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- [00:01]
Bishop
Hey guys, this is tho Bishop of Radio Rothbard and I want to let you guys know about two great events we have coming up soon. The first is on April 22nd in Birmingham, Alabama and the focus is the Great Reset. We've got a great lineup including Michael Rechtenwald, Alan Mendenhall, Jonathan Newman, and a reporter from 1819 News, Amy Beth Shaver. They're gonna be talking about the plans of the Davos elite and what Alabama is doing to fight back against it. It's gonna be a great event. Then on May 20th in Reno, Nevada, we have an event dedicated to property, civilization, culture, featuring some Mises and suit heavyweights. The lineup includes Tom DeLorenzo, David Gordon and Bill Anderson. We always love seeing our audience at these events. It's a great time to network talk with like minded people. You won't want to miss these. Find more@mises.org events and check out our full schedule of events coming up.
- [00:57]
Narrator
This is the Human Action Podcast where we debunk the economic, political and even cultural myths of the days. Here are your hosts, Jeff Dice and Dr. Bob Murphy.
- [01:09]
Jeff Deist
Welcome back to another episode of the Human Action Podcast, joined as always by my co host, Dr. Bob Murphy. How are you doing today, Bob?
- [01:16]
Dr. Bob Murphy
I'm doing all right, Jeff. How are you?
- [01:18]
Jeff Deist
Well, as I'm sure some of our viewers and listeners have heard, I am actually departing the Mises Institute for a new job. This may in fact be my last Human Action Podcast. Not sure if I will appear as a guest in the future, but nonetheless it's in good hands. Dr. Murphy is going to continue the show, find lots of great guests whom you should suggest to him, and also potentially another co host down the road. But Bob, I just was thinking last night about this final show. For me anyway, I was looking back over the previous Human Action Podcast. It actually started about eight years ago. Back in 2015, Clay, our producer and I started what was then called the Mises Weekends podcast.
- [01:59]
Narrator
Mises Mises Weekends with your host, Jeff Deiss.
- [02:03]
Jeff Deist
Podcasting was a very different animal back then and we had lots of different guests, lots of noteworthy guests on a lot of, I would say socio, political, Austrian, libertarian type topics. And then as we evolved into the Human Action Podcast, it sort of came to me that first there were too many podcasts, certainly too many political and commentary podcasts, and that we needed to do something that was really purely Austrian because there are some econ podcasts, but there aren't really any hardcore pure Austrian econ podcasts, at least not shows of any discernible size. So that was when we changed the name from Mises Weekends to the Human Action Podcast. And Clay will certainly remember this. There was a period where I said, hey, look, why don't we do books? Why don't we tackle the biggest, baddest books in the Austrian canon? Because that way we will distinguish ourselves from any other podcast just by the sheer substance of the show itself, as opposed to just sort of a pining or talking. And second of all, it'll be like a Cliff's Notes for the various books, you know, we'll read them. Some of them were so big that we had to do multi stage delivery. We had to have multiple shows for particular books like Human Action, Man, Economy and State. And we said, well, we'll walk through these books and one of two things will happen. Either people won't read the book, but they'll know the basics from having listened to the podcast as sort of a cheat sheet, or number two, the podcast will actually encourage them to go out and get the book and read it. So I hope we did a little bit of both. But Bob, I know you were a guest on some of those book review shows.
- [03:43]
Bishop
Yeah.
- [03:43]
Dr. Bob Murphy
And I do remember that. I thought it was interesting that you were taking that tack of tackling books and that, you know, yes, it's a very highbrow endeavor appealing to the certain demographic that really wants to learn something. So I did appreciate that.
