Part Of The Problem - Dave Smith - Let Me Change Your Mind
Aired: 2022-09-23
Duration: 01:18:17


=== The Libertarian Fair Point (14:50) ===

[00:00:00]  Fill her up.
[00:00:02]  You are listening to the Gash Digital Network.
[00:00:08]  We need to roll back the state.
[00:00:10]  We spy on all of our own citizens.
[00:00:12]  Our prisons are flooded with nonviolent drug offenders.
[00:00:16]  If you want to know who America's next enemy is, look at who we're funding right now.
[00:00:22]  Every single one of these problems are a result of government being way too big.
[00:00:26]  You're listening to part of the problem on the Gash Digital Network.
[00:00:30]  Here's your host, Dave Smith.
[00:00:34]  What's up, everybody?
[00:00:34]  What's up?
[00:00:35]  Welcome to a brand new episode of Part of the Problem.
[00:00:37]  I'm Dave Smith.
[00:00:38]  He is Robbie the Fire Bernstein, the king of the caucs, COVID.
[00:00:41]  Jesus.
[00:00:42]  What's going on, brother?
[00:00:44]  Nothing much.
[00:00:45]  How you doing, Davey Smith?
[00:00:46]  I'm doing good.
[00:00:47]  Very good.
[00:00:48]  Got a lot of stuff going on.
[00:00:49]  Very excited.
[00:00:51]  I'm going out to Austin, Texas in a few days to go do some stand-up at the Creek in the Cave, do some podcasts out there.
[00:00:58]  So looking forward to that.
[00:00:59]  I just, I literally just checked and my first show is sold out.
[00:01:03]  And the late show has, I believe, four tickets left.
[00:01:08]  So I don't know if by the time this podcast is coming out, they might be sold out.
[00:01:12]  But if not, if you want to come, the late show still has a few tickets.
[00:01:15]  Go check it out.
[00:01:16]  Comicdavesmith.com.
[00:01:17]  And then, of course, SkangFest's coming up soon.
[00:01:20]  A lot of other fun stuff.
[00:01:21]  What do you got going on, Rob?
[00:01:23]  What can people see?
[00:01:25]  One gig, October 1st with Justin Silver, Menu and Heart, BK Chris.
[00:01:31]  And then I got to start lining up some more stuff.
[00:01:33]  Well, me and you are going to line up a bunch of stuff coming up.
[00:01:37]  So toward the new year and into the new year, me and you are going to have a bunch of stand-up shows coming up.
[00:01:44]  I'm working on some of that stuff right now.
[00:01:46]  So also, I would let everyone know if you love the show, go to gasdigitalnetwork.com.
[00:01:51]  Use the promo code P-O-T-P.
[00:01:53]  That'll get you a discount on the monthly subscription price.
[00:01:56]  And you get access to the entire archive library on demand of part of the problem, every part of the problem episode from years and years and years.
[00:02:04]  Me and Rob have been talking about this shit forever, and it is, it's pretty fun.
[00:02:08]  910 episodes and counting.
[00:02:11]  We're going to have to do that.
[00:02:13]  Ooh, we got to do something big for the thousandth episode.
[00:02:16]  Yeah, that's going to be fun.
[00:02:17]  Also, you also get access to all the other shows at the Gas Digital Network.
[00:02:20]  So yeah, go check that out.
[00:02:22]  All right.
[00:02:23]  So for today's episode, we're going to do another response episode.
[00:02:29]  I know I've been doing a lot of these lately, and I promise you, my next episode will be dealing with all of the insanity of the current events with Russia and China and all that shit.
[00:02:40]  I'm planning something out for that right now.
[00:02:42]  But, you know, I just, something about these episodes.
[00:02:46]  And I know, you know, a lot, usually we focus on current events and what's happening in the world, but there's something about these.
[00:02:55]  Sometimes you have these very popular people, these big influencers who critique libertarians or libertarianism.
[00:03:04]  And I think it's really important to kind of respond to them.
[00:03:07]  So we just did an episode a few days ago responding to Alex Jones and Steven Crowder talking about libertarianism.
[00:03:17]  Stephen Crowder put out another video today about libertarianism.
[00:03:21]  And I actually found this one very interesting.
[00:03:24]  And not, so I'm not responding to this video with the spirit of let's fucking wreck this guy and, you know, or anything like that.
[00:03:33]  I actually, it sounded like, okay, we should talk.
[00:03:39]  And I've gotten a lot of people who have been saying, you know, someone tweeted at me after the last video that we did.
[00:03:48]  You should debate Steven Crowder.
[00:03:50]  And I responded and said, I'd be down to do that, something along those lines.
[00:03:55]  And it got a lot of people were like, oh, yeah, you got to.
[00:03:58]  And now I see people all the time responding to Crowder's tweets, tagging me, being like, debate, Dave, blah, blah, blah, all this stuff.
[00:04:06]  I saw some people in the YouTube comments of this video being like, you got to debate Dave Smith.
[00:04:11]  But I will tell you, after this video, my response was more just like, I think we should talk.
[00:04:16]  Forget a debate.
[00:04:17]  You know, I think we should talk.
[00:04:19]  I have a feeling we will at some point, but we'll see.
[00:04:22]  We'll see what ends up happening.
[00:04:24]  Anyway, I'll say before it even starts, I just kind of find it interesting.
[00:04:32]  From my perspective, maybe I'm a little bit removed from all of this.
[00:04:36]  And it's hard to have a completely accurate view of the world.
[00:04:43]  Because a lot of times I feel like, you know, us libertarians are like, I don't know, this tiny group compared to the fucking left and the right.
[00:04:54]  And in some ways, we punch above our weight class because I'm like, well, Stephen Crowder just did a thing about libertarians.
[00:05:01]  And now here he is following it up with another video about why he's not a libertarian.
[00:05:06]  Almost like, you know, I think libertarians just talk so goddamn much that if you criticize us, there's going to be a bunch of us swarming you.
[00:05:12]  And then he's like, no, no, no, no.
[00:05:14]  Listen, let me fucking elaborate further and explain to you why I'm not a libertarian or something like that.
[00:05:20]  So the video, we can jump right into it.
[00:05:22]  The video was, what was the title of it?
[00:05:24]  It was something like a reformed libertarian or why I used to be.
[00:05:29]  Okay, why I'm a recovering libertarian.
[00:05:33]  And this is Stephen Crowder.
[00:05:35]  If anyone doesn't know, Steven Crowder is, you know, an incredibly popular comedian and political commentator.
[00:05:43]  He's got like a million subscribers on YouTube.
[00:05:46]  I'm sure if he wasn't being suppressed, he'd have 5 million subscribers on YouTube.
[00:05:50]  He's, I, I, and for the record, I enjoy his content a lot and have have enjoyed a bunch of a bunch of stuff that he's put out.
[00:05:58]  So let's jump into this video.
[00:06:00]  Go ahead.
[00:06:01]  I like recovering libertarian.
[00:06:02]  Does that mean he wakes up in the morning sometimes just itching for freedom?
[00:06:06]  Just like, I'm not it.
[00:06:07]  Like he's got these moments where he's like, if I could just be intellectually honest and into freedom again.
[00:06:12]  And then he's got to talk himself out of being addicted to something else.
[00:06:15]  Like he's like, man, I could go for some fucking freedom.
[00:06:17]  But then he grabs like a chain with a coin on the end of it.
[00:06:20]  And he's like, no, no, no, 47 days without freedom.
[00:06:23]  Then goes back.
[00:06:24]  Yeah.
[00:06:25]  Maybe that's, I don't know.
[00:06:26]  Dave Landau's the fucking man.
[00:06:28]  That guy's fun.
[00:06:28]  Love, love Dave Landau.
[00:06:30]  Oh, always loved him.
[00:06:31]  He's fucking hilarious.
[00:06:32]  He's a great guy.
[00:06:34]  I'm fans of Dave Landau and Steven Crowder, but I don't think Dave is in this video at all.
[00:06:40]  But I didn't watch the entire thing, but I watched most of it.
[00:06:43]  I don't think Dave's in it.
[00:06:45]  But let's jump into it.
[00:06:47]  Especially Crowder Chowder.
[00:06:48]  There we go.
[00:06:50]  I'm a recovering libertarian.
[00:06:51]  Now, if you look at what I believe and you look at where I would sort of line up on policies, I certainly would lean much closer to the libertarian side of the spectrum, but I don't like using the word.
[00:07:01]  The reason for it is when you have throughout time, like Greg Gutfeld, Bill Maher, Glenn Beck, and the Reason Magazine people all claiming to be libertarians, what does it mean?
[00:07:12]  And then when you watch the libertarian debates, it's just a bunch of people with lisps arguing about weed and cryptocurrency.
[00:07:19]  All right, let's pause it right there.
[00:07:21]  Okay.
[00:07:22]  The thing about the debates, fair point.
[00:07:26]  That is a lot of libertarians.
[00:07:27]  Yes.
[00:07:28]  But we just use the word like a lot.
[00:07:30]  If you get past the lisps, they're having some really interesting conversations about cryptocurrency.
[00:07:39]  Okay.
[00:07:40]  So look, the opening point there that he makes is that he goes, I basically still believe in this shit, but I don't call myself a libertarian.
[00:07:51]  And as soon as you say something like that, honestly, My initial gut reaction is kind of just like, okay, well, then who cares?
[00:08:00]  Like, who cares if you, if you, if you still believe in the same thing, but you call yourself something different, that's fine.
[00:08:06]  It does what a label is far less important than what you believe in.
[00:08:11]  You know, if this is just a semantics thing about what I like to be called, you know, I respect people's pronouns.
[00:08:19]  So if you're not going to call yourself a libertarian, that's fine.
[00:08:23]  And his point is an absolutely valid point where he says, look, if there's one term that Greg Gutfeld is calling himself, and Bill Maher is calling himself, and the people at Reason Magazine are calling themselves, and you know, you could go further than this, right?
[00:08:41]  And Ron Paul is calling himself, and, you know, John Stossel is calling himself, then what the fuck does this term even mean?
[00:08:49]  So that's a fair point.
[00:08:51]  There's a lot of people who use this term who have wildly different views.
[00:08:55]  Now, I don't think Bill Maher has actually called himself a libertarian in a long time.
[00:08:59]  I think Greg Gutfeld is moving closer to us.
[00:09:04]  But the point that he's making is a valid point.
[00:09:08]  The issue there to me is that that same point also applies to conservative, constitutionalist, populist, progressive, Republican, Democrat, communist.
[00:09:26]  You know what I mean?
[00:09:26]  Like all of the, I mean, literally any one of those terms that I just used, you can find people from wildly different schools of thought that are calling themselves the same name, you know, from Hillary Clinton to Theodore Roosevelt to, you know, FDR to AOC to Jimmy Doerr.
[00:09:50]  They all call themselves progressives.
[00:09:53]  You know, like, like, it's, there's liberal.
[00:09:56]  You want to use the term liberal?
[00:09:58]  Ludwig von Mises called himself a liberal.
[00:10:01]  Okay.
[00:10:02]  John Stuart Mills called himself a liberal.
[00:10:05]  Also, fucking Bill Clinton called himself a liberal.
[00:10:09]  You know, it's just like, so this, this is true for all of these things.
[00:10:12]  Constitutional conservative.
[00:10:15]  I think, yeah, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney would call themselves constitutional conservatives.
[00:10:21]  And so would Rand Paul or Thomas Massey.
[00:10:24]  But, right?
[00:10:26]  Like it's so there's the it's not that his point isn't true.
[00:10:31]  It's just that it gives you kind of like a misleading perception of things when you only focus on one term and act like that's a problem with that one term, but not with any of these others.
[00:10:43]  So I get his point, but my thing is just kind of like, yeah, but that's true about any term you're going to use.
[00:10:49]  I've heard people say this before, where they'll be like, you know, I don't call myself a libertarian anymore because so many people use the term libertarian.
[00:10:58]  And that's why I call myself a dissident right-winger.
[00:11:02]  And I was like, yeah, but so many people use that term.
[00:11:04]  Like, so all of these terms are like, you know, used by everyone, even the great Michael Malis, who I love and adore, and I'm very much looking forward to going and seeing when I'm in Austin.
[00:11:19]  This is so many things he says that I completely agree with.
[00:11:21]  But one of the things I really don't agree with him on is that he, he, I think, said that he doesn't like using the term libertarian because there's a lot of people who use that term who don't believe in the stuff he believes in.
[00:11:33]  But then he uses the term anarchist.
[00:11:36]  You're like, oh, okay, but like Antifa uses that term.
[00:11:39]  You know, like there's, there's people who believe way different shit than you who use that term.
[00:11:43]  No matter what term you're going to use, unless you're making up some, unless you're coming up with some very specific, you know, term, unless, unless you're saying, I am like, I don't know, like I'm a paleo-libertarian Buchananite Ron Paulian or something like that.
[00:12:02]  It's going to be very hard to find a term that there aren't people who have, you know, there aren't people who have adopted that.
[00:12:10]  And then, of course, anytime if your movement builds at all, then that problem just gets exponentially worse.
[00:12:18]  More and more people use the term.
[00:12:21]  So I get his point, but I don't think it's reason enough to not call yourself a libertarian.
[00:12:27]  But whatever, who really cares what you call yourself?
[00:12:29]  It's about what you believe in.
[00:12:30]  That's what matters.
[00:12:31]  So let's keep playing.
[00:12:34]  I don't think there's a whole lot there for me, but I do believe that originalist sort of federalism, conservatism, certainly lines up more with libertarianism.
[00:12:42]  But we do find ourselves right now at a point in this country where it can't possibly function.
[00:12:47]  And let me explain to you why.
[00:12:48]  Libertarianism is a preventative measure.
[00:12:51]  It works if you set it up from a framework of small government and you maintain it.
[00:12:55]  It is not a recovery.
[00:12:57]  It is not a curative measure.
[00:12:59]  And right now, we are at a point in this country where a preventative measure like libertarianism can you can't fight something aggressive, meaning thousands of pages of new legislation each day by saying, well, there shouldn't be any.
[00:13:11]  I understand that, but there is.
[00:13:13]  And it almost never gets taken off the books.
[00:13:15]  And the idea of free markets, which I support, free enterprise, I support.
[00:13:20]  I've always said I'm not the party of big business, the party of small business.
[00:13:22]  I'm the party of good business.
[00:13:24]  The problem is there really are no free markets in the biggest industries that exist in the world today.
[00:13:29]  And really, when you look at one of the few legitimate purviews of government, it is to protect us from threats, both external and internal, and to ensure that everyone is playing by the rules, that rules that might harm somebody.
[00:13:41]  And certainly now, when you look at the organizations, we'll get into big tech, big banks, airlines, health insurance companies, they are causing direct harm to the American citizens, and they are doing so with carte blanche from our federal government.
[00:13:51]  Right.
[00:13:51]  Well, too big to fail.
[00:13:52]  I mean, you're supposed to have a level playing field so that people can come in and compete.
[00:13:55]  And that's what keeps goods and services more affordable and gives everybody the opportunity to innovate.
[00:14:00]  Pause it there.
[00:14:01]  There's a lot said there.
[00:14:04]  Crowder's co-host here says that the point of government is to keep a level playing field, which I got to say, I object to a little bit.
[00:14:16]  I understand the spirit of what he's saying.
[00:14:18]  But if we're going to be really precise here about what we're talking about, you know, a level playing field sounds a lot like egalitarianism or like equality or something that we're all supposed to be on the same level, which is not true.
[00:14:34]  And I don't think that's what he really believes or what Crowder really believes.
[00:14:38]  Co-hosts say dumb shit, so you don't have to address them.
[00:14:40]  That is such a good point.
[00:14:42]  Yeah, just like I'm the main guy.
[00:14:44]  I remember a co-host saying the dumbest shit ever, but I can't remember where it was.
[00:14:49]  I think I was talking.

