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July 15, 2009 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
34:29
1414 Ron Paul Redux - Sacrifice and Examples

Some arguments against why it is okay to get federal money for your constituents.

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Hi everybody, hope you're doing well.
It's Steph and Izzy.
We are strolling and it is time for us to get back to a wee smidgen of podcasting.
Sorry. Oh, it's windy too.
Hopefully they won't melt out too much with the rumbling.
I have two thick windshield mics that might cover us on this, but we shall see.
I wanted to go a tad nay mayhap in the metric system called a smidgen into more detail about something that came up on the radio show on Friday night, which was this issue of Ron Paul taking money from the government to ship back to his home constituents in Texas.
And I sort of wanted to clarify that because I think that it's really important to understand the degree to which politics, you know, is just not going to work in terms of setting us free.
So, as I mentioned on the show, the reason that I have a problem with that is not because I think that Ron Paul is necessarily disingenuous or...
False lying, manipulating, like he's riding a populist wave of anti-government feeling from his constituents while shoveling back to those who have political pull with him money from the federal government.
That would be a cynical way of looking at it.
And maybe it's true. Who knows, right?
It's so hard to guess other people's motives in these kinds of situations.
He may Because there certainly is two levels of communication, right?
One is, big government bad.
The other is, I will get your money back from big government.
And that, of course, is in accordance with the way that I view things, that if you can get money back from the government, then I think that's good.
I think, generally, there should be some sense of proportionality between the money that you've given to the government and the money you're getting back from the government.
So, for instance, if you are a business person and your business makes, I don't know, a million dollars a year and you get back 50 million dollars or 10 million dollars from the government, then that could be fairly disproportionate in terms of the money that you're paying out in taxes versus the money that you're getting back.
That may be considered somewhat of a pillage.
I mean, what I was talking about was People who are going to be paying a half or a million dollars or a million dollars in taxes their whole life, taking back a couple of grand in refunds and tax, in refunds and 401k deductions and student loans for a couple of large and stuff like that.
It's just not proportional to the amount that's being taken.
And, I mean, you can't ever be exact about this, and you can't know in advance, and so on.
And so that's a rough, you know, I'm not saying this is all really clear to define objectively, but that would be the sort of rough sense of where I think some sort of justice would be.
That if you are putting out a certain amount of money, Or can expect to in your life.
I think taking some amount of money back.
But I think taking a huge excess of money back is harder to defend morally.
Because then you're profiting in the same way that the government is profiting.
Now, do I know...
The degree to which, you know, Ron Paul donators get him to go to Washington and get special favors for them.
And do I know the proportion of profits relative to the money they get back?
Of course not, right? But I think that there probably are a few, if not more than a few.
But again, I'm not going to say I know any of that for sure.
But I think it's an interesting rule of thumb.
So, if Ron Paul is just, you know, saying, well, you know, bad government to the voters, and then let's get you some serious cash from the feds to more of the inner circle, I mean, that could be considered disingenuous at best.
But, of course, there's no proof of that.
I'm just putting it out as a possibility.
We may never know, but it certainly is a possibility, however unlikely you think it might be.
Now the second possibility...
It's so interesting to be talking about Ron Paul again, because it's not about Ron Paul, it's about the system as a whole.
The second possibility is that Ron Paul genuinely and completely believes in his mission from the top of his hair to the tips of his toes, but as a pragmatic politician, he realizes that if he were to run on a platform Called proportional returns from Washington or no returns from Washington.
In other words, if he were to live the ethic that would be required from a UPB sense for everyone to live if the government is to be diminished.
Because if the government is to be diminished, people need to take less out of its coffers.
They simply need to.
You can't enforce all of that with the police and the military.
People are going to voluntarily have to I'll take one more run at this because this is really important.
Either you're just going to stop...
Let's take, for example, privatizing schools.
I'm not going to say, oh, Ron Paul is responsible for this, but just as a principle.
As far as privatizing schools goes, there is a challenge.
Either the teachers are going to say, for the good of society as a whole, we are going to submit to this Privatization, and I wish there was a better word.
It's not like lovemaking is privatized rape.
You're just not using violence anymore, right?
It's not like respect for property rights is privatized theft, right?
You're just not stealing anymore.
But let's just go with common coinage for now.
We have enough reinvention to do without doing half the language as well.
So either the public school teachers are going to say, yes, I recognize that I have been overpaid, and that, you know, two-plus months off in the summer is not particularly valid, right? No one else in the goddamn economy gets anything like that, except for university professors, who are also protected by a statist union.
And they're going to say, well, for the good of Hamana Hamana, I'm going to give up X, Y, and Z, right?