- [03:59]
Jeff Deist
Well, I don't know about highbrow, Bob, but we'll take it. But for example, Human Action, which I had read obviously prior, not always straight through, sometimes you read different sections, but that was something like six or eight shows and we had different people on for the different sections. I mean, that's the kind of thing that is really pretty heavy lifting for a podcast type format. And I think a lot of people over the years appreciated that. And those podcasts are still there. You know, they don't have a time element to them. You can go back and listen to them anytime. But eventually, you know, after doing Human Action, Man, Economy and State, working through a lot of other Mises books, Socialism, Bureaucracy, anti capitalist mentality. You know, we did some shows on praxeology, both on Mises and Hoppe. We did a lot of shows on Rothbard's canon. I mean, we went through the Great Depression. We went through four New Liberty, the Ethics of Liberty, obviously Man, Economy and State, as I mentioned, you know, at some point you have an audience that's pretty narrow. You know, people who are just interested in these particular books. And especially if you have a book that takes up multiple shows. You have to have a listener who's kind of already invested to stay with that. So that was a challenge. But really, ultimately, what brought that to an end was just after a few years, just having to read or reread those books week in and week out to prepare for the show, it just cut too much into my time and other duties. So eventually we sort of loosened it up again and went back to the format where really where you started as co host. So that's the Human Action podcast as we think about it today. And I'm just trying to think who, for myself, were some of the most noteworthy guests over the years. You know, there's been some great ones. Obviously, I think Jim Grant stands out just for his depth and breadth of knowledge. And now Jim Grant is actually highbrow. I think we can apply that moniker to him. But, you know, I hope people benefited from the show. I hope they got something out of it. And I think it fills a needed gap. There really is a huge amount of economic ignorance out there. And to the extent there are podcasts, you know, in sort of the fin twit defy sphere, none of them are really Austrian that I can think of offhand.
- [06:21]
Dr. Bob Murphy
Yeah, I think you're right. And again, we don't, I'm sure we're offending a bunch of people. And you know, we know, guys, that some of you have you sort of niche things and I've been a guest on many of your show. We understand there are. But just talking like mainstream stuff that people at, you know, CNBC or whatever might come across that. Yeah, there aren't too many that are explicitly Austrian that I can think of. And it's. But, and you're right, those, but those book ones you did too, Jeff. I, I do think, like, that's, there's going to be longevity there.
- [06:47]
Bishop
Right.
- [06:48]
Dr. Bob Murphy
So those are classics that people want. So, yes, maybe she didn't have the, the highest ratings the weekend after it came out, but still, people will be going to those 20, 30 years down because I remember that was one of the things the first time I went to the Mises Institute when I was in grad school. You know, I had read Human Action cover to cover by that point, but just hearing other people who had read it and getting up and talking about it, that really helped it click. So I, I, you know, don't underestimate the importance of that for people who are working through these classic texts to then hear, you know, you had experts come on and talk about it like that really does just help guide people and make sure. Oh yeah, okay. So yeah, my take on that chapter was okay or. Oh, wow, geez. I didn't even get what Rothbard was saying there.
- [07:27]
Jeff Deist
Okay, well, I find human action a lot easier than Man, Economy and State. Maybe it's the writing style, maybe it's just more philosophical, more based in logic. You know, Rothbard has a very different style, but those books were never easy for me to get through. I was introduced to Rothbard, fortunately, just by sheer happenstance in the 90s. So I became aware of him at that time, although I didn't really understand his importance as an economist. And then just a couple years later, he passed away. But yeah, this is tough stuff to get through, but I feel like we covered a lot of other great books too. We did a lot of one off shows on books by like Guido Holzman, for example. We did a great show on Rothbard's the Betrayal of the Right. You know, we did that with Tom woods, who had written a big introduction to that. And that was, you know, that was, that was really my introduction to the Old right and, and understanding the divisions between National Review and some of the other conservatives and understanding. You can draw a thread, I think, from the Old right to the Mises Institute today, I mean, through figures like Mencken and Albert J. Nock, that when Republicans were good. So that I think was interesting. And I think that everything is cyclical. But I think today, in part because of the legacy of all these great books, I think the Mises Institute stands as really the current incarnation, along with maybe Chronicles magazine, of that Old Right tradition. Now, obviously that's not the only thing the Mises Institute stands for, but to the extent it still has a home, I think it is with us in Auburn. So that appeals to me a lot.
- [09:11]
Dr. Bob Murphy
Can I just add on that, because this is something too that maybe it's obvious to you because you knew about this, I think probably earlier in your life than I did in mine. But yeah, me growing up in the. Learning about free market economics through the channel of, you know, American conservatives that, you know, in terms like, as opposed to those liberals, like the, you know, the people on NPR or whatever, like using the terms in the, you know, the, the 1980s sense of what those words meant at that time, like Rush Limbaugh, you know, like that's what I thought. Oh, he's a conservative. I like Rush. And then I start reading Thomas Sowell, Walter Williams and get it. So coming from that lens, yeah, I kind of just assumed like, oh yeah, right wingers who know how the free market works are also really strong on military defense. And you know, those, those pansy Democrats are the ones that are anti war and whatever. And don't you know how. And so when you realize like how naive, even as I'm just trying to tell you this now, it sounds so ridiculous to say, oh yeah, the Democrats are against war and you know, and the Republicans, you know, if you're for free markets, you got to be for a big military maintained by the US federal government. Like it sounds so ridiculous. But yet that's what you might think growing up like in the late 80s and getting politically aware. So yeah, so the fact that the Institute kept alive that tradition of, well, no, there was a time when actual conservatives thought the US government should mind its own business and not go across oceans to go bomb people. That's sort of, you know, odd to people to hear that kind of talk.
