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May 9, 2010 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
01:56:46
1659 The Immigration Roundtable - BlogTalkRadio with Stephan Kinsella, Wilt Alston and Stefan Molyneux
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Hello and welcome to your Sunday night edition of Anarchy Time, just a little after 9 p.m.
Eastern Standard Time here.
And tonight we have some great guests, and we have a special guest tonight that we are having on the show.
I'll get to him in a second.
I've been hounding him for some time to get him back on here.
But tonight we have on our show...
Is it Stephan or Stephen Kinsella?
Stephan. Stephan Kinsella.
Wilton Alston.
Wilton, you with us? Hello?
Can you hear me? Hey, Wilton.
Yep, we can hear you. And let me see if this...
Yep, we can hear you, Wilton.
And Mariana?
Yep, I'm here. All right.
And Mariana Evica.
Now, Stephan Kinsella...
He's a libertarian writer and attorney in Houston, Texas.
And he has been active writing and speaking on topics such as rights theory, legal theory, Austrian economics, anarcho-libertarianism, contract theory, property lore, intellectual property, and punishment theory.
He's also a senior fellow at the Ludwig von Mieters Institute, a member of the advisory panel of the Center for Stateless Society, and the founder and editor of libertarian papers.
Wilt Alston lives in Rochester, New York with his wife and three children and when he's not training for a marathon or furthering his part-time study of libertarian philosophy he works as a principal research scientist in transportation safety focusing primarily on safety of subway and freight train control systems and I've lost my train of thought here.
And Wilt has written articles for both Lou Rockwell and Strike the Root.
Marianna Evica uses social media and web strategy to connect the grassroots movements of Voltairism, agorism, natural parenting, and the art and alternative education.
And her writing is inspired by myth, ritual, and family.
Marianna recently started working as a development specialist and social media specialist with the Center for Stateless Society and she has two children and resides in Connecticut.
We are taking calls later in the show, maybe the last 30 minutes.
So the number will be 347-633-9636 to join us on the show.
Tom's out today.
I'm trying to find out where Mandy is.
And our special guest tonight is Stefan Molyneux.
Welcome to the show, Stefan.
Stefan, you with us? Yes, thank you so much, James.
It's great to be back. And Stefan has the website freedomainradio.com and There's some very great pieces to understand how a stateless society can work.
So tonight we're talking about immigration and these imaginary borders that we have around the world that keep countries divided.
What I want to do is start with Stephan Kinsella and if you could start talking about immigration and the state as a whole, why we have these immigration controls and why they feel the need for borders and the arguments against it.
We can all get joined in in this discussion.
I think the theoretical point is It's fairly easy to make, and that is that in a free society there would be no states, and all immigration decisions so-called would be basically permissions of private landowners and property owners.
And so it would just be a system of permissions granted by the landowners, and we don't have that now.
I do think that the best analysis of sort of where we went wrong or why it's so corrupted nowadays is provided by Professor Hoppe in his democracy analysis, and he explains… That although he's an anarcho-capitalist like I am and like a lot of us on the show tonight are, that a monarchy is still illegitimate.
There are certain advantages to a monarchy over a democracy in that when you have a monarch – say a monarch is sort of the putative owner of the whole country – he has certain more rational incentives to control immigration into the country.
And then when you have a democracy, all these incentives get totally screwed up in favor of the political process.
And then when you have the welfare state emerging, it gets even worse.
And I mean I am certainly – I recognize that there are many problems because of immigration now because of the state society that we have.
But the problems are because of the state and the welfare state that we have.
And I don't think that it is legitimate to – for the government to deny – I would have to agree with you,
Stephan. I would say that to also pin another defining characteristic of the problem with immigration on the state, I think it's impossible to tease out The war on drugs from the problem.
We would not have as many problems along the border right now in Arizona, for example, where the people of Arizona and Mexico are dealing with the drug cartels if the war on drugs didn't exist.
I get very I'm impatient when I listen to people use a welfare argument for the reason for excluding people from walking across that imaginary line in the Arizona-Texas border.
Because if they are here illegitimately, quote-unquote illegitimately, they are not using the services of the state.
And even if, let's say, an immigrant's family If the state manages to secure illegally social security numbers in order to participate, then they're paying taxes to the state.
In fact, there was a recent article indicating that there's a net gain because so-called illegals are using state services.
I think it boils down to the drug war.
The war on drugs is a war on people.
And if we didn't have the drug war, we wouldn't have a lot of the violence, which is, I think, one of the most strident arguments against free immigration over the Arizona-Texas border at the moment.
And Wilton?
Yeah, I guess I would probably agree with the first two speakers.
It's kind of ironic that the two Seminal pieces that I've written on immigration both appear on Strike the Root, and Stefan Molyneux was my co-author.
So he and I will probably be saying a lot of the same stuff, I hope.
I think we have to kind of separate a couple of things.
First of all, there's the argument from effect, right?
That's all the things like they'll get on welfare, they use drugs, Their ethnicity is this, that, and the other.
All those things are things that we can debate about for quite a long time.
I prefer to kind of fall back to what I call the argument for morality, and that's a Stephan Molyneux term that I'm stealing for right now.
There's nothing objectively different about a guy who walks across an imaginary line that no one can see and takes the job he's been offered by a person who had the job to give him, right?
So the suggestion that the driving force for, quote, unquote, illegal aliens is to come across the Rio Grande or swim across from Cuba on a water-soaked headboard to get on welfare strikes me as completely preposterous.
I mean, I just don't – I can't even get my mind around how that can be even considered valid.
So from my standpoint, the line's imaginary.
I can walk across the street.
I can go to the next state and buy something.
I can go get a job in another county.
A person from Mexico or Canada is objectively no different than I am in that regard.
And when I get to the other county, when they get to the other state, I'm going to have to find a job.
I've got to buy services.
I'll be offered jobs in exchange for what I can do.
That's why they come, being offered jobs in exchange for what they can provide.
Simple as that. Stefan Molyneux.
Thanks. I think it's important to focus on the language.
If you lose the language, you've lost the debate.
If you think it's taxation and not theft, you've already lost the debate.
Governments love to invent new terms for things which we already have words for.
We don't need a word called immigration because we already have a word called moving because that's all the people are doing.
They're moving from one place to another.
You can re-label it immigration but then you're just changing the entire word and losing the whole meaning.
The second aspect I think is important and I agree with Mariana completely about the hideous nature of the drug war and its effect on Mexican culture.
It's been brutal. Not just on the people who have to suffer the violence of these kingpins but it's corrupted the entire political process even beyond what it normally is.
So I think that's pretty brutal but I think another aspect that's often What's undervalued in this debate is the degree to which U.S. farm policy, farm subsidies and the dumping of excess crops in other countries and in particular in Mexico has destroyed even subsistence farming in Mexico forcing people off their land and that's been really brutal on the Mexican people.
And the last thing that I'd sort of say as my first thoughts on the subject are that statism as it grows, as the state grows There's always an upward pressure on wages because you've got all these special interest groups that you have to pay off, whether it's unions or in particular public sector workers who receive salaries and benefits around twice what private sector workers receive.
So because the government is growing and paying off more people all the time, you've got this constantly rising prices and rising wages in the public sector.
And if that wasn't counterbalanced by something, the system would fall apart very quickly and there would be much more complaint and much more resistance to the expansion of the state.
I think people underestimate the degree to which American prices are kept relatively low, particularly in food, which of course is the staple, by immigrants.
And if that wasn't there, I think that there would be a great deal of change a lot faster because the expansion of the state and its effect on the economy would be that much clearer.
Right. Being an immigrant myself, I moved to the US and went through the process.
It's such a long, painful process.
You have to file.
You have to wait. You have to go back several times.
You have to be fingerprinted.
You have to have blood drawn.
They do a medical exam.
All of this is done after the fact.
You know, that you're here.
And, you know, they want to know if you've got, you know, tuberculosis and AIDS. Well, you know, I mean, you've been here for eight, nine months, and then you go to a doctor's office to have this.
You know, wouldn't you have, you know, spread any of these diseases, you know, before all this?
So, to me, it's control.
And it's, you know, They want to brand you with a number, they want to put you in the system, and it's another way of stealing money from you.
So they want to know, you know, register you.
It's just like Stefan's, you know, video about your cattle and human farming.
I am now part of the United States Human Farming, and I'm still attached to the farm over in England as well, because I could go back there.
You know, in theory, really, right now, because they don't relinquish the citizenship over in the UK. So I have two farmers farming me if they wish, I guess, if I let them.
And so it's control.
It's another way of control, another way of making money out of people, stealing money from them.
I'm going to hand it back to Stefan Kinsella.
His thoughts on this.
Well, I agree completely with all the other speakers and with your comments as well.
I mean I'll say that I used to sort of have some of the more conservative cultural concerns about the effects of immigration in today's society.
And I used to believe that all the attacks on the anti-immigration arguments as being nativist were sort of over the top and unfair.
But… The more I look into this, I talk to friends and people I know that are fairly economically literate.
They understand the economic argument for immigration, that it makes sense.
The more people you have that are productive, the more everyone benefits, etc.
And you say, well, what's the problem?
And they start talking about the language.
