Welcome to Duality Check, the podcast where two brothers embark on a thrilling journey
through the realms of scientific inquiry, the enigmatic mysteries of the past, and the uncharted
territories of spirituality. Join us as we explore the wonders of our world and beyond, all while
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tapestry of existence, blending the dichotomies of knowledge and wonder. Get ready to question,
ponder, and delve into the dualities that shape our understanding of reality on Duality Check.
I'm Drew. And I'm Dean. Welcome back for another week. Yeah, today is episode eight. Getting
closer to that. To a decade of episodes. Yeah, a decade of episodes, that's right. We set
that goal for ourselves and we are getting close. Heck yeah. And we've got many more episodes
planned beyond that of course, but. Yeah, so today we're gonna be talking about libertarianism.
And before you tune out, if you're, this is not meant to be like a current events, politics.
Right. I don't really subscribe to the left or the right. Well, we'll talk about that as
part of this. But I'm not here to offend anyone or tell anyone they're wrong or stupid and
how I'm right and everyone's wrong We're just here to explore some ideas that maybe you haven't
heard before So hopefully it can open up your mind to a new way of thinking about this world
and how it works Yeah, so Dean's pretty studied on the libertarian view the libertarian Yeah
point of view and I have gotten some of the ideas in my head, mostly from you and some
of the other stuff I've listened to. But yeah, I'm more of the every man in this scenario
where I'm going to try to, you know, ask some questions and try to get to the root of, at
least try to put some scenarios out there and see what we can come up with to talk about.
So before we get started, we do have an email from a listener that we would like to read
off here. Yep. He doesn't say we can use his name, so this will be anonymous listener. Yeah,
if you're listening to this one or the last one that we mentioned your email, let us know
if you want to use your name and if you specifically don't. Obviously, we're going to be... Anyone
who doesn't say, feel free to use my name. Exquisitely, yeah. Then we won't. But if you say so, we
will. Anyway, he writes, hello, gentlemen. I have another subject. This is the same guy
that recommended the... That YouTube page. Yeah, that YouTube channel. What was that one called?
My Lunch Break. Yep. Yeah. Anyway, hello gentlemen, I have another subject I thought you might
be interested. David Paulides is an ex-police officer from New York who came across this
in 2001 while staying at Yosemite Park. A park ranger told him that, hundreds of people go
missing every year from the National Park system with no explanation as to who or why. In fact,
the government doesn't even keep a missing persons list, which is interesting to begin with. The
books that David has written are called Missing 411. Anyway, I just thought you guys might
be interested if it was a podcast topic and we are. We definitely are. I'm actually gonna
add that to the podcast topic list now. We've talked about this off the air before and we've
also consumed some YouTube videos on it as well. But yeah, no, it's definitely something we'd
like to talk about. Yeah, the Missing 411 stuff is really interesting. It's like... pretty
confusing and it's specifically cases that are picked out like and profiled in such a way
that like there is no real clean conventional solution or explanation right it's interesting
that it's a lot of cases that defy logic in a certain way. Yeah I'm curious if the government
doesn't keep missing person. persons records for specifically national parks? Cause they
gotta keep missing persons in general. It's the national park service that doesn't keep
missing persons cases. Okay. For people that get lost in their parks, gotcha. Right, so
you can't go to them and ask for- They assume you get aid by a bear. In fact, I think it
was David Paulides who approached them and asked them- Like, where's the list? And I believe
they sent him a quote for like- like a million or two dollars that would need for the information
request in order for them to like fund all the work and effort and labor to like assemble
a list. Which is pretty crazy. That's crazy. Yeah. But yeah, no, thanks for the email. We'll
definitely have to do some more research, but we'll definitely make that a topic in the future.
Appreciate you emailing us. Yeah, I'll have to read those books myself. I've just heard
people talk about them, but I haven't dug into the case files myself before. Cool. Anyway,
so yeah, on to the topic. Do you have something you wanted to start with this? Yeah, so let
me just give a super rough, non-specific intro. So when I say libertarianism, I'm sure there's
a number. These days, There's enough libertarians and enough libertarian content around that
people, a lot of people will have heard the word and may have like assumptions of what
I think I, what they think I mean when I say the word. And let me set the record straight
for what I do mean and what I don't mean. So there is a political party in the United States
called the Libertarian Party. That is not what I'm talking about. That is just a political
party. People who are... Part of it may or may not conform to the actual ideas of libertarianism.
Within the movement, we distinguish capital L, libertarian for the libertarian party, and
lowercase l, libertarian for just the libertarian ideas. So I'm here to talk about the ideas
and not the party or modern politics. Yeah, it's more kind of like a societal structure.
Yeah, so. Like the ideas. And the reason why it's important to distinguish from the party
is because up until recently, for most of the party's existence, it's been controlled by
people who don't actually adhere to the philosophy. Right. And they're basically just like Republicans
that are a little bit stricter, rather than actual ideological libertarians. I got you.
So they're there. So you can get a really bad rap for like what you think libertarianism
is, if. Well, especially if all you know. That's your measuring stick. Yeah, if all you know
about libertarianism is that it's a political party and then you see the people or you listen
to the people and you're like, this doesn't make any sense. Like, are they, they're not
any different than these other candidates or whatever. Right. So let's separate it from
politics for the time being for this podcast. Right. And so in the ideological space. Because
of that confusing distinction, you have a lot of libertarians who actually use different
terms for describing their beliefs. So you'll hear some people describe themselves as voluntarist.
What does that mean? Voluntarist meaning like they believe that all human interactions should
be done on a voluntary manner, no force or aggression. Corrosion. And then you'll hear people just
straight up call themselves anarchists. You'll hear people use the term. I've heard. Well,
also, if you go back in history and you're looking at like historical writers, it was actually
the term before libertarian was liberal. But that term got co-opted in the United States
kind of during the rise of progressivism. during that time, more and more progressives started
using, well, maybe, I'm not sure which way the chicken or the egg on this, but I don't know
if people who had previously called themselves liberal started adopting progressive ideas,
or if people who were progressive started calling themselves liberal. But at one point, like
what we now call classical liberal here in the United States is really more libertarian philosophy,
so. the OG classical liberals, John Locke, and a lot of the founding fathers. Gotcha. OK.
In other parts of the world, though, the term liberal still does kind of mean what that associated
with the class libertarian-ish ideals. But is there any countries that are like they practice,
like they have a full on libertarian society? There are none in today's world. They're, I
believe, the Javier Malay, the guy who just got elected president of Argentina. He's a
pretty hardcore libertarian. Interesting to keep an eye on. He just had a speech at the
World Economic Forum and he told all those rich people out there that they're trying to control
the world and they're evil basically. Really? It was a pretty epic speech. You should check
it out. Yeah, I'd love to hear that. I wonder what their reaction was. I don't know, but
he was introduced by Klaus Schwab. So if you don't know anything about the world economic
forms, it's like all these billionaires live across the world. And government leaders, they
get together in Davos. And they have this big conference where they try and plan out world
affairs and whatnot. Anyway, yeah. He was. He was introduced by Charles Schwab. And he got
introduced by Klaus Schwab, who's like the leader of the World Economic Forum and looks and sounds
like a Bond villain. He's got this thick German accent and a bald head like Dr. Evil and he
wears these weird, not quite military uniforms. He's such a caricature of himself. He looks
like the bad guy. Fascinating. Anyway. All right, so what are the ideals then? So the ideals,
I'll start again more general and then we can go more specific. But the general, what you'll
hear a lot of libertarians say is like libertarians believe in the non-aggression principle. And
so the non-aggression principle is a principle which states that, so the principle states
that It's unjustified to be a person who uses aggressive force. So. Which makes sense. Yeah.
It's pretty easy to understand that. So like, you throw the first punch, you're the aggressor,
you're done the wrong. Yeah. And that has to do, but. The problem with the non-aggression
principle is it's not like philosophically precise. Like it's just, it's kind of a shortcut. It's
kind of like an easy way to explain. Yeah, but it doesn't really. Get the idea across, but
it's not really specific or precise. Does it cover the intricacies of it? Yeah, well. Especially
when you're talking about non-physical stuff. Right. Well, like, so it leaves open, like,
how do you define aggression and aggression against what? Right? So, more specifically,
what libertarians actually believe is a, it's a theory about property rights. Which is essentially
what, like, it's its own way of distinguishing, like, who should be allocated what property
in what situation. So why do we need anything like this? Like who cares about property rights,
property, you know. It's a weird thing to obsess over if you haven't like thought it through
before. So why do we need any of this? And the reason why is because if we go back to the
economics episode where we find ourselves as human beings born into a world where we need
to make use of resources out in the world in order to sustain our lives. And none of us
as an island, as humans, we don't do very well if you know if I drop you on a desert island
or even in the middle of a forest full of resources but by yourself your chances of survival are
really low. So we need to work together. Yeah. And by working together and creating a division
of labor we can become wealthy, we can increase our standard of living. But in order to do
that we need to be able to get along and we have to have some sort of way of resolving
disputes. and disputes can arise in the world when two people want to make use of the same
resource. They disagree. So resources are scarce. They are conflictable materials, which means
my use of it excludes your use of it. Only one person can have a use for it, can actively
use it at the same time. And so if you want to avoid conflict, You have to come up with
some sort of set of rules that says, who gets to use that resource when the two people disagree?
Yeah, so there's like a tier. There's got to be some kind of way to figure out who needs
it at this time based on their needs kind of a thing. Well. Is that the idea? Well, but
not based on needs. Because if you do it, so there's different ways you can do it. OK? based
on needs could be a way of doing it. And that's sort of like the communism logo is like to
each based on their needs and from each based on their ability or whatever, right?
So communism would say if two people have a dispute over resource, then the state will
allocate who gets the right to use it. Okay, so what is the libertarian? The libertarian.
Um, tradition goes back from John Locke, um, whose insight was that basically whoever is
the first one to put it into use, there's only one fair way to solve the issue. So mankind
finds himself in the world, all of this resources around us and no one's used any of it. Then
whoever puts a thing to use. And And there's more details around that. Like you have to
somehow in border it or somehow make it apparent that it is yours. Yeah. You have to make an
active claim for it. You have to leave some sort of way for people to know that it is owned
and by who. Gotcha. That reminds me of when the gold rush happened and they would have
the, what are they called? The. the claimers basically, they would actually go out and they
find places that are likely to have gold or they're like, and they would stake a claim
and they would just go around and just stake claims and basically put a note and says, put
a little stake and then with a note saying, this is for this person. Right. And that's
an example of being able to do that. So, like I said, there's limitations on that in that,
You actually have to put it into some sort of use or in border it or something. You have
to have some sort of way of like actually claiming it and intend to enforce. You can't just say,
I claim all the world. The mountain, right. Right, because no one has a way of telling
that you did that. There's no way, there's no visible, there's no in bordering, there's no,
you have no practical way of enforcing it like. So basically you go put a wall around it, or
you put a fence around something. Put a border, put a label. Yeah, so the claiming was kind
of that way of doing it. It's like you would, you know, and a lot of times they would probably
do that. Like they would somehow make a, like a rope it off or something like that. Like
rope off a section and claim it. A lot of times like the entrances are to like a cave where
they know there could be mining, they would stake a claim and like rope it. Yeah, so you,
so that putting a libertarian answer is when there's a conflict. over a resource is who
had the first claim. But if the resource goes back in time, like say it's a piece of land
and that land is passed down through generations, how do you know neither of the two people disputing
over it will have quote unquote homesteaded it out of nature? The Lockean way of describing
is to like mix your labor with the thing. So you're somehow, it's becoming mixed with you,
your essence somehow, and that's how you're, quote unquote, homesteading that item or that
property. But the, if neither of you is the original claimant, then what? So the second
rule in libertarian property rights is that, whoever has a better, whoever has a contract,
whoever can basically prove back in line back to the original homesteader, or at least whoever
can go further back. The furthest back that they can prove some kind of claim. Yeah, so.
