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Feb. 6, 2014 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

01:19:44

2610 Ron Paul vs. Rand Paul - Peter Schiff Radio Show February 6th, 2014

Stefan Molyneux, host of Freedomain Radio guest hosts the Peter Schiff radio show, and talks about executive orders, why the government does not care about you, Ron Paul vs. Rand Paul, not giving up and much more.

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	Make no friends in the pits and you take no prisoners.
	One minute you're up half a million in soybeans and the next boom.
	Your kids don't go to college and they've repossessed your pens.
	Are you with me?
	The revolution starts now.
	We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it.
	Turn those machines back on!
	You are about to enter The Peter Schiff Show.
	If we lose freedom here, there's no place to escape to.
	This is the last stand on earth.
	The Peter Schiff Show is on.
	Call in now.
	855-4SHIFT. That's 855-472-4433.
	I don't know when they decided that they wanted to make a virtue out of selfishness.
	Your money.
	Your stories.
	Your freedom.
	The Peter Schiff Show.
	Good morning, everybody.
	Hope you're doing well.
	It's Stefan Molyneux from Freedomain Radio sitting in for Peter Schiff.
	Oh, we've got so much to talk about this morning.
	I'm looking forward to your calls.
	This is going to be the theme of the show.
	I want to hear your thoughts on this.
	It's very, very important.
	What do you think of the political process as it stands?
	Do you have hope that we can turn this Titanic around before we hit the iceberg of inevitable mathematical reality?
	Can they keep raising the debt ceiling this month?
	At the end of the month, they get to try again.
	What do you think?
	Is there hope?
	Do you think the Republicans are going to ride in and rescue the remnants of the Republic?
	Is there going to have to be a crash?
	You know, the traditional solution of the ruling political classes to unsustainable government policies has always been war.
	But, really, with the advent of nuclear weapons, war has become fairly untenable to the ruling classes.
	You know, once they can be targeted, suddenly they're all about blessed are the peacemakers.
	Do you have hope in the political process?
	What are you going to do with your vote?
	Are you going to vote?
	What do you think is going to happen in the next five to ten years and make or break time for the West as a whole and for the remnants of the Republic in particular?
	This is Stefan Molyneux.
	I want to hear your thoughts on this topic.
	855-472-4433.
	But we're going to talk a little bit about executive orders.
	I've tried implementing them in my marriage.
	They still remain tangled up in committees.
	My wife and daughter seem to be somewhat nonplussed, but it seems to be quite a perk of the presidency.
	And let's hear what people are talking about these guys if we can hit clip one.
	I frankly am happy when he does executive orders because he, Paul Ryan said he's doing the work of Congress well.
	Well, you know, that's because Congress isn't doing its job.
	So I encourage the president to continue doing executive orders.
	We're going to meet with him tomorrow as a caucus.
	And I frankly hope that his position like that continues because it's pretty clear the Republicans are still not going to work with him.
	So it seems to come as a surprise to this fine lady Republican Karen Bass from California, Democrat of course.
	It seems to come as a surprise to this fine lady that the Republicans don't want to implement the agenda of the Democrats.
	I'm not sure how you can tie your shoelaces, let alone have a career in politics, if you think that your opponents are going to work with you.
	You know, there was a Super Bowl Just recently, Seattle Seahawks against the Denver Broncos.
	What was the joke?
	Last good run in a Bronco was by O.J. Simpson.
	Now, the Seattle Seahawks, strangely enough, were not working with the Denver Broncos because they were actually competing opponents.
	And the idea that you as a Democrat are shocked and appalled!
	that the republicans are not working with you seems somewhat incomprehensible you know when competitors in the business world act in a bipartisan cooperative manner it's called collusion it's actually against the law i'm not saying it should be against the law but currently it is against the law and you can get hit with an antitrust act or collusion legislation so of course the republicans are not going to work with the Democrats.
	They're opposed to the vast majority of their policies.
	So how can you possibly be shocked at this?
	And this is so they're wounded and hurt these Democrats.
	Well, they're just not working with us.
	What's the matter?
	Is it my perfume?
	Am I not wearing the right outfit?
	What if I do a little dance?
	It's crazy.
	Of course they're not going to work with them.
	So because The Republicans are not, quote, working with the Democrats.
	President Obama is calling in the airstrike, the legislative airstrike of the executive order.
	Tragically, there is, in fact, no constitutional provision, nor any statute, that explicitly permits executive orders.
	Now, there are these vague grants of executive power in Article 2, Section 1, Clause 1 of the Constitution, And there's a declaration that the president should take care that the laws be faithfully executed.
	And of course, there's the oath that you're going to faithfully execute and so on.
	That's kind of vague.
	And it's a shame that it is kind of vague.
	You know, this is the institution and the specific person in the institution, the monarch, the dictator, the ruler, the king, Who has caused untold human misery.
	You'd kind of want to really bound that one and not have any vagueness around the powers of the executive.
	I mean, they were fighting a king whose executive orders were law.
	King George in England.
	I mean, I've got more clarity in my cell phone contract than they have in restraining the individual with the greatest power to do evil in the human history.
	And I think it's a shame that this was not more clearly delineated.
	And it just goes to show you that the greatest geniuses combined on the planet, right, the 18th century, products of the Enlightenment, products of Voltaire, products of Locke, these thinkers still could not come up with a document that was able to restrain government power.
	You know, they keep the original Constitution locked away in the dark, exposure to light.
	Probably not that great for it, I think.
	Words don't restrain power.
	Words don't restrain power.
	Words don't turn checks and balances into laws of physics.
	Executive powers have been significantly abused.
	FDR had over 3,000 of them.
	Obama's had 160 odd of these things.
	And as Judge Napolitano has pointed out in an article that just came out this morning, In June 2012, this is from his article, he wrote, in June 2012, facing a presidential election campaign that he feared he might lose and wishing to keep socially conservative Hispanics from voting for Mitt Romney,
	the President directed the Department of Health and Human Services, the same folks who failed miserably at rolling out Obamacare, to establish standards of behavior for millions of illegal immigrants which, if followed to the government's satisfaction, would get them off of government deportation lists.
	So when the President lays down a list of conditions that permit persons in America to avoid complying with federal law, he is not enforcing that law, he is rewriting it.
	Only Congress can lawfully establish the circumstances under which those who are candidates for deportation may legally avoid it.
	And there's a petulance and almost a narcissistic immaturity to the idea that, well, I know what's right, and if Congress isn't going to do what's right, I'm just going to bypass Congress.
	This is late Roman dictatorial accumulation of powers.
	I mean, in the Roman Empire, or in the Roman Republic, the Senate had some significant power.
	Later on, it just became a figurehead, something for people to pretend had power, something for people to fight over.
	And if you study the history of Rome, you will see that this is like a rewind And this is pretty much the same deal, but without the togas, which I guess we can be thankful for in some ways.
	But executive orders are dictatorial in their essence.
	They are a way of bypassing the legitimate role in the Constitution of Congress to make or break laws.
	And this is happening continuously in the late Republic.
	But I want to get your thoughts on this.
	Give me a call, 855-472-4433.
	This is Stefan Molyneux for The Peter Schiff Show.
	The Peter Schiff Show.
	Well, now...
	Meet his worst nightmare.
	This is The Peter Schiff Show.
	Good morning, everybody.
	Stefan Molyneux sitting in for Peter Schiff.
	I hope you're doing well this morning.
	We've got a question of the day going out across the wide lands, the azure plains, the purple mountains, the floating wildebeest.