- [10:37]
Jeff Deist
And let's not forget that the Mises Institute was very out front in opposing the Iraq war. And that was a real schism on the right. In other words, George W. Bush was President, Tom delay was speaker of the House, you know, Dick Cheney, John Ashcroft, John Woo. I mean that was really a time where red America showed its worst side. And during that period, Lew Rockwell wrote a book called Red State Fascism. And so the Mises Institute was steadfast. That's before my time. I'm not taking any credit for that. But the Mises Institute lost some fans and undoubtedly some donors for opposing that war. But you know, there are some things I think worth burning political capital on just for the principle involved. And I would say the same thing about COVID restrictions and lockdowns, which a lot of people on the libertarian side really embarrass themselves with I think over the past three years. So that's a feather in our cap, certainly. But I guess what strikes me, having, you know, going back through some of these books that we did, and I should mention we did a multi episode series on Hoppe's Democracy, the God that Failed and we had a lot of different participants in that. So that was very popular and that's still a popular book. But what struck me is that I think the discussions and the interest in anarcho capitalism, I think those have sort of peaked and receded. I want to say that that was really somewhere in that 2008 to 2012, really the Ron Paul era, when the old mises.org forums, you know, nobody uses forums on websites anymore, but those forums were quite vociferous at the time. And that was a real debate, you know, the idea of society completely without the state. You wrote, you know, Bob, you've written on that with your chaos theory book and otherwise. I mean, you've done a lot of speeches and you've made the case for pure privatization of, you know, the judicial function, society, the police function, and the, you know, the national defense function or defense, whatever you want to call it. So that, that used to interest and animate me quite a bit, I think, personally, but I think that's fallen away. I think you can sort of feel that in the air that people have. People have considered that and some people accept it, some people reject it as, you know, crazy or foolhardy, of course, but it's not really the debate in front of us anymore. I guess none of us really expected the degree to which maybe starting around 2015ish with Brexit and Trump, you know, how quickly things would deteriorate in the United States in terms of discourse, in terms of political comedy, in terms of the red and blue state divide, just in terms of the very nasty politicization of everything. And I think the Mises Institute has had to shift a bit and adapt to that new reality. And so I was certainly one of those ancaps who even maybe 10 to 15 years ago would have said, oh, you know, some traffic cop or some DMV clerk has more power over you than Google because they can pull you over, you know, whereas Google, your relationship with Google is voluntary. Okay, you know, fast forward to today though, and we've seen what Michael Recton calls governmentalities. We've seen this nexus of corporate and state power. So I'm not sure, and I hope to show the Human Action podcast reflects this, but I'm not sure that libertarians were prepared for the degree, the rapidity with which the United States and the west would embrace fascism.
- [14:15]
Dr. Bob Murphy
Yeah, I agree with everything you had a lot of packed in there just to respond to some of those comments. You're right. So as, as you say, I was very much involved in those debates over, you know, min. Minism versus anarcho capitalism proper and what. And that doesn't. I don't get all worked up about that stuff anymore. And I think there's at least two things going on. So one is back then, like that was. You were real radical and bold and people like, what are you out of your mind? Pro. And now people are. The things people are arguing about now are so much crazier than back like now you say, hey, I think the government should privatize. Who owns nuclear weapons? That's nothing, you know, for people to say, no, I think, you know, a guy should be able to say, I'm a woman, and go in the girls locker room in high schools. And that's what we're, you know, which is in a sense, way more shocking to me than to just say, should the military be privatized? And then, and also because of, like you said, that I think your allusion to Brexit and whatnot, like, as, as, you know, Jeff, I'm big on saying, well, that I think Texas should be its own country. And to, because that to me is a much more practical thing that we can talk about as opposed to, hey, what if, you know, there was a worldwide Rothbardian regime or so? You know, like, that's just not going to happen anytime soon. And so, yeah, it's kind of nice to talk about, but it's like, would the enterprise beat the Millennium Falcon in a fight or something? You know what I mean? Like, yeah, I'll have a debate there, but it's not really relevant to the real world right now. So, so there's, there is all that as well, I think. And, and you're right. I just like you. I also would have been one saying, let's say at least 15 years ago, maybe 10 years ago, that, yeah, Google has no real power. Everything. It's, if it's a big corporation, it's, it's voluntary, blah, blah, blah. Or if it's not, the problem is the state and just limit the state power and then the private corporations can't do anything to you. And now that, that does seem a bit just kind of obtuse, especially if it's, you know, the people who own the big corporations, especially like banks and whatnot, that are funding the political campaigns and deciding who are the people that are in office and staffing those positions five years from now. So it seems kind of silly to just point the figure at the people that in many cases were handpicked by the, you know, the private special interests that were saying, no, no, it's not them. Don't look at them. That's free market, baby.