They don't speak English or they don't assimilate into our culture.
And basically, it's an ultra-conservative… It's sort of this idea that we have a snapshot of the way things are now or the way they're used to it from when they were young, and they just don't want it to change.
And I think there is – I don't know if it's racist really, but it's sort of this xenophobic attachment to the way things are.
And they just hate the fact that people are coming in and changing things, and they hate dynamism and the fact that the world changes always.
Mariana? Well, I think the other giant elephant in the room, and by the way, I think that these are nationalist, very verging on fascist arguments, because they sort of ignore reality, which is that we are not a Northern European-centric nation anymore, and vast contributions have been made from a very diverse group of people.
The thing that amazes me When people talk about the costs of immigration, not only are they ignoring the drug war and the human and monetary costs of that as well, the ultimate in the room for me is war in general.
The amount of money that anyone on welfare eats up of the state pales in comparison to the cost of war in In general, I think it's another way that all arguments against it are specious.
Right. And Wilton?
Yeah, again, if you want to talk about, I think, some of the things that I think animate the anti-immigrationist discussion, and as Stephan Kinsella was saying, we have these debates with friends of ours, And not all the people that we're talking to are economically illiterate, nor are they necessarily against freedom.
Some of them are erstwhile libertarians, but they still feel like, for example, I had a guy say to me the other day that, well, I want to see my culture be preserved.
And I thought to myself, what?
I mean, As Stephan mentioned, there's this perception of a snapshot in time that never changes.
The U.S. has never been a snapshot in time.
I don't know what the good old days were, but there was never been a place where it was always like...
I mean, there was an Old West, an East, there was...
There was a time of slavery.
There was always a dynamism that was over and above any stoic impression of, well, we have a static culture.
So from my standpoint, I tend to kind of laugh at any argument that even sort of suggests that, well, immigrants are going to come in and ruin the culture.
For example, I had a guy say to me that, well, they should learn to speak the language.
They should learn to speak the quote-unquote official language.
Well, of course, he didn't realize that the U.S. has no official language.
That's on purpose, right?
I mean, there's a reason why there isn't a move to make everyone do anything specific like that.
So this whole thought that we're going to lose the culture, and myself being Stefan Molyneux?
Yeah, it's funny. I was just thinking that there is this idea that if we can keep those Western European whiteys coming in, then everything is going to be just great because we all know how capitalist and entrepreneurial Western Europe is these days.
What I think we should do is open the gates to everybody who was ever in Eastern Europe under the Soviets.
Those are the people that I want to come.
South Americans, I mean, I talk to these people a lot and they hate the state.
I mean, those are the people we should be inviting in if you want a smaller government.
It also sort of struck me that if you were to get an application, I guess, at immigration in the U.S., for some guy who said, you know, I really want to come to America.
I've never quite got past grade four.
Can I come in? Of course, they'd say, no way, and then Benjamin Franklin would never be allowed into the country.
I mean, how absurd it gets that none of the founding fathers would be allowed into the country under the existing immigration system, and I just think that's the absurdity.
And look, if you need the government to protect your culture, your culture is already dead.
Like if you need an armed guard to keep your wife in your house, your marriage is already dead.
If you need violence to protect your ideas, your ideas are worthless to begin with.
So, to me, that is not, even if I accepted the status argument, that to me would not be compelling.
You know, Stephan, I see a resemblance to the gay marriage argument when you hear Conservatives talk about – they're worried that gay marriage would threaten marriage.
I mean it doesn't threaten my marriage.
It's the same thing.
I mean it doesn't threaten my culture and the celebrations I want to have on my holidays and things like this.
Yeah, and where are straight people going to go for an evening out if there's no musical theater?
I mean, it helps me. But, you know, I think that there is a concern that some people have about – it can be ridiculed, you know, and you have the Archie Bunker types that want white Europeans to come in.
But when the welfare state gets involved and they impose politically correct quotas on the artificial limits that we have – Then it could cause an artificial change to the ethnic or cultural or nationalistic makeup of the country that wouldn't have happened naturally.
I agree with you. We should open the borders and let whoever wants to come in, because everyone I've ever met that's an immigrant is usually better on average than the average person I know in America.
Right. I want to turn our attention, Mandy, do you have anything to say?
Well, anyone who knows me knows how I feel about immigration and borders and immigrants.
I don't know why people feel I have to see and abide by these imaginary lines that they've painted for me.
They're really no more than tollbooths, really.
Just a means to get people pumped up and divided.
It's that attitude that you're better somehow because you were born I mean, you know, a certain longitude and latitude than someone else or more entitled to something.
I just find it really just vile.
I like the way Stefan put it.
People are just moving rather than being immigrants because language is still very important.
SB 1070 in Arizona is absolutely wretched.
I can't get behind anyone that could support that.
It's, you know... I feel...
They work really well to keep people out, but they also work well to keep you in.
And I just, I don't think people really are considering it.
As far as, you know, with the focus on everything being about, you know, drug running, it's not just drugs, it's everything that the government has decided to make a crime that is really nothing more than a vice.
You know, you have people that are involved in, you know, whether it's drugs or gambling or prostitution or weapons or what have you, or even simply wanting to negotiate their own wage and not work at the, you know, the set minimum wages.
People are making a livelihood.
The state's criminalized everything.
So even once people do come into the country, they're automatically a criminal then.
And then from there on out, they're trying so hard to stay off the radar or what have you that they really can't help.
But it's really hard to get ahead.
You can't stop breaking any laws at that point.
Well, I think that's true.
Sorry. I also think there's a legitimate fear that people have in a democratic system, like the majority of white Americans.
They have used the state quite extensively to oppress minorities.
There is a kind of thing that happens in the head, deep down in the brain, in the conscience.
If you have participated in some wrongs or approved some wrongs, you are very afraid that you're going to reap what you sow.
And Americans who have, you know, because the power is there, they've used it to oppress minorities throughout history.
The white majority who's used that power has a kind of sort of basic, almost biblical fear of becoming a minority themselves and fearing that kind of payback.
And I think that's Something that you can sort of read between the lines, and I don't think I'm projecting too much, but I can certainly see it there in some of the conversations about this topic.
I agree totally.
One point I wanted to highlight one thing that Mandy said that she kind of mentioned and then went on with, and that's the whole concept of toll boost.
I think what happens with the state, and we would all see this as being true, is that status measures That were initially conceived for one purpose.
The longer they exist, they morph into something else.
Border stations were originally built by the Treasury.
And literally, that's really what they were for.
They were ways to extract, if you will, tribute from those entering.
You know, you pay tariffs, you pay duties, our stuff you bought, stuff you're bringing in.
It was an additional income source.
That's why the Treasury built those buildings.
And then somehow, as they exist for longer and longer and longer, there's this belief that they become a way to protect us.
They're sort of a choke point against all the bad stuff that could come in if it wasn't for them.
And again, that's a typical statist evolution.
Things that have one purpose when they're first built I'm glad you brought that up, Wilton,
and I'm glad that Mandy brought the Arizona legislation up, because my thoughts on this, this is just a step in the direction for the United States for a national ID card, something that the federal government's been planning for a long time,
That they've wanted to, you know, get in place for all Americans so that, you know, you can carry this card around you with the RFID chip in it and people, you know, can be stopped and it's just like Nazi Germany, papers please. And everything's on that card, you know, they can run it, you know, the cop can run it through his computer, you know, in his car and everything about you will be on that card, even medical records and things like that.
So I just think that this – and Americans, they're too blind to see this.
And they think that this law in Arizona is such a great thing.
It's going to keep all these illegals out.
And it's not going to keep illegal immigrants out.
And I hate that term, illegal immigrants.
It's not going to stop people coming out.
So I'll stop using it right now.
It's not going to stop people moving here to the United States because there are a lot of people that come here on student visas and stay.
And so you're never, ever going to solve the problem.
And people that think that you are, they're wrong.
And I want to move back to Stephan Kinsella with his thoughts on what I've just said.
Well, let me just go back to a thought I just had that there's a parallel here to just the issue of political correctness and racism itself.
And I've noticed that in America, in a way, you have people really politically correct and afraid to be sort of common sense about certain racial differences or things that are obvious… Partly because they're statist-minded, and they have the mentality, the sort of implicit mentality that if you could tell a difference between two types of people, then it would be okay to use the law and the government to do something about it.
So they're sort of afraid to admit that there's any differences between people because if you admit this, then hey, you might have a holocaust or rounding up the Japanese.
And I think there's something similar with immigration too.
And also, we have democracy now.
So when you allow an immigrant into the country, we sort of bought into this myth that now you are the government.
You have a say-so in the government.
You're part owner or part controller of the government.
And because of our system where if you're born here, you have children here, they're automatically citizens, I mean that might contribute to the fear of letting immigrants in because we have democracy.
If a state was clearly separated from the people… There might not be as much fear of immigrants because they wouldn't be viewed as sort of glomming onto and becoming part of this club, part of the government, having a part control of the government.
Mariana? Well, I think that ties in nicely with the whole perception issue of scarcity.
The idea that Somehow additional people are only a burden is quite the fallacy.
People are naturally entrepreneurial.
