WEBVTT - Tim "The Lawyer" Sandefur talks to Armstrong & Getty 0:00:00.120 --> 0:00:02.520 So welcome to the first of our Armstrong and Getty podcast. 0:00:02.560 --> 0:00:04.400 We probably need a jazz your name for this, but 0:00:04.440 --> 0:00:07.040 it's going to be our long form conversations with people 0:00:07.040 --> 0:00:09.920 we like. Yeah, I kind of like it as a 0:00:10.000 --> 0:00:15.520 as a as a standalone name. It's very very down 0:00:15.520 --> 0:00:18.560 to earth. Well, it's descriptive. It's like, you know, Boston's 0:00:18.600 --> 0:00:20.919 first album was called Boston, I get it, you know, 0:00:21.040 --> 0:00:27.440 or they're from Atlanta when you're getting that's right. So anyway, 0:00:27.520 --> 0:00:30.760 this is our our our our long form podcast, and 0:00:30.840 --> 0:00:34.159 our our first guest is a good old friend personally 0:00:34.159 --> 0:00:37.040 and professionally. Tim sander for Vice president for Litigation at 0:00:37.080 --> 0:00:40.839 the Goldwater Institute. He also spent fifteen years at the 0:00:40.840 --> 0:00:44.159 Pacific Legal Foundation, an organization which were big, big fans of. 0:00:44.479 --> 0:00:47.440 He's the author of Cornerstone of Liberty, Property Rights in 0:00:47.479 --> 0:00:50.760 twenty first Century America. Co authored with his fabulous wife 0:00:50.840 --> 0:00:53.360 Christina Sanderford, The Right to Earn a Living the Conscience 0:00:53.360 --> 0:00:57.440 of the Constitution, a wonderful new Ish book about Frederick 0:00:57.560 --> 0:01:01.760 Douglas called Frederick Douglas Self Made man um and in 0:01:01.960 --> 0:01:04.760 a great writer and thinker. Pay Tim, Hey, so you 0:01:04.760 --> 0:01:06.560 have you want to you want somebody who can just 0:01:06.680 --> 0:01:09.720 keep talking and talking and talking for a tremendous amount 0:01:09.760 --> 0:01:12.240 of time, and you invite me. I get it now, 0:01:12.319 --> 0:01:13.960 I see what you're talking. Well, you've got the depth 0:01:14.000 --> 0:01:16.119 of knowledge. But were you aware maybe you were aware 0:01:16.600 --> 0:01:19.679 this this Some people call it the intellectual dark net 0:01:19.920 --> 0:01:24.360 that exists out there, and I like that name because 0:01:24.360 --> 0:01:27.000 it's it's kind of off the grid, but there are 0:01:27.160 --> 0:01:30.800 millions of people doing it listening to these podcasts and 0:01:30.840 --> 0:01:32.600 one of the from YouTube videos that sort of thing 0:01:32.760 --> 0:01:34.600 very big. Yeah, But one of the things that seems 0:01:34.640 --> 0:01:38.440 to be a theme is they're not clearly one thing 0:01:38.880 --> 0:01:41.440 these conversations. It's not like it is at all of 0:01:41.560 --> 0:01:44.440 regular radio or TV where you tune in and you 0:01:44.520 --> 0:01:47.319 immediately say, is this a liberal show or a conservative show? 0:01:47.560 --> 0:01:51.040 These long form podcasts you can't really figure out with 0:01:51.160 --> 0:01:52.920 the guests are, which, by the way, is the way 0:01:53.000 --> 0:01:56.440 normal people are, you know. Yeah, that's the thing I think. 0:01:56.720 --> 0:02:00.000 I think the term dark net is ridiculous. I think 0:02:00.040 --> 0:02:02.280 gets an attempt to try and make it sound like 0:02:02.360 --> 0:02:07.520 it's some shadowy conspiracy of evil capitalists. But the reality 0:02:07.680 --> 0:02:10.160 is that with the availability of all sorts of different 0:02:10.240 --> 0:02:16.160 kinds of media. Now we're seeing the the subdivision of 0:02:16.160 --> 0:02:20.880 of our conversations into a finer and finer degree, so 0:02:20.919 --> 0:02:23.960 that you have more intense audiences that might be smaller, 0:02:23.960 --> 0:02:26.440 but their motive more devoted. And you saw that, for instance, 0:02:26.440 --> 0:02:30.200 when cable television first came out, the quality of television 0:02:30.360 --> 0:02:35.200 drama improved because you could have longer form stories with 0:02:35.280 --> 0:02:39.040 more in depth characters and complicated plots and things because 0:02:39.040 --> 0:02:40.959 you weren't going for a larger audience. We're going for 0:02:41.000 --> 0:02:43.600 