So, maybe a few fewer professional development days.
And in return, of course, they will get more input into how the children are taught.
They will get to design more innovative and creative lesson plans, those who want to.
And those who don't will probably be canned like Charlie the Tuna.
But... There will be sacrifices.
And some people, frankly, will recognize or know, deep down in the cavities where their souls were, that they are not going to make the transition.
They're going to get fired. And they may have to give up certain excesses and pensions.
So it's a matter of sacrifice.
Because if they're not going to give up anything, Then they're going to go on strike.
They're going to take to the barricades.
They're going to axe an entire year of children's education.
They're going to go to the wall, right?
If they're not going to voluntarily give up certain goodies from the state, then they're going to go to the wall.
And then you have this ridiculous scenario where you're calling out the National Guard against wobbly old teachers, right?
How's that going to play in Peoria, right?
Well, libertarianism is fascism.
All the stuff we've talked about before, those images will be burned into the collective brain of some wobbly old white-haired teacher staring down the gun of a national guardsman, perhaps with flowers in her hair, a la the old lady in a room with a view.
And this is going to be the view of libertarianism for the next few hundred years, at least, if not forever.
So, people are either going to have to voluntarily give up Some goodies.
And people are capable of doing that.
Of course they are, right? Of course they are.
People will drive less.
They will wash out their tin cans.
They will recycle. They will...
I mean, people are all hot and bothered about reducing their carbon footprint.
They will do lots of things to sacrifice in the right course.
I mean, look at environmentalism, right?
I mean, whatever you think of it as a movement, and I'm not sure I think a whole lot of it, but...
The principle exists that people will make sacrifices if they genuinely believe that it is for a greater good.
So that is a case that could be made.
It's not how I think it's going to occur, but people who think that politics is the way for it to occur need to make that case.
Need to make that case to people and make It's a government equivalent to global warming.
You have to work to reduce it.
It's a man-made environmental catastrophe, which it is.
Just ask the Iraqis or the million or so peaceful prisoners in jail, non-criminals in jail.
It is a toxic hazard of the first order, and so people will make sacrifices.
Now, if people are willing to make sacrifices, Which is a necessary prerequisite for a peaceful reduction of the government if you're going to pursue the political process.
My sort of multi-generational, better parenting stuff is another approach, which obviously I think is the only way that things are going to work.
But if you are someone who believes the political process is going to work, then you're going to have to get people to make sacrifices, to get less than they give.
Now, of course, will that cause a reduction in the federal government?
Of course not. Of course not.
Because they will simply use that money for other things.
They will turn the Department of Public Education, that's the acronym that actually makes sense, they will turn the Department of Public Education into a bureaucracy to, quote, manage the private schools and no one or almost no one will get fired and the bureaucracy will provide additional levels of cost to the private schools and tuition will go from a couple of grand a year to ten,
fifteen, twenty thousand or more because of the statist overhead and then people will say, well, I told you poor kids couldn't get educated, right?
It's just it's all so grindingly predictable, but But if those who want political solutions genuinely believe that these sacrifices are going to occur, then they should make those sacrifices first, right?
I mean, surely that is The very first thing that you would expect from a moral innovator like, you know, Ron Paul, his supporters, or whatever, you would expect that they will be the first to make sacrifices with regards to the state.
And if they do make those sacrifices, And succeed, then it opens up the possibility of at least proving the principle in theory and leading by example.
Right, so if the constituents in Rand Paul's area are willing to say, okay, We recognize that sacrifices are going to have to be made, according to our theory.
People are going to have to ask for less from the federal government.
Federal government's not going to cut back because if it cuts back without people agreeing that there should be cutbacks, they'll simply go to the wall and things won't work.
Then those people should be the first in line to accept the possibility of job losses, of lowered income, of lowered services, of hardship.
for the sake of the greater good, right?
So if schools are privatized then teachers will have to accept lower salary Possibly.
I mean, the great teachers will be better paid, but some teachers, a lot of teachers, will end up with lower salary.
I mean, particularly when you say that they'll actually have to work a regular year like everyone else on the planet, then those people are going to get lower hourly rates because they won't get PD days, they won't get the summers off, and so on.
And their pensions will be shaved back and, you know, all that kind of stuff.
And since that's what people who want to privatize government services are demanding of others, right, do not use the state to enhance your own income, then they should be the first to sacrifice their own economic security and some aspects of their income and possibly their jobs, possibly their careers, in order to achieve the shrinkage in the state that they recognize and really advocate as necessary for society as a whole, right?
Lead by example. That's the very first thing that we can accept from moral leaders, right?
To lead by example.