They actually do want to succeed, have a home, have land, and start their own businesses.
So the idea that there's some sort of like uniform, generic, soul-sucking Mexican type that is going to come in and just suck up all The resources, when really they bring with them their skills, their minds, their hearts, their families, which are all positive things that we associate with being good human beings.
And I think Stefan Molyneux really hit the nose on the head when he points out that we have no idea of what actual costs are because, for example, in the area of food production particularly, In the last 50 years in California, our food prices are so artificially depressed via both government subsidy and the fact that the labor costs so little, we have no idea.
The fact of the matter is that the Mexican peoples have been contributing in the positive column to our well-being for so long, we have no idea.
People are very disconnected from reality in this regard.
Oh yeah, they are. It's just crushing.
I like what Mariana said about the stereotypical Mexican coming here to do such horrible things.
I like when people say, this illegal immigrant was driving drunk and killed two people, or this illegal immigrant did such and such, and I wonder if they would be happier if that person had gotten permission from the government And then murder someone.
You know, they look at the person and it's somehow as though, you know, their crime was somehow worse because they didn't get permission to come here first.
It's really, they're not judging, they're not looking at the crime, they're looking at the individual and somehow, you know, because the color of their skin is different or they, you know, they do something differently and they didn't get permission to just move their belongings elsewhere, that they should be judged differently for, you know, committing an act of violence.
I've lived in Los Angeles, I've lived in South Texas, and most immigrants I've encountered, usually for fear of that stereotype or for fear of dealing with authorities, really held more tightly to the non-aggression principle than most people who were born in the country.
Oh, I agree. Can I just jump in and add something to you, Mandy?
I think that we're missing a tremendous opportunity because so many Mexicans Are the best counter-economic people.
That's right where I was going with that.
Yeah, go for it. They're open to agorism, staying out of sight.
They're open to working for cash, bartering for goods, different currencies, if you like coins, things like that, trading services.
It's really a tremendous opportunity.
Living in Los Angeles, my family, we always...
I can remember an instance in particular when we had a big move happening, and we went down and we found immigrants.
They negotiated their wage, breaks and everything, and they were hard workers.
Really, we had one person, one of the groups that came with them was a citizen, and he complained all day, and then he slacked off, and they did their job.
They negotiated their wage.
They were happy with what they got.
They took their breaks. I'd much rather deal with someone that I can negotiate with them, you know, on those grounds like that.
And, you know, they kept their word.
And I'm not saying that, you know, all citizens don't.
I'm just saying that, you know, when they feel like, you know, when people have that opportunity to, when they, you know, when they're operating outside the system and that's, you know, what they've chosen or what they felt like they've been forced to, they tend to, you know, they do, in my own experience, there's bad things everywhere, but, you know, agorism works and non-aggression principle, whether or not they Consciously choose it is how they end up living.
Wilton. Yes, hello.
Wilton. Hello.
Yeah, go ahead. One of the things I think I would have no counterarguments for anything anyone has said, but one of the things I think we need to be really cognizant of, and that is...
We don't want to have what I'd call creeping consequentialism.
I don't think one needs to justify open borders because they've always met great Mexicans, right?
I don't think there's a...
Just as if no one needs to justify freeing the slaves because every free slave they ever met There's an obvious moral component to having a man on himself and be free.
And there's an obvious moral component.
There's nothing objectively different about a person who, through an accident of birth, grew up on another side of a fake line in the sand than did I. So I don't think there's anything to be gained,
really, I mean, I think those are good things to say anecdotally, but in terms of how I justify it, I don't even worry about the fact that via some happenstance,
three people got killed in a car wreck yesterday and the car wreckers were driven by an illegal alien because that person didn't drive that car poorly because of their illegalness of being an alien.
And the people who got in a wreck the night before who weren't Mexicans didn't drive it well because of what they were.
So I don't want to in any way at all worry about that.
I want to just stick to the issue of what makes a person who gets here this week different morally than a person who got here 25 years ago?
In my mind, nothing.
So if the state can make up a rule that says, well, If you get here this weekend, you've got to fill out Form A, but if you came here on Mayflower, you've got to fill out nothing.
That kind of strikes me as depending on the state to make rules that it really should not.
Right, and I think we need to stop profiling.
Actually, it was a guy that moved from Mexico that was drunk behind the wheel of a car that didn't have a driver's license that hit somebody.
Right, right. Stefan.
Right, because we know that all of the local people like George Bush never make any decisions that harm Americans.
It struck me too.
I was reading an article the other day.
People put this amazing faith in the next piece of legislation.
It really is amazing. I was watching an animated movie with Jerry Seinfeld.
Let's just say it because I have a 16-month-old daughter.
That's probably easy to explain that way.
and in the movie this bee is flying through the kitchen and he goes bang straight into a glass window and he's like oh what the hell is that and he goes back and he goes in again bang bang and he's like maybe this time it'll work maybe this time this time this time this time and he goes on for a few minutes where he just keeps banging his head against the glass because that's what bees do and it struck me that that's a pretty good metaphor for how people think of the next status policy you know this time it's going to work this time this time this time it's like people have the attention span of a ferret on a double espresso Because they say well people are bringing drugs and the drug war but we already have laws against the drug war and they're not working and we already have laws against immigration and they're not working so why do people imagine that the next law is suddenly going to magically put it all perfectly into place and everything is going to work out fine.
It's not going to happen and what's going to happen is so blindingly predictable The more you restrict entry into a country, the more valuable it becomes for everyone who gets over, which means that there's going to be a greater incentive.
to try and get over the border which means more people are going to focus on it and also it means that people who are being carted across being helped across the border are going to have to pay a lot more money to get into the US because the restriction has raised the value of getting there which means they're going to be even more in debt and even more desperate when they get here and maybe they'll turn even more to drugs I mean it's so predictable just how completely the opposite you always end up whenever you use a force to solve a complex social problem Agreed.
Stephan Kinsella? A lot of the crime and stuff that's happening in Arizona with kidnappings and things, most of the people that are getting harmed are immigrants.
The people are smuggling them over the border or holding them.
They're telling them, you know, we have to work for our drug company or they're putting the women into prostitution.
They're threatening them. And when they try to back out of that...
They're harming them, they're murdering them, what have you.
And everything, it all goes right back to the state that causes us.
I just wanted to say, let me just defend George Bush.
I'm from Texas, so I have to just say in response to Stephan that George Bush is no more of a moron than Obama is.
Well, I completely agree with that.
There's like, there apparently it's a bimbo.
It's like, no, no, no. They're all bimbos.
So I completely agree with you on that.
I will say, I saw an ad from the Arizona, I guess, governor directed to Obama, and it was all pretentious and sort of superior and condescending, saying, you know, Mr.
Obama, we're just defending the federal laws, which they are.
Do your job and defend the borders.
Don't joke about it. But this is complete hypocrisy.
Why don't they advocate abolishing this ridiculous and insane and immoral and absolutely evil drug war, which is the root cause of a lot of these problems that Arizona is facing?
I mean this is just a crime for the governor.
To be in charge of stopping crime in their state and to blame something like immigration policy instead of the goddamn drug war.
I mean, it is absolutely ludicrous.
Well, sorry, I'm just going to jump in because I think I know the answer to that one.
People don't ever want to try to reduce the power of the state because then they'll realize That they can't.
That the system doesn't work.
The system only works to bribe new special interest groups and expand state powers at the expense of the vestiges of your liberty.
The reason that people don't want to say, for instance, they say, well, people are coming over here because of the welfare state, then, of course, the logical thing would be to replace the welfare state with some private charity and agency.
But people don't want to do that because they don't want to see that basic reality that they cannot control this monster that they have created.
The only way that they can ever gain the illusion of controlling the state is if they ask it to expand its powers.
And then it will, and they say, yay, I'm a citizen that's controlled over the state.
They never want to face that huge, blank brick wall of attempting to reduce its powers because then they'll realize how powerless they really are.
Marianna? I guess one thing that's been weighing heavily on my mind, I have a good friend who is down in the Texas, Arizona area, and he says that he feels besieged and that people in his neighborhood have literally started putting refrigerators outside and coolers with food in it,
not because they are Pro-freedom of movement, not because they have compassion for people, but because they're afraid of being robbed.
That there have been many cases of people moving across the border and breaking into people's homes.
And I really let that sit with me for a while since I really do believe that property rights reign supreme and that one should have sovereign control over one's property.
But then I thought, well, wait a minute.
Isn't the moral response to say, oh my god, what is the difference between, you know, the immigrants coming from, and it's not just Mexico, it's all of South and Central America as well, and it has been for a very long time.
Is there some sort of moral difference between slaves trying to escape slavery through the Underground Railroad and this?
And I really, I don't see A huge distinction.
These are people trying to move toward freedom and safety.
I don't know why there isn't some huge underground outcry that says, okay, we're going to set up.
Okay, this is our locale, and in this five-mile radius, this will be a safe house, and you can count on this person setting out food for you.
You can count on this person to give you a small donation.
It seems to me like The relationship that the state sets up is so intrinsically adversarial that we would look at this so much more differently if we could imagine that we were related to people, if they were a part of our family, that the reaction is, I think, people express as some sort of brainwashing because these people are our family.