And also have the use of it, like making use of it. Mm-hmm. Gotcha. So rule one is original
appropriation or homesteading. Rule two is contracts, and contract includes things like gifting.
So if I have a piece of land, I can give it to you. That's still a contract, even though
there's no money being transferred. Yeah, there's a lot of things my brain goes to originally,
because obviously this, you know, this and many other countries were not originally. you know,
right, or not originally the under the homesteading of what the government claimed because you
know the land was stolen from the natives. Yeah, right. And so even under libertarian theory,
the theory is like as long as you can show title, you can show like a descendant. that you descend
from someone who had clear title, who had something stolen, then there is no theoretical statute
of limits. So, land is up for being taken back. To being taken back. If you can actually show
a chain of custody. You can show that it was your direct descendant who was in fact robbed
from. Which unfortunately was not in practice at the time. Yeah, and so because you know
over the centuries and whatnot, you know, like these injustices become like legend and the
people and the family trees and everything gets all murky and so it becomes difficult to actually
show that you in fact have that claim. Which in fact because you know the But in theory,
there's nothing like in libertarian theory, there's nothing that says that you couldn't
like. You still got to have that claim. If you can show like, say you're Native American,
you can show that your tribe occupied the space of Manhattan and you can show the generations
down and how you descend from it. In theory, you could claim some of that land, but you
would have to be able to show that it was your direct descendants.
and that they specifically had title over a particular piece of land, right? So that's
really tough to do. Yeah, it was a show. I was watching Yellowstone. I don't know if you heard
of it. And there was, it's about the Native American tribes in Yellowstone, conflicting
with the contemporary farmers and ranchers and stuff. And there was just this clip on the
reservation of... She's a lawyer, but she's talking about how she wishes she could go back.
If she was able to go back, she would sell everything that the tribe had at the time and go to New
York and buy and pay for the best lawyers that they could find and basically do exactly what
we're talking about. Claim, prove that this is there, and basically have kept it from then.
Obviously, it's just... That's what they would, you know, looking back. But basically, especially
at the time, you know, like we're talking about at the time when the government, like the US
hadn't even been formed yet when a lot of this started. Right. But obviously once we started
moving in. Honestly, all land has a history of theft. Of course. I mean, you look back
in history and there was. There's indigenous tribes all over. Governments conquering people,
kicking people off their land, stealing land. Kings and wars back and forth. Any land ultimately
runs back into a dispute. So in the case of land, you're almost never going to be able
to show original homesteading. But yeah, that's not exactly the requirement. It's between the
two people who are disputing, who can show the better title, who can show the better original
source. And that's also granting that we form a libertarian society that takes this into
account. Yeah. Because our society now is not going to take that into account. And then the
third rule is tort, basically. So if I do something tort. Tort is a word in the law that essentially
means someone injuring or hurting. someone else's person or property. So it's like an affront.
Like it doesn't necessarily have to be criminal. It could be accidental, you know? But you know,
if. my brakes go out and it causes me to run over your lawn because I can't stop in time
and I knock down a fence on your property. I have wronged you even though I haven't like
there's no criminal intent there but I still did something. There's still damage. And so
in that case in order to make the person whole. you know, a portion of your resources is now
allocated to them to make it justified. Make amends, yeah. Yeah, to make amends. So yeah,
essentially, that's from those three basic property rules, you can basically build up libertarianism.
Build up the non-aggression principle. Yeah. And so the non-aggression principle just is
just a shorthand explanation, but it still assumes that you are assuming those property rights
exist. Right. Okay. And most Westernized societies, most societies to the extent that they're,
you know, have accumulated some sort of success and wealth, have some sort of degree of property
rights, but the problem is, is that. There's always this government looming overhead that
claims the right to seize that property for you. At any time, yeah. At any time. And eminent
domain, or whether it be that you don't pay your property taxes. Taxation itself. Right.
So. Yeah, taxation is the taking of resources in order to pay for the land. Right. So those
are the three rules for distinguishing who has title to something, but what can you have a
title over? Right, so your first, it all starts with like your own personal body, right? And
it's assumed in libertarianism that everyone has homesteaded or has a property right in
their own body. Mm-hmm. It's pretty given. Yeah. Inalienable right. That's slavery. Yeah. Um,
and then anything that you homestead and then anything that you contract for, those all become.
extensions of your homestead within of you basically yeah of your ownership and then those things
are all then protected by the libertarian law system which would be that no aggression essentially
so if anyone steps on your rights then you have the right to be made whole and what would be
the um So it'd be like arbitration to determine what is, what's going to be made whole. Like
how would you be, or is it just you say, I need you to give me this, like between the two people,
if you can agree between the two people, obviously, then. Yeah, so you're essentially asking like,
what would a libertarian society look like? Well, it basically, if like how to just, you
know, to actually, other than just the two people saying, hey, this is what I need to be make
whole. And they, and as long as they agree to pay, to give you that to make you whole. But
as soon as they start to disagree on what it is. As soon as they start to disagree, then
they have to have some sort of arbitration. Which happens all the time. Right. Yeah. So
the two people would elect someone to represent themselves. That they both agree on. Or they
could represent themselves. But then. And it's basically the same thing. And then. So let's
say you hire quote unquote an attorney or whatever. So you can bring someone in to represent you
who's more versed in like legal matters. And then those two attorneys would sit down and
talk and they would, well, they could just agree. But they'll probably elect a third arbitrator,
like a judge. and or even a judge system. So you could still have similar court systems
to what we have today. Yeah, but it would be privately funded. They just wouldn't necessarily
be state run. And we haven't built up to anything as to why this necessarily disagrees with the
state other than a couple things like taxation and stuff. But we'll build to that. But we're
actually getting pretty close to a break here. So when we come back, I actually have a little
bit of a snippet of something that I want to read. Cool. Which will set the tone for where
we're going to go from there. And then we can think out more and more of what is the implications
of this type of reasoning. Yeah, I want to know what a society might look like. Yeah. That's
where I want to go. That's where a lot of my questions kind of point. Yeah. OK. And mostly
just kind of whether it's already spelled out. And you can cue it up if you want. talking.
Yeah, whether it's spelled out in libertarian ideals or not, it could be fun to just cut
a spitball with you and you know, figure out what it might look like for actual libertarian
society. Thought exercise. Cool. We'll be back.
And we're back. Be-d Hello, we are back. So instead of the boys needing attention this
time, I got to call for work while we're on break. First time for you, though. Yeah. First
time you needed to step away from it. I'm on call for work, like, every other week. And
so far, this is the first time I've gotten a work call while we're recording. First time.
So maybe the last time. Luckily, it happened during the break. We'll see you wherever. Every
eight episodes, you'll get a call. Yeah. I'll call it that. And then there's going to be
that one episode where it's like an emergency call right while we're in the middle of recording.
And I'm like, sorry, I have to leave. And we'll have to release a half length episode or record
it in two parts or something. Right. Maybe do a two-parter for that or something. So heads
up, something like that is possible to happen. Yeah, we both do work full time. My current
job does not require me to leave anywhere at this time, but. Yeah. I service point of sale
systems for restaurants. So when they take your order and they put it in the computer, my company
runs and installs and services those computers. So yeah, after hours, especially restaurants
and people trying to close. Our offices, so if they start running into major issues during
their dinner hour, late hours, It's an emergency for them. They've got to be able to call us.
And that's me that answers the phone every other week. Yep. Anyway. So yeah. We are back. And
we are drinking. So we've got a variety pack this week. We've got Stone Delicious Variety
Pack. So we're on the Citrus IPA. We had the Double IPA before, right? Yeah, so this is
the Delicious series. So it's Delicious IPA. delicious citrus IPA and delicious double IPA.
And that, what was the double? The double is 9.4% dad. God damn. And then this citrus is
7.7%. Dad, we're still gonna hold you to the, maybe it'll have to be like during the, maybe
like a daytime or a weekend episode if we ever do like a weekend recording or something. See
if dad will bring us some beers and come over and chat with us for a bit. Yeah, that'd be
a good one. While we're recording. Mm-hmm. Be fun. All right, so what I want to do now is
read a little piece here. So this is from, it's hard to call it a book, because it's only 20
pages. Maybe a manifesto, maybe a pamphlet. I don't know what you would call something
this short. An essay? An essay. Yeah, there you go. So this is by Murray Rothbard, who
is kind of the libertarian godfather. He was a student of Mises back on the economics episode.
We talked about him a little bit. Yeah, about Mises. And we actually read from some of Rothbard's
work. So Rothbard was not just an economist. He was also a historian. He knew he was also
a libertarian theorist. So he would write about like legal theory. He actually came up with
this idea called the title transfer theory of contracts. So if you ever heard people talk
about what contracts are, you've probably heard them described as a binding agreement. Have
you heard that language before? Yeah, I've heard that. That's a very common way to describe
them. Right. A binding contract.
breaks apart that understanding and he proposes a different theory for what a contract is,
which is just a title transfer. So it's less binding? So if we make a contract for me to
play music for Wyatt's birthday,
what that is a title transfer agreement. So you are agreeing to transfer $100 to me on
the contingency that I perform the agreed upon action, which is playing music. So if I come
and I play that music, And you've fulfilled your part in the contract. Then I've fulfilled
my obligation. And at that moment, whether or not you write me the check right then, but
at that moment, $100 of yours becomes mine. Right, in theory. It's just in your possession
still. Right. And so what makes that important is if you then don't pay me, I have a claim
of theft because that $100 of yours turned over to me at the moment I fulfilled the contract.
So me still having it is considered theft at that point. Right. Gotcha. Versus me just not
paying you because I didn't like the music that you played. Right, right. If I flake on the
birthday party and I don't show up, well, then I didn't perform the action that triggered
the transfer of money. So unless we have a clause in our contract saying that if I don't perform,
then I owe you a certain amount of damages. Right. Yeah, I was going to say, would there
be any damages considered? Then the default would be not, most likely. It's all based upon
the agreements you make. Right. But anyway. So that was Murray Rothbard that authored that?
That's Murray Rothbard. Yeah, Title Transfer Theory of Contracts. OK. Anyway, so this is
from an essay called Anatomy of the State. And it's pretty short. I'm not sure if we're going
to read it all, but we're going to read a little chunk of it at least. And spark some conversation.
Yeah. So what the state is not. The state is almost universally considered an institution
of social service. Some theorists venerate the state as the apotheosis of society. Others
regard it as an amiable, though often inefficient organization for achieving social ends. But
almost all regard it as a necessary means for achieving the goals of mankind. A means to
be ranged against the private sector. and often winning in this competition of resources. Excuse
me. With the rise of democracy, the identification of the state with society has been redoubled
until it is common to hear sentiments expressed, which violate virtually every tenet of reason
and common sense, such as we are the government. the useful collective term we has enabled an
ideological camouflage to be thrown over the reality of political life. If we are the government,
then anything a government does to an individual is not only just an untyrannical but also voluntary
on the part of the individual concerned. If the government has incurred a huge public debt,
which must be paid by taxing one group The reality of burden is obscured by saying that we owe
it to ourselves. If the government conscripts a man into the military or throws him into
jail for dissident opinion, then he is doing it to himself, and therefore nothing untoward
has occurred. Under this reasoning, any Jews murdered under the Nazi government were not
murdered. Instead, they must have committed suicide. since they were the government, which
was democratically chosen, and therefore, anything the government did to them was voluntary on
their part. One would not think it necessary to belabor this point, and yet the overwhelming
bulk of the people hold this fallacy to a greater or lesser degree. That's actually fascinating.
