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Jan. 16, 2014 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
34:47
2587 Dyslexics of the World - Untie! A Conversation with Jeffrey Tucker and Alexander McCobin

Stefan Molyneux speaks with Jeffrey Tucker and Alexander McCobin about the road forward in the midst of a failing state and the rise of libertarianism.

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Hi everybody, Stefan Molyneux from Freedom Main Radio.
It's time for the dynamic trio.
Oh, that doesn't work very well.
Anyway, myself, Jeffrey Tucker, and one of the head honchos at the youth cult known as the International Students for Liberty, Alexander McCobin, thank you guys so much for taking the time to chat today.
It's really cool to be invited.
Thank you for having us.
Jeff, you just got back from Washington and it's a trip I always enjoy.
What I really dislike is the libertarian hazmat suit, lice eradicating, biotoxic scrub down that has to happen after you go directly into the belly of the beast.
But you were mentioning in the pre-show chat box about how it seems to have changed since the last time you were there.
I mean, other than more evil, there are other things.
No, it was absolutely extraordinary.
Because I had lived in Washington, you know, in the late 1980s.
And to the extent that libertarianism existed, it was kind of intellectually insecure, always sort of being buffeted left and right.
It was an older movement.
It wasn't very well-educated, not very sophisticated.
It certainly wasn't very big.
Now everything is just complete.
It wasn't very sophisticated, either politically or intellectually or otherwise.
And it certainly didn't constitute a social network in any sense.
I don't know what.
It's a combination of, like, Students for Liberty and many other organizations within Capitol Hill, but also social networks and the ubiquity of information.
Everything's changed.
It seemed much more sophisticated this time and much more fun, a younger crowd.
More intellectually self-conscious and dedicated, and actually I have to say more radical, and also more civil.
I mean, so it's like a movement that's sort of grown up in some way.
And I was so impressed because we had this Liberty on the Rocks thing, you know, Thursday night after I'd done a day long of speeches to some really cool young libertarians and stuff.
And that was just a blast because we were all hanging out at this bar and just so many interesting conversations.
People, the young libertarians now, have a real sense of confidence and hope about the future.
This is not a dreary crowd, I can tell you.
Everybody's feeling really confident and upbeat, you know, about everything.
And I'm excited, too, because we're about a month out from the International Students for Liberty Conference, which is like this global gathering of, like, mega proportions that takes place.
And that's just the event of the year, and Alexander heads it up.
Yeah, let's get the website out for people to make sure they can get there if they can.
Alexander, would you like to mention a little bit about all the glories of the Youth Fest?
I assume it's going to involve marsh pits and mud pits, simply because I'm completely out of touch with the youth, and that's my assumption.
But let's hear a little bit about the conference.
Sure.
Thank you again for having us on today, Stefan.
Before I talk about the International Students for Liberty Conference, I want to build on what Jeff just said, that I think there really has been a transformation in the libertarian movement over the past five or six years in the lifespan of Students for Liberty, not just due to the work of Students for Liberty, but a generational shift that I see going on, a second wave of libertarianism, if you will.
Whereas between the 50s and the 80s, libertarianism was primarily defined by the threat of communism and the lack of an infrastructure to support our ideas, which led to many individuals either thinking the cause was hopeless or that we needed to hide within another philosophy, say conservatism, in order to survive.
We now live in a time where communism has largely been defeated.
No one in regular society is willing to say that word in a proud way.
But we also have libertarian institutions that have allowed for individuals and more organizations to really develop.
Students for Liberty wouldn't exist if it hadn't been for the groundbreaking work of the Institute for Humane Studies or the Cato Institute as just two examples of organizations that got us to where we are now.
And we're at a point where Students for Liberty now represents over a thousand student groups in our network all over the world.
The International Students for Liberty Conference, which is taking place from February 14th to 16th in Washington, D.C., where Jeffrey and many other great speakers will be speaking.
It's just one of over 30 conferences we're running this year for over 5,000 students all over the globe.
This is one example of the growing libertarian nature of today's youth and this optimistic, more inclusive approach to libertarianism that I think the movement has really addressed before.