They are human beings.
They're not somehow intrinsically bad because they were, again, by some accident of birth or geography.
I think there needs to be an organized response that says, you know, we understand what you're going through and we're not going to regard you as criminal.
I think people need to really stand up to that.
Right. Wilton?
Hello? Yeah, one of the things that kind of occurred to me as Mariana was talking, and again, this is sort of part of the state, right, is that things that you used to think were your responsibility, you think are theirs.
And this is one of the ways that the state maintains long-term control.
She mentioned the whole issue of the Underground Railroad.
And why don't people see it as a way to help people escape poverty?
It's because the state has set you up as if you're in competition for the crumbs they give you with all the other serfs that are on the same level as you.
And again, this is a historic tool used by the Used by those in control to maintain control is that it becomes more important that you guard the bucket of slop that you're eating than it is to try to figure out why you and the other serfs only have slop and the king has steak.
And again, that's part of what you've got to call an almost A well-executed evolutionary plan of collectivism, statism, kind of supplanting what would otherwise be our natural tendencies toward helping people, turning into our desire to keep the little bit that we have.
Right. And, you know, you have people, I mean, there's somebody in the chat room right now talking about, this is my country, It's our border.
We must protect it.
How would you like them, you know, in your house, you know, this and the other?
There's a difference between, you know, private property.
If somebody owns private property, then yes, somebody is trespassing.
But if it's a road that is municipal, that, you know, nobody owns it, then, you know, anybody has the right to travel on that, you know, road.
And, you People don't understand that fact.
There lies a problem there.
Now, if you're that way inclined that you own property and it's okay for people to come over it, then that's fine.
If you don't want people to come on your property, then you fence it or protect it however way you want.
And how these people think that this imaginary border...
This imaginary line that the United States has, or any country, in fact, is a line that people must not pass unless they get permission.
It is just totally beyond my thought process that people seem to think that they have the right to control people.
They have the This right to tell somebody what they can and what they cannot do.
And they cannot have that right because you cannot give them any right that you don't have yourself.
And regardless of them saying, it's our border, it's our border.
It's not your border.
The border doesn't exist.
It's a fake line that these people who are wanting to move...
From one – from point A to point B have the right to do so.
Stephan Kinsella. Stephan Kinsella Yes.
Well, I mean I'm not in disagreement with what I've heard so far.
I think the question is what can we do to change things?
I mean it's really hard to change people's sort of built-in patriotic and democratic sentiments that infect all these ideas.
I mean as much as I dislike the Arizona thing, the one aspect of it that I don't disagree with is the idea of decentralization, which is basically pushing the immigration decision or jurisdiction down and down and down the level from a larger to a smaller level down to the individual level.
So theoretically, or ceteris paribus, without looking at the particular consequences… Pushing it from the US level down to the state level would in theory be a good idea, and then down to the county and town level, and finally down to the home level or to the individual or family-based level, which is anarchy.
So – and the Arizona issue, which is upsetting a lot of people, they really are doing nothing more than enforcing the already existing federal law.
It's sort of a joke that we have a federal law.
And that it sort of seemed to be politically incorrect to enforce it.
I mean, if you're going to have the law, then you shouldn't shirk from the consequences of that law.
And so for Obama to take the high road and condemn Arizona for enforcing the law that Obama and the federal government supports is totally incoherent.
Right, right.
Mariana? Well, if the question is, what do we do?
Being one who has steadily lost faith and abandoned pretty much the political action paradigm, again, not to sound like a broken record, but I think that everything has to be done on a very small local level,
boiling down to agorists who are willing to help as many Mexicans over the border as they possibly can, assisting them with infrastructure, Making some sort of private contract with them so that something is arrived at that feels equitable to them.
Because since we really know that the drug war is at the bottom of the problem, without eliminating the drug war, I'm not really clear how we can even get people to see eye to eye.
So while it probably sounds like pie in the sky to some people, I think working from the ground up in communities is the way to go.
Wilton? I move to Stefan Molyneux.
Yeah, the question of what to do is really the essential one and I'm not going to go into all of my tangential theories about it, but I do think that a little bit of economic education can help in this area.
I think For those of us who still have some sort of steady income, it's hard to really get just how scary it is out there for most Americans economically at the moment and how precarious they feel and how they're going into debt and living on their parents' savings and it's really scary.
So then when people think or they have the illusion of the perception that immigrants are taking away American jobs and the reason we have no manufacturing is because the jobs have been outsourced to all those damn foreigners and all that kind of stuff.
I think that is a really dangerous paradigm for people to be working with because it's the complete opposite of the truth.
It is the growth of centralized power and state unions that have caused environmental regulations and health and safety stuff which again we would be shared different names for because then it sounds like you're for dangerous and toxic work environment but it's the growth of state power that's driven the lower wage jobs overseas not the influx of immigrants but people mistake that and they veer towards Getting mad at the least powerful people in society rather than taking on the most powerful people in society,
which is the state and its cohort of media and intellectual toadies.
So I think helping people to understand that people don't take your job.
People don't take your job.
It's not like your average American wants to go out there picking strawberries in 110 degree heat.
So I think it's really important to help people to understand that jobs aren't taken from you by people coming to the country.
There's not a fixed amount of jobs in the world.
The old marks a zero-sum game thing, you know, like, if I make money, you must have lost some.
So if people understand there's not a fixed amount of jobs in the economy, and if someone else comes and takes a job, that's one job left for the natives.
I think that is something that needs to be opposed as vigorously as possible.
But it is a hard thing for people to understand because they've heard so much nonsense to the contrary.
Right. It looks like Wilton dropped, but he's back now.
So, Wilton, your thoughts on that?
Yeah, sorry. I had a phone malfunction.
To the issue of what do we do, I want to echo and emphasize a point that Stephan Kasella made, and that's the issue of If Arizona takes over control of this issue with what could be called the first step toward decentralization,
and they find out that treating immigrants this way results in a net loss for their inhabitants, that's a good thing, right?
ultimately what we want to have happen is we want to have as little authoritarian control from the feds as possible and as much control at the local level as possible so that all these things can be borne out, that we can see what's happening.
In terms of what we have to do to make it happen, yeah, clearly the drug war is the root of evil for so much of the bad things going on in the States.
I mean, quite frankly, most of the violence in the inner city, be it native-born or immigrant-born, is because of the drug war, right?
And once we can...
I don't know anybody who thinks that the drug war is a good thing, so I'm trying to figure out if it's as widely accepted as that the drug war is a farce and a complete loss, and we can't get that to stop.
We can't have a president like Obama who came in under change is good And hasn't made one iota of movement towards ending the drug war.
Even ending the drug war on marijuana, then clearly you can't depend on the state to do anything that's going to make this better.
So it's got to be at the local level.
But I'm a person who's more of a warrior of the mind.
We've got to make sure everyone gets out and understands the kind of things that we're saying tonight, that A, the drug wars are farce, that B, You don't have a claim to your job, therefore no one can take your job from you, right?
The employer has a claim.
He gives it out to whoever he wants to.
And if it's a Mexican this week and an African next week, then that's his choice to make, not yours.
So it's economic education as well.
Hey, what would you... Yeah, I just want...
Sorry, go ahead. No, go ahead, Stephan.
Oh, I was just going to say, Texas has made some rumblings about secession, fairly tepid but pretty rare for a governor of a major state to even talk about it.
And I fantasize and talk to cocktail parties with regular people around here and talk about we should become our own country.
And I sort of have this feeling that if things get bad enough and if people see enough of an advantage, all this patriotism and nationalism will just evaporate.
If you can – if people really believe it's a possibility and they could see their federal income tax disappear, of course it would be replaced by something else but something smaller.
They might switch allegiance to the Texas flag very easily, and this wouldn't be an ideal – of course it would still be a state.
But I wonder what you guys would think about a compromise or sort of a second or third best solution where you say, listen, here's the only way we can get this done because if we were to leave the union – We'd have to have some deal and pay the feds off for the military quote-unquote debt or whatever.
So we'd have a big debt.
So what we could do is we could say, look, we're going to become a free market zone open to everyone.
Anyone can come here as long as you don't have a criminal record or something like that.
But you have to pay $50,000 entry fee, one-time entry fee, and that's only going to be here for the next 10 years.
And then we'll take that money and pay the feds off with it, sort of a ransom.
I mean, I have a feeling like this could become the boom economy of the world if we did that.
And then after 10 years, it'd be just open to all comers.
I mean, imagine. Yeah, I think you raise a good point.
In fact, I think the Free State Project in New Hampshire, I think it was a mistake having it in New Hampshire.
I'm quite sure they had the good reason that because it was a small state and it's less people and, you know, I don't know if there was ever any mention of succession like there has been with Texas over a good number of years.
I don't understand why they never chose Texas and maybe they should switch it.
It has a better climate all year round.
It's warmer.
And I think that Texas would have been a better place.
Yeah, and it still has a cohesive identity, and it used to be a country.
It sort of has that kind of image in people's minds that it could be a country again.
I was at a party with some regular people, and I mentioned at the table with all these people that I thought Texas should secede, and one of the guys says, oh, no, that's a myth.
