938 Ron Paul Part 4: Infiltrating the Mafia
How to disprove political skeptics...
How to disprove political skeptics...
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Hi everybody, it's Stefan Molyneux from Free Domain Radio. | |
I hope that you're doing most excellently. | |
And I wanted to talk about, and just if you are interested in Monsieur LePaul as a political candidate, I'm not trying to change your mind about that. | |
I obviously think that if you're committed to it, you're going to go the whole hog through the Ron Paul experience. | |
But I just want to put out some stuff that, in case you're left with a feeling of Emptiness and futility after the Ron Paul campaign doesn't work that you will have something that you can maybe fall back on that might be of interest to you that may have some credibility if it's accurately predicted. | |
So, don't look upon this as me saying to you, don't vote! | |
Don't vote! Whatever you do, but rather just as some thought experiments or ways of looking at things that may be of use to you down the road. | |
And as massive evidence of all the groveling and apologizing I will need to do if and when I'm proven completely and totally wrong. | |
But I don't think that there's any need for unpleasant And, I mean, obviously for vitriolic disagreements, but for unpleasant disagreements between those who believe that political solutions are the ways to solve the problem of liberty, and those like myself who believe that politics is an empty and time-draining distraction that actually makes things worse. | |
And the reason that I say that is because... | |
We can experiment very easily. | |
We don't need to deal with all of this theory. | |
We can experiment and come up with ways of proving theories either way. | |
So I'm going to throw a few out there and you can let me know what you think. | |
I think that we all understand and appreciate that the state, the government, We're good to go. | |
And that it is not there to serve our interests. | |
It's like what is put on the side of police cars very often, to serve and protect. | |
And that's very true, just not us, right? | |
I mean, the police are there to serve and protect their political masters, the hegemony that rules us, not the individual citizens. | |
Because you can't say, I'm here to serve and protect you, so give me half your money or I'll shoot you. | |
That would be kind of insulting, so... | |
Yes, they are there to serve and protect, but not us. | |
In fact, others at our expense, without a doubt. | |
So, we all know that special interest groups donate a certain amount of money to the government in the form of political campaigns, and I'm not talking about Ron Paul supporters here, just we understand this is the general problem of political mixed economy democracy, that special interest groups will donate money to particular candidates and so on, | |
and in return, Those candidates will provide special favors, dispensations, tax breaks, subsidies or protective tariffs and legislation to those particular groups in exchange for the money that is donated in the realm of politics. | |
So, you buy the politicians and then the politicians out of the general kitty of tax money will provide you massive returns on your investment. | |
The pharmaceutical lobby Put, I think, about $10 million into lobbying the latest elderly pharmaceutical bill that was put through by George Bush a couple of years ago, and they've reaped hundreds of billions of dollars in profit. | |
I mean, it's a pretty good investment, and this is part of the whole corruption of the system that any CEO who says, No, I will do no such thing, will be thrown out on his ass by enraged stockholders who will demand his head on a stick. | |
Because if you can get that kind of profit and offload the enforcement of it to the taxpayers through taxation paying the military and the police, then as somebody whose job it is to maximize returns for your shareholders, that's what you're going to do. | |
It's not that corporations are evil, it's that the environment breeds evil. | |
So... We all understand that the state exists to serve the special interests. | |
The farm lobby, which gets a whole bunch of people in the Midwest elected, the farm lobby exists to protect, to defend, to increase the economic self-interest of its members. | |
I mean, that is... Pretty much a given, and I think anybody who doesn't understand that probably sort of looks at me like I'm going, and doesn't really make any sense to them, so I think that given that you can follow the language that I'm using, you can understand that particular groups are focused on particular forms of self-interest for their respective members. | |
Fair enough, right? And a Hispanic group, a group that is there for representing the political or economic interests of the Hispanic community, is obviously going to be pro-Hispanic. | |
And they are going to have particular policies and approaches that are going to be to the benefit of their members. | |
All groups that are put forward are put forward to increase the benefits of their members. | |
This doesn't just mean political groups or anything, but just any group whatsoever. | |
Given that we understand this, then what we're doing through the Ron Paul or through any political campaign, what we're attempting to do is we are attempting to take a group called the state and we are trying to turn it against the advantage of those it represents. | |