- [16:33]
Jeff Deist
So. Well, and we should forget that. We should not forget that things have evolved. I mean, when I was being introduced to libertarian ideas in the late 80s and early 90s, my older brother was getting Reason magazine and at the time, you know, edgy stuff was like, the mayor of Baltimore, Kurt Smoke, says, let's legalize marijuana. I mean, that was Edgy, cutting edge stuff, or when people said we shouldn't have taxpayer funded stadiums, you know, that was sort of the level of libertarian analysis at the time. I mean, obviously Rothbard was already Rothbard by then, but as I came to think of it, and when you fast forward to today and just the political landscape. Daniel McCarthy, I know at ISI has made this criticism that sometimes libertarianism seems ill equipped to answer some of the big questions of the day. For example, the real question of the 20th century was very broadly in the west anyway, socialism versus capitalism. Right. That was the question. And so most, most people on the left would say, well, capitalism won. And a lot of people on the right, you know, or people like me would say, well, I'm not so sure. I mean, we have a, we have a very, we basically social democracy, which is a halfway measure towards full socialism won. So that, you know, obviously that depends on your perspective. But, but that doesn't feel like the 21st century question anymore. Socialism versus capitalism. It seems like people are dug in to their particular viewpoint on that. And the 21st century question is more who decides? In other words, at what level and what degree of centralization or decentralization are we going to have to accept as opposed to persuading left progressives who are arguing about trans bathrooms to accept Rothbard?
- [18:25]
Dr. Bob Murphy
Yeah, and maybe the way I would put it is like, I think if the libertarian people, including me from, you know, the year 2000, could have glimpsed and seen, you know, been transported quickly to the year 2050 and we're walking around and what you would see is, you know, there'd be a lot of, you know, some of the technology would amaze us, obviously we'd be, you know, oh wow, this is great. But on the other hand, there would be things that I think I would look at with horror and it would kind of be like, oh, but that's a private company's policies that are doing that. And yeah, if you go up high enough in the chain, there's some government, some state somewhere like the Chinese, whatever, Eurasian polity or something, people's party of that group that are technically leaning on a few of the people to make that the company's private policy decision. But, but strictly speaking, most of what I would see that would horrify me would probably be nominally a private sector outcome. And so that wouldn't mean it was right. I think it would just show that the framework that I was using in the year 2000 to analyze the world was not really, didn't fit very well by the year 2050.
- [19:32]
Jeff Deist
Well, given that, what do you think ought to be the focus of the Mises Institute and also tangentially, this podcast going forward? In other words, given the scarcity of time and resources and money and manpower, what, what should the Mises Institute's role be going forward?
- [19:53]
Dr. Bob Murphy
Well, I'll, I'll say for the podcast, right, because it's, it's, it's, I'm doing subsidiarity right even here that I, I think that, yeah, the podcast, like right now, especially because the banking sector is so relevant to, you know, to regular people's lives right now. And I think that's the avenue through which a lot of this stuff is going to transform very quickly. I, I'm not saying it, it should just be this, but I think a big component, certainly what I want to do in terms of, you know, my position as an Austrian economist that some people in the public listen to and is to, yeah, take the, the massesian insights of money and banking and sort of bring them into, you know, the digital age and, and communicate that stuff to the public so they understand, you know, some basic, like inflation, but the merits of 100 reserve banking or what causes the business cycle and the dangers now I would say of a central bank, digital currency and, you know, the importance of sound money, things like that. That, that's so a lot of bread and butter, old school Austrian stuff, you know, Mises in 1912. A lot of those themes I think are actually, it's a cliche to say it's more important now than ever, but it actually is, or at least than it has been in, you know, 30 years ago, I would say.