a more loyal audience, and so you could explore things 0:02:43.680 --> 0:02:46.079 more deeply, like with HBO. And so I think that's 0:02:46.120 --> 0:02:49.079 what you're seeing. That's pretty good. Maybe that maybe this 0:02:49.160 --> 0:02:51.360 is this podcast thing or whatever you want to call it, 0:02:51.440 --> 0:02:55.160 is like, um, it's like cable cable tv has been 0:02:55.200 --> 0:02:57.760 to network shows well, and of course a lot of 0:02:57.760 --> 0:02:59.679 it's going to be terrible just for the because of 0:02:59.680 --> 0:03:03.639 the base a rule, everything is crap and so most 0:03:03.680 --> 0:03:08.000 of the most hell yeah, everything starts from there. So 0:03:08.160 --> 0:03:09.680 you know, it's funny. It strikes me as a guy 0:03:09.720 --> 0:03:12.320 who's raised raised a passle of kids. The more kids 0:03:12.320 --> 0:03:14.760 you have to appeal to it meal time, the more 0:03:14.840 --> 0:03:17.680 likely you're gonna get bland crap, and I think you 0:03:17.720 --> 0:03:20.799 know the same as true of virtually any sort of entertainment. 0:03:21.360 --> 0:03:23.800 You know, this is probably a super broad question on 0:03:23.840 --> 0:03:27.880 this topic, but what the hell, um, where do you 0:03:27.919 --> 0:03:30.840 think we are in terms of the exchange of ideas, 0:03:30.880 --> 0:03:35.680 particularly in the United States, because moronic cable news yelling 0:03:36.080 --> 0:03:38.800 is at an all time high. On the other one, 0:03:39.720 --> 0:03:43.640 Oh yeah, and it's it's unforgivable, it's criminal in its stupidity, 0:03:43.640 --> 0:03:46.600 and it's it's dishonesty. At the same time, though, you 0:03:46.640 --> 0:03:51.080 have a phenomenon like the one we've been talking about. Yeah, 0:03:51.120 --> 0:03:53.560 I have no idea. I mean, see your next book. 0:03:54.200 --> 0:03:57.880 We have we have at our fingertips. We have these 0:03:57.880 --> 0:04:00.320 devices in our pockets that we can use to connect 0:04:00.320 --> 0:04:02.880 to Wikipedia and have the entire world's knowledge at our 0:04:02.880 --> 0:04:06.000 fingertips and all of the great music and art and literature. 0:04:06.000 --> 0:04:08.760 And instead we mostly at our at our best, we're 0:04:08.760 --> 0:04:13.000 sending each other videos of kittens. So I think it's 0:04:13.080 --> 0:04:18.320 that it's a weird phenomenon where the curve is flattening out, 0:04:18.839 --> 0:04:21.880 so that instead of having a few people who have 0:04:21.920 --> 0:04:24.200 access to a tremendous amount of information and they're the 0:04:24.320 --> 0:04:28.520 recognized intellectual leaders of the culture. Instead, everybody has a 0:04:28.680 --> 0:04:32.400 slightly more improved knowledge of the world, but it's only 0:04:32.520 --> 0:04:35.920 slightly and so it sort of tends towards the middle 0:04:36.000 --> 0:04:38.280 of the road, which may not be a good thing 0:04:38.279 --> 0:04:40.080 in some ways, but in other ways it's a great thing. 0:04:40.120 --> 0:04:42.279 I mean, there's a lot of people out there who 0:04:42.400 --> 0:04:45.320 would never have had exposure to the world's great art 0:04:45.360 --> 0:04:48.920 and literature who today can access it. It's just are 0:04:48.920 --> 0:04:51.520 they going to take advantage of it? Should we necessarily 0:04:51.560 --> 0:04:55.599 want them to? I don't really know why. Why wouldn't 0:04:55.600 --> 0:04:58.880 we want them Because Western civilization is oppressive? Haven't you 0:04:58.960 --> 0:05:01.720 heard that? Do you know about in your sectionality? Well, 0:05:01.760 --> 0:05:04.080 there is that, But I was thinking more like mic 0:05:04.160 --> 0:05:07.000 Roofen says, not everybody needs to go to college, not everybody, 0:05:07.200 --> 0:05:10.200 you know, it's not necessarily a bad thing that somebody 0:05:10.240 --> 0:05:13.000 doesn't like to sit there and listen to Bach and handle. 