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July 14, 2019 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
24:35
Why Libertarianism Fails Part 3
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Good afternoon, everybody.
Hope you're doing well. It's Stefan Molyneux from Freedomain Radio, just back from Miami, where we had the first ever Freedomain Radio symposium, where about 20 people gathered to talk about the concepts or theories in the book that I have that's coming out shortly called Real-Time Relationships, the Philosophy of Love.
So thanks, everyone. And as you can see, I got a bit of a tan.
See if you can figure out where I wore my sunglasses.
My goal is pretty much to look like two eyes in a red wall, and I think I'm on my way there.
I read an article when I was in Miami that I thought would be a good basis for part three of why libertarianism doesn't work.
And I'm going to read it, or at least bits of it, which hopefully will help stimulate discussion about this issue.
Strict immigration law rattles Oklahoma businesses.
This is by Emily Bazar from USA Today.
Autumn has arrived in eastern Oklahoma and workers at the sprawling Greenleaf Nursery were prepping for deadly frosts.
They needed to ship plants, erect greenhouses and bunch trees together to protect them from the cold.
But in late October, about 40 employees disappeared from the 600-acre nursery about an hour's drive from Tulsa.
Some went to Texas, some went to Arkansas.
Nursery president Randy Davis says they just left.
Why did the workers, all immigrants, flee?
Those states don't have 1804, Davis says.
In a matter of weeks, 1804 has become part of the Sooner States lexicon.
It refers to House Bill 1804, the Oklahoma Taxpayer and Citizen Protection Act of 2007, arguably the nation's toughest state law targeting illegal immigrants.
Sorry, I'll get to that in a sec.
Dozens of state legislatures citing inaction by Congress have adopted measures aimed at curbing illegal immigration.
Oklahoma's new law, which took effect November 1, is particularly far-reaching and has begun sending ripples through the state's economy and its immigrant communities.
Besides highlighting the impact of illegal immigration on Oklahoma, the law has made the state a laboratory in the national debate over immigration.
The Oklahoma measure is broader than a controversial Arizona law that suspends or revokes business licenses of employers who knowingly hire illegal immigrants.
Among other things, 1804 makes it a felony to transport or shelter illegal immigrants.
It also denies illegal immigrants driver's licenses and public benefits such as rental assistance and fuel subsidies.
Many business owners are especially nervous about provisions of 1804 that kick in July 1st, when employers with government contracts must start checking new hires against a federal database to make sure they are legally eligible to work.
If the employers don't, they won't get the contracts.
I've already had customers who came in here and told me they fired employees because they didn't know if they were here illegally, says Tim Wagner, an owner of Cocina de Mino, a Mexican restaurant in Oklahoma City.
He predicts industries such as agriculture will face worker shortages.
Widespread reports of vanishing employees and schoolchildren suggest thousands of illegal immigrants have left Oklahoma for neighboring states or their native countries.
Cotton gins, hotels, home builders have lost workers.
Restaurants and grocery store owners complain of fewer customers.
Some businesses and lawmakers are warning that the economic effect will hit consumers hard.
Having a smaller pool of workers for certain jobs will cause delays and create competition among employers, leading them to raise wages and prices.
Republican State Shane Jett, who opposed 18-4, offers a more dire prediction.
Without changes, the law, quote, will be the single most destructive economic disaster since the Dust Bowl, he says.
So, nearly 5% of Oklahoma's 3.6 million residents are foreign-born.
About 75,000 were illegal immigrants.
And, anyway, so we can sort of understand this.
It says, 40%, a grocery store sales have fallen 40% since November the 1st, and so on.
So, it says, not all those leaving Oklahoma are in the USA illegally.
I've lost two housekeepers out of a staff of 12, says Joe Gaius, met general manager of the sleep-in and suites in Edmond.
They were here illegally, but they have family members who were not.
So, anyway, this, I think, is a very interesting development.
It's inevitable, given the sort of prior understanding or the prior belief systems that's floating around the United States around immigration.
But if we look at...
Let's just sort of play out the effects.
Let's say that this... This law is going to drive a large number, if not most, of the illegal immigrants out of Oklahoma.
Well, what is the result going to be?
So, a bunch of people who work under the table for low rates are going to flee.
Well, what's going to happen is that there are no good answers by using a gun.
There are no good answers from using a gun.
And we always have this fantasy that somehow, if we point the gun in the right way at the right people and pull the trigger at the right time, we can get magic utopia coming out of...
The state. But violence is always sick, evil, and destructive.
So let's look at what happens here.
And let's say that the law actually has the intended goal of driving illegal immigrants out of Oklahoma.
Let's see what happens to those who remain.
Stuff is not that hard to figure out.
You have to work really hard to miss it.
So a bunch of illegal immigrants will flee Oklahoma.
