2156 Property, Theft, Asset Forfeiture and Ron Paul Betrayed!?! - Stefan Molyneux of Freedomain Radio hosts the Peter Schiff radio show!
Stefan Molyneux hosts the Peter Schiff radio show, discusses the philosophical basis for property rights, and welcomes special guests economist Veronique deRugy to talk about the hidden cost of stimulus spending, and lawyer Larry Salzman to talk about the high cost of healthcare, and legal hell of asset forfeiture. Also, the RNC is Blocking Ron Paul Republicans from Tampa Bay Convention Grounds!
Make no friends in the pits and you take no prisoners.
One minute you're up half a million in soybeans and the next boom.
Your kids don't go to college and they've repossessed your bentley.
Are you with me?
The revolution starts now.
Starts now.
We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it.
Turn those machines back on!
You are about to enter The Peter Schiff Show.
If we lose freedom here, there's no place to escape to.
This is the last stand on earth.
The Peter Schiff Show is on.
Call in now.
855-4SHIFT. That's 855-472-4433.
I don't know when they decided that they wanted to make a virtue out of selfishness.
Your money.
Your stories.
Your freedom.
The Peter Schiff Show.
All right, all right, everybody.
How are you doing this morning?
It's Ben Wallin, Free Domain Radio, sitting in the still warm Peter Schiff chair from last week.
We are going to have a very, very interesting show today.
We have somebody from a super PAC who's going to talk about some issues in the Ron Paul campaign.
Can you imagine that Republicans are occasionally unfriendly to Ron Paul?
I can't imagine since he embodies so many of the values that they claim to possess, but we're going to have a nice chat about that.
We have the great Veronique de Rougy coming in.
She's going to talk about what austerity means and what a ridiculous term it is, talking about the issues over in Greece, which, you know, are not too distant.
You know how America imports everything from Europe sooner or later, people, ideas, to some degree, art.
Soon, catastrophic economic excitement.
And Larry Saltzman will be here.
He is going to be – he's just filed a suit against the state of Virginia on behalf of doctors who are being prevented from practicing.
Absolutely fascinating.
One thing I love about being in the freedom movement is that you just meet the smartest and most engaging of people.
We've got some great guests coming up.
So really, if there's a theme for today's show, and I like to think that occasionally there is, we're really talking about property.
Property rights and property.
This is something that's really, really important to understand philosophically.
And what I mean by philosophically is accurately, factually.
And so you may have heard, you know, there's a bunch of mind-twisting brainbenders that are floating around late-night dorm room bull sessions that go sort of something like this.
Okay, so this is Guy.
See, and this guy's name is Bob.
And Bob's wife, yay, she is deathly sick, almost to the point of shuffling off her mortal coil.
And she needs a pill to make her all better, to make her boo-boos all gone.
And that pill doth cost $10,000.
And so Bob's wife is sick.
She needs a pill for $10,000.
Bob!
You don't have $10,000.
He doesn't have it.
And so is Bob then justified?
And he goes to the pharmacist who's got the pill and says, oh, please, please, my wife, she's dying.
Here's a picture.
Oh, that's how I said.
Is he then allowed or justified, is there any kind of moral justification for him to break into the pharmacist's pharmacy at night under the stealthy cover of darkness to take the pill to give it to his wife and thus save her life?
And this is a nasty little question to get, because it's a completely false dichotomy.
We'll talk about that in a sec.
But most importantly, it's a trap!
It's a trap!
Stand back, roll, duck and cover.
Hide under the desk and kiss your butt goodbye, as they used to say in the 50s warnings about nuclear war.
But it's a ridiculous question.
Because the way it's supposed to work is if you say that yes, he is justified in going and stealing the pill to save his wife from her earthly demise, then clearly you're in favor of the welfare state.
In other words, violation of property rights for the sake of helping people is valid and therefore you are for the welfare state, for the forced redistribution of income, Under the guns of the government and, you know, let's all go sing international and walk under the banner of call marks.
So that's the one.
But if you say, no, he is not, he must not steal the pill, then you're basically saying, oh, so under your system, sick people just die.
It's a trap and it's a ridiculous trap.
The reason it's so ridiculous of course is like most moral issues or moral questions, it's got no time context.
It's got no social context.
It's got no context of any kind.
It's like these people are operating in the depths of interstellar space where I strongly doubt life-saving pills are freely available.
Let's say this guy needs $10,000.
Let's say he's got no health insurance.
And let's just pretend that this is a free market, right?
Because this has to be a free market question.
Because it's not a free market question, then he'll just go get it from Medicare or Medicaid or he'll just go to an ER and he'll get the pill for free.
Well, not for free, but other people will be forced to pay for it.
So let's pretend this is a free market situation, in which case, you know, your health insurance would probably be about 5% to 10% the cost of what it is right now and you'd get much better service.
So he didn't buy health insurance.
So he saved money from not buying health insurance.
So he can take the money that he saved from not buying health insurance and use it as a down payment on the pill, which he can then get in a payment period of time.
The guy wants to sell a pill.
He doesn't have the pill because he wants a pill collection.
He wants to sell the pill.
So Bob goes to the pharmacist and says, listen, I'm going to pay you like a hundred bucks a week for X amount of weeks.
Here's some money down.
Or why doesn't he just go and borrow the money from a bank?
Because people being alive is actually a pretty good investment.
So if his wife dies, she's got no more earning potential.
But if she lives, she can go back to work and so then they'll have a lot of extra money and they'll use that to pay off the pill.
Why not just put it on his credit card?
I mean, the credit cards are, you know, they send homeless people platinum cards, I think, at times, so he could just do that.
Why doesn't he go to his friends?
Why doesn't he go to his parents?
Why doesn't he go to his extended family?
Why doesn't he go to his church?
Why doesn't he go to some charity?
Why doesn't he go to anywhere, anyone, anytime who is going to help?
Because, look, either people in society Want to help people who've fallen on hard times or they don't.
Now if they do want to help people who've fallen on hard times then you don't need the government because people just got to do it through charity.
Charity is like over a hundred billion dollar a year business, I shouldn't say business, enterprise in the United States as it stands.
So he can just go and ask for the money.
He can offer to work for free.
Hey, Mr.
Pharmacist, I don't have a lot of skills, otherwise I'd have 10,000 bucks sitting around somewhere, but I will come and sweep your floors for the next two years if you give me this pill and I won't charge you a penny.
Well, you know, done.
Or he could go negative, right?
He could go to the dark side, which can be fine.
He can go to the pharmacist and say, look, Mr.
Pharmacist, you are withholding any reasonable accommodation I'm trying to get for this to get this pill for my wife.
So I'm going to call up the local media and say, you know, heartless rat fink pharmacist is causing my wife to die by not selling, renting or otherwise getting me the pill no matter what I say.
He's a bad guy and what kind of negative publicity is that going to produce for you, Mr.
Pharmacist?
Massive amounts of negative publicity.
He can go to the pill company and say, do you know that you give your pills to these pharmacists who won't take any reasonable accommodation to get the pill into my wife's body and save her life?
How's that going to do, Mr.
Pharmacist, to your relationship with the pill company?
I mean, you could go on and on.
You could go on and on.
But the important thing to remember is that, you know, in life in general, I think in many ways there's kind of a karmic thing, like you get what you give.
And if this guy's never helped anyone else, then he probably doesn't really have any friends who want to help him.
Or maybe he's borrowed a whole bunch of money in the past and has never paid it back.
In which case people are less likely to lend them money now.
But all this means is that actions have consequences.
That if you want nice things from the world, you give nice things to the world.
I mean, I rely entirely.
I've got no ads.
I give my books away for free.
I rely entirely on donations because I have the business sense of a jar of cheese string.
And it's fine.
It works out really well.
The generosity in the world is really great.
So if anybody asks you this question, you can go through this stuff.
But you can also say, well, would you help the guy?
