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Jan. 21, 2014 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
01:19:41
2595 Prohibition, Race and Murder - Peter Schiff Radio Show January 21th, 2014
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Make no friends in the pits and you take no prisoners.
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I don't know when they decided that they wanted to make a virtue out of selfishness.
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The Peter Schiff Show.
Good morning, everybody.
Hope you're doing well.
This is Stefan Molyneux from Free Domain Radio.
I'm sitting in for Peter Schiff.
I hope you're having a great, great Tuesday morning.
Let's see if we can inject a little radio wisdom into your brain and make it even better.
Peter sends his regrets, of course.
He is shooting a cover for Maxim Magazine today because he follows Austrian economics.
They've got him in a lederhosen.
Can I tell you?
He looks surprisingly good.
So I look forward to that on your newsstand.
I hope you're doing well.
Looking forward to callers today.
Love to chat about economics and philosophy and whatever is on your brains.
You can call in 855-4SHIFT, 855-472-4433.
So I'd like to do a little chat with you this morning because, as you know, a few states have decriminalized marijuana, but the federal government is moving in to protect all of the sensitive lungs of the people from the demon weed and is shutting some of them down.
You know, one of the great tragedies in my education, I have a master's degree in history, and one of the things that happens when you study history is you really begin to feel like you're stuck in some revolving door, round and round and round.
My daughter is five, she loves revolving doors, loves going round and round.
By the time you get to my ripe old age of 47, it gets a little tiring to go round and round.
Because when you look at Prohibition, which of course was put in in the 20s.
Prohibition against alcohol in the United States.
All of the same lessons are there.
All of the same lessons are there.
And it's tragic how often this has to be just done again and again and again.
So you can check this out in a book by Burton Abrams called The Terrible Ten, A Century of Economic Folly, which is at the Independent Institute.
You can get it on Kindle.
Let me read you something.
I think you'll find it just tragic.
And it's not much, I'm sorry, I don't mean to laugh, not much to laugh about with the drug war.
It destroys.
It is a combine harvester of human souls.
It destroys people willy-nilly, except the kids of the rich and powerful who, of course, end up getting into rehab.
Let me read you from this book.
Prohibition ended because many original supporters, including elected officials, came to realize two things.
First, they had vastly underestimated the difficulties of preventing tens of millions of people from engaging in mutually beneficial exchanges, the buying and selling of alcoholic beverages.
Essentially, they had ignored a basic economic principle.
If demand for an item, even an illegal item, is sufficient to make supplying it profitable, then entrepreneurs will always find ways to supply it.
Let me repeat that so important.
If demand for an item, even an illegal item, is sufficient to make supplying it profitable, then entrepreneurs will always find ways to supply it.
Second, the government had failed to take into account properly the number and magnitude of adverse consequences created by prohibition.
Including changes in consumer and producer behavior and undesirable impacts on the government itself.
A commission that was put into place to study this after it was put into place said, I'm afraid I'm going to have to do my hoity-toity-twenties voice here.
It is evident that people of wealth, businessmen and professional men and their families and perhaps the higher paid working men and their families are drinking in large numbers in quite frank disregard of the declared policy of the National Prohibition Act.
I don't know why there's a bit of an English accent in there.
That's where I grew up.
What can I do?
The enforcement was ridiculous and it was totally unequal based on class.
Enforcement agents found it way easier to shut down a working person's speakeasy than to close up a large hotel where liquor flowed freely to influential and wealthy people.
And you know, Barack Obama has an admitted history of hard drug use and he's the president.
The wealthy, of course, are able to procure pure liquors while the lower classes often had to contend with liquor of uncertain quality, risking poisoning from some impurity.
And what happened to drugs?
Drug prices, when it became illegal, they went through the roof.
Same thing happened with prohibition.
Prohibition led to significant increases in black market liquor prices.
In the mid-1920s, Beer prices were 700% greater than their pre-prohibition levels.
Brandies cost about 400% more and prices for spirits rose about 300%.
Now this change in relative prices, right?
So beer got more expensive.
Beer is harder to transport and you get less alcohol for, you put the liquid as opposed to hard liquors.
So what happened?
A lot of people switched.
From beer to hard liquor, as a percentage of total alcohol sales spending on distilled spirits rose from about 40% pre-prohibition to 90% in 1922, and it remained above 70% until the repeal of prohibition.
There was a weird little quirk in the law that said you could make your own wine at home as long as it was non-intoxicating.
And, of course, that was never defined, and nobody could even remotely try and prosecute this on a case-by-case basis.
Juries didn't really care that much about it.
There was a lot of, I guess you'd call it de facto jury nullification, where people would find, juries would find people not guilty just because they really didn't believe that the law was problematic.
It caused people to disregard the law as a whole.
When the government overreaches itself and tries to do something that the majority of people either don't care about, don't want, or are actively participating in, then respect for law as a whole tends to diminish.
Corruption in the police force rose exponentially.
During Prohibition, there was very little organized crime, I guess outside the federal government, which is disorganized crime.
There was very little organized crime in the United States in the 19th century.
When Prohibition came in, organized crime, in particular the Mafia, came flowing over from Sicily and other places, and organized crime really began to get involved in America, and that has had a huge impact.
On American politics.
Organized crime, as we all know from the story of Hoffa, organized crime highly involved in organized labor, particularly government, public sector unions, had a huge impact on American politics.
And the thing that has changed, though, what is so desperately bad about the war on drugs relative to prohibition Is that in prohibition, at least people remembered what it was like before prohibition.
Right?
So it was repealed while people still remembered what it was like before prohibition.
Whereas the war on drugs, although there are signs of it diminishing and drugs have been legalized in Portugal and the hard drug use and addictions have gone down by 50%.
The great problem is that people won't remember what it was like beforehand.
You know, Coca-Cola gets its name because there was cocaine originally in the mixture.
Kids could go in to pharmacies and buy cocaine.
It was considered to be a perk me-upper, which I guess it still is, probably mostly on Wall Street.
But people don't really remember anymore what it was like before the war on drugs.
But the war on drugs, since you cannot throw a pound a pot in jail, is fundamentally a war on people.
And it is a war on people's preferences.
It is a war on people's relaxation aids.
I myself, never taken any.
Not a big fan, but I certainly do enjoy Pink Floyd's music and Sgt.
Pepper's and just about most other great bands that you could name who've dabbled in it.
Freddie Mercury got into cocaine and produced Bohemian Rhapsody.
I really can't say that it's a net negative For music as a whole, one of the greatest songs ever written.
So we're going to get into this.
What is the difference between your politics and the government's politics?
Your economy and the government's economy?
I'm looking forward to your calls.
Call us 855-4SHIFT.
We will be back right after the break to continue the conversation.
Now what you do.
Set yourself up now.
It's the love of your life.
Channily on me.
All I know before it's gone.
I always feel it's getting me down.
When nothing's wrong.
What's the matter with me?
You're now enrolling in the Peter Schiff School of Advanced Economics.
Twice the education of a Harvard MBA.
For one one hundred sixty-eight thousandth the cost.
Hi everybody, this is Stefan Molyneux sitting in for Peter Schiff.