I mean, I'm sorry, I tried to think of a good way to put that, I can't think of it any more succinctly, probably my fault, but let's just run that again, just so, because it's pretty important to where we're going, so you can understand what I'm saying. | |
Political activism for libertarian, for shrinking the government, for whatever, whatever, right? | |
For freedom, as traditionally understood, even if we put that down to mean constitutionalism or something like that. | |
Political action is focused on attempting to gain control of the state, And turn it against its representative members. | |
To turn it against its constituency. | |
And there's ways to test that theory. | |
Quite easily, right? | |
Quite easily. And I'm going to throw a few out there, and you can let me know what you think. | |
So, I would, you know, if people came forward and said, Steph, by God, I have a political solution that is going to get us free in some relatively short period of time. | |
And what it does is it involves infiltrating the state and putting somebody in control of the state and then having the very mechanism, apparatus, reason for being, and purpose of the state turn completely free. | |
On its head, then the first thing I would say is, well... | |
That's a pretty big theory, right? | |
If you can do that, that's like inventing the anti-gravity time machine boots, right? | |
I mean, that is a pretty astounding claim that you can infiltrate an organization and turn it completely against its entire purpose and completely against all the members that it actually represents and who nourish and sustain it. | |
That's a pretty big claim. | |
And I would say, okay, well, if... | |
You say, I can lift a car, then I would say, well, let's not have you go out and lift a car. | |
Why don't you lift, say, this coffee cup, right? | |
And if you're not able to lift a coffee cup, then I am going to be fully, fully certain that you're not going to be able to lift a car. | |
Actually, the metaphor is more like lifting a building, but... | |
So with political activism we're saying we can take this mammoth, monstrous machine of the state and we can wend our way upwards. | |
We can infiltrate the top and we can turn it around and we can turn it against all of the special interest groups that it is designed to serve. | |
That's an astounding claim. | |
And the first thing I would say is, before we talk about lifting this building and spinning it like a Harlem Globetrotters basketball, why don't you show me that if you claim you can lift a building, that you can at least lift this coffee cup? | |
So I understand what I'm saying. If you can't lift the coffee cup, I'm not going to take seriously your belief that you can lift the building. | |
So, let me put something forward and say that if you have some wonderful mechanism or ability or, you know, and with all due seriousness, maybe you do, have some amazing, amazing way through rhetoric and drugs and dancing girls that you can infiltrate an organization, you can turn it around, and you can make it act completely in opposition to all of its component members. | |
That's relatively easy to test. | |
So the way that you would do it, the way that you would prove that you could at least lift a coffee cup, is you would find some local group, let's say it's a Hispanic group, right? | |
You would find some local group, assuming you're Hispanic or whatever, right? | |
Let's just say that you have to be or whatever, right? | |
Find that local group and you join that group. | |
And what you do is you attempt to turn that group against Hispanics. | |
Now, if you can do that, that's pretty cool, right? | |
Right. | |
I mean, I'm not saying that anyone should be against Hispanics, but it's pretty cool if you can join a group and you can get it to turn against all of its constituents and component members and everybody who profits from that group. | |
Amazing. Amazing. | |
If you can do this, it's some local group, a 50-person Hispanic club. | |
You join that, and you say, I think that we should turn against Hispanics. | |
Oh, Hispanic group of 50 people, through my amazing rhetoric and power of persuasion, I am going to get you to turn against Hispanics. | |
Now, if you can do that, then at least you have lifted a coffee cup. | |
If you can't do that, then for heaven's sake, stop talking about changing the federal government, please. | |
I mean, please, I'm telling you, it looks ridiculous. | |
It really, really does, you know? | |
It's like, I can't quite lift the coffee cup, but I'll be able to lift the building. | |
Yeah. It's really going to work out that way. | |
I have to tell you... | |
Okay, I'm fine. | |
I'm fine. | |
I'm sorry. | |
It's just pretty funny when you think about it. | |
Okay, I'm fine. I'm fine. | |
Excuse me. Maybe I've lifted one too many coffee cups today. | |
But this is sort of what I'm saying. | |
Like, deal with something that you can credibly manage within your own environment. | |
Let's take another example. | |
If you think that some guy, you can lob him like a hand grenade into the White House and have him change the government and turn it fundamentally against all of its constituent members and supported representatives, then We can certainly understand that it's a lot easier to change your family than it is to change the government, | |
right? To turn your family into people who reject the use of violence, who support libertarianism or voluntarism or anarcho-capitalism, whatever. | |