0:05:13.360 --> 0:05:15.440 I happen to, but a lot of people don't. And 0:05:15.560 --> 0:05:18.440 it doesn't mean that those people are stupid, and it 0:05:18.480 --> 0:05:21.520 doesn't mean that I am intellectually superior to them. Those 0:05:21.560 --> 0:05:25.960 are criteria established at in previous age. Nowadays, we have 0:05:26.120 --> 0:05:31.039 people who have intense knowledge of very tiny fractions of 0:05:31.120 --> 0:05:34.400 the world. It's an era of specialization. That doesn't necessarily 0:05:34.800 --> 0:05:38.240 mean that it's that's not necessarily a bad thing that 0:05:38.320 --> 0:05:40.680 the age of the Renaissance man is over. The Age 0:05:40.680 --> 0:05:42.880 of the renaissance man came about because the number of 0:05:42.880 --> 0:05:45.839 people who are illiterate was tremendous back then, and so 0:05:45.920 --> 0:05:49.160 if you could read, you necessarily became a specialist in everything. 0:05:49.200 --> 0:05:51.440 But nowadays that's not the case. I like Barbara Back 0:05:51.480 --> 0:05:55.360 and Bill Handel stop it. You know, I've been called 0:05:55.400 --> 0:05:58.240 renaissance man, tim, But it does occur to me that, like, 0:05:58.360 --> 0:06:01.520 if you're referred to as a renaissunts doctor, you'd be 0:06:01.600 --> 0:06:05.080 run out of town, or a Renaissance astronomer, you'd probably 0:06:05.120 --> 0:06:08.160 be pretty behind the curve. Um Well, that those people 0:06:08.200 --> 0:06:10.040 are calling a renaissance man, they were, they're referring to 0:06:10.040 --> 0:06:13.960 the Renaissance fair. But that that reminds me to walk 0:06:13.960 --> 0:06:16.400 around with a big turkey leg. It's my thing. It 0:06:16.400 --> 0:06:18.840 reminds me the idea that you know, we were always 0:06:18.920 --> 0:06:21.520 against rocking the vote. We we don't want more people 0:06:21.560 --> 0:06:23.440 to vote unless they take the time to like read 0:06:23.520 --> 0:06:26.560 up on the issues, then then please do. But unless 0:06:26.600 --> 0:06:29.000 you're going to no, don't vote. I like voter turnout 0:06:29.040 --> 0:06:32.400 being relatively low since most people aren't paying attention, and 0:06:33.640 --> 0:06:34.880 you know, it kind of gets to here. All this 0:06:35.000 --> 0:06:36.800 information is out there, but are people going to take 0:06:36.800 --> 0:06:40.039 advantage of it? And do we want them to? Yeah? No, 0:06:40.200 --> 0:06:42.880 that's a good point. I mean we the vote can 0:06:42.880 --> 0:06:46.080 be a dangerous weapon, and yeah, we handed out indiscriminately. 0:06:46.880 --> 0:06:49.359 If everybody voted, I mean, if we had something like 0:06:50.120 --> 0:06:53.000 turn out the vote politics, our our entire political system 0:06:53.040 --> 0:06:55.240 could be turned upside down. Today, there's not an issue 0:06:55.600 --> 0:06:58.280 that you couldn't stand on its head if everybody decided 0:06:58.320 --> 0:07:03.480 to vote, and thank they don't. Yeah. Yeah, the qualifications, 0:07:04.040 --> 0:07:06.679 the requirement that people know what they're talking about before 0:07:06.680 --> 0:07:09.040 they go into the voting booth seems perfectly reasonable, and 0:07:09.120 --> 0:07:11.840 yet it's regarded that is regarded, it's always been pest. 0:07:11.920 --> 0:07:14.160 How do you feel about a poll test? I know 0:07:14.200 --> 0:07:16.840 it's it's history is not good. But what about if 0:07:16.880 --> 0:07:18.520 you had a test and you have to be able 0:07:18.560 --> 0:07:20.680 to name the president, vice president, and how many Supreme 0:07:20.720 --> 0:07:23.360 Court justices there are? Something like that? I mean, pretty simple, 0:07:23.600 --> 0:07:27.000 you'd wed out of think that's liable to It's liable 0:07:27.080 --> 0:07:29.840 to so much abuse that I wouldn't favor that because 0:07:29.880 --> 0:07:32.320 if you could wave your magic wand to wave away 0:07:32.520 --> 0:07:34.520 the abuse, well, then it would be best just to 0:07:34.560 --> 0:07:37.080 do that instead of imposing attack. In fact, the best 0:07:37.080 --> 0:07:39.440 thing to do is to reduce the authority and white 0:07:39.520 --> 0:07:42.560 males is that where you're going. I'm sorry interrupted you. 0:07:42.560 --> 0:07:45.480 You're not going to landed white males. You know, if 0:07:45.560 --> 0:07:47.600 I'm saying, you get the government so that it's not 0:07:47.640 --> 0:07:49.560 doing anything. It doesn't