I hope you're doing well this fine Tuesday morning where last night Canada embraced, or at least in the neighborhood where I live, Embrace its citizens in the loving icy fist grip of minus 31 degrees.
Minus 31 degrees, at which point they might as well just start reporting things in Kelvin.
Ooh!
Boom!
Subtle joke for the science-enabled.
So, hope you're doing well.
We're talking a little bit this morning about...
The current events are this...
The ragged edge of the retreat of the war on drugs is starting to occur.
And in America, there's some states that are starting to decriminalize it, but the federal government is moving in and raiding these shops anyway.
Which, coming from a president who himself has admitted to hard drug use in his youth, is beyond hypocritical.
But he's not a very forgiving kind of guy, Barack Obama.
You know, he's had fewer pardons in his terms than any other president.
He is a hard-nosed guy when it comes to drug use.
Well, except his own when he was younger.
Oh, a hypocritical politician.
I was just chatting with the control room guys on the break.
Flakes are falling in Washington.
No, this does not mean that politicians are tumbling downstairs.
It just means that it's snowing.
So they've had to shut the city down.
So talking a little bit about prohibition, which has all the lessons that you need to know about the drug war.
Let me give you a statistic about prohibition that blows my mind.
Now, my liver is fairly well preserved.
I'm not much of a drinker.
I think the last time I got drunk, I was 20.
So let's just say I got drunk last century.
But let me give you a figure about what happened to the production of whiskey during prohibition.
Illicit distilling provided as much as 120 million gallons of whiskey and other spirits a year.
120.
This is a gallon for every living American man, woman, and child.
One gallon of whiskey and other hard liquors.
Now, not a lot of children were doing it.
A lot of women were, but men must have been just basically taking this stuff intravenously as they walked around during the day.
It's really quite astounding.
The death count of prohibition was huge, and it occurred in two major areas.
The first was that people had alcohol poisoning from badly made alcohol.
Between 9 and 15 million gallons a year of legal industrial alcohol was sold for unlawful purposes.
Unlawful purposes, I tell you!
Now, the federal government had forced the makers of industrial alcohol to include additives that were poisonous to make sure that it could not be used for human consumption.
They put poison into alcohol, but you could still extract it and get the pure alcohol, but not everyone managed to get all the poison that the federal government demanded be put in there.
Thousands died of alcohol poisoning.
A humorist, Will Rogers, quipped, Governments used to murder by the bullet only.
Now it is by the court.
And another thing that happened, of course, you know, drugs these days, I hear.
I don't know.
I'm going to Amsterdam.
April, so we'll see.
But drugs are much stronger than drugs in the 60s or 70s.
Marijuana has been concentrated because it's profitable.
You want to get a higher hit.
When you make stuff illegal, you concentrate it.
You make it more dangerous for human consumption.
The alcohol content during prohibition went way up because it was easier to ship stronger drinks.
The potency of most alcoholic beverages rose 50% to 100% compared to the strength of these drinks either before or after.
The moment prohibition was removed, boom!
Easy peasy, nice and easy, the alcohol goes down.
Alcohol poisoning was a serious problem because people were used to having these drinks, these drinks were way stronger, and they died.
Organized crime was the other source of death.
Al Capone's Chicago operation It was estimated in 1927 that its illegal liquor operations generated about $60 million in total revenues a year.
In today's prices, it's about $600 million a year, or more than twice the average income of libertarian podcasters.
More than twice!
In fact, that's actually a true statement.
So they violated the prohibition law, and once you're on the other side of the, you know, the law, you tend to go a little further, right?
Chicago, known for its corruption and its production of hypocritical presidents.
In 1929, St.
Valentine's Day Massacre, seven members of the O'Banion gang were lined up against a garage wall and shot in the back with machine guns.
It was just an alcohol-related turf war.
No one was ever arrested.
For the crime, during the 1920s and early 1930s, Chicago experienced more than 500 gang murders, mostly prohibition-related.
The homicide rate in the US jumped dramatically during prohibition.
You don't have access to courts.
You don't have access to legal methods of resolving disputes.
Therefore, you turn to bullets.
And, of course, the only people who generally feel comfortable operating outside the law Do not have the most sophisticated consciences in the known universe, I guess you could say.
Mostly nutbars and sociopaths.
Prohibition triggered an increase of almost 20% in the second year of Prohibition, 1921.
8.8 homicides for 100,000 people.
That was the highest rate ever recorded in the US up to that time.
So for the 10 years prior to Prohibition, homicide rate was 6.1 per 100,000, jumped to 8.8 per 100,000.
During the 14 years of Prohibition, it averaged 8.4.
The last year of Prohibition was in 1933.
The homicide rate was 9.7 per 100,000, a rate so high that the US would not see it again for four decades.
And what happened four decades later?
Could it be that the war on drugs began?
It's a murder mill.
This is monstrous.
Prohibition resulted statistically in an additional 29,000 murders.
Prohibition resulted in an additional 29,000 murders.
About the same number as American soldiers killed in the Korean War.
And as a percentage of the US population, that number is way more than the number of soldiers, US soldiers killed in the Korean War.
And this is the kind of monstrous mess that you get into when you have the government ban mutually beneficial exchanges.
There's a praxeological concept which is important, which is that all exchanges that are voluntary are by definition preferred by both parties.
They are win-win for both parties.
This doesn't mean that it's great, you know, a guy with diabetes can go buy a cheesecake and face plant into it.
It doesn't mean it's always necessarily objectively better for everyone involved.
This is all debatable.
Maybe that cheesecake is so good and he's really old.
I don't know.
Cheesecake is good.
Wait, stay on target, Steph.
But what it does mean is that if two people voluntarily engage in trade, they are by definition better off as a result.
They must be, because they're voluntarily engaging in trade.
If I have a buck and you have a pen and we trade the buck for the pen, we both want the other person's goods more than we want what we've got.
It's by definition we are better off.
The moment the government interferes with that, the moment the government initiates complaints, nobody's complaining.
You buy a joint and you smoke it and you're happy with it, nobody complains.
The government can't be passive and wait for people to complain, to have a problem.
The government must initiate pursuit of the population.
The government must fence people in.
The government must control people, which is kind of what governments like to do.
Looking forward to your calls.
We'll be back right after the break.
please give me a shout 855-4-SHIFT.
This is Van Molyneux for Peter Schiff.
The Peter Schiff Show.
The Peter Schiff Show.
We now return to The Peter Schiff Show.
Call in now.
855-4SHIFT. That's 855-472-4433.
The Peter Schiff Show.
Good morning, everybody.
It's DeFan Molyneux sitting in for Peter Schiff.
We are talking, and we're going to get to a caller in just a second.
We're talking about...
Oh...
The historical example of prohibition and what it teaches us about the war on drugs.
Let's talk some more juicy numbers of delectable corruption.
1929 salaries for federal prohibition agents was about two thousand dollars a year.
Average earning for full-time employees in America was fourteen hundred dollars a year.
This is back when a dollar could buy you more than half a candy bar.
So you get to make a lot more money as a prohibition enforcer, but boy, oh boy, oh boy, was the real money in bribes.