And I said, so this shows how mired people are in positive law thinking.
I didn't say that we had the right to secede under the law, which we do actually.
He was saying – well, he was doing one of these lawyer things about the treaty by which Texas acceded to the union has this language in it which contemplates the state possibly dividing up into four or five states with Congress's permission, which is what it says.
And there's this sort of myth going around that… That Texas has the right to secede or divide up into states if it wants to, which it doesn't.
So I say Texas should secede, and he says, oh no, that's a myth.
So he right away jumps to the positive law justification.
And I said, I'm not saying they have the legal right to.
I'm saying that they should.
And this kind of language perplexes the modern ape.
Well, I think, sorry, just to clarify something about New Hampshire.
New Hampshire, I believe, was chosen because In case it doesn't work out and they have to make a run for it, they really want to be closer to Canada than to Mexico because they'll have to face trying to get somewhat frozen arms.
So I just hope that clears that up.
Or to get medical care, right?
Right, Stephan? They could get wounded and they'll need to come across and get this wonderful socialized medicine and we'll be happy to put them on a waiting list.
I do think it's kind of disappointing the degree to which it's still so easy to get us It's sort of to get citizens to turn on each other, so to speak.
I mean, that to me is still something that is mildly disappointing that even after all of these, you know, let's hang together, let's be a team and so on, that it's very easy, still so easy to get people angry at immigrants, you know, when, you know, it's really not, you know, the national death and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, they're not caused by a freaking cherry picker in Arizona.
You know, it's just so astounding to me that there's still this, It's them who are the problem.
Everybody grab a pitchfork and the brands and let's go get them because they're the problem.
Whoever is telling you they're the problem over there, that's the guy who's the problem.
Whoever's pointing you at that group and saying those are the guys who are causing all your troubles, guaranteed that is the guy who's actually causing all your troubles and he's just making up some scapegoats to have you go charge over there.
But it is to me still quite shocking the degree to which this is still so easy.
I don't exactly know where it comes from but it is quite disappointing.
Stephan, you know, that reminds me of that great line from the money speech on Atlas Shrugged where she says something, or Francisco says something like, whoever, the guy who says that money's the root of all evil, whoever says that, hold on to your wallets and watch out because he's coming for your wallet.
Right? Yeah, no, that's exactly right.
I'm always suspicious. I'm never looking at where the guy's pointing.
I'm always looking at who's pointing and it's like, oh yeah, okay, you're the troublemaker.
You're the real troublemaker. You know, I do want to make one other point about what we do next, and I spent some time as an activist in a previous life, so I'm always a little bit reticent to talk about steps we take, step one, step two, step three, and at the end of step five, we've got no stakes.
But Professor Hopper, as Stephan mentioned way earlier on, Makes a point that I think is quite outstanding, and that's the fact that state control, as we know it, is based upon popular consent.
It seems awesome and powerful, but it's really quite tenuous because basically if so many people didn't believe in it, it wouldn't work.
That's That's why you've got so many rank and file worried about Mexicans or South Americans or whomever, because it's easy to get people fighting against each other for some reason.
But still, it's based on what we believe in.
So popular consent drives all this.
Once we can get that to go away, it's almost over, I think.
And how we get to that point, now that I'm not quite so sure of.
How many illegal immigrants work for Goldman Sachs?
Maybe there's one guy in the mailroom who's really edgy.
How many illegal immigrants did you see layered out like a whole bunch of Michelin men in front of Congress recently explaining away why they had to drive gold-plated cars to get to where they needed to go?
Of all the dangers to the US economy, I just, you know, guys washing your car compared to guys with future swaths selling off your children to the Chinese, it's just completely insane the degree to which people just go, oh yeah, there's a problem. You know, guys down in Miami wearing yard blowers all day are not the reason why we've got a bad economy, right?
Yeah, exactly. I mean, they're just trying to survive like everybody else.
I do find it a little bit annoying when people have this sort of conventional economic comment that, well, we need the Mexicans because there are certain jobs Americans won't do.
And, you know, of course, Wisconsin, I mean, they won't do it at that price, right?
We could get lettuce picked, of course, even if we seal the borders off.
It just might cost $30 an hour.
Right, right. Right.
Any of that stuff also sort of reflects, again, both an ignorance of economics as well as an ignorance of, well, that's why the stuff costs so cheap when you go to the store.
So you're getting it on both ends.
I agree. You know, I was going to add one point earlier about, Stephan, you're right that people turn on each other, but there's this weird sort of Compartmentalization or disconnect because most people, at least say in Houston here, there's a huge Mexican population, and it's widespread for people to hire Mexicans and know that they're reliable and half the time they're illegal and no one cares, and you'll have a nanny or you'll have a yard person or something like that.
And they protect and treat those people well because they know them, right?
And yet if they were anonymous, they would… They should be locked up and deported.
It's sort of a weird Orwellian disconnect to people's minds.
Well, yeah, I think we're designed as a species to work in groups of 30 to 60 or maybe 90.
That's why governments and countries fundamentally don't work because we lose empathy for people beyond our immediate social circle and it's very easy to demonize what they call the other or the people who are foreign or different or distant.
And that's why, to me, I think an anarchic society without a state would work so much better, because it's much more in common with what our capacity for empathy, even though most sensitive among us, are actually capable of achieving.
You mentioned about New Hampshire being close to Canada, and if it failed, they could just run across into Canada.
Well, couldn't we just run from Texas to Mexico?
If the whole thing was shifted to Texas?
Well, you could, but I think if you look at the number of illegal immigrants going south as opposed to north...
You can't call on illegal immigrants.
These are people that want to move, remember?
These are movers. No, that's right.
Most of us would pick Canada over Mexico, I have to say, even with the cold.
Okay. I want to...
Of course, as well, you say that, you know, people, you know, use, you know, bad thoughts against these people that move here.
I want to bring your attention to an article and a video.
I don't have the audio from the video, but an article that was on a newscast that was on KRO TV, where police, there's a video of Taken of police attacking somebody that they thought was somebody that moved from the country to here under the law illegally,
as they say. And this was in Seattle, and it basically says that Seattle city leaders expressed shock and disappointment Friday at a video that first aired on KRO7 Eyewitness News.
Showing two Seattle police officers kicking a man as he lay on the ground.
The man was detained during a robbery investigation last month.
The two officers have been reassigned as police conduct and investigation amid a firestorm of reaction.
Another controversy has arisen over why a Seattle TV station declined to air the video.
The racially charged videotape shows officers stomping on the Innocent detainee after they responded to several 911 calls to report of an armed robbery in a parking lot of a nightclub near Lake Union and in this video basically what happens is that a an officer that the guy moves his hand to wipe his eye and the officer stamps on his face and on his hand and then there's a female officer that stamps on another one's on his leg now what this was because somebody allegedly got robbed and the cops this guy was nowhere near the scene but because he looked like an illegal sorry I'm using that word again somebody that moved to the country they decided to pull him over and question him and obviously it led to violence so my point is on this that violence is being used on people that they think are people that have moved to this country as immigrants and they're not.
And this is just another way that the state can justify stopping somebody.
I'll go back to Stephan Kinsella, his thoughts on it.
I'll post the actual Yeah, I agree with that, and I mean it's not surprising.
This is what happens when the government is in charge.
I mean the one thing I think we can hope for is the technology and video cameras.
The internet is going to help expose a lot of this stuff, which is what's good about that.
But let me ask you a question. You expressed a reservation about labeling these people as illegal immigrants.
Why is it that they are illegal immigrants?
I mean they shouldn't be, but it is illegal to immigrate without the state's permission.
So what's the problem with accurately describing their legal status?
Why do I fail?
Well, who is somebody else to make a law?
Who are these people?
Why do they have this authority?
Somebody had an election and people voted for these people.
Now they think that they're God and they can make these laws and say, oh, it's illegal now if you cross this imaginary line.
It's like a victimless crime.
Who is to say that if the speed limit is 45 on a highway and you're doing 55?
Would you say that cocaine possession is not illegal or that it shouldn't be illegal?
I wouldn't say it's illegal.
Cocaine possession, I wouldn't say it's illegal.
Okay. It is illegal.
It shouldn't be, but it is.
Was that Stephan Kinsella that asked why, about using the term illegal immigrants?
Yeah, because I've heard this, and I'm with you on the substance.
It's just that there's a sort of blending of rhetoric and strategy, rhetoric with truth.
And I'm the type that I'm hostile – I'm opposed to this notion, which I don't think James is doing, but this idea that people just say I'm against labels.
I'm like, well, we're conceptual beings.
There's nothing wrong with labels.
Now, in this case, there's sort of this positive law problem.
There's sort of an attempt to – it's sort of like it's a sneaky attempt, and I admire it because we're on the side of right, but there's a sneaky attempt to use semantics and labels… To try to get the underlying reality changed.
Personally, I think we should admit the reality, which is that it is illegal to do X, Y, and Z because the government is in control of the legal system.
It shouldn't be, but it is illegal.
And then to argue that it shouldn't be illegal or that the law is unjust.
But to say it's not a law seems to me to be inaccurate.
I understand what you're saying about… You know, it's obviously illegal to cross an imaginary line without permission from persons X, Y, and Z. I personally don't like the term illegal immigrant or illegal alien, things like that.