	I don't know.
	I'm not a biologist.
	But, um...
	Give me a shout, 855-472-4433.
	Do you have hope for the political process?
	Do you think that the inevitable self-destruction of a system that mathematically cannot continue will be softened by political action, or is it just going to have to hit the wall and we all scurry for cover as best we can?
	And look, I don't mean to pick on the Democrats.
	I don't, but boy, I wish they'd make it a little bit harder.
	Let's listen to...
	Steve Israel, appearing Thursday on NBC. Let's hear him talk about how Obama bypasses Congress.
	If we can hear cut six, please.
	Is there a legitimate debate about overstepping?
	And could that have the net effect?
	And I should say at a time when Congress has found a way to get a budget deal, an appropriations bill, the farm bill, which will probably pass sometime in this hour, could the net effect be to make more progress less likely?
	Well, look, you know, you always want checks and balances.
	That's the way it should be.
	But when you have a Republican Tea Party Congress that has only been willing to act when they can act on behalf of oil companies and insurance companies and special interests, you can't expect the president just to sit still and stand by.
	I don't think Republicans really object to the fact that the president is invoking his presidential authority.
	I think they object to the fact that he's invoking his presidential authority when it helps the middle class, when it helps the working poor.
	How astounding.
	How astounding.
	And how fundamentally untrue.
	The Republicans get the majority of their donation in small amounts from a wide variety of people.
	The Democrats get the majority of their donations from public sector unions, private sector unions, from Hollywood, and from people who are dependent upon government handouts.
	If you take away The people who support the Democrats, who aren't bribed by the Democrats?
	I don't think you even have a party.
	I don't even think you have a thimble full of confetti.
	You've got nothing without bribery, Democrats!
	Nothing!
	And yet they say that the Republicans are acting not according to the wishes of the people, but according to the demands of concentrated political and economic power.
	Oil companies, insurance companies, and special interests.
	Yeah, because of course the Democrats are never swayed by public sector union donations.
	I mean, at least people in general give to the Republicans voluntarily.
	I mean, the number of people in unions, both public and private sector, who rail against being forced to give their money to the Democratic Party because the union leadership take their forced union dues and hand them over to the Democrats.
	This is somehow considered to be representative of the will of the people.
	And the idea that the Republicans Just don't like helping the middle class or the working poor.
	My goodness.
	What an astounding statement.
	The Democrats get their money from unions, which specifically raise wages, and exclude the working poor.
	And the Democrats Get a huge amount of money from concentrated capital.
	President Obama's largest donation base in the last election was Wall Street financial oligopolies.
	You know the big money monopoly men with the monocle and the tiny chihuahua in a handbag?
	Okay, some of them are women.
	But that's where the Democrats get their money from.
	Now, Republicans get their money, a lot of it from small donations, individual donations, and the Republicans don't want to give money as much to the poor, but they still want to give a lot of money to the military.
	So it is a little bit of sort of choose your evils.
	But the Republicans, the Republican Party in America and the Tea Party in America do represent a significant portion of the population.
	And it's not a bunch of Evil Republicans who are somehow racking their bald, bespectacled, money laundered heads to figure out some way to juice the poor into oil, to pour into their gigantic SUVs, probably after it comes through the new pipeline.
	The Republican Party at its individual level represents people who are Extremely anxious, if not downright terrified, about the endless march forward and upward and outward of state power.
	And just look at this interview.
	Progress, according to the anchor here, progress is always the passing of bills.
	Always the extension and expansion of state power.
	That's progress!
	Well, I guess if you're out of the Fabian socialist tradition of the early 20th century and call yourself a progressive, that is progress.
	Progress is always the expansion of state power, an extension of state power.
	The interference of more coercion into voluntary human relationships.
	That's called progress.
	Why?
	Why is the expansion of state power inevitably and always progress?
	Well, it has to come at someone's expense.
	Every time you use force to interfere with the free choices of free people, a concentrated group will benefit, and a diffuse and scattered group will pay.
	If I could get everyone in America to send me a dollar, it would cost everyone in America a dollar, but I would make hundreds of millions of dollars.
	So my incentive to get everyone to send me a dollar is hundreds of millions of dollars high.
	Your incentive to resist my predation is about a buck.
	And so the concentrated benefit and diffuse costs are the reality of the democrat and the democratic political system.
	The use of state power is always used to benefit specific groups and individuals at the expense of the general wheel and at the expense of the unborn.
	I gave a speech recently to a huge hall full of teenagers, high school students.
	And it's a great crowd.
	Smart crowd.
	I love the young people.
	They're so smart.
	You know, there's this thing called the Flynn Effect.
	The IQ goes up a couple of points every generation.
	These people are going to outstrip up us, ladies and gentlemen.
	Keep your game up, because they're getting smarter.
	And they were talking about how the government cares about the young.
	And I said, they don't care about you.
	I hate to break it to you.
	If they cared about you, you wouldn't be born $100,000 in debt.
	Because the government has robbed you before you were born to pay and bribe for votes in the here and now.
	If they cared about you, they wouldn't force your parents to pay for unbelievably terrible government schools with metal detectors built by the same people who build prisons.
	They don't care about you because you don't vote, as the head of the American Teachers Union said, I will start caring about the interests of students and children when students and children start paying union dues.
	The group, the mass, always pays and the benefits always accrue to specific politically connected individuals.
	That's even more true for the Democratic Party, which is why they endlessly accuse the Republicans Looking forward to your calls, 855-472-4433.
	This is Stefan Molyneux for The Peter Schiff Show.
	show we will be right back we now return to the peter schiff show call in now 855-4-SHIFT that's 855-472-4433 the peter schiff show good morning everybody hope you're doing well stephan molyneux from freedom main radio sitting in for peter schiff the conversation this morning is for you
	do you have hope in the political process is uh voting and government and congress and the presidency how we are going to scoop ourselves out of this one-way ticket to oblivion that, mathematically speaking, our budget is taking us.
	We want to hear your thoughts.
	How is it going to turn around?
	How is it going to change?
	You tell me.
	So we have Dave from New Jersey.
	Are you on the line?
	Hey, Stephan.
	How are you?
	I'm well.
	How are you doing, Dave?
	Very good.
	Well, one, it is not going to change.
	You could just take a look at how people vote.
	To answer that question, if you think about it, if Congress has a 90% disapproval rating, then why do 90% get reelected?
	Is this a rhetorical question for me, or are you going to answer it yourself?
	No, no.
	I'm curious why you think that so many politicians get reelected Even though there's such distrust and such hatred amongst our elected officials.
	You know this as well as I do.
	Politics does not work for the average person.
	Politics works for the politically connected.
	The art of politics is to punish your enemies and reward your friends.
	And if you're friends of a politician, people who invest in lobbyists get unbelievable returns on their investment.
	I mean, you look at the amount of profits that people get from government contracts or favorable legislation relative to the cost of lobbying a politician.
	I mean, there's nobody in business who could possibly survive as the head of a company without investing heavily in lobbying.
	They would go out of business in about three days.
	Absolutely.
	Best bang for your buck.
	I couldn't agree more.
	But what you said before was kind of clarified.
	You said you talked to a group of high school kids.
	And you said that they're becoming more and more intelligent, yet right in their face they're being completely stripped of their freedoms and their livelihood, and everything that's come to the modern world is completely being stripped in front of them.
	I don't see how you can claim that they're far more intelligent than their predecessors.
	I think their predecessors are far more intelligent because they're using the hell out of them.
	Well, no, I mean, look, they're in the matrix, right?