matter who gets to vote. You know, 0:07:50.120 --> 0:07:53.000 lots of feminists like to quote the line from Virginia 0:07:53.040 --> 0:07:56.360 wolf Um where she referred to a room of my own. 0:07:56.400 --> 0:07:58.320 I want a room of my own. The actual line 0:07:58.360 --> 0:08:00.400 that she said was give me a room of my own, 0:08:00.400 --> 0:08:03.240 and you can keep the vote. Because what matters is 0:08:03.400 --> 0:08:06.160 let leave me alone, give me private property, and don't 0:08:06.160 --> 0:08:08.120 bother me and take my stuff away to pay people 0:08:08.160 --> 0:08:10.600 not to work. And it doesn't really matter who gets elected. 0:08:10.600 --> 0:08:13.320 That's why you don't see all this this bruja, however, 0:08:13.400 --> 0:08:15.880 gets who gets elected dog catcher or something. But there's 0:08:15.920 --> 0:08:18.320 tons of money being poured into who gets elected president 0:08:18.400 --> 0:08:21.840 and elected to Congress because there's so much redistribution of 0:08:21.840 --> 0:08:24.800 wealth involved. That's the real problem. Interesting, which brings us 0:08:24.920 --> 0:08:27.360 to really kind of the root of your career and 0:08:27.400 --> 0:08:30.040 your books, um, which we mentioned and we'll get into 0:08:30.040 --> 0:08:32.600 a little more specifically in a bit. But you know, 0:08:32.679 --> 0:08:36.160 in this great age of resurgent populism, uh, there's a 0:08:36.160 --> 0:08:38.800 lot of populism that's really unhealthy. For instance, and the 0:08:38.800 --> 0:08:41.600 Founding Fathers knew that most people want a king, don't 0:08:41.640 --> 0:08:44.480 they in a royal family, in a wise and benevolent 0:08:44.520 --> 0:08:47.199 pop out of rule from on high. Yeah, I think 0:08:47.200 --> 0:08:49.560 there is a something to be said for that. I 0:08:49.559 --> 0:08:53.040 think most people don't think long enough to to say 0:08:53.080 --> 0:08:55.079 where does the money come from that the government is 0:08:55.120 --> 0:08:57.679 going to give to me. They think that many people 0:08:57.720 --> 0:09:00.280 think of the government as their parent, when the reality 0:09:00.400 --> 0:09:03.240 is that government is your child. It's the people who 0:09:03.280 --> 0:09:05.360 support the government. So as a matter of common sense, 0:09:05.440 --> 0:09:07.480 the government can support the people. And I don't want 0:09:07.480 --> 0:09:11.439 to come off as contemptuous of the average human being, um, 0:09:11.480 --> 0:09:14.520 but but there's danger there, and the Founding Fathers understood 0:09:14.520 --> 0:09:17.280 that because it's really seductive idea that the government will 0:09:17.320 --> 0:09:19.640 take care of me. In fact, it's not only is 0:09:19.640 --> 0:09:23.800 it not, it's not a condescending thing to say. Most 0:09:23.840 --> 0:09:26.800 people don't understand or think about politics. It's not a 0:09:26.800 --> 0:09:29.240 condescend anything. It's that it's the focus of a lot 0:09:29.240 --> 0:09:32.160 of scholarship. It's called rational ignorance. And my my friend 0:09:32.200 --> 0:09:35.120 Ilias Souman, who's a law professor at George Mason University, 0:09:35.360 --> 0:09:38.200 he focuses a lot of his scholarship on rational ignorance. 0:09:38.240 --> 0:09:41.280 It is not rational for a lot of people to 0:09:41.360 --> 0:09:44.079 spend their time studying politics because they have other things 0:09:44.120 --> 0:09:46.920 to do. They they spend their time studying, you know, 0:09:47.200 --> 0:09:50.080 how to make how to do gardening, or how to 0:09:50.120 --> 0:09:52.160 build buildings, or how how to put up a bridge 0:09:52.240 --> 0:09:53.800 or something. That's what their time is spent on. And 0:09:53.840 --> 0:09:55.720 it's we would not be rational for me to spend 0:09:55.800 --> 0:09:59.200 my time studying engineering, because I'm not an engineer. For 0:09:59.240 --> 0:10:01.600 the same reason, the it's not rational for most people 0:10:01.640 --> 0:10:03.920 to spend their time on politics. It's not necessarily a 0:10:03.920 --> 0:10:06.680 bad thing, but it does mean that we need to 0:10:06.880 --> 0:10:10.000 be very wary when they