=== Agreeing on Goals and Strategy (06:58) ===

[00:14:51]  And then he just came in with some.
[00:14:53]  Anyway, that's a fair point.
[00:14:54]  But, you know, just to make sure, no, my co-host says really smart shit, Rob.
[00:14:58]  There you go.
[00:14:59]  You got to meet him.
[00:15:00]  He's great.
[00:15:02]  So, but, but Crowder makes the point that, so he's like, I basically agree with libertarianism, but the issue is that libertarianism is preventative and it's not a cure.
[00:15:13]  And this, I think, is a really interesting point.
[00:15:17]  I mean, it's an assertion.
[00:15:19]  And I'd be really interested to hear like what the argument is for why that is.
[00:15:23]  Why you think that like I agree with you that libertarianism is where we want to be, but that only works if we're like he said, that only works if you start with a small government and keep a small government.
[00:15:35]  That doesn't work once you don't have a small government anymore.
[00:15:39]  There's something kind of interesting about that.
[00:15:41]  You know, like once we agree on what the goal is, then there's a really interesting debate that could happen around strategy, right?
[00:15:49]  You get what I'm saying?
[00:15:51]  Like, once you agree, like, go ahead.
[00:15:54]  I think Crowder might be more autistic than we are.
[00:15:58]  It sounds to me like he's saying someone's going to have to mandate that government gets reduced.
[00:16:02]  So that's like government forcing itself to be smaller.
[00:16:07]  And that's not libertarian because the government has to actually mandate that.
[00:16:11]  Right.
[00:16:11]  But I see, see, that to me, it's like, so he goes, um, okay, where whatever he says, he's like, well, there's all these regulations, and no matter what we say, there's just more and more and more of them.
[00:16:22]  So, okay.
[00:16:25]  But if we agree that the goal is that there's less of them, then we then we agree, right?
[00:16:32]  Like, it's almost like I'm trying to think of an analogy, but like, if you agree, like, I'll be the first to acknowledge that the task is daunting.
[00:16:41]  Yes, the U.S. federal government is like the biggest government in the history of the world.
[00:16:48]  It's like by far.
[00:16:50]  And so the idea of rolling that back is a daunting task.
[00:16:55]  But there's almost two steps.
[00:16:57]  There's two parts of this that are both equally as important.
[00:17:01]  It's like agreeing on the goal and then agreeing on the strategy.
[00:17:05]  Both of those, they're equally important.
[00:17:08]  Neither one is more important than the other.
[00:17:11]  They're both like as much, like 50-50, equally important in the same sense that, like, if you had cancer and you recognize that the solution is to remove the cancer, but then there's an argument about, you know, the strategy of how to remove that cancer.
[00:17:32]  Now, if you if everyone agrees that we should remove this cancer, but we have no strategy on how to do it, well, that's that's basically meaningless.
[00:17:45]  That's nothing.
[00:17:46]  You have nothing if you don't have a strategy about how you can actually do this.
[00:17:50]  And that is a fair critique of libertarianism that I hear from a lot of people.
[00:17:54]  That's great.
[00:17:55]  You guys talk about, you know, all this stuff and how it should be, but what's your actual actual strategy to get there?
[00:18:01]  I think that's fair.
[00:18:03]  But if you don't agree on the end goal of removing the cancer, then strategy is meaningless.
[00:18:14]  You know, like if you don't agree on that and you go, well, I have a strategy that can actually work and it will double the size of this cancer, but it can work.
[00:18:22]  We can do it.
[00:18:23]  You're like, well, okay.
[00:18:25]  Yeah, you have a strategy that's effective, but it doesn't achieve the fucking goal.
[00:18:30]  So really what you need is both of these things.
[00:18:33]  You need to understand what the goal is and then understand what the strategy is.
[00:18:37]  That's what's important.
[00:18:38]  So when Stephen Crowder says, well, look, I mean, basically what he's saying is the government's just huge and it just seems to be getting bigger.
[00:18:46]  So libertarianism doesn't do anything for that.
[00:18:49]  Libertarianism is preventative, but it doesn't cure things.
[00:18:53]  Well, I would certainly agree that at this point where we are in society, being preventative is not as important as curing things.
[00:19:03]  But what does that mean to say libertarianism is preventative, but doesn't cure things?
[00:19:10]  I don't know.
[00:19:13]  That's what we, that's kind of what we'd have to get to the bottom of here if he's going to really make a point.
[00:19:18]  What do you mean by that?
[00:19:19]  Like, I mean, to me, libertarianism would like, like you said, if you were to use government to reduce the size of government, to me, that's completely consistent with libertarianism.
[00:19:34]  You know, whatever you needed to do to reduce that, you know, the tax code or the whatever, that would, that would be consistent with libertarianism.
[00:19:45]  In the same sense that, um, just to give some examples, so Chris, Christy Noam and uh in uh South Dakota, there they never had a lockdown.
[00:19:56]  Just take one specific area, the COVID policy, right?
[00:19:58]  They never had lockdowns or mask mandates.
[00:20:01]  Now, that was completely consistent with libertarianism to never do it, never do the COVID craziness.
[00:20:10]  Ron DeSantis did institute a lockdown, but then he ended it when he ended it.
[00:20:18]  That was completely consistent with libertarianism.
[00:20:21]  When he instituted it, it wasn't, but ending it was.
[00:20:26]  So, I just don't know exactly what he means by libertarianism is preventative, but it doesn't cure.
[00:20:32]  That's so let's see what we can get.
[00:20:35]  I mean, it's a pretty simple cure-all, uh, actually.
[00:20:37]  If you reduce the government to one task, which is protecting people's private property, then you'll have prosperity because you'll get the, you'll be, you'll be reducing the power of the leech, the thing that gets in the way of people having to compete, create value, make their own independent choices.
[00:20:53]  So, it's like it's actually a pretty good prescription for how to solve just about everything.
[00:20:58]  Yes.
[00:20:58]  Now, again, I just, I completely agree with you.
[00:21:02]  Just to be clear, though, because I don't want to like make this shit sound oversimplistic.
[00:21:06]  I'm not claiming, and I don't think you're claiming either that that's an easy task to accomplish.
[00:21:12]  Like, oh, this is easy.
[00:21:14]  We can easily roll back the greatest, you know, the most powerful government in human history.
[00:21:19]  Obviously, that's quite a daunting task.
[00:21:22]  Um, it's almost like, in a sense, that like if someone was uh um dying of thirst, like they hadn't, you know, had any water in days and days, and they're about to die.
[00:21:33]  And you're like, Well, listen, up this mountain on the top of it, there's a canteen with a bunch of water in it, and you're like, The solution is to go get that and drink it, and you're like, Yeah, but that's so goddamn hard to fucking climb this whole mountain.