Sorry, Jeff, you were mentioning that social media and so on has changed a lot of that stuff.
I think that's true, but it's not harmful to have a quarter century of increasing government disasters occurring.
If you come from a tribe of smokers and then there's you and like 20 coffins, at some point you're going to question the health benefits of smoking.
And I think this is one thing that's really happened.
We're talking about the post-war period of the 50s to the 80s.
Well, that was the time when government appeared to be breaking the laws of physics, mathematics, and basic reality because it was all debt-fueled and the bills weren't coming due and the disasters weren't accruing.
And now, of course, that the bills are coming due, libertarianism gains credibility with those who function at an empirical rather than a theoretical level, which I think really helps with the traction.
But sorry, Jeff, you were going to go ahead.
There's another aspect to this that I find really interesting, and that's that there's a civility among the young libertarians that I've met today.
And not just in D.C., but, you know, I've spoken at like three or four of these regional conferences that Alexander was mentioning.
And what you see at these events is a very broad base of intellectual influence.
So you have people who are, you know, consider themselves objectivists.
You have kind of constitutionalists, you know, Jeffersonian libertarians.
You have Anarchists of all stripes, left, right, and everything in between.
You know, people influenced by just, you know, Austrian economics or people who come to the movement just for the support of basic civil liberties.
Or, you know, who are sick of the drug war, whatever it may be.
So it's a very broad-based coalition.
But what's cool about it is that everybody sort of...
Gets along, which is kind of amazing, actually.
You know, coming out of 50 years of extreme factionalism, you know, it's kind of neat to see people go, you know, why don't we just stop hating on each other and start dealing with the problem that we need to deal with, which is that we need to increase human liberty in the world and diminish the role of power.
It's funny how libertarians, that infighting among libertarians is the most lunatic of all the groups, in my opinion, because we are the one group who is not going to violently impose our will on others.
And so infighting among libertarians when surrounded by statists is completely bizarre because it's like hearing people say, well, I disagree with the way that you're not going to impose your views on me.
Those other guys who are violently going to impose their will, we'll get to them later.
But the way you're not going to impose your views on me is utterly ugly.
It's unacceptable.
And it's like, uh, can we just get back to some principles here?
Anyway.
Well, I think it's really sweet, too.
I mean, even at the Students for Liberty conferences that I've spoken at, I mean, it's been fun for me because, you know, I'm something of a radical, even within libertarian But not even once has anybody said, you know, we'll say this, don't say that.
You know, I've been able to introduce ideas.
Half the people there might, you know, find them objectionable or slightly not quite right or whatever.
But everybody's been interested in what I've had to say.
I mean, there's been a real sort of an atmosphere of liberality within young libertarianism today.
There's not that sort of dogmatic severity of the past that I remember so well.
Well, I mean, like a stock price gets more stable the more people invest in it, and a movement generally becomes more stable the more people become interested in it because it is no longer just attracting people already outside of...
I think part of the problem for libertarianism in the past was this desire to purge anyone who wasn't pure libertarian according to a certain interpretation of what that meant, which led to different factions, whether it's the objectivists or fans of Mises or otherwise, simply saying that they didn't want to even speak with the other side of the group and focus on the 5% difference instead of the 95% that we have in common.
Combine that with an interpretation that if you don't agree with my strategy for effecting social change, you don't agree with the end goal that I'm trying to achieve, and you have this incredible division within the movement over what's going on, and it actually excluded a lot of people from even becoming libertarian because some of the strategies that were adopted that some people who were prominent in the libertarian movement at the time were taking on really weren't Supposed to turn certain people away.
It was to keep individuals out of the movement instead of being inclusive.
One of the reasons I think Students for Liberty has grown so much over the past few years is that we have really emphasized the classical liberal principle of toleration and encourage people to respect one another, irregardless of factors such as race, sex, sexuality, and so forth, which unfortunately has been an issue in the libertarian movement in the past.
Yeah, absolutely.
You know, it's great that you're bringing that word back.
When I think about that word, the very first thing that triggers in my mind is Mises' 1929 book Liberalism, where he kind of enumerated like five core points that constitute the old liberal idea.