I mean, so, what it said in the beginning says, when it started with the we are the government
thing. So it's basically this idea that collectively as the United States, for example, we...
We believe that the government is made of the people, is made of the people by the people,
for the people, right? You hear that, right? Yeah, you hear that. So that means that ideologically,
or I guess. If it is made of you, by you, for you, then anything it does to you is, in a
way, you doing it to yourself. And that's kind of the point he's making, but like, tell that
to citizens of... democratically elected governments all over the world who do tyrannical things.
Yeah. Just because it's the democracy, that doesn't necessarily mean that you are the government.
That you're the one doing the thing, specifically in the case of something that happens to you,
like you're not doing something to yourself when the government has instituted some rule
that is going to force you to do or to... I guess, yeah, to do something, like being conscripted
to the military. And part of his point is that this is more of a modern confusion because
back in the day under monarchies, it was, it wasn't, it was a separation. It wasn't so easy
to make that confusion, right? Because like, no, that's not, I'm not the government, the
king and his people that he determines they're the government. So if you have an issue, like
there's no way of construing it so that you're doing it to yourself. Right. It makes it, it
can make it more confusing for people. It's a word play. So it's a way of like a word play
in order to confuse the people. Yeah, so sloppy use of language and sloppy use of ideas just
because you have some sort of participatory outlet within your government doesn't make
that government you and doesn't make the things that the government does to you just you doing
it to yourself. Right. Okay. We must therefore emphasize that we are not the government. The
government is not us. The government does not in any accurate sense represent the majority
of the people. But even if it did, even if 70% of the people decided to murder the remaining
30%, this would still be murder and would not be voluntary suicide on the part of the slaughtered
minority. Right. Yeah. I mean, that's just so obvious. That's like a reoccurring thing in
libertarian writing. Libertarian theorists have a way of using language and describing situations
in such a way that it makes it seem like such common sense, how could anyone think otherwise?
Right. That's good, though, because it, and you got to remember, like, the founding of
our country was founded on a lot of these ideas, too, right? Right. This was us rebelling against
monarchy and putting in place an experiment of self-government, right? Yeah. But just because,
you know, it was the most quote-unquote free society at the time does not necessarily mean
that it was without. It still is. Well, even then, though, it still... Or that it even was
then, right? Because even then, there was still... there was still powerful people with lots of
money who had things to gain from distorting things in their favor. And it started then
because you can't assume that things just started in the 20th century. Well, it wasn't every
single person in the United States who signed on. Exactly. It was a bunch of representatives
who signed off on behalf of people. So. Exactly. Yeah. No organicist metaphor, no irrelevant
bromide that we are all part of one another must be permitted to obscure this basic fact.
If then the state is not us, if it is not quote unquote the human family getting together to
decide mutual problems, if it is not a lodge meeting or a country club, what is it? Briefly,
The state is that organization in society which attempts to maintain a monopoly on the use
of force and violence in a given territorial area. In particular, it is the only organization
in society that obtains its revenue not by voluntary contribution or payment for services rendered,
but by coercion.
production of goods and services, and by the peaceful voluntary sale of these goods and
services to others, the state obtains its revenue by the use of compulsion, that is by the use
and the threat of the jailhouse and the bayonet. Having used force and violence to obtain its
revenue, the state generally goes on to regulate and dictate the other actions of its individual
subjects. One would think that simple observation of all states through history over the globe
would be proof enough of this assertion, but the miasma of myth has lain so long over the
state actively that elaboration is necessary. Yeah, absolutely. So yeah, that's the classic
libertarian definition for the state. The state is that organization. in society which attempts
to maintain a monopoly on the use of force and violence in a given territorial area. Yeah,
it's colored different ways too, right? Like, obviously people know that if you refuse to
pay your taxes, the government has the right, quote unquote, I'm using air quotes, people
can't see me, but I'm using air quotes, the right to put you in jail. Right. So if you
don't pay, you'll probably start off with a letter from the IRS. And it might be vaguely
threatening, and you'll be like, oh crap. And if you continue to not pay, someone will show
up at your door and try to arrest you, audit you, ultimately throw you in prison if you
still refuse to pay. And then if you refuse to go with them to jail, then they use force.
They ultimately can use violence and force to either kill you or force you into jail. And
they claim that right over you. At birth. If there's anyone here, or if there's any person
who doesn't pay their taxes and ends up raided or whatever. And hurt, like no one is going
to be surprised by that fact. Like we all understand that that's the- It's a reality. That's the
deal. Like you better pay your taxes. Yeah. This is a, it's a perfect timing for this episode
too. Yeah.
Everybody's just now getting their W-2s. Ha ha ha. All right, so what the state is. Man
is born naked into the world and needing to use his mind to learn how to take resources
given him by nature and to transform them, for example, by investment in capital into shapes
and forms and places where the resources can be used for the satisfaction of his wants and
the advancement of his standard of living. The only way by which man can do this is by the
use of his mind and energy to transform resources quote unquote production, and to exchange these
products for products created by others. Man has found that through the process of voluntary
mutual exchange, the productivity and hence the living standards of all participants in
exchange may increase enormously. The only natural course for man to survive and to attain wealth,
therefore, is by using his mind and energy to engage in the production and exchange process.
He does this first by finding natural resources, then by transforming them, by mixing his labor
with them, as Locke puts it, to make them his individual property, then by exchanging this
property for the similarly attained property of others.
by the requirements of man's nature, therefore, is the path of property rights. That's what
we were talking about earlier, yeah. Gotcha. That actually helped me solidify the ideas
we were talking about with Locke and how he talked about mixing his labor. How you were
talking about how mixing, so the work you put in to manufacture or produce whatever said
good is, that's what the mixing of labor is. That therefore, puts you in connection with
that and it is yours because you've mixed your blood, sweat, and tears with the thing. Right.
In a quote unquote. So yeah, the social path, this property rights, free market, and gift
or exchange of such rights. Through this path, men have learned how to avoid the quote unquote
jungle methods of fighting over scarce resources so that A, can only acquire them at the expense
of B. and instead to multiply those resources enormously in peaceful and harmonious production
and exchange. So we have two options. We as humans, we can choose to go and rob every one
of their resources, but that's going to turn everyone against us. And eventually, that's
the whole live by the sword, die by the sword type mentality. Or you're like, OK, I'm going
to. get whatever I can, produce whatever value, and trade. And then not only are you benefited
by trading, but so is the other person. And that is, like, there's those two fundamentally
different approaches to life. One peaceful, one harmonious, or one's peaceful and harmonious,
and one is violent and aggressive. And one makes everyone wealthier, and one only makes one
the strong wealthy at the expense of the weak. Right. And then, yeah, like you're saying,
like, you can go around and do that, right? But then what are you going to do with it?
You don't know how to produce it. You don't know how to do it. So then what are you going
to do? It's only a temporary, temporary fix. But at the same time, you're going to want
to go around and sell it. But people are going to be like, well, you're those bandits that
raided us over there. I'm not going to trust you. You know? Yeah. The great German sociologist
Franz Oppenheimer pointed out that there are two mutually exclusive ways of acquiring wealth.
One, the above way of production and exchange, he called the economic means. The other way
is simpler in that it does not require productivity. It is the way of seizure of another's goods
or services by the use of force and violence. This is the method of one-sided confiscation,
of theft of the property of others. This is the method which Oppenheimer termed the political
means. to wealth. It should be clear that the peaceful use of reason and energy in production
is the quote-unquote natural path for man. This means that for his survival and prosperity
on earth, it should be equally clear that the coercive, exploitative means is contrary to
natural law. It is parasitic, for instead of adding to production, it subtracts from it.
the political means siphons production off to a parasitic and destructive individual or group.
And this siphoning not only subtracts from the number of the number producing, but also lowers
the producer's incentive to produce beyond his own subsistence. In the long run, the robber
destroyed his own subsistence by dwindling or eliminating the source of his own supply. But
not only that, even in the short run, The producer is acting contrary to his own true nature as
a man. Yeah, so if you put that in like a governmental term, like if you think of a government as
the political means, right? Which is pretty obvious the way that they labeled it. It's
obvious that a lot of times you hear these small businesses and they can't... survive because
they're still being taxed. So like if there's a recession, like say like the pandemic, the
recent pandemic and all, and the restrictions are coming down from the government as well.
Like there's all these government restrictions saying, you can't do this anymore. You have
to close your business. You have to do this. And then they're not gaining any revenue, but
they're at the same time, they're still having to pay taxes and they're still having to pay
like the, and that's the robber. That's them. like taking without producing anything or adding
to the production, right? Right. So it's killing all of these small businesses that are in local
towns that are trying to like build up the economy locally. Right. So by, by seizing or like,
let's make it smaller. Like, you know, like three people land on a desert Island and are
all trying to survive together, you know, you decide to go fishing. I decide to. to gather
berries in the woods. And John decides to like go hunting, but halfway through he's like,
ah, this is really hard. I know what I'll do. I'll go back to camp and I'll steal the fish
from Drew and the berries from Dean, right? So he does that and it gets violent to do that.
And not only is there not any meat for all of us, we all could have been better off if he
had just got meat and we traded it, then all three of us would have benefited. But on top
of that, now we're injured. Now you have less, I have less, he has less. All our productions
went down. And we're less incentivized to keep producing because we know he's just gonna come
steal it again. Right, yeah, that's a great example. So we're now in a position to answer
more fully the question, what is the state? The state, in the words of Oppenheimer, is
the organization of political means. It is... the systemization of the predatory process
over a given territory. For crime at best is sporadic and uncertain. The parasitism is ephemeral,
and the coercive parasitic lifeline may be cut off at any time by the resistance of the victims.
The state provides legal, orderly, systemic channel for the predation of private property.
It renders certain, secure, and relatively peaceful, quote unquote, the lifeline of parasitic caste
in society. Since production must always proceed predation, the free market is anterior to the
state. The state has never been created by a social contract. It has always been born in
conquest and exploitation. The classic paradigm was a conquering tribe, pausing in its time-honored
method of looting and murdering. a conquered tribe to realize that the time span of plunder
would be longer and more secure, and the situation more pleasant if the conquered tribe were allowed
to live and produce, with the conquerors settling among them as rulers, exacting a steady annual
tribute. One method of the birth of the state may be illustrated as follows. In the hills
of southern Ruritania, bandit group manages to obtain physical control over the territory,
and finally the bandit chieftain proclaims himself king of the sovereign and independent government
of South Rertania. And if he and his men have the force to maintain this rule for a while,
lo and behold a new state has joined the family of nations, and the former bandit leaders have
been transformed into the lawful nobility of the realm. So this is like providing essentially
a theory for like what, how could the first state have formed? Right. So if originally
back in the day, you have these like different tribes, some of these tribes are peaceful with
each other and they trade, some of them are more violent and they go on like raids and
they raid their neighboring tribes. Yeah, this makes me think of Greece. All right, so back
in the day, they'll go raid. They'll kill everyone in the city, take all their resources, and
take the loot back home. And they'll live all fat and happy off that until they run out of
the resources. But the thing is, is they just killed the goose that laid the golden eggs
by raiding and murdering and pillaging. So oh, someone has the idea. All right, hear me out.