express political opinions or demand 0:10:10.160 --> 0:10:14.120 a say in what the government does. You're a an 0:10:14.120 --> 0:10:16.079 expert on the founding, what do you think we we 0:10:16.080 --> 0:10:18.560 we regularly asked this, as you know, it's a common 0:10:18.640 --> 0:10:20.920 question if the Founding fathers were alive today, what would 0:10:20.920 --> 0:10:24.760 they think of their experiment? Do you think shocked that 0:10:24.880 --> 0:10:26.960 it lasted so long? Or horrified to where it's end 0:10:27.040 --> 0:10:29.520 hut up? There would be a lot of the ladder No, 0:10:29.720 --> 0:10:33.280 I I think I think Jefferson would be horrified that 0:10:33.320 --> 0:10:37.200 we hadn't torn up the Constitution long ago and rewritten 0:10:37.240 --> 0:10:39.920 it several times. Jefferson had this idea that we should 0:10:40.000 --> 0:10:43.080 rewrite the Constitution every generation or so, and he would 0:10:43.120 --> 0:10:45.360 be horrified also, by the way, at the size of 0:10:45.400 --> 0:10:48.240 the states. He thought the states should be much smaller 0:10:48.240 --> 0:10:51.280 than they currently are and should be subdivided down into 0:10:51.320 --> 0:10:55.360 the two hundreds hundred citizens per town unit or something 0:10:55.400 --> 0:10:57.480 like that. Came up with these really great ideas to 0:10:57.480 --> 0:11:00.360 try and limit government power and keep power in hands 0:11:00.360 --> 0:11:03.240 of local decision makers as much as possible. So he 0:11:03.280 --> 0:11:05.040 would have been horrified, and he would have said that 0:11:05.080 --> 0:11:08.640 we had sold out the American dream to the Hamiltonian 0:11:08.720 --> 0:11:11.880 notion of get rich quick. And by the way, that 0:11:12.000 --> 0:11:14.920 is really true. There really is. There's two American dreams. 0:11:14.920 --> 0:11:18.679 There's the American dream of patient, careful hard work that 0:11:18.760 --> 0:11:21.440 provides a modest living for yourself and your family, and 0:11:21.440 --> 0:11:24.520 then there's the American dream of get rich quick, and 0:11:24.720 --> 0:11:27.080 those two have always been intention and it's when the 0:11:27.200 --> 0:11:31.240 latter starts to rise in society that you really need 0:11:31.280 --> 0:11:34.240 to be careful and worried about the government. I think 0:11:34.360 --> 0:11:37.480 James Madison would have been more pleased than Jefferson. Madison 0:11:37.520 --> 0:11:40.960 had this idea, had a more conservative view about what 0:11:41.000 --> 0:11:44.199 government could accomplish and and how reasonable it was to 0:11:44.280 --> 0:11:46.880 expect people to be responsible citizens, and his answer was 0:11:46.920 --> 0:11:49.600 not very so I think he would have been a 0:11:49.600 --> 0:11:52.319 little bit more pleased, but he still would have been 0:11:52.480 --> 0:11:55.360 pretty shocked by the scope and size and power of 0:11:55.400 --> 0:11:57.520 government today. No, none of them, none of them, not 0:11:57.559 --> 0:11:59.920 even not even people like Hamilton's or John Adams, who 0:11:59.920 --> 0:12:02.040 were more of your big government guys. Not even they 0:12:02.080 --> 0:12:04.520 would have had they all would have been horrifying. That's 0:12:04.520 --> 0:12:06.280 what I was gonna say. You could find things that 0:12:06.320 --> 0:12:08.959 they would disagree on, I'm sure, but I would think 0:12:08.960 --> 0:12:13.240 they would all be shocked at the royal government place 0:12:13.280 --> 0:12:15.680 in everybody's life in the modern world, which brings us 0:12:15.720 --> 0:12:18.679 back to the rational ignorance you're talking about. As I've 0:12:18.720 --> 0:12:24.240 said many times, it is an impossibility for a voter 0:12:24.880 --> 0:12:27.839 or hell, even a legislator to have anything near a 0:12:27.960 --> 0:12:30.480 thorough enough knowledge of what the government is doing to 0:12:30.600 --> 0:12:35.240 be a responsible voter or responsible representative, which which is 0:12:35.280 --> 0:12:38.560 just that's a deal breaker. If you have a government 0:12:38.600 --> 0:12:43.240 too large and complex to comprehend much less