	I mean, they're in the belly of the beast.
	They've just spent over a decade being programmed by the government to believe that the government is necessary and virtuous and good and moral, and without it, we're turning into a flaming hellhole of Somalia where guys like Mel Gibson will throw machetes through your hair while driving by on motorcycles on fire.
	But where I saw the intelligence was when I gave a very brief, like, 30-second case as to why there's no evidence that the government cares for them.
	They didn't say, well, that's just not true.
	They went, hmm, hmm.
	Well, you might have opened up a few eyes there, but I think the problem stems with our education system.
	As long as I keep walking in these high schools and the first thing I see behind glass cases are trophies for football and sports and everything that has nothing to do with academia, then none of this is ever going to rectify itself, because They have the grip on the youth.
	They have the grip on the mindset of the youth.
	Thus, the future will pretty much right itself.
	Yeah, I mean, there's that old Jesuit saying, he says, give me a child until he's seven and he's mine for life.
	Of course the government wants to get their hands on the young.
	And I have a general belief, though I can't prove it, I have a general belief that it would have been really tough to have a First World War if the governments throughout the West had not taken over education a generation or two previously.
	You know, human beings, we're like ducklings.
	We bond with whoever raises us.
	And if we are raised by the state or by state representatives, which is all the way through from daycare to a PhD, then we bond with those people.
	They have credibility to us just because we bond with whoever we're around, which is why Muslims tend to become Muslims and Christians tend to become Christians and atheists tend to become atheists in the next generation.
	We just bond with whoever raises us.
	I agree.
	We're all products of our environment, but at the same time, until we remedy the problem with the environment, politics as usual will continue.
	I don't see anything that's going to change the direction Of the voter.
	I think you spend too much time on the Democrat, Republican, and that paradigm.
	But it's really the voters the problem.
	And it's how they're programmed.
	It's how they think.
	The voters themselves are relatively ignorant to the facts that actually control their lives.
	Well, look, I think the voters are not always the problem.
	I mean, I think that people in general are overwhelmingly for smaller government, and polls tend to bear that out, and the amount of votes cast for Republicans who talk about smaller government, though, of course, when the Tea Party members first got to Congress, they stuck themselves We're good to go.
	That they try and send small government people to Washington.
	Those people get swallowed up by the giant Jabba the Hutt Borg of political favoritism and they end up doing exactly what everyone did before.
	There is a desperation for smaller government and there doesn't seem to be any way to reliably achieve it.
	The Tea Party movement, what effect has it had?
	No, there's no desperation for smaller government.
	I think the opposite is true.
	I think the majority of the population actually desire Far more government intervention in their lives.
	I see it just the opposite.
	I don't see how you can come up with that conclusion that people are desiring less government.
	Just look around you.
	That's not what's occurring in the society.
	We're seeing ever more government.
	So how could you say that people are desiring less, yet we keep getting more?
	I don't see the connection.
	Well, that's because you think that the government is reflecting the will of the people, right?
	Well, then why do they think that way?
	Well, because that's what they've been told.
	And also, do you know what it's like?
	This is an analogy.
	Now, an analogy is not a proof, but hopefully it will illustrate what I'm trying to say.
	But it doesn't mean I'm right.
	If you're facing a giant grizzly, and all you have is a stick, and then people say, well, do you really think that stick is going to be effective against that grizzly?
	You're going to say, it's all I've got!
	So this is what I have to put my faith in.
	I have no alternative.
	You know, I can't call in an airstrike.
	I can't will a lightsaber to appear in my left hand.
	I can't pull any nunchucks out of my backpack.
	Right, or you can't...
	So people think that the political process is the only way to control and restrain the government, so they keep getting drawn into it, because they don't know or can't think of any alternative.
	Well, that's the problem.
	They cannot think of any alternative, because the government-run schools have...
	Completely annihilated critical thinking.
	Yes, that's true.
	That's true, but we do have hope.
	We do have hope, and the hope comes from the Internet.
	I heard that line before, hope.
	I've heard change also with that hope thing, and I'm not buying it.
	I see how this movie plays out.
	I've seen it historically.
	I don't see how any of this is going to remedy itself.
	It's nice to have hope, Stefan, but I've lost hope.
	Unfortunately, here in the United States, and I know you're in Canada, I've lost hope.
	I'm completely, completely 100% lost hope in our species, for that matter.
	I just don't see how this is going to remedy itself.
	I just don't.
	Well, then I think that the propagandists may have won, because if they've taken you out of the race, you're not going to fight for something better.
	Let me give you a poll from 2010.
	I'll look up some more information during the break.
	A new Washington Post-ABC News poll finds that respondents favor smaller government with fewer services over larger government with more services by 58% to 38%.
	58% of people want smaller government with fewer services.
	Only 38% of people want larger government with more services.
	And I'll get some more recent information.
	I think that that's only gotten stronger with the passage of time.
	But if they get you to give up hope, then I do believe that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
	If you give up hope for change, for illuminating people, for leading people out of the matrix of government language, which swallows and bewilders their minds, Then I think you've surrendered something essential.
	If you take yourself out of the field of battle, the bad guys win.
	And it is not the entire human race that you need to give up on.
	There's always new people coming out, right?
	We're like Lucille Ball on that chocolate conveyor belt.
	Always new people coming out, and they are not responsible for the system.
	That they're inheriting.
	And they have the chance to see the truth.
	They have the chance.
	We have this incredible web of human connectivity called the Internet.
	We can talk to people directly.
	We can get them to the source of information.
	We can make powerful arguments without the gatekeepers of the mainstream media, of academia, of the publishing houses.
	We can make clear arguments, cogent arguments, direct to people.
	My show, Free Domain Radio, is doing over three million downloads and views a month.
	Now, if I had given up, that simply wouldn't exist.
	Is that going to be enough to change the world?
	Over time, I hope so.
	I'm not going to be shy about my ambitions.
	But it sure wouldn't happen if I'd have given up.
	You don't know what you're capable of.
	You don't know, with enough enthusiasm and passion and commitment to bringing virtue, reason and truth to the world, what you can achieve.
	If you take yourself off the battlefield, you lose by default.
	If you don't show up to the job interview, you don't get the job by default.
	Don't underestimate your own capacity to bring reason, truth, and virtue to this world, to tickle the brains of people until they giggle into rational intelligence.
	But don't take yourself right out of the game yet.
	It's too soon.
	You know, maybe when we're all behind barbed wire, we can give up and get used to cabbage soup rations and distant views of a sunset.
	But not yet.
	Not yet!
	I'm not ready to go down.
	I'm not ready to give up the fight yet.
	Don't give up.
	We live in the freest society still with the greatest communications capacity the world has ever seen.
	It's too soon to give up.
	It's way too soon to give up.
	Have something powerful to say to your grandchildren when they ask, what did you do when the government kept growing?
	What did you do when freedoms kept shrinking?
	I stood against the dark.
	I stood against the dark.
	That's something to be proud of on your deathbed.
	It's not a bad scribble to throw on your tombstone.
	I hope that you will consider that.
	Don't let the disgust of the irrational or disgust for the irrational keep you from reasoning with the potentially intelligent.
	But I want to hear more.
	Let's not make this show all about me and my rantings.
	You can give me a call at 855-472-4433.
	I do want to hear your thoughts.
	How is things going to change?
	How is it going to change?
	You know, if you don't give me your thoughts, I'll end up just having to give you my thoughts.
	And you can get those from my show anytime at freedomainradio.com, but I want to hear from you.
