3953 The Immigration Debate | Adam Kokesh and Stefan Molyneux
One of the most contentious divides in the libertarian community centers around immigration, borders and "the freedom of moment" question. Adam Kokesh joins Stefan Molyneux to discuss immigration and debate disagreements about the most essential question for the future of western civilization. Adam Kokesh is the author of the book “Freedom” and former host of Adam Vs. The Man on RT.Website: http://thefreedomline.comBook: http:www.fdrurl.com/kokesh-bookYouTube: http://www.youtube.com/adamkokeshTwitter: http://www.twitter.com/adamkokeshImmigration PresentationsThe Truth About Immigration: What They Won't Tell Youhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QV7JILRugOgThe Truth About America's Survival | Demographicshttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GN_FOCF3vIQThe Truth About Illegal Immigrantshttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6NYP9qmjfUThe Truth About Immigration and Welfarehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4u1J6EEhkyMIQ and Immigrationhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4x-tYmyJSVoYour support is essential to Freedomain Radio, which is 100% funded by viewers like you. Please support the show by making a one time donation or signing up for a monthly recurring donation at: http://www.freedomainradio.com/donate
Hi, everybody. Stefan Molyneux here with Adam Kokesh.
Now, Adam and I go ways back to when I was in the Red Room.
He was the former host of Adam vs.
the Man on RT, who I think I was on that show talking about the fact that bitcoins might end up having just a little bit of value.
He is the author of the book, Whose Title Begs to be Screamed in a Kilt?
Freedom! And you can check him out at thefreedomline.com, youtube.com forward slash Adam Kokesh.
That's K-O-K-E-S-H. And twitter.com forward slash Adam Kokesh as well.
We'll put the links to all of that below as well as the link to the book.
Adam, thanks so much for taking the time today.
Hey, it's a real honor, Stefan.
It's been way too long.
It's been way too long since we've been able to have this conversation.
And I understand that we were in different trenches in this last election cycle.
And I'm really excited that now that we've had a year of Trump, We can kind of step back and come back together and re-examine the long-term goals of freedom and achieving a voluntary society.
I'm afraid that we could go for hours on that and go back into the history and go back into the election cycle and I want to say first, congratulations.
I don't think that in the history of American politics, we've ever had a Canadian with so much influence on a presidential election.
I want to cut to the heart of the meaningfulness of your participation.
In the 2016 American presidential election, as a voice of great, great influence, that you really did have a significant impact.
And I would dare say that Trump's margin of victory May have been smaller than your impact on the election.
Things we'll never know for sure, and I really appreciate that.
Now, I've heard, through the grapevine, perhaps more than one or two little birdies have told me, Adam, that there are certain elements within the libertarian community.
Now, I'm not saying you have anything whatsoever to do with them, but there are certain elements within the libertarian community who have, regarding me, a narrative something along the lines of, Traitor!
Or something like that. I have betrayed my basic principles.
I have reversed my stance.
I am now embracing political action, which formerly I despised.
I am now embracing borders, which I formerly despised.
And I have turned against all that is good and true and noble and wise and virtuous in the libertarian goal.
Again, you may have heard these rumors floating through the back.
I've been a part of it, but just talking to you before going on to the recording here, it was very nice, and I will say just for everyone to hear you reassert that you're taking a different strategic course that may be confusing to some.
Your core objectives are still...
A voluntary, free society in line with UPB and your original writings that woke up so many of us.
And yes, I have been dismayed and frustrated, and I do see some direct contradictions in specific positions that you've taken that really do bother me as a libertarian, but I can appreciate the strategic difference and the overall objective.
I'm very encouraged by the fact that you see the value of participation in the political process even as only a vehicle to get people to understand and appreciate the philosophy that you convey so well in your earlier works.
I mean, I hope that's...
Not an unfair characteristic, that you created an empowering gateway for millions of your viewers who went from the wilderness of all the different mainstream media sources and other outlets there on the internet and were then exposed to your core philosophy as a result.
I really don't appreciate that even if they disagree with your positions, even if they have changed, even if you're appealing to people we don't like, that what you are doing is still better than 99% of us.
More effective than what 99% of us who call ourselves libertarian activists are doing.
Well, but if I'm effective in the wrong direction, I mean, I certainly deserve criticism for where I go astray.
And this is why these conversations, Adam, are so helpful to me.
If I've made fundamental errors, if I've been drawn in by bad data, bad arguments, and so on, if some sort of confirmation bias has skewed my thinking and my approach, well, I need friends around me to say, dude!
Back up that truck. We ran over some truth, and it's still wriggling on the road.
Perhaps a little mouth-to-mouth might bring it back to life.
So I do, of course, want people, and this is frustrating for me sometimes, is that, you know, I do a call-in show.
I do debates all the time.
I mean, please, people call in and set me right where I have gone astray.
Nobody, of course, has a monopoly on truth.
It is... A collective endeavor, which is why maybe what you can do, let's go through maybe the top couple of divergences, let's put it as nicely as possible, the top scarlet letter L on my forehead that people have, yourself included, where you think I've gone astray in my thinking.
Well, I mean, I think it's not so much in your thinking when you put it in terms of, well, this is the strategic course that I have chosen.
Of course, it leads to some ugly things, and I have not gone and You know, parsed out your precise positions, and I don't intend to.
I think, if anything, I thought this conversation was going to go the other way.
I thought you were going to be putting me on the spot and examining my strategic positions, and that's what I wanted, because I know your audience still respects you very much for the same kind of intellectual thoroughness and certainty, and I believe that you bring that to your positions.
You know, I think the most offensive one to me is the one about immigration, and I understand That you have taken a position that is in favor of government limiting freedom of movement.
And I think that there are- That may be begging the question just a little bit, but go ahead.
Take the case. Oh, come on, Stefan.
You've been in politics long enough.
That's just good framing right there.
Yeah, okay. I got it. I know.
And it's good framing for me to identify that as good framing.
That's all I wanted to mention.
So go ahead. Oh, and just so people know, I don't type during debates because, you know, it's like right by the recorder and all that, and nobody wants to hear the clickety-clackety, so I just, I go old school, death to trees, birth to wisdom.
So, okay. So, regarding immigration and borders, the major criticisms.
Obviously, the voluntarist position that I would espouse is that the only legitimate borders are private property borders, and that acknowledging a government border as in any way legitimate is giving credence to an illegitimate property rights claim being made by government enforcing a border.
Now, my understanding of the positions that you've taken is that, you know, you share this ideal, right?
I mean, you still share this ideal of a world of private property, of where the only restrictions to freedom of movement are based on private property.
Is that correct? Yeah, the non-initiation of force and respect for property rights.
In the future, the goal that we wish to build would be a society based on those principles, yes.
So I want to point out then that the disagreement here comes down to somewhat of a matter of subjective judgment within the realm of strategy.
And I think in making a lot of the cases that you have made for Donald Trump, for his policies, you have gone and done some things that Said some things that really reinforce the current status paradigm of restriction of movement.
And so my objection is not that you made these arguments that I disagree with, but again, like you said, being effective in the wrong direction because you're defending a guy, you're showing that his particular policies would be better than Hillary Clinton's or Gary Johnson's.
And I can certainly respect it as someone who's making the case for an ultimate conclusion to the general audience.
And that's where you've shifted, right?
From speaking to people who generally agree with you and are looking to agree with you to being a player in the bigger conversation.
In the last couple of years, you've done a great job of elevating your voice in that.
It's just the...
I think the core objection from someone in my position that...
That a lot of others share, at least.
And some would say, no, he's wrong.
He's evil, like you said, in making fun of them.
But that making the case in this way for Trump to reinforce the existing paradigm is missing the opportunity that you have to even wake more people up more directly.
I don't know your numbers.
I can't argue with that.
But I do see that there are some ways in which, in making that case, you were effective in the wrong direction.
All right. So just for those, I'll keep this very compressed and we'll put a link to the presentations that I have done below, which I'm sure you're aware of.
So first of all, the borders are not being effectively maintained at the moment.
In fact, the borders and the property rights of the domestic population are being egregiously violated by states all throughout the Western world.
The reason being, of course, as you know, that the majority of immigrants from the Third World who come into the West Sit on welfare and take other free government assistance programs, including things like schools, and they use up precious resources which they did not pay for, which are funded by the domestic population and, of course, based upon the economic enslavement of the next generation through debt and bonds and other instruments.
So it's not so much that the borders are not being maintained at the moment.
It's the fact that the governments are inviting in and forcing the domestic population to pay for a group.
So the initiation of force is against the domestic population.
Now, of course, I wish that weren't the case.
I wish, as everyone has said from Milton Friedman onwards, if there was no welfare state, borders would be much less than an issue.
But the initiation of force Unfortunately, it's represented by immigration at the moment.
So, in America, and I'm going to pretend, I'm going to LARP as an American just for the moment.
Hold on, you said the initiation of force is represented by immigration, but you just said that the initiation of force is by the government against citizens.
So, which is it?
Well, let me run through the numbers and it will hopefully become clearer.
No, no, no. Regardless of the numbers, I'm sorry, I just want to drill down on this, but regardless of the numbers, specifically, immigration represents the initiation of force, or government taxing people to fund a welfare state is the initiation of force.
I think this is a really important point that we miss sometimes, is this ascribing responsibility properly in an ethical context, like voting is violence.
It's not. It's just expressing a preference.
The violence is when you impose the results of the election on people.
So it's similar, like, who are you saying is responsible here, the government or people immigrating?
I'm not sure what responsibility would have to do with anything.
Well, I think it's identifying where is the violation of the non-aggression principle.
Well, it's at two levels.
One is that Many immigrants into the West are vastly higher in terms of their proportion of criminality relative to the domestic population.
So you do have higher rates of criminality occurring.