Instead of killing everyone, let's just go in, show them who's boss, put the fear of God in
them. Yeah. and set our, like we'll live amongst them, we'll keep our weapons aimed at them,
and we'll require them to keep paying us over time. This way they can keep producing, and
this way we can keep getting resources, but without having to constantly go risk our lives
in these raids. And not only that, but risk losing the production. Right. Because once
they lose all the stuff that they just got, who's gonna produce that for them now? Right.
Because they're not. Gonna do it. So it's a more efficient way of being a thief or a parasite.
Instead of going and conquering and killing, you go and you conquer, you don't kill, you
tax instead. You set yourself up as the nobility, the rulers. And you put fear into them so that
they comply. Right. Which I think is a pretty fascinating, like, fascinating way to think
about that. What is the state and how did it come to be? How did it come to be in the first
place? Yeah. And how did it continue? Right. Because you got to see other parts of the world
were like, hmm, that's an interesting way of doing that. I'm just going to see what I can
do with that in my neck of the woods. Yeah, like you imagine once they conquer that one
city, They're continuing to build up resources by leeching off of the population. And eventually,
they save up enough to go on the new raid. And they go on the new raid, and they try and conquer
that next place. And now they've got two places paying them. And they're constantly trying
to grow. And then ultimately, they've conquered enough territory to where the next place they
try and conquer is already conquered by someone else. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's where warfare
sets in. Right. Right. Because there's fundamentally something different from going somewhere and
raiding it for resources, pillaging it, versus going there and fighting against the other
people who control that area. Right? Yeah. And in setting up that, it's like taking over the
territories, right? You take over that first group. And then you realize that first group
doesn't produce a lot of these resources that you're obtaining. So you realize, oh, they're
trading with this other group over here. So if we just go conquer them, we don't have to
worry about this middleman of them like doing all the trading, we can just get that from
the direct directly. And then you realize that group is obtaining some of their resources
from another group. And then you continue, you're like following the thread back to the origin,
to the source, right? So maybe the things that are the most valuable or the things that you
realize you just can't get on a regular basis without the fact that they're gonna trade.
Like you were saying, like we were talking about before, like they're gonna be less likely to
do those trades knowing that they're just gonna get it taken, right? So then they realize that,
oh, it's not being produced here, it's being traded for with the resources that we're taking.
So if we're taking all these resources, they're no longer allowed to, they're no longer able
to trade. So now we just gotta go take over that state instead of having. to worry about
them trading and doing all that. Or like allowing them. But even if they don't take over that
state, they could still require their subjects to go do the trade and then demand a tax on
the profits of that, right? But you're still losing out, right? Right. They could still
make a little bit more by going to the source. Yeah. So that's probably what may have led
them to go state to state to state, if you were to think about it like that. But yeah. That's
probably. pretty accurate as far as war, because you can't consider something war if you're
the most powerful and you're going and taking over people who are peaceful. That's not war.
That's... Yeah, well, there's something fundamentally different between going against another government
armed and organized with military might versus like just a peaceful population that isn't
organized with the military and you're just plundering their resources, right? Exactly.
So that might be the origins of war then. Yeah. For me, I would propose that as a sort of definition
of war, which is like states fighting each other. Or would it be states under the nation fighting?
Well, a state, so here in America, we get confused with the term state because we have states
and nations. I'm thinking of like Greece is what I'm thinking of. Right. But city states,
nation states, they're all states. A state is a thing that claims the monopoly of violence
on that area. They're the ones that get to use the violent force. So you're saying even the
state is, OK, OK. So if it's just a group in an area, they're not necessarily a state until
they have the monopoly on violence and force. I got you, based on the definition set out
here. Right. OK. So how the state preserves itself. Once a state has been established,
the problem of the ruling group or caste is how to maintain their rule. While force is
their modus operandi, their basic and long-term problem is ideological. For in order to continue
an office, any government, not simply a democratic government, must have the support of the majority
of its subjects. The support, it must be noted, need not be active enthusiasm. It may well
be passive resignation as if to an inevitable law of nature, but support in the sense of
acceptance of some sort it must be. Else the minority of state rulers would eventually be
outweighed by the active resistance of the majority of the public. Right. Since... Yeah, I was
just gonna say, yeah, so it's basically whether it's resentful, you know... acknowledgement
of it or if it's you know enthusiastic. Yeah like that maxim death and taxes nothing in
life is inevitable except for death and taxes. Right. That's that like that's a exasperated
yeah exactly like it I'm sorry it's just there's nothing you can do about it. Yeah and if there's
nothing you can do about it if someone is going to tax you someone is going to rule you all
right. We agree. At least there's a constitution. You know? Like, at least it's the government
of the people. Yeah, except the Constitution is subject to change. So you don't have to
be an enthusiastic supporter. You just need to be willing to not fight against it. Yeah.
OK. Sorry, continue. So since the predation must be supported out of the surplus of production,
because it's Right, so like I think that's right, right because you got to sustain the population
and then there's excess and that's what you can be taken You need the population to be
able to survive on its own. Yeah It needs to be able to survive on its own in enough Wealth
that you can pull off of it While continuing it while they are able to continue right? You
can't take too much that especially you know I guess contemporary, not really contemporary,
but once you start taking too much, that's when you get revolts, that's when you get rebel
groups that start to come up. And they're like, all right, dude, we just can't survive anymore,
we gotta do something. That's when those people, that's what he's saying here, right? That's
when those people who are just kinda resigned that this is inevitable. They start to rise
up a bit. They start to be like, you know what? I don't care. I can't freaking feed my kids.
I'm going to do something about it. If we can't survive, we got to do something. You need people
to be at least passively resigned, if not supporting of it. And so if you overbear on them with
the taxes and the predation, then you cause more people to stop being passive about it.
Yeah. OK. So yeah, since the predation must be supported out of the surplus of production,
it is necessarily true. that the class constituting the state, the full-time bureaucracy and nobility
must be a rather small minority in the land. Although it may, of course, purchase allies
among important groups of the population. Therefore, the chief task of the rulers is always to secure
the active or resigned acceptance of the majority of the citizens. Man. It's pretty well spelled
out. Yeah. When was this published? Can you? Let me see. I don't want to derail this too
much, but I'm curious. 1974. Wow. OK. So not as long ago as I thought it would be. No. Of
course, one method of securing support is through the creation of vested economic interests.
Therefore, the king alone cannot rule. He must have a sizable group of followers who enjoy
the prerequisites of rule. For example, the members of the state apparatus such as the
full-time bureaucracy or the established nobility. But this still secures only a minority of eager
supporters.
and other grants of privilege still does not obtain the consent of the majority. For this
essential acceptance, the majority must be persuaded by ideology that the government is good, wise,
and at least inevitable, and certainly better than other conceivable alternatives." Right,
so that kind of brings in propaganda. Right. The use of propaganda. to create a story of
why we are better than what is the potential alternative. So why is it good? Why is it inevitable?
Why is it at least better than what it would be otherwise? Yeah, okay. Promoting this ideology
among the people is the vital social task of the intellectuals. For the masses of men do
not create their own ideas or indeed, think through these ideas independently. They follow
passively the ideas adopted and disseminated by the body of intellectuals. Intellectuals
are therefore the opinion molders in society. And since it is precisely a molding of opinion
that the state most desperately needs, the basis for an age old alliance between the state and
the intellectuals becomes clear. Wow, does this not? bring us back to episode one, right? Yeah,
yeah. Does it not bring us back to the idea that why government sees it so useful to sway
what it is that intellectuals otherwise, colleges and professors and the... education system
is disseminating down to the population. Right. As a whole. Right. So. And why there are all
of these discrepancies. That's why universities, they're all public funded, and that's why all
the funding apparatus for science comes through the government, and it makes people identify
the government with science, with progress, with the very like study and and understanding
of nature that makes us so productive with technology. And so you're saying- And ideas, new ideas,
everything. And it makes this avenue of progress mixed with this avenue of predation to the
point where, because people see how these intellectual pursuits cause our lives to get better. Change.
But they don't see how the intellectuals are in bed with the government. And they see, like,
everyone's got some sort complaints about government, right? If you're on the light, on the left,
you got one set of complaints. If you're on the right, you got a different set of complaints.
If you're an outlier, you got your own set of complaints. But everyone's got something they're
not happy with, with the way things are set up right now. The way we're governed, yeah.
But yeah, a lot of people don't necessarily see that sort of necessary alliance. And a
lot of times, they don't see the way those complaints overlap. They don't see how similar our complaints
are because of the differences. A lot of times the complaints of the left and the complaints
of the right are complaints aimed at the same source, right? But like they're opposite sides
of the same coin. And because they're coming at it from a different approach, they think
they're against each other when if they stop and really think about it clearly, they can
realize, They both, both of their complaints are better aimed at this third party that is
motivated to keep them at odds with each other. Right. Continue before we get too political.
It is evident that the state needs the intellectuals. It is not so evident why the intellectuals
need the state. Put simply, we may state that the intellectuals depend on the values and
choices of the masses of his fellow men. And it is precisely characteristic of the masses
that are generally uninterested in intellectual matters. The state, on the other hand, is willing
to offer the intellectuals a secure and permanent birth in the state apparatus, and thus secure
income and the panoply of prestige, for the intellectuals will be handsomely rewarded for
the important function they perform for the state rulers, of which group they now become
a part.
You know, people, they're busy. They got lives, they got families. Like, they got their nose
to the grindstone. They're doing with their life what they want to do, right? And that
isn't always like pursuing intellectual pursuits. So you don't have time to like go into all
these deep and vague intellectual matters. And so maybe you don't see how obvious it is that
these people may need funding. And so the intellectuals, if they try and survive on the open market,
they may find it like tenuous to like find a free market survival mechanism. Yeah. But the
source of funding for them, yeah. The state creates these universities, it creates these
positions, it creates this prestige and this state funding apparatus that gives them security
in their intellectual pursuits. Whereas the people where the funding ultimately comes from
wouldn't necessarily put that money there without the state to do it. Man. Gives me hope is internet
and these new outlets and YouTube and how we're seeing so many more intellectuals go on YouTube
and do all these podcasts and they're seeing the benefit of how much how many people they
can get behind them and their ideas. We have a new class of intellectuals rising because
of the internet, who are creating a direct relationship. Between the consumers of their thoughts and
they're getting pushback just the same, right? They're getting pushback and there are a lot
of these projects where they're trying to open source. But pushback is good. Pushback means
engagement. Exactly. It means people are listening and people are. thinking and wrestling with
their ideas. Exactly. It means podcasts listens, which means advertising revenue. Like Jordan
Peterson, he's gotten his license stripped from him. He's been kicked out of institutions.
Couldn't be more popular, though. Right. He couldn't be more popular. And his money is
not a question anymore because he has created a direct relationship with the consumer class.
And not only him. With his intellectual pursuits. And that is a much more honest way to be an
intellectual. Right, you're talking about people like Michael Malice, people like a lot of these
people who are going around and doing speaking tours and they go around to these, even colleges
still, they're going and talking to these people in institutions that are set up and funded
by government. But... They see the value. In science, too. You see it with the, like,
there's all these scientists that have the podcast. Sean Carroll. Sean Carroll's one of them. Brian.
Brian Cox. And the new ones like Brian Merrescu, who's now. Lex Friedman. Lex Friedman, yep.
And even like Eric and Brett Weinstein. And when that's why Joe Rogan has been so influential
in this day and age, he brings all these intellectuals into to talk and think in front of people.