And if the guy says, well, yeah, I would.
I said, well, I would too.
So, you know, problem solved.
And if he says, well, I wouldn't help the guy.
It's like, well, then why are you talking about it like it's an ethical issue if you don't even want to help the guy whose wife is dying?
So that's one way to approach it.
We're going to get a little bit more into property rights theory.
It's really, really important to understand this stuff.
We want to make sure that what we're defending is moral, true, virtuous, and good.
Call in.
We'll have time later in the show for callers.
I will be back right after the break.
You've heard of Karl Marx, right?
Well now, meet his worst nightmare.
This is The Peter Schiff Show.
All right, we're back and we are talking, really the theme of the show, we are talking about property rights today.
Do you remember property rights?
Those distant...
Foggy, fading into the rearview mirror rights that were really the essence of human civilization and the violation of which undermines as surely as dominoes fall down when stacked against each other undermines our liberties.
I mean, all rights, I think, fundamentally come down to property rights.
Because the first property that you have is your body, is you.
Only you can make your arm move.
I mean, stare at my arm and try and make it move.
And unless your name is Mr.
Epilepsy, you're probably not going to have...
Very much luck.
Only I can control my body.
Only I can control my words, my language, my actions.
And so, when we think about property, the first, first, first place to start is with the body.
It clarifies so much about property that otherwise gets obscured.
I mean, people want to leap into, I copied an mp3.
Is that intellectual property or patent property or whatever?
Copyright, that stuff is, first of all, so messed up by the state system that we can talk about that perhaps another time, but start with the individual, start with the person.
The fundamental question about property rights are things like, do I own my kidneys?
Do I own my kidneys?
If you have a failing kidney or two, do you have the right to come and take my kidney by force?
That's really what property rights are all about.
And people like to abstract it, like into currency or money or social transfers, social justice, the welfare state and so on.
But really it comes down to if I have a healthy kidney or two and you have no healthy kidneys, do you get to take my kidney by force?
Now, if anyone tells you yes, then you want to back away from that person very slowly, speak softly and gently, don't make any sudden moves, and put, say, a catcher's mitt over the area where your kidney is exposed on your skin.
That would be my suggestion.
Because anyone who says, yes, I can come in with a rusty spoon and take your kidney should mine fail, is just a psycho and should not be graced with the respect of a debate.
Because my kidney is my property.
I have watered it.
I have grown it.
I have nurtured it and taken care of it over these many years.
And it's mine.
Mine!
Now, I can choose to donate it.
I can choose whatever.
But, you know, while I still want it and while I'm still alive, it's mine.
So all property really starts with the body.
Now, there's the property that we create outside the body, which, or using the body, which is another question.
It's a lot easier to steal someone's iPhone than it is to take their kidney.
So what is our relationship to that?
Well, it's not really fundamentally very different.
Just because something is inside my skin or outside my skin, if I have created it, if it only exists because of my actions, then it's still mine.
There's no fundamental difference between my kidney and a log cabin that I build in the woods.
I have transformed the trees into a log cabin.
The log cabin has been brought into existence.
Property fundamentally is that which is brought into existence.
Not something which is just grabbed or homesteaded, but things that are brought into existence.
So if I built a log cabin, why is it mine?
Because there would have been no log cabin if I didn't build it.
Think of a fish in the sea.
What use is it to anyone?
Well, the other fish is maybe food or something like that.
It has value to itself because it wants to stay alive and that's all fine and good.
But from a sort of human utility standpoint, the fish in the ocean has no value to anyone.
So, how much are you going to pay me if I say, I will give you the right to own a fish in the ocean?
What are you going to offer me for that?
Now, don't everybody bid at once.
What are you going to offer me for that?
Well, you're not going to offer me anything.
Because it's inaccessible, it has no utility, you can't find it.
How much are you going to pay me for a log cabin that I've built if I say, well, it's perfect for you, it's right on the lake, it's just a short distance from the highway, and so on.
Only $200,000.
And you say, well, that's great.
Where is it?
You say, well, I'm never going to tell you.
I'm never going to tell you where the log cabin is, but you know, come on, fork over that $200,000.
Well, it's inaccessible to you.
It can't be used.
So the real act of property is to bring something into utility.
When you pull the fish out of the lake, it becomes something that someone can use.
They can put it in a fish tank and enjoy it.
They can set it free if that's their particular bent.
They can fry it up with a white wine sauce and a nice Chianti and some fava beans.
So they can do all of that kind of fun stuff with it.
But the bringing of property into utility, into the sphere of utility, is what property really is.
So people think about homesteading.
I used to actually do this, believe it or not.
After high school, I went and worked as a gold pan or a prospector up north.
And I did a lot of claim staking because that's how you sort of get mineral rights in Canada.
You go a kilometer square and you hammer these little plaques into the trees and then you get the mineral rights for a certain amount of time.
But nobody cared about the trees, nobody cared about the plaques, nobody cared about any of that.
All that was cared about was the minerals.
So it's not that you go and enclose a piece of land that that's important when it comes to property.
What matters, let's say you're a farmer and you go and enclose a couple of acres and you put a fence around it or whatever.
The only reason you're doing that is so that you can create crops.
So that you can bring crops into existence that otherwise would not exist.
That otherwise would not exist.
And this is why ownership is so essential.
Because you are bringing things into existence that otherwise would not exist.
You only put the fence around a farm so that you can plant crops and grow them.
So that you know that you will actually be able to harvest what you're planting.
You only walk into the forest with an axe.
You can cut down the trees.
You can build a log cabin.
Property fundamentally is creation.
And why are parents responsible for their children?
Because They brought the child into existence, right?
If I remember rightly, the wife gets drunk, the husband gets on his knees and begs and pleads and cries, and then the Holy Spirit comes along, inseminates somebody, and there you get a baby.
I'm a little hazy, but I think something like that.
The child, the human life is created, is brought into existence.
The way that the fish is brought into utility by being caught and put in a boat, the way that crops are brought into existence, By homesteading a piece of property.
It's the things which exist which otherwise would not exist that is the essence of property.
And the degree to which we forget that, the degree to which we place need above property, that's the old communist slash socialist dictum.
From each according to their ability, to each according to their need.
Now, that would morally justify Somebody being held down, drugged, having their chest cracked open, having a healthy lung removed, and then implanted, or donated, so to speak, to somebody who was a chain smoker who's got lung cancer in the lung.
The guy who's got lung cancer really needs a lung.
And the guy who's been a marathon runner and never touched a cigarette, he's got a healthy lung, from each according to their ability, healthy lung, to each according to their need, cancerous lung.
But we shrink back from that.
Any decent human being is going to shrink back from that equation.
If I'm an idiot, let's assume I'm not for a moment.
If I'm an idiot and I grab a bunch of fireworks and read the instructions which says, do not hold them when you light them.
And then I light the fireworks and blow up both of my thumbs.
Is it then reasonable for me to go out and jump a stranger and get his thumb or thumbs and have them reattached?
Well, no.
It's not his fault that I was an idiot.
It's my fault that I was an idiot.
If I've smoked my whole life despite my doctor's advice and general common sense and then I get sick, well, you can ask for charity, of course.
But you don't have the right to other people's labor.
You do not have the right to other people's labor.
That isn't slavery.
100% ownership of other people's labor is slavery.
50%, well, it's taxation slash serfdom.
Well, but I repeat myself.
They're two sides of the same coin.
And in some cases, it doesn't really matter how long you possess somebody else's property.
A rapist possesses the body of his victim for not very long, a couple of minutes maybe.
But it's still an egregious and unholy crime.
Property is essential.
It starts in the body, and the effects of the body, whether it's the spoken word, whether it's a log cabin or a fish that's usable, or whether it's a crime that you've committed, we own the effects of our actions.
We own the effects of our actions, for better or for worse.
We can always ask for charity, but we can never pull out a gun, morally or legitimately, and force other people To do our will.