Because if that's not going on, then it's all just a silly shell game, right?
It's all just a nonsense verbiage of self-congratulatory ethical pomposity, right?
I mean, we all understand this very basically, right?
You don't generally get people who are personal trainers who show up chain-smoking and 300 pounds.
That person may have an expert knowledge of health, but we would expect at least for them to be relatively fit and to be able to do the exercises that they advocate other people to do as important and healthy and essential and this and that, right?
I mean, it comes down to stuff as silly as you will very rarely go to a, quote, authentic Japanese restaurant and be served by a Scottish Jamaican, right?
There is a certain amount of this stuff, right, that just goes on, that's really understood at the food court level and is understood at the 12 bucks an hour personal trainer level, but is not at all understood in the loftiest realms of philosophy and politics and ambition to overthrow the state or to undermine the state or to shrink the state.
And it's silly, right?
I mean, it actually is kind of embarrassing to me when you see very intelligent and educated people who don't get the lead-by-example stuff or do what you preach, live your values, before telling other people to live your values.
It's kind of embarrassing when A gym manager who makes 30k a year has figured this out and would laugh in the face of somebody who showed up chain smoking at 300 pounds saying, I want to be a personal trainer.
That person would laugh at that and say, listen, you drop 150 pounds and you quit smoking and then come back and we'll talk.
I'm not going to put you in front of people who weigh less and don't smoke as the expert on physical health and fitness because you're clearly not living the values.
That you want to teach others.
They would look around for the candid camera.
They would look around like this is a joke, right?
This is Sasha Baron Cohen in a fat suit.
They would look at it like that's ludicrous, like that's funny, right?
But in the realm of libertarianism and politics, This is taken with all seriousness, right?
And so, if Ron Paul, and again, not about Ron Paul, but just as a general example, if Ron Paul...
Genuinely believes that the state can be trimmed down, then he obviously is going to want to do it peacefully, as we all would do, which means that other people are going to need to accept shrinking in security and income and benefits and pensions and holidays and in order for the state to shrink, right? You have to shrink the payroll in order to shrink the size of the state, at the very least.
And so if he's basically saying to, I don't know, a third of the population who gained their income from the state in one form or another, from, you know, income to state sort of union protection to welfare to Medicare to Medicaid to Social Security,
if he's going to say to these people, look, you're going to have to suffer, you're going to have to accept a shrinkage in security and income in order for us to shrink the state, if he's going to say to those people that, But he's going to say to his own backers and donators, I'm going to get you lots of money from Washington, then...
I mean, it's such a disconnect, you can't even really call it hypocrisy.
Like, I think it is just such a logical disconnect that it's tough to even call it hypocrisy.
I mean, really, to me, I can't use that word.
Because that would indicate even a vague sense of the contradiction, of which I don't get any indication from anyone I've talked to in this.
No one seems to be troubled by this, right?
I mean, it was, what, over two years ago that I posted the returns from, the financial returns that Ron Paul was giving to his leading constituents, right?
It's not like it went to all of them.
And people just made up excuses, right?
Well, that's how you play the game.
Well, the money's been taken from them in the first place.
Of course it is! Of course it is!
But... You tell me one status group that couldn't make the same claim.
Right? I mean, look at some welfare recipient who's going to say, well, the government screwed up my life because I had shitty schools and shitty teachers and the minimum wage is too high for me to get a job and status economic policies have collapsed.
The manufacturing sector, so I can't even get a low-rent job and I'm uneducated, so dammit, they owe me something for ruining my life.
Right? Gonna shrink the power of the doctors?
Well, they're gonna say, are you kidding me?
I spent X amount of dollars on deferred income and tuition fees, and I spent 10 years trying to become a doctor, and now you're gonna get rid of the union and it's gonna open it up, causing my salary to drop by significant amounts?
Well... Sorry, I'll just put the cover back on here.
They're going to say, screw you, buddy.
No way I invested all of that, right?
I invested all of that in order to get this income.
That's why I made those economic decisions, and I'm not going to have my income cut by a half or more.
I mean, in the short run.
In the long run, you could say, well, but your job will be more pleasant, and your income will go up even more significantly, and you won't have those regulations, and the time, and this, that.
But libertarians aren't making that case.
I mean, some are, but political libertarians are more focusing on the votes, right?
So there's the post office, right?
Well, you know, I also got a bad education from state of schools, and I made my economic decisions based upon, like I said, it was better to go work for the government than to go to the university, because I got job security, and I got vacations, and I got sick days, and I got mental health development days, and I've had to put up with the shitty stress of a bad environment for 20 years.
I'm owed. I'm not giving all this stuff up.