You have much more influence over your family than you do over the government, and your family and the Hispanic organization does not use force. | |
Does not use violence, does not have an army, does not have the ability to print money, does not have a massive military and police force to do whatever it wants, right? | |
So this is a much less volatile situation where you have much more influence and control than you or Ron Paul or anybody will ever have over the government as a whole, right? | |
You should be able to change the minds of everybody in your family and extended family, right? | |
I mean, if you can't, then you can't even lift your hand, let alone a coffee cup, let alone The massive edifice of the federal government and the largest military force the world has ever known. | |
Right? I mean, I'm not trying to be cruel. | |
I'm trying to save you time, money, and energy. | |
Get you focused on things that will work, not things that just appeal to that which you like. | |
And if you want to be a doctor, the important thing is to figure out what cures work and what cures don't work, not just to prescribe what you feel comfortable with, right? | |
I mean, to be a responsible doctor. | |
So if you can't change the minds of your friends, if you can't change the minds of your family, if you can't infiltrate a Hispanic organization of 50 people and turn it against Hispanics, then that should give you just a little, just a little, rational humility about your capacity to rein in control and diminish the power of the state. | |
But let's say Let's pass that hurdle. | |
The great thing about an irrational argument is it doesn't matter how many premises you granted, it's still always going to fail. | |
Let's say you can change your family and your friends. | |
Let's say that you can also Magically change the Hispanic organization. | |
You can infiltrate the NAACP and make it a racist organization. | |
You can infiltrate the Ku Klux Klan and turn it into the NAACP. You can infiltrate any organization that you see fit to, and you can turn it around and turn it against its constituent and founding members and everybody that it's supposed to benefit. | |
These are all non-statist, non-violent organizations. | |
Can you join a union and dissolve the union? | |
Can you join the United Auto Workers, wend your way to the top, and then turn it into a free-market, non-union organization? | |
Nothing against you. I'm just talking about the statist elements of unions. | |
Can you get them to stop lobbying for protective tariffs? | |
Can you get them to stop using the power of the state to get more and more benefits for their members? | |
Voluntary organizations. | |
Voluntary organizations is what I'm talking about here. | |
There have been millions of opportunities for libertarians to prove this amazing ability that they believe in. | |
That they can propel people to the top of organizations and completely turn them around. | |
Since libertarianism was founded, you count Adam Smith, over 300 years ago, how many millions of opportunities have there been for libertarians to show, on a smaller scale, on a more manageable scale, on a more achievable scale, their ability to infiltrate organizations and turn them around, and turn them against their constituent beneficiaries? | |
I wonder why this has never been done. | |
I wonder why libertarians don't prove that they can turn around the state by joining unions and turning them against their union members. | |
I wonder why libertarians haven't proven that they can turn around and control the state and minimize the state by joining a farm workers' lobbying group And convincing everybody to eliminate, or at least cut, farm subsidies. | |
I wonder. Actually, I don't. | |
We all know the answer to that, which is it's never going to happen. | |
It's never going to happen. | |
So let's go one step forward. | |
Let's say you've changed your family and friends. | |
You've transformed the Hispanic group into the anti-Hispanic group. | |
You've put the NAACP into... | |
You've put the Ku Klux Klan into rap gear. | |
I don't know. You've turned everything around. | |
You've got this amazing ability, right? | |
And then, you see, we actually have to begin to approach, on a tiny, tiny little scale, what the state actually does. | |
The state is a violent organization. | |
The state is an agency with direct control of astonishing amounts of violent power. | |
Any state in the world. | |
America, of course, the biggest military the world's ever seen. | |
Any state has massive amounts of military power, of course, relative to any individual or group. | |
So, there's no need to have an election. | |
I mean, to prove your thesis. | |
There's no need to have an election to prove your thesis. | |
If you believe, if you believe that you have this amazing ability to infiltrate violent organizations and turn them around against their constituent members, well, this is very, very easy to prove to skeptical naysayers like me, which is simply this. | |
Join the mafia. Join the Mafia and turn it into a charity. | |
That is far, far easier than curtailing the most massive military the world has ever seen. | |
I'm just talking about your local guidos. | |
I'm just talking about your local... | |
Sopranos. Much easier to infiltrate. | |
It's much easier to join the mafia than it is to become a congressman. | |
I mean, just statistically, right? | |