- [21:17]
Jeff Deist
Well, I think there's a couple ways that the Mises Institute and this podcast in particular could distinguish itself from other shows, for example. And first is to talk about the cultural consequences of fiat money and the ramifications through society, which are often hard to trace or draw directly. But that's the goal or the role of economists, is to show us the unseen. Right? I mean, that's very difficult, but nonetheless, that's what we want from social scientists to help us understand the trade offs involved. And I know people like Holzman and Seifati Nammus are really good at talking about how we get fiat medicine, fiat science, fiat education, fiat culture, even fiat social mores. So I think that's a very important point because the Mises Institute doesn't shy away from issues of culture or family or religion or the more civilizational type questions. We don't have to be narrow in our approach. But the other thing is that I think only the Mises Institute, really, at least as an organization, really stands for the idea that it's not just central banking as practice. It's just that central banking per se is impossible, that it is inherently political or becomes political, and that the idea that we can have in effect, sort of a politburo making decisions about money supply or interest rates or swaps or whatever it might be, asset purchases, that there's just no good way to run this. And so even a lot of our people on the libertarian side of things have been wrong about their reform ideas for central banking. And I think increasingly free bankers, at least of a variety, are feeling defensive in the wake of the Silicon Valley bank fallout and some of the other fallouts. And I think it's Joe Salerno says in an article that I can recall vaguely that, well, free banking is fine, but if what you mean by that is a currency school free banker, I think that's what Salerno termed himself. And that's when free banking is truly disciplined by the marketplace and is not basically leveraging off a fiat system. So I think that's an important distinction. And I think the idea of not only sound money, which is very, very important, not just economically, but culturally, as I mentioned, but sound banking, sound money storage, that sounds awfully old fashioned, both of those things. That sounds like the 1800s, but they might become very important in the, in the 21st century.
- [23:50]
Dr. Bob Murphy
Yeah. And I have to just amplify something that associated scholar of the Mises Institute Peter Saint on said. I had a conversation with him. I don't know that it came up, Jeff, because I had him as a guest when maybe it was even like literally the last episode or two when you couldn't be with us. I don't know that it came up there. But then I was talking to him separately and he brought it up, just, could we talk about 100% reserve banking? And how could. And it sounds like this big thing and oh, you have to lobby. And he just made the simple observation that, well, no, it would just take a simple, you know, rule change or even just a tweak of how it's enforced that like, what if, if a customer went to a commercial bank and wanted to open up, you know, a checking account that was going to be fractional reserve, that they just had to kind of fill out a thing, just a suitability requirement just to make sure. Just like if you want to open up an account, you know, and trade put options or something, they kind of you know, make you do something just to kind of show, you know, what kind of the basic. What you're doing just as a check and that. So, because, because his point was that, yeah, if you ask people, do you think the bank takes your checking account deposits and puts them in the vault with your name on it? Most people probably say no, they don't do that. But then if you ask them, you know, more sophisticated, like, you know, do you think the bank has your money if you need it or something, or, you know, would you be upset if they. It's. I think if you ask just a few more questions, it's pretty clear that the public's notions about what actually is going on is, is not quite right. And so, you know, it was, it was just a simple point like that to say that there's, there's real world applications and this isn't merely just us doing science fiction and describing, you know, some Martian colony where the banks are 100 reserve. Like, this stuff is real. Especially now with easy, you know, technology improvements, it's. It's more practical to try to do some of this stuff and implement it, at least just to have an option. That's the thing. It's not that we have to reform the entire system, but just to make it as a viable option. Because, you know, you and I have talked about this, Jeff. It's the sort of free banker response of, well, nothing's stopping you right now. No, actually, there are things stopping it right now. Like there are institutional barriers, decisions that the Fed has made, like not giving access to certain applicants to their network and such. That makes it impractical for a viable 100% Reserve bank to emerge right now, you know, in the, in the current environment. And so things like that, that, yeah, I think it is becoming more relevant. Stuff that was just more of an academic debate within The Austrian school 10 years ago is now a lot more relevant for real people. Like, we just, there's, you know, people in congressional testimony asking bureaucrats like, is fractional reserve banking sound or something? You know, like, that's.
- [26:30]
Jeff Deist
Anyway, well, I think if you follow Per Bylund on Twitter, he's very adept at making the point that there's this kind of nonsensical idea that theory and application are wholly separate and can never be reconciled. He's excellent at making the point that theory is how we know everything. I mean, theory is how we approach the world and deal with the data that's out there. So I think that's, that's important. I think we're going to find that Austrian principles are proven correct in the coming decade. I think we're going to have a rough time for our economy, for banks, et cetera. So, Bob, before we wrap up, do you have any thoughts about future guests or anything else you'd like to discuss?