So it's like property rights and peace and freedom of contract association.
But tolerance is a major thing.
I mean, that was one of his subheads, like, you know, tolerance, social tolerance is right up there.
And it's very interesting.
It's like, for decades, people sort of forgot this critical principle.
But the point is this, really, and I think it was the point that Mises made in his book, was that, you know, it's no challenge to bring together A homogeneous people and cause them to be orderly and more or less kind of, you know, get along, maybe.
But the great challenge is how do you combine people that have radical differences among them, you know, whether it's race or religion or whatever the thing may be.
That's where liberty really begins to work its magic and brings people together in mutually beneficial associations.
And so liberty both requires and promotes tolerance.
So I think it's a beautiful term, and I love that you're emphasizing that and bringing it back.
I also wanted to mention something, too.
Jeff was mentioning before the show that I'm starting to look more and more like Lennon.
Actually, what I'm aiming for is homeless Phil Collins, but I guess Lennon works as well.
I have actually been working on a Lennon imitation, so I would just like to get you a review of it.
So you have to, of course, imagine me with a little bare-skin hat on, on top, in a black-and-white photo, naturally, on top of a railway carriage somewhere in Vladivostok, shouting at a bunch of people.
So, ready?
Here we go.
Dyslexics of the world, untie!
I'm still working on it, but that's as far as I've gotten.
That's perfectly silly.
Sorry, back to the serious topics.
Now, Jeff, I also wanted to give you the chance to talk about the project that you're working on.
Liberty.me.
I believe you're ready to talk about that in public and openly and all that kind of stuff.
To come out as an entrepreneur, so to speak.
But what's going on with that these days?
So the idea is that I've always dreamed of this forever.
Just like a single piece of real estate where everything cool in the world could happen.
And I discovered basically this last spring that all the technologies that I ever wanted were not just available but actually affordable and doable.
And so I just couldn't resist it.
I just began to brew my mind.
I laid out a business plan, shopped it around all summer and fall, and found some investors.
And so what it does is it combines a social network very much like what you get at the International Students for Liberty Conference, except I wanted to kind of Put it online and cause it to exist in a digital space of 24-7 opportunity for people to sort of constantly engage each other.
Plus forums, but I commissioned really beautiful designs so they're not forbidding like others.
Plus a content delivery system where we're going to immediately release with 300 books so you can have a complete library there.
And classrooms, and now the classroom spaces that are available digitally are just remarkable.
I've been working with some I've got enterprise-level software providers to make classrooms that just beat anything I've ever used.
But the other thing that really frustrated me over time is that there's a lot of sort of liberty-minded writers who don't really have an outlet that they want.
I know SFL has been really good about giving outlets to students.
So I wanted to kind of take this model and make it, you know, universal and give anybody who is a member of the site a really beautiful piece of real estate where they cannot just Write without gatekeepers, but also get in front of their colleagues and friends and get comments and criticisms back and submit themselves to a commerce system, a competitive system about voting articles.
And I want to be subjected to that, too.
This is part of the main driving force.
I don't want to become lazy as a writer.
So we're combining all these elements, plus a news stream, plus constant chat, And content delivery with very much of an applied sort of focus and putting it all in one big piece of real estate.
I convinced some investors that this seemed like a good idea so now we're rolling it out and so far I've just been absolutely thrilled.
We're also working with SFL to get students We're all really going to open with a very gigantic community.
So I'm looking forward to it.
I mean, it's like the thing that I've always wanted to do, and now it's all happening.
If I screw up, then that's entirely my fault, but I think everything's going really well, and I'm really, really happy about it.
I get to watch the building take place every day.
I've got lots of people engaged in it, so it's like building our own little Sitting in the sky, really.
Yeah, it's a digital liberty vortex that will suck you in and never let you go.
And that's why I never do taglines, because that all just sounds vaguely sinister, like this greasy, hairy hand reaching out through the computer to grab you in.
But yeah, so it's liberty.me.
Will, of course, I'm helping out a little bit, and we're going to be...
Helping to promote it when it comes out.
It's really something that you should come and check out to find like-minded people, like-minded resources, and a place to check for news and arguments and ideas and experts and education.