Guns can be used, of course.
Violence can be used in self-defense, in an extremity of self-defense.
Of course.
I have no problem with self-defense.
I'm not a pacifist in that sense, because that doesn't sustain itself logically.
Because if self-defense is wrong, then you have to initiate force against people who are doing self-defense, because it's a crime.
Which means you'd have to raise it as a crime to a higher status of immorality than the initiation of force.
Sorry, it's a bit...
But the reality is...
That we own ourselves.
We own the effects of our actions.
And any debate is going to naturally accept this.
Because if I put forward an argument, I am creating the argument.
I am putting it out.
I am using my mouth, my tongue, my larynx to create and produce an argument.
And we all accept that because people respond to me as if it's my argument.
We even own the arguments that we create.
The violation of property rights is as egregious a violation in the long run as violations of personal body space.
We're going to get back and we're going to talk to the great Larry Saltzman right after the break.
It's going to be a fascinating discussion on just what we're talking about.
We will be right back.
We now return to The Peter Schiff Show.
Call in now.
855-4SHIFT. That's 855-472-4433.
The Peter Schiff Show.
Alright everybody, we are back.
Let's move from theory to practice.
On the line we have Larry Saltzman.
Larry, are you there?
Stephan, I'm here.
Thank you.
All right.
So listen, I just wanted to point out, just as we get into this, sometimes government programs are aptly named, right?
So originally it was going to be the Department of Public Education, which spells out DOPE, quite accurate.
And you are dealing with this hellacious invasion of freedom of trade called Certificates of Necessity, which spells out CON. So let's have some background on that and why you're doing what you're doing.
Sure, and they are a con job.
The Institute for Justice and several doctors have teamed up to file a lawsuit challenging the con program or the certificate of need program here in Virginia.
It's based on the simple premise that patients and doctors and not the government are in the best position to decide what medical services and equipment are needed in a community.
And here in Virginia and 36 other states, you require government permission.
It is illegal for a doctor to open an office Right.
And of course, the need in the free market sense is people are willing to pay for the service.
I think as you've rightly pointed out, I mean, if people are going to come to my clinic and they're going to want this scan or they want this MRI or whatever, then that's an indication of need.
But of course, government bureaucrats have an entirely different definition of need.
I wonder if you can talk about their reasoning behind that.
Yeah, that's right.
I mean, when private citizens want to invest in innovative or quality healthcare services, the last thing the government should be doing is stopping them.
What the government is interested in doing is in protecting the services that are available in the community.
So this is just pure protectionist legislation that is, in effect, a government permission slip to compete with existing healthcare providers in the community.
It protects the large hospitals and incumbent providers against Those people who would like to start up new medical facilities or purchase new equipment and improve the services in the community.
Now, if I understand this correctly, this came out of the 60s when governments wanted to limit healthcare costs.
This, of course, is not a new debate in any Western society.
Governments wanted to control healthcare costs, and so when hospitals that were funded by the state wanted to invest in expansion or new equipment, they had to show that it was necessary because they were concerned about wastage.
That's sort of where it began.
How on earth did it end up in this particular situation?
To give some of that background, you're exactly right.
It started out in the 60s and 70s.
At one point, the federal government promoted states adopting con programs and the certificate of need programs.
They did that because Medicare provided reimbursements to hospitals on a cost-plus basis.
Whatever the cost of the service was, plus some profit of margin, The federal government would pay for those services under the Medicaid program.
That encourages the use of new equipment or more expensive equipment, because whatever the hospital would spend on the equipment or the services, they would be paid for.
And so there was this need or this perceived need or attempt by the federal government to limit their costs through the Medicare program.
And so they pushed this legislation onto the states and encouraged them to adopt these certificate of need programs to reduce the number of new hospitals, to reduce expanded services, to limit the amount of innovative technological equipment used in medical facilities.
Ultimately, the federal government looked at this and realized that it was not working.
It was basically anti-competitive and protectionist and reducing the quality of medical services.
It withdrew its support.
There was an FTC project or a program in the 2004 that produced a report showing that these laws are just wholly protectionist and anti-competitive.
So the federal government would do their support, but lobbying in the states kept them going.
So in 36 states, there continue these projects, or these con programs, certificate of need programs, so that it's illegal to open certain kinds of medical facilities, to have certain types of equipment, including, as you say, MRI machines, without special government permission.
And the protectionist angle and the lobbying that keeps those protections in place for incumbent providers is what is driving these things to continue.
Some states, including Virginia, really get into even the most minute purchases of relatively inexpensive purchases of medical equipment.
So an MRI machine, for instance, you just can't put one in a medical facility in Virginia without special permission.
Right.
So if I'm in Virginia and I want to, I'm a doctor, I want to open a private clinic, which throughout most of the civilized world you can do.
I think you can probably even do it in Syria.
But throughout most of the civilized world you just, you hang out your shingle and you wait for your customers.
But you have to apply for special permission.
You have to go through, I think you said, a multi-year, multi-hundred thousand dollar and with no guarantee that it will be approved.
I mean, it truly is Orwellian.
I mean, you go through all of this and there are no objective standards by which you know whether you're going to get approval or not.
Is that right?
It's ambiguous.
It's expensive.
It's time-consuming.
And what's remarkable and what demonstrates the protectionist side of this is that the state of Virginia and in the 36 other states that have these laws, the state doesn't care that you're providing these services.
In other words, we have Virginia licensed radiologists providing MRI services in the facilities that would like to open.
The problem is the state doesn't want you working for themselves and competing against existing facilities.
If they went to work for a hospital to provide these very same services, it would be lawful.
If they want to hang out their own shingle, open a competing service, it's unlawful.
And it could take years to get through the process.
Dr.
Bommel, one of our clients in this case, spent nearly five years and $175,000 trying to get a license and was denied.
And this is one of the things that drives him to sue the state.
And of course, this creates entrenched special interest rent seekers who gain this monopoly or quasi-monopoly benefit.
And it also drives down the wages of doctors there because if you have to go and work for someone, then there's an excess of people applying for those jobs, which is going to drive down the wages.
So do you think that there's been any flight of medical expertise from Virginia or from the states that have these kinds of draconian measures in place?
Well, if you're in...
If you're in the state and you're practicing, you may very well be protected by these laws.
The problem is that interstate commerce problem.
The problem is the doctors who are out of state.
So, for instance, one of our clients has successful radiology facilities in Delaware, is expanding to New Jersey, would like to bring services to Virginia and expand the options for patients here, but can't.
So, it's not a matter of flight, but good doctors who have innovative treatments are kept out of the state by these laws.
Right.
And I would imagine that people who know about these laws, they may choose where they go to practice based upon these.
Although, as you say, there's 36 states that have these kinds of laws.
What kind of lobbying efforts are being put into place by the people who are currently, and I would completely argue, morally unjustly benefiting from these regulations?
What kind of lobbying efforts are they putting in to fight this and any kind of liberalization of this market?
Well, there are certainly lobbyists at the state level, but more typically where you see the action by the incumbent.
Who are protected by these laws are at the local level.
So, if one is trying to say open a radiology facility, put an MRI machine into a community in Northern Virginia, you apply the state for your license to get that.
As part of that process, the incumbent providers are actually invited into the process to opine on whether or not a new competitor will hurt their business.
And it comes down to, in essence, full-blown litigation over this question.
And so the lobbying really comes down to them getting consultants and lawyers and reports to demonstrate that they cannot have a competitor in their region, and by that means they can keep the competitor out and they can keep their market protected.
These con programs are really government permission slips to the new doctors to compete, but they amount to certificates of monopoly for favor of established businesses who have those resources who can put the consultants and the lawyers to work at the local level and I can't imagine this is the first time this has been challenged.
What's going on with other states and what is the legal precedent that you're hoping will ratchet this to the just side of the fence?
Well, our lawsuit has several sides to it.
