Part Of The Problem - Dave Smith - What's Your Problem? Dave and Robbie answer your questions!
Aired: 2022-12-29
Duration: 01:00:50


=== Wrapping Up The New Year (03:00) ===

[00:00:01]  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 am Dave Smith, the most consistent motherfucker you know.
[00:00:40]  He is Robbie the Fire Bernstein, the king of the caulks.
[00:00:44]  What's up, brother?
[00:00:45]  How are you?
[00:00:45]  I'm doing well.
[00:00:46]  How are you, Davey Smith?
[00:00:47]  Doing very good.
[00:00:48]  Doing very good.
[00:00:49]  Excited to wrap up 2022, which was quite a wild year.
[00:00:56]  And I'll be wrapping it up on New Year's Eve in Los Angeles with my brother Louis Jay Gomez.
[00:01:01]  We opened up a second show because the show sold out.
[00:01:03]  So you can still go get tickets to that second show.
[00:01:06]  Get tickets now if you want to come out to New Year's Eve with us.
[00:01:09]  And just added New Year's Day live Legion of Skanks podcast.
[00:01:14]  Big Jay is going to come out and meet us there at the comedy store on the night of January 1st.
[00:01:22]  So come on out to that.
[00:01:23]  That's going to sell out.
[00:01:24]  There's still a few tickets left, but that thing is going to sell out.
[00:01:26]  So if you want to come out, come join us there at the comedy store on New Year's Day.
[00:01:31]  And then, of course, me and Rob got a bunch of stuff coming out on the road next year.
[00:01:36]  So we'll be going all over the place.
[00:01:38]  I know in January, we'll be in, what is it, Maryland?
[00:01:43]  What's the name of that spot, Rob?
[00:01:45]  It's called Fifth Company Brewing, Great Brewery owned by a fan of the show.
[00:01:49]  And I will have ticket links up shortly.
[00:01:51]  Okay, very good.
[00:01:52]  And then we'll also, we're going to be at the funny bone in St. Louis on January 20th and 21st.
[00:01:57]  So if you're in the Maryland area or if you're in St. Louis, come out and see me and Robbie the Fire.
[00:02:02]  And of course, Rob, you got your end of the year spectacular coming up very soon.
[00:02:07]  Even more disinformation come out to the shell on this Friday and Saturday.
[00:02:11]  Gonna be a New Year's party on Saturday with the Shedcast Boys.
[00:02:14]  Got some other comics on it.
[00:02:15]  And my presentation's done, ready to go.
[00:02:17]  Hell yeah, dude.
[00:02:18]  I'm excited to watch that.
[00:02:19]  All right.
[00:02:19]  So for today's episode, you know, Rob, it was your idea.
[00:02:23]  I give you all the credit for this.
[00:02:24]  Is that, you know, what we should do as we're wrapping up the year?
[00:02:27]  We should do a nice listener questions episode.
[00:02:29]  We haven't done this in forever.
[00:02:30]  We used to regularly do this, where we would just take listener questions.
[00:02:34]  Anything you guys want to talk about, anything you guys want to ask me and Robbie the Fire Bernstein, here's your chance.
[00:02:40]  And so I tweeted for questions and let's dig into some of these and see where we go.
[00:02:46]  Oh, I should say before we start, very cool.
[00:02:48]  Glenn Greenwald tweeted a video of me today talking all that COVID stuff.
[00:02:53]  So that was pretty cool.
[00:02:54]  I got a nice response from that.
[00:02:55]  Big fan of Glenn Greenwald.
[00:02:57]  Okay.
[00:02:58]  So Andrew writes, first question up.

=== Listener Questions And Ideas (10:55) ===

[00:03:01]  What's your opinion on Reaganomics?
[00:03:07]  Not good.
[00:03:08]  They could all spend all the money on the military economic plan.
[00:03:12]  Well, there's like, there's, there's this like weird, it's almost like this.
[00:03:17]  This is the way it works, right?
[00:03:19]  There's this weird agreement between like the two sides, say more or less, between the Democrats and the Republicans when they fight.
[00:03:27]  Well, where one side will like, usually the Republicans will claim like they'll wear the banner of like limited government and individual liberty and free markets.
[00:03:39]  And then the other side will attack them as limited government, individual liberty, and free markets, but they're not.
[00:03:48]  So they're just attacking something that's completely different.
[00:03:50]  So the concept of Reaganomics of like how it would be presented was this idea of like, well, if you cut taxes on the very rich, then they create more jobs and they expand their businesses.
[00:04:02]  And this is what the left deemed trickle down economics.
[00:04:05]  I don't think, I don't believe I've ever heard a proponent of Reaganomics use the term trickle down economics.
[00:04:12]  It was always just something that was used as like a pejorative.
[00:04:17]  But in reality, Ronald Reagan's economics were, yeah, just like driving spending through the roof.
[00:04:24]  He had some tax cuts initially, but he had tax cuts with drastic spending increases, particularly military spending.
[00:04:33]  And yeah, it was not good.
[00:04:35]  Nothing I'd want to be a part of.
[00:04:37]  There's in no sense did Ronald Reagan ever actually shrink the size of the government.
[00:04:43]  That's not what presidents do.
[00:04:45]  But yeah, so not a fan, not a fan of Reaganomics.
[00:04:48]  All right, let's move on.
[00:04:50]  Ben, my brother Ben, he writes, okay, Mary Fuck Kill.
[00:04:56]  I'm pretty sure it's fuck Mary Kill.
[00:04:58]  No?
[00:04:59]  Can you do Mary Fuck Kill?
[00:05:01]  I've always heard it as fuck Mary Kill.
[00:05:03]  You know, now that you say it, I always thought it was Mary Fuck Hill, but then you say fuck Mary Kill.
[00:05:08]  That sounds better.
[00:05:09]  It does.
[00:05:10]  So I'm not sure.
[00:05:10]  I think we can all agree it sounds better.
[00:05:12]  All right.
[00:05:12]  Tim Poole, Joe Rogan, Michael Malice.
[00:05:16]  Fuck Marykill.
[00:05:17]  That's a tough one.
[00:05:19]  Well, I mean, I guess who am I going to kill?
[00:05:25]  The problem is Rogan's a fucking savage.
[00:05:28]  He's like a black belt in multiple martial arts, you know, disciplines.
[00:05:33]  Tim Pool has a lot of guns.
[00:05:38]  The Michael Malice, on the other hand, is my closest friend out of the three of them.
[00:05:44]  But I just think he'd be a lot easier to kill than Joe Rogan or Tim Poole.
[00:05:49]  So I'm going to kill Michael, which will be very difficult for me.
[00:05:54]  It's going to take me years to get over the fact that I have to kill my good friend, Michael Malis.
[00:06:00]  But it'll be a little bit easier knowing I'm married to Joe Rogan.
[00:06:04]  You know what I'm saying?
[00:06:05]  Like money's not really an issue.
[00:06:07]  I'm married to Joe Rogan.
[00:06:08]  I can get all the therapy I need to get over this trauma of killing my good friend Michael Malis.
[00:06:13]  And while I'm in therapy, we might want to discuss the fact that I fucked Tim Poole.
[00:06:19]  That would probably come up at some point in this therapy, which Rogan is footing the bill for.
[00:06:23]  So like, it's not a problem.
[00:06:24]  I'm getting the best.
[00:06:25]  But yeah, there's going to be some stuff we got to talk about with that therapist.
[00:06:29]  I don't know.
[00:06:30]  Do you think the hat comes off if you're fucking Tim Pool?
[00:06:32]  Or do you pull it over the whole face so you don't have to look at him?
[00:06:35]  That shit's keeps that shit on.
[00:06:37]  That shit stays on always.
[00:06:39]  Okay, garbage.
[00:06:41]  Maine writes, what was your favorite episode of the year?
[00:06:47]  What was your favorite speech that you gave this year?