Long form content, because into people who are looking for an intellectual conversation don't
want a 30 second clip. They want a two hour long podcast where they can actually see. what
this person is about, what their content is. Maybe they're not ready to read a book. Maybe
they're not ready to take a college course. But they can listen to a two to four hour Joe
Rogan podcast with some astrophysicist talking about stars and all this stuff that's above
their head. And that may engender a interest in that topic that they can build on later.
The internet, you're right. That is a very hopeful thing. The internet is sort of undercutting
this alliance between the state and the intellectuals. It's offering intellectuals a different path.
Right, exactly. I just wanted to point that out because that spark, like it made that make
so much sense to me. Yeah. Heck yeah. Anyway, we're over. We're going to take a little break
here, got to tinkle. And we'll be back in just a few. Thanks for hanging on. We'll be back.
you
Bye!
Yes!
you
R-r-
It's red.
Welcome back. Welcome back to Duality Check. We are here. Kids are asleep. No more work
calls. Actually, I forgot to get a beer. Oh, let me go do that real quick. If you want to
get started. I'll start. Or at least remind us where we were. You can hear me reading here
while you run to the fridge. All right. The alliance between the state and the intellectuals
was symbolized in the eager desire of professors at the University of Berlin in the 19th century
to form the, quote, intellectual bodyguard of the House of
Holzenhorn? I don't know how to say that. In the present day, let us note. the revealing
comment of an eminent Marxist scholar concerning Professor Whitfogle's critical study of ancient
oriental despotism. The civilization which Professor Whitfogle is so bitterly attacking was one
which could make poets and scholars into officials. of innumerable examples we may cite. The recent
development of the science of strategy in the service of government's main violence wielding
arm, the military. The venerable institution furthermore is the official or court historian
dedicated to purveying the ruler's views of their own and their predecessor's actions.
So is that basically talking about how the military arm pulls in a lot of the intellectuals in
order to make their points more valid. By making military matters a science to be studied, you
can recruit intellectuals into that pursuit. Or court historians. So you're saying the official
funding of history, you know the whole saying the history is written by the winners, right?
It's the winners funding a historian to tell the history. Tell the story. Right, that's
another example of the... Yeah, in ancient times it was that literal scribe sitting there on
the battle lines watching it. Right. And whichever scribe, whichever side won, the scribe survived
and their story was told. Right. Or in this example he gave, this professor is bitterly
attacking a society which could make poets and scholars into officials, which is an example
of those intellectuals becoming part of the government. Right. Many and varied have been
the arguments of which the state and its intellectuals have induced their subjects to support their
rule basically The strands of argument may be summed up as follows a the state rulers are
great and wise men They rule by divine, right? They are the aristocracy of men. They are the
scientific experts much greater and wiser than the good but rather simple subjects and be
Rule by the extent government is inevitable, absolutely necessary, and far better than the
indescribable evils that would ensue upon its downfall. The union of church and state was
one of the oldest and most successful of these ideological devices. The ruler was either anointed
by God or, in the case of the absolute absolute rule of many other oriental despotisms was
himself God, hence any resistance to his rule would be blasphemy. The state's priestcraft
performed the basic intellectual function of obtaining popular support and even worship
for the rulers. Yeah, man. Yeah, so the integration of church and state, obviously because church
had a lot of the scientific-minded people at the time. In the beginnings, right? If we're
talking about the beginnings of church and state coming together to form this alliance. The
Holy Roman Empire had lasted a very long time. Right, and even though we have this quote unquote.
The official Roman Empire only lasted a certain amount of time, but even after the Roman Empire
collapsed, then the Holy Roman Empire started where the Pope would essentially ally with
whatever kings in whatever territories. and tell, basically get all his bishops and priests
in that area to tell the population, this is the divinely appointed ruler of this land,
and if you go against this ruler, if you rebel, you're rebelling against God, you're rebelling
against Jesus, you're going to go to hell. Yeah, and even this... Or in eastern countries, like...
It was the... The belief that the king was God. Was God himself, yeah. But I was gonna say,
even in the contemporary, this quote unquote separation of church and state, do we really
believe? You can see it as an attempt by the founding fathers to defend against that long
old alliance. Sure, but did it hold? But no, it didn't because still to this day, You see
big political influences of like large parishes and large Christian mega churches. Making donations
and lobbying. Yeah, and you get like politicians trying to get the support of people who have
a lot of influence with their followers. And what does the quote-unquote president or ruler
usually swear in on using? What do you mean? Oh, using the Bible. Yeah, exactly. Right.
You know, it's a lot of this like, nowadays, it's a lot of this hidden stuff, right? It's
a lot of this like behind closed doors or at least it's like, it's used as more of a...
Yeah, it's more obfuscated. Yeah, it's less obvious. But for people who, as the world is
becoming less religious and more scientific, quote unquote, that's where the university
system and all the professors and all the state-funded intellectuals on that side. You got your hand
in both still, really. Exactly. Yeah. Exactly. Let's continue. Another successful device was
to instill fear of any alternative systems of rule or non-rule. The present rulers it was
maintained supplied to the citizens an essential service of which they should be most grateful,
protection against sporadic criminals and marauders. For the state, to preserve its own monopoly
of predation, did indeed see to it that the private and unsystemic crime was kept to a
minimum. the state has always been jealous of its own preserve, especially has the state
been successful in recent centuries and instilling fear of other state rulers. Since the land
area of the globe has been parceled out amongst particular states, one of the basic doctrines
of the state was to identify itself with the territory it governed. Since most men tend
to love their homeland, the identification of that land and its people was a means of making
natural patriotism work to the state's advantage. If Ruritania was being attacked by Waldavia,
the first task of the state and its intellectuals was to convince the people of Ruritania that
the attack was really upon them, not simply upon the ruling caste. In this way, war between
rulers was converted into a war between peoples, with each people coming to the defense of its
rulers. in the erroneous belief that the rulers were defending them. The defense of nationalism
has only been
This defense of nationalism has only been successful in Western civilization in recent centuries.
It was not too long ago that the mass of subjects regarded wars as irrelevant battles between
various sets of nobles. Right. I think what messed you up is it says this device, not defense.
Ah, yeah. Oh, yeah. Um, yeah, the thing that was playing in my head while you're reading
that... This land is your land. This land is my land from California. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Right.
And that's such a good point, because we're born in California. California is regarded
as one of the craziest states in the nation. The taxes, the property, everything. California,
if it broke off into its own country, would be in the top 10 economies of the world. It's
huge, but its state is also huge. The state government of California is crazy and controlling.
And Drew and I were just having a conversation on break about the idea of moving and all the
expenses imposed. But anyway, it's natural for people love where they were born. You look
around you, like you're surrounded by friends and family, you see these beautiful landscapes.
You learn to love where you come from and you identify with it. Right, you take pride in
it. And if the state and its intellectuals can successfully convince you that they are that
and they represent that. then you will be willing to defend them when they are threatened by
another state. Yeah, or the government itself, in a sense. Right. Like what would happen with
Texas or the South if you were in the Civil War and all these other things, right? Mm-hmm.
Like, you know, if they were threatened by the government, and they were willing to defend
themselves. Yeah, or like 9-11, you know? Yeah. you know, some attack on this country gets
everyone like riled up and proud, like, cause people are proud to be American. They're proud
of where they come from. Like they're proud of like the people and the relationships and
you know, but they identified the state of the United States of America with themselves and
their land territory. And they assume any attack on the quote unquote government is an attack
on them. Now, obviously it's a little weirder in the case of 9-11 cause it was an attack
on a bunch of innocent people. But it was the World Trade Center for a reason. But you got
to think, like the people that were, the people who were ready to defend, they were ready to
defend the people. Yes, you have to serve the government in order to defend the people because
of the way it's set up. But that's their, that's, where there is a natural patriotism, there's
a natural pride in your in your in your cohort, right? The people that make up your cohort.
And there is a beautiful thing to like a young adult who's 20 years old and tough macho guy
and he wants to sign up for the military to protect the people he loves and that's how
he tells himself. Yeah. Right. But then he goes off and he goes to war and he doesn't know
why he's fighting any wars and There's a bunch of murder and stuff and he doesn't, he can't
really connect how what he's doing overseas is actually protecting the people at home.
And you know, it becomes a little less questionable why like there's so many, you know, the suicide
rate in the military is so high and all that. Yeah, you disconnect yourself when you're not
fighting on your land for your land. Right. There's a fundamental difference between repelling
and invading force and yeah. And I would say that even still, even if it's an invading force,
like penetrating into your land, like almost always it's a state against a state and it's
rulers of one state trying to conquer the rulers of another state so that they can take over
the spoils that state has over its own people. Right. Like, it's not actually them trying
or wanting to affect the population. But in the 20th century with bombs and with like,
Intercontinental Ballistics. Yeah, like we now we have this term. The nukes and everything.
What's the casualties? No, what's the term I'm looking for? The term for when civilians get
hurt as part of a military operation. Oh, are you talking about the new term for it? Yeah,
yeah, like what's the? Is it not just innocent casualties? And no, there is a term. There's
actually a term I'm searching for. I feel stupid. I can't pull it out. It'll come to us. Yeah.
Anyway, many and subtle are the ideological weapons that the state has wielded through
the centuries. One excellent weapon has been tradition. The longer that the rule of a state
has been able to preserve itself, the more powerful this weapon. For then, the X dynasty of Y state
has the seeming weight of centuries of tradition behind it. Worship of one's ancestors then
becomes a none too subtle means of worship of one's ancient rulers. What were you gonna say?
Collateral damage. Collateral damage, yes. Sorry, continue. The greatest danger to the state
is independent intellectual criticism. There is no better way to stifle the criticism. that
criticism then to attack any isolated voice, any razor of new doubts, as a profane violator
of the wisdom of his ancestors. Another potent ideological force is to deprecate the individual
and exalt the collectivity of a society. For since any given rule implies majority acceptance,
any it ideological danger to that rule can only start from one or a few independently thinking
individuals. The new idea, much less the new critical idea, must begin as a small minority
opinion. Therefore, the state must nip the view in the bud by ridiculing any view that defies
the opinions of the mass. Listen only to your brothers, or adjust to society. thus become
the ideological weapons for crushing individual dissent. By such measures, the masses will
never learn of the non-existence of their emperor's clothes. It is also important for the state
to make its rule seem inevitable. Even if its reign is disliked, it will then be met with
passive resignation, as witnessed the familiar coupling of death and taxes.