control, then 0:12:43.360 --> 0:12:46.920 you've done something terribly wrong. Yeah. I think The Atlantic 0:12:47.040 --> 0:12:49.880 ran an article some months ago about talking about how 0:12:50.160 --> 0:12:53.080 the presidency was just too big a job for for 0:12:53.120 --> 0:12:55.880 people across the board, And that's absolutely true, and it's 0:12:55.880 --> 0:12:57.760 not true just in the era of Trump. It was 0:12:57.800 --> 0:12:59.920 true of Obama, I was true of Clinton, industry, of Bush. 0:13:00.120 --> 0:13:04.920 No no individual could possibly understand even a fraction of 0:13:05.080 --> 0:13:07.520 what the president is required to do, so of course 0:13:07.600 --> 0:13:11.480 the president can't possibly get it right. No nobody could 0:13:11.559 --> 0:13:14.200 possibly handle that kind of information. Is just too much 0:13:14.240 --> 0:13:17.439 work for any one person to do, or or a 0:13:17.440 --> 0:13:19.360 group of people like you said, Congress doesn't read a 0:13:19.360 --> 0:13:22.160 lot of the bills because nobody could read all those bills. 0:13:22.200 --> 0:13:24.880 So what happens is that the intellectual leadership kind of 0:13:25.000 --> 0:13:27.920 devolves into the hands of think tank people like me, 0:13:28.800 --> 0:13:32.200 or into the hands of staff members, especially in a 0:13:32.280 --> 0:13:34.600 state like California with the with term limits and things. 0:13:34.640 --> 0:13:37.640 You often find that the staffers stay around, they become 0:13:37.679 --> 0:13:40.360 the permanent political class. And then it's a matter of 0:13:41.240 --> 0:13:44.080 of this, you know, these ideas that float around the 0:13:44.160 --> 0:13:46.520 capital for a decade or two, until all of a 0:13:46.520 --> 0:13:49.320 sudden there comes a need. Oh, hey, let's we need 0:13:49.360 --> 0:13:50.880 to do a bill on such and such. What what 0:13:50.920 --> 0:13:53.000 have we gotten a drawer? You know, Well, they've gotten 0:13:53.000 --> 0:13:55.520 a drawer what's been floating around for ten years? And 0:13:55.520 --> 0:13:57.959 that's what it gets past. That's exactly what happened with Obamacare, 0:13:58.280 --> 0:14:00.800 when when a ballcare came about. All these notions have 0:14:00.880 --> 0:14:03.360 been floating around Washington, d c. For decades or so, 0:14:03.720 --> 0:14:05.679 and they all just stuffed it into a bill and 0:14:05.720 --> 0:14:08.120 there you go. And so you get this horrible, crazy 0:14:08.200 --> 0:14:11.320 quilt of a bill that nobody still understands what it does. 0:14:11.400 --> 0:14:14.720 You know. So let's circle back to something you said 0:14:14.800 --> 0:14:17.840 that we're talking about Hamilton's earlier and they get rich 0:14:17.960 --> 0:14:23.640 quick view of America, the American dream. How does that 0:14:23.760 --> 0:14:27.000 intersect with the desire for big government. I don't get it, 0:14:27.080 --> 0:14:30.920 he says, feigning ignorance. Yeah, well, a lot of people 0:14:31.200 --> 0:14:33.920 expect to get rich quick off of the government um 0:14:34.200 --> 0:14:36.560 or at a minimum that they can use the government 0:14:36.600 --> 0:14:39.000 to keep other from other people from getting rich quick. 0:14:39.440 --> 0:14:42.120 And it's the government is a great tool for for 0:14:42.360 --> 0:14:46.840 ruining your competition and getting what you want right, stifling 0:14:46.880 --> 0:14:51.239 competition by both through licensing laws or other kinds of restrictions. 0:14:51.240 --> 0:14:52.720 And you know we by the way, we often talk 0:14:52.760 --> 0:14:54.880 about this in economic terms, but it's also true in 0:14:54.920 --> 0:14:59.560 social terms. The government doesn't just prevent competition in economics, 0:14:59.560 --> 0:15:03.320 it also events competition in ideas. So religious groups will 0:15:03.360 --> 0:15:06.760 often try and use the government to restrict their opponents 0:15:06.800 --> 0:15:09.240 in exactly the same way that businesses try to use 0:15:09.240 --> 0:15:13.080 the government to restrict their their competitors. Licensing laws, for 0:15:13.080 --> 0:15:15.600 for for starting a moving company, are a good