=== Aspiration Zero for the Environment (03:16) ===

[00:21:49]  You're like, Absolutely, I agree with you.
[00:21:52]  That seems really hard.
[00:21:53]  I'm just telling you that the water is up there, and that that's the solution to your problem of dying of thirst is water.
[00:22:01]  So, that again, so anyway, but let's let's listen to Crowder and see what he means by all of this.
[00:22:08]  Once you have these big companies set up in the government backing them up, that's no longer the case.
[00:22:12]  Exactly.
[00:22:13]  So, first, do we have a we don't have a stinger for question?
[00:22:15]  Do we?
[00:22:15]  I gotta say, Oh, all right, so question.
[00:22:18]  Oh, that's nice.
[00:22:21]  Let's, what is libertarianism?
[00:22:23]  Quick pause.
[00:22:24]  All right, just so you guys know, it's pretty fucking cool that they do that.
[00:22:29]  We're building a new studio, we have a new studio that's being constructed very shortly for part of the problem, and we're going to get that level of technology.
[00:22:36]  Okay, we just keep it all manual.
[00:22:38]  I'll run into like the screen with like one of those Ivanka, you know, like suit things.
[00:22:43]  Yeah, okay, maybe, yeah, but we'll do it one way or the other.
[00:22:46]  We're going to make that shit happen.
[00:22:48]  Where I just go, question, and it goes ding because god damn it, even though my points-I'll wear a bell on my head.
[00:22:54]  I'll wear a bell on my head, I'll like wear hold a thing.
[00:22:56]  I just feel like I feel like my points are better than his, but at the same time, if you were watching both of these videos and you saw he had that ding thing, like even I'd be like, I'm going with the ding guy, the ding guy just seems like he's got his life together more than that guy.
[00:23:09]  Damn you, Crowder.
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=== Handouts vs Anti-Mandate Views (14:47) ===