So you've probably seen a movie called The Untouchables.
Elliot Ness was offered $2,000.
Oh, let's just wait before we get to the time slice, shall we?
So he's making $2,000 a year as an enforcement agent.
Now, if he would leave Al Capone's illegal liquor operation alone, if he would not pursue them, he was offered $2,000 a year, double his salary?
No!
He's Italian.
He's a generous guy.
I mean, not to the government, who finally got him an income tax evasion, but he was offered $2,000 a year in bribes?
No, no, no, no.
$2,000 a month?
No.
That's not enough to buy your average government enforcer.
Of prohibition?
No, no, no.
He was offered $2,000 a week by the criminals to leave him alone.
Or approximately 52 times his annual salary.
More than 200 federal prohibition agents were convicted on criminal charges.
Hundreds of others were fired for cause.
And this messed up the court system enormously.
And just finish this point and get to the caller, but...
By 1930, prosecutions in federal courts under the Prohibition Act were eight times the total number of all federal prosecutions in 1914.
The workload was so overwhelming that prosecutors were forced to make bargains with defendants, allowing them to plead guilty to minor offenses and escape with light penalties.
In 1930, nearly 90% of prohibition convictions were of this sort.
When the government becomes proactive and pursues citizens, like evil butterfly collectors, They have to shred due process.
They have to shred trial by jury.
In some of the larger cities where congestion in the federal court system was greatest, only about 5% of the convictions under the Prohibition Act resulted in some form of imprisonment.
The criminal gangs, since all they got were fines, just another cast of doing business.
Easy peasy.
But this is why 95% of people in America never get a trial by jury, because the court system is overwhelmed, largely with drug-related cases, which means that due process is shredded, and you threaten people with overwhelming imprisonment times in return for pleading guilty to lesser sentences, and this is considered some sort of justice.
It is not.
All right, we've got a caller who would like to chat.
Is it Joe?
John, sorry.
John.
We'll keep going through all the Anglo-Saxon names until we get the right one.
Are you on the line, my friend?
Yeah.
Actually, my name is not Tom, and I am not from Ohio.
I just said that.
I wanted to remain anonymous.
I don't want to get anybody in trouble.
Right.
If the government were serious about this war on drugs, why don't they drug test their own employees?
Because I'll tell you, I have an older brother who is a state trooper.
And he's a recreational marijuana user, and he says he doesn't get drug tested.
But if he did, he'd have to quit.
My wife is a schoolteacher who is a recreational marijuana user.
She doesn't get drug tested.
If she did get drug tested, she would have to quit.
So I find it ironic that the government comes out saying that they have this war against drugs, But they don't even drug test their own employees.
Well, but why would they drug test the armed employees?
You know, it's really important to drug test people who aren't armed.
Because, you know, the combination of drugs and guns, I mean, how could that possibly be a problem for society?
He said, ironically.
Yeah, that's interesting.
Look, I mean, the enforcement of the drug war is gross.
I mean, I think we all recognize that people who steal, rape, kill, whatever.
Yeah, let's round those guys up.
Let's give them a trial.
Let's find the guilty and let's punish them.
Yes, I think that's great.
I am very primal in my desire to keep the human viruses of evil out of society.
I think that's great.
However, a guy sitting and enjoying Teletubbies and listening to Dark Side of the Moon is not a huge and major threat to society unless you are, in fact, a Dorito, in which case your days are numbered.
In fact, your minutes are probably numbered.
But in chasing these guys, going after these guys, capturing these guys is a gross business, and it's well understood that the more horrific the task of law enforcement, the more that law enforcement officers Tend towards substance abuse.
I mean, you just have to get by.
You just have to find some way to drown your conscience in something or fog it out with something.
So I think that's an excellent point.
And it's tragic.
You know, I saw, I think it was a 60 Minutes years and years ago, where a guy who was a hitman for the mafia decided to, you know, he's like, I got tired of that for a while, so I decided to become a cop.
For a couple of years.
And I did that for a couple of years.
And then I drifted back into the mafia.
I was like, what?
Because, you know, I was still young and in my salad days and still not quite aware of the amount of corruption in the world.
And the amount of corruption that has entered the police force through the drug trade is just horrendous.
You know, a lot of cops are straight up people, nice people.
They want to do the right thing.
But there is...
A culture of corruption that is inevitable.
You start sloshing around 50 times people's pay for doing nothing, I will pay you 50 times your annual salary to not go to this address.
I mean, how many people are going to say, well, no, I feel that that's wrong.
This goes against my inner compass, my moral compass, my Jiminy Cricket is yelling in my ear, no, don't take the money, go to that address, where you might get shot.
I mean, come on, talk about a carrot and a stick, right?
You go to that address, they're going to try and shoot you.
You don't go to that address, you get 50 times your annual salary tax-free.
Come on, how many people could resist that?
I don't know.
If you are somebody who wants to offer me that, minus the shooting, please call in.
Let's put my moral fiber to the test.
Offer me 50 times my annual salary.
I'm a podcaster, trust me.
It won't cost you that much.
But I appreciate your call.
Is there anything that you wanted to add?
Oh, he's gone.
All right.
Hopefully he did not hang up suddenly.
Don't trace him.
You know, people, it's like funny, you know.
He says, well, I said I was from Ohio and I'm actually not.
Like, the government only listens, never examines.
So always be careful what you do online.
My suggestion is, you know, the NSA sniffs everything.
You know, while I'm doing this actual podcast, while I'm doing, sorry, while I'm doing this actual radio show, They are measuring my inseam and not in the way that I like.
Digital spiders are crawling up my legs.
That's what I'm telling you.
Always act online as if the government was listening and the government was watching.
Because odds are it's being stored somewhere.
So that's my suggestion.
Now, what changed in prohibition?
Why did it end?
I mean, obviously the people getting 50 times their salary in bribes 52, to be precise, did not want it to end.
The organized crime did not want it to end.
Why did it end?
Well, some states just stopped enforcing it.
It was too ridiculous.
And it was quite expensive to run.
You got some fines, but usually not enough to cover the costs of pursuing it.
And what happened, of course, was they began to miss the alcohol tax.
Hmm...
Taxing that which is now illegal, but which was formerly legal, is a great temptation, and its governments do try to figure out how to balance their budgets.
You know, this looming tidal wave, this tsunami of economic disaster that is coming down the pipe, which is public sector pensions for retirees, for the baby boomers, who spent their life learning how to flick pens from one hand to another while consuming massive amounts of capital.
Well, they need all their free healthcare and they need all of their massive retirement benefits and someone somehow has got to pay for that.
And so the idea of cutting costs by shaving back the war on drugs and beginning to tax drugs is very attractive to governments who are really running out of sources of revenue.
And this just goes to show you it's never a principle.
There's a very telling moment, and it's not political philosophy, but Hollywood art.
But in The Untouchables, it's not a spoiler, so at the end, they say, a reporter goes up to Eliot Ness and says, Mr.
Ness, Mr.
Ness, have you heard that they might get rid of prohibition and legalize alcohol again?
What do you think you would do?