	855-4SHIFT. How are things going to change?
	How do you see this turning about?
	How are your conversations going with the people in your life?
	About politics, the state, power, debt, the future.
	Let me know.
	Give me the pulse of the nation.
	Don't give me a heart attack.
	But give me the pulse of the nation.
	This is Stefan Molyneux from Peter Schiff.
	We will be right back.
	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.
	Hope you're doing well, Stefan Molyneux.
	I hope you're enjoying my slight cold voice.
	I went to the biochemical medieval warfare pit of a children's playground and caught something foreign.
	Not too bad, though.
	Not too bad.
	The instrument for speaking is a little raspy.
	I think I'm somewhere between Duke Nukem and Edder James.
	So, we are talking this morning about what is your hopes for the political process?
	What do you think is going to change things?
	Everybody knows that which mathematically cannot continue will not continue.
	How are things going to change?
	Do you think it's going to be a soft landing through reforms within politics, or is it going to be a hard landing of sudden, hopefully not too fascistic, fiscal reality hitting the political process in the nads?
	Patrick from Philly, what are your thoughts?
	Hey, Stefan, how you doing?
	I'm well.
	How you doing, brother?
	Oh, good, doing good, doing good.
	I hope you feel better.
	Oh, yeah, it's not bad.
	Yeah, yeah, I got something to do, a little something.
	But, you know, in terms of the previous car, I just don't see, I don't have such a negative outlook on things.
	I think, you know, there are certain signs, you know, that, you know, people are kind of waking up to the message of, you know, individualism and self-ownership and stuff.
	I mean, I go to Temple University and believe me that's no libertarian paradise.
	And I tell you, there's not many kids I run into that are liberal or, you know, far left.
	You know, a lot of them believe in, you know, the right to self-ownership and stuff.
	But I wanted to have your comments on what you think about Rand Paul, you know, running in 2016.
	I mean, I know he's not as good as his father was, but I feel like, you know, one of the first steps we could have, you know, in trying to, you know, get back to, you know, libertarian, you know, self-ownership, you know, What are your thoughts
	on Rand Paul, basically?
	Well, it depends what you mean by when.
	You know, can he win office?
	I think that he has, I think we can all admit or understand, he's softened some of the stances that his father had.
	He seems to be more pro-military, and he's softened some of the very libertarian arguments of his father, which is one of the reasons why he's more prominent and why you get more coverage from him.
	So he's muted himself somewhat, which is going to get him a greater chance of achieving some sort of significant political office.
	One of the great challenges of libertarian candidates, I would argue, is that they need to find a way to get power without distributing other people's money.
	And Ron Paul was not able to do that.
	I mean, he took lots of government money and he handed it back to his constituents.
	Now, his argument is that the money was already spent and that he's just getting money back for people who'd had their money taken by the government.
	And I understand that argument.
	I don't particularly agree with it.
	It's kind of a collectivist argument because he wasn't giving the money back to the people who'd had it taxed.
	But you need to find a way to get into power without handing back goodies to your constituents.
	Because you need to make the case to politicians, look, you can get in power and you can be successful as a politician without taking blood money and shoveling it back to your constituents.
	Because that's how it works at the moment.
	You get voted into power, you go and get a lot of money from Washington, and you bring it back to your constituents.
	That's how it works.
	Now, if someone can get into power without doing that, then they can make a very strong case.
	On how we need to reduce government spending and your constituents will not be voting you in to go get money from Washington or bring it back to them.
	Now, Ron Paul wasn't able to do that, or at least he wasn't willing to try.
	Because if he were to say, look, because the point would be to not bring money back to your constituents and make the case or prove the case that you can get voted without being a conduit of stolen money back to your constituents, He wasn't able to do that.
	I don't think Rand Paul has been able to do that.
	I think he's a very nice guy, to be honest.
	I mean, the guy gives free eye surgery to the poor.
	You know, I donate and give money to a food bank, but I can't fix their eyesight with a laser scalper or whatever he uses.
	He's a very nice guy, as is Rand Paul.
	Very nice guy.
	Very intelligent guys.
	But I'm not sure that they're able to break the pattern of politics as yet.
	What do you think?
	Well, I mean...
	I mean, it just, it kind of reminds me of the previous caller.
	It's kind of like, well, you know, if they're not, like, 100% on board, like, don't get me wrong.
	I totally agree with you.
	Rand Paul is not my, you know, redeeming savior.
	When he endorsed Mitt Romney, I nearly jumped out of my skin.
	I mean, the idea of supporting somebody who's just a little bit less divorced than Obama is insane to me.
	But I'm saying, like, in terms of, you know, you know, it's like the Titanic.
	You know, we're spilling over and over and over, and someone says, do you want to close the watertight door?
	And then someone says, well, we could do that.
	And then someone else says, well, it wouldn't matter.
	I mean, that would only give us minutes.
	But, you know, those minutes might be helpful to a lot of people.
	I'm saying it would be the first step in the right direction.
	I know Rand Paul softened a lot of his libertarian terms, but the fact is he had to do it because he was, like you said, he wouldn't be on the media.
	And the fact that Ron Paul had to bring that money back to his constituents, because then he wouldn't have had a platform to speak about libertarianism and self-ownership, because he would have gotten voted out in a minute.
	I'm just saying Rand Paul is not the end-all solution.
	It's not going to be like, you know, when Rand Paul goes up to the podium, everything's going to be okay.
	But I'm saying it maybe could be the first step in the right direction.
	Of the long, progressive presidents we've had so many years before us, I think Rand Paul would be a good start to really bringing libertarians to the forefront of the political platform in America.
	I think it would be a good start.
	Maybe a small step, a very small step.
	And one that's not my ideal step, but who knows?
	I mean, I can't think of any other candidates up there right now that have a chance of winning that are as up there as what Rand Paul is right now.
	Well, I mean, and you know, I mean, I assume you know that this has all been tried before, right?
	I mean, I just recently read Barry Goldwater's conscience of a conservative.
	Barry Goldwater was like the Rand Paul of his time in the early 60s.
	Ann Coulter speaks rather scathingly of him for being too libertarian and destroying the credibility of the Republican Party for quite some number of years.
	But he was, of course, a huge libertarian and got, you know, precisely nowhere.
	Of course, Ronald Reagan campaigned on, you know, Cato-based small government.
	And, you know, got into power, was in power for eight years.
	The federal government grew by two-thirds under Reagan.
	Grew by two-thirds under Reagan.
	Now, you can't lay all of that at Reagan's feet any more than you can lay the whole doubling of the debt at Obama's feet, because there's a bunch of stuff in there that they can't change.
	But we've had a whole bunch of people charge up on their white horses, waving their libertarian swords, attempting to do battle with the Neptune of state power, and boom!
	They just get swallowed up and end up rolling around in rusty uselessness at the bottom of the ocean.
	I'm concerned that we are not learning from our history.
	But we will find out.
	Let's talk more.
	855-472-4433.
	Do you have hope for politics?
	How is it going to change?
	You've got to tell me, brothers.
	Stefan Molyneux for Peter Schiff.
	Jeff, we'll be right back after the break.
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	The Peter Schiff Show.
	Good morning, brothers and sisters.
	How are you doing?
	This is Stefan Molyneux from Freedom Main Radio sitting in for Peter Schiff.
	We're talking about where is that little fairy of hope in your heart called politics will help, politics will change.
	And some of the callers are without hope, without the pulse of possibility.
	And they say people just don't get it.
	They just don't get how dangerous the government is.
