← The Comedy Cellar: Live from the Table
Loading summary
Transcript244 lines
- [00:00]
A
Welcome to Live from the Table, the official podcast, the world famous comedy seller. I'm Periel, the producer of the show. I'm here with Noam Dwarman, the owner of the Comedy Cellar. And we have a very special guest, recurring guest, Nick Gillespie, editor at large at Reason, the libertarian magazine of free minds and free markets.
- [00:23]
B
I like being recurring. It's. I feel like herpes.
- [00:26]
C
We.
- [00:27]
A
Well, we like you a little bit more than we like herpes.
- [00:30]
B
Well, you know, we all have herpes. This is dormant, like if you had chickenpox or something.
- [00:35]
A
Right.
- [00:36]
B
The herpes virus, zoster and unprotected sex.
- [00:39]
A
Of course, but never. I've never. And he is also the host of the Reason interview with Nick Gillespie.
- [00:47]
B
Thank you.
- [00:48]
A
Welcome to our show.
- [00:49]
B
I will, if I can just start off out of the gate, plugging my own show. I just released a great episode, comes out on Wednesday. So whenever this comes out. But with the novelists Lee Stein and Julius Taranto talking about whether or not we can do satire anymore in America, not because we're not allowed to, but because things are just so fucking crazy, you know, like, if there's truth is stranger than satire. Yeah. And there's a famous essay by Philip Roth in commentary in 1961 where he's like, you know, he was talking about, like, Charles Van Doren, the Columbia professor who cheated on the game show 21 that got made into the movie quiz show stuff. And he's like, you know, you just can't keep up with this kind of crazy reality. And it's like, Philip Roth. You had no idea what America was going to look like 60 years later.
- [01:42]
C
Periel is blushing because she almost slept with Philip Roth.
- [01:45]
B
Oh, really? What happened?
- [01:47]
A
It's a long story. You can read about it. I don't want to take up the episode, but it's a chapter in my last book. Oh, really?
- [01:52]
B
Okay. That's great. You know the woman who wrote asymmetry got like, a National Book Award out of sleeping with Philip Roth.
- [02:01]
A
Well, I was trying to get a National Book Award by sleeping with him, but it didn't quite work out that way.
- [02:07]
B
How could you not? It's when he found out you were Jewish, he's like, okay.
- [02:13]
C
He had no idea she was Jewish.
- [02:15]
B
He went back to pounding liver.
- [02:17]
C
I think it was actually when she started talking.
- [02:19]
A
That's not true. Some people actually enjoy. Enjoy my company to talk to me.
- [02:26]
C
So when you sat down, you told me we were just, like, chatting about the local New York elections.
- [02:32]
B
Yeah.
- [02:32]
C
Anthony Weiner is running to Be. Yeah, my local city council.
- [02:37]
B
It's not yours. Is it the East Village or the District?
- [02:40]
C
Runs all the way here.
- [02:41]
B
Yeah, I was on Mike Pesco's podcast with him, and I hate to sound like we're in the old Tonight show or something, some crappy Hollywood circle jerk, but. Yeah, Wiener. You know what? I think Weiner is pretty sociopathic, which is not necessarily bad in a politician, but when I was on, like, the first thing he did out of the gate is like, you knucklehead. Like, he was, you know, negging me and Anthony Weiner is a kind of pure, you know, gain of function version of a New Yorker where even if you agree with him, he just has to attack you. And, you know, he gain a function for New York. He's a horrible, you know, has a horrible personal matter manner, and I think he's probably won his last election.
- [03:27]
A
Did you think that before you met him in person?
- [03:30]
B
You know what? I had followed him on TV back when he was a congressman and, you know, all the Breitbart stuff and all of that stuff was coming out, and I had always. He had always struck me on gab shows and I think he would go on Fox as well as like CNN or msnbc. And what I liked about him is that he was willing to argue with people, which is good. You know, and he has a definite point of view. And he's not. He's not a super identity politics progressive.
- [03:58]
C
No, he's not.
- [03:58]
B
Which is good. But he is a noxious kind of human being, I think. And he raises a lot of interesting question in the context of the show we were talking. He brought up the fact that in the New York mayor's race, you know, there's at least three of the candidates, Scott Stringer, Eric Adams and Andrew Cuomo, all have, you know, either have sexual assault charges or impropriety charges against them that were, either, you know, taken seriously or not. And he pointed out, which is a kind of clever move, you know, that he did. Paid his time, literally, you know, he.
- [04:35]
C
Did hard time, by the way. Yeah, so. So just, you know, I. I've met Anthony Weiner. I didn't know him until, I don't know, six months ago. He.
- [04:42]
B
When you picked up your daughter's cell phone.
- [04:46]
A
No, no, no, no.
- [04:50]
C
When he, when he contacted me because he's running for office here, and I. And I met with him and I. And I rather liked him, you know, I mean, this kind of pugnacious personality that you. That you're describing, I enjoyed that.
- [05:02]
B
You know, I like, somewhere after this event, he's like the burp that you have after eating a dishwater dog on the sidewalk.
- [05:11]
C
Oh, my God, you're harsh.
- [05:12]
B
No, well, I mean, that's just who he is, and he doesn't hold up. You know what's interesting, because I would love to talk about the New York City mayor's race a little bit, but in New York, ideology should be less important the more local the race. Right. And one of the things that's frustrating about somebody like Weiner who recognizes that the Democrats, you know, have fallen out of favor, and that may only be for a couple more months, really, until the midterms. And, you know, the Republicans nationally are doing everything they can to absolutely lose whatever advantages they have. But, you know, when, you know, he'll be like, yeah, we have to fix things, we have to change things. And then it's like, okay, well, you know, what should we do about Social Security? Absolutely nothing. Medicare? Nothing. You know, everything is. We shouldn't do anything other than tax rich people more and give more stuff to more people. And to me, that is unbelievably frustrating to be in those conversations where we went from in 2019 at the federal level spending $4.4 trillion to now we're going to spend $7.2 trillion this year under a conservative Republican who's doging the government and stuff like that. And there's just something fucked up if you can't figure out how do you get back close, if not below $4.4 trillion, which at the time was a record amount of money that was being spe.
- [06:33]
C
So let me just say, you know, it's not my place to tell a guest what they, you know, shouldn't say about even people that I have friendships with. I'm not a good friend of Anthony Weiner, but we know each other. And, you know, the things that he got in trouble for are quite serious. And I told him that on. On the show here, and, you know, I've had to process that. But he did his time. He did hard time, not minimum security time. He did two years. And then. And then afterwards, work like a. A job that was only for like, ex cons. And he spoke. Been very forthright about it. And I do. One part of me says, yes, people have done their time. That should be the end of it. Another part of me can't be dishonest. And we know that certain crimes which are based on kind of a personal pathologies are not just, you know, they. They can recur. But he said He's. He goes for regular counseling. And he called himself an addict. And, you know, to the extent that however you'd want somebody like him to behave, I think he's doing that. And so I, I agree with that.
- [07:40]
B
And, you know, he spoke on this show about, you know, being in recovery and whatnot, and he seems to take it seriously.
- [07:47]
C
Yeah, he does take it seriously, you.