And he said, uh, probably have a drink.
Probably have a drink.
If there's certain words on a piece of paper, then I will go and shoot a whole bunch of people, round them up, throw them in prison, because that's what the magic words on the piece of paper tell me to do.
But if those magic words on a piece of paper change, I won't shoot people for having a drink.
I will have a drink.
That...
He's a complete sociopath.
In my opinion, that's a completely monstrously evil person.
And it's a quippy line to end the movie, but I don't think people really have...
I've never really seen it commented on just what a monstrous evil that is.
If my masters point at me and say, shoot that guy, I will shoot him.
If my masters say, don't shoot that guy anymore, collect taxes from him, I will collect taxes from him.
If they say he's now a hero, I will throw ticker tape at his parade.
I will give him a medal.
I will do whatever my masters tell me to with a gun.
Far too many people like that on the planet, my friends.
Not exactly sure how to get rid of them all, but there's too many of them who will simply do what their masters tell them to do with guns.
And it is my prediction, because it's always safe to go into the prediction business when the internet retains absolutely everything you say, but it is my prediction.
That the war on drugs is going to diminish.
Not because of any moral reason.
Not out of any sympathy for drug addicts.
Most of whom come from histories of extreme child abuse and are just self-medicating.
But they want the money.
And they'll tax it.
And they'll call it a principle.
But it's just another crime.
This is Stephen Molyneux for Peter Schiff.
GF855-4SHIFT.
Feel free to call in.
We will chat together after the break.
The Peter Schiff Show.
The Peter Schiff Show.
Since the Peter Schiff Show was last on the air, the national debt added another $7.89 million.
Luckily, Peter's intelligence is growing twice as fast.
That's incredible.
Welcome back to your source of sanity in an insane world.
It's the Peter Schiff Show.
Good morning, everybody.
Stefan Molyneux sitting in for Peter Schiff.
I hope you're doing well.
Got a note from the producer.
It says, Eric NYC on Colorado Pot.
Now, I assume that this means he wishes to talk about Colorado Pot.
Not that he is currently on Colorado Pot.
Let's find out.
Eric, are you with us?
Stefan, hello.
How are you?
I'm well.
How are you doing?
Do you have the munchies?
Currently, I am not on Colorado pot, nor do I have the munchies, but thank you so much for asking.
You are welcome.
Anyway, you're doing a great job filling in for Peter.
I really enjoy listening to you.
Well, thank you very much.
Okay.
So, Colorado has legalized recreational use of marijuana.
So, what's it going to take for the other states to follow suit?
Prisons emptying out?
Tax revenue up?
What's it going to take?
I live in New York, and we already are discussing legalization of medical use.
I know New Jersey has passed medical use, but it seems to me that this is a modern-day prohibition, like you were just discussing, and it's not working.
The prisons are completely filled in America, state by state, overflowing, California being the worst, and they're filled with minor drug offenses.
People being caught two or three times with marijuana.
And to your point before, it's prohibition.
It's not working.
I just wanted to run that by you.
Well, you know, but remember, the phrase not working is kind of subjective in a lot of ways.
It is working for a lot of sadists.
It is working for a lot of control freaks.
It is working for a lot of People who make profit from it.
It is working for a lot of enforcement agents.
It is working for a lot of people who like to play around with weapons and boats and planes and who like to play cat and mouse with drug dealers.
It is working for a lot of racists who get to target minorities.
It is working for a lot of people.
It is working in terms of making the world unsafe for citizens.
You know, the government says, oh, I want to keep you safe.
I want to keep you safe.
Well, of course, there's the fundamental problem of saying, I want to keep you safe when taking half of your property by force.
Let me protect your property rights by stealing your car.
I don't think that really works logically.
And can I have my car back?
No!
I need to check it for drugs.
It might have a secret compartment.
Actually, that's just a glove box.
But it does work for governments.
It gets to create criminals.
The study of economics, obviously, is based on a few basic principles.
Human desires are infinite and resources are finite.
So how are things going to get allocated?
Or another way of asking questions in economics is to say, what are the long-term effects on the majority rather than the short-term effects on the minority?
Governments love to produce criminals because then people feel the need for governments more.
And that's really fundamentally important.
To understand.
And this is not, oh, everyone in government is evil or anything.
I'm not saying that.
What I'm saying is that there's a fundamental incentive to make sure that danger exists so that people feel the need for government.
Oh, we want to keep you safe from terrorists!
Hmm.
Well, how about closing down the 720 military bases that America has all around the world?
That might help keep you safe.
Government is sort of saying, hey, go stick something in this hornet's nest.
Go stick a fork in this hornet's nest, and I will try to keep you safe by batting away some of the hornets.
Like, I've got a good idea.
Why don't we just not stick a fork in the hornet's nest to begin with?
Let's just not go near the hornet's nest.
No, no, no!
Go stick a fork in it, and I'll try and keep you safe.
Won't happen.
If the government wants to keep you safe, Then it should not have the capacity to initiate legal proceedings against you without the complaint of another citizen.
It should be passive.
It should wait for a complaint and then leap into action.
It should not be out there prowling around and trying to cause problems and trying to find problems.
But that's what government does.
I mean, government benefits enormously from the drug trade.
It gets to harass people.
It gets to extend rights.
It gets to claim the safety of citizens, independent of the desires of citizens.
What's more dangerous?
An out-of-control DEA with a budget in the tens of billions of dollars?
With the capacity to sweep and steal your property and pick you up and throw you in jail and threaten you with multi-decade sentences for minor infractions?
Or a guy eating a hash brownie three floors away from you in an apartment building?
Hmm...
Let's try and process that, shall we?
So, it does work for a lot of people, but I feel I'm monopolizing the conversation.
Is there anything you wanted to add?
Yes, can you hear me?
Yeah, go ahead.
Yeah, but at what point, I mean, do they have to start letting murderers and rapists out of the prisons before we realize that we don't have enough room in the prisons because they're filled up with these minor drug offenses?
At what point?
I mean, do we have to keep building and building and building more prisons and more prisons?
We have two million people behind bars in America, the most in any civilization in the history of the world most currently.
That's insane.
I mean, at what point do we stop building prisons and legalize it?
At what point?
I'll tell you exactly at what point.
The point that this will occur is when it becomes more profitable for the government to legalize drugs than to keep them illegal.
When that tipping point occurs, when the government can make more money by legalizing them than it can by keeping them illegal.
Then the policy will change and it will be called a sea change in human morality and an extension of empathy to the now hard done by drug people who are victims of blah blah blah.
I mean they'll just change the narrative.
It's exactly what happened with prohibition.
Prohibition occurred during the Great Depression and taxes went down, corporate revenues went down, income taxes of course went down, a quarter of the population out of work and lo and behold Let's tax liquor again.
Well, we can't if it's illegal.
So they changed their story.
And now, it is an unwise policy that was pursued against the interests of the average American, and it's really time we try to turn this thing around and show them what it is.
It's all nonsense.
It's all driven by the dollar.
The dollar and the power of coercion that is the essence of the government.
Does that make any sense?
And look at Colorado as the poster child for this, because the revenue is going to be Unbelievable.