	Well, the numbers don't agree with you.
	Thank you.
	So this is a poll taken last year, March 2013.
	Do you have a favorable view of the federal government?
	Not Federal Express, the federal government.
	July 2009, favorable view of the federal government, total percentage was 42.
	2013?
	28%.
	It went from 42 to 28%.
	Among Republicans, it went from 24 to 13%.
	Kind of understandable.
	Independents went from 35 to 27%.
	Still a pretty significant dip.
	Among Democrats, it went from 61% to 41%.
	A 20% drop in four years.
	A 20% drop in four years.
	Of a favorable view of the federal government.
	That is significant.
	Trust in government is collapsing.
	I mean, if I ran a business, I did run a business for 15 years.
	If we had a massive drop like that in customers who approve of us, well, that would be catastrophic.
	I would be out on my British butt.
	So yeah, people are waking up.
	Now, they don't know exactly how to solve it.
	They don't know what to do to change things.
	But you don't need to be a weatherman to know if it's raining.
	You may not know what to do about it or how to change it, but you can at least notice if your head is getting wet.
	Nate from Lansing.
	You are on the Peter Schiff Show.
	What's on your mind?
	Oh, well, thanks for taking my call, Stefan.
	You're my second favorite Canadian.
	Just wanted to let you know that.
	Should I ask?
	Who's your favorite?
	Bryan Adams.
	Bryan Adams!
	Right, right.
	I think I could, you know, with my cold voice, I could probably sing one of his songs now, but I won't grace the airwaves with that.
	Yeah, he's a great singer.
	I'm working on it myself.
	Why isn't he putting out any albums anymore?
	When was the last album he put out?
	Oh, I don't know.
	I grew up with the original Robin Hood movie, and his theme song, Through There Stole My Heart, you know?
	All right, well, what's on your mind about politics, man?
	Well, I have hope for the political process, but only that it's going to just destroy itself.
	You know, we have our phones that can access anything, that we can take pictures of all the...
	Bad stuff the government does, police brutality.
	It's just a second away where we're going to have, you know, for the most part, your self-driving cars that are going to do a huge job in getting rid of the need for the police on the roads.
	And, you know, can you really have like a drunk driving, get arrested for drunk driving if your car is driving itself?
	I mean, those sort of things that, you know, even email taken away from the need for the Postal Service.
	And eventually, with your last poll that you're talking about, eventually, with all the knowledge that we have at our fingertips, you know, people just keep on understanding that, you know, the federal government, it's an obsolete institution.
	I don't think it's obsolete yet.
	just because people still believe that they need it, but That's just going to dwindle, dwindle even more, the more information people have.
	So you think that we're just going to end up driving around the mountain rather than trying to blast through it?
	Yeah, I mean, I think that we wake up and we realize, yeah, I know a lot of people in, like, I wouldn't call them my libertarian movement, but a lot of people would call themselves libertarians, like, oh, we need a revolution, and, you know, really, if you...
	If you have some sort of violent revolution, you're only planting the seeds for another violent regime.
	I think the only way to get to yours and my ideal society where one's based on the non-aggression principle is that it has to be birthed in non-aggression and non-violence.
	And I think that people are waking up to that through things like, you know, through the internet.
	I mean, just YouTube was the thing that...
	That really got me to really understand political philosophy.
	I always thought I was a Republican because capitalism is good, but we have the eyes now to see all the corruption, how people lie when they'll tell you anything to get into office, and then they will do whatever I
	think you make some great points.
	I think there's a lot of ways in which technology It has allowed us to bypass the government.
	I mean, so eBay is one of the world's biggest employees.
	Hundreds of thousands of people make their money off eBay internationally, and there's no court system.
	There's a rating system and through PayPal you can get mediation.
	Through Visa you can get mediation of disputes that you have with people, which is what people use.
	How many people are going to go to small claims court rather than try and do something with Visa or PayPal or eBay?
	We have reputation systems.
	We have cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin that are giving people the capacity to earn and trade value for value without involving any financial third parties.
	Violence is going down in society.
	As violence goes down, we will have less need of police.
	So yeah, I think that we continue to, you know, I live like the government's not there.
	It's a ghost, and I don't believe in ghosts.
	I live like the government's not there.
	And I think that's what you've got to do.
	You can fight evil or you can ignore it.
	Now, the problem with fighting evil is that evil is way better at evil than you are.
	And the people who use violence are way better at using violence than you'll ever be.
	I mean, they're trained.
	They have selected the right people, the right cold-blooded sociopaths who will shoot anyone that the rulers point at.
	They're much better at bad than you are.
	And I don't go into a singing contest with Freddie Mercury and I don't take up arms against the state.
	They just got it down.
	They got the market cornered.
	They know what they're doing.
	And they do have a fair amount of popular sentiment on their side.
	There is still this belief.
	That without the government, all would be chaos, madness, destruction.
	The end times would occur.
	And of course, in the absence of government, as I argued the last time I was hosting, in the absence of coercion, you get spontaneous self-organization.
	And it is a little bit of Cross your fingers, close your eyes, and jump across the canyon in this matrix moment, believing you'll make it across.
	But there is this reality, and there are thousands and thousands of examples from all over the world.
	If you get rid of arranged marriages, you get dating sites.
	You get singles bars.
	You get introductions by friends.
	People don't stop getting married if you stop forcing them to get married.
	They just find better ways of finding each other.
	Same thing will happen to us as a society.
	Stefan Molyneux for The Peter Schiff Show.
	We'll be right back after the break.
	Looking forward to your calls.
	To President Obama, Madame Pelosi, and all of the socialist econ professors across America, We're sorry.
	We're sorry.
	Peter Schiff is back on the air.
	Good morning, everybody.
	Stefan Molyneux from Freedom Aid Radio sitting in for Peter Schiff.
	I hope you're doing well.
	This morning we are talking about...
	Do you have hope for the political process?
	You don't have to tell me who you're going to vote for.
	Are you going to vote for the political process at all?
	Do you think there's any hope to come out of Washington?
	A lot of well-meaning people go to Washington hoping to turn it around, hoping to bring truth, reason, and virtue to an increasingly corrupt and dysfunctional political system.
	Do you think they can make it?
	Do you think they can make it?
	Are they Tom Hanks in Saving Private Ryan or that guy who lifts his helmet up and gets a.22 between the eyes?
	Let's find out.
	Doug from Delaware, what do you think?
	I've got a plan, Seth.
	There's two key positions at the state level that if we can grab, and these positions, it's the state attorney general and the state treasurer.
	There's kind of two parts to this.
	The first part is the platform that these guys have to run under, and then two, how you win the election.
	The first part, the platform these guys are run on, is that as the attorney general, you run on bringing back common law.
	If there's no victim, there's no crime, there's no fine, there should be no time.
	And then with the state treasurer spot, you do a state bank and do a cryptocurrency issued out, and that way there's something to move into that's decentralized out of the dollar, and it's something to absorb some of the mess that's being created by the feds.
	The federal system is going down.
	The dollar is going down.
	The only question is how we're going to move into something different.
	One of my ideas is to take all of the land in a state and put it on like a Google Earth overlay and draw all the property lines that exist.
	And then it gets like, I don't know how familiar you are with the MasterCoin build-out, but like there could be coins created and backed by each piece of property.
	And public electronic wallets that identify the owner, and allow the owner to take bids and to sell and divide the property without all of the mere system.
	Each property is backed by a specific, you know, crypto coin.
	It can't be duplicated and rehypopulated and all the mess that's created.