I worked really hard to become good at what I do.
I've sacrificed. I've put up with crappy bosses in a crappy work environment.
40% of postal workers are ex-military.
Not a very positive environment for many people.
And so, no, I'm owed.
Everybody feels that they're owed.
So if the libertarians are going to say, well, the state takes from you, and so we will take back, and more if we can.
Then that argument is universal, right?
And the state has taken from just about everyone.
Everyone. Actually, the state has taken from everyone.
I can't think of a single person that the state would not have taken from.
Even a guy who lives in the woods because he hates the state lives in the woods because he hates the state.
So, those arguments just simply can't be universalized.
Somebody has to take the bullet.
Somebody has to say, if you're going to take the approach that takes less from the state than it takes from you, and that's how we're going to diminish things peacefully, make the sacrifices necessary to shrink the state for the sake of world peace and future generations and...
No tax enslavement and blah blah blah, then somebody's going to have to take the hit to begin with.
And since it's libertarians who are claiming that this is the way to go, surely it should be libertarians who take the hit to begin with and show just how productive and positive it can be.
And the way that you do that, if you're Ron Paul, or anyone really, doesn't really matter, we'll just say Bob the Politician, is Bob the Politician will say, To his home constituents, listen.
The federal government is unconstitutional in most of what it does and is immoral in most of what it does and needs to be shrinked in most of what it does.
And we need to do this peacefully and what that means is that we're going to have to accept sacrifice.
We're going to have to, for a time at least, get less than what was taken from us so that we can begin the process of shrinking and we can lead by example all those people who believe that...
or we can lead by example all those people who currently won't give up anything and we can show them just how wonderful and how happy and productive and creative and innovative we can be if we start giving up more than we get from the state.
That personal sacrifice for the sake of shrinking the state is a valid and worthwhile and wonderful and beautiful thing.
And we can at least say to other people, look, I'm doing it and You should do it too.
And then we don't look like people who say plastic water bottles are evil and have a press conference where they drink from three or four plastic water bottles, which would simply be a comedy skit, right?
I mean, not a very funny one, but a comedy skit, right?
And we'd be the first people to make these sacrifices.
The guy who says electric cars are the way to go better show up in a Prius, not a Hummer, right?
I mean, otherwise it's just silly, right?
So we have to be the first people to make these sacrifices, right?
To show people how productive and positive and willing we are to get less than we give, to lower our incomes, to lower our job security in order to do the right thing.
Right? Like the people who'll say, I want to buy American and they'll spend more to do it.
The guy who wants to buy American shouldn't really show up in a Toyota for the press conference, right?
This we understand.
Now, if Bob the politician went to his constituents and said, I want you to vote me into Washington so I can not get any money for you coming back, or only half what you've been getting, or a third or a quarter or whatever, but there's going to be a real hit to the income in these constituents and to the job security in these constituents, and the construction companies aren't going to get nearly as many government projects.
Right? And the schools are going to have to do with less money.
I'm just making things up. I don't know how all this finance works and I don't really care to know, but there's going to be some groups who are going to take a hit if these tens or hundreds of millions of dollars are not being shuffled back in pork projects to Bob's home constituency.
People are going to suffer and suffer hard, right?
So, he goes and he makes this stump speech, right?
And he keeps going and makes this stump speech and says, I want you to send me to Washington and I'm not going to pull back any money to this place because we need to show people how rejecting the federal government and not being bought off by the federal government and being willing to let our tax dollars go and not come back, which is the sacrifice we're really expecting and demanding of other people.
You want my, sweetie? Yeah.
That we want to be the first to lead this charge of personal sacrifice in order to shrink the state.
Now, I can't imagine that this has never crossed anyone's mind.
I mean, if it hasn't, then they're just a bunch of unprincipled jackals, right?
If no one has ever thought of this, that we need to do that which we demand of others in order to lead them morally, we need to make the sacrifices...
That we expect of others in order to lead them morally.
Sorry for the panting. It's like nothing but hills here.
It's getting heavy. Right?
It can't be, like, as if you work from principles forward, the first thing that you really want to do is to test out and lift the principles that you advocate to others, right?
I mean, that's really the first thing that you want to do, right?
If you If you have an illness and you want other people, I'm sorry, if you're overweight and you want other people to follow your diet, the first thing you'll do is follow the diet yourself, track your progress, and then show you before and after photos and say, this is what happened, this is how I did it, this is the science behind it, right? To convince others, you first need to live your values yourself, obviously, because otherwise you don't, you're just saying, live these values, I don't want to because I don't really believe in them, right?
Sacrifice income and stability for the sake of Freedom from the feds.