[00:06:52]  Well, favorite speech would have to be in Reno speaking and then introducing the legend Ron Paul as we took the Libertarian Party back and put it in the hands of the good libertarians.
[00:07:06]  So yeah, that would have to be my favorite, my favorite speech of the year, although I enjoyed a lot of them, but that one has to be tops.
[00:07:14]  Favorite episode of the year.
[00:07:16]  That's an interesting.
[00:07:16]  What do you think, Rob?
[00:07:20]  We do a lot of them, so it's tough to have any stand out.
[00:07:22]  I remember the live one in Chicago being a lot of fun.
[00:07:25]  I just remember that being like a funny one.
[00:07:27]  But for the most part, they don't really like, we do too many of them for like individual, like the live ones are a different setting.
[00:07:34]  They kind of stand out, but otherwise, I don't know.
[00:07:36]  There's like too many to go.
[00:07:37]  That one in Chicago was a lot of fun.
[00:07:39]  I do remember really enjoying that.
[00:07:42]  The live ones are always fun.
[00:07:44]  I always really enjoy doing live part of the problems.
[00:07:45]  We're going to do a lot more of those in 2023.
[00:07:48]  I got, I guess, a couple episodes that stand out to me.
[00:07:52]  Um, let's see, I really enjoyed the one.
[00:07:57]  Um, we had one where we did a response episode to um to John Oliver's piece on inflation.
[00:08:06]  Oh, yeah, and I really enjoyed that.
[00:08:08]  It was fun because that was like a big thing talking.
[00:08:10]  It is kind of interesting when someone like huge in the mainstream is like talking about what is our topic, like the topic that usually they don't give a shit about that we always care a lot about.
[00:08:19]  And then, like, oh, they're dipping their toe in it.
[00:08:21]  And that was one of the really interesting things about 2022 from the libertarian perspective: that all of a sudden inflation is this huge thing that everyone wants to talk about.
[00:08:30]  Um, and of course, like devaluing the currency is something we always uh talk about.
[00:08:35]  So, I remember really liking that episode.
[00:08:37]  I liked the one where I responded to the dude who, uh, the Ukrainian dude who was calling me out for my misinformation on Rogan.
[00:08:45]  Those two, like, I'm sure there's other episodes out there that I really liked.
[00:08:49]  It's just for whatever reason, those two are uh, those two are popping out.
[00:08:52]  I bet as we talk more about this year, I'll think of other episodes.
[00:08:55]  And remember, if you uh sub to the archive, you can go see all these episodes along with hundreds of others that are all available only at Gas Digital.
[00:09:04]  What's our promo code?
[00:09:05]  P-O-T-P?
[00:09:06]  P-O-T-P GasDigital Network.com, promo code P-O-T-P.
[00:09:09]  Come become a subscriber, come support the show that you love.
[00:09:13]  All right.
[00:09:13]  Dave Benner, my brother Dave Benner, he writes, What is more likely to happen first?
[00:09:19]  A globalist one-world government or a major national divorce political fragmentation of some kind.
[00:09:26]  It's an interesting question.
[00:09:27]  That's a juicy one.
[00:09:28]  Yeah, it's a really interesting question.
[00:09:30]  And I, you know, I've always had the attitude that I don't like, I don't like kind of the determinist attitude.
[00:09:39]  Like, I don't like neither, it's not like either one of these things are guaranteed or the percentages of what will happen are guaranteed.
[00:09:46]  It's like human beings act and human beings' actions have impacts on the world.
[00:09:52]  And so it's going to be a matter of what people do.
[00:09:56]  And, you know, I think actually achieving a one-world government is incredibly difficult.
[00:10:04]  Lots of people have wanted to for a long time.
[00:10:07]  What we have now is probably about as close to it as we've ever had, right?
[00:10:13]  You think these super national organizations like, you know, the World Health Organization and the UN and things like that certainly have a lot of influence, as we've seen over the last few years.
[00:10:26]  But I do think that there's a, I think we have a real fighting shot for some type of radical decentralization.
[00:10:36]  And if we have a shot, then we better fight like hell for it.
[00:10:40]  So that's kind of what I would say.
[00:10:41]  You got any thoughts on that, Rob?
[00:10:44]  Well, I think you're right that we, I don't think we're formally going to see like the UN and one person have control, but I do think you might see more moves towards like a consolidated currency.
[00:10:55]  You might see more moves in tandem towards digital currencies, more moves in tandem towards health passports.
[00:11:01]  Like I think there's certain important agendas, even like with the global warming stuff or what kind of fossil fuels we're using.
[00:11:07]  Sure.
[00:11:08]  So I do think you might see more centralized, big decisions that are kind of being made in tandem by world governments and being somewhat imposed on everybody.
[00:11:17]  But between the two options, I think it's more likely that Texas goes, hey, fuck this, or that it happens actually at the same time that you end up with more things coming from a world government and branches of the U.S. just being like, nope, we're done with this thing.
[00:11:29]  Yeah.
[00:11:29]  No, that's an interesting point that they could actually, you know, it seems almost contradictory, but the idea that they could both be happening at the same time because one is fueling the other.
[00:11:42]  It's a good point.
[00:11:42]  And yeah, look, I mean, we've seen movements just over the last, say, five years in, you know, these kind of like Brexit is the big one.
[00:11:51]  There was secessionist movements in Spain.
[00:11:54]  They're, you know, the Texas, Cal exit, all that stuff.
[00:11:58]  Like, yeah, let's, it'd be really nice to see some of those really pick up steam.
[00:12:01]  So we'll see.
[00:12:02]  All right.
[00:12:03]  Okay.
[00:12:03]  The next two are on the same topic.
[00:12:06]  Toad writes, when are you coming on Tower Gang next?
[00:12:10]  We are ready for you.
[00:12:11]  And then David wrote, Will you and Robbie both go on Tower Gang again?
[00:12:19]  Yes, I'll go back on Tower Gang.
[00:12:21]  Of course.
[00:12:21]  I love those guys.
[00:12:23]  It's a great show.
[00:12:23]  Hilarious.
[00:12:25]  My type of my type of show.
[00:12:28]  Have you been on, Rob?
[00:12:30]  I've been on at least two, if not three times.
[00:12:33]  It's always a blast.
[00:12:34]  So I'll definitely do it again sometime next year.
[00:12:36]  I would hope to.
[00:12:37]  Yeah.
[00:12:38]  We'll definitely, we'll definitely be back on.
[00:12:41]  Fat Dave, son of a bitch.
[00:12:44]  He writes next special question mark.
[00:12:48]  Yeah.
[00:12:50]  I will have a comedy special out in 2023.
[00:12:52]  I promise.
[00:12:54]  I promise that.
[00:12:54]  I will have a comedy special out next year.
[00:12:56]  It's been, I mean, I've, I've, I think I've talked about this a few times before on the show, but I've had like just the last few years, it's just been one thing after another.
[00:13:08]  I mean, I for sure was going to put a comedy special out in 2020.
[00:13:12]  And then the world really changed and we could not go on the road anymore and work it out.
[00:13:19]  And then I had to kind of like completely write new shit because I had to like write shit about what was going on in 2020.
[00:13:25]  Then, of course, in 2021, I had my second kid.
[00:13:28]  He had some major health problems.
[00:13:29]  That really pushed things back a bit.
[00:13:31]  So there's just been issues that have slowed down.
[00:13:34]  I would have liked to have had my second hour out already, but definitely 2023.
[00:13:39]  We'll be putting that out.
[00:13:40]  You got any plans to put something out, Rob?
[00:13:42]  Well, I got the end of the year specials and stuff like that.
[00:13:46]  So I'm doing an end of year, which is going to be at least 25 minutes of like the topical stuff I was working on over the year.
[00:13:52]  Like I have about a half hour new and about a half hour that was polished over the year.

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[00:13:57]  Right.
[00:13:57]  But I'm thinking hopefully end of next year, I want to maybe film like through Summer Porch Door and put out like some pure stand-up that's not so topical.