Let's say that the law is perfect and 90% of them leave or whatever.
Well, what's going to happen? Well, it's an agricultural state and the illegal immigrants were working in the agricultural industries.
Let's just focus on those for the moment.
So they leave, and what happens?
Well, there's a shortage of workers, so the price of workers is going to increase.
Not only is the price of workers going to increase, but because we've got this 1984 scenario where the enforcers of the law are the business owners who can have their licenses suspended, and the farmers who can have their licenses suspended for hiring illegal immigrants, These people are going to have higher labor costs and much higher enforcement costs.
They're going to have to vet everybody.
That takes time. It's going to be costly.
The consequences, i.e., possibly going to jail or die or losing your business.
So the workers' wages are going to go up enormously.
I would conservatively predict that they're going to double, and it's probably going to be much worse than that.
Since now you have all of the regulations that go with hiring, quote, legal workers, we're going to have to pay taxes, there's going to be that many more forms, it's not just going to be cash under the table.
So the labour costs are going to triple or quadruple for producing.
The agricultural products that Oklahoma is known for.
So what happens?
Well, all of these illegal immigrants are going to other states, neighboring states, and they're going to be working in agricultural concerns.
So while the price of Oklahoma labor goes up enormously, two, three, four times, the price of labor working on farms around the states bordering Oklahoma or other agricultural states nearby is going to go down enormously because you've got 7,000, sorry, 70,000 odd workers going elsewhere.
So, what happens then?
Well, Oklahoma's goods are going to become that much more expensive relative to, well, even, I mean, objectively, even if we don't count the workers going to depress the price, the wage price in other states, the Oklahoma's agricultural prices are going to be very high relative to everybody else's.
So what does this mean?
Well, it means that they can't sell their goods, right?
So what does this mean? Well, it means that the farmers are going to have to apply for additional subsidies, citing enormous problems with profitability.
They're going to lose a hell of a lot of money.
They're not going to be able to compete with the other states in terms of selling their goods.
In fact, they're driving business by raising their own prices and driving down the prices of other businesses in neighboring states.
They're going to be shooting themselves in the foot.
This is why the guy says the worst economic disaster since the Dust Bowl.
Well, so then what happens?
Well, the farmers then go to the government and say, I need subsidies, because otherwise I'm going to go out of business and there's going to be a huge catastrophe and so on.
So what happens then?
Well, the government starts providing subsidies.
And what does this do? Who's going to pay for these subsidies?
Not the government, because the government doesn't exist.
Who's going to pay for the subsidies?
It's everybody living in Oklahoma.
And this, of course, is going to cause even more inefficiencies and require more subsidies, so you have an ever-escalating increase in taxation for those who live in Oklahoma.
So you think that you are...
I mean, if your concern is, well, the illegal immigrants, you see, they consume government services and that raises my taxes and so on, driving them out is going to raise your taxes far more significantly and far more permanently than having let them stay.
What else is going to happen?
Well, the subsidies that the farmers receive are going to allow them to sell their products at cut rates.
And one of the ways that this occurs is that the products flow south into Mexico, which means that the Mexican farmers who are struggling to survive in the face of overwhelming U.S. subsidization of agricultural products are going to be unable to compete.
You can't compete with agricultural products that are subsidized and dumped on your home market, which means that the farmers from Mexico are going to head north, and they're going to try and get jobs there because they can't compete against the U.S. dumping market,
which means there's going to be even more of an influx of workers into the U.S. economy, which is going to further drive down the wages, which is going to make it even harder for Oklahoma to compete, because they're not going to go up to Oklahoma, right?
And so you end up in this ever-escalating situation where Oklahoma is going to end up with a far higher tax that's being raised in general.
Now, what else is going to happen?
Is this, in fact, going to drive illegal immigrants away from Oklahoma?
Well, no, of course not.
Because the more illegal immigrants that you drive away from Oklahoma, the greater the value of being able to stay in Oklahoma and get a job.
So, if they're paid $5 an hour, I have no idea, but if they're paid a couple of bucks an hour when there's no 1806 law, then let's say that the wage doubles to $12 an hour when the 1806 law is put into place.
Well, of course, that's going to drive a lot of people out, but what's going to happen is...
The less scrupulous, so to speak, or those illegal immigrants who are willing to live with the criminal risk, it then becomes highly profitable to fake your credentials.
Because the gap between the $6 that it was before and the $12 that it is now, which you're going to get in perpetuity if you can provide some false paperwork, Or pretend that you are a legal worker, what's going to happen is there's going to be a thriving trade that is going to be built up in terms of supplying documentation.
For false documentation, false papers.
Because it's going to be hugely more profitable.
If you have to pay $1,000 to get false documentation, you can earn that back in a couple of months based on the increased wages that are going to occur in Oklahoma.