example 0:15:15.640 --> 0:15:19.480 of how existing moving companies use the licensing requirements to 0:15:19.520 --> 0:15:22.320 prevent economic competition. A lot of the time, you see 0:15:22.320 --> 0:15:25.440 the same kind of competition between religious groups as as 0:15:25.480 --> 0:15:28.240 opposed to economic groups. So, for instance, every few years, 0:15:28.280 --> 0:15:32.040 Texas goes through a meeting where they adopt textbooks, and 0:15:32.120 --> 0:15:35.560 because they're the single largest market for textbooks, that matters 0:15:35.600 --> 0:15:37.600 a lot, so a lot of religious groups will rally 0:15:37.640 --> 0:15:40.280 around that meeting to try and get the textbooks they 0:15:40.320 --> 0:15:43.200 like adopted because they know that that will set the 0:15:43.240 --> 0:15:46.960 trend nationwide. And it's exactly the same phenomenon. And James 0:15:47.000 --> 0:15:50.120 Madison understood this when he wrote the Constitution. He used 0:15:50.160 --> 0:15:54.360 that example, used the competition among religious groups as his 0:15:54.480 --> 0:15:58.160 explanation for why you need limited government, because that kind 0:15:58.200 --> 0:16:01.200 of competition will cancel itself out if you have the 0:16:01.280 --> 0:16:04.280 right checks and balances in place so that no one 0:16:04.520 --> 0:16:08.400 church can take over the power of government and stifle 0:16:08.520 --> 0:16:11.840 religious freedom of religion and so forth. And the seam 0:16:11.960 --> 0:16:14.760 is true of government, I mean of economics. If if 0:16:14.800 --> 0:16:17.320 you have these competing interest groups, as long as the 0:16:17.360 --> 0:16:20.280 government's power is limited, it doesn't really matter whether they 0:16:20.320 --> 0:16:21.960 hate each other or whatever, because they're not going to 0:16:22.040 --> 0:16:24.960 harm the rest of us by creating a monopoly. And 0:16:25.040 --> 0:16:27.480 so that's why I often say that my goal is 0:16:27.600 --> 0:16:31.200 the separation of economics and politics in exactly the same 0:16:31.240 --> 0:16:33.960 way as the separation of church and state. How far 0:16:34.000 --> 0:16:37.960 away are we from that goal? About a billion light years, 0:16:40.400 --> 0:16:43.400 you know, probably worth mentioning. It's specifically one of my 0:16:43.440 --> 0:16:45.480 favorite books of yours, The Right to Earn a Living, 0:16:46.040 --> 0:16:49.240 which is just it's such an eye opener about how 0:16:49.760 --> 0:16:53.080 government is used in regulation is used not to keep 0:16:53.160 --> 0:16:58.440 us all safe and make things fair, but precisely the opposite. Yeah. Yeah. 0:16:58.440 --> 0:17:01.680 The founding father is called the problem of faction. A 0:17:01.840 --> 0:17:05.280 faction is a group within society, which can even include 0:17:05.320 --> 0:17:08.360 an entire majority of the society, that wants to use 0:17:08.400 --> 0:17:11.320 the government for its own private purposes instead of for 0:17:11.359 --> 0:17:13.920 the public welfare. And the fact is that there really 0:17:13.960 --> 0:17:16.080 is only one thing in the world that is genuinely 0:17:16.160 --> 0:17:18.679 in the public welfare, and that is the protection of 0:17:18.720 --> 0:17:23.000 individual rights. Everything else you can think of favors one 0:17:23.080 --> 0:17:26.560 group at the expense of another, whether it be public schools. 0:17:26.640 --> 0:17:29.600 Public schools favor those who have children against those who 0:17:29.600 --> 0:17:31.320 don't have children. I don't have kids, but I have 0:17:31.359 --> 0:17:33.359 to pay to support the public schools, And there's always 0:17:33.359 --> 0:17:35.960 some excuse given, Oh, well, you benefit from the fact 0:17:35.960 --> 0:17:39.040 that there's an educated populace. Ha ha ha. Yeah right. 0:17:39.600 --> 0:17:42.120 It's the parents who benefit from the public schools because 0:17:42.160 --> 0:17:45.520 they don't have to provide for the education entirely by themselves, 0:17:45.520 --> 0:17:48.760 because they're subsidized out of my tax at my tax dollars. 