[00:14:06]  But we'll see.
[00:14:07]  We'll see over the course of this year, how polished I can get some of these bits.
[00:14:12]  And I've been holding on to some of the Evergreen stuff.
[00:14:15]  So we shall see.
[00:14:16]  But you know what we really need, Dave, is the 2019 Dave Smith bootleg.
[00:14:20]  Who's got it?
[00:14:21]  Who's got the unreleased hour?
[00:14:22]  Who recorded it secretly?
[00:14:24]  No, I don't know.
[00:14:25]  You know, I might even have like a recording of it somewhere like on like, but like on a cell phone audio recording or something like that, but I don't have like a good quality of it.
[00:14:33]  But yeah, I had a whole hour that'll be laid to rest.
[00:14:35]  That the 2019 bootleg.
[00:14:38]  Yeah.
[00:14:38]  He's got to get it out there on YouTube.
[00:14:40]  Yeah, maybe, maybe.
[00:14:41]  If I can find a decent copy of it, maybe I will.
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[00:16:14]  All right.

=== Pushing Back On Lockdowns (15:54) ===

[00:16:18]  All right, Lex writes: Given the trend lines leaning ever more toward government expansion and people lining up behind state intervention, is there any hope for libertarianism to flourish in this nation before I die?
[00:16:31]  Please take into account my very poor lifestyle habits.
[00:16:34]  All right.
[00:16:37]  Sounds like this guy's already living free.
[00:16:38]  What are you worried about?
[00:16:39]  Everyone else enjoying yourself.
[00:16:42]  Like, I just, again, like I said before, I just with these type of questions, I think it's like, okay, so like if everyone who believes in liberty accepts that there's no chance that we're going to see libertarianism flourish here, then yeah, I think it won't, right?
[00:16:57]  But if we, if we fight for it, then we have a better shot than that.
[00:17:02]  And I always just say that, look, amazing things have happened throughout human history.
[00:17:08]  Are we going to have full pure libertarianism flourish in America?
[00:17:12]  Probably not, you know, anytime too soon.
[00:17:15]  That doesn't mean things can't get drastically better.
[00:17:18]  I mean, there's a, we're in a pretty like a pretty wild time.
[00:17:24]  And in these wild times, there's tremendous opportunity for, you know, for the status quo to be upset.
[00:17:32]  And things in, you know, in human history, like slavery has been abolished across the Western world and the Soviet Union peacefully dissolved.
[00:17:42]  And, you know, there's just like a lot of go, I'd highly recommend people go read Michael Malice's new book, The White Pill.
[00:17:48]  There's a lot of tragedy in the world, but there's also a lot of reason to, you know, maintain hope and optimism.
[00:17:58]  And so, sure, I think, I think in many ways, I think libertarianism is our future if we are to have a future.
[00:18:07]  The only way this is going to work is if we somehow, you know, relinquish some of the central controls.
[00:18:14]  All right.
[00:18:14]  Buy Bitcoin and listen to alternative media like this and share it with your friends.
[00:18:18]  There you go.
[00:18:19]  Change the world.
[00:18:20]  Defund the government.
[00:18:22]  Okay.
[00:18:22]  What specific actions would Ron DeSantis have to take between now and then to get your active support in 2024?
[00:18:35]  That's an interesting question.
[00:18:37]  I mean, I'll tell you a lot.
[00:18:40]  It would have to be a lot.
[00:18:42]  It would have to be so much that it's kind of outside the realm of possibility, maybe not possibility, but plausibility.
[00:18:51]  It's very, very, very unlikely that he would do what he would need to do to actually get my active, like enthusiastic support.
[00:19:00]  You know, if you think about someone like, say, Donald Trump, who, you know, was somebody who could actually was to some degree an outsider candidate, at least outside of politically connected circles in 2016.
[00:19:16]  Or at least I should say, I shouldn't say that.
[00:19:18]  He was inside politically connected circles.
[00:19:20]  The politically connected circles did not want him to be president.
[00:19:24]  And this was a guy who was saying things like, you know, we shouldn't have fought the war in Iraq and we should end the wars and, you know, some other decent things too.
[00:19:36]  And he actually was able to beat the Bushes and the Clintons.
[00:19:39]  Not just someone saying the right things, but someone who could actually beat those guys.
[00:19:43]  But, you know, he was just bad on so many issues and didn't have like a real like conviction that he was, he was going to actually get the things done that he was good on.
[00:19:55]  And, you know, I even saw just recently in one of the last two batches of the Twitter files that were out, the one that was about how Twitter was dealing with COVID misinformation.
[00:20:07]  I don't know if you saw this, Rob, but it's where they even revealed that the Trump administration was meeting with Twitter to suppress people who were contradicting the COVID narrative.
[00:20:20]  Now, I understand this question was about DeSantis and I'm talking about Trump, but I'm just making the point that it's like, think about how unforgivable this is.
[00:20:29]  If you're like a person who was opposed to the lockdowns and the vaccine mandates and all this stuff, how unforgivable is it that even the Trump administration was working to silence people like us from in real time criticizing these policies?
[00:20:44]  Why?
[00:20:45]  Because he was worried it would make them look bad.
[00:20:47]  You know, this is the guy who's going to fight for your tech censorship to quote it here.
[00:20:51]  Internal files at Twitter showed that both the Trump and Biden administration directly pressed Twitter executives to moderate the platform's pandemic content according to their wishes.
[00:21:05]  They were even the Trump government, while they were still in the phase of lockdowns and shit like that, they were just as eager to shut down the anti-lockdown stuff.
[00:21:14]  So, you know, to bring it back to this, I think that this fucking two-party shit is a real trap.
[00:21:23]  If you support anybody, especially at the presidential level, who is not at least like you have some high degree of confidence that they're going to get in there and really work toward, you know what I mean, the things that matter and not cave on these most important things.
[00:21:40]  Now, I just don't see that out of DeSantis.
[00:21:43]  Like, I think it's, DeSantis did a really good job reversing his initial blunders as governor in Florida.
[00:21:50]  And I don't, I never want to downplay that.
[00:21:52]  In fact, I've really been very critical of other libertarians who downplay that, who do this kind of like this binary thing where it's like, well, you're either a statist or you're a libertarian.
[00:22:04]  And that's that.
[00:22:05]  It's like, no, that's not exactly right.
[00:22:07]  You know, like, I like libertarians better than statists, but it's not like, oh, you're either a libertarian or you're whatever, you're Kim Jong-un.
[00:22:19]  Like, actually, there's some, there's some space in between there, and you'd much rather live under a softer statist than live in North Korea.
[00:22:27]  You know what I mean?
[00:22:30]  But let's also be realistic about what a president can do and what you're actually going to get.
[00:22:39]  Someone like Ron DeSantis, like, look, again, I don't want to downplay it.
[00:22:43]  If you were either in Los Angeles or in Orlando for 2020 and 2021, it made a huge fucking difference who your governor was, like a really huge difference.
[00:22:54]  In one, you had drastically less liberty than in the other.
[00:22:57]  And he does deserve credit for that.
[00:23:00]  But the question is whether I would support him for president.
[00:23:03]  So to answer your question more specifically after I dance around this, what would he have to do?
[00:23:08]  I mean, he'd basically have to have some type of libertarian come to Jesus moment.
[00:23:14]  If he goes, you know what?
[00:23:15]  I've realized that I was absolutely wrong to be like a Zionist war hawk when I was in the house and I reject all of that and I'm really going to end all of these wars and not just saying it like Trump did.
[00:23:28]  I'm actually going to do it.
[00:23:29]  And he said it in a way that convinced me he really meant it.
[00:23:31]  And then he goes, you know what?
[00:23:33]  I've been reading up on monetary policy and I've realized that, oh my God, having this quasi-private public government department of money and interest is insane.
[00:23:42]  And we need to abolish the Federal Reserve and go back to sound money and blah.