I find them very dehumanizing.
I find that when you just apply this big blanket term to a group of people, it makes it easier for some people to see them as somehow less deserving of rights Oh, no, I agree.
You have to say, yeah, well, they did.
They broke this law. This law shouldn't be.
Yeah, but it's the law that's dehumanizing.
It's the government's law that's dehumanizing.
And I agree with you completely.
But recognizing the law for what it is is not dehumanizing.
It's dehumanizing to have the law enforced.
Not at all. I think when I'm talking with people who favor things like SB 1070 and things like border walls, I find that telling them I find that term offensive usually leads them to asking me why.
And then it gives me an opening to get in my point and to try to make them see my view and maybe think about it a little bit.
It's the same thing when you hear about people being killed by the soldiers in Pakistan, Afghanistan, or what have you.
They're always identified as militants, Islamic militants.
Islamofascists, they're not identified as, you know, they're not fathers, they're not mothers, they're not children, they're not students, they're not people who have hopes and dreams.
They're just, you know, it's a blanket term to make mistreatment of them easier.
And I think if you call people out on that, and most of us, I think, hear talking, see things that way.
So if you kind of, if you take, if you can work it into a conversation that way, I usually try to.
I understand. I just personally have an innate revulsion to faking terms for strategic purposes, which I know everyone doesn't see it that way, but I just hate it.
I just like to call things like they are and then go from there, but I can see the strategic value of what you're saying.
I just think for me that way, breaking it down, keeping it simple, and trying to make it personal for people.
For me, personally, I usually find that I can get further.
It works for me. It doesn't work for everyone, of course.
The way Mr.
Molyneux said, you know, okay, you're calling them immigrants, we just want to say they're moving.
I like that one. I agree with that one.
That's a good description of what they're doing.
They are moving. Exactly.
And when people give you that opening to get in a term there and get in your own opinion, it's an opportunity for education.
So I jump on that whenever I can.
Someone in my chat room just said that we should call them world travelers as opposed to illegal aliens.
Let's round up all those world travelers and throw them into dungeons for traveling.
I think another tragedy that is something that needs to be addressed by the libertarian community and the general population thinking is this idea that cops are just like an implement like a hoe or a rake or something that you can just use without consequences and I think we all understand I think even the general public understands that even if all they've done is watch cop shows on TV they understand that the drug war has corrupted the police force I mean not just the drug war but it had a significant effect because they just get bought off I mean that's how drugs move around The cops have all the guns but the drug dealers have more money and so they buy protection from the cops and it corrupts the police force and I have not seen any reference in the mainstream media for sure I wasn't really expecting it but even in much alternative literature just with people saying well what is this going to do to the police force when you have these new powers when you have people who have money who want to move people around in the same way that people have money and they want to move drugs around The fact that I'm corrupting the police force is going to be pretty significant,
if not enormous. I wonder why people don't have more concern about that even in the general sway of things.
Have you guys read or heard much about that concern?
Because it was guessed about or predicted with the drug war and it turned out to be very true but it's not really with these expansion the powers of stopping an arrest which is just going to lead to more bribery and of course it's going to lead to a huge industry in the faking The corruption of the police force I think is pretty scary and it's going to make the police do a bunch of stuff they don't want to do.
I mean not all cops are nutty and nasty.
I mean up here in Canada I read an article about a cop is writing that he stopped over some guy who was in an accident and of course if you're an illegal immigrant up here in Canada and I'm sure it's the same in the States.
You're a very good driver.
I think that's a really great argument for there being no licenses and insurance requirements because there's no better driver than an illegal immigrant because he can't get pulled over.
If anybody's not speeding, it's either me and a Volvo or an illegal immigrant.
The cop pulled him over and the cop was like, I really don't want to do this.
He's showing me pictures of his wife and his kid and they're all here illegally and they're living in a basement.
And he ended up just letting the guy go, which I thought was a very humane thing to do.
But if you've got the kinds of people who really like chasing people down and grabbing their papers and hauling them off to jail, you're inviting a whole different kind of animal into the police force and they're not just going to stay with harassing the people you don't like.
Right. Mariana?
I think that's absolutely true.
Since The very people who shouldn't possess power are those who are attracted to it.
And frankly, also because the number of so-called law enforcement officers who will need to be hired to handle the additional burden above and beyond what they already handle.
That means, and we've seen this as it has happened in the military, the standards for recruitment get lower and lower and lower until finally You're looking at a pool of people who are more criminal than they are not.
So, I mean, it's very predictable what's going to happen.
You will attract those who enjoy power over others, those who are corruptible, and those who are either criminal or insane.
And I don't think that bodes very well.
I think that somebody needs to look into Investing heavily in the business of helping people fabricate documents.
I don't have a lot of hope about using the political process to fix this.
Yes, Stephan Kinsella, I agree with you when you say, well, yes, they are illegal immigrants.
Well, okay.
I don't see a lot of hope in using the political process to undo that.
So at this point, I feel like all the efforts need to be put into counter-economic black markets It's agorist pursuits, both locally and as broad scope as possible when it comes to industries that support the faking of documents, because it's just going to get worse.
It's going to get worse. I want these people to be sheltered from harm.
I do, too. I'm not sure that either one's going to work.
I mean, sometimes we have to accept that we live in a statist world where there's a lot of rampant, systematic crime, and it's going to continue for a long time.
But I don't want to accept it.
I know some of the finest minds in the world, and there has to be an alternative.
I don't want to have to accept the state.
That seems like a slippery slope into nihilistic oblivion to me.
That's the way we're heading.
This is Stephan's turn to jump in now.
He's good at nihilistic oblivion.
Okay. Maybe not.
Is that done?
Molyneux? Did we lose him?
Yes. Are you looking for some nihilistic ability?
I don't have much. I'm fresh out.
I mean, if the talk is turning into the solution, I mean, I'm sure that my solution, which I can provide in about 30 seconds, is fairly well known, but the research that I've done and the subject matter experts that I've talked to and the I've experienced this with my own life,
my own listeners. That's just led me to believe that it is going to be a multi-generational solution and the key issue is involved in parenting, in raising children in a peaceful manner, in raising children to be good negotiators and to be confident and to raise children with no fear of authority.
For sure, those children are never going to become IRS agents and cops and have a lust for power to make up for some deficiency in their own personality.
So I think it's just a matter of really trying to communicate as many peaceful and positive parenting solutions as possible.
And that's the solution.
It's a multi-generational solution which is involved in just better, peaceful, voluntaristic, non-violent, non-aggressive parenting That's the only way to soothe the jets of anger and hatred in the world that I can think of.
And it's something that of course most of us can do or at least influence within our own lives.
And I don't want to move the topic way off of that, but since we were talking about solutions, that's sort of my two cents worth.
You know, it could also be like scientific revolutions, right?
Like Kuhn's model of scientific revolutions that you just have to wait for the old people, old generations to die out.
I mean people are not going to change their minds at a certain point.
It's the way it looks like society is and the human nature is.
And I think you're right, Stephan.
We educate the younger generations, and they become more tolerant and more – I mean I was thinking on a slightly related note just the other day.
I have this new iPad, which Stephan and I were actually chatting about earlier.
And there's this application for this magic piano, and you can just play.
You can press a button and play a duet with someone, and it picks someone around the world, right?
Awesome. All of a sudden, someone in Ecuador or somewhere pops up, and you see that you're both playing notes with each other.
And I'm thinking, you know, if the world was like this 50 years ago, 100 years ago, would there have been a World War II? You know, if people saw each other as just people on the planet and not Germans and, you know, and whatever...
And, I mean, I do think that every generation that comes out, you can see the change.
The young kids now, they don't get landlines.
They don't get cable TV. They're not as conservative and Archie Bunker grumpy as our parents were.
Maybe there's hope, but I think it's going to take generational change.
Well, I think that's indubitable, and I think that there's lots of research that seems to indicate that significant progresses in human society, such as the Renaissance and the Enlightenment and so on, were almost all perceived by significant improvements in parenting.
And yeah, there's a theory which says that, for instance, old scientific theories never die, it's just the supporters eventually snuff it.
And there does seem to be a certain rigidity that sets in after a certain time with people that they don't want to change their minds.
But yeah, the hope is in the young.
The hope is in the young and the hope is that they will be raised in such a way that they will look upon authority as an anachronism.
In the same way that when we look at negative or destructive authority now, for those of us who are raised, I was in boarding school, there was caning, there was lots of aggression against children and even in England I was reading a statistic recently that said that up until quite recently and I'm I'm not sure what the statistic is now but this was a decade and a half ago 80% of British mothers struck their infants before the age of one year old and quite regularly and that is going to lead people to grow up with a fear of authority and that translates very well into priests that translates very well into public school teachers and that translates very well into policemen in the state and if we can raise children without any aggression with negotiation with peace And with love,
it's hard to really think that striking children and loving them occur at the same moment.
Then I think we're going to end up with a solution to the problem of oligarchical hierarchy, which is that children who are treated as rights-bearing agents, I think as Stefan said recently, are treated as rights-bearing agents with their own thoughts and feelings and never physically aggressed against and never have voices raised against them in the home.