I mean, just look at what's happened in London under Sadiq Khan, where you have acid attacks.
I'm not disputing any of that.
I think there are great problems.
Let me finish my point.
So there is increased initiation of the use of force among immigrants relative to domestic populations.
And of course, since the government is paying For people to come into the country using the resources stripped at force at gunpoint from the domestic population.
And then in order to maintain these immigrant populations, they are continuing to initiate the use of force against the domestic population.
So immigration sets in motion, and of course the immigrants know this, right?
Because they know they haven't paid into, say, the welfare state system in Sweden.
They haven't paid into that.
But they know that they're going in and getting thousands and thousands of dollars of benefits out of the Swedish taxpayer.
So they are knowingly stepping into a situation where they are triggering the initiation of the use of force and they're in receipt of coerced income.
And so the government is the one primarily responsible, but I wouldn't say that the immigrants are completely illiterate in where the resources are coming from.
Okay, so that makes it very clear, but it also invites a certain challenge here because you could say the same things about Just poor people in the United States.
Poor people have higher rates of crime, so on and so forth, all these negative things that you can associate with them as a group of people.
And we don't say, well, if they're poor welfare people in the United States who have a higher rate of criminality, who are getting on welfare and initiating and supporting the system, blah, blah, blah, that we need to therefore violate their rights.
We need to set a standard for them based on that that says, We're going to take away your freedom of movement.
We're not going to let you drive around nice neighborhoods in the United States.
And I understand there's a difference in scale, there's a difference in circumstance, but if you're looking for ethical, philosophical consistency, I think the ideas that you're applying to immigration are Would apply to the domestic population and a number of other issues with other implications.
Of course, this gets to what is your ideal policy that you're suggesting from this?
If you're saying we need to have a wall, we need to have these restrictions on immigration, I think that whatever you're applying to come to that as an immediate, practical, physical policy, Is inconsistent with how those points that you made earlier would apply to different groups,
issues, and situations. Okay, so there is, of course, in all countries, a proportion of the population that is poor, and poverty is generally caused by criminality, and criminality tends to peak around an IQ of 85.
So there is already, in the bell curve of intelligence within any particular society, there is already a minority of people who are going to be somewhat dysfunctional, statistically, I mean, lots of exceptions, but there is a minority of people who are going to be dysfunctional.
Now, if you then go to locales in the world with very low average IQs and you import millions of people from those locations, you are adding enormously to the problem.
So saying, well, we can't limit any kind of immigration because there are already poor people in the United States is like saying, well, my water is a little bit gamey, it's got a little bit of rust in it, so it doesn't really matter if I add something poisonous to it.
It's like, well, there is already a problem of coercion based upon the bell curve, based upon a number of government policies based on bad education, child abuse, all the stuff I've talked about for years.
So saying that, well, there are poor people in America, therefore it doesn't matter.
If we add to the problem by importing more people who are going to end up in poverty, it doesn't seem to make any sense.
When you're in a hole, as you know, you're supposed to stop digging, right?
Right.
Well, I would just look at the longer term view here.
And again, this is where it comes down to a little bit of a subjective difference.
Because you can make the case that limiting immigration will result in immediate benefit to XYZ. Just like with any justification for government policy or use of violence, you can say, yes, there's an immediate practical benefit.
But to use the rust-in-the-water analogy that you introduce here...
In the case of immigration, you really can't stop more rust from getting in the water.
It's a metal container that's just constantly leaking rust.
I don't think you can ever trust a government that is managing a welfare state like the United States federal government is to effectively limit immigration.
It's simply not capable of it.
You're building a wall to keep out the best tunnel builders in the world.
There will always be ways to defeat any immigration system on this kind of scale By falsifying paperwork.
When I went to Mexico, I went to a number of cities and I asked people along the border towns.
I actually tried to sneak in myself physically across the border and failed.
I was caught by border patrol.
But they said, you know, how would we sneak in?
We would just, in Tijuana, we get fake papers.
We go to the checkpoint. We go right through.
It's not a big deal. And if your problem is rust in the water...
So let's just deal with that and deal with one topic at a time because if we line up too much, we miss stuff.
Let me just finish this one point because the whole thing is don't worry about a tiny bit more rust in the water.
Figure out how to make it irrelevant that the rust is in the water.
Figure out how to fix the deeper problem.
Okay. I mean, that's a platitude, not an argument.
Fix the deeper problem. That's what we're trying to do.
If you look at things like immigration, hang on, let me rebut.
Let me rebut.
If you think about things like immigration, Adam, of course, you look at countries like Poland, you look at countries like Japan, and you look at countries like Israel.
And they, of course, have managed to be very effective at controlling or limiting immigration into their countries.
And this is, of course, Israel is surrounded by hostile neighbors, the majority of whom would love to wipe it off the map completely.
They've built a wall.
They have checkpoints.
They have controls over their borders.
Japan, of course, doesn't accept many immigrants at all and is maintaining its cultural homogeneity.
We're looking at places like Poland where you can have a very civil and pleasant New Year's Eve without fear of rape gangs and so on.
So the idea that it's completely impossible for a government to control its borders is simply false based on the empirical evidence.
Not impossible, but to do it effectively.
I mean, even in all these places, when immigration is outlawed, only outlaws will immigrate.
When you tighten the loop, or when you make the screen and the hole size and the filter is really, really small, when you choke it down, it just means that the worst people will get in.
If you're a determined terrorist who wants to get through one of those systems, you'll be able to do it.
But again, what I was getting at here is that- Except they don't.
They don't. I mean, you tell me about an immigrant terrorist attack in Japan.
Now, Lord knows they've had their own local cults doing terrible things, but they don't.
I mean, you can say, sure, well, you know, there's always some way to get through every rule.
Well, that's sure, that's true.
But that doesn't mean that any particular rules or laws are irrelevant.
How many terrorist attacks were in Poland over the last couple of years?
There have been 30,000 terrorist attacks around the world since the early 2000s.
How many of them have occurred in Japan or Poland?
Well, virtually none. Okay, so that's a fair point.
And again, this is where it comes down to subjectively weighing the different values.
And there's a huge amount of subjectivity here because, like I said, you can make the case for We're good to go.
That means everybody either has to work half as much or quality of life doubles.
You know, that would radically change our relationships with government.
I think the benefits that come from asserting freedom from a consistent ethical standpoint, that changing the paradigm in a way that's consistent with that end goal rather than, well, for now, we're going to have some benefits if we have government borders and restrictions on freedom of movement.
To say, look, let's keep our eye on the prize because the average human being on this planet is not so dumb to understand the non-aggression principle, understand how it applies consistently to government.
And when you make a case for something that contradicts that, I think that sets us back in a way that has a far greater negative value than the positive value of, well, if we tighten the US border completely down as much as any government could effectively restrict immigration, would we have less terrorism in the United States?
Maybe. Would you accept one terrorist attack once a year throughout the world if it meant that there was no war, if it meant that we were twice as productive, if it meant that people understood libertarianism and the non-aggression principle?
I think in that case, again, it's a little bit of apples and oranges, but the way I see those scales of things, I think clearly the answer is consistently advocating for the non-aggression principle always I think that gets to the heart more of the issue of where people see a divergence from your prior approach,
your prior thinking, and maybe the rest of the people who call ourselves the movement of people who share your perspective.
So this study, I did have a look at it because I heard you in debates, Mr.
Southern, citing it.
And it seems that what they have done is not taken into account the costs of the labor landing in the new country, which means that they're not taking into account the basic fact that native whites in America use Medicaid at a rate of 17 percent.
Hispanic immigrants use it at a rate of 58 percent.
Immigrants' welfare usage, 23% white natives, 70% Hispanic immigrants.
Food assistance, only 15% of native whites in America use food assistance, 60% of immigrant Hispanics, and this continues generation after generation after generation.
European immigrants use welfare in America at the rate of 23%, Mexicans at the rate of 73%.
And so the idea that, well, we just get rid of all borders, again, no welfare state, maybe.
But when you get people pouring into the country, there's no conceivable economist with half a brain cell rattling around in his Keens-addicted brain who will tell me that Sweden is flourishing as a result of its immigration policies.
I mean, there's no conceivable way that anyone can make that case.
And Adam, you should know better. Come on, you know that the people who are going into Europe who are making up the no-go zones, who are disproportionately committing crimes, these are not adding to Europe's GDP. It is a massive drain upon the scarce resources within the society.
And as far as these populations go...
Either government gets smaller because of a horribly violent crash in a civil war, or there's some way of reducing it through the political process.
Now, it's all very simple when it comes to—I'm almost done.
It's almost very simple when it comes to this.
Look at Somalia. It's an average IQ of 68, which means up until a couple of decades ago, more than half the Somalian population would be considered functionally retarded.
That is not a situation where you're going to end up with a Jeffersonian— Appreciation of the finer arts of the republic and the deferral of gratification essential to a dedication to a free market.
If you've got Mexico, the average IQ is 88.
And trust me, the smartest people came long ago.
Now we're on the left side of the bell curve.
And so we have a situation where in America, 37% of whites want larger government.
Sorry, 37% of whites want larger government.
Among foreign-born Hispanics, only 12% of them want smaller government.
And so we have the influx of people who are reliably going to vote for larger and larger and larger governments.
Among whites, more than 1 in 10 are libertarian-leaning.
Hispanics, it's 1%.
1%. And so we do have this situation that if you're going to have voting, and if voting is a way to do something to affect the political process, then what happens is when you bring in people who want more and more government and larger and larger government, you're going to end up with a continual growth of government,
with the continual hoovering up of welfare resources, with the continual hoovering up of medical resources, and you're going to have this horrible crash, which I seek to avoid because historically when you look at how these crashes work out, millions of people suffer enormously.
Okay, so that gets to the heart of another divergence here that I think is really, really important in this conversation.