[00:25:05]  What is libertarianism?
[00:25:06]  Okay, have a definition here.
[00:25:08]  A political philosophy maintaining that all persons are the absolute owners of their own lives and should be free to do whatever they wish with their persons or property, provided they allow others the same liberty.
[00:25:17]  There's nothing there with which I disagree, to be clear.
[00:25:20]  There's a more psychic.
[00:25:23]  All right.
[00:25:24]  I do not completely agree with that definition, but it's close enough.
[00:25:30]  It's close enough that I'll accept it and go, okay, that's the definition of libertarianism for the sake of this conversation.
[00:25:37]  But then Crowder reads that and goes, I completely agree with it.
[00:25:42]  And you're like, okay, great.
[00:25:44]  So then what the fuck are we talking about here?
[00:25:46]  Like, if you agree with the definition of libertarianism and we agree that that's the definition of libertarianism, then all right, man, let's fucking like, what are we talking about?
[00:25:57]  Then we're all on the same page here.
[00:25:58]  Okay.
[00:25:59]  So that's all I want to say.
[00:26:00]  All right.
[00:26:00]  Let's keep playing.
[00:26:01]  Psychologist, I guess it's his title.
[00:26:03]  Jonathan Haight had an interesting hypothesis on sort of how libertarians think.
[00:26:08]  Here's a clip.
[00:26:09]  There is a big sex difference here.
[00:26:11]  Men are generally higher on systemizing.
[00:26:14]  Women are generally higher on empathizing.
[00:26:16]  And what we find is that libertarians are, in a sense, the most masculine out there.
[00:26:22]  Libertarian men are the highest on systemizing of any of the three groups, and they are the lowest on empathizing.
[00:26:28]  Same thing for women.
[00:26:30]  Okay.
[00:26:30]  Now, first off, let me just say, I disagree with that as it applies to conservatism.
[00:26:34]  I understand the idea that libertarianism is, you know, people might be low on the empathy scale.
[00:26:38]  I will tell you, I am a conservative.
[00:26:39]  I'm a constitutionalist.
[00:26:40]  I'm a federalist because I am hyperly empathetic.
[00:26:43]  I look at the people of Venezuela.
[00:26:44]  I look at the people of, you look at the people under Stalin's regime.
[00:26:47]  You look at the people under Castro.
[00:26:49]  Currently, when we're talking about Venezuela, I mean, take your pick China.
[00:26:52]  I look at them and I say, it's never possibly worked.
[00:26:55]  So you may see in the short term saying, well, you don't want to extend a hand.
[00:26:58]  No, I see what handouts lead to.
[00:27:02]  And because I don't want to see the destruction of not only society, but the human spirit, I'm a conservative.
[00:27:08]  I think it's the most empathetic worldview you can possibly have.
[00:27:10]  Absolutely.
[00:27:12]  So, okay, a couple of things.
[00:27:13]  First off, I really agree with Crowder when he says this.
[00:27:16]  Although I do say I really like Jonathan Haidt just saying libertarians are like the most manly men around or something, because that has not been my experience dealing with libertarians.
[00:27:27]  And I just appreciate that.
[00:27:28]  Like, you know, someone's going like, yeah, we're the fucking, we're the men here.
[00:27:32]  All right.
[00:27:33]  Anyway, but I really, I got to say, I've talked about like similar things on the show before, but I really agree with what Crowder is saying, like the spirit of what he's saying, that it's, it's like, obviously, like, yes, I mean, it's a mix of both.
[00:27:47]  Yes.
[00:27:48]  Part of the reason why we're libertarians is because we understand the system and how the system would work and how our system would work versus the current system would work.
[00:27:56]  But I do agree that it's like, I think that I am my belief in liberty is driven by empathy.
[00:28:07]  That I think the main reason why I believe in freedom is because I just see how governments destroy innocent people's lives.
[00:28:18]  And I certainly can understand how something like, let's just say, like the IRS can, you know, you can understand like the systematized problem with the IRS, where you go, like, wait a minute, but if you set up a fee for being productive, then that is discouraging people from producing more.
[00:28:45]  You know what I mean?
[00:28:46]  Like, if there's a tax for working, then you'll get less people working than you otherwise would have working if you didn't have the tax and all this stuff.
[00:28:55]  But the real thing that makes me good at this job of podcasting about liberty shit is because I'm like, deep inside me as a human being, I'm like, you ruin people's lives.
[00:29:07]  Like the IRS like goes after people for the crime of working and will go back 15 years on them and wreck them and destroy their business because they misfiled a few papers.
[00:29:22]  Like that, that's what drives me crazy.
[00:29:24]  That's why I'm anti-war.
[00:29:25]  That's why I'm anti-Fed.
[00:29:26]  That's why I'm anti-war on drugs.
[00:29:28]  That's why I'm anti-all this stuff.
[00:29:29]  I just hate that the government destroys innocent people's lives.
[00:29:33]  So I really agree with the spirit of what he's saying there.
[00:29:36]  That no, it's not, it's not a lack of empathy.
[00:29:40]  And I just think, I think he is a little imprecise when he's saying, like, oh, it's not that I'm against handouts.
[00:29:48]  It's that I see what handouts lead to.
[00:29:51]  But what the libertarians, the real strict, hardcore libertarians like us understand is that it's, we're not even saying we're against handouts.
[00:29:58]  Handouts are good sometimes.
[00:30:00]  You know, we've all probably given handouts to people sometimes.
[00:30:04]  It's forced handouts with other people's money who you stole, you know, through the through extortion.
[00:30:11]  That's what is the problem.
[00:30:13]  You know, if you leave this to local levels, like churches give out free beds to sleep on, but I don't think that anyone's going like there's a real problem with these handouts.
[00:30:22]  It doesn't lead to all the disasters he's talking about.
[00:30:25]  The disasters come from an authoritarian regime who monopolizes handouts with other people's money.
[00:30:32]  But the other thing that I happen to notice in there is that he's completely comfortable using these terms like constitutionalist or federalist or any of this stuff or believing in federalism, rather, I should say.
[00:30:46]  And they all have the same problems that he objected to with the term libertarian, that a lot of other people use this and don't mean at all what you mean.
[00:30:56]  Like if you believe in federalism and you're a constitutionalist, like a real constitutionalist, by today's standards, you are a radical minarchist.
[00:31:12]  You may not be an ANCAP, but you're a radical minarchist if you believe in the Constitution, which really to me is like, dude, you're a libertarian.
[00:31:21]  If you're really a constitutionalist, then basically you would have to believe that 90% of the federal government should be eliminated, abolished.
[00:31:32]  So, like, what are we even talking about here?
[00:31:35]  What are we even talking about?
[00:31:36]  Are we down?
[00:31:38]  Are we arguing over like the last little bits of whether we should have pure anarchy or some degree of loose, you know, like confederation of state governments under like a very weak federal government?
[00:31:51]  Whatever.
[00:31:52]  But I'm just saying that, like, I do very much agree with the central point that he's making there, that like the left almost tries to make this conversation out to be like you either have empathy and care about people or you believe in capitalism.
[00:32:08]  But that's not accurate.
[00:32:09]  That's not true at all.
[00:32:11]  And I think in many ways, if you just look at it in your everyday life, like think about leftists that you know, do they really have more empathy or do they just use the claim of having more empathy to really crush their opponents, which is not empathy?
[00:32:27]  Any thoughts, Rob?
[00:32:29]  I think that's the most annoying thing about liberals is that they pretend like our perspective is out of lack of care.
[00:32:35]  Right.
[00:32:36]  Right.
[00:32:36]  Exactly.
[00:32:37]  All right.
[00:32:38]  Let's keep lying.
[00:32:39]  Yeah, absolutely.
[00:32:40]  It's the only one that allows for compassion because government is never compassionate because they're dealing with numbers that are too big to be compassionate.
[00:32:46]  You're not dealing with one.
[00:32:47]  You're dealing with thousands, millions of people.
[00:32:49]  And so you can't be compassionate with that.
[00:32:50]  And that's why you see leftist individuals, they donate far less to charity than conservatives.
[00:32:55]  The single two biggest determining factors, I think it was Brooks wrote this, a book called Who Really Cares, if I'm not mistaken.
[00:33:00]  Guys in the edit bay, you can let me know if that's right.
[00:33:04]  Discussed who gave to charity.
[00:33:05]  And the single biggest determining factors were your faith, religion, and your political persuasion.
[00:33:10]  Yeah.
[00:33:10]  And it was a huge difference because you have Nancy Pelosi saying, no, the empathetic thing is to have open borders and to give all the money to government and less than 1% to charity.
[00:33:21]  And hey, I go weed whack my lawn.
[00:33:22]  That's how they, it's rules for thee and not for me.
[00:33:25]  Right.
[00:33:25]  Well, but it assuages their guilt, right?
[00:33:27]  They're like, oh, I can just, you know, pay taxes and do this.
[00:33:29]  The government's responsible for doing this.
[00:33:31]  The charitable view is I'm responsible for helping my local community.
[00:33:34]  So I'll give to charity locally and let these guys go and do the work and I'll also volunteer not write off my underwear.
[00:33:40]  Joseph Biden.
[00:33:42]  Remember when he did that?
[00:33:43]  So far, sounds pretty goddamn libertarian.
[00:33:47]  But anyway, let's keep lying.
[00:33:48]  Yes.
[00:33:49]  Wrote off underwear.
[00:33:51]  I didn't know you could have write-offs for skin.
[00:33:53]  Especially for his underwear.
[00:33:54]  They're like $8,000 in depends.
[00:33:56]  You bullion.
[00:33:57]  Here, let's go to this.
[00:33:58]  A few examples.
[00:34:00]  You are at a point now where the libertarian argument can't apply when you're talking about big tech, when you're talking about these giant non-government entities that have more influence over the government and over your life than even the government would be justified in exerting.
[00:34:14]  Let me give you a few examples.
[00:34:16]  Okay.
[00:34:16]  Facebook.
[00:34:17]  Start with Facebook.
[00:34:18]  They are an arm of left-wing government, just to be clear.
[00:34:23]  They don't allow any opinions that contradict what?
[00:34:26]  What?
[00:34:26]  Government agencies or like the CDC or international governing agencies like the WHO, who, by the way, don't acknowledge Taiwan's existence.
[00:34:34]  Hold on a second.
[00:34:35]  Here.
[00:34:37]  Is it political?
[00:34:38]  Is this a private industry or is it political if they are taking marketing orders from the WHO who does not acknowledge Taiwan's existence?
[00:34:44]  Because by the way, acknowledging Taiwan's existence might be the reason for World War II.
[00:34:48]  Just to be clear, Crowder did something there that I think was a really important conflation that really changes how you feel about this whole thing.
[00:35:00]  He said at one point, he goes, you have these big tech companies that are exerting more influence over the government and over your life than even the government.
[00:35:12]  And then in the next breath, he said they're taking marching orders from the government.
[00:35:18]  And I just want to be clear that those are two different things.
[00:35:21]  And it's really important to understand which one of them is actually going on.
[00:35:25]  What's happening?
[00:35:27]  Exerting influence over the government is very different from taking marching orders from the government, right?
[00:35:34]  Like, so for example, I will shamefully admit that I pay taxes and I've paid a lot of money in taxes.
[00:35:42]  I am not proud of it.
[00:35:43]  And it sucks.
[00:35:44]  And my God, I wish I had all of that money for my fucking family that I've given over to the federal government to go, you know, send weapons to Ukraine or whatever the fuck I'm paying for.
[00:35:56]  But that's not me exerting influence over the government.
[00:36:00]  That is me taking marching orders from the government, just to be clear.
[00:36:04]  And so it's like, which one, those are two very different things.
[00:36:09]  It's very different to say, if I'm in bed with the government in the sense that I'm paying them taxes, that I'm exerting influence over the government or that I'm being forced to do something by the government.
[00:36:19]  Those are very different things.
[00:36:20]  And so that's very important.
[00:36:22]  Look, I don't even want to get into this Taiwan thing.
[00:36:25]  It's not recognizing the existence of Taiwan.
[00:36:29]  It's recognizing the independence of Taiwan, but whatever.
[00:36:31]  This is, we could talk about this on an online.
[00:36:33]  I can't see Taiwan on a map.
[00:36:35]  I mean, it's tiny.
[00:36:35]  It basically looks like it's a part of China.
[00:36:37]  So you don't think it is.
[00:36:39]  You actually are denying the existence.
[00:36:40]  You're like, I'm not sure it's a thing.
[00:36:42]  They keep telling me about it, but they like wars.
[00:36:44]  So they make up some place that doesn't exist.
[00:36:46]  They say that people are skirmishing.
[00:36:48]  Next thing you know, you got a war on your hands.
[00:36:49]  There you go.
[00:36:50]  Rob is actually denying the existence of Taiwan.
[00:36:52]  I don't think it's a place.
[00:36:54]  I don't think anyone's, I think it's just something people made up.
[00:36:56]  Have you ever seen Taiwan?
[00:36:57]  Have you personally been there?
[00:36:59]  Can even locate it on a map, keep telling me about semiconductors.
[00:37:03]  I can't even see semiconductors.
[00:37:04]  The whole thing's a scam.
[00:37:06]  You know, goddammit, that is a damning case.
[00:37:08]  All right.
[00:37:08]  Let's keep playing.
[00:37:10]  Or three.
[00:37:11]  I got that clip.
[00:37:12]  Oh, of them not even acknowledging the.
[00:37:14]  Yeah.
[00:37:15]  You know, let's pull this up.
[00:37:15]  It's Bone Chill.
[00:37:17]  Oh, consider Taiwan's membership.
[00:37:25]  Come again.
[00:37:27]  Guy.
[00:37:28]  Hello?
[00:37:31]  I can't hear you.
[00:37:31]  I couldn't hear your question.
[00:37:32]  Okay, yeah.
[00:37:33]  Let me, let me, let me repeat the question.
[00:37:35]  Okay, let's move to another one then.
[00:37:37]  Right.
[00:37:38]  Because I'm, I'm actually curious on talking about Taiwan as well, on Taiwan's case.
[00:37:49]  Here's the thing: I should say that I'm most upset because it's wrong.
[00:37:52]  I'm most upset because I'm jealous that you can just do that.
[00:37:54]  I was about to say, you could do that.
[00:37:56]  You could just end an interview and it's like, everybody's like, oh, yeah, sorry.
[00:37:59]  Just have any argument in a relationship.
[00:38:01]  Like, well, why don't you take out the trash?
[00:38:05]  You know what the most fun part is?
[00:38:06]  I suppose it.
[00:38:07]  Yeah.
[00:38:08]  That is, look, that is incredible and fucking hilarious the way they play that.
[00:38:14]  But that really just demonstrates more that the Chinese influence over the WHO.
[00:38:20]  You know what I'm saying?
[00:38:21]  Like it's, it's like, that more just demonstrates the fact that it's like, yeah, we shouldn't be a part of these kind of like global governance organizations.
[00:38:28]  But fair enough.
[00:38:29]  That's insane that he literally just, the guy goes like, I'm sorry, I didn't hear that.
[00:38:34]  And she goes, I'll repeat the question.
[00:38:35]  He goes, no, no, just move on to the next question.
[00:38:37]  Like, well, why would you want to move on to the next question if you didn't hear that question?
[00:38:41]  And then she asked again and he just goes, I love that his backdrop is even more off-center than mine.
[00:38:50]  That's like, that's like Fisher Price CEO set.
[00:38:54]  Oh, yeah, it's not even set up.
[00:38:57]  And then, yeah.
[00:38:58]  I thought you were talking about Crowder's guy, but yes, yes, yes.
[00:39:00]  No, Crowder's set looks great.
[00:39:02]  Okay.
[00:39:03]  Fair enough.
[00:39:04]  You think Bill Gates could afford nicer backdrops for these people?
[00:39:07]  Yeah, really.
[00:39:08]  All right.
[00:39:08]  Anyway, let's keep playing.
[00:39:09]  So where does libertarianism fail?
[00:39:11]  Let's get back to that.
[00:39:12]  About not being able to post information that can't contradict one of those.
[00:39:15]  I mean, I guess it's not fun, but go.
[00:39:16]  When the WHO and the CDC don't agree, then you can't, you can't be like, hey, the WHO said because the CDC is like, no, we don't agree, or vice versa.
[00:39:25]  That's like having an alcoholic father who beats your mother who's also an alcoholic and beats him back.
[00:39:29]  Zuckerberg also emailed Dr. Fauci personally in March 2020 to collaborate with the NIH to ensure, quote, people get authoritative information from reliable sources.
[00:39:41]  Not to mention, of course, Facebook's decision to ban the 45th president until at least 2023 for public safety concerns.
[00:39:46]  What is a public safety concern?
[00:39:48]  We don't want him to win.
[00:39:50]  We don't want him to win.
[00:39:51]  Really don't want him to win.