So, yeah, I think it's a really worthwhile project and well worth checking out.
Very much of a focus on applied liberty, too.
I mean, you find this actually...
One of the things that's really been cool about going to these Students for Liberty regional conferences this fall is that there's a lot of lectures that are really about people's lives, you know?
So, you know, the good lectures on the drug war and how that affects people and the police state and, you know, what to do about that, issues of family and gay marriage, these kinds of subjects are very much integral to the new libertarianism.
So it's not just then about theory, but it's about like How does liberty actually affect your life?
If the ideas of liberty are actually wonderful and beautiful, then they should have a profound influence on the way we live.
Maybe that sounds really obvious, but it took me a couple of decades to learn this point.
I want to add this in an institution and see how it works.
Alexander, as a person who is I guess closer to the end of time than the beginning, such as us.
I wonder if I get your thoughts on something.
There was an article just came out yesterday in the Financial Times.
And it's called the tide is rising for America's libertarians.
Now, I think somebody said that there's nothing worse for movement than to be incompetently defended.
And so whenever I see mainstream articles writing about libertarianism, I always put on my Boba Fett blast shield helmet of keep my brain inside my head because it's usually pretty bad.
But I wonder if you could just give me your thoughts because he talks about young libertarians and so on.
So he talks about some plus sides and all that.
And you can do a search for this on FT.com.
It's called The Tide is Rising for America's Libertarians.
And this is the last paragraph.
We're going to get you guys' thought on it.
He says, on the minus side, libertarians have no real answer to many of America's biggest problems.
Not least the challenges posed to U.S. middle class incomes by globalization and technology.
Nor are they coherent as a force.
Libertarianism is an attitude rather than an organization.
It is also potentially fickle.
Young Americans...
I guess the group, not the song, disdain foreign entanglements that could change overnight with a big terrorist attack on the homeland.
They feel let down by Democrats and hostile to mainstream Republicans.
Yet they could flock to an exciting new figure in either party.
Theirs is a restless generation that disdains authority.
Establishment figures should take note.
Tomorrow belongs to them.
And I'll post a paragraph just so you can have a look at it in more detail in the chat window of Skype.
But what are your thoughts about those statements?
So I don't initially begin with the disdain for this.
I think it's very exciting that the Financial Times is actually recognizing the increasing libertarian nature of this generation, as a lot of other more mainstream publications are starting to do.
The British version of The Economist just a few months ago, back in May or June, ran a cover story saying that today's youth are the most classical liberal or libertarian generation ever in the UK. And this is It's something that more people are starting to recognize.
It's something that those of us involved with Students for Liberty from the beginning had known was going on.
We could see it on the ground.
And you're starting to see the media finally picking up on this.
And some individuals are expressing concern about it.
They're not sure what this is going to mean to revising the establishment as it is right now.
Other people are actually embracing it and trying to figure out what this is going to do and how to use it to their advantage.
I don't think it's a bad thing for publications to start talking about the need for the two establishment parties in the U.S. to take heed of the increasing libertarian nature of today's youth.
We need both major political parties to start to recognize they need to adopt more libertarian positions to stay in power, which will encourage them to do so.
It's Political Economy 101.
Politicians will adopt the positions it takes in order to get elected, and political parties will do the same thing.
The more we get things like this out in the media, the more we're going to see a shift towards a freer future, and I think we ought to encourage that.
It's a great sign in my mind.
What about you, Jeff?
What are your thoughts?
My mind kind of stuck on this very strange claim that somehow Globalization and technology represents a threat to middle-class incomes.
I mean, actually, globalization and technology have been the only thing that have protected middle-class incomes against the looting by other governments.
So it's exactly the opposite of what they're saying.
I do think it's interesting about the point about terrorist attacks on the homeland as having the potential to disrupt our progress towards liberty, because, of course, we've seen that again and again in my own life.
Well, I think they're saying it would challenge isolationism, as it's called, or non-interventionism.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And there's some truth to that, and it's actually really worrisome.
But, you know, I remember after 9-11.
But not for libertarians.