Because the implication of how you started that, the thrust of that, is that you're defending the integrity of the existing U.S. dollar, fiat currency-based, government-run economy.
And you're a fan of Bitcoin.
You're sitting on a big pile of it.
You've been an advocate of Bitcoin, like you mentioned at the beginning here, that You know, even going back to 2011, we were talking about it on Adam vs.
the Man on RT, and you were a better investor than I was.
I've always been a big fan and advocate and user.
Of Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies, I think that's huge.
And I think that's how we avoid the collapse.
If the current economy collapses around the US dollar, it's just, yeah, there's going to be, you know, the less well-established and ready the cryptocurrency ecosystem is ready to pick up the slack from that, the more difficult that transition is going to be.
But we're talking about You say collapse, and it sounds like you're going into this sort of typical fear-mongering approach, whereas most of us would go, no, government collapsing, the dollar collapsing, that's a good thing.
And there's not going to be years and years of deprivation and a lost decade economically.
No, there's going to be a period of transition, and we are going to come out of it stronger and More capable, more prosperous, and a lot more free.
And while there are these certain, I don't, I mean, I take issue with some of the minor stuff, but I really don't want to get into that.
I don't want to even debate immigration, because I fundamentally agree with your point that there are Lots of negative externalities to allowing freedom of movement in the current system.
I think the benefits outweigh the costs.
I think that's the main benefit of standing on consistent ethical principle.
And yes, accelerating the demise of this system.
And I don't think it's going to be a collapse.
I think it's going to be a collapse of the people who are the swamp.
You want to really drain the swamp?
Let's crash the welfare system.
Let's crash the dollar system by Having a peaceful, orderly transition to a cryptocurrency-based economy, I think that's happening.
I think you're doing a huge job of supporting that as well.
Wait, wait, wait. You can't, on the one hand, Adam, say that immigration is really great for the economy, and on the other hand, say immigration is going to crash the economy.
I mean, you've got to pick one of those positions.
No, no, no, no, no.
It's going to crash the welfare state.
It's going to help crash the dollar system.
But the overall, the actual economy, the real economy, the legitimate, comprehensive look at what is the flow of goods and services in society are certainly helped.
But, I mean, mainly because in the act of restricting immigration itself, you are— Destroying value of a person's life who would be better off if they were able to pursue their economic interests freely, just as it is with any individual who lives within the country or any individual throughout the world when you violate the non-aggression principle.
You are reducing...
Sorry, so hang on. You view what's happening in Sweden and Germany and so on as positives because it may end up crashing the status system sooner?
You know, I can't say that I've gotten familiar enough with those exact situations to try to weigh it out.
I'm not a citizen of those countries.
I don't have that local perspective.
So no, I don't pretend to be able to weigh it out exactly exactly.
In those terms, but I am firmly confident in saying that if those countries consistently adopted the non-aggression principle, then the restrictions that they would be able to impose on freedom of movement would be more based on private property, obviously, than government borders, and they would do a better job economically in all regards if they had such a system.
I think this is consistent with what you've advocated philosophically from the beginning.
So we do understand, then, together, I think we agree on the principle that a third-world immigration robs from the domestic population.
No. A third-world population— Well, then how could it crash the welfare state if it doesn't destroy the value of the existing system?
But going back to the point of ascribing responsibility that we covered earlier, a third-world population coming in gives government the excuse to—what was the word used—violate the domestic population.
It gives government the excuse to do it.
It's not doing it itself.
Immigrants don't come in and point a gun to your head and say, pay your taxes.
You know, that's the IRS. The government uses the immigrants as the excuse to do more of that.
So if you have a population coming in, Adam, that on average is going to have a lower IQ than the general population.
And they are therefore dependent upon government money because they get more money from the welfare state than they would in the free market because IQ and income tend to be somewhat correlated.
Then do you think that you are not by importing all of these people?
And Jason Richwine of Harvard has done the research and found that the Hispanic average IQ of 88 is functionally permanent.
It does not change in the second generation.
Fundamentally, it doesn't change in the third generation.
And as we've seen, of course, in Europe, the Muslims who come in tend to be more radical.
Over time, not less.
So the people who've come into the country, who have set down their roots as the result of the flow of free stuff coming from the welfare state, what do you think is going to happen when that free stuff runs out?
Do you think that they're just all going to become Rothbardian libertarians, or do you think that there would be a massive potential for violence when they don't get that which they...
Figure, and maybe rightly so, they feel is necessary for their survival.
When that flow of free money in a gun-happy country, when that flow of free money runs out, what do you think is going to happen?
There may be riots.
Yeah. There may be welfare riots if you cut off welfare, if the system collapses.
Yeah, it's certainly possible.
I don't think it's going to be on any kind of huge scale or we'd see similar equivalents or precursors today.
But part of the progress that we're making— Well, welfare is not diminishing today, is it?
No, no, I didn't say it was.
I'm sorry if I implied that. Sorry, you were saying that we would see these riots today, and I'm talking about when the free stuff runs out.
I mean, you would see, because there are places in the world, in modern history, where welfare has come and gone and gotten better and gotten worse in various forms.
And I think that's, there has never been, I mean, you're the History expert here for sure, but I don't think there's ever been anything that we go, wow, that was so bad that we need to keep this government system going.
When have I advocated keeping the government system going?
I'm not sure where I've ever said.
What we have now is great. Let's really get behind the Federal Reserve and intergenerational debt enslavement and the indoctrination of the young in government schools.
I've changed my mind about all of that.
Let's just keep going with that.
Well, actually, in the premise of the argument that you just made, there is something that you are advocating in maintaining the current system, and it's this nationalist identity.
You say, our area coming to our nation, or the United States, or, you know, and it's a reinforcement of this false idea of collective property of a nation under a government.
And I think that's, you know, it's really kind of I'm dismaying for those of us who really take that as a very important idea, that nationalism is bad, that collectivism is bad, that a collectivist identity is bad, that a government's claim to property rights over an entire territory is- Wow, okay, no, hang on, hang on a sec.
So I understand. And I've heard this argument before, so riddle me this, if you will.
If collectivist in-group preferences are really bad, what do you say about importing cultures which have far stronger collective in-group preferences than Native Americans or Americans who are born there?
Hang on. Among Hispanics, you have this advocacy group called La Raza, which directly translates to the race.
They are very focused on collective in-group identities.
They are very focused on Latino heritage and Hispanic culture and so on.
They have incredibly strong in-group preferences.
So if you're very much into let's not have these collective in-group preferences, how on earth do you solve that by importing masses of people, millions and millions of people who have ferocious collectivist in-group preferences?
So what you did there was very, very clever because you took out The wording that led to that obvious objection, but the same point is still there.
You say importing. Importing to where?
To the United States federal government's territory?
Okay. No, into the wallets of the taxpayers.
Into preying upon the wallets of the taxpayers through the state.
And I don't, I mean, of course I pay taxes when I use, every time I use the dollar, but I don't pay income tax.
I don't pay property tax.
I figured out a way to opt out of that here.
I do as much of my business in crypto as possible.
So you're okay. So the immigration and the predation upon the wallet doesn't really affect you, but that's basically saying, well, I'm fine.
Everybody else who doesn't have my options, who doesn't have my choices, well, to hell with you.
You have to pay with them, but it's okay.
I'm on my safety raft.
You all can go down with the Titanic.
I'm fine, man. No, that's not true because what I'm doing is saying that I don't differentiate between people who are not me based on what country they come from.
I don't have a special need to protect American taxpayers from the predation of the American government more than I do to protect people in foreign countries from being killed by airstrikes.
Hang on, you don't recognize group differences that are biological, that are statistical, that are factual, that are statistical.
You don't recognize group differences, even though I've given you a massive number of group differences that are objective and statistical.
So for you, everyone's the same height, even though I've shown you taller and shorter people.
Absolutely not what I'm saying.
What I'm saying is that I don't give any special credence to the fact that you are a citizen of a particular nation.
That does not give you extra rights.
I don't even know what that means relative to what we're talking about, but I may have just missed something.
Because you say that importing, you're saying that what the government is doing is importing from another area into a specific area.
That importing into that area is saying that that is an area that is of value of a specific designator.
I'm saying, no, it's not. Being born within the United States borders, being a part of this collective, living within this geographic area, does not make us, as human beings, somehow justified in advocating for the violation of the non-aggression principle of people simply because they weren't born within this geographic territory.
I'm not sure I follow, but if I understand what you're saying, you're saying that being born in the United States doesn't give you magical virtue.
Human rights are universal to human beings.
The non-aggression principle is universally preferable behavior that applies, I believe, as you said in the book that I listened to so many years ago and thought was the brilliant treaties on ethics, that there is that universality to that, yes. All right, but let me ask you this, Adam.
Do you prefer libertarians or communists?
Libertarians. Okay, so there is a group that has beliefs that, I agree with you, are far more virtuous than the beliefs of communists, more factual, more objective, more rational, and better, good.
And so you have an in-group preference and you recognize that the libertarians are closer to virtue and closer to what you and I believe than, say, communists, just to take sort of two extremes on the political spectrum.
And so what you're saying is that there is value in a group that holds limited government beliefs.
Now, the place in the world where people in general hold smallest government beliefs certainly is the West as a whole and maybe arguably America in particular.
And so if there is a convergence of small government beliefs among particular groups in America, then you would prefer those groups to other groups that have big government beliefs, right?
Because you prefer libertarians to communists to take two extremes.
Sure.
And on my own property, I would be more inclined to invite a libertarian beliefs.
But again, there's a certain collectivism here or collectivization here.
In your creation of these groups where you refer to, like, Communists or Libertarians as if it's all...
Wait, I created these groups?
What do you mean? There's no such thing as Communists?