historiographical determinism as opposed to individual freedom of will. If the X dynasty
rules us, this is because the inexorable laws of history or divine will or absolute or the
material productive forces have so decreed and nothing any puny individuals may do can change
this inevitable decree. Real quick, I wish that reminds me of like when you come to an election
year and you start the states are defined as being this way or this way. Mm. Right? Yeah,
that's a blue state or a red state. Right. Yeah. And it feels inevitable. Like, as you know,
as a person in California who's not left or right, sitting in this like ultra quote unquote
blue state, like it feels inevitable that the state is going to vote blue. And so. What do
you, as the individual, have? Even if I don't participate, which they would hope for, like
at least I find it inevitable that it is going to be a certain way. Yeah, that's the resignation
that they're talking about. Yeah. It's also important for the state to inculcate its subjects
an aversion to any conspiracy theory of history. For a search for conspiracies means a search
for motives. and an attribution of responsibility for historical misdeeds. If, however, any tyranny
imposed by the state, or venality, or aggressive war, was caused not by the state rulers but
by mysterious and arcane social forces, or by the imperfect state of the world, or if in
some way everyone was responsible, where all murderers proclaims one slogan, then there's
no point in the people becoming indignant, rising up against such misdeeds. Furthermore, an attack
on conspiracy theories means that the subjects will become more gullible in believing the
general welfare reasons that are always put forth by the state for engaging in any of its
despotic actions. A conspiracy theory can unsettle the system by causing the public to doubt the
state's ideological propaganda. Yeah, so this reminds me of like, when you talk about war,
propaganda or war, dissent, right? You talk about protests on war, and you talk about people
realizing that, like, what we let the US government, the military has done is unnecessary to other
countries, right? Right? Whatever it might be, right. But that population that we, like they
see us all as murderers because we are a democratic state. So then because of that, because you
know what the view point is. Then the state on that side can use that as ammunition to
rally its population with its propaganda. And at the same time, at home for us, we realize
that that's happening. We realize that these countries see us all as murderers of what's
happened because we are a democratic state and we must have voted on this right and so therefore
we're all responsible we're all responsible and therefore it gives us a powerless resignation
again to the inevitability of these actions and conquest exactly yeah right like the never-ending
terror wars ever since 9 11 right like there's war in the middle east after war in the middle
east and yeah Oy. Another tried and true method for bending subjects to the state's will is
inducing guilt. Any increase in private well-being can be attacked as unconscionable greed, materialism,
or excessive affluence. Profit-making can be attacked as exploitation, and usury, mutually
beneficial exchanges, denounced as selfishness. And somehow with the conclusion always being
drawn that more resources should be siphoned from the private to the public sector. The
induced guilt makes the public more ready to do just that. For while individual persons
tend to indulge in selfish greed, the failure of the state's rulers to engage in exchanges
is supposed to signify their devotion to higher, nobler causes. predation being apparently morally
and aesthetically lofty as compared to peaceful and productive work. Yeah that makes me think
of companies that go against the government mmm in a sense of like when you have to about
the Like when you talk about like a company who is gaining power and affluence Based on
their productivity, right? Right. They are gaining their own sense of political lenience because
people are starting to, people obviously are paying that company enough money to get that.
So they like their product, they like their motto, they like their being, right? And if
they're going against the ideals of the government, that's when this is instituted in a sense of
like, labeling them as selfish, labeling them as materialistic, labeling them as excessive
affluence, right? Like giving them these titles so that And claiming that they, and that's
the illusion of it, is like, in that, it has the, in claiming that against someone else,
it has the underlying assumption that you are not that. Yep, exactly. When in fact, it's
the state that is constantly gathering resources without producing anything in particular. And
that's why it talks about like, the parasitic predation of it, like. like instead of like
acknowledging it as far as idealistically, all it does is impose more will upon those specific
companies or comes up with some new statute that limits the powers of companies of that
statute, right? Right, right. It makes me think of like the intellectual class too, like the
professors and all the like university people because they like. I feel like a lot of these
people sit on this like moral high horse of like, I'm just a public service innocently
spending my life pursuing intellectual matters to the benefit of all mankind. But if you tell
any of them that you are anti-government, anti-tax and you think that the size of the state and
that the state shouldn't fund sciences, all of a sudden they go up in arms and like, Whoa,
Whoa. Like we need. States have to fund these things or else society will collapse. Like
we need these intellectual matters. That's how we, you know, like the people who talk about
how like all the inventions that the Apollo program gave to like the commercial public,
how we got Tang from the Apollo program and stuff. That was only partially like. Yeah,
and Velcro. We got Velcro from the Apollo program. No, that was all from alien spaceships that
were retrofitted. Or what's the word I'm looking for? That's from back engineering. Back engineering
alien spacecraft.
I love it. All right, sorry, we love tangents here. In the present more secular age, the
divine right of the state has been supplemented by the invocation of a new God, science. State
rule is now proclaimed as being ultra-scientific, as constituting planning by experts. But while
quote unquote reason is invoked more than in previous centuries, this is not the true reason
of the individual and his exercise of free will. It is still collectivist and determinist, still
implying holistic aggregates and coercive manipulation of passive subjects by their rulers. And this
goes back to the whole thing with the economics episode, right? Where I talked about how like
the Keynesians are all about like collectivizing, right? Like they're all about like analyzing
the economy as a collective whole and... and showing these macroeconomic trends and saying,
we need to inject money and increase spending and blah, blah. Right? Like, they're putting
on, they're showing all these mathematical formulas and trying to justify it all based on this.
But the actual fact of the matter, as the Austrians expose, is like, no, the economy is individual
people exchanging individual things that collectively adds up. But there is no collective. The collective
is only derived from the individuals. It has no existence without the individuals that make
it up. Yep.
Yeah, we're bridging eight and one here. how the boy's doing, is he looking? Yeah, I swear
he woke up, but he also went back to sleep. Nice. Well, we're going.
Well, we're actually over here. Okay, so maybe we'll take a break real quick. Yeah, let's
take a quick break and we'll be back. All right.
Thanks for watching!
Welcome back! Hello, we are back. We had a little bit of a longer break this time. Extended break.
This time it was the children. Bless their heart. He just wants his pacifier. Yeah, but he won't
hold on to it. I love watching him head bob around the crib to find it. As mean as that
might sound, but it's funny. It is funny. He literally would sit up, cry and then like look
like he's laying down, but his feet are like as if he's sitting up. So he just like puts
his top half of his body down, like trying to like see if he could find it just like different
parts. Headbutts the mattress. All right, we should probably go before I jinx it. OK. All
right, so we were talking about in the more secular age and how they're using science more.
So the increasing use of scientific jargon has permitted the state's intellectuals to weave
obscurantist apologia. for state rule that would have only met with derision by the populace
of a simpler age. I love that. Obscurantist apologia. I was gonna say, you nailed that.
At least I could have done better. A robber who justified his theft by saying that he really
helped his victims by spending, giving a boost to the retail trade, would find few converts.
But when this theory is clothed in Keynesian equations with an impreference. with impressive
references to the multiplier effect. It unfortunately carries more conviction, and so the assault
on common sense proceeds, each age performing the task in its own ways. Thus ideological
support being vital to the state, it must unceasingly try to impress the public with its quote-unquote
legitimacy, to distinguish its advocates from those of remitting determination of its assaults
on common sense is no accident. For as Mencken vividly maintained, here's a quote from H.
L. Mencken, the average man, whatever his errors otherwise, at least sees clearly that government
is something lying outside him and thus outside the generality of his fellow men, that it is
a separate independent and hostile power. only partly under his control and capable of doing
him great harm. It is a fact of no significance that robbing the government is everywhere regarded
as a crime of greater magnitude than robbing an individual or even a corporation. What lies
behind all this? I believe it is a deep sense of the fundamental antagonism between the government
and the people it governs. It is apprehended not as a committee of citizens chosen to carry
on the communal business of the whole population, but as a separate and autonomous corporation,
mainly devoted to exploiting the population for the benefit of its own members. When a
private citizen is robbed, a worthy man is deprived of the fruits of his industry and thrift. When
the government is robbed, the worst that happens is that certain rogues and loafers have less
money to play with than they had before. The notion that they have earned that money is
never entertained. most sensible men, it would seem ludicrous. Yeah, that's a great quote.
Yeah. Yeah, it definitely spells out the hypocrisies and the underlying just, it just doesn't make
sense, really. Like, you know, if you really sit down and think about it, like, a lot of
these laws that are, that pertain to the common man. are not necessarily pertaining to them
and they sit above it because a lot of these laws are to collect the things that we have
produced. Right. It's not something that they produce because they're not producing anything
necessarily other than the... But it's an interesting point too that like you get punished for messing
with the government a lot more than you get punished for... Much harshly. Much more harshly.
Messing with other individuals or companies. Yeah. Like if you were to go... Loot a business
during some riot you're gonna get a lot of the times you don't even get punished Because they
see it like a man check and your bank is out some money Like you can get fined. Maybe you
can go to prison for you know, yeah fraud or whatever. But if you Do that with an individual
business, right you go and write it back when checks were a thing, right? You go write a
bad check at a grocery store. Yeah, you're what's gonna happen Something, but yeah, but less
than if you were to write a bad check to the IRS or if you were to Counterfeit us dollars.
Yeah, freaking Secret Service is gonna get involved and you're gonna have federal charges, right?
so Yeah, you should probably turn that off and on is that how that works? Yeah Otherwise,
I just don't have the remote on me, but Yeah, I put my computer in a monitor so he can follow
along with what I'm
Let's go to sleep. It's coming back. Now. Eh, is it?
how the state transcends its limits. As Bertrand de Gouvenel has sagely pointed out, through
the centuries men have formed concepts designed to check and limit the exercise of state rule.
And one after another, the state, using its intellectual allies, has been able to transform
these concepts into intellectual rubber stamps of legitimacy and virtue to attach to its decrees
and actions. Originally in Western Europe, the concept of divine sovereignty held that the
kings may rule only according to divine law. The kings turned the concept into a rubber
stamp of divine approval for any of the king's actions. The concept of parliamentary democracy
began as a popular check upon the absolute monarchical rule. It ended with parliament being the essential
part of the state and its every act totally sovereign. As de Juvenal concludes, many writers
on theories of sovereignty have worked out one of these restrictive devices. But in the end,
every single such theory has sooner or later lost its original purpose and come to act merely
as a springboard to power by providing it with the powerful aid of an invisible sovereign
with whom it could in time successfully identify itself. So that's talking about the. beginning
of democracy, right? Yeah. It started as a popular check upon absolute monarchal. Right, so like
the original ideological justification for the divine right of kings meant that they could
only rule by divine law. But it turned into anything that the king says is divine law.
Right. because he is divine. So it starts as a limit on his power, and it ends up being
corrupted into excusing anything he does. In a similar way, the US Constitution started
out as a powerful check on the growth of government. And now it's a tool for them to use. It's just
a tool to use for the Supreme Court to say, oh, no, that's constitutional. As soon as the
Supreme Court declares it constitutional, it's constitutional. I will say that the Constitution
was written in such a way that the common man, especially because of the tongue and the use
of words at the time, was a lot different than what we use now, that they can conflate a lot
of what is said in the Constitution and use it as a way, like as generalistic in a sense.
Not all of it. Yeah. So for instance, in the Constitution, there's a clause that says that
the federal government has the ability to regulate interstate commerce. Right. OK? Which kind
of makes sense if you have this federation of states that are joining together and creating
an entity to help them exist together. That entity part of its job is making sure the state's
commerce between each other is civil. But it didn't say specifically that. It didn't specifically
say that it was to interject when there's a dispute. Right, so what has happened now is
that any time anything commercial crosses state lines, so if I start a business and I distribute
outside of my own state, the Supreme Court and, you know, case law over time has now justified
that because I'm doing business across state lines, I am now under federal jurisdiction.
and regulation. And so that ability to regulate interstate commerce has turned into the ability
to regulate anything, if anything crosses the state line. No matter whether there's a dispute
or whatever. Right. Right? So I can make sense. Or to provide for the common welfare is another
clause in the government and it has been used to like justify the Department of Education
and... Like all of these things and like a lot of people have never like spent the time like
looking at like how the Constitution was constructed and what it's meant to do. So our the US government
the theory behind it is that the Constitution is a limited document that enumerates the rights
that the government has anything not on the Constitution specifically spelled out that
the federal government has this power. is reserved for the states and the people. Yep. But somehow
that has been flipped because there is nothing in the Constitution about health care, about
education, about vaccines, about just the millions of the multiplicative ways of every single
branch of the government. All the different bureaucracies that govern our lives. You don't
find the Constitution saying the government has that power. But somehow it has that power
now. Yeah. Yeah, it's because of the, not because of, but it's the exploitation of the generality
of it, because you got to imagine the founding fathers not imagining the complexities of today's
society, right? And not only that, but all the time, right? So there are stages of these things.