These laws abridge the doctors that we represent their right to earn an honest living, to open their own shingle, to have their own independent practice.
That's a violation of the United States Constitution.
We hope to establish that precedent, that they have a right to earn the honest living, to provide their services where there are willing patients who would like and can access their services.
Secondly, there's an Interstate Commerce Clause problem.
The United States Constitution Interstate Commerce Clause It creates a national market for healthcare services.
It creates a free market across the entire nation.
States are not allowed to erect barriers to that market to protect local interests at the expense of the interstate market.
And that's exactly what happens here.
You have doctors who are successful out of state who would like to enter our state to provide services.
You have medical equipment manufacturers who would like to sell into the state and provide innovative technology for medical services.
They're prevented from doing so.
We'd like to get a precedent to demonstrate that these con laws in Virginia and perhaps in other states violate the Commerce Clause protections of the United States Constitution and abridge the right to earn an honest living of these doctors who would like to provide services to willing patients.
Yeah, healthcare is one of these funny things, of course, because when you're healthy, you really don't care about healthcare that much.
And when you're sick, you only just care about getting better and you don't have a lot of stomach for a big fight.
And that's one of the reasons why expansion to state power into healthcare happens so frequently.
Now, do you have any numbers or comparisons between states that don't have these kinds of restrictions and states that do?
Have you got any quantifiable numbers about any difference in patient cost or care or availability?
Well, one thing that's clear is that in the states that have the con laws, the executives of the established hospitals earn substantially more.
So one study shows that the executives of the established incumbent providers in con law states are able to extract roughly $90,000 additional wages and additional salaries compared to executives in non-con It demonstrates that there are,
as you said earlier, these rents that you can extract from the laws that wages go up for the incumbent providers by protecting and keeping out the upstarts and the innovative people who might come into their markets.
And the moment you get these kinds of aggressive incursions into the free market, you end up with an imbalance of resources and requirements.
So, for sure, it seemed to me inevitable that there would not be enough equipment, there would not be enough service provider, because any time there's a barrier to entry, you end up creating shortages.
It comes down to what is the patient available, what is available to the patient, and the basic right that you should have.
As a human being, to be able to choose your healthcare provider, and this violation is so fundamental, and until you get sick, it's really hard, I think, to understand just how fundamental a violation this is.
Absolutely.
The results are predictable.
There's going to be fewer choices and higher prices for patients, bigger paychecks, maybe profits for established businesses.
And I think one of our clients, Colon Health Centers of America, demonstrates the lack of innovation.
So what they provide is a virtual colonoscopy For people who might not get screened for colon cancer using traditional methods because it's uncomfortable.
People have a lot of fear around it.
All right.
Sorry.
On the colon note, if you can hang on, we've got to take a break.
We're going to come back and talk about outright theft or acid forfeiture right after the break.
Thanks, Larry.
Nine out of ten historians agree.
If Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine were alive today, both would be Schiff Radio premium members.
Somewhere up there, Thomas Jefferson is looking now with great pride.
Schiff Radio continues right now.
Alright, we are back on the line with Larry Salzman.
Just to switch gears a little, Larry, you're also involved in a process of asset forfeiture.
Asset forfeiture, for those who don't know, is, correct me if I'm wrong, if you are even suspected of having property that's been used in a crime, that property can be taken and sold and the profits go to the police.
And you are working with a couple whose hotel or motel is under this kind of process.
Is that right?
That's right, Stephanie.
The Institute for Justice represents the Caswell family in Tewksbury, Massachusetts.
And you have it right.
Civil asset forfeit laws allow the government, both federal and state government, to take property that was involved in a crime.
And most people probably assume that that means it can take property that somehow is the fruit of a crime or And it's a fundamental violation of innocent until proven guilty because in order to recover your property, you have to engage in lengthy, expensive legal action at a time when your property has been taken and you're probably kind of broke as a result.
That's true.
The Caswells own a motel in Tewksbury.
It's been in Russell Caswell's family for more than 60 years.
It was built by his father.
They are totally innocent owners who've done everything reasonable and everything the government has ever asked, the local government has ever asked, particularly to keep crime away from their property over the years.
And rather than help the Caswells keep crime...
This is a rough neighborhood.
Rather than help the Caswells keep crime off of their property...
They're really making them a scapegoat in the neighborhood and seeking to take their property.
And this financial incentive, it's really a perverse financial incentive that the agency seizing the property will get to keep the money when the property is sold off.
And it encourages an abuse of the kind you're seeing in the Caswell case.
Yeah, like in this example, they could sell the hotel for a million and a half and they give up to 80% of that to the police department whose budget is five and a half million.
That's a significant amount of money.
And of course, what's so horrifying about this is that The Caswells have never been asked by the police to do more than they're doing.
As you've pointed out, they voluntarily installed security cameras, they photocopy customers' IDs, they record their license plates, and turn that information over to the police.
So they have been more than cooperative, they've gone above and beyond what is required as far as I understand it, and yet they're still considered to be somehow responsible for 30 incidents, even if we assume that that's true, 30 incidents since 1994, or as you point out, less than five one-hundredth of one percent Of the 125,000 rooms that they've rented over 6,700 days, it just seems to me I'm not sure how this would be distinguishable from organized crime coming to just take your stuff.
Yeah, and the point you make is really one of the outrageous points here.
For more than the 10 years that the federal suit, it's the federal government that has launched the forfeiture action.
Over the ten years that they've identified in their complaint roughly ten crimes that occurred at the property that they claim subjected to forfeiture, the local police have always cooperated with the Caswell family.
So the Caswells have done all those things that you indicated and more.
They are often the ones that call the police when there's trouble at the motel.
They don't want this crime at their motel.
Russ and his wife Patricia live right next door of the motel.
This isn't like some slum where somebody's an absentee owner.
They live right next door with a past 91-year-old mother with their granddaughter, and they do everything possible to keep the crime off of this motel, have always cooperated with the police to do that.
The first they heard about the seizure is, after decades of cooperation in a difficult neighborhood with the police to keep crime off the property, the federal government serves them with papers telling them that they're going to lose the property through civil asset forfeiture.
And how successful are police departments with this kind of action in the past?
How successful have they been?
Well, unfortunately, very successful.
Civil asset forfeiture is a growing problem.
This financial incentive was put into law in 1994.
Federal law changed so that when the federal government and when they team up with local governments, they can share the funds with the local government, they get to keep the money that they see.
That began in 1984.
There was about $100 million in forfeitures that occurred that year.
Last year it was more than $1.5 billion.
So it's a growth industry for the agencies that benefit from this.
And it really is a win-lose.
I mean, I remember hearing of a case where a guy had a private plane and flew passengers.
It turns out that one of those passengers had hidden drugs.
The man had no knowledge.
His plane was seized.
His entire livelihood was seized.
And this creates a kind of paranoia and mistrust, of course, among citizens because you don't know what actions, even if you have no knowledge, are going to result in the destruction of your entire livelihood.
Well, even if, as in the Caswell's case, you're entirely innocent, it does what you said earlier.
It turns the principle, the American principle, of innocent until proven guilty on its head, because once they suspect you of a crime, and once there's some evidence that a crime has occurred with your property, whether you will guilty of any wrongdoing or not, they take it first, and then it's up to you to come into court to sue them to get it back, to prove that you are innocent.
And so it certainly does raise a I think this is just another example of how the drug war is leading to a pretty fascistic extrapolation of state power, because of course these are fundamentally crimes where the only complainant is the state.
I mean the people selling the drugs aren't complaining, the people buying the drugs aren't complaining, so there's a third party who comes in With all of the weight and might of the state, and this really, really disrupts.
I mean, has there been no challenges to this kind of...
It's such a violation of common law, of any Western legal tradition.
Have there been no challenges mounted against this that have had any chance of success, or have challenges not even been mounted?
There have been challenges in the past, and really some of those challenges have whittled away at the government's power to do this to some degree.