They're going to have unbelievable revenue.
The crime is probably going to go down.
The prison system is going to have a reduced burden on all these offenses.
The court system is going to be flowing again.
I really am hoping that Colorado is successful.
I really am.
Well, I hope that the legalization continues.
Thank you so much for your call.
I really appreciate it.
And we will be right back after the break.
We're going to talk about some race stuff, because it's not my show.
See you in a sec.
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The Peter Schiff Show.
Good morning, everybody.
Hope you're doing well, Stefan Molyneux.
Sitting in for Peter Schiff.
Peter is going to be on the Joe Rogan Experience, and you want to check that out.
You can find his powerful JRE, I think, on YouTube, Powerful Joe Rogan Experience.
Check him out.
He's going to be back here hosting tomorrow, attempting to repair the smoking crater of credibility I've left his show in.
But I think let's put on our uncomfortable pants and talk about race, because President Barack Obama Had something to say about it, as though I guess his administration had something to say about it.
Gentlemen, if we could have a listen to cut four, please.
Who really liked me and give me the benefit of the doubt precisely because I'm a black president.
So when you heard that quote, what did you say?
Well, I thought that was actually a pretty honest and accurate assessment.
I mean, one of the things very interesting here, you know, I'm a ninth generation American.
I've been, my family's been here for literally nine generations.
We had about 300 years of enslavement, 100 years of Jim Crow.
I'm the first member of my family born with all my rights in nine generations.
So it's not surprising to me that race...
...come up when you have the first black president elected so quickly after the civil rights movement.
One thing that's really interesting to me is we've actually in some ways gone backwards.
It's actually easier for us now to talk about lesbian and gay issues, thank goodness.
It's easier for us to talk about immigration issues, thank goodness.
even marijuana well that's an interesting tidbit about race so So, okay, but let's talk about race.
Let's talk about race in America, if this is the topic.
I mean, why Barack Obama is referred to as black when he's half-white is still a source of great confusion to me, especially since he was raised by his dad, basically vamoosed, which is tragically common in the black community.
But he's not black.
And the other thing, too, I mean...
Can a man not be judged by his accomplishments or lack thereof without people dragging race into it?
Can't he be a terrible president and that has nothing to do with the color of his skin?
Can't he be an extralegal, imposed by fiat liar of a president without people dragging race into it?
Can't he say, oh, you'll keep your healthcare insurance, you'll keep your doctor and lie to people?
He could be a liar.
And black?
There's nothing wrong with that.
That's called not being racist.
I am not going to take the man's race into consideration.
I don't care that he's black.
He can be rainbow colored.
He can have a disco ball for a head.
I don't care.
I will judge the man by his accomplishments.
This is the man who included thousands of pages of regulations for Obamacare after Congress passed it, which is not legal.
This is the man who hands out waivers.
From Obamacare to hundreds of organizations, thus violating the Constitution.
He's a constitutional law professor.
He doesn't get to claim that he doesn't know about this stuff.
Who's very comfortable with the unwarranted spying on millions and millions of people.
Who failed to close Guantanamo.
Who continues America's military predations.
Who doubled The debt under his watch.
Not all his fault, he inherited a snowball, but he can be a terrible president.
We can criticize the man, and if people start to say, well, that's racist, well, they're actually being racist, because they're bringing race into an issue that is purely philosophical, purely moral, purely legal, purely political.
The first person to bring up race is the racist.
The first person to bring up race loses the argument.
Because I don't care what color he is.
But if we're going to talk about race, let's talk about race.
Let's talk about race.
Federal crime reports.
There are significant differences in crime ratio between the races.
While they cannot find evidence of judicial bias against minorities, blacks are seven times more likely than people of other races to commit murder.
Yes, seven times, 700%.
And eight times more likely to commit robbery.
Blacks are three times more likely to use a handgun and twice more likely to use a knife.
Hispanics commit three times more violent crimes than whites, but these statistics are nebulous because sometimes they're classified as white, Zimmerman, so it could be far higher.
The best indicator of violent crime levels in an area is the percentage of the population that is black and Hispanic.
The most dangerous cities in America are black majority.
Blacks are 39 times, 39 times more likely to commit a violent crime against whites than vice versa.
they are 136 times more likely to commit a robbery against a white person than a white person is to commit a robbery against a black person blacks of course tragically are the major victims of black crime 45 percent of black crime is against white whites but 43 percent are against other blacks and 10 percent against hispanic blacks are seven times more likely to go to prison hispanics three times And the reason is clear,
because from 1980 to 2003, the U.S. incarceration rate has tripled.
And you can look these statistics up.
They're not much discussed.
And if they are discussed, of course, immediately the excuse of slavery and racism and all of this sort of stuff is brought up.
I reject that argument fundamentally because I reject the soft bigotry of low expectations.
Well, blacks had it hard, so let's lower our standards.
No, that is racist.
I refuse to reduce the moral responsibility of my black brothers and sisters.
No!
That is paternalistic.
That is condescending.
My ancestors were serfs.
The Italians enslaved my ancestors.
Those Roman buggers.
I will not lower my standards for anyone who is not mentally handicapped.
Not women.
Look, if racism is the sole issue, a lot of problems in the black community come out of catastrophically high illegitimacy rates.
Single motherhood is the best predictor for negative outcomes for children.
It doesn't mean all kids are single moms turn out badly.
I was the kid of a single mom.
But it is by far the best predictor of negative outcomes for children.
More pertinent than race, more pertinent than socioeconomic status or gender.
Illegitimacy rates in the black community are almost three-quarters.
Almost three-quarters of black kids are born outside a wedlock.
Is that the result of racism?
Well, if that were the result of racism, then the ratio would be even higher in the past.
But you know what?
In the 1950s, when blacks faced far more racism than they do today, The illegitimacy rate in the black community was 16%.
Now it is 73%.
That disproves to a significant degree the idea that it is race that is the major impediment racism that is the major impediment to the black community.
If we lower our standards for people, Most often, people will accept those lowered standards and act accordingly.
It is racist to lower standards for the black community.
Racism was a tragedy.
Slavery was a tragedy.
But to let it lower our expectations in the here and now is to continue that tragedy, not to end it.
If you have calls about this or any other topic, I would love to hear them.
You can call in at 855-4SHIFT, 855-472.
44-33.
This is Stefan Molyneux for Peter Schiff.
We'll be back right after the break.
You know what we need, though.
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This is The Peter Schiff Show.
All right, everybody.
Stefan Molyneux sitting in for Peter Schiff.
I hope you are having a fantastic, fantastic day.
And I hope we can add to your knowledge, wisdom, and hopefully a fence with this show.
We're talking about race in America.
Barack Obama's representative was recently saying, well, you see, people don't like him because he's black.
Well, I mean, the relationship of the media to Barack Obama in his initial campaign days was, as Bernie Goldberg has said, a slobbering love affair.
I mean, they were just all over the guy.
They thought he was the second coming and he was going to heal all the racial problems in the United States and all around the world.
He has had a free pass in the press.
I mean, the press is generally lefty and he's lefty, so you get a free pass.