So what you're doing, in the same way that prohibition is what drew organized crime to America in perpetuity, Then making it more profitable to present paperwork in Oklahoma is going to create a large underground economy of producing fake credentials.
And what is this going to do?
Well, what's going to happen is then when you get credentials handed to you by a worker, Then you are not actually going to be sure whether they are genuine credentials or they are false or fake credentials.
And you say, well, there's a database that can't be faked.
Well, of course it can. Everything can be faked.
Everything is susceptible to corruption.
The database is going to result from paperwork that is sent in.
So all that's going to happen is people are going to fake whatever they need to get that paperwork sent in to get their names entered into the database.
So here you're going to start having an ever-escalating cat-and-mouse game.
The more strict the requirements you put on proving your legality as a worker, the higher the wages are going to become from being able to do that, so the greater incentive you have, To fake your credentials.
Therefore, the more people are going to be drawn into the market of producing these fake credentials.
So what's going to happen is that the people in Oklahoma who are hiring these people are going to get increasing amounts of fear and control and they're going to have to double and triple check everything and then people are going to slip through because there may be bribery and then there's going to be ever escalating I'm not saying that there's anything wrong with faking this paperwork.
I mean, it's all nonsense anyway, but the people who are able to do that, to live with that kind of risk, tend to be a little bit more scary than those who aren't.
If they're willing to bypass all those laws, there may be other more legitimate So you're going to draw more and more dangerous illegal immigrants into your community and you're going to create a highly lucrative and illegal trade in producing false paperwork and all of the fear and the burden of that It's going to shift on to American citizens, right? Because the illegal immigrants, they're part of the Underground Railroad.
They can disappear into the night at any time.
And they have no licenses that you can take away, and they have no professional accreditations.
They're not dependent upon subsidies in that way.
So they can vanish.
They're highly mobile.
Whereas, you know, average Tidy Von Whitey farmer guy is really bound to his land.
He's sort of, quote, legal...
So he's going to have a lot more that the government can take away, and the government is going to increasingly place the burden of enforcing these ridiculous rules on that person.
And then that person is going to, the farmers and the business owners and so on, are going to face increasing pressure and increasing fear From the possibility of hiring and working with these, quote, illegals.
It's just going to blur the line.
Every time, as I said before, every time you make an adjustment, you adjust the entire ecosystem.
Every time you drive people out, you raise the wages, which makes it that much more lucrative for people to fake their paperwork and get in somehow.
So, what's going to end up happening if this process continues is that it's going to become increasingly unsustainable for Oklahomans to live in Oklahoma.
The tax base is going to continue to increase the risks of being found out that they've accepted fake paperwork and God help you trying to prove to the government that you thought the paperwork was genuine.
I mean, that... Who even wants to get into that situation?
Who even wants to cross the door into that threshold and say, well, the paperwork seemed genuine and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
I mean, your life is already a mess by the time you even get brought up on these kinds of charges.
The fear, the stress, the expense, the uncertainty.
So people are going to leave Oklahoma.
I mean, you think that you're driving other people out.
You genuinely, I mean, I bet you so many people say, yes, we are driving out these illegal immigrants.
But that's not the case.
What's going to happen is it's going to end up with a noose around your neck.
This is from Lord of the Flies.
A spear is a stick sharpened at both ends.
You put it into somebody else, it goes into your own heart.
All you're doing is making Oklahoma an unbearable place to live for you, not for...
The illegal immigrants. You're simply replacing a sort of, quote, legal and legitimate economy with a black market, deceptive, corrupting, underground economy, which is going to make your tax base increase your fear of prosecution from the government for hiring people who are, quote, illegal.
You're going to make that just that much worse.
You're going to draw more and more of the less and less desirable immigrants, illegal immigrants, into your community.
And it's going to have completely the opposite effect.
You're hoping to drive out people who are stealing from you through taxation, but it's going to end up with drawing people in and also ending up taking away more tax money from you because of the subsidization that is going to have to go to the farmers and so on.
And you're just completely crippling your economy.
This is going to continue to escalate over time.
So why am I talking about this situation when we are looking at the question of why libertarianism fails?
Well, libertarianism fails because people don't want to look in the mirror.
Libertarianism fails because people don't want to look in the mirror and say, I'm kind of an asshole.
I'm allowing my xenophobia, my fear to put me into the path of joining the villagers with their torches and pitchforks, driving out the foreign elements, the illegal elements, the predatory, parasitical elements.
So when you join that thuggish, xenophobic, racist crowd, it's kind of unpleasant to look in the mirror and say, I'm not driving out the illegal immigrants, I'm driving out my own freedom, my own security.
I am appealing to the state to support, enable, and enforce my own base xenophobic racism.