So, believe it or not, Civilized torture has been going on since the founding of the country.
And as you say, the drug war really heightened its use.
Prohibition in the 30s heightened its use.
But by the 1990s, there was so much abuse that it got to Congress.
And they passed a reform law in 2000, which put an innocent owner Oh, so this is where we are now, is actually progress?
This is progress from the original law?
Oh, that's astounding.
This is progress from the original law, but what we need to demonstrate is that civil asset forfeiture has to go lock, stock, and barrel.
It's simply wrong to treat innocent people as guilty and require them to demonstrate that it is innocent.
It's one thing to take property innocent into a crime.
If the wrongdoer benefited from the property or bought the property with the fruits of a crime...
Sorry to drop, but there's such a clear conflict of interest that you would never be allowed to do this in any other transaction.
Listen, I'm sorry we're out of time, but listen, I want to make sure that you get information out to the listeners.
If anybody wants to help out, has expertise or donations that they want to put out, where can people go to get more information about what you're doing and help out if they want?
I would encourage them to go to our website at www.ij.org.
All right.
Well, thanks, Larry, so much.
I really appreciate the fight that you're doing.
We will be back right after the break.
We're going to take some calls.
Feel free to call in and chat.
Make no friends in the pits and you take no prisoners.
One minute you're up half a million in soybeans and the next, boom.
Your kids don't go to college and they've repossessed your pens.
Are you with me?
The revolution starts now.
Starts now.
We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it.
Turn those machines back on!
You are about to enter The Peter Schiff Show.
Show me the money!
If we lose freedom here, there's no place to escape to.
This is the last stand on earth.
The Peter Schiff Show is on.
Call in now.
855-4SHIFT. That's 855-472-4433.
I don't know when they decided that they wanted to make a virtue out of selfishness.
Your money.
Your stories.
Your freedom.
The Peter Schiff Show.
Hello, hello.
It is time for us to wish a very happy birthday to the late Keynes, who really was the cocaine peddler of economics because he was all about short-term quote solutions.
He was actually once famously asked, what happens to your policies in the long run?
And he said, in the long run, we're all dead.
And now he is, thank heavens, dead.
But his ideas live on and it is taking quite a lot of free market stakes to be driven through the vampire heart of these absolutely terrible and destructive theories.
And here to talk about them, we have Véronique de Rougie.
She is a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center and columnist for Reason Magazine.
She got her PhD in economics from the University of Paris Sorbonne and she is a crackerjack of insight about the free market.
Welcome, Véronique.
How are you?
I'm good.
How are you?
Well, thanks.
Okay.
So, the Keynesian multiplier.
I will let you talk about that because when I talk about it, I end up having to wash my mouth out with soap.
So, what do you got?
You're very nice to leave that to me.
The Canadian multiplier is this fiction by which if the government invests one dollar of your money on your behalf for its own goals, the economy will grow by more than one dollar.
Obviously, we have multiple evidence that it's not the case, whether it's The Great Depression, this recent stimulus, also economists can't even agree on the value of that multiplier by this amount by which supposedly this miracle happens.
And when you look at the economists who actually find a high value for this multiplier, you find out that the conditions that need to be there are like Nothing like what we have.
You need to have very low level of spending.
You need to have fixed exchange rates.
You need to have closed borders, not have free trade.
I mean, a lot of things which just do not even apply to us.
And this all, it seems to me, goes back to the broken window fallacy, right?
Which is the idea that if you go and spend a bunch of money, even if it's building stuff that doesn't need to be built, right?
Go dig a hole and fill it back in and the government pays $100 million for that.
You get maybe $50 million in labor costs.
Those labor costs then spend money in stores and generate a lot of flurry of economic activity.
You know, it's like that old joke about economists.
The President of the United States says, I really, really need a one-armed economist.
And somebody said, why?
And he said, well, because I need an economist who's not going to say, on the other hand.
Now, of course, on the other hand, everybody looks at the money that is spent, but they don't look at the debt and the money that is removed from the private sector.
Is it that simple, or am I missing something obvious?
No, it's actually that simple.
I mean, the government doesn't produce anything.
I mean, anything.
I mean, I tend to think that it actually destroys things.
But in the best case scenario, it doesn't produce anything.
In order to spend money, the government needs to tax people.
So that's just displacing money from one side of the economy to the other.
Or it needs to borrow money.
And at a certain level of debt, it totally displays private capital.
I mean, there's so much savings to go around.
Or it needs to print money.
And we know the effect that inflation has on our economy.
So, yes, it has a dramatic cost.
I guess maybe one of the most interesting arguments of the Keynesian theory to debunk is those who say, well, okay, the multiplier is less than one.
It's like, let's say, the government spends $1 and it will produce $0.50 of economic growth.
And they say, see, that's $0.50.
That would not have happened.
But the dollar happened.
The minus dollar and the plus $0.50.
Is math that hard to do for Keynesian economists?
Do they not have fingers that they can count?
I don't understand.
Here's the thing.
There's this worshipping at the altar of consumption.
There's this assumption that when people save money, it's actually just like if you might as well put it under your pillow.
It's not doing anything.
Or that there's actually no value whatsoever in prudence.
In people saying, you know what?
I just don't think it's wise to invest my money right now.
I'm just going to sit on it.
It's because these guys, they worship at the altar of consumption and they worship at the altar of what they call aggregate demand.
Demand is what is driving everything.
It's like if consumers spend their money, if the government spends their money, then demand will rise, and then firms will see that consumers are out and buying stuff, and firms will start hiring, investing, building plants.
And here you go, you've jumpstarted the economy.
It's measurable, right?
But I mean, if you save your money, you put your money in the bank, that's supposed to drive down interest rates and that makes it cheaper for companies to invest in growth and startups to occur.
Even if you put your money under the mattress in a sort of fixed amount of money, you've just raised the value of everyone else's money.
So you've even done the economy of benefit by putting it under your mattress.
Do they not understand capital investment and the need for interest rates to go down for companies to do that?
I mean, I don't know whether they...
I mean, I suspect they do understand, but they think it's not as important as the value of increasing aggregate demand.
The other thing is, like, I really do think that there is a really kind of...
There is a refusal to see any positive side to...
And we know how bad recessions are and how it inflicts significant pain on individuals, on companies, on an economy.
But in a sense, this is the way a country, a society, a financial system kind of purges itself from the excess of the past.
Yeah, I mean, if I'm 300 pounds, I don't think it's a really good argument to say I don't want to diet because dieting is uncomfortable.
I mean, you still need to diet because you need some weight.
It's not good for you, right?
Yeah, you may die, but this is, you know, as Keynes himself has said, you know, tomorrow we'll all be dead, so we might as well pig out now, I guess.
So, Romney said, I hesitate to go to the Republicans even for a good understanding of free market economics, but Romney recently said, if you take a trillion dollars, for instance, out of the first year of the federal budget, that would shrink GDP over 5%.
That is by definition throwing us into recession or depression.
So I'm not going to do that, of course.
What is this idea that if you cut government spending, you are shrinking the economy?
I mean, that's like saying, if I stop going into debt, I am making my finances worse.
Well, I mean, I think, I mean, there is some truth to the fact that the moment the government will stop spending money, I mean, some people whose entire business model rely on getting money from the government.
I'm thinking about all the defense contractors around, you know, in the Virginia area where I live.
It's pretty stunning.
I mean, they'll go through some serious pain and hate and And many of them will actually disappear.
But there's a total, utter confusion between the value created by this type of production versus what actually happens when you actually let people spend their own money, when you actually let people invest where they think it's the most productive rather than the government deciding, hey, here is the winner.
I'm going to spend all My money, all the government's money, some of the government's money on this.
And it's also, I mean, all these models that actually predict this gigantic reduction, I mean, in economic growth, they're all based on Keynesian assumptions, which is fundamentally that if you invest, GDP will grow.