So like, over time, when there's wars, and then what I was going to say about the interstate
commerce, right? It's like, it definitely makes sense that it would be a sense of like an arbiter
between states, right? And when there's disputes, like it makes sense that if one state is trying
to export X, you know, whatever good through another state, that and that state sees that
good as being some sort of hazard to their state and to the common welfare of those people.
And that state says to the other state, we don't like this thing being traveled through our
state and we won't allow it. And the other state's like, well, you know, it's not ending up in
your state, it's just traveling through your state. So what's the harm, right? And so there's
an arbiter and the federal government is in the constitution, the arbiter of those disputes.
And it should have some sort of regulations that that tells this state that it can do or
not do this thing and within other states that have state law that says it's not allowed,
right? So that's what the constitution, it doesn't specifically say that though, and that's the
problem, you know? And that's the real rub. And like the greater point, like, cause your
point is true, but like even the very words that are intended to limit. get turned into
excuses for exerting power. Like the divine right thing. It means you're supposed to only
have the right to rule by divine law, anything you do outside divine law is BS to anything
you do just is divine law. Yeah. And like that is the purview of the intellectuals, right?
Like that is their job, like is to like find the ways to like. Find it out. How can I reverse
psychology this? How can I make it pass some intellectual test that at least passes muster,
at least leaves people with that resigned sighing like, ugh. Well, and even then, right? And
then it goes to propaganda, the engine of propaganda and how it can contribute to the power at be's
will. So you get the intellectuals to say a thing, but not everybody agrees. And then you
use propaganda or the idea like, what if you didn't have these regulations? Like how bad
would your life be if people were just, you know, passing cyanide or all these different
like hazardous chemicals? Like we need to, you know, like this is just the thing between state
lines, but like that's the, like we need to be able to regulate this. And then you get
everybody to just, you know, and then you just continue to like constantly, like your whole
engine is to constantly berate the people who, like we said before, are just busy living their
lives. They want to live their lives. They're not interested in the intricacies of these
things. Not everyone has the time and energy to keep fully up to date on all what's the
new way the government is trampling on rights. So it passes. Yep. Similarly, with more specific
doctrines, the natural rights of the individual enshrined in John Locke. the Bill of Rights
became a statist right to a job.
Utilitarianism turned from arguments for liberty to arguments against resisting states' invasion
of liberty, et cetera. Exactly what you were just saying, yeah. Yeah. Certainly the most
ambitious attempt to impose limits on the state has been the Bill of Rights and other restricted
parts of the American Constitution, in which written limits on government became the fundamental
law to be interpreted by a judiciary supposedly independent of the other branches of government.
All Americans are familiar with the process by which the construction of limits in the
Constitution has been inexorably broadened over the last century, but few have been as keen
as Professor Charles Black to see that the state has in the process largely transformed judicial
review itself from a limiting device to yet another instrument of furnishing ideological
legitimacy to the government's actions. For if a judicial decree of unconstitutional is
a mighty check to the government power, an implicit or explicit verdict of constitutional is a
mighty weapon for fostering public acceptance of ever greater government power." So the point
being, like, yeah. the judiciary is supposed to be quote unquote separate and independent.
And if it says this is unconstitutional, that's a powerful check against government growth.
But if it says constitutional, that's a powerful weapon to grow the government. And especially
the way, you know, contemporarily, like you see the political. And I hate going into specifically
political, but this is bipartisan in a sense. You get a specific president in the office
and it has affiliations in the different branches of the government. You got the judicial, you
got the legislative, administrative, and then you got the executive branch, which is part
of the legislative, is part of that. No, it's administrative. Or administrative is an administrative,
yeah, not the illustrative. But yeah, and you see like a lot of these like are going across
branches, right? Mm hmm. You see a lot of these individuals going across branches, but you're
not seeing, but because the government is seen as an entity, not as individuals, it's OK for
individuals to cross branches of the government. And in a sense, can completely like misconstrued
the ideals of this separate but equal yard, like the checks and balances, right? Yeah,
yeah. You know? I think, yeah, I think I know what you mean. I think the point is even greater
in like, it's used in like the revolving door sort of thing, but that's usually between like
government and the industry that it's meant to regulate. I don't know how often, well I
guess. But also you see the term limits. Yeah, you do see a lot of senators and Congress people
ultimately running for president and stuff. But you don't necessarily see presidents going
the other direction. You don't necessarily see judges going back and forth. But that's because
that's kind of the peak of it all, right? You see the executive as more of the peak of it
because that's the top down. But you do see where you like. career politicians and people
whose life revolves around one office to the next, jumping from this to that, and constantly
trying to upgrade themselves in status as far as what sort of political power they can wield.
Right. And I hope this point, and I've seen this become more popular just in general, is
the idea of that term limits need to be enforced. or at least instituted when it comes to senators
and the entire legislative side of things. You got these career politicians who are there
for 40, 50 years, some of them, and they're dying. They're going from 20-something year
old interns in this, and then they're dying in their positions. And they're completely,
we're not allowing our government And we're not pushing for our government to have a turnover
rate. Right, so either they are doing a fantastic job or they happen to be in a position, like
in a district that is guaranteed to elect them and the political process means that no one...
No one in the opposite party in their district can beat them. And no one on the same party
in their district is going to compete against them because they're a shoo-in. But also in
the judicial side, right? Oh, yeah. Like, a lot of these are life for judges. Judges are
for life. Supreme Court is for life, yeah. Unless they step down, which is pretty unheard of.
It happens. Some of them will retire. But yeah, a lot of them just die. And a lot of times
they just die in their positions. And then it finally gets taken over. But who's appointing
these judges? Well, the president's job is to appoint them, and then Congress to approve
it. But yeah. So yeah, let's keep going. Professor Black begins his analysis by pointing out the
crucial necessity of legitimacy for any government to endure.
basic majority acceptance of the government and its action. Acceptance of legitimacy becomes
a particular problem in a country such as the United States, where substantive limitations
are built into the theory on which the government rests. What is needed, adds Black, is a means
by which the government can assure the public that its increasing powers are indeed constitutional,
and this, he concludes, has been the major function of the judicial review. Let Black illustrate
the problem. The supreme risk to the government is that of disaffection and a feeling of outrage
widely disseminated throughout the population, and a loss of moral authority by the government
as such, however long it may be propped up by force or inertia or the lack of an appealing
and immediately available alternative. Almost everybody living under a government of limited
powers must sooner or later be subjected to some governmental action which as a matter
of private opinion he regards as outside the power of government, or positively forbidden
to the government. A man is drafted, though he finds nothing in the constitution about
being drafted. A farmer is told how much wheat he can raise. He believes he discovered that
some respectable lawyers believe with him that the government has no more right to tell him
how much wheat he can grow than it has to tell his daughter whom she can marry. A man goes
to federal penitentiary for saying what he wants to, and he paces his cell reciting, Congress
shall make no laws abridging the freedom of speech. A businessman is told what he can ask,
and must ask, but for buttermilk. Yeah, so these are all examples of the government clearly
having over-stemmed its constitutional bounds. Yeah. Absolutely. The danger is real enough
that each of these people, and who is not of their number, will confront the concept of
governmental limitation with the reality as he sees it of that flagrant overstepping of
actual limits, and draw the obvious conclusion as to the status of his government with respect
to legitimacy. This danger is averted by the states propounding the doctrine that one agency
must have the ultimate decision on constitutionality, and that this agency in the last analysis must
be part of the federal government. For while the seeming independence of the federal judiciary
has played a vital part in making its actions virtually wholly writ for the bulk of the people,
It is also and ever true that the judiciary is part and parcel of the government apparatus
and appointed by the executive and legislative branches. Black admits that this means that
the state itself has set itself up as a judge in its own cause, thus violating the basic
juridical principle for aiming at just decisions. he brusquely denies the possibility of any
alternative. So, yeah, a basic tenet of jurisprudence of court and law and theory of justice is that
you cannot be a judge in your own case. Right, exactly. But the judiciary is a branch of the
federal government, which gets to decide on whether the federal government is overstepping
its bounds. So whether or not it's quote unquote independent, which it isn't because it's appointed
by the executive and legislative, it draws its funds from the very taxes that the other branches
do. Its existence is tied to the existence of the other two and justified on the same documents
and the same history. It is tied together. So it's not really independent. No, and you might
see the judiciary branch rule against the government in some form, in the sense of like certain
executive actions, right? Like if a government or if a specific president might do some sort
of executive function that is unconstitutional. But again, those are usually pretty far between,
few and far between. And those are really the only times you see the judicial branch really
step out and go against its own cohort. And even then, sometimes it still passes. It's
not typically in things that really affect the common person. Yeah. Usually those things pass.
So, black ads. The problem then is to devise such governmental means of deciding as will
hopefully reduce the tolerable minimum to a tolerable minimum, the intensity of the objection
that government is judged in its own cause. Having done this, you can only hope that this
objection, though theoretically still tenable, will practically lose enough of its. force
that the legitimating work of the deciding institution can win acceptance.
Yeah, so essentially, he's just saying that they tried to dress it up in fancy enough theory
that kind of gets across the idea, like, this is as independent as we can make it. Yeah.
You know? When a lot of times they, like, they'll rule based on a lot of other rulings, too,
right? like they'll rule on specific cases based on a lot of their past cases, whether it directly
correlates or whether it's some kind of like sub-category of like a previous ruling, you
know? And if there's enough of those, they'll like rule based on like that. And if it's convenient,
it'll make some big change, you know? It can make some big change. Right. In the last analysis,
Black finds the achievement of justice and legitimacy from the state's perpetual judging of its own
cause as something of a miracle. Applying his thesis to the famous conflict between the Supreme
Court and the New Deal, Professor Black keenly chides his fellow pro-New Deal colleagues for
their short-sightedness in denouncing judicial obstruction. So this is a quote from Black.
The standard version of the story of the New Deal and the court, though accurate in its
way, displaces the emphasis. It concentrates on the difficulties. It almost forgets how
the whole thing turned out. The upshot of the matter was, and this is what I like to emphasize,
that after some 24 months of balking, the Supreme Court, without a single change in the law of
its composition, or indeed in its actual meaning, place the affirmative stamp of legitimacy on
the New Deal and on the whole new conception of government in America.
it wasn't an amendment to the Constitution. And it gave the federal government vast sweeping
power over controlling the economy. So this was the bit of legislation that, well not bit,
this huge chunk of legislation that came out with Roosevelt out of the Great Depression.
Yeah, oh yeah, yeah. And that's what gave the government the power to tell farmers how much
they can grow, tell farmers to destroy crops, set price. fixing, set certain prices on certain
items. And it was all theoretically to get us out of this Great Depression. But it was all
this vast power that the government never had and is not in the Constitution. But the Supreme
Court deliberated for a long time on it and then found it constitutional. When that goes
back to the example of like, it's simply unconstitutional for a farmer to be told how much it can grow.
Right. If it's being grown on its own land. Right. That's completely unconstitutional,
and it makes no sense for an economy, if you're right. Like, you're growing a resource, and
you're able to provide it. If you have excess, you're going to be told to burn it or get rid
of it. Like, what are we talking about? You can put that into new markets, or different
markets, or international, whatever it might be. You can do that individually. You don't
need to get a friend to tell you not to. And a lot of people don't understand that this
actually still happens to this day. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. That's why there's. the farmers go on
strike a lot. What's the institution, the agriculture federal, it's not the FDA.