That's not a pretty thing for people to look at.
Everybody's a fan of free trade until there's a competitor who's actually affecting their livelihood, and then suddenly they become rabid protectionists in America first.
And this is not true of America particularly.
It's true all over the world.
And as I've talked about before, people pick on these illegal immigrants because they're helpless, right?
And we're helpless with regards to the state.
And once you understand that, then you become a rational anarchist and a sensible human being with regards to the corruptive nature of power.
But we're helpless with regards to the state.
And like that elder sibling who's beat on by the parents, we turn around and beat on the younger siblings who are the illegal immigrants.
Immigration, as I've said before, is a term that is meaningless.
What we really mean is moving.
Moving from Tijuana to Houston is exactly the same in terms of actual reality as moving from San Diego to San Francisco.
It's just moving. Immigration doesn't mean anything.
There's no objective lines in the earth, only in the maps within our minds.
So, the other thing that occurs as well, and you see this happening quite a lot in the United States, but it's also in other places where minorities are expanding fairly quickly, is that there's this fear, well, whites are going to be the minority in 2020 or whenever it is, right? And there's this general fear of the Hispanic horde or the whatever, the horde of those who are different from me.
And, of course, this only occurs because the average white American is terrified of being in a minority.
In other words, they're terrified that a Hispanic minority, sorry, that a Hispanic majority will do exactly to the whites what the whites have done to the minorities throughout history, right?
Our own corruption and desire to control others that we fear them gaining control of the same gun that we've used on them for so long.
It's the fear of retribution and of just retribution that we are afraid of these majorities.
And appealing to the power of the state to protect us from the supposed threats of each other is madness and simply ends up with us all in cages.
Appealing to the gun for hire to drive off your enemies Who aren't in fact even really your enemies, but rather your brothers and sisters.
Appealing to the hitman to come in and drive off your enemies simply ends up with the hitman controlling your life.
It doesn't end up driving off your enemies.
You're appealing to who is actually your enemy to drive off, who is actually your friend.
And it is that baseness, and it is that manipulation, it is that cowardice, it is that ignoble action that is really hard for people to look into the mirror.
And to see, who is the threat?
I mean, I did a video a while back you might want to check out called Muslims are not your enemy.
Who is the threat here?
I mean, really, who is the threat?
Is it the guy picking blueberries under the hot noonday sun, a job that you would never want, which reduces the price of fruit for you and for your children, thus decreasing your risk of cancer and things like that?
Is it that guy who is out there picking blueberries for a couple of bucks an hour?
Is that guy really...
Your enemy? Is that the person who is threatening your freedom?
Or is it perhaps the political class?
The rulers, the real rulers, with their B-52s and their nuclear weapons and their aircraft carriers and their 700 plus military bases all over the world.
Raping women in Okinawa.
Occupying Japan and extracting money through force from the Japanese government to pay for that occupation.
Occupying every single continent except for Antarctica.
Blowing up hundreds of thousands of highly volatile and aggressive Muslims, throwing you in jail if you fail to pay off their money, throwing you in jail if you happen to smoke some vegetation, throwing you in jail if they want your property and you resist, throwing you in jail for any one of the millions of petty regulations that are thrown up to block and impede the natural progress of the free markets.
Is it the guy picking your fruit who's really your enemy?
Or is it the people who will throw you in the rape rooms of American prisons if you so much as cross or question their commandments?
Who can invent laws to enslave you and have enslaved you?
Who run up massive national debts that are going to cripple the economic possibilities of your future and your children's future?
Who provoke conflicts around the world?
Who declare war? Who maim you?
Who force you to pay for unjust wars?
Is it the guy picking fruit or the guy picking your pocket?
With a gun to your temple, who you really have to worry about, but the more that they can get us to attack each other, the greater the noose, their noose, tightens around our neck, and the solution is not to attack illegal immigrants, but to recognize, understand, and reject the basic violence of a status system.
And until we can do that, look in the mirror and say, I have been unjustly turned against those who are not my enemies by those who really are my enemies.
And I crumbled and was susceptible and fell under the spell of this propaganda that my real enemies are not the men with guns at my temple, but the fruit pickers in the next county.
And I succumbed to that and I attacked those who did me no harm.
To appease those who were the gun to my temple until we can look in the mirror and accept that we have that capacity as everybody does and that we have found our own Jews and are attacking and harassing them And that the real enemies that we have are those with the guns to our temple,
not those picking fruit. Until we can look in the mirror and understand our own capacity for corruption and destruction, libertarianism will never work because the temptation of using the gun to achieve our ends will always be there, and we will always grab that gun in an extremity, and the gun always ends up at our temple, not in the faces of our supposed enemies.
Thank you for watching. I look forward to talking to you soon.
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