I don't understand. No, no, no. Rhetorically, when you create...
In your mind, when you say Libertarians, you prefer Libertarians or Communists, you have an idea of what people that includes.
And when you say Libertarians are, you know, more ethical people, I generally agree because they're asserting inethical...
No, no, the beliefs are more ethical.
Individual Libertarians vary somewhat widely.
Sorry, what was the first part of that?
I said the beliefs are ethical.
I wouldn't necessarily judge each individual.
That was the point that I was making, is that there are lots of people who call themselves libertarian who have very low impulse control.
And I wouldn't let them on my property.
And there are communists who, while certainly wrong philosophically and have those unethical beliefs, and I would be very suspicious of them to say, well, if you believe that theft is justified through communism, blah, blah, blah, do you respect my property rights on my property?
If I invite you on here, are you just going to start stealing stuff?
And there are communists who would give me a better faith in being good guests on my property than some libertarians.
And I think I should be able to set those preferences for myself on my property.
I feel that that is my right.
And when you advocate for any kind of restriction of freedom of movement, You are violating, essentially, my property right to be able to invite someone from anywhere on the world to my property.
I know there's- No, no, no, no.
Come on, man. No, no, no.
Listen. First of all- No, first of all- First of all, Adam, you can invite people onto your property.
They can get tourist visas and summits.
You can invite people onto your property.
And secondly, it's not just a question of your private property and who you invite onto your property.
Because when immigrants come into the country now, I mean, certainly since 1965, third world immigrants as a whole come into the country, they...
They siphon stuff out of your wallet.
They siphon stuff out of my wallet.
So don't talk to me about your private property.
What about the private property of my family?
What about the private property of my money?
So there are some immigrants who are going to come in who statistically are going to take less welfare even than the domestic population.
And there are other immigrants who are going to come in who are statistically going to take three or four times the amount of welfare and the amount of predation out of my wallet and my child's future and my savings and my hard work.
So the idea that you're just inviting someone onto your property and it has no effect outside the bounds of your property is nonsense.
It's a complete lie because they come in and they take huge amounts of money from the domestic population.
It is a massive transfer of funds at the point of a gun.
So it's not just private to your property.
This is where you make a huge, I think, fallacy in attribution because you can say, I have freedom of speech, I'm going to say whatever I want, or I have freedom on my property here in Arizona to build whatever I want.
But if I build a building that comes above the tree line, it's going to affect your view of the mountains so you can bomb my property.
No, it doesn't matter. I still have that right.
That is not even close to the correct analogy.
I don't own the view of the mountains, but I own the money that's in my bank account, which is regularly hoovered up by the taxman to pay for immigrants who are going to vote for bigger government.
That is directly against my interests.
By the taxman.
By the tax man, not by the immigrants.
And if you want to say to me, hey, Adam, what about the other taxpayers who are going to pay for this freedom that you're advocating?
Well, what about the Mexican taxpayers?
What about me or anybody else who's going to be taxed to support a system that they don't support?
Why is an American taxpayer a good excuse to violate the non-aggression principle, but the Mexican taxpayer isn't?
What does the Mexican taxpayer have to do with this?
What does the Mexican taxpayer have to do with this?
You're defending this American taxpayer as this group that's going to be violated more Because government is using immigrants as an excuse to steal from them.
Well, if they stay in Mexico, you could apply.
And I'm not saying I would apply this argument.
I'm just pointing out that your argument could be just applied the same way.
Well, what about the taxpayers in Mexico?
If there are poor people in Mexico who are coming here who are, you know, living off the Mexican welfare system and they're hurting the taxpayers.
They're not taking from my wallet if they're in Mexico.
You understand? If the people stay in Mexico and sit on the Mexican welfare state such as it exists, they're not taking money out of my wallet.
The thing is that it's always the government that is doing the taking.
I think it's really important that we keep our eye on who the real enemy is here.
And I think that's, again, to the heart of the matter, because we can debate immigration, but we're on the same page.
But you don't pay any taxes.
So you don't have any stake in this matter.
You don't pay any taxes. So you're fine.
You have this abstract thing.
You don't have a child.
You're not saving up for that child's future.
I mean, you're not even in the game as far as this goes because you self-admit you don't pay any taxes.
But for those of us who do actually pay taxes, and sometimes quite a lot, it matters a little bit more.
We don't have to deal with this.
We can't just live in this abstract world.
Right. To the tunes of God knows how much money every year, because I have an ideal called open borders.
So Steph, I'm not going to pay for it because I don't pay taxes, but Steph, you damn well better sit down and let the government rifle through your wallet because I have this fantasy called open borders, which I'm not willing to fund because I don't pay any damn taxes.
Well, no, I'm not saying open borders.
I'm saying private property borders.
And what you're doing here is You haven't said private property borders to my knowledge, but I'm certainly happy to hear about that.
What's that? Oh, yes.
No, I made this very clear at the beginning, I thought, to say that the only legitimate borders are private property borders.
Government borders are not legitimate borders in the sense that they're not based on legitimate property rights.
Oh, so someone could buy up the border between America and Mexico and erect a wall.
Because that would be private property, right?
Hypothetically, yes, you can build all the walls.
And you know what? I think an enormous number of Americans would be really happy to fund that because that would pay for itself in less than a year as far as savings on the public purse.
So, okay, then we don't have any particular disagreement.
If the government allows people to buy up private property along a border and erect a wall, if people want to fund that and pay for it, and there's no question it's a huge return on investment, again, pays for itself in less than a year, I think we're on the same page.
I think I would prefer that to a government wall because it would be a private property solution.
It would be better maintained, it would be better built, it would be cheaper, and you couldn't vote it away in the next election.
Absolutely. But you could still sail into the United States.
You could still fly and come and meet me on your property.
Well, no. You'd be able to take a helicopter to my property.
So there. It's fine.
I don't have a problem. You build a wall on your own private property.
Absolutely. I think that's what's in line with What I dare say is our philosophy of voluntarism.
I think that's the more consistent ethical position.
And I think you're correct to point out all of the negative consequences of immigration is something and looking at it as a matter of policy.
What do we prioritize? When you say we need to have more government in this regard, you are reinforcing the philosophy that very directly...
No, no. Oh my gosh. It's not more government, Adam.
It's less government. It's less government.
It's vastly less government.
Okay, well, hold on. Let me just make that case briefly, because if you missed it, maybe other people missed it, and maybe I didn't make the case.
It's less government because you get far fewer people on the welfare state.
You have far more people being productive, far fewer people on the welfare state, which is why the wall pays for itself in less than a year, and so you end up with less requirement for government predation and government spending if you have borders.
You get a smaller government, and you get to maintain a population composed of people who will actually vote for smaller government.
Some subjectivity in the conclusions there.
No, not at all. Not at all.
There's white males in general and married white females who want smaller government.
That is statistically undeniable.
Okay, so...
I ask sometimes in my talks when I get into this with an audience, is big government always worse than small government?
And, of course...
It's a trick question. Everybody raises their hand.
Yes, big government is always worse than small government.
And it's really not true, and it's very easily proven.
And I think this is really important.
I'm sure you've considered this concept at some point, but from the perspective of voluntarism, right?
The metric of the evil of government is not its size.
And I ask people, would you rather have a government that's huge, made up of half the population, but everything it does is kind of an approximation of what the free market would provide?
The only coercion that they use is just enough to maintain their monopolies on those services, and they generally respect civil liberties and individual rights.
Or— Would you rather have a government that's tiny, that's 1% of the population, but it's extremely violent and kills every single firstborn child?
And you go, oh yeah, no crap.
I'd rather have the big government than the small government in that case.
And the conclusion from this should be pretty obvious, that the metric of evil of government is not its size, but rather how much it violently destroys value and takes us away from our potential of a harmonious free market.
This is where a huge amount of subjectivity comes in, but to me it's very clear that the disadvantages of the violence of borders, of government borders, of controlling limiting immigration far outweigh just the value in terms of respecting the non-aggression principle, having an economy that's Working towards that consistently and asserting those values.
I think that to say, is government bigger or smaller, really misses the point of your philosophy of voluntarism.
But you don't pay any taxes, so, I mean, the idea of government.
But let me ask you this. Do you think you would be able to do what you do, Adam, in, say, Saudi Arabia or Mexico or wherever?
Do you think that if you were living in Mexico, we would have the freedom to have this kind of discussion?
Do you think you would have the relative wealth that you have, the independence and the freedom, and the gun ownership rights that you have if you lived in Mexico?
Well, first of all, I don't have any gun ownership rights in the United States as a Convicted felon.
And if I was in one of those countries, I mean, I consider myself an activist.
That is, I am motivated, as I think a lot of people saw that you once were, by a deep-seated sense of injustice.
I think that's still your primary motivator.
And I would be, yeah, I'd be doing different things, but I'd still be, you know...
It would not be as easy. Right.
It would not be as easy as pleasant.
Well, is it... To do what you do, is it preferable to live in a country with a First Amendment, or is it preferable to live in a country with endless hate speech laws?
I don't know, Stefan. I might prefer the greater challenge.
You know, I was dumb enough to join the Marine Corps.
No, come on. Be serious.
Be serious. You choose to do the work in America, right?
No, it doesn't matter to me.
I'm going to do what I can to advance.
Wait, the First Amendment doesn't matter to you?
Freedom of speech doesn't matter to you?
It doesn't matter to me what personal circumstance I find myself in.
I'm going to fight injustice, the greatest injustice I can.
Do you think that there's value in free speech?
Of course. Okay, good.
So in America, the people who believe in free speech tend to be those born in America, raised in the European tradition of debate and so on, whereas the Hispanics and the Muslims and so on, not so keen on the free speech.
Now, as you know, non-Hispanic whites are going to be less than half of the US population under current trajectories by 2055.