- [07:48]
B
Know, and by the way, you know, one thing you were talking about, like, you know, we assume that sex crimes are categorically different than other crimes. There is actually very little criminological or sociological data that actually backs that up. It's considered true. But people like Thomas Szasz, the great psychiatrist who was a critic of psychiatry and the medicalization of everyday life. He was a longtime contributing editor to Reason, wrote a lot about that, as did others. And it turns out that that's actually not true, which should be a relief to people. And, you know, none of this means you don't prosecute sex crimes, you know, you know, rapidly and effectively and all of that. But, you know, if he's in, if he's taking, you know, recovery seriously and all of that, there's no reason to worry about him with that. I mean, the harder questions come, like, what do you, what do you do in New York City? What are, you know, what are the pressing issues and how do you fix them? Because we have an insane amount of, you know, of political gridlock in this city, you know, that I call home, that I was born in and then I lived and worked in and then moved away from and came back to. And it's frustrating. And when you look at the mayor's race.
- [08:59]
C
Yeah.
- [08:59]
B
You know, it's just kind of like, holy cow, this is, you know, this is not good.
- [09:03]
C
So Wiener, you know, comes across, it's like in this atmosphere, he comes across as a right of center New York candidate and, you know, as a business owner. I want to support the most right wing local candidate that there is who might.
- [09:24]
B
When you say right wing, you mean somebody who's pro business or is that.
- [09:27]
C
Someone who's pro business? Yeah.
- [09:28]
A
Not the most right wing.
- [09:31]
C
Well, not. Maybe not most right wing on a national election, but I'm talking in terms of what's realistic in a New York City election to be in the running. He is the most right wing guy we're going to get.
- [09:41]
B
Is he going to win? Does he.
- [09:44]
C
I don't think there's any really credible polling, but he's out there apparently every day shaking hands. Whatever it is people are forgiving yeah, I've, I've spoken to people and like, I spoke to, like, Tiana over here and just people, waitresses who work for me, stuff like that. And they were like, yeah, yeah, I could vote for a guy even though they knew what happened, which was interesting to me.
- [10:04]
B
Yeah.
- [10:05]
C
And so maybe he will win. Name recognition in a local election is very, very important. And, and he is a winning. People like him, they, you know, they do.
- [10:14]
B
Yeah, I'm not sure of that.
- [10:15]
C
You know, Nick does well, you know.
- [10:17]
B
You know why? Because that, that kind of in your face, like, you know, right out of the box, he's like, you know, somebody's electrocuting him and he's in your face. I don't know if people like that. I mean, I don't like it particularly, and I think I have a thicker skin than a lot of people. But, you know, ultimately what it comes down to is like, okay, what are you going to do about the rats and the garbage? And how are you going to make it easier for more. This gets complicated very quickly, especially in a place that's like the, you know, the west, the, you know, Greenwich Village or East Village or whatever. When you say, how do we make it easier for people to live here? How do we make rents cheaper? And then people are like, pissed off because I don't want anybody else living here. You know, it's. I just came back from a trip to Austin, Texas, where Reason magazine, you know, where I work, had an annual donor event. We have them in different cities every year. And this time it was in Austin. And before that, with a couple of colleagues, we were doing a documentary about how Austin has had massive growth, you know, really, over the past 50 years. But since COVID like a lot of people, when the lockdown started, they moved to Austin. Rents went up. And then, miracle of miracles, the city council and Texas at the state level, and there's county, you know, government, they all were like, okay, we're going to make it easier for developers to build housing. And rents now are lower than they were at, you know, right after Covid, when people started pouring into the city and it was amazing. Like, you can imagine this. It's like New Yorkers when you go to people in a city and you're saying, like, you know, the, you know, what's the secret here? Rents are going down. And it's like, well, you know, Nick, it's like this. And this is left wingers and right wingers and libertarians and, you know, left wing anarchists, you know, and homeless people, you Know, everybody there seems to be on amphetamines. The homeless people are really, you know, in New York. Yeah, they're kind of low key in fentanyl and in Texas, they are just really, you know, on a lot of uppers. But every one of them just said, nick, you know, here's, you know, this, sit down. Because this is kind of complicated. But it's like if more, if there's more demand for housing and then you build more housing, the prices go down. And I was like, wow, that is, you know, it is amazing that like no other city, seriously, like no other big city has thought of that.
- [12:37]
C
So what do you, what do you make of this whole new Ezra Klein movement to, to that, like, it's like they discovered.
- [12:45]
B
Yeah.
- [12:46]
C
The most elementary rules.
- [12:48]
B
Yeah, well, it is, you know, part of me is like, you know, I love this stuff and I loved it, you know, even more when I read it in reason 50 years ago or 25 years ago or 20 years ago, but more, you know, just, you know, without any reservations or anything. I think it is great to see people who identify as progressive saying, you know, what we're talking about here constantly are problems in supply rather than demand. And to say, instead of being like, oh, well, you know, what we gotta do is like, we have to make it so people, you know, people don't want as much healthcare, people don't want as much housing, people don't want as much education because it's too expensive. And instead of focusing on those old things and trying to distribute things through the government, you know, they're saying, okay, we need to think about supply. How do you maximize. And maximize supply of everything? I think that's great. You know, I, so I like, you know, that they're focused on this and that they're talking about this. Uncomfortable. Their solutions tend to be too top down for me and technocratic. It's just that the government is going to be very involved with saying, okay, you can build this, but not this. And you know, these people get first crack. It's just things like that. I mean, we need to become Promethean again. I think, you know, we need to be stealing fire from the gods and within politics and outside of politics. Like, we just need to become less governable and let things go. I mean, in Austin.
- [14:21]
C
I agree with you. I just said that to Corinne in the last hour. I said it used to be the Wild west and it was good.
- [14:25]
B
Yeah, I mean, and it's, you know, rules.
- [14:27]
C
I didn't say Promethean, but it was.
- [14:29]
B
Same like, okay, no, actually, Wild west is better, right? Like, who am I trying to impress? And, yeah, you know, we need. One of the things that's fascinating in Austin is that, you know, there's the city of Austin, and then it's within Travis county, and there's a bunch of other counties around there. But in most of these places, in unincorporated areas, you can basically do whatever you want. And so, like, there's a big chunk of land and a developer can go. And as long as they get certain basic permits and they build the infrastructure, you know, the roads going in and out and the sewers and the water and all of that, like, they can do what they want. And, God, that's, like, kind of amazing. And in Texas, I've been thinking about this a lot, because I lived in Texas in the 90s. I lived in the prison town in Texas, Huntsville, where the death chamber is. And it was, you know, weird.
- [15:20]
C
Gary Gilmore was.
- [15:21]
B
No, no, he was out in Utah.
- [15:22]
C
Utah, right.