But some of the things that he could have done to really help the black community would have been fantastic, and he's not done any of them.
And I think that's the real tragedy about this.
We were talking just before the break about the unbelievably high crime rates of blacks relative to whites.
Blacks are seven times more likely than people of any other races to commit murder, eight times more likely to commit robbery.
Blacks are 39 times more likely to commit a violent crime against whites than whites are against blacks, 136 times more likely to commit a robbery.
Seven times more likely to go to prison.
This is not all the result of racism.
And addressing the problem of black violence would be one of the best ways to help black communities.
I mean, the disproportionate degree of black-on-white violence versus white-on-black violence is certainly scary for a lot of white people, but being trapped in a ghetto with these predators is monstrously terrifying.
For black families, for the generally single mother headed black families is terrible.
What could Barack Obama have done?
Well, Barack Obama married his wife and stayed married.
Good for him.
Fantastic.
Maybe he could suggest that to the black community as a way of solving some of their problems.
Would that help a little?
I mean, come on.
He's already got 99.999% of the black vote.
I guess mine is Thomas Sowell.
I don't know if Thomas Sowell voted for a black economist I really like.
So he's got a lot of cred in the black community.
They love him to death.
I'm sure not because he's black, because that would be racist, but after an independent and thorough evaluation of his policies and the comparison of those to the policies of other race candidates, But he could go in front of the black community and say, hey, I am successful and I stayed married.
I married the mother of my children, stayed married to her.
That's a pretty good idea.
That's a great idea.
If you want to raise your income, if you want your kids to have the best opportunity, then for black men, and I'm not saying anything that lots of men in the black communities aren't saying too.
The Sister I'm Sorry movement, the Million Man March, is all about Let's stop marrying the mothers of our children.
One of the best ways to get into the middle class.
Does he say that?
I don't believe he's ever said that.
I've had a look.
And I don't believe he's ever said, let's address the problems of illegitimacy within the black community.
Barack Obama says that he does not spank his children.
Spanking is a third higher in African-American communities than it is in white communities.
Spanking is known to cause significant problems with aggression.
Spanking is known to cause lowering of IQ by a few percentage points and to increase the odds of criminality.
So can Barack Obama possibly say to the black community, listen, I got married and stayed married to the mother of my children and I don't spank my children.
So if I'm any kind of role model, Get married, stay married, don't spank your children.
Is he saying that?
No.
2009 he addressed the 100th anniversary dinner at the NAACP, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and he made jokes about how productive it was to hit other people's children.
Made jokes about this.
I remember back in the day when you could whop other people's children who were acting funny, and everybody cheered and laughed.
I mean, he's a vampire, fundamentally, because he could be using his bully pulpit, as the presidency has been described, to actually advance responsibility, knowledge, information, ideas, based upon his own example as a role model for the black community, to say, don't hit your kids, work hard, and marry the mother of your children, and stay married.
I mean, that would do more to advance The prospects of the black community than any kind of affirmative action or any kind of let's get this guy into the presidency.
Does he address that?
Does the media talk about that at all?
No, there's this knee-jerk response that there's dysfunction in the black community.
It can't possibly be the black community's fault.
It can't possibly be the black community's fault.
How condescending, how racist can you be to take a shred of moral responsibility for the decisions of black people?
I won't do it.
I won't do it.
I mean, the contributions of black people to American culture have been staggeringly great.
In the realm of jazz, in the realm of music, in the realm of arts, poetry, novels, movies.
I can't do it.
I can't excuse people because of a difficult history.
Lots of criminals had really terrible childhoods.
But there's no defense called, I had a bad childhood, therefore, I have no moral responsibility.
And those are personally bad childhoods, not slavery over 100 years ago.
People are morally responsible.
Black, white, rainbow-colored.
If a beluga whale had opposable thumbs and ran for office, it would also be morally responsible.
And would probably win against Chris Christie in a wrestling match.
But that's a topic for another time.
But I cannot remove moral responsibility from people because that is the ultimate contempt for an individual or the ultimate giving up of hope for an individual.
There's nothing worse than you can say to someone than you are no longer morally responsible or I'm going to lower my expectations for you.
That is a terrible, terrible thing to say to someone.
It's paternalistic.
It's treating them as children.
And if you do that on the basis of race, it's contemptuously racist to lower expectations.
I believe that the black community can deal with these issues.
I believe that the black community can get and stay married.
I believe that the black community can stop hitting their children at such a high rate.
But they happen to take responsibility for that.
Of course they do.
I had a rough childhood.
I took responsibility for that.
Went into therapy, dealt with it all.
Yes, you can do it.
But I did that because I did not create excuses for myself based upon difficulties in the past.
The moment you start creating excuses, you lower your expectations.
Well, I couldn't stop.
Eating too much because cheesecake is really good and it was there.
Not an excuse.
The best way to put the past in the past is to maintain your expectations, maintain your standards, and not give yourself an out because bad things happened a century ago or 50 years ago.
And I call upon the media and I call upon the president to talk about these issues and really help the black community By reminding them, don't hit your kids.
Get and stay married.
And that will deal with the majority of poverty experienced by blacks.
So if you really want to help them, don't lower your standards.
Tell the truth.
Stefan Molyneux for the Peter Schiff Show.
855-4SHIFT.
We will talk right after the break.
We now return to the Peter Schiff Show.
Call in now.
855-4SHIFT. That's 855-472-4433.
The Peter Schiff Show.
All right.
Stefan Molyneux sitting in for Peter Schiff.
You can find my work at freedomainradio.com.
We have Ed from Florida.
We are talking about race in America.
Ed, what's on your mind?
Hey, Stefan.
How are you doing?
I'm well.
How are you doing?
Good, good.
I can't think of anything.
I mean, you're one of those, I've listened to a lot of your videos in the past, and I think you're doing a great job, by the way.
Thank you.
And I can't think of anything I really disagree with you on, so I just had more of a comment, and then I wanted to ask you a question.
The comment is, I think it's already, you know, it's gone too far.
There's too many people, not just blacks, but all the, you know, aliens over here.
Everybody's on the government teat.
And I don't think there's any way to really change it to, you know, people are just barely making it to a lot of people.
And they're hooked on the heroin, like Peter says, you know.
You mean the government handouts and all that?
Yeah, how do you tell people that have been living on government welfare for the last three or four generations, all of a sudden you get to cut them back ten bucks for the ride.
But they will.
No, no, listen.
Look, I mean, in the 90s, Clinton, with the Republicans' support, reformed welfare, and people who'd been on welfare for a long time just got jobs.
I mean, in Canada, they cut government spending like 30% in the 90s, and people just got jobs.
I don't think that they've become so domesticated that they can't go out into the wild of the free market anymore.
No, no, no, no.
I agree with you totally.
I just think that with what you're saying and with what Peter says, this is a different situation.
This country is trillions in debt.
We don't have the shock absorbers to create real jobs.
So there's nowhere to go.
We painted ourselves like Bernanke or Yellen into a corner.
Well, but you're assuming that the debt has any particular reality.
I mean, the debt is, there's either going to be a soft default or a hard default.