And no racial ethnic group will constitute a majority of the U.S. population.
And Hispanics are going to go to 24% by 2065 from 18% today.
Asians going from 60% to 14%.
So you value free speech and the importation of masses of cultures From people who don't value free speech, who value hate speech laws, who value the suppression of free speech.
So the immigration of people with values in general, hostile to free speech, is going to take down the value that you want.
And does that not matter to you?
If free speech is a value, and cultures coming into the West don't value free speech when they gain enough electoral power, which is not proportional to their population, It's proportional to their willingness to use aggression and violence and manipulate the laws and be dedicated to changing the existing society.
If free speech is a value, and there are cultures coming in who don't value free speech, who gain significant control over the electoral process, how long do you think before that value is fundamentally threatened?
I think it's more important that we disempower the entire electoral process instead of saying, you know, like, we need to preserve the system in order to avoid these negative externalities that I agree with you are real.
And I'm more having an objection here to you saying, That we need to collectivize the United States and defend this particular collective.
I think that's really contrary to the message and how we move forward.
But more importantly, this is what motivates me to do what I want to do, which is dissolve the entire United States federal government and leave 50 independent states plus territories sovereign native nations.
This is why I'm running for president in 2020 for the Libertarian nomination.
On the platform of immediately dissolving the United States federal government.
And if, as a result, some states end up having stricter immigration policy as they transition to greater localization, you know, I understand that that's probably going to be more effective than what we're trying to do at the national level, where there are a lot of people who really don't, you know, don't share Trump's position, who don't share, you know, your position or your policy on this.
You're fine with states doing it, but not countries?
I'm not fine with it, but I think it's better for the more local it is, the less it represents an affront to freedom of movement.
So the more local it is, it's better.
So if there was some North American Union with open borders, that would be bad.
But if there's countries, say, I don't know, Mexico, America and Canada with borders, that's better because it's more local.
I think the closer you get to approximating a private property-based system, yeah, the better we'll be.
Now, I'm not sure how that applies to, yeah, if we got rid of the borders between the United States and Mexico and Canada without asserting private property, yeah, you'd have a lot of those negative externalities as applied to the US dollar economy and to the system of taxpayers.
And I'm not disputing that, Stefan.
I mean, you keep throwing these statistics out, and it's like, I'm not arguing with your statistics.
I'm not debating that.
I'm trying to explain, or I'm explaining what I see as the far bigger, greater trade-off.
In this whole picture.
And to me, it's very clear that asserting freedom consistently is more valuable.
So, I mean, if you disagree, again, it comes down to strategy because we share the same objective of the end goal.
So you are more in favor of the European Union than you are of individual European nations, is that right?
No, because that represents a concentration of power.
No, absolutely not. So you're a fan of Brexit?
Yes, absolutely. Because Brexit was driven by immigration concerns and the need to control borders, which is kind of what I talk about.
So how can you support Brexit but criticize me?
I'm a little confused. I think it's pretty obvious that I'm talking about a different transition than you are.
What I'm talking about is that we can move forward by localizing.
Wait, wait, wait. Hang on, hang on, hang on.
No, no, no, no. You can't slime me on that one, brother.
Come on. Brexit was driven by concerns of immigration and a significant requirement to control borders and close borders, right?
So that's kind of what I supported Brexit for as well.
And one of the reasons why I was interested not in Republicans and not in Trump.
I don't care about Trump. I don't care about the Republicans.
I just care about policies and I care about history and I care about facts.
Hang on, hang on. So how can you defend Brexit, which is driven by a desire to control borders and make things more localized and criticize me for a desire to control borders and make things more localized?
Well, I think it should be obvious that you don't have to endorse everybody's motivation for doing a certain thing in order to endorse the action.
You know, I don't support Brexit because it means that there's going to be more restrictions to freedom of movement.
I supported Brexit because it represented a challenge to the concentration of power that was the EU. I think that's the critical turning point that we're at right now in human history, where the United Nations, you know, when you had the EU, there was all this talk, well, now we're going to see it, we're going to see an African Union, we're going to see a North American Union and, you know, all the, an Asian Union.
Wait, do you not think that Brexit was to do with national, sorry to interrupt, I'm still trying to process this, do you don't think that Brexit had to do with national sovereignty?
Yeah, I do. But it's also a more local version of national sovereignty than the EU as a neo-national, supranational, greater concentration unit.
So I think if enough people in Britain go, yeah, we want Britain to have a strong identity that's independent from Europe, I think while I disagree with the collectivism inherent in that, I want them to keep going.
Like, yes! And as, you know, Citizens of this particular region of Britain, we also want to assert our individual identity, and we want to Welsh exit, whatever.
We want to separate from that union as well.
And then eventually they go, you know what?
As an individual, I want to assert my individual rights free from any of these forced collectives.
I think that's a much more important direction, and that's what I see as the value in Brexit.
But you understand why it's a little confusing when you criticize me for any kind of in-group preference and any kind of preference for people who value liberty.
And then you say, well, it's fine if the states do it, but not the federal government.
And it's fine if England does it, but it's bad if Steph recommends it.
Because you're definitely misrepresenting what I said here.
I never said it's good or fine that the states do it.
I think it's sort of like... It's sort of an acceptable transition on the way to a free society.
There you go. An acceptable transition on the way to a better world.
You see, we're not that far apart in our views at all.
So, exactly. And it gets to the heart of this.
I suppose what you're willing to accept is a lot more...
A lot more statist than what I'm willing to accept.
And I don't see the value.
And, you know, maybe I haven't looked enough.
I don't see the value.
Tell me. Tell me how important millions and millions of people who are dependent on the state, who want bigger government, and have no European traditions of...
Separation of church and state and free speech and the Second Amendment and so on.
Tell me how importing millions of people who are dependent on the state and who want bigger government in a voting system leads to smaller government.
Because if I've made that mistake, that's important for me to know.
Tell me how any of those things justify a violation No, no, no.
You've already told me you're willing to accept compromises, imperfection, and a road to a bigger goal, which is why you're fine with Brexit.
In fact, you approve of Brexit. So don't suddenly go from pragmatism to idealism, because you've already said that you're willing to accept compromises on the way to a greater goal of a freer society.
So tell me how importing millions of people who want bigger government and who are physically dependent on the state gives you a smaller government in a voting environment.
So the compromise is, hey, if you're going to take $10, I'll accept that tomorrow you're only going to take $9.
It's not, hey, well, why don't you take $9 and a dollar worth of Bitcoin on top of that?
It's just there is a consistent principle that I am applying in how we get there that is always a reduction in the amount of violence and violations of the non-aggression principle in the world.
I'm going to have to ask again because it's the third time you haven't asked.
You're getting good at running for office.
Tell me how importing millions of people who are dependent on the state for their survival and who consistently want bigger and bigger government, Hispanics of whom 1% have libertarian leanings, how is it that importing millions of people who want bigger government and who are going to ferociously vote to defend their government freebies, how is that going to get you to a smaller government?
It is smaller government in and of itself, because advocating for a wall is bigger government.
Advocating for restriction of freedom movement is bigger government.
You're saying, I can implement this.
I mean, this is the madness of this position.
You're saying, I can implement a government program that is going to have a net result of reducing government.
That's the heart of this argument, to say we need more restrictions on immigration.
That is, we need more government With the end goal of getting less government.
I think that's a much more difficult Leap of faith that you have to make to say, yes, we're going to increase government this way, and in the end run, it's going to lead to less government.
Right, I got it. So you were opposed to the American Revolution, you see, because in the American Revolution, they implemented a government with the goal of reducing the power of the British government over the colonies, and you would have very much ferociously argued against the American Revolution because it is a status solution to a problem and therefore is inevitably going to make a bigger government in the short run.
Actually, I support the revolution up to the point where they started writing governing documents, yes.
I did not support the signing of the Constitution.
Obviously, the Articles of Confederation that were in place before that were more in line with principles of freedom.
The collectivization of force that was required to overthrow the British Empire, to the extent that it was done voluntarily, I totally support it.
To the extent that it was done coercively, I don't.
All right. And I just wanted to check on that.
So I'll tell you why I, well, how I think it's going to happen.
Because you just have this, at least to me so far, and correct me after I made my little spiel, please.
You have a big magic box, you know, which is, well, we open borders and tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions of people pour into America.
Who are uneducated, generally low IQ, no history of freedom, and want bigger government and are gonna crash the system.
And then out of that smoking rubble, we get magic freedom.
Although the world is populated by, America is now populated by tribalistic, in-group preference, collectivist, third-worlders.
But anyway, that's your magic.
Oh, and of course, they may also want Sharia law in significant portions, but don't worry, we're going to get magic freedom out of that.
But here's why- I'm also gonna pass a law To require them to start watching your videos, okay?
That's going to be part of the executive order.
Those eyeballs I don't want. I'm getting this, like, what is it, the clockwork orange, you know, the guy with the toothpicks in his eyeballs and all.
All right, so let me just give you a very, very brief thing about how I think the transition occurs, and tell me if I'm wrong, and then we can finish up by getting your transition.
I am always very concerned.
You know, there's that old cartoon about a guy with massively complicated equations on the whiteboard, and in the middle there's a cloud where it says, and here a miracle happens, and there's some other researcher who comes up and says, I'd like to know a little bit more about this bit in the middle, because that seems kind of important.
So the way that I think it could work is, and this is working under Trump.
I predicted it, and this is one of the reasons I was interested in his administration.
But I did...
Expect this to happen and it's happening.
So what's happening right now is that people are getting off welfare and onto the productive roles, right?
They've got jobs. Manufacturing is up by, I think, almost 200,000.
Black unemployment is at the lowest level ever historically, which is fantastic, right?
That's a great partisan talking point.