If government invests money, GDP will grow, and hence The reverse is true in these models.
If you take money away, the government will shrink.
I wish Republicans would just not use this language.
Well, I think that's very true.
Now, if you can hold on past the break, there's a number that blew my mind.
And every time I talk to you or read one of your articles, my mind gets regularly blown.
But this one came right out of my right ear and hit the wall.
And it's the dollar amount.
We'll talk about this after the break.
It's the dollar amount that each one of the stimulus jobs cost.
And it is truly an astounding figure.
We will be right back with the great Veronique de Régis.
You're now enrolling in the Peter Schiff School of Advanced Economics.
Twice the education of a Harvard MBA.
Four.
One, one hundred, sixty-eight thousand.
The cost.
All right.
We are back with Veronica Ruggie.
Okay, so there was this stimulus package, and it always struck me how government programs, they produce metaphors.
Nobody ever really looks at what they produce, with some exceptions.
Oh, we're in a depression.
Let's have stimulus.
It's like, you're down.
Here, have a coffee.
And there was, of course, when government spends a bunch of money, when it borrows and spends a bunch of money, then people get hired.
Absolutely.
No question at all.
And when I go on a spending spree and run up my credit card, I buy a lot of stuff.
And then I have to contract my spending to a greater degree later because I have to pay for the principal plus the interest of the money that I borrowed.
So it always has seemed to me that Keynesianism is about bleeding the I think the average number is $286,000 per job created.
Is that the number you're thinking about?
I got something here, which I got somewhere a little north of $4 million apiece.
This is according to the Congressional Budget Office.
Yeah, so it depends on which program you look at.
So if you look at a lot of the green energy jobs, when you look at the ratio of job created versus money spent, you get big, big numbers.
But I think also lost in this whole Debate is the fact that we call them job-created or safe.
And what really it means is, one, these are jobs, for the most part, that were not created by hiring people who were in the unemployment lines.
Because that's the Keynesian theory, is that the government will be spending money to put people back to work.
My colleague, Gary Jones, It's actually shown that roughly half of the stimulus money that actually produced, loosely, I mean, used, very loosely used the word produced, jobs were basically jobs where the company poached workers from existing jobs.
The other thing is, like, because the standard for, the guidelines for Jobs created with stimulus money were very, very loose.
It allowed for pay increases, for instance, and bonuses.
So I think all of these numbers, no matter how scary they are, it's even worse when you think of the fact that for most of these jobs, these guys were employed.
So basically, you basically saved a private businessman from actually using his own money to pay his workers and instead asked Wretched.
Now, to shift gears a little bit, it seems to me that there's a sort of looming, we always talk about class wars and so on, but it seems to me that there's kind of a looming intergenerational conflict that's coming up as we get, what, 10,000 boomers a day retiring just in the United States.
Let's talk a little bit about what's happening between the old and the young demographically, and in particular through income redistribution at the moment.
Well, so what's happening is, I've said that I have actually thought a better cause for Occupy Wall Street is that they should be occupying AARP. Because right now, 37% of our budget is spent on seniors.
And that's through two programs, Social Security and Medicare.
And under the best economic situation and projection, By 2030, 50% of our budget will be spent on seniors.
That's in the best case scenario.
And because of the way these programs are funded, basically what you have is a gigantic transfer of wealth from the relatively young people in society and relatively poor, because when you're at the beginning of your life, you have lots of debt and you don't make that much money, They transfer money from this category of Americans to the relatively old and relatively wealthy member of society.
So it's a total scam.
Yeah, and a lot of people don't really understand that there's no money in the social system.
There's IOUs.
There's no money.
Money spent long ago.
And people say, well, I've paid into it.
But I don't really understand what that means.
Just because I put money on a roulette wheel doesn't mean that I deserve the winnings.
If I lose my money, if the government spends my money, and it's been evident for many years that the government has blown all this money, then you gave your money to an untrustworthy entity and they blew your money.
That's terrible, but it's not the fault of the young.
No, and we have Reagan and Greenspan to thank for this, because the creation of their trust fund dates to 1983, and the idea was to collect more payroll taxes in each given year and channel it through these trust funds,
which by law have to invest that extra payroll tax into treasuries, so that basically, by design, The federal government is spending this extra taxes.
So it means that for the last two years, where we've entered a permanent cash flow deficit, not only are young people, younger people, like active workers in America, paying payroll taxes today to pay for benefits today,
but on top of that, the government, in order to complete, to pay all the benefits, has to borrow money With all the implication that you and I have talked about earlier on.
Right, right.
Now, it seems to me that this would have something to do with what's going on over in Europe, which has an even more catastrophic demographic than North America, the very low birth rate, particularly in the Mediterranean countries.
Does this have something to do with what's going on over in Europe?
Are investors looking at the European situation and saying, well, this is ridiculously unsustainable?
Well, I mean, beyond what investors are doing, I mean, this assistance in Europe and in America is completely unsustainable.
I mean, Europeans are like, I mean, it's ridiculously more unsustainable because, I mean, they have things like, I mean, in Greece you can retire at 50 with really lavish pensions.
Even in France, when they reduced the retirement age to 60, which is, I mean, it's nuts.
And public workers, they retire at 50, 55 at worst.
And their pensions are like quite...
So, I mean, their system is like way worse than ours.
And in and of itself, it is unsustainable.
Investors are like, no, we're not going to lend you more money or we're going to lend it to you at a very high rate because from what we see, there's not enough economic growth to be paid back.
No, the fantasy that they can grow their way out of these deficits is lunatic.
And anybody who decides to tie their economic future to Greece and to Spain, Greece in 1908 was already kicked out of a monetary union.
Spain's had economic troubles ever since 1492.
It's like trying to do a slow waltz with a malfunctioning robot being hit by a taser while on the last sleeping deck of the Titanic when a meteor hits the top.
I mean, it's just a crazy situation.
And Germany and all of the other countries who tied themselves to these spendthrift lunatics are now paying the price.
Yes, I mean, but within the government, I mean, it produces this fiction.
This fiction that you can actually borrow and borrow and borrow and spend way more than you can collect in taxes and never pay any price for it, that you can actually give a right to a life.
I was on C-SPAN on Sunday and one of the caller Coleman, he was like, well, we deserve a life after work.
Basically, he wanted to retire at 50 and I was like, dude, all the more power to you.
Save for it.
You're right.
I mean, at a time when lifespan is increasing to lower the retirement age, I mean, it's all completely mental.
Listen, I'm so sorry.
We do have to break for a commercial.
Just give us a website or contact information.
I highly recommend.
You've got great articles.
You're a great speaker and if people want to contact you or read your stuff, where can they go?
So, my stuff is on Mercatus.org website, and you can follow me on Twitter at...
10.
...which is V-E-R-O... Hold on.
V-E-R-O... Five.
Four.
I'm going to give it to, after the break, just to email it to me.
Thanks a lot, Veronique.
Always a pleasure and talk to you soon.
All right.
We are going to have a Peter Schiff show exclusive, a surprise guest interview.
We're just attempting to get him on the line.
I just wanted to mention, sorry, we had to cut off Veronique.
You can Twitter handle her at V-E-R-O-D-E-R-U-G-Y. It's tough, you know, it's a French name, so I know that people have some exciting times trying to pronounce my name.
So, we have a special surprise guest interview quite excited, Brian Seaman from a super PAC in Florida.
Brian, are you with us?
I sure am.
Thank you for having me on.
It's my pleasure, my pleasure.
So, I will let you tell the dastardly tale of what is happening with the Republican National Committee Festival.
Okay, let me start from the beginning.
We are trying to organize a festival down in Tampa, Florida for the 24th, 25th, and 26th called Paul Festival.
And this will take place days before the RNC is scheduled to start.
And so what happens is that the Republican National Committee, they have gone out and two years prior to having this convention here, they already knew they were going to have it in Tampa.