=== Where Libertarianism Fails Facebook (03:40) ===

[00:39:53]  So, was this private enterprise?
[00:39:55]  Is this free market?
[00:39:56]  When people say, go create your own Facebook, how do you do that?
[00:39:59]  How do you do that when the head of Facebook, sorry, Meta is directly emailing Dr. Fauci, the highest paid government official who's never been elected?
[00:40:05]  Think about that for a second.
[00:40:06]  Dr. Fauci's never been elected by you.
[00:40:08]  He's not even your representative.
[00:40:09]  And he's talking with Zuckerberg to give them marching orders who can control what you say.
[00:40:14]  Nothing about that is emblematic of a constitutional republic.
[00:40:17]  And nothing about that can be solved through a preventative measure like libertarianism.
[00:40:23]  It no longer applies here.
[00:40:25]  By the way, Facebook, Alphabet, Apple, Amazon, they've donated millions of dollars to Joe Biden and Democrats in 2020.
[00:40:32]  Not to mention, of course, you have what?
[00:40:34]  Zuckerberg and Twitter.
[00:40:36]  And to a lesser degree, Google, YouTube censored the Hunter Biden laptop story.
[00:40:41]  Not only did they censor it, they censored the story while allowing political opposition to paint it as Russian propaganda.
[00:40:49]  And then said, whoops, we were wrong.
[00:40:51]  Is this a free market?
[00:40:54]  Is the true libertarian view?
[00:40:55]  Well, Facebook can do whatever it wants.
[00:40:57]  Well, because when you're saying Facebook can do whatever it wants, the libertarian in you is saying, Dr. Fauci, Joe Biden, Hunter Biden, Kamala Harris, Jean-Pierre, they can do whatever they want.
[00:41:07]  You're not talking about a private entity.
[00:41:09]  Yeah.
[00:41:10]  Well, and it's funny because Mark Zuckerberg, you know, his solution to say, oh, we're not as bad as Twitter over there, we didn't actually ban the story and make them go silent for 10 days while their account was banned.
[00:41:20]  We just shadow banned it so nobody knew that we were making it to where you didn't see it pop up in your news feed.
[00:41:26]  And so it was a significant reduction in the spread of this information that potentially, according to polls, not me, could have changed the outcome of an election.
[00:41:34]  It absolutely would have changed the outcome of the election.
[00:41:35]  According to Biden voters, Biden is banned so many times.
[00:41:38]  It's according to because at least it's not our branch of libertarians that in any way think that Facebook's a free company and that this is a working system.
[00:41:50]  Yeah, I mean, this is all this stuff he's saying is completely consistent with what we've been saying for a long time.
[00:41:56]  It's like, but again, look, just to say, look at this.
[00:42:01]  If his point is like, hey, big business is in bed with big government.
[00:42:05]  Is this a free market?
[00:42:06]  No, it's not.
[00:42:07]  It's like, yeah, no, it's not.
[00:42:08]  But then the weird thing is that's the problem with government.
[00:42:11]  I mean, government's controlling these companies.
[00:42:14]  Right.
[00:42:14]  So he like he already even said there.
[00:42:16]  He goes, is this a constitutional republic?
[00:42:19]  No, it's not.
[00:42:19]  It's like, oh, okay, but that's the label you used.
[00:42:22]  That's what you described yourself as was a constitutional Republican.
[00:42:25]  So yeah, you're right.
[00:42:26]  It's not consistent with that.
[00:42:27]  It's not consistent with libertarianism.
[00:42:29]  It's not, but that doesn't disprove constitutional republicanism or libertarianism or anything like that.
[00:42:35]  It's just great evidence that, yeah, your response shouldn't be go create your own Facebook.
[00:42:40]  Now, I will say it is probably fair to have the response that, look, what we should be trying to do is roll back this government partnership with Facebook.
[00:42:53]  And also, if you can create your own Facebook, that'd be a fucking great thing to do.
[00:42:56]  And like companies like, you know, Rumble and stuff like that or Getter or whoever it is, like, yeah, okay, that's, that's great if you can do something in that world.
[00:43:07]  But yeah, of course, no one's like, I mean, maybe not no one, but certainly that is not the argument from any good libertarian that, like, yeah, this is completely appropriate that, you know, government is able to influence these social media companies or really in some ways quasi-force these social media companies to ban their political opponents.
[00:43:30]  Or again, none of us would argue that this is a free market.

=== Quitting Smoking with Fume (02:19) ===

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=== Arguments Against Government Collusion (14:59) ===