They're either not going to pay their bills, or they're going to inflate the currency.
I mean, I'm no mathematician, but I understand the principle that that which mathematically cannot continue will not continue.
I mean, they can just...
Look, they've got all the guns and nuclear bombs in the world.
If they decide not to pay their debts, I mean, who's going to come garnishing the wages of the federal government?
They've got the biggest military the world has ever seen.
If they decide not to pay their debts, guess what?
The debt won't be paid.
The debt is not real in any tangibly collective or collectible kind of way.
They'll just vanish and make it go away.
Well, you know, you've got to tie the Chinese and all that in there, but I mean, assuming that, you know, I mean, there are...
I think there's going to be...
Hyperinflation or deflation?
That's the whole debate.
You know, Peter's had many talks on those, and deciding on what side you take.
Well, I'm just making a basic generalization that it's a lot easier to add jobs in a strong, sound money economy than add jobs in an economy that is trillions in debt.
And that's all I've got to say, but I have another question, and I'll hang up.
Wait, just let me make a comment on that.
I mean, just before you get to your question.
So, and I'll make it brief, because, I mean, this is your call.
We're only ever about six months away from a healthy economy.
I mean, historically, you know, massive dislocations in the economy get dealt with in about six months, absent of government interference and subsidies and PAC taxes and regulations.
There was a worse crash after the First World War in 1920 in America.
About six months later, everything was fine.
And this was all the people coming back from the war and a massive destruction of the Western economy in Europe.
France was destroyed and Germany was not invaded, but the Western economies were a complete wreck.
Six months!
It takes about six months for an economy absent significant government intervention to recover.
And yeah, those six months are tough.
It's a detox.
It's a rehab.
But if the government stops controlling everything, if the government stops ordering people and capital around at gunpoint continually, it will take three to six months, I would say, for all of that stuff to change.
So, again, historically, is that likely?
Yeah, it's going to happen.
The people in charge are not stupid.
They know that this cannot continue.
And they'll just turn on the dependent classes and reclassify them as parasites and rouse the popular indignation and the media will go along because they're out to survive.
They're not going down with the ship.
They'll just change course.
Go ahead.
I hope you're right.
You know, these government workers aren't going to leave without a fight, but I think it's going to be a fight.
That's all I'm saying.
I agree with you totally, but I have a question I've always wondered.
Who's your favorite philosopher?
I know it's a little off topic, but if you go back to the Roman, Plato, I mean to Tacitus or whoever, who do you, if you had one you'd pick out, who would you resonate most with?
And I'll hang up and listen to your answers.
I'm not allowed to say me, right?
For my favorite philosopher.
Well, I am, because otherwise I'd be working for...
If there was a living philosopher who I thought was better, I'd go work for them.
That doesn't mean I am.
It just means my opinion I am.
But historically, for methodology, you can't beat Socrates.
And the Socratic method of continually asking questions, looking for exceptions, and attempting to seal them up is the essence of all good science, all good rigorous thought.
Ah, justice is X. Well, can we find an example of X that is obviously unjust?
Then we need to refine...
The definition.
You can't be that for a methodology.
It can sometimes go too far to the point where you nitpick yourself into an atomic self-disintegration where it's like, well, I can think of one conceivable exception on another planet in another dimension.
This could be the case.
Look, we all have to make decisions.
You have to build a bridge even though a giant asteroid will knock it over.
Under some circumstances, your bridge will not stand, yet we must build bridges.
So I think that sometimes we can go too far with that.
So historically, Socrates is a huge influence.
Aristotle, in his metaphysics, in other words, the study of reality, is great.
I really, really dislike the Descartes, the Cartesian is called.
Which is that we might be a brain in a tank manipulated by an evil demon.
Ooh, mainstream media.
Wait, that's actually too true for words.
So Nietzsche, I think, is fantastic for challenging thought and getting you out of preconceptions, although he was more of an aphorist.
In other words, he was a thought-provoking fortune cookie machine rather than a systematic philosopher from first principles.
I think Locke for government is an interesting place to start.
Adam Smith for economics.
Bastiat for economics is fantastic for this kind of stuff.
John Stuart Mill, of course, a great challenge in utilitarianism.
In other words, we should judge public policies according to the greatest good for the greatest number.
Hugely influential in society.
I find it quite repulsive.
John Rawls' theory of justice.
It's interesting and a great challenge to libertarian thought, which is if you were a baby floating in the ether before you were born, what kind of society would you choose?
He says, well, you choose a society with some free market so you could achieve your potential, but with some social safety net so if you were poor or sick or brain damaged, you wouldn't starve in the gutter.
Interesting challenge.
I've responded to this in my show.
You can find that at freedomainradio.com.
But I have been circling because the smoky, gravel-voiced Russian goddess of Ayn Rand certainly was my biggest influencer.
I think that she is one of the most powerful thinkers in history and had this incredible ability to translate philosophy into digestible art.
Atlas Shrugged is the second most influential book according to New York Times survey after the Bible.
Second only to the Bible Not bad.
Not bad.
Aiming for higher than the Bible might be a bit premature.
But I think her philosophy, I have no fault with her study of reality, metaphysics, no fault with her study of the acquisition of knowledge and what is truth, which is epistemology.
I deviate from the methodology, though few of the conclusions of her ethics, and I deviate significantly from her politics.
She was what's called a minarchist, which is small government magically controlled by pieces of paper.
Because you all know that if you hold up a piece of paper, it stops bullets.
It's magic!
But she was a minarchist, and I am an advocate of, in a couple of generations, achieving a society without a state, a stateless society, because the non-aggression principle denies the validity of of the initiation of force under all circumstances and government is by definition an agency that requires the initiation of force so it does not pass the non-aggression principle and therefore we should start looking for solutions and again multi-generational change and all that starts with peaceful parenting which I've talked about in yesterday's show I won't go over that
again But Ayn Rand's relentless focus on rationality, her acceptance of the empirical existence of an objective universe, which we must obey.
Nature to be commanded, as the scientific saying goes, I think it was Bacon, nature to be commanded must be obeyed.
The derivation of rationality from the consistent behavior of matter Fantastic.
Introduction to objectivist epistemology required reading for anyone who claims to understand philosophy.
It's a great challenge, which is how do we know what is true and how do we know what is false?
Everybody wants to jump into philosophy at the end where it's fun.
None of the beginning where it's really tough.
People say, the government should pursue this policy.
Why?
Because it's good.
Well, what is goodness?
What is truth?
What is virtue?
Answer me that, and then you can start talking to me about government policies.
But everybody wants to wave around government policies and point the gun like the gun is just an unquestioned absolute, like law and government and force and control and prisons are just unquestioned absolutes for how we should pretend we're organizing society.
How many people say...
I don't even know what is true.
I don't even know what is good.
I don't even know what is virtue.
They don't ask those questions.
They don't learn the lesson 2,500 years ago.
Socrates made it very clear.
The wise man starts with the proposition he knows nothing.
Nothing!
And from that nothingness, from that blank page, from that tabula rasa, From that blank slate, we can begin to build some real knowledge.