They went out and secured all the major venues in the area.
And it's actually a common practice with these big political parties.
I'm not sure if most people know that or not.
But what they do is they sign contracts with all the big venues.
And the concept there is to, you know, allow them choices of the venues they want for events that they need.
And, of course, give them the option of approving or not approving events they don't think they want around their convention at the time.
So back in February, we started the process of securing the Florida State Fairgrounds.
For our event and what the Florida State Fairgrounds told us to do was to go to a website that the RNC has up and we put in an application for approval.
We did that right about the end of February, beginning of March.
We put that in.
Come May, the RNC told the fairgrounds that they can start negotiating with us and the fairgrounds did start that negotiations with us so we could have the event On June 1st, there was supposed to be an announcement of releases of events, and come June 1st, our event has not been released.
We still have not been approved to use the fairgrounds from the RNC. And this is not because the RNC has some other use that they have planned for it, is that right?
I mean, because they have first dibs, right?
They sort of state the claim, so to speak.
They have first dibs, but they said to you, we're not going to use it, go ahead, and now they're not releasing it.
Is that right?
That's correct.
That's exactly what's happening.
Do they think that you're Democrats?
The same team!
Tell me what the reason.
Do they just consider Ron Paul to be the crazy uncle with his conspiracy theories and the Fed and gold standards that they just don't want him at the table?
Or what do you think is going on?
You know, I think that has to be the case.
Because when you look at around the country and what the GOP has done to Ron Paul and his supporters up in Maine and in other states as far as not counting votes, as far as trying to change the rules, I'm in the middle of a convention to select delegates.
When you look at it from that point of view, I think it's no doubt that the GOP does not want Ron Paul and his supporters part of this, which strikes all of us as odd.
From my point of view, I've been a registered Republican for 16 years now.
So they're kind of – I voted – and I hate to say this, but I voted for George Bush back in the first election.
Yeah, yeah.
I know.
I learned since then.
I'm standing indoors so the righteous lightning libertarian thunder gods don't send a bolt through your head.
So good.
Just stay in.
Don't touch any water.
Exactly.
But the point is, you know, almost everybody on our organizational team is Republicans as well and have been for a very long time.
And so, yeah, this is a Republican event.
It's not just Ron Paul who's invited.
Obviously, we're going to invite Rand Paul.
There's going to be some other congressmen and other Republicans out there that are on our list.
To extend invitations to once we have the venue secured.
So from our point of view, it does seem like we're not being approved because this is a Ron Paul event.
They did already approve a location for Sarah Palin's event, whatever she's putting on.
I haven't looked into the details, but obviously they released an event for her, a location for her.
So this is obviously some picking and choosing.
The RNC itself and the The organization that handles this, which is called the Committee on Arrangements with the RNC, they're very vague.
They're very one-worded answers, and what we get from them is, we have hundreds of applications to go through.
We'll get to yours when we can.
Right, right, right.
Yeah, because they want a farmer's market there, and how on earth would they be able to differentiate that between...
Also, feel free to give me a call.
I do a live version of Baby Got Butt.
I don't know if that's going to fit your venue, but...
So, I'm going to try and sort of get into the Republicans' head, and this is not something I like to do on a regular basis because it does involve a fair amount of sand scrubbing and detox afterwards.
I don't blame you.
But my guess would be, and tell me if this fits with your thinking, my guess would be that they don't consider there to be a lot of bleed over, right?
So, you know what happens in all of these campaigns is that, you know, they're all jockeying for the front position and they all put each other down, right?
And then the moment that somebody becomes like a clear contender like Mitt Romney is now, everyone's like, Love that guy.
He's the best guy ever.
I can't believe there were people who ever spoke wrongly of him.
I had a personality disorder.
I have an evil twin who speaks badly of this guy.
But I don't think that there's going to be that same switch from the Ron Paul supporters.
Like the Ron Paul supporters in general, and you know this much better than I do, but my impression is the Ron Paul supporters aren't going to go, oh, Ron Paul isn't in?
Okay, I'll go with Mitt Romney.
So I don't think that they feel that there is a bleed-over effect, in which case it may not be as valuable to them.
It may even be a negative compared to other things that they could throw in there.
Does that make any sense to you?
It does, but I would think that they would have the feeling also that Mitt Romney can't win without the Ron Paul supporters either.
So to take on the assumption that there's going to be no bleed over or that we won't support Romney, it might be a good assumption.
I can't speak for everybody in the movement.
Do you think that Romney can get Ron Paul supporters, given that he's dedicated to socialized medicine, at least from his home state?
He's dedicated to increasing The military spend and is bellicose towards other nations.
Do you think that he would have to make so many compromises to get the Ron Paul supporters that he would just alienate other less consistent, let's say, base within his party?
You know, once again, not speaking for everybody else out there that's a Ron Paul supporter, I'm not sure how to answer that question and I hate to speculate.
I do know that if you, you know, I do believe that if you're a political party and, you know, they really think that they want Romney to When and beat out Obama, if the theory is a Republican office is better than a Democrat and Obama in office, then it seems to me they shouldn't speculate or make these assumptions.
They should reach out to us and work with us, that they should come and say, hey, how do we make sure that you help us beat Obama in the general election?
And they're not doing that.
What they're doing is exactly what you said.
Well, we don't believe there's going to be any bleed over.
We think you Ron Paul supporters are going to go away.
If Romney gets the nomination, so we don't want you anyway.
But wouldn't they follow Ron Paul's lead on that?
Do you think that he will endorse any other candidates?
You know, I think they should follow Ron Paul's lead on a lot of stuff that they don't seem to follow his lead on, like auditing the Federal Reserve and sound money, things like that.
But he has endorsed other Republican candidates, and of course some of them have won their primaries in those states where he's endorsed them.
And, you know, Ron Paul has also raised money in state Republican parties for the The party itself.
So it's not like Ron Paul is out there trying to actively destroy the Republican Party, and neither are his supporters.
We're out there trying to obviously change the Republican Party, bring it back to what its platform used to be, which was less government.
So, you know, I think, and Ron Paul's, of course, objective is to get people involved in the process.
You can't affect change without being involved.
And, you know, you would think that the RNC would take some recognition to that and understand what we're doing.
I hate to use the word censorship because that is a very powerful word and I wouldn't want it confused with legal incursions against freedom of speech.
But there is a definite element of squelching, an element of its own party.
This is not a competing party.
This is not a neutral party.
This is all under the same big tent.
And they are basically not allowing A very successful, legitimate Republican candidate to hold a venue at the Republican National Convention.
Is this not just frankly scandalous?
I believe it is.
I truly do.
And you know, if we reverse this or rewind and go back to when George Bush was running, if he were able to bring in as many Democrats and as many independents over to the Republican Party as Ron Paul has, they would embrace him with open arms.
But for some reason, because it's Ron Paul doing it, and he's getting all these people to come in and become Republicans, they seem to reject it.
And it's kind of the antithesis of what you would think a party would want.
I mean, you'd think that they would want to take voters away from the Democrats.
Aren't Republicans continually and constantly complaining about bias in the liberal media?
And the fact that they don't get venues, that they don't get the opportunity to speak their plans, their calls to action, their platform, And now, aren't they doing exactly what they criticize the mainstream media for doing, which is to squelch and ignore, in a very underhanded manner, a legitimate expression of a political philosophy.
That is part of their political platform and part of their party.
I think that's exactly what they're doing.
And what the problem is, is I don't think many of us completely understand why.
And when I say many of us, I think the people inside the Ron Paul movement really do understand it.
I think it's the The Republican voters out there who just vote Republican because they've done it all their life and they don't care who's on the ballot.
They just believe it's better than a Democrat.
So I think there's now two factions of the Republican Party, those who are in the know and those who don't know.
They just kind of blindly follow the Republican Party and its leadership.