They're going to grow up and they're going to look at the state as an anachronism in the same way that we look at racism as an anachronism from history and we look further back and we see extreme sexism as an anachronism from history.
The state is something we have to outgrow.
It's not something we can outfight.
We have to outgrow it and I think that is a multi-generational solution.
Great point. Stephen, what did you do to deserve getting caned?
Oh, I kicked a ball over a wall and I climbed over the wall to get it back.
And that was very much in school.
And see, all I was doing was I was moving.
It all comes back to where I thought it.
That's where Singapore got it from.
Yeah, it's, you know, Stefan Molyneux is right.
I mean, we have to educate people.
And the younger generation, I see a lot of them, especially on Facebook, that are in these, you know, anarchy groups.
And they're all over the world.
These, you know, these younger people, they're, you know, anywhere from the age of like 17 upwards.
And they're in these anarchy groups.
And it's, you know, I asked them, Why are you anarchist?
And they say, well, I just don't like the way that government murders people in faraway countries.
That's one of them. I don't like the way that government uses its so-called authority to make people do things that they don't want to do or stop them from doing something that they do want to do even though they're not hurting anybody.
These are the things that they're telling me.
I'm asking them, why are you an anarchist?
I think it's wrong that I'm having money stolen from me.
I'm rejecting the state.
I'm rejecting my government.
I don't like it.
I don't think it's right.
These are bullies.
I'm being bullied. I'm being made to do something I don't want to do.
It's coming. I think it can come a lot quicker if people pick up and do what Stefan Molyneux is doing.
I started this radio show on a Friday night, and now I'm doing four shows a week.
If more people get information out to other people, And people come and listen and, you know, they may have this statist mind and say, you know what, these people that are talking tonight on this radio show, they do have a valid argument about, you know, using force against people.
And yet, who am I to stop somebody crossing the imaginary line when they're not hurting anybody, you know?
Maybe we should change things.
Maybe the world should be different.
Maybe I shouldn't have my money stolen from me to load up a plane with bombs and drop it on innocent women and children in another country somewhere.
And if we can educate people on how coercive government is and how it monopolizes things, which it does, Then I think, and there's enough people doing this and we're reaching out, I think we can make a drastic change and bring about that change quicker.
And I want to take it over now to Wilton.
Yeah, I agree with everything you said.
I think that it's interesting that everyone on the call tonight, of the four of us, the three of us Know each other and interact on a pretty regular basis.
In fact, four of us are all Facebook friends or whatever.
Three of us write regularly, speak regularly, so we're all warriors of the mind.
And as Steph mentioned, we've all got kids, so we're trying to try to convey that basic understanding of Authority doesn't mean you've got a right to go against morality and the basic goodness of the idea of peace,
right? But we've also got a pretty big battle ahead of us because the entire state is based upon maintaining that those things do make sense.
The public school system is based upon indoctrination of the goodness of the collective.
USA, USA, Church of Allegiance, all those kinds of things.
But yet and still, I went across kids all the time who understand that that's just crap.
So I'm not a cynic or a nihilist, although I do have my nihilist days.
I just think that it didn't get this way overnight, and we can't make it go back overnight.
It's a long-term battle, but it's a battle that we can win in the mind.
Well, and I also just wanted to just very briefly add that the inertia of society should give us great hope for the future.
Because if human beings can be so fundamentally dedicated to radical error and so conservative in resisting change towards, you know, truth and reason and peace and light and all that dewy-eyed good stuff, Imagine how stable society is going to be when human beings are both conservative, which is natural, I think, to humanity, and right, and peaceful.
I think it's going to be a permanent change, and I think that's something really to look forward to.
Good point. All right. Marianna?
I agree with Stephan.
I think we're actually probably on a precipice, and it's impossible to really fully perceive where we stand in time right now.
But we are at a point of accelerating consciousness individually and together as a human race.
And I can say this because it took me until about 40 to really start to become exposed to and then process and understand the ideas of liberty and peace in a genuine way.
But my son is 19 and he's there already and my daughter is 8.
And she's already talking about things with her friends on the bus and in school.
She's already hypersensitive to the issues of the state which already affect her.
Just one example.
It's ironic because Junior Achievement is a program.
You probably haven't heard of it, Stefan Molyneux, because I'm pretty sure it's unique to the United States.
Junior Achievement was a program when I was in high school That came in and taught children how to be entrepreneurial.
And when she told me that they were coming to the school, I said, oh great, wonderful, excellent.
This is a really good lesson.
And then she came home and it was all about this career day that had been absolutely railroaded by the state.
And she said, yeah, and they made me They tried to make me be a police officer, and I said, I don't want to be a police officer.
I don't want to do that job.
That's not a good job.
Oh, that's great. Yeah, and she was able to say that in a semi-public setting in front of her peers.
And why that is revolutionary is because the ideas of liberty and of peace and self-directedness are intrinsic to us as human beings.
It is the abusive public school system That assists the state in beating those ideas out of us.
So what if there's a child sitting in that classroom who said, hey, wait a minute.
Really? Because I always thought that was kind of true too.
Or even to begin as a point of inquiry for those children, to hear something else than the statist quo, if you will, is revolutionary.
Because I don't think that you can smash the state from without.
You can subvert it.
You can make it obsolete and it happens person by person.
You don't bring people to liberty en masse.
It happens individual by individual.
So if I have two children and they are pro-liberty and they speak their mind and they are unafraid of authority, we are in effect a micro-revolution of our own.
Stephan Kinsella?
Oh, well, I mean, I just have to say I agree with a lot of this.
It does make me think that, I mean, there's so much potential with our children, and it seems like the people here are doing good jobs with theirs.
I know mine is six, and he's already doing what, you know, these sort of, he's fighting what he's hearing in school and things like that.
It is sometimes shocking to me.
I know these world-famous Austro-libertarians and I've met some of their children, and they're 20, 21, 23, and they're just like – some of them are just social leftist lefties or totally apathetic, and I don't quite get how that happened because most of the people I know that are really into it, like some of us here are, we're doing a damn good job of educating our kids about it.
I do think it's possible.
Right. Are you guys up for taking some calls?
We're all coming up to the last 21 minutes of the show.
Do you have something to say, Mandy?
No, let them take some calls if they're up for it.
You guys up for calls? Yeah, I'm okay.
Sure, I'm okay with it, too.
All right, we have a caller that's been waiting very patiently from area code 267.
Your name, you're on the air.
Hi, my name is Kevin Tudzner.
I have a perspective that's kind of coming from Mr.
Mono's human perspective.
Farming part two which I just posted on a Facebook page of mine and I guess my question comes down to how is it that since we have all of our money tied up in central banking that immigration becomes an issue at all considering we are all living on pretty much the same farm since Throughout the world,
there's nothing but central banks, and realistically, I believe the only country on the planet is Panama that doesn't actually have a central bank as part of their system.
I just feel like you guys have been neglecting economics this evening, although I really appreciate what you've been speaking of thus far.
I'll turn it over to you guys now.
Thank you. Alright, thank you.
Stefan Molyneux? Stefan Molyneux?
It looks like...
Oh, wait a minute.
Wait a minute. Hello.
It looks like you dropped. Okay, go ahead.
You dropped, didn't you? Yeah, you're back.
Hello. Yeah, can you hear me?
Yes, you might. Was that a more specific question to me?
I think I understood the question which was since we're all in the metaphor that I use to attack livestock for the state owners, why is there such a fuss about immigration?
Well, we are a peculiar form of livestock.
I'm sorry if you're not familiar with the metaphor but you can have a look at a video that explains this in more detail.
We are a peculiar form of livestock insofar as we produce best when we think that we're free.
In the Middle Ages, people didn't imagine that they were politically free and they produced very little as a consequence.
But when you believe that you're free and you have some genuine economic and political and particularly property rights privileges, then you produce much better as livestock.
You get 10 times the milk by letting the cow wander around a little more.
The problem is that When people begin to suspect that they're not very free they tend to become rather depressed and inert which is one reason why of course socialist economies don't work along with all the great Mises arguments about price can't allocate things and so on people get kind of depressed when they get that they're not free and depressed people aren't very productive and so I think that people need to maintain the illusion that they're free which is why they don't like to restrain the power of the state because that will reveal to them how non-free they really are And so immigrants coming in reminds people that the state has a lot of power,
reminds people that the state can really mess up people's lives if it wants to by hounding them and taking away their papers and chasing them all over the place and deporting them and so on.
And so people don't like to feel that.
They like to feel that they're free and of course the people who run the state and I'm not saying this is any kind of conscious conspiracy.
Human beings have a great knack for owning other human beings because we're so productive.
It's just an instinct that people have evolved because it's so useful.
I think that immigration remains an issue because there's an us versus them.
You need to have the loyalty to the country and that needs to be a cohesive group.
When you have a cohesive group, you automatically create enemies who are unlike yourself, who threaten that group identity and so on.
You need to get that Stockholm Syndrome with your own government and that necessity is going to create fear, anxiety and hostility towards outside groups.
And I know that's not a very specific or detailed answer, but that's what I can come up with off the top of my head, if that makes sense.