- [15:23]
B
Yeah. He might have killed people in Texas. He was a very good driver. And he liked. I loved those, you know, those kind of serial killers who read on the Road because, like, Ted Bundy, you know, he was in, like, Florida and Washington State. It's like, you know, they really put a lot of miles on. But in Texas, unlike places like California, where I've lived, in Florida, where I've visited a few fair amount, and I guess Florida is a different story. Or New York, where I live, like, in Texas, they're like, you know what? We got a lot of land, and, like, the buildings can never reach up to blot out the sun. So it's like, let's just start building more, bigger, higher, taller. And that's kind of exciting. I mean, you know, I'm a second generation born in America, or third generation, second generation, whatever that is. And, like, the whole reason, you know, I kept hearing about why people came here was because you could build stuff that you couldn't do in, like, old Europe, you know, and in New York, I mean, you know, the way my parents talked about New York in the, you know, 30s, 40s, 50s especially, you could really, you know, take big swings and, like, build stuff out and just do what you wanted. And if you couldn't do it in New York, then you would go west and do it. And, you know, California is an unbelievable state where it's like, you can't really do anything. I was just reading a story today, you know, the Pacific Palisades fire and the mayor, Karen Bass, who is ridiculous, and Gavin Newsom you know, they both were like, okay, you know what we're going to do now that this whole part of Southern California burned down? We're going to suspend all of the normal bullshit that we require. Since then, they've only approved four permits in Pacific Palisades for houses. And it's like, okay, well, you're done. People are going to move to Texas, where in the time, you know, they leave LA and drive to Austin, like there'll be a complex, you know, that has like 50 apartment, you know, apartments in it or something.
- [17:25]
C
Yeah, it's it. They, I mean, they talk about reforming things and there is part of this, it is when Elon Musk has that chainsaw.
- [17:32]
B
Yeah, yeah.
- [17:33]
C
I'm not a fan at all. I know you're not either. And I wanna talk about how the Trump administration has been behaving itself.
- [17:40]
B
Yeah.
- [17:41]
C
But, yeah, the chainsaw is not a bad metaphor. It's not a bad image for what needs to be done.
- [17:48]
B
Yeah. And he kind of got that from Javier Milei, the Argentine president, who you're a fan of. Yeah, yeah, I like a lot so far. I mean, I don't, you know, I have to admit, I don't fully understand the intricacies of Argentine politics. You don't know. I know I've been faking it all these years, but, you know, he came around with a chainsaw and, you know, and I think in the past, people like Rand Paul might have shot. Did he use a chainsaw or like a wood chipper? I don't know. Or he might have shot, you know, like regulations, like a stack of regulations, things like that. But yeah, I mean, part of it is you can spend your whole life trying to fix things in the place you are, or you can like, light out for the territory and build on a kind of blank landscape. And I don't know, do you think.
- [18:36]
C
That Ezra Klein and all these Democrats and liberals who have found the new religion, do you think that would have happened if Trump hadn't won?
- [18:44]
B
Yeah, I do, in this sense that Klein and his co author, Derek Thompson of the Atlantic, had been working on this kind of material along with somebody like Matt Iglesias, who I believe actually grew up in the Village, but they've been working towards these ideas for a while, so that's good. And I mean, to me, in a lot of ways, I mean, I'm a hardcore libertarian. Reasons we're the magazine of free minds and free markets. We like civil liberties and economic liberties and think they're all together. They're all part of the same thing. And so we like the idea of just, if you can dream it, you can do it, as long as you're not, you know, objectively hurting somebody else or stealing from them, you know, within very large parameters. And I think it's good to see people that identify as being either liberal or leftist starting to come to those conclusions. You know, the guy who is now the president of the Nation, you know, one of the oldest magazines in the country and a very left wing magazine, Bhaskar Sankara, he founded Jacobin, a socialist magazine. And he's, you know, he's an ideological character, but he even calls himself a market socialist. So, you know, what he wants is a society that is fairer and more kind of egalitarian. But even he will say, you know, in a lot of most cases, the way you get there is through markets and making sure people can participate in them.
- [20:17]
C
So tell, tell our, since it's related to this, tell our audience who doesn't understand it because it is complicated. Why are tariffs such a bad idea? Yeah, I'm presuming you think they're a bad idea.
- [20:29]
B
Yeah, I do.
- [20:30]
C
The worst.
- [20:30]
B
Yeah, I don't know if they're the worst, but no redeeming.
- [20:36]
C
No redeeming.
- [20:36]
B
Yeah, that's a great way to put it. There's really no social or cultural or scientific redeeming value. What are this, the. For porn where it's like the, the test for porn if, you know, has. No, no, it has like no artistic or social.
- [20:54]
C
Yeah, yeah. Cultural prurient interest.
- [20:57]
B
Yeah. I mean, tariffs. The, the thing to understand about tariffs is that they are a tax that is, you know, that is not levied on the producer, the exporter, you know, the guy in China who's sending stuff here. It is a tax that is levied on the importer of that which then ends up being passed on to the consumer. So it raises our prices.
- [21:22]
C
Now let me just stop you there because now does 100% of that price get passed along or does the guy in China lower his prices?
- [21:32]
B
Sometimes it all varies, right? And it varies on a lot of things, but it's definitely an increase. And you know, because somebody's got to eat that somewhere and it might be, you know, sometimes the guy in China will, you know, will come up with a better way to produce stuff so he can, you know, he's got a fatter profit margin that the tariff eats into because he's got to lower his price to get it in. So it, it costs less in America. Sometimes it's the, the importer will eat, eat some of the costs, but ultimately it ends up, you know, it ends up increasing prices and those are mostly borne by the consumer.
- [22:08]
C
I mean, you could imagine.
- [22:09]
B
Yeah, okay. And then I was, you know, I was just going to say that has the effect, you know, the, the intended effect is that if tariffs are high enough and people know they're high enough and they're going to be around for a while, then the argument is that, well, we'll start producing these things that we were going to import because it's cheaper. That is not nearly often the case. And it's also partly because tariffs people figure out ways to get around them or they substitute products and goods and things like that. And one of the other bad things. And then I'm sorry for cutting you off. One of the other bad things that happens is if you're in a protectionist marketplace as a producer, you tend not to be as competitive because you know that the government or that nobody can compete with you, so you have less competition. The classic case of this was the.
- [23:08]
C
The auto industry in the 70s.
- [23:10]
B
Yeah, I was going to say the big three or big two and a half auto manufacturers where there were heavy tariffs on imported cars, both high end and low end. And you know, this stuff never really affects the high end because people who are buying high end products can pay more if they want. But it wasn't simply that the US Auto, you know, auto companies were caught by surprise when tariffs started to decline, but it was also that they had like baked into their production processes and their design processes and their labor contracts just so much inefficiency because they didn't have to work that hard for sales.
- [23:49]
C
Yeah. I remember my father, when he first got a Toyota, it was a revelation to him. He was like, I can't believe it. Like, if this is an American car, the window thing, the window regulator would be falling off by now and the armrest would be falling off. And he says, look, the door is closed properly. He couldn't believe that you could make a car like this. And then sure enough, the American cars got much, much better.
- [24:10]
B
Oh yeah, yeah. And also, you know, the other thing is worth thinking about is like, what is an American car? Because a lot of it, you know, part of it is built overseas or in Canada or Mexico.
- [24:21]
C
But here's my question. I could imagine that the Delta, as they say, you know, between producing an identical product in China and America, where wages are so much lower tax, everything is just cheaper, cheaper. It could be profoundly different. It could be, it could cost them 30% of what it costs an American company to make.