[00:45:53]  Biden voters, 12% of them, I believe, I'm going by rote, said we would have would have changed my vote if I knew about the Hunter Biden laptop, right?
[00:45:59]  That switches all of the swing states.
[00:46:00]  Yeah.
[00:46:01]  And how does libertarianism fix that?
[00:46:03]  Let's go on to another example.
[00:46:04]  So now the biggest organization is the biggest company.
[00:46:06]  Right there.
[00:46:06]  Because this is an interesting question.
[00:46:08]  He says, how does libertarianism fix that?
[00:46:10]  So what he's saying is that there's polling data to suggest that the suppression of the Hunter Biden story swung the election.
[00:46:21]  Now, I don't know about that.
[00:46:22]  I haven't actually seen that polling data that he's referring to.
[00:46:26]  And maybe that's right.
[00:46:28]  Let's just, for the sake of argument, let's just say that is right.
[00:46:33]  I'll tell you, even with that, that Stephen Crowder is underselling his case.
[00:46:40]  There's actually a much stronger case, even than just that.
[00:46:43]  Like, you could go, look, that story being buried by social media companies, that would have swung the election.
[00:46:51]  But what else did social media companies bury?
[00:46:55]  Who else did they de-platform?
[00:46:57]  I mean, look, add it all up in your mind, right?
[00:47:02]  really add up who after the censorship regime in on big tech rose up and it really rose up around 2016.
[00:47:12]  It was around when Donald Trump got elected that they really started cracking down on the fake news and all this stuff, misinformation and all of that, which has only gotten worse and worse and worse.
[00:47:22]  But I mean, look, obviously we know Alex Jones, a huge Trump supporter who was supporting Trump, you know, up to he was like leading the rallies in the 2020 stop the steal, you know, shit.
[00:47:38]  He had millions of viewers and he was relegated down to being on like whatever, you know, he can't be on Facebook or YouTube or Twitter or iTunes or any of that shit anymore.
[00:47:49]  And there's people like Milo.
[00:47:53]  Huh?
[00:47:54]  I'm just saying.
[00:47:55]  He's in trouble for no reason.
[00:47:58]  Well, but look, Milo Yiannopoulos or trying to think of other big examples of high-profile people.
[00:48:08]  Again, however you feel about any of these guys, Gavin McGinnis and Anthony Kumia.
[00:48:14]  And I'm not just naming people who have been canceled, but I'm naming people who had huge audiences who were Trump supporters who have been deplatformed.
[00:48:25]  I mean, all of them being kicked off was a huge, you know, like imagine like all of Biden's most popular influencers who had big audiences all getting kicked off social media.
[00:48:38]  Would that hurt him?
[00:48:39]  Of course.
[00:48:40]  Of course it would.
[00:48:41]  So yeah, they did tremendous damage to that.
[00:48:43]  But when he says libertarianism can't fix this, it's like, again, I can understand the, like, I can kind of understand the argument that it's a really daunting challenge to roll back the government intervention into the private economy.
[00:49:01]  I get that completely.
[00:49:02]  In the same way that I can understand when the guy's dying of thirst saying getting up this entire mountain to get that water that's up there is a really daunting challenge.
[00:49:14]  But that's a different thing than saying to the guy who's dying of thirst, water can't fix this.
[00:49:20]  Yes, it can.
[00:49:21]  Water does fix this.
[00:49:24]  Rolling back the government would fix this, right?
[00:49:28]  Like if you go, hey, look, I just think it's a very difficult thing.
[00:49:33]  It's going to be near impossible to roll back government.
[00:49:36]  And so we can't do that.
[00:49:37]  Go, okay.
[00:49:38]  Well, what's the other solution?
[00:49:40]  More government.
[00:49:41]  Right.
[00:49:41]  And hopefully that level of it doesn't get corrupted, which is the issue.
[00:49:45]  The corruption of government.
[00:49:46]  The same level of government, more government.
[00:49:49]  If we're going less government, then that's completely consistent with libertarianism.
[00:49:52]  So again, just like that's that's as simple, I think, as I could make it is going like, you're dying of thirst.
[00:49:58]  The water's very far away.
[00:50:00]  Going, hey, that's so far away.
[00:50:02]  I completely get that.
[00:50:03]  But going, water won't fix your problem of dying of thirst.
[00:50:07]  Like, no, that's not true.
[00:50:09]  Actually, it will.
[00:50:10]  That's actually the one thing that will fix this is rolling back government.
[00:50:14]  Okay.
[00:50:15]  So he's, he's already asserted, but libertarianism can't address this.
[00:50:20]  This is what they always say.
[00:50:21]  Well, he said specifically, libertarianism is preventative, but it doesn't cure the problem.
[00:50:27]  Okay.
[00:50:27]  I like, explain that to me.
[00:50:30]  Explain to me what you mean by that.
[00:50:31]  Well, what does cure the problem?
[00:50:34]  A stronger government?
[00:50:36]  You know, let me know.
[00:50:38]  And explain to me why.
[00:50:40]  Anyway, let's keep playing.
[00:50:41]  Companies that have ever existed throughout the history of mankind.
[00:50:43]  The Westington Trading Company, I think, employed like a fifth of population Earth, not as powerful as the big tech companies.
[00:50:51]  And by the way, they all email each other.
[00:50:53]  Do you think they accidentally all banned Alex Jones and Donald Trump within 24 hours of each other?
[00:50:57]  Come on.
[00:50:58]  It's not a conspiracy if it only requires five people to make it happen.
[00:51:01]  So let's go to example number two: banks.
[00:51:03]  Hey, banks, I agree with you.
[00:51:04]  I agree with you that banks should have the right to do what banks want to do.
[00:51:08]  They should be, but banks are not separate from the government.
[00:51:11]  If you look at banks and you look at hedge funds, they manipulate the economy, for example, to short stocks before we even get into the balance.
[00:51:18]  Remember Robin Hood?
[00:51:19]  Remember, they stopped the purchasing.
[00:51:22]  Isn't this all libertarian arguments for the problem with government?
[00:51:25]  I'm sorry.
[00:51:25]  I get a little bit confused.
[00:51:27]  Well, that's the whole thing that's so weird is that he's like saying, oh, libertarians don't get this.
[00:51:31]  And then he's just making the libertarian argument.
[00:51:33]  But he's almost like assuming that the libertarian argument is that even if government, you know, is involved in a company, the company can still do whatever they want to do.
[00:51:47]  But that's not the libertarian argument.
[00:51:49]  And I listen, I can understand if he's saying, hey, I've heard some libertarians who make this argument.
[00:51:57]  Like, okay, the fuck am I going to say?
[00:51:59]  Look, I'm the guy who's known for what am I doing?
[00:52:03]  What do I do with my whole libertarian thing?
[00:52:04]  Well, I just took over the libertarian party to repudiate all of these awful libertarians who would make some arguments kind of similar to this.
[00:52:12]  And I'm doing my best to rebrand libertarianism as like Ron Paul shit and not, you know, Cato, the worst of Cato shit, right?
[00:52:22]  So, okay, fine.
[00:52:24]  But he read off a definition of libertarianism.
[00:52:28]  Like, he's not saying some libertarians say this.
[00:52:31]  He's saying, what can libertarianism say about this?
[00:52:34]  After he read off a definition that I said, okay, I agree with and he agreed with.
[00:52:39]  So what the fuck does he mean by any of this?
[00:52:41]  This is none of this makes any sense.
[00:52:43]  I find I'm not saying that this is what Crowder's doing, but I find that frequently the fear of liberals, so not Crowder, but the fear of liberals is that without government to help us, corporations are evil and they're going to swallow us consumers alive.
[00:52:57]  But I find that government is the tool by which they're able to go ahead and do that.
[00:53:02]  In an open market, corporations have to offer you something of value in order to exist.
[00:53:07]  That's the only way that the only way to work around that is to have government institute that people can't compete with them.
[00:53:13]  And we can go industry by industry and look at all the problems that exist in this country.
[00:53:17]  And the core problem, it's going to be that government has empowered corporations to do something evil.
[00:53:23]  The banking sector is really easy.
[00:53:24]  You got the Federal Reserve.
[00:53:26]  You've got bank charters.
[00:53:27]  You've got insurance.
[00:53:28]  The entire industry is dominated by the fact that governments empower bigger banks.
[00:53:32]  We can go industry by industry here.
[00:53:34]  It's always the same story.
[00:53:35]  Government stepped in.
[00:53:36]  There's no longer a free market.
[00:53:38]  It is the tool by which corporations are able to, you know, reduce competition and yes, act in ways that aren't in the consumer's interest.
[00:53:47]  But the weird thing.
[00:53:48]  Government's the tool of it.
[00:53:49]  Like, so I don't understand the argument for like, yeah, you guys.
[00:53:53]  But yes, I completely get what you're saying.
[00:53:55]  100%.
[00:53:56]  But the weird thing about it is that a progressive or a liberal will argue that they'll say, well, look, these corporations have so much power.
[00:54:07]  And that's why we need government to make sure that they don't exert power over you.
[00:54:11]  And that's why libertarianism is wrong.
[00:54:13]  And okay, they're stupid and incorrect about that, but at least the argument makes sense on its face.
[00:54:20]  But Crowder is going, no, libertarianism is wrong because it's actually the government in bed with these companies.
[00:54:28]  And that's why these companies suck.
[00:54:30]  And you're like, yeah, no, that's our point.
[00:54:33]  That's what we're saying.
[00:54:35]  That's literally, that's the whole fucking thing.
[00:54:37]  Yes, of course.
[00:54:39]  All right, let's keep playing.
[00:54:40]  Remember, they stopped the purchasing of GameStop stock because Redditors were boosting it.
[00:54:45]  Now, you might not like what Redditors were doing.
[00:54:46]  You might not, but guess what?
[00:54:48]  That was a free market.
[00:54:49]  It was a bunch of people who came together.
[00:54:51]  And then the banks said, well, hold on a second.
[00:54:53]  This is too powerful.
[00:54:54]  So we need to make sure that someone steps in from regulatory affairs to stop you from playing the game that we have already raped.
[00:55:02]  And they sided with Wall Street.
[00:55:03]  They sided with a hedge fund and several hedge funds really that were shorting GameStop and driving the price down.
[00:55:09]  And basically people said, that's not fair.
[00:55:11]  We don't like that.
[00:55:12]  And Robin Hood steps in and says, it doesn't matter if you like it or not.
[00:55:16]  We're going to put a halt to this.
[00:55:16]  So nobody can sell their stock or buy whatever the parameters were.
[00:55:20]  You just can't trade this stock anymore.
[00:55:21]  It's like for no reason other than somebody was losing billions of dollars that they liked.
[00:55:26]  So we didn't stop it.
[00:55:27]  You just can't trade it.
[00:55:28]  Well, what else would I do with stock?
[00:55:29]  It's just sitting there.
[00:55:31]  These same banks, by the way, donate overwhelmingly to Democrats.
[00:55:34]  The myth of the big bank, the fat cat Wall Street banker, right?
[00:55:36]  Republican.
[00:55:37]  It couldn't be further from the truth.
[00:55:40]  Certainly in the modern era, maybe once upon a time, not anymore.
[00:55:44]  So let's look at hedge fund managers.
[00:55:45]  You have Sussman, Snyder, Eichner donated $70 million each to Democrats from 2008 to the 2018 midterms.
[00:55:53]  2020, Wall Street backed Biden to Trump, $74 million to $18 million.
[00:55:59]  Biden has had multiple AIDS ties to BlackRock, venture capital from Firm Revolution, consulting firm Precision Strategies.
[00:56:06]  These are the biggest companies that exist in the world, right?
[00:56:07]  Too big to fail.
[00:56:08]  And the current Secretary of State, Anthony Clinken, founded the consulting firm WestExec, which is, or I guess I should say, they formerly employed also Jen Sacchi, CIA deputy director David Cohen, director of the national intelligence, Averill Haynes.
[00:56:21]  So another, it's this unholy alliance of shithields across the board.
[00:56:27]  You have people who have worked in these companies' hedge funds, right, who give overwhelmingly to Democrats, who have worked with these banks.
[00:56:32]  Then they get appointed to unelected roles in government.
[00:56:34]  And sometimes that even involves roles in your intelligence committees, the CIA, the FBI.
[00:56:40]  Think about that for a second.
[00:56:42]  Think of the path from working for a company that gives $74 million to a politician and follow that little trail, right?
[00:56:51]  Like follow the asshole trail, back of a kid's placement.
[00:56:53]  And you end up say deputy director.
[00:56:56]  Yeah, absolutely.
[00:56:57]  The most surprising stat that you said in there was that Wall Street backed Biden to Trump and the number was 74 to 18.
[00:57:04]  The economy was booming under Donald Trump.
[00:57:07]  If anything, they should have been like, we're rolling in the dough.
[00:57:10]  Trump has basically got like the Dows at 30,000, the Dows at 30,000.
[00:57:14]  He's got these like placards thrown in the bathroom because he doesn't have room for them anymore for the records he was setting.
[00:57:18]  And they're backing there's no explanation for that other than they want special treatment.
[00:57:24]  Well, not only special treatment, I can tell you why.
[00:57:25]  The market goes up, right?
[00:57:26]  The market overall has been going up under Biden.
[00:57:30]  I don't know, man.
[00:57:31]  It's like, this is, yeah, there's no explanation for that other than they want special treatment.
[00:57:36]  Like, well, yeah, of course.
[00:57:38]  And Biden hasn't been bad for the big banks.
[00:57:41]  So I don't know what that means.
[00:57:44]  And yeah, they like even saying that they like Donald Trump, even though the economy was booming under Donald Trump.
[00:57:51]  Look, I don't know.
[00:57:52]  We've just, we've covered this so much on the show.
[00:57:54]  All this shit to me is kind of like, this is very flawed and shallow level analysis of the economy and all of that stuff.
[00:58:00]  But yes, there's no question that the big banks and the establishment in general, and I can't believe they're actually connected to the CIA, Rob.
[00:58:09]  All right, yes.
[00:58:10]  Yes, they preferred Biden to Trump.
[00:58:13]  It's not that they prefer Democrats to Republicans.
[00:58:17]  You could go look at how much money they were given to Mitt Romney, although they also gave a lot to Barack Obama.
[00:58:24]  But yes, they liked Biden over Trump.
[00:58:26]  There's a lot of reasons why we get into this.
[00:58:28]  But yes, essentially, I will say that Crowder's co-host there has it right.
[00:58:33]  Like, yes, they want special treatment.
[00:58:35]  Okay, that's it.
[00:58:36]  Yes.
[00:58:37]  Turns out big business loves big government.
[00:58:39]  This has been at the core of libertarianism from the very beginning.
[00:58:44]  And there's not, I mean, like the entire intellectual tradition has always talked about this, from Rothbard to Ayn Rand, even Milton Friedman, all of these guys always talked about this relationship between big business and big government.
[00:58:58]  And there's certainly nothing in the definition that Crowder himself read on this show that in any way contradicts that.
[00:59:06]  That you would, well, if you believe in individual liberty, then you have nothing to say about the partnership between big government and big business.
[00:59:13]  So all of this, so far in the video, Crowder made this assertion that libertarianism, believing in, you know, whatever, however you want to define it, believing in, you know, reducing the size of government and allowing individuals to be free all the way to the scale of like completely eliminating government, like some other people, some hardcore libertarians might believe in more.
[00:59:37]  But he said that that is, it's great if you already have a limited government.
[00:59:43]  It's preventative, but it doesn't work once you have this private public partnership, you know, kind of awful situation we have now.
[00:59:53]  And he's done a great job arguing.
[00:59:55]  Like, I think he's, I actually think he's, he's left arguments on the table, but he's done a very solid job of arguing that the government is in bed with private business.
[01:00:06]  I just haven't yet heard the argument of why libertarianism is preventative, but doesn't cure the problem when you're at this level.
[01:00:14]  That seems like a great libertarian lecture.
[01:00:17]  It's all the problems of government and what it does to empower private corporations that they don't have to compete.
[01:00:24]  But what I'm really confused by is I would hear all this and think, okay, so we got to lessen the scope and power of government because it's being corrupted by these private corporations.
[01:00:34]  So I wonder what his solution is if it's not that.
[01:00:37]  It seems to be.
[01:00:38]  I would love to get to that.
[01:00:40]  So let's just keep playing because this is my point, basically.
[01:00:43]  He made this assertion about libertarianism, and then he's making a devastating case, which I completely agree with, that government is in bed with the corporations.