- [27:16]
Dr. Bob Murphy
Well, I do certainly want to discuss your book so that maybe we'll have guests on to talk about your book. But you got this new book, a Strange Liberty, that has recently dropped. And do you maybe want to just tell the listeners a bit about its origins?
- [27:33]
Jeff Deist
It's an anthology, I think Clay can show the graphic while we speak here. It's available@mises.org, if you go to the bookstore. It's also, I believe, just in softcover. It's also available on Amazon. I think there are some hardcovers left there. They cost a little bit more. So essentially I've been working on a theme for a long time, which is that it's too late for politics in the United States and in the west, that we're beyond being able to vote our way out of this. And I think that reflects itself in our political landscape. So that's the title, both of an essay and also the book, politics Drops Its Pretenses. Which what I mean by that is that it wasn't that long ago, certainly within the memory of people alive today, that, I mean, politicians were hated. And I don't want to say that there was some golden time where politics was more above board or less seedy or less corrupt or anything like that, because that's simply not true. But at least for average Americans and their relationship with the political world and with the media, things were very different in our grandparents or our parents time. I mean, I remember my dad telling me, you know, people would have a picture of JFK in their home, like above their fireplace. If you walk into somebody's house today and they have a picture of Joe Biden above their fireplace, I think you better get them the help that they need, let's just say so. Things have gotten very, very spooky in the sense that politicians no longer pretend that they want to represent the entire electorate or the entire population. Now they're quite open about wanting to vanquish their political opponents. That's different. That's changed. That's changed just in my lifetime. In other words, they've dropped this pretense that democracy, well, it creates a compromise down the middle. We have the far left and the far right, and none of those crazies on the outside get everything they want. But down the middle, we compromise, we all get a little bit of what we want and we're finding out that that's not true at all. So called democracy, at least mass democracy, is practiced at the national level. In a country the size of the US it just produces this permanent bureaucratic class, this managerial state that's totally unelected, that's got union protection, that can't be bounced no matter who you vote in. And as we saw with Trump, it scarcely matters who you elect as president. So politics is no longer pretending to be at all. Win, win. As we conceive of the marketplace, it's just a pure zero sum game with a lot of nastiness involved. Now, like when Biden made that speech where he was behind that really red backdrop and it looked like something out of Nuremberg or whatever, I mean, that's, that's basically saying, you know, we intend to, to go a certain direction and if you don't like it, too bad because we're winning and there's more of us at the ballot box. You know, that's, that's not a healthy place for a society to be. And I think you and I, Bob, would agree that, you know, America's far too large. It needs to break up into some constituent parts. Progressives don't believe in that because they don't want to give away any turf if they think they're going to win the whole thing. But nonetheless, that's the theme of the book. It goes into the immigration and borders debate. I try to show both sides of that. It goes into a lot of what's happening at the Fed and with central bankers. In other words, these people are not the magicians or the alchemists we thought they were. It turns out that they're kind of groping around in the dark. And it goes a lot into the Trump phenomenon, the Brexit phenomenon, the idea of decentralization and secession as really the only nonviolent antidote to what we're facing now. And again, I would say that there are progressives on the left and the right who insist on a universal worldview, that there's one true faith, and that's got to apply everywhere in politics. And that's, you know, a form of religiosity, you might say. But nonetheless, it's an anti political book. I hope, and I hope people get some enjoyment out of it and understand the perspective that whatever it is that gets us out of this, whether that's something more at the local level or the state level, or whether that's something that entrepreneurs create or that technology assists us with. You know, it's going to come far from outside Washington, D.C. it's not going to come through politics. And the U.S. federal government in terms of its dollar, its debts, and especially this is the worst thing of all. It's its entitlement promises. Washington, D.C. is too far gone and our approach now has to be to turn our backs on it and start trying to create a new reality from the bottom up.
- [32:27]
Dr. Bob Murphy
We just. A real quick one response to what you said and then more substantive reply is you, you mentioned Biden, you know, when he's given that speech, was that, what was that? Was that a state of the universe or inaugural? What? Where there was the red backdrop. I forget what the occasion was.
- [32:43]
Jeff Deist
No, it wasn't. It wasn't a state of the union because that's held in the.