[00:23:46]  I mean, okay, if he did all of this, I'm getting in there.
[00:23:48]  We are going to in the first year of my presidency, abolish the FBI and the CIA.
[00:23:53]  Like it would have to be something like that.
[00:23:54]  Because think about it like this.
[00:23:56]  Even if he was saying all that stuff, and even if he meant it to his core, it would still be a crazy journey to actually get that stuff done, right?
[00:24:07]  Because there's so many forces that would be working against him.
[00:24:10]  So now, what are the chances if he isn't saying it and believing it that he's going to get those things done?
[00:24:15]  It's zero, right?
[00:24:17]  So that's what it would take for me would be him coming out and saying that he was really, truly anti-war, anti-Fed, anti-deep state, anti-federal police, all of this stuff, and meaning it and convincing me he meant it.
[00:24:32]  The thing is, if he were to do all that, he probably couldn't win.
[00:24:36]  So, you know what I mean?
[00:24:39]  It just seems so unlikely that that would happen.
[00:24:43]  But, you know, like, what is DeSantis really?
[00:24:45]  Like, even if you appreciate what he did as a governor, what's he really running on for president?
[00:24:50]  That he won't have federal lockdowns?
[00:24:53]  Like, there weren't really federal lockdowns.
[00:24:55]  I don't know.
[00:24:56]  Do you have any thoughts on that, Rob?
[00:24:58]  Well, on your last remark there of what would he run on other than being against the federal lockdowns, I think he's also done a pretty good job of pushing back on woke culture and particularly businesses.
[00:25:11]  With that being said, I don't think DeSantis is a good guy.
[00:25:14]  I actually think he's like, he's an old school Republican.
[00:25:17]  That guy would probably, I'm not going to say he's going to get us into another war, but you're going to see more war spending.
[00:25:22]  You're going to see more like conservative right hoopla, whatever, like, you know what I mean?
[00:25:26]  If he was running against AOC and his pitch was in the Fed, you know, that would make him interesting.
[00:25:31]  And he was certainly better than a lot of people.
[00:25:33]  He's doing a good job now of saying that he's going to go after Fauci and that like he's got that AG, not the AG, whoever liked the doctor in his state, that black dude is really cool.
[00:25:44]  So he's done some cool stuff, but like, I mean, I'm talking total conspiracy shit right now.
[00:25:48]  I read that that guy used to work in Gitmo.
[00:25:50]  He was like the lawyer or something.
[00:25:53]  I've never heard that.
[00:25:54]  I'm just saying behind the scenes, there's something about him that it doesn't strike me like he's some nice and noble guy.
[00:25:59]  He's done great on COVID.
[00:26:00]  He's done a great job of pushing back on some woke nonsense.
[00:26:03]  I think if you gave that guy real power, you'd see what Christian conservatives look like when they have real power, which tends to be some pro-Saudi Arabia going to war bullshit.
[00:26:13]  Yeah.
[00:26:14]  Yeah.
[00:26:15]  I don't disagree with you.
[00:26:16]  That's to me, that's certainly the wing of Republicanism that he comes out of.
[00:26:20]  And that's not for me.
[00:26:22]  All right.
[00:26:23]  Next question.
[00:26:24]  All right.
[00:26:24]  Kevin asks, is Robbie the Fire ever going to let me do my fifth grade book report on Austrian business cycle?
[00:26:32]  Funniest drunk agreement he ever abandoned, in my opinion.
[00:26:37]  I do not get this reference.
[00:26:38]  Do you know who I don't either?
[00:26:40]  And I will say, if I have a personality flaw, I'm definitely a drunk guy.
[00:26:44]  Hey, that's the greatest idea I've ever had, ADD, and then don't care about it in any capacity the next day.
[00:26:50]  I'm definitely guilty of that, but email me, robsnewsermatgmail.com.
[00:26:54]  I mean, it's funnier now that you've plugged it on this show.
[00:26:56]  And yeah, I guess I don't remember this.
[00:27:00]  All right.
[00:27:02]  Wade asks, how does the stand-up comedy scene historically fare during recessionary times?
[00:27:08]  I think, well, actually.
[00:27:10]  We're cheap entertainment.
[00:27:11]  Yeah.
[00:27:12]  You know, I remember, I mean, I did comedy through the 2008 recession.
[00:27:19]  It was like right when I started.
[00:27:20]  I started like maybe 2006, something like that.
[00:27:25]  And I remember going the weekend that like the all the auto companies declared bankruptcy.
[00:27:34]  I remember doing gigs in Detroit and they were like, it was the first time I ever did the road and they were sold out and just like the greatest shows, like so great.
[00:27:46]  And there was something to that where it was like people are like, oh, they're all fucking just scared and everything's fucked up.
[00:27:52]  And they're like, well, you know what?
[00:27:53]  We got to go have a drink and a laugh.
[00:27:55]  I mean, what else can you do at that point?
[00:27:57]  And I mean, I was pretty broke during all those years.
[00:27:59]  So I don't actually know how the business side of things was going, but I enjoyed it.
[00:28:04]  So I don't, I don't know.
[00:28:05]  That'd be an interesting thing to like look back at the history of how to stand up do during recessions.
[00:28:10]  We're going to find out.
[00:28:11]  When I was a broke college kid, going to a New York City comedy show was a great date.
[00:28:16]  I mean, tickets were all at 10 bucks.
[00:28:17]  He spent 20 bucks on like it was great.
[00:28:19]  I mean, a Broadway show is like $160 a ticket or some stupid shit.
[00:28:22]  And it's not even something I like.
[00:28:24]  So I tend to think we fare pretty well in a recessionary environment.
[00:28:29]  People are looking for it.
[00:28:30]  And like, we're not an NFL game.
[00:28:33]  Like, we're a pretty good value proposition, actually.
[00:28:35]  Yeah.
[00:28:36]  No, I agree with that.
[00:28:37]  I agree with that.
[00:28:38]  Yeah.
[00:28:38]  Hopefully.
[00:28:39]  Hopefully you're right.
[00:28:40]  This doesn't look economic forecast doesn't look great.
[00:28:43]  I'm saying is like if I was a fan of what I do, I mean, if you come to a porch tour show, it's 20 bucks.
[00:28:47]  There's a concert, a live podcast, and a stand-up show.
[00:28:50]  When I go to see a band I like, maybe they play for three hours and the ticket cost me 70 to 120 bucks.
[00:28:56]  Like, so hell yeah, I'm recession proof.
[00:28:58]  I don't run my heat as it is.
[00:29:00]  I got food scrolled away.
[00:29:01]  Let's do this shit.
[00:29:03]  Very good.
[00:29:05]  All right.
[00:29:06]  So number one, Sharon fan, what are your thoughts on what can be done about the escalating crime and violence in cities?
[00:29:18]  Huh?
[00:29:19]  Well, so I actually think what can be done is like fairly straightforward.
[00:29:28]  But the problem is that big cities tend to be filled with people who vote for Democrats.
[00:29:36]  And so that's kind of the, you know, the issue in terms of actually getting it done.
[00:29:40]  But look, what you'd want to see in these situations, we've talked about this a bit on the show, is you have to have some type of like response from the community to violent crime.
[00:29:56]  And the best thing to have for that is to have guns.
[00:30:03]  I mean, you want to have like if you could, if I could just wave a magic wand and pass any policy or whatever, it would be like, oh, yeah, abolish all gun control and gun restrictions, institute concealed carry rights, you know what I mean?
[00:30:17]  Like with no permit, with no permit and castle doctrine and stand your ground and all that shit.
[00:30:22]  And like, that's it.
[00:30:23]  And then what you'd want, I mean, obviously, ideally, I'd want like an anarcho-capitalist society, but assuming a government exists, right?
[00:30:31]  What you'd want is to say, like, to be like, look, I'm going to have my prosecutor is going to tell you straight up, like, if you break into someone's house and they shoot you, like, we're not going to prosecute that person.