=== Market Wins for Renters (03:19) ===

[01:00:52]  Okay.
[01:00:53]  But let's get to your, let's get to your case of why libertarianism can't work to solve this problem or what would be better than that.
[01:01:01]  It seems like the better, the only thing that I can see him leading up to is some sort of a dictatorship with someone who's, I guess, so moral and good that he's good at making these decisions and standing above government and restricting the power of it.
[01:01:17]  But then it's the same circular problem of how does that one person not become corruptible?
[01:01:22]  It's not that.
[01:01:23]  Well, listen, to be fair, he hasn't made that case, but let's see.
[01:01:27]  Let's see what he makes.
[01:01:29]  I'm just saying, if it's not, hey, we got to reduce government because it's corruptible, then what's the alternative?
[01:01:34]  You don't like the status quo.
[01:01:36]  So you must be advocating for some sort of an increase or new government to stand above government.
[01:01:41]  Right.
[01:01:42]  So it just sounds like you're, you know what I mean?
[01:01:43]  It seems like you're okay, but fair enough.
[01:01:45]  But he hasn't said that.
[01:01:46]  Yeah, I understand what you're saying, but let's see what he says, if anything.
[01:01:50]  Under Biden, if you look at it overall as a whole, you have bad days and you can argue about the rate of climb, but the government wins out over time.
[01:01:58]  Sorry, the market wins out over time.
[01:01:59]  No, you said it right the first time.
[01:02:00]  Yeah, the government wins out over time, but the market wins out over time.
[01:02:02]  The problem is with Donald Trump, unlike with Joe Biden.
[01:02:05]  Look, is anyone buying this shit when they say the economy is?
[01:02:07]  You know, it's not.
[01:02:08]  I know it's not.
[01:02:08]  They tried to say, keep in mind, under Jimmy Carter and under Barack Obama, they tried to gaslight you and say, no, no, the economy is great.
[01:02:15]  Everyone knew that it wasn't the case.
[01:02:16]  You would even have the biggest attractors of Donald Trump saying, well, what's the economy worth when you have someone who brings shame to us on an international stage?
[01:02:22]  The reason why the market wins out, the banks will do fine no matter what.
[01:02:26]  It's that the average American was doing better.
[01:02:29]  The banks could be doing better if the average Americans were doing slightly worse.
[01:02:33]  The banks could be, even though they're making tons of money, hand over fists, billions of dollars going to these CEOs, who, by the way, are glorified managers.
[01:02:40]  They're not actual business owners.
[01:02:41]  They say, but we could make more billions if we create a permanent class of renters.
[01:02:46]  We could make more billions if the average salary under Donald Trump, the average salary, went up like $5,000.
[01:02:52]  I think under Barack Obama, the first was it.
[01:02:54]  This is just, all right, I got to say, credit.
[01:02:56]  And now he's just getting sloppy and he doesn't really understand how any of this shit works because he's going, oh, like, you know, the bankers were pissed off that the Americans were doing well because they could do even better if the American people were doing worse.
[01:03:09]  Like as if that's just how it works, or that he said that they want to make a class of renters because they do better.
[01:03:16]  It's actually not true.
[01:03:17]  The truth is that the banks have been trying to make a class of owners for a long time, owners, because the owners really means fucking they take out mortgages from the banks.
[01:03:28]  They actually prefer homeowners to renters.
[01:03:31]  In fact, they encourage a lot of people who should be renters to be homeowners so that they can make a bunch of money off the fucking loan and then chop it up and securitize it and pass it out to a whole bunch of other banks and create these mortgage-backed securities.
[01:03:46]  And then if they all fail, they just go and fucking, you know, foreclose on the house anyway.
[01:03:53]  So they kind of recoup their money.
[01:03:55]  But no, the real scheme here is that what?
[01:03:58]  They get money for free from the Federal Reserve and then lend it out at interest to the American people.
[01:04:05]  So what they're incentivized to do is keep the American people in debt.

=== Investing in Crypto and Gold (02:55) ===

[01:04:12]  That's the game.
[01:04:13]  It's not just, this is almost like some real lefty way of looking at economics.
[01:04:16]  Like they just want you to do worse so they can do better.
[01:04:19]  It's like, no, no, no, no.
[01:04:20]  They're getting money for free and loaning it out at interest.
[01:04:23]  So they want you in debt.
[01:04:25]  That's how the system works.
[01:04:27]  It's all government intervention.
[01:04:29]  The central bank was created by an act of Congress and their chair is appointed by the president.
[01:04:35]  It's a government agency.
[01:04:37]  It's the government department of money and credit.
[01:04:40]  And they want you in debt because that's how they profit.
[01:04:45]  That's the game.
[01:04:46]  And yes, Crowder is right, essentially, that it's a government.
[01:04:50]  It's not really the free market.
[01:04:52]  It's the government.
[01:04:53]  But that's just an argument for libertarianism, not against libertarianism.
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=== Rolling Back Red Tape (11:10) ===