And I think the Republican Party is leaning on the blind followers and rejecting those that are in the know.
And I don't know why that because we're in the know, we scare them.
I think that that would be helpful to them.
And, you know, we're obviously building a coalition here of very strong, active political people.
You would think a party like the Republican Party would want that, especially if they really feel like they are competing with the Democrats.
Well, assuming that they're interested in principles, not power, I would agree with you.
I mean, it sort of popped into my mind.
This would be a perfect Daily Show bit, right?
You know, you call up the Republican convention.
We want to use your fairground.
Okay, are you Republicans?
Yes.
Are you consistent with our philosophy?
Yes.
Then no.
Yes, if you're Republicans.
No, if you're actually consistent with our political philosophy of smaller government.
Then we can't conceivably allow that.
And of course, this doesn't help break the stereotype that Republicans are old white guys who are scared of the young, particularly people who might have differently colored hairstyles.
Thank you so much.
You can go to paulfestival.org for more on this.
Try and put the pressure on.
and we will be back very shortly.
If knowledge is power, then the Peter Schiff Show is a uranium-enriched 10,000-megawatt nuclear reactor.
Stay plugged in.
Stay brilliant.
This is the Peter Schiff Show.
All right, all right, everybody.
How are you doing?
I hope you're doing well.
We are cruising into the final segment.
Please feel free to call into the show.
I'm happy to take a call before we end up.
I wanted to talk a little bit.
I was hoping to get into this a bit more with Veronique, but we got a little sidetracked, as I so often am by shiny things and the lint between my toes.
But Europe is, I think, of course, where a lot of people's financial attention is focused at the moment and rightly so.
And there is, of course, a panic.
And in broad terms, right?
And I really think that the high view, the view from orbit is really, really important.
Because when you're really up close to things, you can't see.
The detail of economics is like pointillism.
If you're up close, it just looks like a bunch of dots.
You got to move back to see the bigger shape.
Of course, what happened in Europe for the most part was you had really spendthrift economies and you have relatively better economies.
Germany is still riding the wave of free market reforms that occurred after the Second World War.
And one of the reasons that Germany is skeptical about bailing out Greece is, remember, 23 years ago, Germany poured $2 trillion or more into Eastern Germany right after the fall of the Soviet Empire.
And what did they get?
Little benefit here and there and a massive debt.
And so this is what voters are working with in Germany.
They saw pouring all of this money into East Germany to almost no benefit.
And then they're already jealous of the Greeks for their climate.
Are they really going to send them a whole lot of productivity as well?
All right, we've got a caller back from New Jersey.
What is your question, my friend?
Hey, how are you?
It's a pleasure being here with you.
Go ahead.
I wanted to ask you, what exactly, if somebody could explain to me, the libertarian position on the RICO statutes?
As we all know, the RICO statutes were designed to go after the heads of the families of La Casa Nostra, to take out the heads of the families that gave orders to people to kill people.
Is it the libertarian position that that is necessarily unconstitutional, that you can't hold somebody responsible for giving orders to kill somebody?
You can only hold that individual responsible for killing somebody.
Is it a violation of the First Amendment, or Is it unconstitutional on other grounds?
What is the libertarian, or more specifically, what is your take?
Yeah, yeah, me, I try not to speak.
I often don't even speak for myself, so I don't want to speak for others.
Okay, so look, the question is, those who give orders versus those who execute.
Well, the first place that I go in my mind is to the Nuremberg Trials after the Second World War.
Of course, as you know, the Nuremberg trials were the trials of the Nazi leaders after the end of the Second World War.
And during the Nuremberg trials, the precedent was put forward very clearly and very repetitively that being on the receiving end of the orders was not a moral crime.
But giving the orders was the moral crime, and it was the leaders who were criminalized, not the soldiers.
Now, I understand it's a little bit different when you're in war versus just being in peacetime, but the idea that whoever starts the ball rolling is...
The most morally responsible for it.
So, for instance, if I pay someone to go kill someone, well, I'm actually causal in that.
I'm only speaking morally, I'm not speaking legally, that's out of my sphere of expertise, but if I pay someone 10,000 bucks to go hit and to go whack someone, I don't know if that's how much it costs, but let's say, then I'm actually causing that death because that death would not have occurred if I did not give that person 10,000 dollars.
Now, the person who kills, they're the killer and they're morally responsible too, but I'm actually the causal agent in that.
There's an interesting thing that happens in the law.
This is actually a legal case in the US. Guy went to rob a convenience store and the cashier shot at him to prevent him from stealing and the bullet ricocheted and killed another customer in the store.
It was the robber who was charged with murder, although the robber did not pull the trigger because the robber set into motion the events which resulted in the death.
I think of course that if you order a hit and you pay the person to do the hit and you know that person is going to, then it is your words.
Now, that, of course, has vastly changed when you look at the use of torture that was authorized by high levels of the US government.
Then, of course, now that they were in power and not prosecuting the Nazis, they went after the people at the bottom rather than give the course of responsibility to the people at the top.
But of course, you wouldn't need any of this stuff if you didn't have a war on drugs, if you didn't have a war on prostitution and gambling and all of these other things which are consensual, if sometimes distasteful, you wouldn't need any of this stuff.
It's just another example of one government program called the War Against Drugs leading to another government program called RICO. Does that make any sense?
It doesn't make any sense.
The only question I would ask is that in the Nuremberg trial, I would assume that the reason that we were going after the leaders and not actually the people carrying out the deeds is because, you know, as soldiers who thought that they were legitimately following the rules of the state, the military leaders were supposed to be run by civilian leadership,
as most people are, as most governments are, whether they'd be civilian leadership I agree with you, which is why they didn't prosecute the foot soldiers of the Nazis, but you would prosecute a foot soldier of the Costa Nostra.
I agree with you, there's a difference, but the point I was trying to make is that it's the leadership that instigate the immorality that is considered to be That is considered to be morally at fault.
I think you go after them both.
I think morally that would be the right thing to do.
Sorry, we've got to move on.
We've got another caller from Jacob.
Are you on the line?
Yes.
Sorry, you had a question?
Yes.
I wanted to ask what you think about violent video games.
Frankly, they're a lot of fun.
I'm a very peaceful person.
I've never been in a fistfight.
I barely ever yell at anyone.
I think they can be a lot of fun.
I think they can be a fairly harmless release of fun tensions and so on.
I played a game before I became a dad.
When I actually had some time, I played a game called Unreal Tournament, which was quite a lot of fun.
You're shooting at robots with ridiculously explosive weapons, so it's not particularly realistic.
I think they're fine, but because we have the capacity to differentiate between fantasy and reality, and I don't think that there's much of a link between that.
But I have heard studies, I have not read them in any great detail, I just put that out there for people who want to take this further, that it's not so great for kids.
Because of course your brain is still developing, your moral sense, your empathy and all of this is still developing and children have less of a capacity to differentiate between reality and fantasy.
I've heard studies that say that the link between violent games and violent media for children and violence in children is about the same if not more than the link between smoking and lung cancer.
So I think that it is an adult pleasure.
I think that they can be a little bit addictive.
You have to watch your time sync with those things.
And certainly for the young, they're playing like, what, 12, 13, 14 hours of video games a week.
That's quite a lot.
So, you know, in moderation with good self-knowledge and not, I think, so appropriate for the children.
That would be my particular approach.
I hope that makes some kind of sense.
So with that, and thank you so much for the callers.
I'm sorry, sorry that we didn't have more time for callers.
I love, love the callers, particularly on this show.
You guys always have fantastic questions and insights and comments.
So I will actually be back, I think, on Thursday, and we will have a show more dedicated to your thoughts, your ideas, and my occasional brackets of hopefully somewhat utilitarian wisdom.
But that's about it for us today.
Thank you to the team for putting together such a great show.
Thank you to the guests and thank you so much to the callers.
This is Stefan Molyneux for The Peter Schiff Show.