- [24:46]
B
But think about, like, with avocados in Mexico, you know, they're so cheap, it's cheaper to, like, import avocados from Mexico and ship them to New York than to, you know, grow them in Florida or California.
- [24:59]
C
So wait, wait, wait. So it's. So it's much, much cheaper in China. And then I don't really know if China has a free market such that there's competition between two companies in China making that item. So then they can raise the price, you know, just a little bit below what the American guy can make it at. And we have our units and all like that. And then they make a killing. The Chinese company makes a killing. Actually, it's not all passed on. Some small or some percentage is passed on to the American consumer, but a huge part of it is going in the pocket of a Chinese businessman. And I think I know the answer to this, but I'm asking. It's also because this is how people are trying to understand his question. And what is wrong with us saying, well, you know what? We're gonna take a chunk of that money.
- [25:44]
B
Who's we?
- [25:45]
C
The American government. We're gonna get revenue from that.
- [25:47]
B
Yeah. And then what are they gonna do with that revenue? I mean, so it, you know, if you're a consumer. I don't, I don't service the deficit. Yeah. You know, with that, they're increasing because they're, you know, we're spending $7.2 trillion instead of 4.4 trillion or $2 trillion or whatever.
- [26:02]
C
But is there something to that?
- [26:04]
B
I mean, the idea is that you will raise, you know, and I, I'm trying to remember now what the estimates are on this round of, you know, of goods, like, say it's, you know, you know, hundreds of billions of dollars a year. That one, it may not end up being that much. Oftentimes these things are over. The estimates are overly generous. Every time somebody says, I'm raising a tax or I'm cutting a tax, it's going to, you know, they always oversell it for whatever reason. But then, you know, the idea that the US Government knows better what to do with money that they take from American consumers, I agree with you on that. That's tough. And the idea was we're going to use tariffs to pay for the tax cuts, the extension of the Trump and Republican tax cuts that got passed in 2017 or 18. And, you know, that remains to be seen because, like, you just, just don't. You could Tariff, everything. And you're not going to get enough money to make up for the costs of those other tax cuts. And I like tax cuts. I think we, you know, I think we pay too much in taxes and we spend too much, but I also think that we need to pay for the government that we're actually having. And this is one of the things that happened, you know, really, it started in a modern form under George W. Bush, who inherited a balanced budget, you know, and it was a balanced budget that had been balanced by Bill Clinton and a Republican Congress, and then they blew out everything by just borrowing wildly. That continued under Obama. It continued under Trump 1.0. It contributed, you know, it continued under Bush or Biden, rather, and it's probably going to continue under Trump, you know, in a second term. So it's not like we're taking any of this new revenue and actually using it to retire the debt or to cut, you know, really cut taxes in a way that is sustainable.
- [28:05]
C
Have you thought about if you were emperor.
- [28:08]
B
Yeah.
- [28:08]
C
And you could reshape the budget as you wish and without causing any more hardship than you wish to cause, you know, whatever healthcare you want to give, whatever Social Security want. How much smaller you think you could make the budget?
- [28:25]
B
Yeah. I mean, you know, this is. And this is me kind of already giving up. But. But to say, you know what, maybe we should be able to go back to the 2019 level. That's before COVID Right. So, okay. You know, and we all know, why.
- [28:39]
C
Not 1992 level control for inflation.
- [28:42]
B
Yeah. I'm just saying as. As an easy thing to say, like, you know, it shouldn't be that hard to go from, you know, back to $4.4 trillion as a starting point and then cutting, you know, or stopping growth and have us grow, if we grow the economy, you know, whatever we're spending as government is less for me, the big things and, you know, the big drivers of spending at this point, and something like 75% of the budget. I started writing about federal budget issues in the early 2 2000s, and this is already boring me, so I apologize for this. But it's, you know, she just doesn't understand it. That's why you would talk about. Well, she's thinking about Philip Roth, and I want to get back to that. But, you know, you would always say something like, you know, the federal government has two parts to it. It's called discretionary spending and mandatory spending, each of which takes up about 50% of the budget. That's like what you would say circa 2000, 2002 now. And that means mandatory spending is stuff that doesn't have to get re upped every year. So that's like Social Security and Medicare.
- [29:50]
C
And it's indexed to inflation often.
- [29:52]
B
Yeah, in various ways. But like that is on autopilot. And then discretionary spending is stuff like defense and education, which technically has to get renewed every year. And Congress actually has to fucking do something, which they never do and they didn't this year. But you know, now it's 3/4 mandatory spending and it's, you know, a quarter discretionary spending. So it's like, because Social Security, Medicare in particular, which the old age entitlements, they keep growing even as the amount of money that is taxed to fund them just doesn't keep pace. So for me, that would be like the primary if I'm emperor. And you would have to be emperor because anybody who does this is probably going to get voted out of office pretty quickly. But we have to tackle that. And you know, Noam, you and I are of a certain age where we're nearing, you know, the official retirement ages. And you know, it's wrong for people like us who have the means and the money and the ability to pay for our retirements and to pay for our healthcare to make somebody's grandkids. You know, younger and poorer people pay for that on the idea that, oh, when you retire, you know, in 50 years, it'll be there for you, because it won't be. I mean, it just can't.
- [31:06]
C
Right?
- [31:07]
B
We have too many people retiring with too few contributors and it's a shitty deal. Like Social Security is, you know, it's not just that it picks the pocket of younger workers to pay for older workers. It is a bad kind of guaranteed retirement plan. You would be much better off saving that money and putting it in, you know, a mutual fund and just letting it ride for, you know, 30 years.
- [31:31]
C
That's what Bush wanted to do with it, kind of.
- [31:33]
B
Some of he screwed that up. It's a real shame. I mean, George W. Bush, it's hard to remember how unpopular he was and kind of how bad he was at everything other than blundering into really shitty wars. And it's worth remembering that because he seems kind of like a nice guy now, as does Obama, who also made a lot of really bad mistakes, whereas Trump and Biden and, you know, Hillary Clinton, like, they're more villainous, right? But yeah, Bush, when he won reelection in 2004 by really amping up the idea that we were about to be destroyed by, you know, Islamic terrorism and all of that. He said, I'm going to, you know, I have a lot of political capital and I'm going to use it to fix immigration and Social Security. And he had decent plans for the beginning of that, but he was just not the guy to do it.
- [32:24]
C
Now. What are the odds that, you know, I'm looking at flat screen TVs. I remember when they first came out they were like 10, $12,000. Now they're almost a couple hundred dollars, right?
- [32:34]
B
Yeah, that's probably, it's a Vizio, so you could get that at Walmart. That's probably like 200 bucks. Yeah.
- [32:40]
C
So what are the odds that when all these pressures finally come to the breaking point that technology will so decrease the costs of various things like health care, maybe housing will come down because we build more housing that will have a much softer landing than you would imagine if everything was straight line projections based on what we have.
- [33:02]
B
Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, you know that. I mean I kind of believe in the singularity, you know, the idea that eventually machines and computers will start talking, excuse me, to each other. And you know, and I like AI. I mean I think we have, you.
- [33:18]
C
Know, the replace 20% of the workforce, the federal workforce now with AI by the way.