Because libertarians, as far as I understand it, and you can't speak for such a disparate group, but libertarians from Ron Paul onwards say that the terrorist attacks are coming from foreign entanglements, and therefore the solution to them is to disengage.
The thing is, Stefan, after 9-11, I remember feeling Like, I really thought that afternoon after those attacks, I thought, well, now people see clearly the problem with these crazy foil entanglements and the kind of effects that it has.
And Americans will for the first time actually demand, you know, that we stop this nonsense.
Well, that didn't happen.
I was, like, radically wrong in my prediction.
In fact, it went entirely the opposite direction.
Now, here we are all these years later.
The effects of that particular message of 9-11, that we need to get more involved, I think, are lessening by the day.
And I would like to think that one of the jobs that we have is to educate people about this, to prepare us for the next time that something like this happens, so we don't have this crazy reaction.
I mean, after 9-11, it was like, okay, let's nationalize the economy and impose the police state.
And destroy, you know, human liberty right here at home.
I mean, that was the worst conceivable reaction.
I want to live, I want to live to the time where something terrible like that can happen and the American people have a normal response to it, a rational response to it.
And I hope that's true next time.
And maybe it will be true.
I just don't know.
I think it's also interesting when he says libertarians have no real answers.
And I think that comes from the idea that answers must come from the state.
So answers to all human problems must come from state action, from laws, from regulations, from tariffs or tax, something like that.
It's got to come from the state.
And so when libertarians say the state is the problem, not the solution, people mistake that for having no answers.
It's like, well, if you don't want to do the state to solve a problem, then clearly you don't want the problem to be solved.
And of course, that's a complete misreading of the libertarian position.
It's Bastia's old argument that you mistake the state for society.
And if you think the government doesn't want to solve a problem, then you don't want that problem to be solved.
Oh, if you don't like welfare, you must hate the poor and want them to stay poor.
And it also bothers me in particular when he says libertarianism is an attitude.
To me, because I think libertarianism, non-aggression principle, property rights, very rigorous philosophically.
To me, this is the equivalent of saying mathematics is an attitude.
You know, it's really not.
It's really a very stringent and strict discipline.
Sorry, Alexander.
Go ahead.
Well, I actually think that criticism the author makes is on point, as it represented libertarianism in, say, the 70s, 80s, and 90s.
Libertarianism wasn't well organized.
We didn't have many institutions backing up real-world change.
It was a number of individuals articulating an academic position more than anything else.
What the author and many other mainstream individuals don't recognize is that that has changed.
We now have institutions and organizational efforts that is spearheading a new wave of libertarianism.
But when it comes to a lot of the other criticisms the author offered, I think there's actually a fundamental disconnect between why today's youth are libertarian and the ways this person points out the generation could change.
Today's youth have had our political memories informed by 9-11 as one of the first major events in our lives and the political reaction to it really defining our memories for the entire Bush generation.
After that, we experienced the 2008 financial crisis, and instead of seeing the solution being greater government intervention, today's youth are more skeptical of government intervention as well.
These kinds of events have led more young people to question the dominant narrative of the dangers of the free market and the need for state intervention in the economy and foreign affairs and everything else, and to seek alternatives.
These have actually been things that have increased the libertarian nature of today's youth.
And the fact that An author can get that sort of criticism so wrong, I think actually should lead us to optimism that today's youth are going to continue in the current path more than a lot of people suspect right now.
There's also the fact of, well, let me ask you, Alexander, what do you think about this?
The failure of Obamacare makes a decisive case against the domestic welfare state, it seems to me.
The other thing that's overwhelming to this generation is this idiotic drug war, actually, which has done absolutely nothing to curb drug use and just done a lot to just destroy lives.
Don't you think those two issues are pretty profound also in terms of domestic policy?
I would certainly argue that what's happening with Obamacare, just very briefly, let's let the younger person answer, but Obamacare is government without anesthetic.
This is what happens when you can't borrow or print to pay for a government program.
You have to have a massive shift of resources in real time without the anesthetic of debt.
And so the young people are very clear that this is simply stealing from me to give to sick and old people directly.
In the past, in the 60s and 70s and 80s, maybe even in the 90s, this would have all been funded through inflation and debt and would have seemed free, right?