[01:07:07]  All right.
[01:07:08]  Let's get back into the show.
[01:07:09]  All right.
[01:07:09]  Let's keep playing.
[01:07:10]  The average salary under Donald Trump, the average sale, went up like $5,000.
[01:07:13]  I think under Barack Obama, the first, was it eight years?
[01:07:16]  It was 1,300.
[01:07:17]  Three years of Donald Trump was $5,000.
[01:07:19]  The average American benefited and the banks and Wall Street benefited also.
[01:07:24]  Right now, Wall Street banks are beneficiaries at your expense.
[01:07:27]  That's the big difference.
[01:07:29]  But here's the thing, greed cannot harm you from big banks if they don't receive bailouts, if they don't get preferential treatment.
[01:07:36]  The less red tape there is, the harder it is for them to get ahead.
[01:07:40]  Why do you think these giant corporations always support?
[01:07:44]  That just sounds like an argument for libertarianism.
[01:07:46]  I mean, he's wrong.
[01:07:47]  He doesn't get central banking.
[01:07:48]  But if he's saying the less bailouts and the less red tape, the less they can fuck you over.
[01:07:54]  Okay, fine.
[01:07:55]  Another argument for libertarianism.
[01:07:57]  Let's keep playing because he's got to get to it eventually.
[01:08:00]  Big government policies.
[01:08:01]  Because it eliminates the mom-and-pop competition.
[01:08:03]  Again, is your libertarianism?
[01:08:06]  How is it going to solve this here?
[01:08:08]  And if your answer is go in and just slash up, it's not going to happen.
[01:08:12]  That's not what happens with our legislative process.
[01:08:14]  How do you fix it?
[01:08:15]  Libertarianism right now, it's a preventative measure that cannot offer solutions.
[01:08:19]  So let's, do you have anything else to add?
[01:08:21]  We have, okay, we have big tech.
[01:08:22]  We have banks.
[01:08:24]  All right.
[01:08:24]  Now we can go on to other corporations being an arm of the government.
[01:08:26]  These are sort of what we might say miscellaneous.
[01:08:29]  Yeah, special interest groups like Planned Parenthood, 45 million to back Democrats in the 2020 election.
[01:08:37]  And it explains why in 2019, all but three Democrats voted against the Born Alive Survivors Protection Act.
[01:08:44]  And that's one of the few bills that is aptly named, just to be clear.
[01:08:47]  Yes.
[01:08:48]  Yes.
[01:08:48]  It means what it says.
[01:08:49]  Like the Green New Deal.
[01:08:50]  Like, what is that?
[01:08:50]  I don't know what that means.
[01:08:51]  Well, that's by design.
[01:08:53]  The Born Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act.
[01:08:55]  Here, I want you to picture what it actually.
[01:08:57]  Yes.
[01:09:00]  Yes, babies were being born alive and they're being allowed to die.
[01:09:03]  Wasn't happening in huge numbers, but it was enough if it was more than zero and Democrats voted against it.
[01:09:10]  Hmm.
[01:09:11]  Wonder why.
[01:09:12]  All of them.
[01:09:13]  All except for three with a conscience.
[01:09:14]  Now we go on to Visa MasterCard.
[01:09:17]  American Express, who, by the way, have received billions of dollars in bailout money.
[01:09:20]  They're now all going to track gun purchases using a new purchase code, which, by the way, could be provided to the government, considering that private data has been given over to the government by these companies in the past.
[01:09:28]  Let's look at airlines, one of your favorite, one of your favorite businesses, I'm sure.
[01:09:32]  They're beholden to the government after receiving over $54 billion in bailouts.
[01:09:36]  And I think that's even just the most recent round with COVID-19 relief.
[01:09:40]  Hey, hold on a second.
[01:09:41]  Now that we're back in full swing, has that been passed on to you?
[01:09:44]  Let's think about it.
[01:09:45]  Libertarians, right?
[01:09:46]  The free market.
[01:09:46]  Do you get a bag of peanuts?
[01:09:48]  Okay, so just pause.
[01:09:49]  What about the for a second?
[01:09:50]  So, I mean, I don't know.
[01:09:52]  Look, he's making a great case about how big business is in bed with big government.
[01:09:56]  We all agree with this, but it's just so weird that he tried to turn that into a dunk on libertarians.
[01:10:01]  He goes, hey, these big giant companies getting bailouts from the governments.
[01:10:05]  Has that been passed on to you?
[01:10:07]  Libertarian?
[01:10:08]  How's your free market working out?
[01:10:09]  It's like, yeah, the whole point is that's not a free market.
[01:10:12]  Right.
[01:10:12]  Okay.
[01:10:13]  So look, he said something again.
[01:10:16]  He almost sounded like he was going to get back into the point that like I'm sitting here waiting to hear where he goes, look, because this actually like kind of speaks to me.
[01:10:24]  He goes, look, libertarians, what are you saying?
[01:10:26]  You're going to get in there and roll back all this red tape?
[01:10:28]  Okay, sounds great, but that's not how the government works.
[01:10:31]  And then I'm like, okay.
[01:10:32]  All right.
[01:10:33]  So how does it work?
[01:10:35]  So you tell me, so what is the solution?
[01:10:37]  I know that the water is up on a very high mountain.
[01:10:40]  I know it's very hard.
[01:10:41]  The idea, it's very daunting that we're going to actually roll this back.
[01:10:45]  But okay.
[01:10:46]  It's like, no, listen, you can't go up on that mountain.
[01:10:48]  That's not how it works.
[01:10:50]  And I'm like, okay, so how does it work?
[01:10:52]  What's a better idea than that?
[01:10:54]  And then he goes, well, let's get into other companies and how they're in bed with the government.
[01:10:59]  Okay, sure.
[01:11:01]  Yes.
[01:11:02]  Steven Crowder, you are making a great case that big business is in bed with big government.
[01:11:07]  To be honest, I think I can make a better case for all of these companies.
[01:11:10]  You're not even like, I understand he's making a YouTube video.
[01:11:13]  There's only so much time.
[01:11:14]  We only have so much time in our podcast.
[01:11:15]  Believe me, there's a million things that you're leaving on the table.
[01:11:18]  With the airline industry, you didn't even get into the fucking FAA or how hyper-regulated the fucking airline industry is to begin with.
[01:11:25]  Okay, fine.
[01:11:26]  You just hit the bailouts.
[01:11:27]  That's a good point too.
[01:11:28]  Okay.
[01:11:29]  But none of this is getting to the point.
[01:11:32]  The point is that you keep saying that libertarianism is preventative, but can't deal with the current situation.
[01:11:38]  You keep saying that, oh, we want to roll back these regulations.
[01:11:40]  We want to get the government out of bed with these businesses, but that's not how it works.
[01:11:44]  So how does it work?
[01:11:46]  What can work?
[01:11:47]  You call yourself a constitutional Republican.
[01:11:49]  So how does that work?
[01:11:52]  How do you make that work?
[01:11:54]  At the end of this and tell us, if you want to find out what you can do, you can go here and start to feel like one of those videos.
[01:12:00]  I hope there's a book at the end of this because we're getting close to the end.
[01:12:04]  So let's keep playing.
[01:12:06]  What about the check baggage fee?
[01:12:07]  Is your airline experience now more pleasant or at least as pleasant as it was pre-COVID?
[01:12:12]  Or does it still suck?
[01:12:14]  Because once the government steps in and says, all right, we're going to give you this money.
[01:12:16]  It comes with strings attached.
[01:12:17]  Guess what?
[01:12:18]  It never gets better.
[01:12:19]  It only gets worse.
[01:12:21]  So let me recap this for you.
[01:12:23]  And I'd like you, you know, comment below if you disagree.
[01:12:25]  I have a lot of libertarian friends and I agree with the principles of it.
[01:12:29]  I'm just saying that pragmatically, it doesn't apply here.
[01:12:31]  What do we have?
[01:12:31]  We have collusion between big tech.
[01:12:34]  And what do I mean?
[01:12:34]  The most powerful companies that have ever existed.
[01:12:36]  You've got Facebook.
[01:12:36]  You've got, sorry, Meta.
[01:12:39]  Whatever.
[01:12:40]  Like, we don't know what that means.
[01:12:41]  So you've got Meta, Twitter, YouTube, Google, Amazon, Apple, right?
[01:12:46]  Okay.
[01:12:46]  We have collusion between them, all the banks, all the big credit card companies, multiple corporations and special interest groups, airlines.
[01:12:52]  Where do you, you're a citizen.
[01:12:55]  Where do you go?
[01:12:56]  If you want to live in a free market, well, just don't be anywhere in big tech.
[01:12:59]  Go create your own.
[01:13:01]  Well, you know, just don't do any banking with big bank.
[01:13:03]  Go create your own.
[01:13:05]  Well, just don't use any of the major credit card companies.
[01:13:07]  Just use cryptocurrency.
[01:13:08]  Yeah, that'll never be regulated if it becomes as powerful as fiat currency.
[01:13:12]  Airlines, go buy a plane.
[01:13:13]  The point is we are at a point where it's not something that you can simply solve through free market alternatives because they have been locked down.
[01:13:20]  And that can only happen through the corruption that has taken place between the government and these corporations.
[01:13:26]  And I get it.
[01:13:27]  The irony is not lost on me that we do need some fighters in government to try and roll this back because it cannot simply be solved through the free market at this point.
[01:13:34]  It doesn't exist.
[01:13:36]  All right.
[01:13:37]  So that's the end of the video.
[01:13:39]  So just...
[01:13:40]  The beginning is to roll it back.
[01:13:43]  Wait, so his conclusion is someone needs to come in and roll it back so that there's more freedom in the market so that the free market can work again.
[01:13:51]  I'm pretty sure that's the libertarian.
[01:13:54]  Isn't that what we're doing?
[01:13:56]  It's really funny because he's like almost building up this whole time.
[01:13:59]  So I'm like, okay, so when's he going to tell us what his better solution is or why these assertions are that?
[01:14:05]  So if he's saying that it's almost like, wait, is your, was your whole thing like a critique of agorism or a critique of just ignoring the government until it goes away and just participating in private business?
[01:14:17]  And now you're saying, no, someone actually has to get into government and roll it back.
[01:14:23]  Like, okay.
[01:14:26]  Yeah.
[01:14:27]  Like, but that's completely consistent with libertarianism.
[01:14:30]  It's almost as if his point was like that if someone, like, if a politician ran on, let's say, I'm going to abolish the income tax, and then you got in there and they abolished the income tax, that libertarians would be like, that's fucked up, man.
[01:14:47]  You should have just, you should have just found your own business that didn't have to pay income taxes or something.
[01:14:54]  Like, yeah, I don't know.
[01:14:55]  He just kept making, like, the whole time I'm sitting there waiting for his actual argument.
[01:15:00]  And he was kind of, I swear to God, I watched this video, like being like, okay, I think this is kind of interesting.
[01:15:06]  He's conceding all of our points, but saying, but this is why libertarianism can't work.
[01:15:10]  And you're like, I'm almost waiting to get to the final argument.
[01:15:14]  And then there just wasn't any.
[01:15:16]  There just wasn't.
[01:15:17]  It was like he was assuming that what libertarians believe is that this all is just the free market and that there's no collusion between big government and big business.
[01:15:29]  And then at the end, it was like, see, look, I've proven to you in devastating, in a devastating case that we don't live in a free market.
[01:15:38]  He goes, yes, we don't live in a free market.
[01:15:40]  That's completely correct.
[01:15:42]  And the point is that we believe we should.
[01:15:45]  Now, how we get from here to there, I am open to suggestions.
[01:15:51]  I don't know.
[01:15:52]  I'll be the first to admit.
[01:15:54]  I know the task is daunting.
[01:15:55]  I don't know.
[01:15:56]  My whole thing has been that I think it's like you try to like, there's so much propaganda against freedom that I try to fucking counter the propaganda as best I can.
[01:16:06]  Try to wake up as many people as I can and try to like my whole thing is try to wake up as many people as you can, try to make as many powerful alliances as I can.
[01:16:16]  You know what I mean?
[01:16:17]  Like make alliances with really influential, powerful, impressive people, get as many of them on board as you can.
[01:16:26]  That's the thing.
[01:16:27]  Try to win over as much grassroots support and as much elite support as you can.
[01:16:33]  That's kind of my goal.
[01:16:34]  Now, granted, that's still seems like a very daunting task.
[01:16:41]  But if you got better, if you got better solutions to what to do, and I hear lots of different people with different things.
[01:16:47]  I know the guys at the Free State Project in New Hampshire, they're like, hey, we should really all geographically relocate so there's more people who believe in liberty in one in one area.
[01:16:57]  That's very promising to me.
[01:16:58]  There's people who advocate pulling your kids out of public school and homeschooling your kids.
[01:17:04]  Okay, I like that.
[01:17:06]  There's people like Ron Paul, who made a homeschool curriculum.
[01:17:09]  That's, you know, it's not just libertarianism, but it definitely like gives you like real American history and the real tradition of liberty and things like that.
[01:17:16]  Okay, that seems really interesting to me.
[01:17:18]  The people who go into cryptocurrency to kind of like try to counter the government fiat currency.
[01:17:23]  Okay, that's like all of these, I'm open.
[01:17:26]  But if we all agree on what the answer is here, then the conversation comes down to what the strategy is.
[01:17:33]  Now, I personally think that all those strategies, for example, that I just laid out, I think none of them are in conflict with each other.
[01:17:40]  It's like, let's pursue all of them.
[01:17:42]  You know, in fact, I think in many ways they all kind of feed into each other.
[01:17:47]  But Crowder is just like, he's putting this forth like it's a reason why he's a recovering libertarian.
[01:17:56]  I really think me and him should talk because it's like, dude, you just did a whole video telling me why you are a libertarian, why you're one of us.
[01:18:04]  So come on, man.
[01:18:06]  Come back and see the light.
[01:18:07]  You got to talk to some good libertarians, Crowder.
[01:18:09]  So I don't think you're getting it.
[01:18:11]  All right, look, we got to wrap up.
[01:18:13]  That's the end of this episode.
[01:18:14]  Thank you guys for listening.
[01:18:15]  We'll catch you next time.
[01:18:17]  Peace.