- [33:22]
B
And I mean of course, you know, none of these things. I mean you, you don't want doctors deciding like, okay, I'm checking the AI and it's said, okay, I'm going to cut off this leg or whatever or I'm going to deport these people. Because in autocomplete, in an autocomplete field, it's like, you know, the name Dwarmin came up like you're Ms. 13, obviously. I can see from, he wears those long sleeves to hide the tattoos.
- [33:48]
C
Ms. 18. Yeah, it's a Jewish joke. Go ahead.
- [33:54]
B
And you know, so I, I don't believe in apocalypse. Like, you know, things are never as bad as they seem. I remember, you know, after 911 and everybody was talking about dirty bombs and it's like I'm like, like somebody could walk into Times Square. I was worried about that with, you know, with a valise as they used to call them and like, like, you know, in a suitcase sized bomb and detonated and then like when you read what people said, okay, this is actually what would happen. You would have to like, if you were exposed to it, go inside, take a shower and keep your blinds closed because the amount of radiation that even a dirty bomb would give off was like, you know, and Take iodine. I mean, it was like, God, this is kind of amazing. And when you look at this century, we've had so many terrible things thrown at us, you know, including, you know, Covid and the financial crisis and 9 11. And it's like we're doing pretty well, actually, in a lot of ways. So I don't believe in apocalypse, but it is true that the, you know, the government is a primary cause of volatility and uncertainty in the economy and in our everyday lives. And, like, it behooves us really to figure out how are we going to address. Address entitlement issues. How are we going to make it easier for people to get housing, whether they're renting or owning? And, you know, how. How do we unleash market forces that have made this, you know, TV super great and cheap? How do we bring that to health care and education and every other thing that we care about?
- [35:23]
C
And, of course, government keeps the prices high through all their.
- [35:25]
B
Yeah, yeah.
- [35:26]
C
So Trump, I, I want to, I want to get your take on.
- [35:30]
B
Do you know what I said about Anthony Weiner? Yeah. As a New Yorker, as a gain of function. New Yorker. So is Donald Trump, right. He is like, he's a cartoon version.
- [35:38]
C
I think he's worse than those of us who were not Trump apocalypse predictors thought he would be, obviously.
- [35:48]
B
Are you moving to Canada?
- [35:49]
C
No, no.
- [35:50]
B
All of the Yale faculty.
- [35:53]
C
No. We really don't know how it's all going to play out. You know, my daughter's in eighth grade, and quite often the intelligence, entire administration, not often always of a previous president, gets reduced down to three or four bullet points that she has to memorize. You know, and it's interesting because you could imagine, you know, there's so many things every day, there's this story, there's that story, there's this guy who's deported by mistake. And you, you don't really. And you wonder, okay, but when it's all said and done and we're 10 years down the line, what will be the bullet points? Because. And will those bullet points make it all worthwhile? Better than the Kamala Harris bullet points would have been or would.
- [36:32]
B
I mean, I think so.
- [36:35]
C
Let'S speculate what those bullet points.
- [36:37]
B
So, you know, Trump, his first term bullet points would have been pretty good.
- [36:41]
C
Very good.
- [36:41]
B
Like where it's like, you know, he brokered the Abraham Accords, he oversaw a growing economy, the Trump court got rid of racial preferences, he supercharged the COVID vaccine production and stuff like that. Yeah. He doesn't Want to admit that, but I don't know. That's a really interesting question.
- [37:02]
C
But that's really the heart of the matter. Otherwise you get caught up in the hysterics of all of it. And they're valid. I mean, the idea that somebody. Now I read into it yesterday for the first time, and I realized, oh, well, this guy actually might have been. It actually looks like this guy was a gang member, but that really doesn't matter.
- [37:19]
B
It does.
- [37:20]
C
It doesn't matter to the principle of government by shit show. And if this guy, if they got lucky enough that this guy actually deserved it, that does not sanitize the procedure as being reckless and a violation of his liberties. Even if he's guilty.
- [37:36]
B
Yeah. I mean, and he did have a valid order where he could not be deported. So people can argue about that. But that's also.
- [37:45]
C
Procedure is everything.
- [37:46]
B
Yeah. And taking a step back, you know, the rhetoric that, oh, we are undergoing a invasion, you know, by Ms. 13 and by Mexicans and by Indians and by people who want to come here and live here, you know, that's wrong. There isn't crime. There isn't a crime wave associated with immigration. The reason we have more illegal immigration than legal immigration at times is because it's impossible to move here legally. I mean, we.
- [38:12]
C
We definitely want to get gang members out. Yeah, if we do it.
- [38:15]
B
Absolutely. And we want the border to be secured, which, you know, Trump and actually Biden in his last six months was doing. You know, this is. This is all to the good. And so I'm not apocalyptic about Trump, but, you know, this is one of the benefits. And maybe this is also one of the limits of being a libertarian. Like, I, you know, every president, it is this mix of things where it's like, you know, George W. Bush was not completely terrible, but he was terrible on civil liberties, he was terrible on foreign policy, he was terrible on spending. You know, things like that. You know, Obama not terrible on everything, but he was worse than Bush in a lot of ways. And, you know, Trump was worse than Obama in a lot of ways, and Biden was worse than Trump. So it's kind of a perpetual cycle. And I don't think one of the things that bugs me is the idea that, you know, we're not supposed to be critical of the president. You know, this drives me nuts.
- [39:14]
C
Or Anthony Weiner.
- [39:15]
B
Yeah, yeah, well, yeah, you know, well, I don't have to vote for Anthony Weiner and I don't have to. I don't have to live under his, you know, Heel.
- [39:24]
C
What about under his boot?
- [39:25]
B
Yeah.
- [39:26]
C
What about even, you know, even on Ukraine, Biden? I'm optimistic that the outcome with Trump will be better than it would have been under Harris, which just seemed to be a policy that was just, you know, floating in the wind. It had no goal.
- [39:44]
B
Right. I mean, I worry, you know, with Trump and foreign policy and this is saying a lot because we're coming off of a quarter century of just terrible foreign policy. And I guess he was involved in some of that. It's not clear. You know, people may remember that during the Bush years, people like, it was a big gotcha question. Like, whenever anybody was on a talk show, they'd always be like, well, do you agree with the Bush Doctrine? And people would be like, yes, I do. And then like, well, what is it? And nobody could define it. Even though he, you know, was, you know, he was like, launching major wars in a way.
- [40:21]
C
Charles Krauthammer term, I think the Bush doctrine.
- [40:23]
B
Yeah. And it was like, it, it wasn't clear. And I can remember reading articles where, like, actually there's three Bush doctrines and all of this type of stuff, but we, you know, it's good to have basic principles that are thought through, that are debated, articulated, and then actually govern how we do things. And, you know, I don't think we had that under Bush. We definitely didn't have it under Obama, who appeared, you know, who didn't run as an anti war candidate, but was perceived as such and did nothing to, you know, change that thinking. And then he was kind of a warmonger when he was in office. And then Trump, it's not clear, you know, what, you know, what is his governing principles. Because there's something sickening when he's telling a country that was invaded, you know, that you are the problem and that, you know, if you don't kiss my ass right now, like, I'm gonna say, you know, go straight ahead, you know, put. And go in having said that, you know, and then his position on Israel is different and it's kind of obscure and, you know, but what, what is Trump's, you know, set of basic coordinates that he uses to determine foreign policy? It's not clear.