But this is government without anesthetic, and I think that's becoming increasingly clear to young people as well.
Sorry, Alexander, go ahead.
No, it's fine.
So I think the right way to interpret the youth's disenchantment with Obamacare is not disenchantment with the welfare state in general.
That already existed.
Young people haven't expected to get Social Security at the end of our lives or for the system to really sustain itself.
National debt has been a concern of this generation for a long time.
The disenchantment of Obamacare is a disenchantment specifically with Obama.
And I think that actually has a deeper implication for the libertarian nature of today's youth, because it gives more fodder to the idea that they don't associate with either the Republican Party or the Democratic Party, that neither one of the establishment institutions or the people that have represented it really support the ideas and the principles that neither one of the establishment institutions or the people that have represented In the same way that young people fled away from Bush in the 2000s, they're starting to run away from Obama right now, because he's not living up to the principles of change and the idealism that they expected him to.
And that's still a very powerful and important benefit to us right now.
Do you think that, Alexander, do you think there's a degree to which, when you look across Europe, I think you can see an increasing what is called radicalization, which is usually just an enlightenment or an awakening to reality.
Reality is radical because it's so coercive in our statist institutions, but we call those who awaken to that fact radicals, which is kind of weird.
It's like calling people stuck in prison cells agoraphobic.
It's like, well, I'm just kind of locked in.
But in Europe, there's a kind of radicalization of the youth that's happening primarily because the road forward is blocked.
You know, I've always sort of argued that society buys the allegiance of the young, intelligent, and energetic by promising them goodies.
You know, obey the law and you'll get, you know, white picket fence, you know, put 2.2 kids, a car, a garage, whatever.
And society is kind of unable to offer goodies to the young in return for conformity to fundamental irrationality or nationalism, whatever.
In Europe, I think you can see this.
of course, Europe has a history of far-right activity, and some of them are drifting that way.
Do you think that the fact that for a lot of young people, the road forward is blocked?
I mean, job opportunities are scarce.
I've talked to young lawyers who can't get jobs.
I just had a guy on the show who spent eight months as a pharmacist trying to find work.
He ended up having to take a night shift, which he was just happy to get.
Do you think that some of it is the practical implications of a life post-education being stalled for a lot of young people and being frustrated at that lack of opportunity?
I mean, that's absolutely a cause to the unnerving sentiment across Europe right now for a lot of young people with the failure of the state system.
Like you pointed out, some of the solutions that are being offered in the direction that some people in Europe are heading right now are not beneficial towards liberty.
The rise of what Stephen Davies calls national welfareism is very concerning to me, especially with the racialist and xenophobic undertones to it.
But at the same time, there is a very large increase in libertarian movement of young people in Europe as well.
We just ran, I believe, eight regional conferences across Europe this past fall.
We've got our third annual European Students for Liberty conference coming up in Berlin in March.
And we're seeing an increasing desire to learn more about principles of liberty from European youth the same way that we see in the United States and around the world.
That's actually one of the most exciting things about this generation.
We're so interconnected and the problems that young people are facing are so globalized There is a common cause for liberty amongst youth everywhere.
You know, there's another factor, too, that we live in times when the technology is showing us every day that the real solutions that make our lives better, the things that make our lives cool and beautiful, are all emerging from the private sector.
And, you know, it's so obvious.
What is government doing anymore, actually, for anyone, much less for young people?
I mean, it's just, as you say, putting barriers in the way, whereas all the The opportunities are coming out of private enterprise and free markets and entrepreneurship.
And the only thing the governments are doing is outsourcing, right?
People say, well, without government, who will build the roads?
It's like, you know, the government doesn't build the roads at the moment, right?
They just hire people to do it.
Yeah, that's a very excellent point, actually, and it's one that we need to be starting to make.
Right.
I mean, government doesn't actually do anything.
I mean, nowadays, they're just hiring private contractors for everything.
But that wasn't even true, like in the New Deal, and even during World War II and throughout the 1950s, there's a widespread perception that if you wanted Cool toys, the government had to build them, you know?
And that is just not true anymore.
It's really like government has ran out of all innovative steam.