300-odd congressmen. | |
Tens of thousands of people in the mafia, I'm sure. | |
It's much easier to join any criminal gang than it is to get elected to high office. | |
So, it's much easier, it has much less control over violence, it has much less control over propaganda, and people already believe that it's bad, right? | |
The problem with the government is most people believe that it's virtuous and necessary, in the same way they believed that slavery and the subjugation of women and the glories of war were virtuous and necessary. | |
Some people still do. | |
But people already believe that the Mafia is bad, it's much more localized, it's much easier to get into, it does not have a monopoly of force, and you have the police hounding them as well. | |
Much more controlled, much more manageable situation. | |
So why don't you join the Mafia and turn them around, turn them into the United Way, turn them into a nice group, or at least get them to give up significant portions of their business. | |
Join the Mafia, get them to give up half their gambling control, half their control of the prostitution rings, get them to give up half of their shakedowns and half of their drug trade. | |
Or a third! Or 10%! | |
You can do that, and you will learn enormously valuable lessons about how to actually go about changing an institution which everybody still considers moral and has a huge and massive army. | |
*laughs* *laughs* Don't you see why it looks a little funny? | |
I mean, seriously, do you see why it looks a little bit funny for people to say, as one guy did, oh no, you see, Ron Paul, he's going to make the world better and safer by closing down all the army bases, ending the war in Iraq and bringing the military home. | |
If you know how to control and minimize the biggest army the world has ever seen, then surely you can, like infiltrating the mafia and turning then surely you can, like infiltrating the mafia and turning it around should be nothing to you. | |
It should be a weekend's work. | |
Why don't you try joining the army and turning it into the Peace Corps? | |
Getting it to get rid of all of its weapons, or most of its weapons, or half of its weapons, or 25% of its weapons. | |
Why don't you do that? If you believe that you can put someone into an organization, then do it in your life. | |
Do it in situations that you can control. | |
Do it in situations that are easily accessible and available to you. | |
In your workplace, try to turn the organization against its customers, because we're not the customers of the state, the special interests of the customers of the state and the military. | |
The industrial complex is the customers of the state, and the people dependent on welfare are the customers of the state, and the old-age pensioners dependent upon Medicare, Medicaid, old-age pensions. | |
They're the customers of the state, not you and me. | |
They're not working stiffs. | |
So just join a company, And say, my mission plan is to turn this company against its customers and put it mostly out of business. | |
Gonna do it? Gonna have any luck? | |
There's no need to talk to me about political solutions. | |
There's no need to talk to me about abstractions and theories. | |
There's no need whatsoever. | |
Because you can prove your theories. | |
See, I put forth the argument that History has disproven these theories of political action because every time, well, for hundreds of years, people have been trying to control the state. | |
State grows bigger and bigger all the time. | |
All the time. So, that's my disproof of the theories. | |
You can prove your theories, though. | |
You don't need to honky with me. You don't need to yell at me. | |
You don't need to call me names. You don't need to get mad at me. | |
You don't need to call me, oh, I'm against freedom. | |
I'm a Canadian. Oh, good. | |
You don't need to get mad at me. | |
You just need to show me that the theory works. | |
And that's easy. You don't need to wait for an election. | |
Just go and grab any local group and turn it against its customers and constituents. | |
Easy. Easy peasy peasy. | |
But they never do. | |
Because we know it's nonsense. | |
We know. We know it's never going to work. | |
We know that we could never infiltrate a Hispanic group and turn it against Hispanics. | |
50 people, no guns, local access. | |
Hell, how many times, how much luck have you had changing everyone in your family, where you have an enormous amount of influence and access? | |
No, it's a bunch of people who can't lift their arms, claiming they can lift a mountain. | |
It just looks silly. | |
The idea that Ron Paul is going to close down 700 plus bases and bring the troops home? | |
Do you think that the biggest military in the history of the planet is going to pack up and go away because an old man writes some words on a piece of paper? | |
I mean, seriously, get your head out of your armpit. | |
It's not going to happen. | |
It's not going to happen. | |
I'd love it if it could. | |
I really would. I'd be the happiest guy in the world if this could work. | |
If we could get troops out of foreign countries by next year, I would be ecstatic. | |
But it's not going to work. | |
It's not going to work. | |
And there are other things that will work. | |
And we should stop focusing on those and stop pretending that this mad fantasy of political action will ever give us freedom. | |
Thank you so much for watching. |