- [41:32]
C
Do you find that?
- [41:33]
B
But just to agree with you, I mean, I, you know, it's better, I think it's better than Biden, you know, where whatever Biden was doing, he was spending a lot, but then also telling people you could do this, but not this. And like, he was simultaneously giving a lot of money and micromanaging or being Kind of vacant.
- [41:51]
C
So, yeah, and I mean, bog down it, but obviously there were certain kind of optimism early on in the war that they might just do this and maybe the Prigozhin is going to get rid of Putin or maybe he has pancreatic cancer. So there was reasons. But I don't think anybody thinks that Ukraine is going to expel Russia from the Donbas anymore. And if that's the case, then time may be on Russia's side. Like, they dick around for another two years, Russia might roll into Kiev. And I think we all breathed a sigh of relief to hear Trump actually say out loud that he was pissed off at Vladimir Putin. And so that we hope you try to divine where Trump's coming from. I'm much, much more off put and scared of JD Vance and this post Trump maga, motley crew of nuts. I see them as nuts. People who praise Alex Jones and whatever it is. And you know, Trump's 78 years old. It's not like crazy to think Vance could be president even in this term.
- [42:54]
B
Yeah.
- [42:54]
C
How do you feel about this guy?
- [42:56]
B
You know, you had mentioned earlier on that you don't like Elon Musk, right?
- [43:03]
C
I'm kinder. I have a better opinion of Musk than I do of Vance.
- [43:05]
B
Yeah, well, what I was gonna say that, you know, what's interesting, and I think the Doge project is a good idea and I don't like the way it's being executed. And my colleague Matt Welch has talked about this in other contexts of, you know, when, when something gets going, like you, you don't have the, you don't have the ability to try a bunch of different things to see what works, like in terms of cutting government or whatever, like trial and error. The moment happens and then like, if, you know, your first cut is probably going to be what you get, like your first take. And I think they're doing it wrong in a way that's going to discredit the idea of like cutting government for a long time. And that bothers me a lot. But on another level, you know, within Trump world, Elon Musk does, you know, he. Earlier or I guess late last year and earlier this year, he was talking about being in favor of high wage or high skilled immigration and that he would fight the MAGA people, including J.D. vance on that and Bannon. Yeah. And you know, it worries me because, you know, everybody, there's a flurry of stories and I suspect there's some truth to it that he's gonna be leaving the White House. You Know, or the sphere of influence pretty soon. And if Trump becomes fully just MAGA all the way, and there is no kind of people on, you know, there who are saying, you know what, maybe we need to be more economically mindful. It. Maybe we need to be thinking about immigration and other, you know, pulling back from the strict MAGA world. I think that's very disturbing.
- [44:38]
C
Scares the shit out of me. I mean, by the way, Trump has always been for these H1B visas. This is an, this is a issue that he championed in 2015. I remember hearing him arguing with Bannon about it. And one thing about mix. Yeah, yeah, he doesn't change his positions that easily. You know, like, he, he's so. I think he'll stick by it. But this may is one of the last thing. We'll talk about the new respect that all these conspiracy theorists have in that world that Tucker Carlson and Alex Jones and whoever else, Chris Owens seem to have the President's ear and they have Vance's ear. And then Kash Patel and all these various knucklehead appointees. Matt Gaetz, who didn't.
- [45:26]
B
Yeah, they gotta be pissed.
- [45:28]
C
Now, you might be a fan of Tulsi Gabbard. I don't know, because I know politics.
- [45:33]
B
Yeah. No, you know, but to me, she's.
- [45:35]
C
A flake, even if I agree with her on some things, you know.
- [45:37]
B
Yeah. I mean, it's, it's odd because she, you know, everybody's a critic of the deep state. And then when you start running it, like, you start to find reasons to keep it or to do certain things and all that. But. Yeah, I share your concerns about a lot of this stuff because the conspiracy theory world, and, you know, there's a left wing version of it, but it's not in power right now. It's disturbing because I don't know, you know, I don't know how you engage.
- [46:04]
C
And it mixes with Ukraine because. All right, Trump, you know, seems to want to impose a settlement kind of in a common sense way. You know, where Vance hates Zelensky, he hates him like the guy's done something wrong. The guy never done anything wrong. He was invaded. Right.
- [46:18]
B
Yeah.
- [46:18]
C
And then if you look at his, like, ideological cousins, they clearly hate Vance because he's Jewish.
- [46:25]
B
Zelenskyy.
- [46:26]
C
I mean, Zelenskyy because he's Jewish, they come out and say it.
- [46:29]
B
And then there's the classic trope of where Zelenskyy is Jewish and he's really a Nazi.
- [46:34]
C
Yes.
- [46:34]
B
You know, he's a Bolshevik. They call it that's right.
- [46:38]
C
And Tucker Carlson will, you know, talk about him rat like and sweaty. And then Glenn Greenwald will talk. They'll talk about how our support for Ukraine is really about Israel. So this is all very ominous to me. I kind of trust Trump on this stuff. Why in the world do they hate Zelensky like this? What is. It's psychotic.
- [47:02]
B
Yeah, they hate him. I don't know. I don't.
- [47:05]
C
How could he have pleased them by just rolling over and let the Russians in?
- [47:08]
B
And this is the whole thing, too, is that, like, it's one thing to be against America giving aid, much less troops or anything to Ukraine.
- [47:18]
C
That's on us, not on Zelensky.
- [47:20]
B
Yeah. And I mean, he's asking for help and things like that. And I think he's made mistakes in all of that. But it's a very strange position where you're basically arguing that this guy who really rose to the occasion, I mean, regardless of ideology, in a lot of ways, because Yeltsin was like this, too, where he rose to his moment in history and then could. Couldn't sustain it. And I, you know, that we have reverberations of that, but it's kind of amazing. And when you know, Zelensky, you know, who would. Who's the. What is he the equivalent? George Lopez or somebody, you know, like a sitcom comedian, you know, Jerry Seinfeld, you know, becoming like a meaningful leader. It's very strange.
- [48:04]
C
What was that Russian comics name?
- [48:06]
B
Oh, Yakov Smirnoff. Yeah, yeah. Who has a very good podcast. Does he? Yeah, yeah. And he. I don't know if he's still there or if he does it from there, but he moved to Branson, Missouri, you know, and had a regular show there.
- [48:19]
C
He's very patriotic American, right.
- [48:21]
B
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Reason foundation, the nonprofit that publishes the magazine, actually gave him an award sometime in, like, the 80s or very early 90s. And that is a. I don't know where he is on, you know, the Ukraine. Russia split it. Because you never know, you know, when people who left the Soviet Union, they have odd allegiances.
- [48:43]
C
Now, before we go, because, you know, I'm always feuding with Dave Smith.
- [48:46]
B
Yeah.
- [48:47]
C
Who is supposedly a libertarian.
- [48:48]
B
Yeah.
- [48:50]
C
Can. Can you explain the split between the Gillespie wing and the Smith wing of the libertarian movement?
- [48:59]
B
Yeah, that's a good question, because I.