[00:30:42]  If you try to, you know, fucking carjack someone and they shoot you, we're not going to prosecute that person.
[00:30:48]  If they, you know what I mean?
[00:30:49]  Like all this shit.
[00:30:50]  Like, we're just going to like, we're going to allow people to defend themselves and their property.
[00:30:55]  And that you, I think you'd be very surprised how quickly that cleans up a lot of this shit.
[00:31:02]  I will also say the other thing I believe that some of the like, you know, certain camps of libertarians who give me shit for this.
[00:31:12]  But as I've said many times, I also believe that as long as you have a government, which is never going to be ideal, but as long as you have a government and you have public Areas and there's public property sidewalks and public buildings and shit like that.
[00:31:29]  They have to be maintained in some reasonable way.
[00:31:33]  So you don't just allow people to fucking camp out on the street.
[00:31:37]  You don't allow people to fucking, you know what I mean, like commit crimes on public areas.
[00:31:44]  You have to have some type of force to like clean that shit up the same way you would on private property or it would be destroyed pretty quickly.
[00:31:51]  But that's what we need.
[00:31:52]  We need a system of like, you know, prosecuting people for violent crimes.
[00:31:58]  There have to be serious repercussions for violent crimes, and there cannot be serious repercussions for people who defend themselves against them.
[00:32:06]  That would be more or less what I'd say.
[00:32:08]  Unfortunately, good luck getting any of that through in these, you know, Democratic areas.

=== Balkanization Of Government Power (15:18) ===

[00:32:13]  Anything to add to that, Rob?
[00:32:15]  I don't know.
[00:32:16]  Move out, let the liberals move in.
[00:32:18]  Yeah, I mean, that's that more practically, since we can't wave a magic wand, that does seem and also, I think when you spend time in cities, I don't know.
[00:32:28]  Newspapers seem to do a good job of taking random pictures and making them seem like I'm in New York all the time.
[00:32:32]  I never walk around looking over my shoulder, feel full in any capacity.
[00:32:37]  Yeah, well, nothing in my life that seems more dangerous over the last two years.
[00:32:41]  Well, the truth is that with a lot of these things, and there are some, there are more random acts of violence and stuff.
[00:32:46]  And there are, there is, violence is up in New York City, even in some of the nice areas.
[00:32:51]  But yes, like you said, if you go, it's not like you're living in constant fear or something like that.
[00:32:55]  The truth is, what happens in these crimes when there's these big crime spikes typically is that the high crime neighborhoods have big spikes in crime.
[00:33:04]  And that's what drives all of it.
[00:33:06]  But the truth is, if you're just not really in those high crime neighborhoods, you're not that affected by it.
[00:33:11]  Sucks for the fucking people who live there, though.
[00:33:13]  That's for sure.
[00:33:14]  So avoid the people you're going to avoid.
[00:33:16]  Yeah, right.
[00:33:17]  More or less.
[00:33:18]  All right, guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is YoDelta.
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[00:34:08]  All right, let's get back into the show.
[00:34:10]  Candler Bud writes: if you could only abolish one, would it be the CIA or the FBI?
[00:34:18]  Ah, that's an interesting one.
[00:34:22]  Really?
[00:34:22]  Yeah, I'd abolish the CIA first.
[00:34:25]  I think the CIA does more to fuel the FBI than vice versa.
[00:34:32]  And I think that the CIA is the, they just overall do more evil shit.
[00:34:39]  But believe me, it's a tough choice, and I'd want to abolish both.
[00:34:41]  You were going FBI?
[00:34:42]  Well, my FBI argument was going to be the FBI seems to be worse towards the American people right now.
[00:34:48]  And they seem to be the front for the CIA that the CIA is able to pull off like domestic operations.
[00:34:54]  However, that's abolished.
[00:34:56]  If the CIA can't pull off domestic operations, then the FBI wouldn't be as bad.
[00:35:00]  All right.
[00:35:01]  That was kind of my feeling.
[00:35:03]  But I get your point.
[00:35:04]  There's an argument there, too, that like, you know, the FBI really, I mean, look, we figured out a lot of shit just recently about what the FBI did just in the 2020 election.
[00:35:16]  It's pretty insane.
[00:35:18]  All right.
[00:35:19]  Babushka writes, oh, shit.
[00:35:22]  I lost it.
[00:35:22]  Should all pets be freed back into nature?
[00:35:25]  No, absolutely not.
[00:35:29]  Most fucking domesticated animals will die in nature.
[00:35:34]  They won the fucking evolutionary championship.
[00:35:39]  No one's done better than human beings' pets.
[00:35:42]  They've literally evolved to not even need any of their big scary teeth.
[00:35:47]  Like you look at some fucking little Yorkie and realize that that was a wolf.
[00:35:53]  We made that thing a Yorkie out of a wolf.
[00:35:55]  And you'd be like, now how can it possibly survive?
[00:35:57]  You know, and it's like, oh, because it's got a human being picking up its shit and feeding it every day.
[00:36:02]  They got it made.
[00:36:04]  We should domesticate more animals.
[00:36:09]  All right.
[00:36:10]  Uncle CRV, our CBR therapist, writes that, do you believe the Libertarian Party has a chance in any federal political positions?
[00:36:21]  You know, right now, probably not.
[00:36:23]  That's if I'm just being honest.
[00:36:26]  I think we, you know, Michael Heist just put out a great video of this.
[00:36:31]  I think it was titled Decentralized Revolution.
[00:36:34]  If you go check my Twitter feed, I retweeted it.
[00:36:37]  But yeah, no, we have to be honest about where we are.
[00:36:39]  No, we're not really in a chance to win federal elections.
[00:36:45]  So what we need to do is like spark a bigger cultural change and wake a lot more people up so that we could be in a position to do that.
[00:36:51]  That's kind of the goal.
[00:36:53]  He elaborates a lot more on that than me.
[00:36:57]  Seller writes, why are you gay?
[00:37:01]  Which is okay.
[00:37:02]  All right.
[00:37:03]  Well, I don't think I am really that gay.
[00:37:06]  Dave, I was hoping that you'd finally take on these allegations.
[00:37:11]  I'm happy that this guy brought this up because honestly, I feel like it does need to be addressed.
[00:37:15]  Why?
[00:37:16]  What would the answer for why be?
[00:37:18]  I feel like this is just assuming that I am gay.
[00:37:21]  There's a presumption in this question.
[00:37:23]  I don't know.
[00:37:23]  Society made me that way.
[00:37:26]  I was born that way.
[00:37:29]  Okay, let's see.
[00:37:31]  David and Lincoln writes, who will be elected president in 2024?
[00:37:38]  God, it's just such a hard question.
[00:37:40]  You know, I like making predictions about this stuff, but God damn, it's just so hard.
[00:37:44]  It's just so hard to predict because there's just so many moving pieces in this one.
[00:37:51]  And I could almost see it going anyway.
[00:37:53]  You know, I don't know.
[00:37:54]  I was predicting that Trump would be reelected in 2020 for most of the year, even through the COVID shit.
[00:38:02]  And I thought the riots were going to give it to him.
[00:38:04]  I thought the riots were just so unpopular that they were going to really get done.
[00:38:08]  It wasn't until, if you listen back to the episodes, go to gasdigitalnetwork.com, promo code POTP.
[00:38:12]  Listen back to all the 2020 episodes.
[00:38:15]  It was when they announced the mail-in ballot shit is when I really changed my mind on that.
[00:38:20]  And I went, oh, this is completely up in the air now.
[00:38:23]  I don't even know how to predict something like this.
[00:38:25]  It's going to be like weeks of them counting it.
[00:38:27]  It's going to come down to lawyers fighting and, you know, like court cases and shit.
[00:38:32]  The Democrats are better at that than Republicans.
[00:38:34]  So I don't know.
[00:38:37]  I mean, I could see a scenario going almost anyway.