I mean, probably never had it, but at least the illusion was there in the past.
Now the illusions are just completely stripped away.
All the cool stuff that we We experience and we get.
We get through the private sector, and especially with regard to job creation.
You know, one thing, Alexander, I've noticed when I would talk to a lot of the students at the SFL conferences I went to, they're in college right now, and they're planning to get their first jobs just to kind of pay the bill, pay the rent, you know, make the car payment, pay off the student loan.
But so many of them are working on side entrepreneurial projects.
You know, they're planning a better life for themselves through entrepreneurship and sort of digital engagement and forming their networks and like that.
So they're seeing their job out of college as being kind of a transitional measure to a life they're going to create for themselves.
Now, I have to tell you, this is completely different from the way my generation thought of it leaving college.
I mean, we never had any doubt That we were going to get a job in our field and there were going to be plenty for us and that we could just walk in anywhere and get hired.
I mean, there was a great confidence about the future when I graduated that you don't see anymore.
But you see also this response to it by planning to, you know, have more freer, independent lives.
And so many of these young people are Or making plans to deal with the realities that are around them.
It's a completely different environment from anything I recognize.
I don't remember anybody when I was that age that was planning to work a day job and do some great entrepreneurial venture in the nights and weekends.
But now that's just extremely common.
I mean, that's a huge change.
I absolutely agree, and I see the trend as well.
I think this is just further evidence of the desire for economic freedom amongst this generation.
The incredibly high regard that young people hold for entrepreneurs, no matter how much they may be demonized in movies or by the media and so forth, young people want to be business people, and they want to have the opportunity to create the businesses that they want.
And that just further illustrates the libertarianness of today's youth.
I think there's a general perception that the only security is independence.
You know, security when I was a kid was, you know, you get a job with a big company, a stable company, you work your way up and so on.
But I think now people are understanding that there is nothing in the system as it stands that's going to give you security.
The only security is to continually add to your human capital.
And there's no faster way to do that than to become an entrepreneur.
Yeah, that's exactly what we're seeing.
I've talked to so many people for whom this is true.
And you're right, Alexander, there's a real admiration for the tech entrepreneurs of our time, you know, despite the whole culture, political culture that's sort of like attacking them all the time.
You know, young people are very much drawn to that.
And there's something beautiful and revolutionary and wonderful and destabilizing about entrepreneurship, you know, this idea that the world can be reinvented and changed through private initiative.
I mean, despite everything that's going on, despite all the despotisms of our time, we're still seeing private entrepreneurship, you know, revolutionize a world around us.
I think oftentimes about things like Bitcoin, for example.
Something that nobody, you know, cryptocurrency, that nobody like 10 years could have even imagined possible, now making gigantic inroads even into the mainstream retail sector.
You know, it's just a demonstration of how the world can be made new again, you know, if we take the right steps and we be creative and entrepreneurial about it.
All right.
Well, Alexander, I know you've got a hard start for 2.30, so we'll probably wrap this up.
So I just wanted to remind everyone, Liberty.me is launching, I guess, a month, month and a change, six weeks.
So in software terms, that means 2029.
No, I'm kidding.
So if there's anything that's going to be on time, it will be Jeffrey's project.
I respect.
The iron whip with which he drives his programmers off cliffs so that he doesn't have to pay them.
No, I mean the way in which he manages things effectively.
So that's Liberty.me launching soon.
We'll keep you posted about that.
For people who want to attend, I wonder if you can give a few dollars in web tips, Alexandra, so people can get to the conference if they want.
Absolutely.
Please visit studentsforliberty.org.
It's not just a conference for students.
It's really an event for the entire libertarian movement.
We would love to have more people come out to it to see the growth of the student movement for liberty and really the future leaders of the libertarian movement who are getting their start at the conference.
Yeah, and the future leaders of the world, you will be provided with superhero capes from Alexander and naturally the inevitable bow tie from Jeffrey Tucker.
So, have yourselves a wonderful time in Washington in February.
I'm not sure that's a sentence I ever would have said in my life if it had not been for this show.
But thanks so much for you guys for your time and we'll talk to you soon.
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