- [49:00]
C
Agree with you guys so much, and I think everything they say is out to lunch.
- [49:07]
B
Without going into details too much. Part of it is the difference between somebody like Friedrich Hayek as a thinker or an organizing Principal and Murray Rothbard. Murray Rothbard is very influential at the groups that Dave is particularly at home with, like the Mises Institute. And Rothbard was an anarcho capitalist, and he threw a lot of complicated kind of thinking about stuff. He's an anarcho capitalist, but then ended up rolling for a time with David Duke or, you know, being very interested in the kind of populist. Right in the, you know, years ago. And then, I mean, Rothbard's been dead for a while, but his followers are kind of interested in that. And, you know, and that immigration is somehow, you know, we shouldn't have any government, but we should have like a really strict border until all property is privately owned. And there's, to put it more bluntly, and I don't mean this pejoratively, like, I mean this descriptively, but I think part of it is also it's dispositional. And a lot of libertarians are, I hate to use the word cosmopolitan because that gets used as an invective against me, but, you know, some people like living in kind of sloppy, heterodox places where all sorts of weird shit and weird people happen. Right. And, you know, and it's, you know, it's. And, and then some people don't. Some people like living in you know, more hierarchical and more monocultural places, you know, and that could be ethnic, ethnically, it could be class, it could be all sorts of things, or people who believe the same thing. And that's a big split in the broad libertarian movement.
- [50:57]
C
Okay, but so just like if you're about liberty and liberty is what moves you, your heart swells to this, the sultry strains of liberty, whatever, then Ukraine, you would think would be something that you would support. Here is a country about to be overrun by a tyrannical dictator and they're fighting for their freedom. They may not be a perfect democracy, but certainly their future is brighter under Ukrainian government than it's going to be. So. But their instinct is vehemently in the other direction. What's going on here is the. Is this. Why would a libertarian movement ever speak this way about a people fighting for their freedom?
- [51:48]
B
Yeah, I don't understand that. And again, I'm not committed to American troops being in Ukraine. And I think we need a good accounting of all the aid that we give. And in general, I'm against foreign aid, but yeah, when you look at the optics of the picture, where there is, where there's a David and a Goliath, you would think that most libertarians are always going to Be on the side of the David. And, you know, that matters. And it's also, you know, this Tucker Carlson went through a libertarian phase. I mean, he was an adjunct scholar at the CATO Institute in D.C. shortly before he formed the Daily Caller. And I have an old, I used to do a Reason talk show with Michael Moynihan when he worked at Reason. And we had an episode where Tucker was on and he was talking in ways it's like you would not recognize the same person because he was anti government and he was. Yeah, he was very libertarian. And, you know, to see him going to Russia and doing a kind of, you know, reverse minstrel show of Paul Robeson or like, you know, a black leftist in Stalin's Moscow, you know, and talk about how great the supermarkets are and the subways and all of that, it's very peculiar and I think some of it is. And again, I don't know that this is, you know, particularly libertarian, but there's, you know, some people like tradition and hierarchy and like clarity in social relations. You know, a man is a man and a woman is a woman and we don't, you know, and gays are problematic because they don't, you know, they don't fit into categories and things like that. And then other people are like, you know, whatever, you know, do whatever you want and, you know, as long as you're not hurting somebody.
- [53:33]
C
And they have this, they have this urge now, of course, it's always very, very hard. It's the unanswerable question in a certain way, how to. The trade off between actual lives dying and that it's. That it was worth it for those lives to be lost in order to fight for a certain way of life.
- [53:54]
B
Yeah.
- [53:55]
C
Is it better to have them be slaves or is it better to support the war where 30,000 innocent people will die but will end slavery? These are very, very tough questions. Right. But you would think that the libertarians somehow would have a tougher time with that question because they value liberty. And then of course, there seems to be. See, I don't see the libertarianism at all in what they're saying. And then just my pet peeve is if this notion that, let's say you accept all their arguments that Putin was provoked.
- [54:30]
B
Yeah.
- [54:31]
C
By whatever nonsense. There is an offhand comment by Baker before, you know, whatever it is. And to the extent that you think that his, the non pretextual part of his concerns about whatever's going on in Ukraine and provocations from ethnic Russians, whatever it is. So he was provoked and therefore, he had no choice but to go into Ukraine, and now he should be entitled to keep 20% of the country. Okay, fine, let's now that. So that's your kind of principles. Okay. Now let's take those principles and use them to examine another chapter. Let's look at the 1967 situation that Israel was in. Egypt puts 100,000 troops on the border, is. Removes the UN peacekeepers, has a blockade, has genocidal rhetoric. Egypt, Israel is provoked. They take out the Egyptian army. They didn't. And then Jordan attacks. That's more than provoked. And they take this, this land. These same people say, no, not one square inch should Israel be able to keep. Not one inch. I don't care if you were provoked or they'll say you weren't provoked. You, you had a choice. They'll say, of course they had a choice. They had less of a choice than Putin did. Right. So unless there's something I'm missing or I'm being unfair, which, you know, I don't like to be.
- [55:55]
B
Yeah.
- [55:56]
C
I'm calling bullshit on the whole point of view.
- [55:58]
B
Yeah. Well, you know, I, And I'm yet.
- [56:02]
C
To hear someone push back on me. So you're. This is what you're missing, though.
- [56:05]
B
Well, I'm not, you know, I, you know, my libertarianism, I think, is, you know, is pretty open and forthright.
- [56:15]
C
Yeah.
- [56:15]
B
So, I mean, you stand for what I stand for.
- [56:17]
C
You want to. And I mean, I said in a, in a conversation with the people, we're going to have dinner with us. Everybody's entitled to due process, even if, in my opinion, even if it's not a constitutional requirement.
- [56:29]
B
Right.
- [56:30]
C
It's basic fairness and morality that people should be treated fairly when they can be. People should not suffer consequences without some procedure that allows them to state their case. Like, I don't have to give my employees due process. I can say to my employee, you know what I think you were stealing. You're out. But I don't do that. I say, listen, I think you were stealing. What do you have to say for yourself? Well, listen to here. Here's a witness. I embark on that because it's. Well, it's these immigrants. He doesn't deserve due process. He's here.
- [57:03]
B
It's much worse, too. I mean, you know, business owners are one thing, but when it's the government, you know, they, they have ostensibly a monopoly on force. So they do. They're held to a higher standard, you know, because you can't, you can fire somebody that can get a job Somewhere else. If you're running the government and you put somebody away or do the same thing by.
- [57:23]
C
I don't think businesses should have the requirements, I'm saying, but when it's not too onerous a burden on me, I will reserve the right to say, listen, I don't trust it.
- [57:31]
B
You gotta go, well, you know, here.
- [57:33]
C
But this is where I really, the libertarian point of view in general really moves me because it's a respect for people and for fairness and for freedom in a way.