But anyway, there's a, whichever institution has the controller. Whatever acronym. Yeah,
yeah. They actually still use this. USDA? Yeah, they still have the ability to, do you have
your phone near the interface? It's causing these weird glitches. I thought it was just
this plug. I think it's the radio from the phone interfering with the interface.
I don't know. I wasn't doing that before. Yeah, I don't know. But anyway, still to this day,
there is certain crops that get destroyed because of the justification being that they're trying
to keep a crop at a certain trading price for the benefit of the farmers. But what it really
results in is oranges being burned. to keep the price of orange juice up and stuff like
that. For what reason other than to have absurd power? So that the farmers who grow oranges
get more per orange when they sell them. It's just, it's crazy. But it doesn't make sense
if you have enough oranges to out. It's all based on Keynesian economics and stuff, though.
I mean, it just doesn't, like, feasibly. Like, if you have a large, like, we're talking about
producing a thing that humans can eat, right? at the same time of this bullshit happening
in our, in, you know, in whatever government that's instituting this, we have hunger around
the world. We have in our, in countries that are instituting this, we have hunger, people
who can't eat. And you're just going to pretend that like producing more and being able to
produce it at a lower price. Their argument is that if they give it away for free or if
they trade it at a lower price to other people that will affect the market price for oranges.
thus making farmers be able to get less money for their oranges overall. No, it means that
you're able to produce a lot for less. And that means it makes it available to people at a
lower price. But that all falls back into the point, right? It falls back into the point
of that's the job of the intellectuals is to come up with some complex economic justification
for why this could plausibly do. Do some sort of good for some people and if you can't come
at them with like a validated argument against them then Like they're just gonna move on and
if it's enough for people who aren't totally paying attention, but are voting Yeah, then
it's enough to pass muster, right? And that was that goes back to our first episode too
where you talk about these like these papers being done by a lot of these intellectuals
that are that are p-hacked or they're like, you know, they're like there isn't there is
a reason for these because they get You know and also the fact that a lot of these ideas
that are put out in these papers that may have instrumentally funded like um had a lot to
do with a lot of these ideas that the government instituted They aren't able to be refuted because
nobody's going to fund somebody who's putting out a paper to refute another person's position
that is accepted by the paying customer, which is the government. Right. So yeah, that brings
it back to that first episode we were talking about, like the limits of scientific certainty.
So check that episode out if you haven't already. In this way, the Supreme Court was able to
put the quietus on large body of Americans who had the strong constitutional objections to
the New Deal. So this is back to black. Of course, not everyone was satisfied. The Bonnie Prince,
the Bonnie Prince Charlie of constitutionality commanded laissez faire still stirs the hearts
of, what is the sentence? The Bonnie Prince Charlie? What is that? Is that a cultural reference
that I'm getting? That must be some sort of reference. Prince Charlie of constitutionally
commanded laissez-faire still stirs the hearts of a few zealots in the highlands of choleric
un-reality. But there is no longer any significant or dangerous public doubt as to the constitutional
power of Congress to deal as it does with the national economy. So what I found quickly is
this person named Charles Edward Stewart during his lifetime was also known as the young pretender.
But in popular memory, he is known as Bonnie Prince Charlie. So I'm guessing it's the pretender.
So it's saying, yeah. So it's like saying that. these people who are still pretending that
laissez-faire is important, and they still have some people on their side, but there's no longer
significant or dangerous public doubt as to the power of Congress to deal with the economy
as it does. We had no means other than the Supreme Court for imparting legitimacy to the New Deal.
As Black recognizes one major political theorist who recognized and largely in advance, The
glaring loophole in a constitutional limit on government of placing the ultimate interpreting
power in the Supreme Court was John C. Calhoun. Calhoun was not content with the miracle, but
instead proceeded to a profound analysis of the constitutional problem. In his disquisition,
Calhoun demonstrated the inherent tendency of the state to break through the limits of such
a constitution. So this is Calhoun. A written constitution certainly has many and considerable
advantages, but it is a great mistake to suppose that the mere insertion of provisions to restrict
and limit power of the government without investing those for whose protection they are inserted
with the means of enforcing their observance will be sufficient to prevent the major and
dominant party from abusing its powers. So it's saying... If the idea is that you're imparting
limits on the government against, so that the government can't use these powers against the
people, if you're not giving the people the power to check the government, then ultimately
they're going to steamroll over it. You're giving the government in a separate branch. power
to limit the government, but the people who are supposed to have the power. But they're
not the ones at odds with the government for those power decisions, right? The people are.
And the people don't have the power intrinsically in the Constitution. Right. It's not spelled
out. Right. So back to Calhoun. Being the party in dominant... Being the party in... possession
of the government, they will, from the same constitution of man which makes government
necessary to protect society, be in favor of the powers granted by the constitution and
opposed to the restrictions intended to limit them. The minor or weaker party, on the contrary,
would take the opposite direction and regard them the restrictions as essential to their
protection against the dominant party. But where there are no means by which they could compel
the major party to observe the restrictions, the only resort left to them would be a strict
construction of the Constitution. To this the major party would oppose a liberal construction.
It would be construction against construction, the one to contract, the other one to enlarge
the power of the government to the utmost. But of what possible avail could the strict construction
of the minor party be against the liberal construction of the major? when the one would have all the
power of the government to carry its construction into effect, and the other be deprived of all
means of enforcing its construction. In a context so unequal, the result would not be doubtful.
The party in favor of the restrictions would be overpowered. The end of the contest would
be the subversion of the Constitution. The restrictions would ultimately be annulled, and the government
would be converted into one of unlimited power. So essentially, Do you follow what that's saying?
Absolutely. It's essentially saying like- There's a lot of construction going on, but yeah, no,
I follow it. So it's saying, you got, let's say in modern days, you got Democrats and Republicans,
right? So right now, it's the Democrats in power. Sometimes it's the Republicans, sometimes it's
the Democrats. And this is what actually happens in practice. Anytime the Democrats are in power,
they always try and push stuff that the Democrats want. Yeah. OK? And then you'll have the Republicans
on the other side who are not in power right now because they lost the presidency and they're
not in control of the Congress or whatever at the moment. And they'll put up all these, oh,
what you guys are trying to do, what you Democrats are trying to do is unconstitutional, blah,
blah. And they'll argue against it and try and kick and scream, but they don't have the power
right now. And so the Democrats will pass something. And then when the Republicans become in power,
They'll have their own things that they want to pass. And then, but because they're in power,
the Democrats, their only argument against it is like, what you guys are doing is evil and
unconstitutional and blah, blah. But they're not in power. So the Republicans will pass
something and it goes back and forth. It's like, it's like a pro wrestling, right? Like you
got the good guys and the bad guys and they hate each other on screen, but like it's all
just an act. It's just a way to divide it. It's a way to get progress on one side of things.
Because how often? Because then when the power shifts over to the other power, you get progress
on other things. But you never really see it rolling back. You never see repeals. The government
only ever grows in power. I was going to say that too. The repealing of what the previous.
the previous party in power has done is very rare. And usually it's only when the third
party, the judicial or the Congress is striking something down because of their overwhelming
support in favor or of striking it down. It's rarely done. by the executive branch immediately
upon arriving in the White House. Right. And it's very obvious, but at the same time, it's
a ratcheting mechanism. It's a way to apply force a little bit at a time, but never give
on the growth that it's achieved. And it makes it easier each time. Each time you do it, it
makes it easier for the next turn. So I want to keep going, but we're We're pretty far over,
but I think we could definitely make... I think we could definitely do this in another podcast.
And I think we're going to continue with this libertarian theme. Yeah, yeah, because I've
barely scratched the surface of where we want to go with this. This is all criticizing the
state. But where this ultimately leads in the long run is to the question of should a state
even exist? And we haven't even really tackled that. And does it need to exist? Right. And
if it doesn't, what kind? What could life look like without it? Would it just be chaos? Or
is it possible that mankind can create structures to govern themselves peacefully without some
sort of man in power, the man in the room with the gun, holding everyone hostage? Yeah, could
you imagine a world where private enterprise, the pursuits of private individuals
in a sense, can do the function of the government without the need of the centralized aspect
of it. Right. The needs of the people directly dictate what the powerful do, in a sense. You
think the people with guns, or the people that protect us, they are directly affected by what
the people specifically need, right? Like, we need borders. We need not borders specifically,
but we need a way to defend ourselves if we are attacked by some sort of marauder. Right,
and everyone knows that and feels that. And so because of that necessity, they think the
only way to achieve that is the way we're currently achieving it, which is having a state. We're
having a state. So even if it's not this state, like, Even people who are like over where the
United States is or wherever government you live in if you're like over with how it's How
it's working and you're like, ah man, it is just broken and we like seldom do people think
that the solution is To just not have a state they usually think oh, well, we can create
one that's different but you're like you're creating the point of this and it hasn't fully
gotten there yet, but like is that you're just substituting one problem for another. And it's
the institution itself and not the specific instance of it that is the problem. It's not
like the founding fathers could have used a little bit of different language and we wouldn't
be in this situation. Maybe we would have gotten here at a different pace or whatever. Could
have been 20, 30. It's inevitable by the nature of what a state is that it will continue to
grow. justify its legitimacy and constantly overstep over boundaries placed up by the people
that it's meant to govern. So. Yeah, I think this has been a good episode. I think we definitely
got some bases, you know, some groundwork laid for this idea and I hope people enjoyed it
and I hope you do some research on these topics yourselves. Yeah, so. See what you think about
it. We'll link, obviously, to this article that we're reading. And we will talk about these
ideas some more. Yeah, if you're watching this on YouTube. Yeah, if you're looking at this
on YouTube and Rumble, I know we like to put a lot of images in a lot of those nowadays.
But this might be a difficult one. But we can come up with some. We'll come up with something.
Come up with some cool ones. Also, I'm still at the moment of recording, working on fixing
the links. Oh, yeah, for the different podcast platforms. For the show notes. Yeah, so like
if you're in Apple Podcasts or whatever, and you go to look at our show notes, they get
cut off with like a dot, dot. And I'm trying to get that fixed. If you're running into that
and you want to see the links that we're putting, you can click the episode title. And it should
link you to our website, to the episode page. Dualitycheck.net and then go to the episode.
And you'll see all the links and all the sources. YouTube also allows us. Oh, we don't put the
links on YouTube though, do we? Yeah, we're still not like whatever partner, YouTube partners
or whatever. So we have very limited powers for linking to external sites from YouTube.
Yeah, that's right. We'll get there. We don't have the privilege yet. We just need your help.
Yeah. So if you're listening on YouTube, give us a like. Give us a subscribe. Send a comment.
Like, let's open the conversation. Send us an email. Hosts at dualitycheck.net. Or you can
reach us on Facebook or Instagram. You can message us on any of those platforms, and we'll see
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Give us a high rating and give us a little description. It would really help us grow and reach more
ears. Absolutely. That's what we're here for. We want to build a community of people who
are interested in opening their mind to different ideas like we're doing just by making this
podcast ourself, right? We're allowing ourselves to open it up. It's been fun, y'all. Been fun.
Two and a half hours, wow. In the next one. Man. If you made it to this point. Yeah. Bravo.
Appreciate you. See you next week. We'll see you next week. Adios. Later.
Bye!
Thanks for watching!