Right. Steph, do you want to comment on that?
No, I don't have anything else I should add.
I wasn't quite clear on the question, actually.
Okay. Wilton?
No, I don't have anything either.
I mean, I think there is...
I mean, it's in the state's interest, right, to have us think, to give us just enough freedom that we won't revolt, but keep just enough control so that it maintains those who are making the most money at the top,
right? I've been on this a couple different times with Lou Rockwell, how the Fed, every time there's a reallocation of deficit spending in Inflationary action, it funnels money systemically away from the lower quartiles to the higher quartiles.
Well, that's the same oligarchy that's also benefiting from most status control of industry, most political power, the Halliburton's of the world, the The Wall Street people of the world.
So it's pretty clear that, as Steph mentioned, they want to have livestock, but they want them to be sort of happy, right?
If you kind of step back and look at it, even the issue of owning a home, right, you can own it, but you don't really own it, because if you don't pay your taxes, they can take it, which is a tiny percentage of the overall cost of a home, but points to who the real owner is.
So I'm not sure that there's more I can add than what Steph said, but clearly the economic issue is why the state exists.
All right.
Mariana? I don't have anything to add right now, actually.
Okay. Mandy?
Norah. I just want to go back to what Will said about the house.
And yeah, I mean, you don't really own your house.
You don't really own anything.
And you have this illusion that you do.
And like you said, you don't pay your taxes and they take it.
So it's all control and people...
Well, I'm not saying not everybody doesn't see the control, but the majority of people don't.
And it's like what Stefan said...
In one of his videos, everybody's cheering for USA, USA, one team and another team and there's really no difference.
Education is key.
Education is key here on educating the up-and-coming people and trying to get them to have an understanding Of what the state is,
that the state is coercion, violence, that taxation is theft, and how it brainwashes at an early age Children to thinking that they need to be relying on the state, which we don't.
The state doesn't build roads.
The state doesn't purify water.
These are human beings.
These are individuals that do this.
And if these were all private companies that were doing this, Then, and we were all doing this peacefully, the world would be a, you know, far, far better place.
But of course right now it's not.
We have these governments and they utilize their power to make people do things that they don't want to do and stop people from doing things That they do want to do.
And what I'm talking about is things that aren't hurting.
Nobody's getting hurt.
And that's just all I wanted to add to that.
James, you just mentioned – can I interrupt something?
You mentioned that under the current law, people don't really own their homes, for example.
Right. And I think you're correct, but when you say that, you're buying into the positive law conceptions of the state, which I think is actually accurate.
I mean… I point out to people all the time that all these people that debate over whether you should own or rent a house, and I always say, well, you never do anything but rent a house.
Even if you buy it and pay off the mortgage, you still pay $X,000 a year in property tax alone to the government.
Otherwise, they'll take it from you like a landlord.
In fact, they are a landlord.
They're the overlord in the common law sense.
In fact, we still have feudalism in the United States, literally still have feudalism in that sense.
Even the states which have – the three or four states in the beginning of the country which declared allodialism, those states still maintain the power to tax property.
So basically we don't have ownership, but that is a recognition of the power of the government, which is real and does exist, and the recognition of the law.
So ownership is the right to own.
It's the legal right of ownership.
So I would say that actually the government is the underlying base owner of all property in the country… Or they assert that right now, and they enforce it to a large degree.
Sure, yeah. It's funny, I just bought a new home, and when I signed the last papers, the realtor came to look at me and said, how does it feel to be a homeowner?
And I said, well, I wouldn't know.
I said, I'm still renting from the government.
And it was just this past Friday.
I just closed on my home. And he laughed.
He said, no, that's not true.
And I said, well, no.
I said, they'll come take it if I don't pay certain taxes.
They'll take it if I don't have certain types of insurance, and many of it they underwrite.
I have to have flood insurance, and that's all through FEMA. If they decide that they want it, and even though I've paid my taxes and I'm up to date on everything, they can take it via eminent domain because they decide that one of their buddies needs my land.
You can't really own anything.
The same goes even with my car.
It's paid off. I own it.
But I don't own it because I'm forced to pay taxes on it.
I'm forced to, you know, have all kinds of regulations and this and that and jump through hoops just to keep it.
It can be taken off to me at any time just, you know, because, you know, that matter of piece of paper that says they can.
And it was a really hard concept.
I mean, I really had a hard time getting him to understand and he just kept looking at me like I was mad.
Right. They think you're crazy because They don't have the notion to think, well, yeah, if anybody doesn't pay...
They think the taxation is something that has to be handed over.
It's for the greater good.
It's for the greater good.
It's for the better good of people, of mankind.
It helps everybody.
And things can be done a lot cheaper and on a voluntary basis.
if the state was out of the way and that's the problem that I have that you know the force is used against the individual and they're doing nothing wrong in the words of Harry Brown if you really want to cure a pressing social problem take steps outside the realm of government If you don't see how you can convince people to help you succeed in a non-governmental endeavor,
how can you expect to control politicians who care nothing for your desires?
And if you really want to make a noticeable difference, if you really want to improve life, do something for yourself or your family today.
That's where you have real control, and that's where you don't need to rely on politicians or anyone else.
And you can make sure the results are as you intended.
And as a society, that is, you know, what we should do.
And that's, you know, I feel that's what we should be, you know, educating people on.
Stephan Kinsella, do you have a website that you want to give a shout out about?
Stephan Kinsella?
Stephan Kinsella?
Oh, sorry. I had my mute button on.
I was talking. I would like to just plug my latest blog, which is the Libertarian Standard, which is libertarianstandard.com, I think, or.org.
And it's a group blog with several very principled and fun anarcho-libertarian friends of mine.
So it's just libertarianstandard.com.
Yeah, libertarianstandard.com.
Okay. And Mariana?
Yes. You're now helping out with c4ss.org, correct?
That is correct. I was very honored to be brought aboard just a few days ago, actually, about a week and a half.
I'm now handling both the development and social media Aspects for the Center for Stateless Society.
We recently had a very successful monthly fund drive, and there are lots of really great things going on, including the addition of Anna Morgenstern as an author, in addition to an ongoing class that Gary Chartier is doing on anarchy.
So there are great things happening at the Circle A, as I like to say.
Okay. That's great.
And Wilton? Yeah, I write for the Libertarian Standard as well as my archives at luroquo.com.
Just go to Columnist and find my name.
My archive is Strike the Root.
Pretty voluminous writing in both of those places.
Okay, and Stephan Molyneux.
Well, of course, it's freedomainradio.com for free books and podcasts.
I'm not even going to tell you how many because it's kind of embarrassing at this point, but I'll also be speaking, I'm the opening speaker at Porkfest, which is not a porn convention much though it may sound like one.
It is in fact a libertarian gathering in New Hampshire, which I hope people can attend.
I will also be the closing speaker at Libertopia in Hollywood in October in California.
I hope people can join there.
That's at libertopia.org.
And thanks very much for the invite.
It was really, really a very, very great pleasure to chat with you all and to discuss this topic and the topics that we delved into.
So thanks so much for the invite.
Yeah, I just couldn't believe it.
Here we were like 15 minutes before the show was about to go live, and all of a sudden I get a message on Facebook.
You know, you got room for me on the show today?
I said, well, of course.
You know, here's what I'm calling, Stefan.
So it's great. All you guys, all you guys, this has been a great broadcast and a great podcast it's going to be.
I want to thank you all.
I hope that Stephan Kinsella, we can have you on again with talking about IP. That's the topic that I want to get into with you.
So I hope that you will come back sometime shortly.
I'd be happy. Okay.
And Wilton...
It's been a pleasure having you on the show.
Thank you for joining us.
You had a lot to offer.
And Mariana, I want to thank you for coming on as well.
And Mandy, I want to thank you for hosting these shows with me.
Hopefully, we can all make a difference in the world.
And I truly do believe that we can.
It's Like it's been mentioned in the show tonight that this is all about educating people and making them realize what the state is and what it's about and how people can be to make life a lot better.
I want to thank you all again for joining us tonight.
It's been great. Tune in tomorrow night, folks.
You're welcome. And tune in tomorrow night for...
Let's Talk Live. It's at 9 p.m.
here on Blog Talk Radio.
Thank you, guys. Thanks for having me.
Thank you. Thank you.
And I'm going to play us out with Andrew Jackson.
He's a Canadian.
And this is his song off his album, Feral Familia.
This is track seven, Another Day in Misery.
Thanks a lot, guys.
Have a great week.
Another day of misery, just you and me.
And all my life I try to remember The messages in the air The smithers will ask you to surrender But did you read the whole story?
Before you made up your mind?
Did you buy the blind glory?
Or did you read between lines?
My head was changing, the room was spinning I'm angry when I'm fainting We're good to go.
I think of you From a time before I knew What it's all said and done tomorrow
Your ways are set to choose guitar
solo guitar
solo guitar solo But did you read the whole story Before you made up your mind Yeah, I am.
Did you buy the blind glory?
Or did you read between lines?
My head was tingling, the room was spinning, I'm angry when I You're done so demanding as the color melts away.
I'm thinking you from the time before I knew what it's all said and done tomorrow.
You love yourself with you.
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