- [32:47]
Dr. Bob Murphy
I didn't mean. Yeah, yeah. Well, in any, I don't recall either. Yeah, in any event, it was. I remember like when those iconic images were flying around Twitter the day, you know, the day after it happened and a lot of like libertarian types of right wingers were showing it and saying things like, oh, some lighting tech is about to lose his job. And I was just astonished that you think they would put him out there with all that lighting and stuff. Not on purpose. Like they didn't realize what, how that was coming off. That wasn't deliberate. Like, I mean it's kind of like so it was funny and maybe a lot of them, they were just kidding and they knew it was deliberate and they were trying to make a dumb joke. But still, like I just, it really just show the divide, like even among people who, you know, oh, I believe in lower taxes and like there's, I don't know if you've seen it, Jeff, but there, there's now an argument cuz Dave Smith made a remark about how there's many ways in which we have less freedoms than his grandfather did or something. And of course, you know, everyone's bringing up, oh, so you don't want women to vote and have checking accounts and all that stuff. But beyond that, they were saying this is the freest time for Americans ever. You know. And it just. So it is. And these are among people that, you know, probably agree with us on a lot of stuff about, you know, free trade's great and you know, inflation's bad. So it is interesting to see that divide. So as far as your book, can you just tell? Because I think one of the phrases that you have popularized is post persuasion America. So for people. And one of your essays talks about that. So can you just explain what do you mean by that?
- [34:21]
Jeff Deist
Well, I believe the phrase was coined maybe or at least popularized by Steve Bannon.
- [34:26]
Dr. Bob Murphy
Okay.
- [34:27]
Jeff Deist
Who is one of the architects of Trump's victory in 2016. I was watching him on a PBS documentary called America Divided and they had people like Robert Reich and all these different things, but they had Steve Bannon. And he was talking about this idea that people are largely beyond persuasion, which seems funny because we have this little cell phone in our pockets that has basically the sum total of human history and knowledge a few clicks away. And so given the fact that access to information and various arguments and for instance, Austrian economics has never been easier to go read Austrian economics for free online. So access to information has never been easier. So at least in theory, we should be more open minded as a result, are more likely to change our minds as a result, because it's easy to get an opposing viewpoint or it's easy to get facts which disabuse us of our own viewpoint. But Bannon says no, no, no, it's going the opposite direction. People are digging in more than ever simply because there's so much white noise coming at them. So I thought that was an interesting turn of phrase. And the idea that when everything seems unstable and shifting underneath your feet and where there's just so much media, 24 hour cable news and the political jargon, and of course all of social media, we know so much more about all the trouble around the world than our grandparents did, that we actually begin to sort of shut down our thinking and our open mindedness to opposing arguments and dig in our heels. So I thought that was a pretty interesting thing and I thought that he had summarized that correctly. If we look at how politics is actually operating these days.
- [36:08]
Dr. Bob Murphy
Well, I think another element of that too is that for people who really care about a certain topic, they can go now find PhD, like 50 PhDs who agree with them and go read all their stuff. And so they, it's not merely like, yeah, that's just my gut level thing, like they can sit there and have a two hour debate with somebody about it. Like whether it's climate change or evolution or, you know, and I looked at those more. So the climate change, the evolution stuff, I was more of a dabbler. But the, the people who hold the unorthodox view and are dismissed as anti science by the people who hold the orthodox view. It's, you know, I mean, you can say they're wrong, of course, but and that they disagree with the, you know, the professional award winning scientists in those fields. Sure. But they're, they're not saying I don't trust science. What they're saying is, well no, if you actually look, the evidence says blah, blah, blah, blah and there's this thing and that contradicts this hypothesis. So they're not making anti scientific argument, they're actually saying that no, the, you know, the conventional wisdom is overlooking these things and they have a whole wealth of statistics and whatnot that they try to marshal coming from people who have PhDs in the relevant fields. So because it's so much easier to find those people now with the Internet. And so it is an interesting element of all this. So can I ask you though, Jeff, so what is, is, does that kind of dovetail? Like if it's post persuasion America, is that why just more federalism or nullification or even outright secession perhaps of certain regions is really the only solution because we're not going to just talk it out and come to a mutual consensus. Like we just kind of have to separate or at least I think that's,
- [37:51]
Jeff Deist
I think that's entirely true. And I think if you look at politics today, neither side, so to speak, is really trying to build consensus anymore. I mean we know what the left thinks of abortion, the left knows what the right thinks of abortion. I mean that's just an irreconcilable difference. And so it really becomes about force. Who is going to prevail? Who is going to control the apparatus of government and make the laws and especially control the enforcement of those laws? The enforcement's far more important than the laws on the books. And you know, we see that all the time. That's anarcho tyranny, the idea that some people have to follow the rules and some people don't. And the government itself can be anarchic, in other words, not follow its own rules while making us follow the rules to a T, giving us a ticket for jaywalking or whatever it might be. So I think that's absolutely true, that some kind of soft secession is already happening. It's inexorable. We saw what happened this week in Wisconsin and Chicago with elections. I think that's going to accelerate and intensify. And so that's fine with me. Let the 50 states be more of a laboratory of ideas as originally intended. And the extent to which we can stop the federalization of everything I think is important. I think we ought to fight for that and I think libertarians ought to learn a lesson about what I consider a grossly incorrect interpretation of the 14th Amendment, and that really, no one's being served, even our progressive friends are not being served by the current situation.