	And then, you know, also the attorney general can go after just the dollar system.
	The dollar is a fraudulent debt instrument.
	Private banks created through the, you know, through the bank credit and interest is attached to all these loans.
	Well, there's never any currency that's created to pay the interest.
	Therefore, you create a pool of people who mathematically cannot make the interest payment.
	And then the banks have created the currency out of nothing.
	Yeah, but hang on.
	I mean, can you imagine the existing system?
	And I don't mean Democrat or Republican, the entire system.
	Can you imagine it functioning?
	Without the capacity of debt, and debt of course is not only national debt, but bonds.
	The government bonds that they sell to raise money to do things in the here and now, which always come due generally the year after the politicians who issue them go into retirement or expect to.
	How could the existing system work without this kind of debt?
	If you couldn't bribe people with the money of the unborn, why would they even pay attention to you?
	Well, that's the thing.
	We've got to have a state-issued or a government-issued currency.
	And then at the same time, you allow all of these other currencies...
	Wait a second.
	Let's go back there.
	Hang on, hang on, hang on.
	To trade parallel.
	You just say we've got to have a government-issued currency?
	What does that mean?
	How does that solve anything?
	Well, I would say that...
	Well, we don't really need to.
	But I would say that in order to get people...
	To build infrastructure, to do road projects and stuff like that.
	If the state, instead of borrowing, you know, money created up in there from the banks, if they were to just spend into existence a limited cryptocurrency, And then at the same time...
	Wait, wait, wait!
	Okay, hang on, hang on.
	You keep going past these things like they're not controversial.
	You know, you open the door, then you walk out, obviously.
	But will you spend into existence a cryptocurrency?
	What does that mean?
	You mean that they would just create their own cryptocurrency and spend it as if it were real money, as if it were something that were accepted by the marketplace or valued by other people?
	Well, the way that you could get it to have value...
	If you take existing state land that should be up for sale and sell the state land for that currency at a no-reserve auction.
	But why would the government get the money for selling land that they never homesteaded?
	The government doesn't own that land.
	The government has just established a title for it.
	It's like me sticking a flag in the moon and saying, it's mine!
	All mine!
	I mean, the government doesn't.
	Why would the government get the money for that land?
	They don't own it.
	Well, they claim ownership of it now, right?
	Yes, but the common law, which you referred to earlier, means you've got to homestead something before you can just stick a flag in something or color a map with some fill paint program and say it's mine.
	They don't own it in any common law way.
	Well, this would be a way of getting stuff built and then putting the land back into the people's hands.
	I don't know.
	I don't have all the answers.
	All I know is that there's two positions that we can really affect some change and at least limit what the federal government is coming in to do to the states.
	All right.
	Well, listen, sorry, I got another caller in, but let me tell you, you've got to come up with your solutions based on principles, not cross your fingers, what ifs.
	You know, how can we implement change that does not violate the non-aggression principle or property rights?
	Nathan from Vancouver, what's on your mind?
	Oh, Ray, Stefan, it's been really good.
	How are you doing?
	Well, thanks.
	Good, good to hear.
	Big fan of yours, big fan of Peter Schiff.
	I wanted to comment on the last caller.
	He seemed to be confused about crypto currencies work in deflationary markets, but...
	I guess that's another topic.
	Well, and you always hear this, sorry to interrupt, you always hear this, that the Federal Reserve is a private institution, private banking, and so on.
	No, it's got a government-granted monopoly, for heaven's sakes.
	It is a government-granted monopoly.
	Just because the profits go to private hands doesn't mean there's a private industry.
	Otherwise, Mussolini was Bill Gates.
	Anyway, go on.
	Absolutely, absolutely.
	I totally agree with you.
	In fact, I had a big debate with Peter Schiff at the Vancouver Resource Investment Conference about Bitcoin.
	He didn't seem to agree with me about that.
	What are your thoughts on the idea that a lot of people in America are looking at starting seasteading, flotilla communities outside of America?
	I don't know if you've heard of this, the Seasteading Institute?
	societies on the ocean.
	Yeah, no, actually, I interviewed Charles Perala from the Seasteading Institute on my show.
	So, yeah, the idea is, of course, that you build some floating city outside of American waters, in international waters, but still within access to the mainland, and you allow the society I assume Kevin Costner will be the first president.
	Oh, there's no young people who are going to get that comment at all.
	But look at movie Flux.
	Right under Ishtar is Waterworld.
	Although I think it ended up making money.
	But that's neither here nor there.
	So you get these floating flotillas of cities and you let common law develop.
	You let people negotiate their rents and their contracts and all of that.
	And you let an organic society develop without central coercive authority.
	I think that's the general idea.
	Is that right?
	Precisely.
	Yeah, absolutely.
	I would love to visit one of those places.
	Hey man, I was on the swim team.
	I probably wouldn't even need a boat.
	But I would love to visit one of those places.
	The moment one of those is up and running, I'm there with a friend or two, some video cameras, and we are all over that mother just to see how it's going to develop.
	Absolutely.
	Absolutely.
	And one of the things that you know, real quick, at the last thing, if you know what people are kind of concerned about being on international waters and having to do with having to fight pirates, that kind of thing.
	You know, people have also been into this project called Shrugged Out, where they're going to places like Chile and starting new societies that are inspired by Atlas Shrugged.
	I don't know if you're familiar with that.
	Jeff Berwick is running one called Galt's Gulch.
	There's another one being brought by Doug Casey in Argentina.
	There are people setting up these communities.
	They're attempting to be as remote as possible, as self-sufficient as possible, as free from centralized government as possible, so that people can go and enjoy the beauty of the land and not worry about the local state as much as possible.
	They tried this, I think, in Uruguay.
	They were going to try and buy some section of land and have it free from the government.
	I think these things are all fine.
	I think they're not particularly helpful for the majority of people left behind.
	I am a little bit more stay-and-fight out of love for my fellow man, but I absolutely enthusiastically endorse all experiments.
	Stefan Molyneux will be right back 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.
	Good morning!
	Stefan Molyneux sitting in for Peter Schiff.
	We are talking about your hope for a political solution to the problems of the government.
	Now, I mean, the statistics seem fairly clear.
	The surveys seem fairly clear.
	The majority of Americans now say that the federal government is a threat to their personal rights and freedoms.
	You know, in November, 2011, it was only 30%.
	January 9th or 13th, there was a survey done, 2013, where 53% of people now view government as a threat to personal rights.
	And I would argue this is really before all of the Snowden NSA wiretapping your hamster stuff came out, where the government sends a man to hide in your fridge shivering to figure out what you're eating.
	So I think that the veil is coming down.
	The matrix is dissolving.
	People are seeing the naked force, danger, and predation of the state now.
	Now is the time for us to speak as loudly and clearly as possible about the beauty and peace and potential of peaceful interactions between civilized human beings.
	You know, the government is just this great temptation.
	Free evil is the motto of the government.
	You get people's stuff.
	For free, but you don't have to have the risk and personal threat of trying to steal it yourself.
	Free evil.
	Well, whatever you subsidize increases.
	If you make evil free, you're going to get a whole lot more of it.
	Once people see that moral argument, they understand it.
	It will connect with their increasing skepticism.
	I mean, even approval for the Supreme Court is now down below 50% for the first time in history.
	Keep talking to people.
	They are ready to listen, brothers and sisters.
	They are ready to listen.
	But now we're going to go to James from Clinton, New Jersey, which I believe is the grabbiest of the towns in New Jersey.
	James, are you on the line?
	Yes, I'm here.