Hang on, hang on. But so as you transition people off the welfare state and onto the tax rolls, then they automatically become interested in smaller government because they're on the paying side rather than on the receiving side.
You know, as you know, economically, most people fairly amoral.
They just respond to incentives.
And so if you're paying taxes rather than receiving free stuff, you're going to be interested in a smaller government.
If you can maintain a population in a country that is interested in smaller government and you transition people from big government dependency to small government advocacy through moving them onto the tax rolls, you get a fairly gentle transition.
As the economy gets better, more and more people slide off welfare into productive work.
There's going to be more and more interest in smaller and smaller government.
And that way, the system is not going to work in the long run.
The existing system is a disaster.
And it's either going to be a hard landing or it's going to be a soft landing.
Like it's either going to be into the side of the cliff at 600 miles an hour or it's going to be bumpy but survivable.
And the bumpy but survivable is do not import massive numbers of people who want bigger and bigger government and are hostile and have their immediate economic incentives directly against smaller government.
Raintain the population of freedom lovers and in that population transition people from dependence on the welfare state To being productive citizens, they will then be interested in smaller and smaller government.
And as Trump has done, reduce regulations and allow for more and more jobs to be recreated.
If he gets this repatriation back of money from overseas, that's going to be fantastic for R&D investment manufacturing.
Because unfortunately, you know, we've got a whole bunch of people who don't have necessarily the interest, the verbal skills, the IQ, the whatever, to do what you and I do.
There's lots of people who want to work with their hands and more power to them.
I mean, I think it's fantastic. It's what we need in the world.
So Trump is opening up sort of low middle class and middle class employment.
He's going to get people off welfare onto government, onto paying taxes.
There's going to be more interest in smaller and smaller government.
And this way we get not a cold turkey crash, but we get a sort of weaning, which I think is the best way to get people off addictions.
It's not just to, you know, drive them nuts in cold turkey stuff.
But in order to do that, you need to control the borders because right now, What's happening is you've got millions of people pouring into America every year, legally and illegally, who are going to be dependent on the state.
And, of course, they're opening the borders.
The globalists open the borders because they know it's going to crash the U.S. as it stands.
And then you're going to have, I don't know, a civil war, a giant mess.
Who knows? Now, it's not a perfectly guaranteed chance.
But given what happens, if the system crashes...
Then it's a chance worth taking.
It's the old thing. It's like, well, I think my parachute works and I'm high enough that I can jump.
I know the plane's heading into the cliff.
You say, well, can you guarantee you're going to land softly?
It's like, well, no. But it's certainly the best chance that I have.
And the last thing that I wanted to say, which is something I've touched on many times in the show, which we haven't touched on here, but...
The question of the good treatment of children is essential to me, and I've made this case, you know, spanking is a violation of the non-aggression principle, worked in peaceful parenting as much as humanly possible.
And when you're talking about third world cultures, you are talking about cultures almost uniformly, unbelievably brutal towards their children.
And I'm not just talking about female genital mutilation or male genital mutilation for that matter.
I'm talking about rape of children, sexual assault, sexual abuse of children, beatings, spankings, torturings, mental and physical and so on.
There are a lot of brutal cultures.
The vast majority of cultures out in the world are extraordinarily brutal towards their children.
And so it's not just in terms of, well, there's going to be a bunch of people who are going to vote for the left and want bigger government, dependent on the state.
You are bringing in a permanent or virtually permanent child hostile set of cultures into the West.
That is going to produce traumatized and brutalized adults who are going to be irrational, who are going to be hostile, who may be prone to violence.
This is just statistically the way that it works out.
So it's hard enough to get libertarians to give up spanking.
Trying to get someone from Somalia to give up female genital mutilation, well, that is a task, I think, certainly beyond my abilities, and I suspect yours as well.
So that's my sort of idea about how the transition might occur, but I'm certainly happy to hear, A, how that's wrong, and B, what the alternative is.
Oh, well, that really helps, Stefan.
I really think that's illuminating of how you see this going and sort of the reason for why, and much more Helpful terms than simply looking at it as just the isolated policy.
What I see definitely is different as a transition.
And I think that with the secession movement that we see globally, I think Brexit is a huge part of it.
The failed Scottish independence vote.
Brexit has failed too, I just want to mention.
Brexit has failed so far too, and it's been 18 months.
Fair enough.
But that there is a general trend towards localism, towards localization of government, towards independence, towards asserting the right of self-determination, which I say doesn't really exist for a nation or a state, but certainly for an individual.
And I think that trend is actually more important than the trend towards libertarianism or belief in small government, that the way we actually get out of this system is by localizing it.
And this is why I'm running for president on this specific platform.
Sorry to interrupt you. I said have your speech, but I really need to know.
In which communities do you see this localization occurring?
Do you see it occurring in the Muslim communities?
Do you see it occurring in Hispanic communities?
Do you see it occurring in Somali communities, this movement towards individualism and away from a group identity?
Where do you see it happening in the immigrant populations?
It's not so much in specific populations as a shifting in the global paradigm in the age of the internet when people realize that we shouldn't be forced into large collectives, that we're better off with the free market.
I think there is. I mean, you scoff, but I think- No, it's not.
The data completely contradicts what you're saying.
And if you're going to hold these positions, Adam, you damn well better look up the data.
Because it's highly irresponsible to have these airy-fairy, everyone's equal, everyone's got the same level of focus on individualism and is against globalism and collectivism, when the data simply does not support, in fact, directly opposes what you say.
And if you're going to be out there mouthing off about this stuff, you need to have the data behind you.
And I've given you the data behind.
In terms of focuses on collectivism, smaller government, bigger government, and so on.
And it's like there's no input here.
That's what's frustrating to me about this.
And I'm just honest about the frustration.
It doesn't mean you're wrong. It's like saying, well, it's occurring equally.
It's not occurring equally.
There is not a massive libertarian flourishing movement in the Somali community in Minnesota.
In the Somali community in Minnesota, their imams tell them to vote for Al Franken, who gives Obamacare.
In England, the imams in the Muslim community tell their people to vote for socialists or you go to hell.
So the idea that there's this massive, wonderful, individualistic, anti-collectivist, anti-group identity movement occurring equally among various cultures is completely false.
I didn't say that.
You misrepresent me and then throw out a bunch of statistics and say you're wrong.
And it's like, no, the straw man that you're addressing is wrong.
Correctly so. I didn't say that.
I cite your earlier work in talking about how there is A phenomenon of awakening in humanity as a whole connected with the internet, connected with conversations like this, that this is possible in a way that voices like yours and mine, you know, in an era of media pre-internet, completely dominated by government control, this conversation simply would not have been possible.
And it does represent a fundamental shift in the paradigm of humanity.
You are having an impact, Stefan.
You know, don't ignore that.
I've never said that it's equal.
I've never said it's equal across the world.
And just look at birth rates.
Just look at birth rates.
The birth rates of immigrants is significantly higher than the birth rates of the general population, which means population displacement.
As immigrants have more children, more taxes need to be levied on the domestic population, which means they have less money to raise their own children, and it is a population displacement among cultures that very much are in opposition to everything that you're saying.
This is what I don't understand. You don't like collectivism.
Fantastic. I don't like collectivism either, in which case we really should be skeptical about importing millions of people completely addicted to collectivism.
Your definition of importing there, the use of that word importing is loaded with premises of collectivism because it's not based on a concept of private property.
Do you think that in Somali they have greater addiction to collectivism or tribalism than the average libertarian?
Well, Stefan, I really appreciate how you laid out Your vision of this transition.
And I would appreciate the opportunity.
That's totally fair. Yeah, please go ahead.
I will zip it. Go for it.
I apologize. But it's not just that.
I don't want... It's more that in order to make your case, you keep having to deliberately misrepresent what I'm saying.
Now, I don't think at any point that I say this paradigm shift is happening equally across cultures or across the world.
I said it's a global phenomenon.
And then you take—you inserted that one word into what I said.
And then, you know, Went off for five minutes on it.
I think that's really, you know, somewhat disingenuous in how you're engaging.
Do you think that I deliberately misrepresented you?
I mean, that's what I understood from what you were saying.
I did not hear you say one thing and then deliberately twist it.
I mean, you're a friend of mine, right?
So I don't deliberately misrepresent my friends in order to score points.
If I made a mistake, I'm sorry, we can't do the instant replay at the moment.
But my understanding is you were saying fairly undifferentiatedly that this global awakening And opposition to collectivism is occurring across the world, and I wanted to point out that it's far from equal, and I certainly did not mean to misrepresent you, and that was not an intentional purpose of mine.
Then we're good. So, yes, I agree.
It's not equal. I didn't mean to imply that.
If you heard that implication and what I said, I don't assume that it was deliberate, but I do think you are looking to To hear implications of what I'm saying that aren't there.
Don't try and read my mind.
Why don't you just go and make the point about how the transition occurs?
The mind reading never goes well in these conversations.
You're right. I don't want to ascribe intent, but that's what it seems like, not just from you.
I wouldn't make the point about you personally so much as a lot of the people who share a similar philosophical perspective from you who make this case, who I engage with I'm grateful for the opportunity to show my assessment in the somewhat subjective ways that it contradicts yours and share this vision.
I think it's more realistic that we are going to convince a majority of the American people to vote for localization Than to embrace a libertarian ideal.
And among libertarians, we cannot even agree on what that ideal is.
So to say, like, we are going to, you know, have this universal awakening, that it's really about the paradigm shift, and I firmly believe that drives it.
I think in the mechanics of how we get to a voluntary society, localization is a much more powerful mechanism.
Now, this really goes into the sort of Hoppian model of private property enclaves.
And this is something that I got from when I went to Europe last year and heard from, I like to quote Mr.
Liechtenstein, Andreas Kohl.
Who in his speech said that as libertarians, we should really be agnostic when it comes to taxes and regulations.