- [39:26]
Dr. Bob Murphy
Can I ask you one more, Jeff, here I'm just looking at your, at the outline or the, the table of contents and piggybacking on what you just said is some of the other essays next to the welcome to Post Persuasion America are what Should Politically Vanquished People Do? And then the Case for Optimism. So can you just speak a little bit maybe that is as perhaps closing thoughts for the listeners on this.
- [39:51]
Jeff Deist
Yes, well, because being politically vanquished is better than being literally vanquished, being, you know, put in a concentration camp or something like that. But historically, being politically vanquished is a road potentially to a worse fate. And Mises talked about this a lot. He really fretted about minority groups in countries because he saw the old patchwork of Europe in the 1800s, even when, you know, as a young man come together into these modern super states, you know, what we think of today as Germany, for example, was a patchwork. And so he was a little uneasy about that. If you go read Nation State and economy and liberalism especially, his big concern was always political minorities. And oftentimes for him, that was linguistic. We don't think about that so much in America anymore because everybody speaks English, a lot of people speak Spanish, and that's fine. Everybody, you know, it's pretty easy. We have the luxury of not having to think about language. But in Europe in Mises day, I mean, the number of languages were, you know, and so if you were brought into a political arrangement by the redrawing of a border, let's say, due to a war or some imperial ambition, you know, that really affected you because, you know, not only linguistic minorities, but ethnic minorities, whatever it might be. And so Mises was forever saying, you know, they really need to have their, you know, for democracy to function properly, they really need to have the ability to break away and reorganize politically. So I think that's an undervalued or underappreciated aspect of Mises, that he really was pretty decentralist because, you know, he uses some terms about universalism, which he actually opposed, but talks about being a citizen of the world and a cosmopolitan. And so I think some of that was misinterpreted to mean that he thought we just would be better with one giant super state. And I don't believe that's what he meant. You can argue or debate that. And So I think that's, it's very important that politically vanquished people begin, I think, looking at what they might do. And so when I talked, I remember that talk very clearly. It was in Newport Beach, California, around 2015 or thereabouts. The case for optimism was just that we know, and we've seen since then, this is accelerating, that the federal leviathan just can't do what it promises. And so Atlas is going to shrug. We can't even fix minor issues like the Jones act, which everybody knows should be fixed, much less remake Afghanistan into a Jeffersonian democracy or whatever. So Uncle Sam increasingly is not going to be able to do the things he even purports to be able to do, like control the money, pay entitlements, at least in a meaningful sense, win wars, whatever it might be. I think there's a huge case for optimism out there simply because people are organizing and understanding this, they're coalescing around this, and it's an uneasy time. It's painful to think that we've really been sold a bill of goods, especially in the late 20th century. But nonetheless, I think empowerment starts with honest reflection. And so people are getting together more at the local level. People are looking at their businesses. People are trying to armor up their financial lives, their family lives or their home lives, and maybe get more engaged or active locally. So I think all that makes the case for long term optimism, even if there's some short term pain along the way.
- [43:28]
Dr. Bob Murphy
So, folks, let me push Jeff's book because he's too modest to do it, so it's a strange liberty. The subtitle Politics Drops Its pretenses. He's got a forward by Paul Gottfried and an introduction by Tom DiLorenzo. I highly recommend it. There's a lot of fascinating ideas in there and it's, you know, Jeff is his own guy, right? It's, it's not just parroting the views of other people. It's. It really is. He's got his own perspective and makes the case for it well. So I highly recommend the book.
- [43:56]
Jeff Deist
Well, thanks so much, Bob. We the show will be back with another episode of the Human Action Podcast. Bob will move forward, both soloing with some new guests, and I look forward to checking that out every week. So, Bob, have a great weekend. Ladies and gentlemen, we'll see you soon.
- [44:12]
Narrator
Check back next week for a new episode of the Human Action Podcast. In the meantime, you can find more content like this on mises.org.
- [44:24]
Jeff Deist
I.