	What's on your mind?
	Hello, Mr.
	Molyneux.
	So I just wanted to make a comment about how a lot of people on the left will claim that we should cut military spending in order to feed the welfare state.
	But I have a theory that the welfare state is completely dependent upon military spending because no one would pay for the welfare state up front.
	The only way we would pay for the welfare state is through debt, and the only way to really enforce our debt and back our dollar is through military strength and military coercion.
	What are your thoughts?
	Okay, so you're saying that without the threat of the U.S. military, the debt would be unsustainable?
	More so than it is now.
	Basically, my theory is that we use our military strength to enforce our debt, in a sense.
	Play with dollars or die.
	Okay, but can you think of an example?
	I mean, there have been some rumors, I've never looked into them in any particular detail, I don't discount them up front, that people like Gaddafi and Saddam Hussein were looking at introducing A gold-backed currency.
	Yeah, a gold euro that would basically displace the toilet paper of U.S. Viet currency, and that's one of the reasons why there's a smoking crater where their leadership statues used to be.
	So I think that's one possibility.
	Sorry, go ahead.
	I'm going off the assumption that basically our dollar is backed not by gold, but through the petrodollar, and therefore by force.
	For origin, initiation of force, in a sense.
	But that's what our economy is backed about.
	Let's just assume that that's true.
	That's the real reason why we went in there, is because they threatened the U.S. dollar, in a sense.
	Well, I think there's no doubt that in general, historically, the U.S. dollar has had some validity because of the productivity of the U.S. economy.
	Correct.
	But that has been diminishing.
	Worker productivity has been diminishing.
	Lower to middle class wages have stagnated or declined for the last couple of decades.
	And the debt, obviously, everybody knows there's just no way the debt is going to get paid off.
	I mean, there's just no way.
	That is way past the point of no return at this point.
	I mean, you could inflate it to the point of no return, but at that point, you know, you would really need to, you know, basically you're stealing from the people that borrowed from you, and the only way to really get away with that is to say, well, deal with it, I'll kill you.
	Right.
	And that's what I'm saying.
	So basically, my theory is that, you know, all countries are basically kids on the playground and whoever is the biggest and the baddest Well, they'll use that form eventually to get what they want.
	That is a very interesting theory.
	I mean, there's got to be some reason other than pure military welfare why the U.S. has over 700 military bases around the world and, what, 70 years after the defeat of Germany and Japan, they still have military bases there.
	That's something to think about.
	I'm not sure that there's proof for it, but it's certainly something to mull over.
	We're going to move on to Bill.
	From Omaha, what's on your mind?
	Stephan, good morning.
	What I'm hearing you saying is that these surveys show that the American public distrusts the federal government and they want less government.
	Where I'm coming from is they may say that, but at the end of the day, that isn't what they really want.
	Since the 2008 election and since I've been retired, I've stayed active in the local Republican efforts here in Nebraska.
	And they always talk about limited government, this, that, and the other thing.
	But you're going to have to go a long way to find people that, despite what they say, that don't want Social Security, don't want some kind of health care.
	They don't object to any kind of the so-called public-private partnerships.
	They certainly don't object to military spending.
	So even though people say it, I don't see them walking the talk, if that's the best way to express it.
	Yeah, I mean, I think there's a lot of truth in that.
	I mean, so the Democrats have traditionally been viewed as weak on defense, so they've become pretty belligerent and defense heavy.
	And the Republicans have been viewed as uncharitable when it comes to government social services, and so they don't touch that kind of stuff for fear of confirming the stereotypes.
	So that caution that people have had around the major ideologies in America has gotten to the point where there's no Republican out there who is going to point out the basic fact that Social Security is a coercive Ponzi scheme.
	That there's no money, no money at all in the Social Security lockbox.
	And it was never designed for that.
	I mean, basically, they always tax the next generation to pay off whatever is required in the current generation.
	And they take money from people and they use it to bribe other people.
	They use it for general government expenditures and they use it as collateral for new debts and as collateral for bonds.
	And there's no money.
	And thus the boomers, who are the richest generation the world has ever seen, are now retiring by preying on the young who have lower economic possibility and opportunities than they ever had.
	It is, you know, they're a bunch of old vampires, frankly, economically speaking.
	And this has been known and discussed pretty openly for many years.
	There's very few people who could claim a lack of knowledge of this with any credibility.
	So I think there is.
	Republicans won't go near the third rails of American politics because people think that without Social Security, the old will die in the streets or live on cat food, and without welfare, the poor will blah, blah, blah.
	But this is what people generally and genuinely believe.
	Sorry, go ahead.
	What I was going to say is I'm just over 65, and I got interested back in the Goldwater campaign in 1964, and I remember having heated debates over the dinner table back then with my father.
	I thought it was...
	Wrong that I should have to participate in Social Security.
	And, well, you see how long I've been at it.
	Yeah, no, and I think that...
	But back then, sorry, but back then, you know, it's hard to argue with a drug addict when he's high.
	You know, you have to wait for him to crash.
	You know, when he's face down in a Vegas sewer with hooker's panties on his head and no money in his wallet, then maybe you can talk about his destructive habit.
	But when people are getting all kinds of free goodies from the government and the bill is way over the horizon, you can't really argue with people.
	You can argue with them at a moral level.
	But that's an argument that sways very few people.
	Most people are, because of government education or miseducation, they're consequentialists.
	They're utilitarians, pragmatists.
	What works in the now?
	In the long run, said Keynes, we're all dead.
	But now the bill is coming due, and now the system is beginning to unravel, and I think that the consequentialist argument is becoming less easy to sustain.
	But sorry, you were about to say something?
	What I was going to say is you can drive this down even further to the local level.
	You might be able to get a libertarian or a non-government person elected, to say, at the state or city level.
	City level is even better.
	But even in the small suburban community I live in, do you realize how many things are done that are dependent on federal and state funds?
	And so nobody, say for example, the mayor of Omaha, they get, I think it's something like $35 million a year in federal programs.
	Nobody's going to run for Mayor of Omaha and say, if I'm elected, I'm going to reject all of that to push back on federal power.
	So they're going to have to fire a whole bunch of people, or they're going to have to raise taxes or cut spending in some other way.
	And that's all magic money.
	That's all magic money.
	And you can't really argue, well, if I hand this $35 million back, that's going to lower inflation a little bit.
	That's going to, you know, the government isn't going to go in as much debt and therefore your grandkids are going to have to pay off a lot less money.
	I mean, that's found money.
	You know, it's sort of like people walking along the street, they find a giant blob of gold that has been spat up from the ground lying by the earth.
	I mean, expecting people to say no to that, well, maybe somebody more needy will come along and find it or maybe I'll just let it rest here because it's beautiful.
	I'm going to grab it.
	You know, if the Brinks truck explodes scattering $50 bills over the whole poor neighborhood, people are going to grab stuff.
	And you can make some moral argument, but the moral argument spreads out so wide.
	Because the system has become so embedded in people's lives.
	It's their DNA now.
	People have made lifelong decisions based upon the existence of Social Security and welfare and Medicare and Medicaid.
	People have made fundamental life decisions about the quality of their health based upon government-subsidized healthcare.
	People are so embedded in this system now.
	To make the moral argument is to many people comes across like you want to repeal the laws of physics when they've already built their houses.
	This is Stefan Molyneux for The Peter Schiff Show.
	We've got another segment to chat.
	I'd love to chat with you.
	855-472-4433.
	We'll be right back after the break.
	The Peter Schiff Show.
	The Peter Schiff Show.