[00:38:42]  You know, I could see Trump becoming the nominee, but it just being a really, it seems like Trump is just doesn't have the energy, isn't quite as in touch with the voting populace as he was in 2016.
[00:38:54]  There's so many people he's turned off.
[00:38:57]  I could see him winning the nomination and just losing it.
[00:39:00]  You know, I could also see him winning the nomination and squeaking out another 2016.
[00:39:05]  Although I find it unlikely.
[00:39:08]  You know, my gut right now is telling me that even Biden would beat Trump.
[00:39:14]  And that's, I don't know.
[00:39:16]  I think there's a little bit of a rocks, paper, scissors shoot situation going on that if the Dems run Biden or Kamala, they will certainly lose to nearly anyone but Trump.
[00:39:26]  Trump, they might be.
[00:39:27]  And literally anyone else they will lose to.
[00:39:30]  If they don't run one of the, so like, in other words, if you get a DeSantis or like just any traditional Republican, other than maybe like a Ted Cruz, that traditional Republican's probably going to win.
[00:39:40]  But now you do have a question still on the table of, do the Democrats actually even run Biden or Kamala?
[00:39:46]  And also, how bad is the economy going to be looking if the Fed continues to jack interest rates?
[00:39:51]  And do we actually have some throw them out economy situation going on where you got recession and inflation kind of going on at the same time, which will make it nearly impossible for an incumbent party to stay in power?
[00:40:06]  But people might just vote against Trump.
[00:40:10]  So you still have, you have, look, you have the questions of the kind of voting by mail shit, how much of that is going to be going on in 2024.
[00:40:19]  Then you have the questions of the, look, just because Twitter is run by Elon Musk now, who even knows what the situation with Twitter will be by then.
[00:40:28]  Still have all the other tech, all the interference that we've learned about from 2020.
[00:40:32]  We might see that all again in 2024, whether we know about it or not.
[00:40:37]  It's just very hard.
[00:40:38]  It's very hard to say.
[00:40:40]  I will say I don't have a full understanding of it yet, but this Cary Lake election stuff in Arizona is odd because everything I'm reading is the judges saying, well, you have to prove intentionality.
[00:40:52]  Like that, in other words, there was intentional like malfeasance.
[00:40:55]  I don't understand that.
[00:40:56]  So are they admitting that the election count is not accurate?
[00:40:59]  Yes.
[00:41:00]  Because they are admitting that.
[00:41:02]  Why is it certified?
[00:41:03]  Yeah.
[00:41:04]  It's pretty insane.
[00:41:04]  Then we should be, you're admitting that we did not have an accurate election.
[00:41:08]  And so what's being done to make sure that the next one is?
[00:41:11]  Why is that fair?
[00:41:12]  Why was it certified?
[00:41:13]  Like, why is that an aspect of the criteria that it has to actually pro you have to actually prove that the other side cheated or did fraud?
[00:41:19]  If we know that the count is wrong, then we should go, that's a bad election.
[00:41:23]  We have to redo this.
[00:41:24]  It makes no sense to me.
[00:41:26]  Yeah.
[00:41:26]  No, I agree.
[00:41:27]  I agree.
[00:41:28]  It's pretty insane.
[00:41:30]  All right.
[00:41:31]  Let's okay.
[00:41:34]  When PI asks, when are you going back on Timcast?
[00:41:39]  And can Robbie the Fire go with you this time?
[00:41:42]  You know, I literally was just thinking about that because I was thinking about, because we have a gig in Maryland.
[00:41:47]  So I was going to see how far the trip was to Timcast.
[00:41:51]  And yeah, I'll definitely bring Robbie with me if we can make that fun.
[00:41:54]  Hell yeah.
[00:41:54]  Let's do it, man.
[00:41:55]  That'd be fun.
[00:41:59]  Does Tim do Friday episodes?
[00:42:01]  Let's just go up on Friday.
[00:42:02]  We'll drive up to Tim's.
[00:42:03]  I think, yeah, I think he does.
[00:42:05]  No, he does.
[00:42:06]  And I think the Friday episodes are cool because he does it like a little less topical and more just like whatever fucking you want to talk about.
[00:42:11]  So that's cool.
[00:42:12]  I know you don't like this idea right now, but hear me out here.
[00:42:14]  We'll go to my friend's Max's.
[00:42:15]  He's got a private bar.
[00:42:16]  He's got a place for us to stay.
[00:42:18]  That's where we do porch tour.
[00:42:19]  And then he's like an hour from this gig in Myersville.
[00:42:21]  It'll be a great night.
[00:42:22]  Okay.
[00:42:22]  We'll have to see how far it is to Tim Poole's place from there.
[00:42:28]  And then how far it is to the hotel that I will be staying at.
[00:42:33]  I got to just locate all of these things on a map.
[00:42:35]  But yeah, that sounds great.
[00:42:37]  That's a great plan.
[00:42:41]  Okay.
[00:42:42]  Let's see.
[00:42:43]  Let's get a couple of good ones because we're running low on time here.
[00:42:49]  Will there be legitimate pushback against digital currency, AI, and automated jobs taking over?
[00:42:55]  Are we too far down the path?
[00:42:57]  Will aggressive woke policies continue to get worse or swing back in the opposite direction?
[00:43:03]  There's a lot there in that question.
[00:43:05]  You got any thoughts on that, Rob?
[00:43:06]  Yes, absolutely.
[00:43:07]  First, you got to separate AI, automation, and digital currencies because those are three very different things.
[00:43:16]  Firstly, AI might be getting a little bit creepy, but automation is great.
[00:43:20]  You got to understand it's human evolution when we automate processes.
[00:43:23]  That means that we're like a little beehive.
[00:43:25]  We get to go work on something else.
[00:43:27]  It creates wealth.
[00:43:28]  It means people like you and I are not in factories and we get to podcast instead.
[00:43:32]  People get to specialize.
[00:43:33]  Automation's great.
[00:43:34]  You know what I mean?
[00:43:35]  There's a reason why we don't have to toil on farms.
[00:43:37]  It's because they figured out how to automate a lot of the processes so that we can get a lot more food out of the ground without as not many people needing to be out there doing it.
[00:43:45]  So automation is great.
[00:43:46]  Tech AI, that might get a little bit creepy.
[00:43:49]  I'll give that one to you.
[00:43:50]  Digital currencies, here's going to be the problem with digital currencies.
[00:43:53]  They're bad.
[00:43:54]  They're really bad.
[00:43:55]  They're bad because it means government's going to be able to track everything you're doing with your money.
[00:43:58]  They're going to be able to separate you from your money at any point in time.
[00:44:01]  They're going to see exactly how you're using it.
[00:44:02]  That's all on the negative side.
[00:44:04]  The problem that I see is I think government kind of has a good sale in a way with digital currencies to some people.
[00:44:13]  And that like doing your taxes is a real pain in the ass.
[00:44:17]  So like if part of the sale with digital currencies is that you don't have to do your taxes because it's all kind of just automated, there might be a sell in there to your typical.
[00:44:26]  Now, it could be that most Americans, everyone's playing some sort of game with their taxes or they prefer sitting down with an accountant.
[00:44:32]  Like they don't want like, we don't want to be in a situation where you're fighting with the government to try and get your money back.
[00:44:37]  Because like you look at how inefficient the IRS system is, like think about if they could automate it on their end, you'd be in a situation.
[00:44:44]  It's like when you have when a credit card, you know, when you've already been charged by a company, you're trying to get your money back.
[00:44:50]  It's like all of your tax deductions would probably be proof on you to actually get the money back from government, which I don't know if like most people will like, but it just seems like that's the next thing for government.
[00:45:02]  Like the next time that kind of they have to make a change in currency, it just seems like a natural technological pivot.
[00:45:09]  When you look at Venmo and the way that like all transactions are digital, it almost seems odd that government's behind the curve right now that you can't interact with them or money.