- [57:43]
B
Yeah. Well, I think wherever you can find it. One of the kind of paradoxes of the current moment, or certainly of the past 25 years, I'm really starting to see, you know, the 21st century like it's worth talking about it because a lot of negative trends accelerated, some positive things accelerated during it. But, you know, this concept that we've lost so much trust and confidence in government, and I think we've done that rightly because government has acted poorly. You know, they, you know, in the first Gulf, or not the first Gulf War, in the Iraq war, and, you know, throughout the war on terror, our government just lied to us. They lied about what they were doing, and they also lied about how much it cost and how they were spending money. You know, they lied about the financial crisis, the causes of it and the remedies to it. They lied about COVID in all sorts of ways and made a lot of stu. You know, we have every reason to have less trust and confidence in government. And from a libertarian perspective, superficially, that's like a good thing, because once people don't trust the government, they're going to, you know, say we want less of it, but that isn't the way it works. And ironically, and I wrote a story about this a few years ago in Reason, which was, you know, semi controversial within libertarian circles, whereas saying, you know, we've won that idea, that argument of the idea that you shouldn't trust the government because it is incompetent at best and kind of malevolent at worst. But that doesn't lead to less government. It actually leads predictably around the world to people wanting more, like a strong man or strong governments that can, you know, stop the chaos. And I feel like this is what's happening under Trump. You know, he came in and he said, I'm going to destroy the deep state. I'm going to get rid of all of these administrative bureaucrats who are just doing whatever they want without any restraint. And he's modeling that now in a lot of ways. And so you know, it isn't going, you're not going to change direction by doing more and better of what you're combating. And ironically, I think, you know, libertarians would do well and this, I'm in a minority position in the libertarian movement because I'm not an anarchist in this sense. But like, we need to, you know, show where government legitimately has an interest and how it can be effective and efficient. And I actually think once people understand that can happen, they will vote, you know, they'll vote for less government. This happened in the 90s, throughout the 90s at the state and federal level, as the government started doing less things and it did them more effectively. You know, the, the burden of government shifted. So, you know, we have a lot of work to do.
- [60:20]
C
And Trump is a shame, right, because he came into office now and he's got such a cult like power that he could have literally chosen, you know, any subtle direction to go in and the country would have come along.
- [60:36]
B
It also remains to be seen, you're right, that he is remarkably consistent in many of the, his beliefs. I mean, he changes them because like when he first ran, he was anti bitcoin and now he's kind of like pro bitcoin and certainly crypto, et cetera.
- [60:50]
C
Those are not his deeply held beliefs yet.
- [60:52]
B
But you're right that he's pretty predictable. But the other thing to remember, you know, it's weird because this is his second term, so he's kind of a lame duck already. But then, you know, as he approaches the midterms, he's going to be very lame duck. But I was going to say, you know, when you look at, look at somebody like Ronald Reagan at this point in his first term, he was a complete disaster. Like, you know, he got what he wanted and things went really poorly. And then by, you know, by 1984, he was about to win 49 states and probably 50, I think. You know, they gave him, they gave Walter Mondale, Minnesota to, you know, so he wasn't completely humiliated. But so things can change pretty quickly. And Trump is probably adapting and like, as the tariffs go into place and the, you know, if the economy tanks, he can't, he can't live with that.
- [61:41]
C
No.
- [61:41]
B
And he'll start to change things.
- [61:43]
C
I agree with you. He more than anything, he wants to be popular and actually I think he wants the country to do well.
- [61:51]
B
Yeah, of course.
- [61:51]
C
I mean, you know, I don't, I don't, you know, people have this horrible impression of the guy. I think he's more Complicated than that. But I don't think he has or.
- [62:00]
B
And it's not, I mean all the, you know, I think Biden, you know, to the extent that he had anything going on at the end, like he didn't want to leave office being a bum. Right. You know, and it's an interesting point. I hope somebody close to Trump is saying like what are the three bullet points you want people to remember? And it's not going to be I deported a bunch of, you know, guys who hung out at Home Depot parking lots. Like it's going to be that, you.
- [62:23]
C
Know, I should put it, they all want the country to do well, but I think the country, a picture of a country doing well according to Donald Trump in many ways would be closer to what you and I would think of than what Joe Biden, who knows what a left wing democratic vision of the country doing well is. It's certainly not. I don't even know if business even occurs to them or free press even occurs. Free speech occurs to them.
- [62:48]
B
Yeah. I mean Trump on free speech is really incredibly bad. And he had an executive order that was great where he basically said, you know, this Biden era jawboning of social media and actually leaning on people, that's done. Which is good. But then he's going after people for all sorts of things and he has an FCC chief who is going after networks and programs for the way they edit videos and this is insanity.
- [63:16]
C
I mean it's like where they edit videos about him.
- [63:19]
B
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [63:21]
C
An ironic. Listen, the guy is so thin skinned and he makes a fool of himself, but I don't see any anti free speech movement coming out of his movement. Just they, they're, they're, they're the free speech people. Even if he's a disgraceful guy and I don't like the way they're going after the universe. I'm sure we agree.
- [63:42]
B
Yeah. You know, and it's, it's one thing.
- [63:43]
C
To cut the people protest for Hamas.
- [63:45]
B
Yeah. It's one thing to cut, you know, money and it's one thing to cut, you know, even funding for research because there are ways around that. But to, you know, be going after people because of the things they say that's, I mean, profoundly un American. I hope that Donald Trump, Trump judges.
- [64:03]
C
Will be much more free. Good stall.
- [64:05]
A
Is it for what they're saying or are they falling under things like inciting violence or harassing people?
- [64:12]
B
I don't know. I mean it's just anything. Yeah.
- [64:14]
A
And, and the idea, well, it's not what they're saying. I mean, it's what.
- [64:17]
C
I don't trust anything the Trump administration is saying.
- [64:19]
B
Yeah, sure. Students, like. I don't think writing editorials in a student newspaper is an incitement to violence.
- [64:25]
C
No, this is the problem. It's just like. Just like the pardons. I'm totally persuadable about almost anything. Be a professional, Write a document, present it to the American people. This guy is pardoned for this, this, and this reason. This person is being deported. He did this, this, and that. Have it ready to present to the people at the time you're deporting them. Sure. It's not like. Yeah, but they don't do that. Yeah, they put the cart before the horse. Throw them out.
- [64:56]
B
Can I. You know, in a way, I mean, why I. Hopefully this will be the legacy of Donald Trump, is that he will have made him. If he makes America more like New York, I think that would be a good thing. Because what's great about New York is everybody disagrees. And, you know, there's a ton of different types of people living different kinds of lives here, and it all kind of works. And, like, to me, that's my vision of America. It is. You know, it is like the. You know, it is the Lower east side. It is Greenwich Village. You know, it's Hell's Kitchen. And it's just people doing what they want to do to make their lives interesting and express themselves and make money. And, you know, in a way, you're right. I think Trump. Trump understands that kind of on a cellular level, even if he doesn't know how to articulate it, and often works against that. And I think a lot of the people around him don't share that. They're very uncomfortable with that kind of thriving hub of, you know, just weirdness, of individualism and weirdness, and that worries me.
- [65:55]
C
All right, we gotta go. Are you coming? Taking a cab with me?
- [65:58]
B
I guess I have to.
- [66:00]
C
You don't have to.
- [66:01]
B
Maybe I walk.
- [66:02]
C
Thank you very much, as always. Nick Gillespie, Reason Magazine. Free minds and free markets and free everything. Bye, everybody. Free sex.
- [66:12]
B
Free mumia.