And I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa.
I'm triggered like a snowflake.
Really? You want me to just as a libertarian?
I'm supposed to just give up on these issues?
But the point he was making was that in a true private property-based society, you would have, like Hoppe describes, private property enclaves, communities.
That, like, homeowners associations might have dues.
They might have regulations, right?
They would have rules. And if it's private property-based, then we don't have a problem with it, right?
It's voluntary. And if they want to call their HOA a government, if they want to call their dues taxes as if they're pointing guns at people, but it's really voluntary, I'm not going to point a gun at them and say, no, you can't call that A tax.
That has to be called a membership fee.
No, I'm going to let them do what they want in their community.
And I think when you get to that point, this really speaks to the core of how libertarians really should go about, you know, spreading our values more by example.
Let's create communities and mechanisms and businesses where free trade, voluntary interaction shows that it improves everyone's lives.
And in terms of the transition, this idea of localization is really powerful because it unites people against the common enemy of big centralized government at a much simpler level.
And this goes to what you said about most voters being relatively low information, right?
They're going to vote in their immediate self-interest.
I think if we can show them how the application of libertarian principles, like what would I do if I was president?
What would you do if you were president?
I would throw the ring in the fire.
I would not allow that office to continue to exist.
I would dissolve the entire federal government.
That's what this executive order lays out.
So if you're a conservative, you live in a conservative state, you're a liberal, you live in a liberal state, you don't want to be tied to those crazy people through a central government.
We don't need to be united under one government to be united as Americans, to be united in the values of freedom.
And this is the everybody gets what they want strategy.
This is the end run. I don't have to argue philosophy.
I don't have to get people to watch Stefan Molyneux videos or read my book or sit down.
I mean, I'm again blown away and honored by how long this conversation has gone.
We don't have to get them.
To sit through this conversation and think about these issues.
We can allow them to indulge in the market of specialization of leadership.
Have you tried this? I mean, do you speak Spanish?
Do you speak Somali? Do you speak Arabic?
I mean, I don't think that there's a lot of Rothbard books that have been translated into, I don't know, whatever they speak in Kenyan.
So I guess my question is based upon the theory I think we're good to go.
When they're having trouble ordering a coffee at Starbucks in English, I think is a bit challenging when it comes to spreading these ideas.
If you bring in people who already speak English, you are, of course, far further ahead.
But the balkanization of language is also the balkanization of ideas because in some other languages, there aren't even words for the concepts that we talk about, which have taken thousands of years to develop through Western culture.
Well, my point was that you don't have to wake up everybody.
You don't have to convince everybody of the philosophy.
All you have to do is convince them, come out and vote once for localization.
Come out and vote once to destroy the highest level of government and then keep going in that process until you get down.
Have you tried putting that into practice?
Have you tried that as a field experiment?
I'm not trying to be harsh.
I like theories, but I'm an empiricist, right?
I'm smiling because I have a great answer to this question.
I speak a functional amount of German, French, and Arabic, just barely.
When I was in Fallujah in 2004, I learned Arabic and civil affairs.
My book, I'm very, very excited to say, and you know this, you've had this experience with yours as well, It's been translated by volunteers into a dozen languages at this point.
And now I'm mostly concerned with the people in the United States.
Can the people in the United States be convinced to vote to dissolve the entire United States federal government if we do it in a peaceful, orderly, responsible manner?
Leaving your state or your territory or whatever as a, you know, functioning governing body.
It means I don't have to argue with you about what is the role of government, what is the scope of government, just would you be better off if government was closer to your community?
And the response of the United States, overwhelmingly positive.
And I'm very confident that when I win the nomination and we're able to put forth this platform and say, look, the American people now have a chance to vote nobody for president.
That within an election cycle or two, you're going to see a fundamental shift in that direction.
I'm sorry to interrupt, but I do want to get to the actual transition, and I appreciate that explanation.
I don't know whether your book or my book versus immigrant birth rates is really going to matter.
You have to let me finish answering your question, just a second.
No, no, the problem is you haven't started answering my question, which is the practical transition point.
You said, what have you tried?
I'm telling you, I've done two national tours in the United States.
I've done You know, hundreds of events within the United States.
I've gone out and talked to average Americans, mostly, you know, at gas stations and hotels and RV parks.
And yes, they are overwhelmingly enthusiastic about this.
When I went to Mexico for Anarchapulco last year, and by the way, you're invited again.
I would love to have you join us there.
Anarchapulco is an amazing event, you know, hosted by Jeff Berwick, the Dollar Vigilante.
A lot of people there love you.
It'd be great to have you there.
I spoke to every cab driver and I took about a dozen cab rides in a week and I was able to talk to them about the basics of government in Spanish and they're all receptive.
So I have two more tours planned internationally.
I do an American tour now every year where we do pretty much all the lower 48 and do events at least in every state that we can.
But next fall I'm doing 40 cities in Europe.
And I'll be giving speeches in five languages.
We will hopefully have copies of the book translated into the local language in every city that we go to, which is obviously more than I will be able to speak.
And just to be perfectly modest here, my French and Arabic are barely good enough that I'll be able to read a speech in those languages, but we'll be passing out copies of the book in those languages.
More importantly, what I've seen, not just internationally myself, but really going around the United States and talking to people, is that human beings want to be free.
They generally resent being told what to do.
They are clear in the association with What is the mechanism of control and exploitation as big, centralized, modern, bureaucratic governments?
And the idea that, hey, we could get government down to the community level, everything that you want government to do with the community, you can have, is much easier to convince people of than a comprehensive worldview or philosophy.
Well, of course, charming though you are, and I'm sure and positive those conversations would be, the simple factors of just looking at people who want to come to America from Mexico, the vast majority of them want bigger government.
So, I mean, sure, people say in the abstract, I want to be free, but let's, okay, so let's get to transition.
So, hang on.
I want bigger government in my community.
I'm okay with that. It's your community.
You have big government in your community, and anybody's free to leave that community, you know, ultimately.
Just as libertarians.
No, no, no, no. Hang on.
Wait a minute. Big government in your community?
That's a violation. I thought you were universalist, non-aggression principle.
Right. Well, if it's voluntary because it's community-based… Then it's not.
If it's voluntary, come on, you know this is 101.
If it's voluntary, it's not government.
So help me understand that last statement because that kind of blew my ears off.
Sure, sure. Okay, excuse me.
That was a little semantic stumble there.
I apologize. But no, if you want big things that look and operate like government in your community, but they're voluntary, I'm not going to argue with that, especially if you don't...
But that's like saying if you want rape, but it's lovemaking.
Like if it's government, it's not voluntary.
I hate to be a nitpicker, but these are pretty important terms, right?
Right, right. And you could say what we're doing is tricking people into turning their government into not government and then realizing that they're using the wrong word for it.
All right. So you want to have open borders, which means tens of millions of people who barely speak English and want bigger government and are dependent on the federal government for their income, come into America.
And then how does it turn free?
I want private property borders.
And my plan is not contingent upon immigration one way or another.
I'm not saying that immigration is going to lead to freedom or stopping immigration is going to lead to freedom.
I think either way. I mean, under Trump, I think After four years of Trump, I think people will be ready to get rid of the entire federal government, regardless of what it means for or what immigration has.
But Helen, you want to become president, you're going to run on dismantling the federal government.
You've got tens of millions of additional people utterly dependent on the federal government for their economic survival.
Why would they vote for you to eliminate the source of their income?
Which people are you referring to?
You want open borders, which means tens of millions of people coming in who want bigger government and who are dependent on the federal government for their income.
Why would they vote for you?
Well, they're not going to be coming in under Trump, right?
So I guess that's a good thing. And I'm willing to accept that.
No, no, no. Trump has not ended immigration.
It's not in the 1920s.
Trump has not ended immigration at all.
Okay. Two million people came into America last year.
Mostly from the third world and a good proportion of those came in illegally.
There are 20 to 30 million at a minimum of illegal immigrants living in America.
They're not being deported. This is not what's happened under Eisenhower in the 50s.
So Trump has not stopped.
I think there's a case to be made for stopping immigration completely, but Trump has not stopped immigration.
But if you have your way, Trump opens up the borders completely.
So you get tens of millions of people pouring in from the third world.
Anybody who can beg, borrow or float across is going to come into America.
They all want, almost all of them want, you got maybe 1% of them who are libertarians, so almost all of them want bigger government, they're dependent on the state for their income, and they have an IQ in the 80s.
Now, how is it that they're going to vote for you to become president if you want to dismantle the source of their income, which is the federal government?
Stefan, it is absolutely correct that that might make our job significantly More difficult.
I think the vast majority of the American people...
I think you made another semantic mistake and misquoted the word impossible.
Come on, you can do the math, right?
You understand. Right.
There are 330 million plus Americans.
You know, 10 million come in.
You know, I don't think there are...
No, come on. Oh, Adam, come on.
You've been in politics long enough to know that elections are won usually by a fairly thin margin.
And 330 million Americans, not all of them are voting, not all of them come out to vote and so on.
And of course you know as well that the people who are trying to protect Their wallets from immigrants are less motivated than the people who are dependent upon the taxpayers for their income.
And they're herded and they're put out often by their imams or their local leaders or their group leaders and so on.
I mean, I saw this when I was a kid.
A friend of mine was involved in a political campaign.
A bus rolled up and all of these immigrants piled out, didn't even know which way the voting booth was, barely spoke English, but the guy pointed at a picture and said, you choose this guy because he looks like us.
So the idea that this is just going to be a bit more of a challenge, if you want to become president, then you need to have people in the country who are willing to forego the federal government and who want smaller government.
And if you want open borders, you're going to get tens of millions of people in there.
It's going to be way more than enough to swing any election against smaller government.