[00:45:19]  Like in, you know what I mean?
[00:45:20]  It's like money is going to go more digital.
[00:45:22]  Payments are going to be easier.
[00:45:23]  They're going to be faster.
[00:45:24]  And I don't think government, which is in the business of money, is just going to cede that to the market.
[00:45:29]  You know what I mean?
[00:45:30]  They're not just going to let Bitcoin be a great, you know what I mean?
[00:45:33]  They're going to put up a fight.
[00:45:34]  So now it becomes a question of if they can sell people on the value of, oh, look, criminals aren't going to be able to have money.
[00:45:42]  And look how well we can track everything if people are going to buy into that.
[00:45:45]  And it's going to be an interesting battle.
[00:45:48]  Yeah.
[00:45:48]  I, okay.
[00:45:49]  So I basically, yeah, I agree with all of that.
[00:45:51]  And I think that's going to be the battle of the future, kind of in the financial aspect of things.
[00:45:59]  In terms of the question about, you know, woke culture, the pendulum swinging back, I don't know.
[00:46:10]  I don't know that this answer is written in stone.
[00:46:12]  I sure hope it does.
[00:46:13]  And it does seem like a lot of this woke shit does seem just too unsustainable to last with such little popular support.
[00:46:21]  I think what's likely is that a continued kind of balkanization is going to happen with this stuff.
[00:46:26]  I think we saw some hints of that in the last election where Ron DeSantis wins by 20 points in Florida, but there's no big red wave that sweeps over on the national level.
[00:46:37]  I think some areas will continue to go woke while others reject it more and more.
[00:46:42]  I think it's going to rely heavily on tech censorship because if they continue to kind of, we live with like an unbelievable amount of socialism right now that we pretend not to live with.
[00:46:54]  And it's a lot of it's influenced by government money and policy, which is also then influenced by whether or not news is covering that.
[00:47:02]  And I think one of the places that you see it like the most is kind of with this trans stuff.
[00:47:08]  I mean, you saw it with COVID, the fact that doctors who didn't all agree with the policy were being censored by it.
[00:47:12]  And now with the kids, with like with the trans stuff.
[00:47:16]  And I think if we end up with free media, that you're able to get more information out there and actually criticize these policies, like the go woke, go broke thing is true, unless they're able to continuously institute socialist policies that essentially fund it.

=== Trans Issues And Censorship (07:00) ===

[00:47:31]  So I think it's kind of like to me, like the crucial chess piece, like your queen on the board is going to be tech censorship.
[00:47:38]  That if we actually have free information to criticize it, it's not going to be sustainable.
[00:47:43]  But if they're able to further advance socialism where you're not able to question these things and they're able to direct more resources towards it, then we're going to live with a lot less freedom and a lot more of it.
[00:47:54]  I'm venturing to guess just with the nature of the internet, like we're going to have bad periods, but like you're going to have a Twitter.
[00:48:00]  You're going to have things that just break through.
[00:48:02]  Like it just doesn't seem like we still existed through COVID.
[00:48:05]  We criticized it throughout the entire thing.
[00:48:08]  If you're listening to this, you heard us.
[00:48:10]  You know what I mean?
[00:48:11]  So it just seems to me like it's like freedom's out of the bottle.
[00:48:15]  They can keep trying to push it back in, but they're never going to fully do it.
[00:48:19]  I agree with that.
[00:48:20]  I think there's, it's very hard.
[00:48:23]  It's very hard to, and, and people find a way to navigate.
[00:48:26]  I mean, China just broke out of it.
[00:48:27]  Even just China just broke out of it.
[00:48:29]  I, I mean, now I don't know the way that they've unwound it over there.
[00:48:32]  I can't imagine they claimed it to be COVID fatigue, but despite, you know what I mean?
[00:48:37]  But they basically pulled the same thing.
[00:48:39]  People reached a breaking point, which is in part because they saw the rest of the world.
[00:48:42]  I'm sure on non-social platforms that you can get on, there were like, how come no one else in the world is locked in their fucking building?
[00:48:48]  Yeah.
[00:48:49]  But you know what I mean?
[00:48:49]  They just got some freedom back.
[00:48:51]  Yeah, a little bit.
[00:48:52]  I mean, the other thing I would add on top of this with the woke pushback thing is that one thing that I think is going to be is going to be a big factor in this is that we are right now, you know, with the stuff which has really kind of taken over a lot of this woke conversation recently, as crazy as this is, you say it out loud, just sounds so insane.
[00:49:12]  But is this kind of the trans kid stuff?
[00:49:17]  And basically, we're running a rather large experiment on children right now.
[00:49:25]  And the idea of this, and you know, the numbers are hard to exactly measure, but certainly we've started giving a hormone, you know, the puberty blockers and hormone treatment to thousands of kids around the country.
[00:49:46]  We've done what they call, you know, the gender affirmation to tens, hundreds of thousands of kids around the country.
[00:49:56]  And this has never been done before.
[00:49:59]  This is, we don't have like long-term data on how this works out.
[00:50:02]  We're running the experiment right now on these kids.
[00:50:05]  And my prediction would be that this is going to be a disaster.
[00:50:09]  They're really going to ruin a lot of people.
[00:50:11]  And I think this is more and more, there's going to be stories of this.
[00:50:16]  There's already some that you see coming out of where these kids are like, oh, yeah, I transitioned and I just completely regret it.
[00:50:24]  It was the worst thing that ever happened to me.
[00:50:25]  And I don't, I now recognize that I am a guy or a girl or whatever.
[00:50:31]  I think we're going to have a lot more stories like that.
[00:50:34]  And I think that's going to have an impact on the speak to just how demonic this kid transitioning movement is.
[00:50:43]  One is there was a video recently with Rachel Levine talking about how happy she is that she had kids prior to transitioning.
[00:50:50]  And so one of the most tragic parts are like we're lying to people because you're not actually becoming the other gender.
[00:50:57]  Like you're playing a very tough game of make-believe where you're going to need constant repair work and constant doctor visits, where at the end of the day, you don't have like, let's say you identify you're a male and you identify as a female.
[00:51:10]  So I know some women who were very miserable up until they had kids.
[00:51:13]  I would say that's like the signature thing that you can do as a lady is have kids.
[00:51:16]  You're never going to get to experience that.
[00:51:18]  So like we're literally just lying to you.
[00:51:20]  It's like you can go pretend to be a lady and we can give you somewhat functional equipment that you're going to have to spend your entire life maintaining.
[00:51:27]  And it's expensive and hurtful.
[00:51:30]  But at the end of the day, you're still praying pretend.
[00:51:32]  You're not a lady.
[00:51:33]  And a lot of these people, I mean, I have a joke.
[00:51:35]  I'm not going to tell you, but like I've got a joke about like they don't have functioning equipment.
[00:51:38]  You're not having sex.
[00:51:39]  You're not having an orgasm.
[00:51:40]  Like all the things that like you might think might be a thrill for you in terms of being the other gender.
[00:51:46]  I'm saying if you go through with all of it and you get the best parts, you see the best doctors, you're still just playing a very expensive and painful game of make-believe, which is tragic.
[00:51:57]  And then you look at the kids, what evidence do you have that a kid can make this recommendation or can make this decision about themselves when every study that I've seen thus far, like up until 95% of these kids just grow out of it.
[00:52:09]  So I'm just saying if you're making the recommendation, what science do you have to support that?
[00:52:12]  And the answer is zero.
[00:52:14]  The idea of letting kids make this decision.
[00:52:16]  I mean, it's like, it's the most profound decision you could make in your life.
[00:52:20]  I mean, these treatments are even the hormone blockers.
[00:52:23]  I mean, they're irreversible.
[00:52:24]  And it's like, just, you know, it's, God, it's just so goddamn.
[00:52:28]  It literally seems demonic.
[00:52:30]  And what seems the most demonic about it, and this is where I was talking about like with the socialism stuff, is that people in like, even in religious circles, like leaderships in religious circles, like at schools, like they're not allowed to talk out against it.