0:17:48.800 --> 0:17:51.439 So everything else that you can think of is like that. 0:17:51.520 --> 0:17:54.439 It benefits some people at the expensive others except for 0:17:54.840 --> 0:17:58.359 the protection of individual rights. And so the more you 0:17:58.400 --> 0:18:00.919 get to a government that does nothing more than protect 0:18:00.960 --> 0:18:04.680 individual rights, the better off. Society in general is as 0:18:04.680 --> 0:18:08.760 opposed to one faction over another using political power for 0:18:08.800 --> 0:18:11.720 their own best interests. A tangent since you brought up 0:18:11.760 --> 0:18:14.359 the idea of getting rich quick the recent Supreme Court 0:18:14.440 --> 0:18:17.199 ruling on gambling, so there are a lot of states 0:18:17.200 --> 0:18:19.000 that are either going to get into the lottery thing 0:18:19.080 --> 0:18:22.400 now or increase it or opening up more um gambling, 0:18:22.480 --> 0:18:26.000 to sports betting, to to to make money off of it, 0:18:26.040 --> 0:18:28.320 and only the governments will really be allowed to do 0:18:28.400 --> 0:18:32.640 it large scale. So so you've got taxpayer money being 0:18:32.720 --> 0:18:36.600 spent to advertise to people to that they're gonna get 0:18:36.680 --> 0:18:38.879 rich quick, I guess, so that they can bring in 0:18:38.920 --> 0:18:41.520 more money to the state government and then wasted. How 0:18:41.560 --> 0:18:43.800 do you feel about that? Yeah, you know, it's it's 0:18:43.800 --> 0:18:46.199 funny because of course, as a libertarian, I believe that 0:18:46.280 --> 0:18:48.760 if you want to gamble, it's every bit, it's your right. 0:18:48.840 --> 0:18:51.960 The government has no business getting involved. But you know, 0:18:52.240 --> 0:18:56.000 gambling is a is not exactly a healthy occupation, and 0:18:56.119 --> 0:19:00.959 it does encourage social morais and habits that are inimical 0:19:01.080 --> 0:19:06.240 to a good society, and it should be. I don't know, 0:19:06.280 --> 0:19:09.240 it is worrisome that the government is in the business 0:19:09.320 --> 0:19:13.640 of fostering these kinds of activities. If you think about it, though, 0:19:13.720 --> 0:19:16.440 it's funny because government has always been doing that. Government 0:19:16.440 --> 0:19:21.399 has been subsidized by um taxes on liquor forever, and 0:19:21.440 --> 0:19:24.240 there are states where the government owns all of the 0:19:24.280 --> 0:19:27.879 liquor stores. Liquors is a monopoly run by the government, 0:19:28.280 --> 0:19:31.160 and government taxes on cigarettes and things. You know, these 0:19:31.160 --> 0:19:35.040 syntaxes have always been a very important part of government's income, 0:19:35.640 --> 0:19:37.800 precisely because it knows that. You know, they're kind of 0:19:37.800 --> 0:19:39.680 addictive and it's hard not to do them, so they're 0:19:39.800 --> 0:19:45.960 a healthy stream. When prohibition went into place, prohibition was 0:19:46.000 --> 0:19:48.720 only made possible by the passage of the Income Tax Amendment, 0:19:48.720 --> 0:19:52.080 because the federal government was supported so much by alcohol 0:19:52.160 --> 0:19:55.120 taxes that the only way that you could prohibit alcohol 0:19:55.240 --> 0:19:57.159 was to come up with an alternative income stream for 0:19:57.200 --> 0:19:59.560 the government. And that was why the income tax was 0:19:59.600 --> 0:20:02.760 such a an important part of the progressive platform. I 0:20:02.800 --> 0:20:04.560 was happy to hear you say that that you're troubled 0:20:04.600 --> 0:20:07.440 as a libertarian, you know, because I'm the same way. 0:20:07.760 --> 0:20:10.240 I'm libertarian most things, but on this one. The idea 0:20:10.280 --> 0:20:14.680 of the government with the billboards of happy, smiling people 0:20:14.720 --> 0:20:18.400 winning money, which is a lie. Almost nobody, nobody, You're 0:20:18.440 --> 0:20:21.120 not gonna win, you know, long term, your math, you're 0:20:21.119 --> 0:20:23.480 gonna lose. But they're so they're lying to people to 0:20:23.480 --> 0:20:25.440 try to get them to spend money on something that's 0:20:25.440 --> 0:20:28.600 a bad habit, to try to fill state coffers, which 0:20:28.640 --> 0:20:30.840