But we must first cast aside all of the lies and momentums of history, all the superstitions of history, and we must assume that nothing we inherit has validity.
Nothing we inherit is morally good.
Nothing we inherit is logically sound.
Nothing we inherit can achieve any kind of virtue.
Because we must start from the beginning, from a blank page.
If we don't know what is true, if we don't know what is good, We must first decide what is real.
We can then decide what is true.
We can then decide what is virtuous.
But we don't even know what is real, most of us.
Majority of Americans believe Satan tempts them with goodies.
And that hell is the destiny of people like me.
I mean, we don't even know what is real.
Or what is true, let alone what is good.
And yet we start pointing all these guns and claiming we're achieving all this virtue, all this goodness.
And we are like a blind man shooting in a crowded theater.
We don't know what we're doing.
Therefore, the results are almost always disastrous.
Looking forward to chatting with you.
Stefan Molyneux from Free Domain Radio for the Peter Schiff Show.
Give me a shout, 855-4-SHIFT. We will be right back after the break.
My head is spinning around and around as I go deep into the funnel of love.
It's such a crazy, crazy feeling I get weak in the knees.
My poor old head is a reeling as I go deep into the funnel of love.
And I tried to run and hide Even tried to run away You just can't run from the funnel of love If knowledge is power,
then the Peter Schiff Show is a uranium-enriched 10,000-megawatt nuclear reactor.
Stay plugged in.
Stay brilliant.
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It's my last segment.
Thank you so much to Peter for letting me helm the show.
It's been a real pleasure.
And if you'd like to hear more of my stuff, you can go to freedomainradio.com.
If you're listening to this on my feed, SchiffRadio.com is the place to go.
So...
We have a caller.
Actually, we have two, but I'm going to go with Greg from Tallahassee.
Are you with me, brother?
Now is not the time to mime.
Do you have a voice?
Can we hear you?
Yes, I hope so.
Okay, what's on your mind?
I appreciate you taking the call, and I'm going to probably do you an injustice as I attempt to To recap your thoughts from yesterday, but you were speaking about ignorance and how you try to avoid ignorance or ignorant people,
and you may have made a distinction there, I'm not sure, and you compared them to radioactivity, right, where sometimes you need to be exposed to them, but you try to minimize your exposure so as to not make yourself dumber or waste your time or whatever.
Somewhere in there, you used the example of Barack Obama, And, you know, I could use Barack Obama or, you know, being on Peter's show, the likes of Paul Krugman and Ben Bernanke would also come to mind as guys that, you know, I would disagree with probably on nine of ten topics, but I would not dare to call them ignorant.
You know, guys like Bernanke know more about economics than I ever will.
So compared to them, I would be the ignorant one.
But I would be a little concerned if they were to dismiss me out of hand and say, you're just ignorant about economics.
If I were to take issue with their policies, and my contention would be that, look, I may be ignorant, but what I'm concerned about is ideas and principles that you're violating, and I don't have to have a PhD in economics to disagree with your principles, right?
Right.
I don't have a very focused question for you, but I'm interested in...
I think I understand.
Let me just sort of clarify that.
Maybe I did, but I don't remember saying Barack Obama was dumb.
I don't think he is.
Now, I think that there's...
No, no.
You did not say that, but you used him as an example in your discussion about ignorance that you tried to avoid.
Right.
Now, philosophically, there's not much to say about policy.
Philosophy is really about the pursuit of truth and virtue.
There's an old equation that Nietzsche talked about, Socrates, defining reason equals virtue equals happiness.
If you are rational, if your thoughts are organized and consistent with reality, consistent with each other, then you have the chance to be virtuous.
You can't be virtuous randomly any more than you could be a good golfer by blindfolding yourself, getting drunk, spinning around three times, putting a monkey on your head and swinging wildly at a watermelon.
You can't be randomly virtuous.
It means consistency.
Consistency means reasoned principles.
If you are rational, you can be virtuous.
If you are virtuous, you can be happy.
These are necessary but not sufficient requirements for each preceding step.
So I think good philosophy doesn't care that much about particular policies.
Should we do this?
Should we do that?
Should we take this stolen money that the government has gotten from people and spend it on this or this?
Philosophy focuses on the truth value of the proposition and the virtue of the action, of the virtue of the principle behind the action, sorry.
So people like Krugman and Obama and Bush and all these people, I would not consider them intelligent insofar as They have reasoned methodologies behind what they say.
I would call them sophists, which is to say that they are cunning with emotionally manipulative language.
They know how to push people's buttons.
And because they know how to push people's buttons, they can say stuff that seems plausible, if you don't really think about it too much.
Seems plausible.
I care about the poor.
Obama seems to care about the poor.
He says he wants to help the poor, and he's going to give them free health care.
Well, who could possibly be against free health care for the poor?
So, go Obama!
Right?
I mean, this is emotionally manipulative, retarded, philosophically economic, retarded stuff.
But it hooks into people's desire to help.
It hooks into people's sense that we sure hope that the people in charge of us are good people.
We have this desperate desire to feel that.
Because if we're tied to the back of a limo and the driver is drunk and blind and there's a brick on the accelerator...
Well, that's not a very relaxing ride, is it?
So we have this desire to believe the people in charge are virtuous, and they know that, and they will attempt to get us to surrender our rights, to surrender our freedoms in the pursuit of a virtue that is never achieved through a methodology that is fundamentally immoral, which is the initiation of force.
And these sophists, these people who are cunning in the manipulative use of language, fundamentally a characteristic of sociopathy, But I'm not a psychologist, so that's just my opinion.
But they are ancient enemies of virtue.
They are ancient enemies of truth.
And we are, in our social organization, like medieval Christendom in its approach to science.
We don't have a consistent methodology for organizing society, for achieving virtue.
In the same way that the Alchemists of the Middle Ages did not have a consistent methodology called the scientific method.
They had to wait for Francis Bacon and others to come up with that in the 16th century, and it took 100 or 200 years to propagate.
And now we have science somewhat hijacked by government, but still the best methodology we have for discovering truth about the universe.
In the absence of a consistent methodology, everything is accidental, everything is superstition, and when you don't have a consistent methodology, you are open to emotional manipulation.
Reason is the opposite of propaganda.
Clear thought is the opposite of political control through language.
Philosophy is the opposite of the matrix we call culture, which is the enclosure for we tax cattle.
It's a zoo.
We think it's a resort, but it's a zoo.
And we're destined for the slaughterhouse, economically, through war, through imprisonment.
But people can paint a pretty picture of our cages.
They can paint a mural on the wall and we think we can see the whole universe.
All we have to do is avoid trying to walk through it and remember that it's a prison.
The mural is a pretty picture.
In a very small enclosure.
And these sophists can create that illusion for us that we are free, that we see far, that we are participants in a virtue.
And they use this by appealing to the language of volunteerism.
We want to help people.
We want to do good.
Well, thank you for your calls.
Thank you for your time.
I hope you have a fantastic, fantastic day.
I am at freedomainradio.com, youtube.com forward slash freedomainradio if you'd like more.
Have yourselves a great day.
Stefan Molyneux for The Peter Schiff Show.
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