[00:52:42]  You just had, this is an interesting case.
[00:52:43]  It's right on topic.
[00:52:44]  I don't know if you saw it, but at Yeshiva University, they just lost a lawsuit that they have to have a gay group on campus.
[00:52:50]  Now you understand if you're gay, you can go to any other school in the world.
[00:52:54]  I mean, I went there for a year.
[00:52:55]  That's a, I left because I wasn't into religion.
[00:52:57]  You can leave.
[00:52:58]  You don't have to do the religion or you can go there and be respectful.
[00:53:01]  But it's literally a school of a thousand people.
[00:53:04]  You know how small of a school that is?
[00:53:05]  It's a thousand people who went there so that they can have a religion.
[00:53:09]  And then government steps in and goes, no, you can't have literally government stepping in to go, you're not allowed to have a religion.
[00:53:14]  You're not allowed to say that you have to support a gay club here.
[00:53:18]  They can go to any other school in the world.
[00:53:19]  There's plenty of government funding and a lot of institutions.
[00:53:22]  Why do you have to go to like, it's like going to the monk school and telling them that they have to have a ban there or, you know what I mean?
[00:53:28]  You might as well have the fucking bacon club.
[00:53:29]  But that's what I'm talking about, that it's all an outpouring of socialism, government policy and money that they, that we're not allowed to have like independent identities.
[00:53:38]  You're not allowed to question these things.
[00:53:40]  You can't even have any little corner.
[00:53:41]  You can't even have yeshiva.
[00:53:42]  You can't have one little area.
[00:53:44]  That's not right.
[00:53:45]  That's not like, no, I remember always thinking that like, I used to think that about when they banned smoking in bars.
[00:53:53]  It'd be kind of like, you're like, all right, look, I understand there's a lot of people who want to go to a bar where there's not smoke there.
[00:53:57]  And there's people who want to work at a bar, but like we can't have one.
[00:54:01]  You know, like we can't just have one bar where it's like for the people who really do just want a bar that you can smoke at.
[00:54:06]  You know what I mean?
[00:54:07]  There's lots of people who want that.
[00:54:08]  So like, and this is kind of the nature of socialism.
[00:54:11]  The nature of government is they have to go into every little nook and cranny and enforce their will.
[00:54:15]  But the bright side about that is that it's, if it's not being propped up, it falls apart.
[00:54:25]  It requires that kind of force in order because it will organically fall apart.

=== Capitol Storm And Liberties (06:18) ===

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[00:55:35]  So do you still have contempt for me?
[00:55:39]  President-elect Van writes, do you still have contempt for me wearing this shirt at that protest in Arizona after the 2020 election?
[00:55:47]  The shirt is in my profile pic.
[00:55:49]  No, I don't have contempt for you at all.
[00:55:51]  I actually found that rather amusing.
[00:55:54]  That was the guy who was wearing the part of the problem shirt at the Stop the Steal, the Stop the Steal protest.
[00:56:02]  No, I don't have any contempt for you at all.
[00:56:04]  But why would I?
[00:56:05]  I appreciate that you bought our shirt, that you listen to the show and stuff.
[00:56:09]  I love you for that.
[00:56:11]  But I would say, you know, consider all of my arguments for why Trump is not worthy of your support.
[00:56:18]  And if you had walked into that building in Arizona and been arrested and thrown in solitary confinement and been tortured for 300 days or whatever, just know Donald Trump would not have cared at all.
[00:56:29]  He's not fighting for you.
[00:56:31]  And if you do decide to go out and protest, like wear trans kids or real kids' shirts, like wear something that's very like I support AOC.
[00:56:38]  Like, you know what I mean?
[00:56:39]  Make it weird.
[00:56:40]  Confuse the media.
[00:56:41]  Like that's what they should have done instead of Hawaiian shirts.
[00:56:43]  They should have said, AOC sent me here, like in whatever that was, Charlottesville.
[00:56:48]  You know what I mean?
[00:56:50]  Don't give the media the images they're looking for.
[00:56:51]  Confuse them.
[00:56:53]  Yeah, I agree with that.
[00:56:54]  I support that.
[00:56:55]  That'd be real fun.
[00:56:56]  They really won't know what to do with it.
[00:56:58]  Storm the Capitol to make it look like a pride parade.
[00:57:01]  But I'm not actually saying storm the Capitol.
[00:57:03]  Don't storm the Capitol.
[00:57:04]  But if you're going to Storm the Capitol against our advice, maybe wear I identify as non-binary t-shirts while you do it.
[00:57:12]  That's all we're saying.
[00:57:13]  But don't do it.
[00:57:14]  Don't do any of that.
[00:57:15]  But if you're going to ignore our advice to not do any of that, then maybe that's the way you should do it.
[00:57:20]  Again, we recommend against.
[00:57:21]  Put on some makeup.
[00:57:25]  Is this a real question?
[00:57:27]  So it just said, Danielle says, What is libertarianism?
[00:57:32]  Well, it's a uniquely American form of autism that me and Robbie Bernstein both suffer from.
[00:57:41]  Libertarianism is the belief in self-ownership, private property rights, and the non-aggression principle.
[00:57:48]  That's the okay.
[00:57:51]  Kyle, all right, let's we'll wrap on this.
[00:57:53]  Okay.
[00:57:54]  Can you?
[00:57:54]  He says, Can you steal man the minarchist constitutionalist worldview?
[00:58:02]  Um, yeah, okay, I think I could do that.
[00:58:07]  Um, so what's the steel man?
[00:58:11]  What's the absolute best argument against anarchy?
[00:58:15]  Um, it would probably be something like you uh wherever you there's always going to be a sovereign to one degree or another, whether you live in whether you're talking about anarcho-capitalism or a constitutional, you know, republic or a socialist government or anything.
[00:58:36]  There's always going to be someone who has to be the final say on in any given area.
[00:58:43]  The anarcho-capitalist view would be that it's the property owner, right?
[00:58:46]  That like they're kind of they have the final say.
[00:58:51]  But if you, I think the argument would be that if you believe in liberty, then we'd have to have some type of guarantee that the final sovereign is on the side of liberty.
[00:59:04]  That the final sovereign, instead of splitting into, you know, if there's all people who just own their own private property and there's no sovereign above them, then they could say not have free speech rights or, you know, a right to a speedy trial or due process or something like that.
[00:59:21]  So if we have a constitutional republic, you can enshrine the First Amendment and the Fifth Amendment and the Fourth Amendment and all of these things, and you can guarantee liberty for that group of people.
[00:59:35]  So that, you know, there's all other arguments about like, you know, power vacuums and things like that.
[00:59:41]  I don't really think those are, that's actually the strongest argument.
[00:59:44]  I think probably the strongest argument is something to the effect of like, we've, we, we at least need guarantees on individual liberties that can, that can, will come better from someone who has a monopoly on those guarantees than otherwise.
[01:00:04]  Now, of course, my issue with that would be that, you know, that in fact, government cannot guarantee any of these things and that there's a much higher likelihood that that power will then just be expounded and you've kind of opened the door for that cancer to grow.
[01:00:18]  But I don't know.
[01:00:19]  I guess that would be my steelman position of it, if I had to think about it.
[01:00:23]  I'm sure there's a lot.
[01:00:23]  There's a lot of different minarchist arguments out there.
[01:00:28]  All right.
[01:00:29]  Let's wrap up on that.
[01:00:30]  Good questions from you guys.
[01:00:32]  Did good.
[01:00:32]  We haven't done one of these in a while.
[01:00:33]  Thanks for listening.
[01:00:34]  We will be doing our part of the problem 2022 year in review episode.
[01:00:40]  We'll be recording that, a two-parter that'll be coming out in the next two episodes to end off this year.
[01:00:47]  So look for those coming out soon.
[01:00:49]  All right.
[01:00:50]  Peace.