So if you want smaller government and you want it achieved through a political process rather than some horrible hellscape, Mad Max collapse, then you're going to need to keep people in the country Okay, so here's how I do the math on that.
40% of eligible voters in the United States consistently never vote, even in U.S. presidential elections.
Of the remaining 60%, roughly half vote Republican, roughly half vote Democrat.
Among those, from my experience, I would guess, and again, this is the subjective element here, that about half of them are truly enthusiastic about voting.
They understand that the Republican or Democratic Party or candidate is going to be the savior of America, and if they don't go out and vote, then America is going to hell.
The other half, and I think this is conservative, I think it's more than half that don't feel that way, that vote reluctantly, that understand that it's kind of a bullshit shell game that's creating the excuse for government to exist.
I think that if we can build a coalition among that 30 percent of 15 and 15, Plus the 40% who never vote.
Hypothetically there, we're talking about 70%.
Now, of course, it's going to be much less than that.
We're not going to get all 40% or 100% of that 40% of non-voters to come out.
That's not realistic.
Are we going to get half of Republicans and half of Democrats to defect to the Libertarian Party?
Who knows?
But I think that eventually we will.
And I think that that bigger demographic strategy is, yeah, that's why I see 10 million or even tens of millions.
I don't think it would be tens in the next several years.
And again, you misrepresent my position by saying open borders as opposed to private property borders, which I know you appreciate the important distinction there.
Sorry, the government won't sell land along the border, so there's no such thing as private property borders at the moment.
If you don't want the government to control immigration right now, then there is going to be a continuation, if not an acceleration, of the two million a year pouring into America.
So this idea of private property borders is not going to occur, so you're functionally for open borders.
Well, no, I mean, like, I have a closed border on my property right here.
I put up a fence.
I defend it. Yes, but you don't pay taxes, and other people do, and they don't have closed borders around their wallets, sadly.
And I think you would say that they should.
They should engage in economics as much as you do in cryptocurrency.
Absolutely. And we should try and have a political solution to big state, which means not importing or having come into the country tens of millions of people who want bigger government and are utterly dependent on the state for their primary, if not sole, source of income.
Because those people are only going to want bigger and bigger government until the system crashes and then you have mass tribal warfare.
So... I think that gets to what I see at least as the core divergence here.
If I may, I think it's really kind of cool that this division has manifested so strongly in the debate about border policy or control of freedom of movement and immigration and welfare.
Because we agree on the welfare state.
We agree on the idea.
We agree on so many of these other things.
But you present a different narrative.
Of where things go than I do.
Narrative with a lot of hard data.
It's not just, you know, we're just choosing different stories in an adventure book.
Your future narrative.
How you see how this goes.
Your predictions. No, they're not just random predictions.
We know, based upon the demographics, that immigrants breathe more than locally, and they want bigger government, and they're far more dependent on the state.
These are just facts, and it's not going to change in the future.
I didn't say they were random.
I believe that the narrative, the predictions that you put forth are well thought out and based on statistics.
I did not say or imply random.
Narrative is not the same as facts.
You didn't choose that word accidentally.
I'm not accusing you of ill intent.
I just want to make sure that it's not a narrative.
Your predictions. Your predictions.
Your narrative of predictions.
I didn't use it with that, but you know, you're My facts and arguments are valid.
Okay, but I'm specifically referring to the narrative that you laid out of predictions of restricting immigration, of solidifying in the United States, of shifting people.
The fundamental thing that you described in your narrative is Well, that's already happening, but yeah.
Okay, so that's all I was referring to there.
That's your narrative.
That's great. My narrative is that we are going to have a critical mass of people who believe in localization and secession and want that localized autonomy, and that that's going to be a greater driver of how we achieve a free society rather than the paradigm shift Or, you know, any of those other potential narratives.
Adam, you need people to believe in smaller government, right?
For your goal to work.
No, we need people to believe in localized government.
Is that not smaller government?
Come on, man. If you want to talk about abolishing the federal government, do you not think that that might be somewhat in the vicinity of smaller government?
Oh, of course. Okay, so you need people to believe in smaller government and you support the...
Entry into the country of tens of millions of people who are desperately devoted to larger government.
And you cannot square that circle, my friend.
You cannot square that circle.
If you want smaller government, you need people to believe in smaller government.
That is not the current crop of immigrants and has not been since 1965.
This is data. You can't wish it away.
You can't magic it away. If you want a peaceful transition, which I'm sure you do because the alternative is unbelievably ghastly, you need people to accept smaller government.
And if you support people coming into the country who, A, want bigger government and B, are utterly dependent on the state for their income, You're not going to get what you want.
And it's incredibly dangerous.
This is why I want this conversation to go on so long.
And this is why I'm being really annoying and really finicky.
Because this is very, very important.
I want smaller government.
I'm desperate for smaller government.
Hell, I want no government in the long run.
Which means that I know, and I've done this whole presentation called The Death of Reasoned Man, people don't change their minds.
People, when presented with counter-information, generally harden their existing beliefs.
I'm sure people think one or both of us is doing exactly that in this conversation.
But people don't change their minds, and particularly people with their IQs in the 80s.
They don't have the capacity to reason, to debate, to confront themselves, to defer that kind of gratification.
So you are bringing in You are advocating bringing in or allowing in or importing or ending up with people in the country who specifically go against smaller government, who are going to be dependent upon the government, and who are going to have very little functional capacity to survive and flourish in the remnants of the free market.
That is incredibly dangerous.
You are bringing in or advocating importing or bringing in people who are incredibly hostile towards their own children, who beat them, who rape them, Not all, obviously, right?
But statistically, it is a very big problem.
Who cut off their clitorises, who do other ungodly things.
And this is not going to produce a smaller government.
It's in no way conceivably possible that importing tens of millions of people who want bigger government is going to get you a smaller government.
Like, I don't even know how it's possible to look at that fact and not at least pause in your analysis.
Yeah. Well, you just spent 10 minutes repeating yourself and refuting a point that I did not make.
You asked, do people have to believe in smaller government?
And I said no. Ultimately, they only have to believe in localization.
They only have to be able to see- Which is smaller government.
No, you don't know.
Come on, man. You want to run on eliminating the federal government and you say, well, people don't need to believe in smaller government.
I just want to eliminate the majority of it, but they don't have to believe in it.
Come on, man. Come on.
Because if someone wants to have their little communist socialist uncle, I would see that, okay, say 99% of the American people believe in communism and they're wrong, right?
Would you rather us be forced into one system where the 1% of us who believe in freedom live under communism, or where government is localized to the community?
You know this historically as well as I do.
If 99% of people believe in communism, they'll drag us out and shoot us in the back of the head, so we won't need to worry about that.
Fair enough, fair enough. I'm going to the extreme there to make a point.
Let me finish the...
The comparison here, though, because, no, I think this is the thing, is that you say that these people, you know, again, everything that you're saying could apply to certain groups within the United States.
You'll never get them off welfare.
But not to the same degree.
Not to the same. There are far fewer people native-born to America who want bigger government than people coming into America.
So it's a smaller problem, and we should choose a smaller problem rather than a bigger problem.
Exactly. Localized government as opposed to big centralized government.
And this is where I see that there is a huge opportunity to bring people to support a position of transitioning the actual mechanisms of government without challenging their philosophy.
I don't have to get you to believe in libertarianism to believe that California is better off not connected under a central government to Texas.
Let's take this important first step together.
And I think that's where we have the real potential to change, to bring about this movement, taking it from being a debate club to being a political force, that it needs to be in order to bring about any kind of real change.
You know what's going to happen, though.
I mean, in California, they get progressively socialist.
They destroy that. And then, like Locus, the socialists move to the next state and try and turn it into a socialist state.
And they just keep moving on and on.
Anyway, I think we've...
I think we've mined the topic significantly that people can at least know where you and I stand with regards to these positions.
And I really do appreciate, Adam, the opportunity to bat these ideas back and forth.
I think it's very productive and very powerful.
Certainly, I think you feel that I have betrayed my principles.
I think that you are betraying the freedoms you inherited.
But we will have to let the audience decide with regards to who made the stronger case.
I look forward to To seeing the comments below, and I really, really do appreciate the chance to have the conversation today.
Well, that's a great way to end it, Stefan, and I certainly share your sentiment of appreciation for this.
And I wouldn't go so far as to say, betrayed the principles, but the difference in our current narratives is that yours ends with, and therefore we need to violate the non-aggression principle.
Thusly, and mine says, you know, no, we can still Consistently adhere to the principles of non-aggression, of self-ownership.
And to me, that is my intrinsic motivator.
Well, I can't let that stand.
I can't let it stand that you're accusing me of violating the non-aggression principle when I'm aiming for smaller government.
The fact that you don't pay taxes and other people do means, I guess, that you can have a bit of a high horse about paying for the illegal immigration that you support but aren't willing to damn well pay for.
Oh, let's bring all these people in, but don't ask me to pay for them because I'm an idealist and I've got a magic thing called small government wand that's going to change everyone's mind.
I am not advocating for introduction in the non-aggression principle.
I'm aiming for an increase in the non-aggression principle.
I'm just driven by data rather than abstractions because I have And remain, as always, an empiricist.
But thanks again for your time. All right.
Well, thank you, Stefan. And if I may just get my final plug in here, I really do appreciate it.
And yeah, I see we could certainly keep going for a long time.
So this was inspired in many ways by your work to make it more accessible to a larger audience.
It's a very easy to understand, to digest a short 100 pages, free three-hour audiobook at thefreedomline.com, where you can also find kokushforpresident.com, get involved with the Libertarian Party.
At least, Stefan, you're not trying to tell me that politics is completely useless and a waste of time anymore.
And I really appreciate that I think we've made- Yeah, it kind of was still Trump came along, but he was interesting enough that it was All right. Will, let's see what the comments are.