I mean, come on. So if no one ever thought of this, then they're just a bunch of unprincipled jackals, right?
I mean, a whole bunch of libertarians, politicians, right?
They're just a bunch of unprincipled jackals who just use this stuff while never really wanting to live it.
And they use it to get votes in power because they happen to fill a niche market, right?
No principles, really. Just principles used to delude people into giving them tens of millions of dollars.
I don't think that's the case. I have much more respect for the libertarian political movement than that.
And so someone must have at some point said, listen, let's look at the option of leading in terms of sacrifice by not returning money to people.
Right? And showing how we're willing to peacefully give up benefits from the state, which is really what we're demanding of other people if we shrink the federal government significantly.
And that will be a tough challenge for the people of our home area, for our voters.
It will be a tough challenge. Some of them will lose their jobs.
Some of them will lose income or benefits.
But We're going to show in the laboratory of us how that spurs creativity and all these other goodies and wonderful things and how after a temporary hardship people end up with more job security and better benefits because they're not dependent on the state.
So let's do that D-Day, that deficit day and not get back as much as we put out and let's make that our platform.
I'm absolutely positive.
That someone at least thought that, if not talked about it, right?
And if they thought about it but didn't talk about it, then that's, you know, because they recognize no one's going to listen to them and a bunch of jackals just using libertarian principles to get money in power, right?
Which is pretty vile.
Viler than Democrats and Republicans who don't claim to hold these principles.
So, I imagine that somebody put this forward, right?
And said, let's live the values that we preach to others And that was put forward seriously.
And it was decided that this was not going to be the way to go.
And why was it decided that this was not going to be the way to go?
Because, my friends, even those people...
Who were so infused with libertarian values that they would vote in Ron Paul repeatedly, who were so enthusiastic and so down with libertarian values, and who genuinely believe that personal sacrifices in income and job security are going to need to be made in order to shrink the state, in no way, shape, or form are willing to make those sacrifices themselves.
Because if Ron Paul had gone up and said, vote me in, and we're going to go through some real hardship, but we're going to show how you don't need money from the government.
In fact, you're better off without it.
I'm not going to get you any money from Washington.
What would have happened? Well, frankly, as we all know, he simply wouldn't have been elected.
Or at least that was their belief.
Even those most infused with the values would not be willing to make the sacrifices necessary to live those values from a political money transfer standpoint.
And if even the staunchest libertarians and the voters most supportive of libertarian ideals are not willing to even entertain the thought, to even bring up the discussion, to even have the talking point, to even review the option of living the values they wish to inflict on others, Then all it is is a massive puncturing, deflating, discrediting of libertarian values.
You can't ask other people for sacrifice in income, job security, benefits and vacations in order to achieve a better world if you're not willing to do that.
And clearly, Ron Paul, who is a successful politician, did not run on that platform.
Why? Because he understands the political process.
Which is, you make a lot of noise about ethics, which every politician does, and you simply don't live your values.
I mean, that's what politics is all about, right?
It's all about making pompous moral declarations And then laughing in the face of anyone who says, well, great, you can actually put these into practice by X, Y, and Z very easily.
Right? Which is why there's no plan, right?
Of course there's no plan for how this $20 million or more is going to end up with a small estate.
Because the moment you get into a plan, you get into the basic reality.
Sorry about the wind, if there is any.
The moment you start making a plan, you get into the basic reality that people are going to have to make sacrifices.
Right? People are going to lose out when status changes to something more voluntary.
People are going to lose out significantly, largely, enormously.
You're taking old tigers out of the zoo and putting them into the jungle, so to speak.
Is a 50-year-old, pompous, entitled, windbag failure of a teacher going to reinvent himself as a stirring and stunning young-minded educator?
Of course not. Of course not.
So people are going to lose out.
The moment you start putting your plan together, then you recognize a lot of people are going to lose out when the government shrinks.
And then once that becomes clear, obviously you face the hurdles of arguing against people's direct economic self-interest, which is a very tough argument to make.
But secondly, you're going to say, well, if people aren't going to lose out, we need to make the case that it's better for them to lose out.
And so there's really no point making that case if we're not willing to lose out.
So let's take on the losing out ourselves and show everyone how much better things will be.
Right? If we want to sell the diet book, let's drop a few pounds, not gain more and more.
That's understood by relatively uneducated, uninitiated people at the very bottom of the economic food chain.
It just is studiously ignored and missed.
By the people who claim to have the greatest and deepest knowledge of economics, political science, and human psychology.
And I think that's a real tragedy.
And I think that they're right.
And that's why politics will never work.
Well, it's another reason why.
Look forward to your donations. Thank you so much for listening.
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