	If knowledge is power, then the Peter Schiff Show is a uranium-enriched 10,000-megawatt nuclear reactor.
	Stay plugged in.
	Stay brilliant.
	This is the Peter Schiff Show.
	Good morning, everybody.
	Stefan Molyneux sitting in for Peter Schiff.
	Hope you're doing well.
	We are talking about your hope for politics.
	Is the government going to solve the problem of the government?
	Is voting going to solve the problem of voting?
	Amy from Las Vegas, are you on the line?
	Hi.
	Yeah, well, I think the government is going to get bigger, but not because of the matter of principle, but just because it's inevitable because population is going to get bigger and bigger, and opportunity is going to get lower and lower, you know?
	Because I believe a lot of people don't think the world is overpopulated, but I think it's seriously overpopulated.
	And opportunity is already little, or else, you know, you'd have to work part-time to receive benefits.
	Yeah, I mean, as far as overpopulation goes, like, you could take the entire world's population, give them a couple of acres, they'd still fit inside the state of Texas.
	And, I mean, you know, too many people, everybody says the world's overpopulated, but they don't want to do anything about it with regards to their own life, right?
	Well, there are too many people.
	Well, you're one of those people, but I'm sticking around, right?
	I didn't have any babies.
	Oh, okay.
	That is certainly one thing you could do.
	I mean, to me, the best way to...
	I would have adopted if I had had money and a home in a good situation.
	I definitely would have adopted kids.
	Right, right.
	Yeah, I don't think they let anyone in Vegas adopt.
	You know, I took it seriously when I was a kid, you know, in 1970, whatever, I took all that stuff seriously overpopulation.
	So I decided to try and do something on my own about it.
	That was a big deal in the 70s, I remember.
	ZPG, zero population growth, was the big thing.
	But the best thing for population growth is industrialization, right?
	So when people can believe or accept or understand or know that their kids are going to survive, then they have fewer kids.
	And also when you get industrialization...
	The need for human capital increases.
	In other words, you do well when you know more.
	If you're just some surf plow in the back 40, you don't need to know much at all.
	But if you want to make it in a knowledge economy, you've got to know a lot of stuff, which means you need to invest more in each child for that child's success.
	Well, you know, people say, oh, you know, if you can kind of fluff off, you can fit them all in Texas or something.
	But people are incredibly burdened from species.
	Each individual, I mean, you know, the amount of dead, you know, the amount of things they consume, the water, the electricity, You know, everything, you know, the animals they eat, you know, and the amount of crap that falls off their bodies and goes back into the water system and plugs up the earth.
	Humans happen to be incredibly, we're just not here, you know, enjoying ourselves.
	We really are incredibly burdensome species.
	Well, but that burdensomeness is exacerbated by factors, right?
	And, I mean, one of the things that has always bothered me about fiat currency...
	Sorry, go ahead.
	See that, you know, people are very burdensome.
	Yeah.
	No, I mean, so I'm just going to sort of finish up this speech because this is sort of the matrix between human beings or a cancer.
	First of all, Mother Nature is incredibly mean, and it really doesn't work that well to live in accordance with nature or to live without technology keeping nature at bay.
	Nature's a lovely Ansel Adams photo, but right up close it tends to get you killed with fair regularity.
	I mean, you get a couple of bacteria in your teeth, and next thing you know, you have a heart attack and die.
	Nature was regularly killing off people with plagues and famines before we managed to leash her up and tie her up and make her work for us.
	And the best thing to do, though, I think, is industrialize.
	You know, when people know their kids are going to live and when they need to invest more in each kid, they'll just have fewer kids.
	And if we get rid of fiat currency, then you won't have these massive booms and busts that destroy massive amounts of the environment.
	10% of U.S. housing stock is uninhabited at the moment.
	So we get rid of the government and privatized stuff, and resource conservation will be so much better.
	Randy, are you on the line?
	Can we chat in the last closing few minutes of the show?
	Awesome, awesome.
	So good to speak to you, my friend.
	Thank you.
	Real quick, since time's tight, I wanted to roast the topic of national state of man, and assuming that Hobbes is cracking the Leviathan, And going at Rizzo's social contract,
	is it not the case that if indeed there are better angels of our nature, that under the contract that they've had a failure to perform and so that contract is then null and void and we can basically ignore them?
	Yeah, I mean, so coming back to the human nature argument, human nature is a very tricky concept.
	The only thing that I think can be proven about human nature is its extreme and fundamental adaptability.
	Asking what is human nature is asking, like, what is the shape of water?
	Well, it depends what you pour it into.
	You pour it into a vase, it's the shape of a vase.
	You pour it into a cup, it's the shape of a cup.
	You pour it into an ocean bed, it's the shape of an ocean.
	And human beings are unbelievably adaptable, even genetically, right?
	The science of epigenetics has shown conclusively that our genes turn on and turn off relative to our environment.
	So a really violent person has almost certainly come from a violent history, from violent history as a child.
	A peaceful and reasonable person has come from a peaceful and reasonable history.
	We get this culturally.
	You know, if you're born in a Muslim country, you're most likely going to be a Muslim.
	If you're born in Harlem, you can have other cultural characteristics.
	If you're born in Little Italy or Italy itself, you can have other cultural characteristics.
	We adapt to our environment.
	If you want peaceful people, you need to give them a peaceful environment when they're growing up so that their endorphins and their various hormones and dopamine systems all work well to self-regulate and be peaceful.
	So there's no such thing as human nature.
	Human nature is what we create in a child's early life.
	And the more peaceful the child's early life, the more peaceful the society we're going to have.
	Matt from Dayton.
	You want to finish up the show, brother?
	Hey, how are you doing, Stephen?
	Well, thanks.
	Cool, man.
	I just want to chime in here.
	A few callers ago, you know, the guy pretty much sounded like he had no hope for humanity and he wanted to bury his head in the sand.
	You know, I actually have a very positive outlook.
	I'm a lifelong wrestling fan, professional wrestling, and if you look at the WWE is coming out with a WWE Network, which fans could just go straight to the network and stream whatever they want.
	In a sense, you know, you're kind of bypassing the cable companies, so this could theoretically bypass cable and satellite providers.
	I look at the internet and technology as a bypass of the government.
	You know, we could use All the knowledge that we get from the internet is knowledge is power to completely bypass government schools and government training and stuff.
	That's kind of like my outlet.
	So it's very positive for me.
	Yeah, and I think you have to limit your exposure to idiots.
	Idiots are a toxic substance that will harm your brain.
	Unless you have some sort of biochemical brain shield hazmat suit, you must limit your time with idiots.
	Otherwise, you will lose hope.
	Being around idiots is like being around sick people coughing into the air.
	There's no mask safe enough to keep all that bacteria out of your brain.
	Limit your time with idiots.
	Spend time with quality people.
	If you don't have quality people around you, find them on the internet.
	Move to where they are.
	Find a tribe of the large-brained and spend your time with them.
	Find a tribe of the deep-knowledgeable and spend your time with them.
	Find a tribe of wisdom and love and compassion and intelligence and curiosity and philosophy and live with them.
	Limit your exposure to idiots.
	They will rob you of the very will to live.
	And you will become one of them.
	So, I would hope that you will take that advice.
	Find a like-minded tribe or just a minded tribe.
	Spend your time with them.
	This is a great place to do that.
	This is Stefan Mellon, you from Free Domain Radio.
	Thank you so much to everyone at the Peter Schiff Show.
	It's been a pleasure.
	I will see you when I see you.

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