Welcome to Keith and I don't tread on anyone in the
Libertarian Institute. Today.
I am joined by Jack Lloyd, author of the You guys Got to
read these books. This is a great intro into our
ideas. He just came out with the
trilogy we have libertarian volunteerism.
The third one is a vision for a libertarian future and the one
in the middle philosophical volunteerism.
This goes through a number of logical fallacies that people
it's on page 36. If I I might have to just
disrespect his IP altogether and make a video just on the 36 page
because it's so vitally important just to get these in
the back of your mind. So anytime you come across them,
not that you can call them out because that's like so nerdy,
but the point is to see through them and not get manipulated.
It's really difficult sometimes when we're like, well, if we
work hard, eventually we could have a stateless society.
OK, maybe in the meantime we can at least see the world clearly.
And that's why I wanted to invite the author, Jack, on to
the show. You can find him at
volcomic.com. Oh, Eve, what did I do here?
Vol comic.com. You can also check him out at
jackvlloyd.com. Jack, thank you so much for
coming on, man. Keith, it's it's my pleasure.
It's been a long time coming. I've seen you in so many places,
so many states, and now we're here, so here we have the
voluntarist comic. Before getting into the content
of these books and what you do in the Freedom sphere, what is
it that comics provide when it comes to sharing our ideas that
is not easily achievable through sharing empirical evidence or
deontological arguments? Sure.
So my comic book series Voluntarist isn't really like a
Jack Chick track. It's not a a preachy thing.
It's not meant to be like, oh, here's what voluntarism is,
although some people have done that.
Actually, I would say this book, Beyond the Government Haunted
World by Xander Mars does do a preachy form, you know, using
the the, the comic form. But no, my comic book series
here is is actually more of a narrative where it just flips.
The status norms that are used to seeing in all the comic book
series on its head where everywhere and you know pretty
much every medium you can imagine DC, Marvel, Image, you
know a dark horse, whatever. They always are going to say
that the state is either necessary or inevitable or just
a few bad apples, right, That kind of thing.
So through the comic medium, I challenge that norm and make
government not the default ethical norm and treated as
such. And I think that that ties into,
you know answer your question here with the idea of.
Using fiction or stories to help people get a picture of what it
is that we are thinking about and desiring in a freer future.
And I think that there's many great examples of this.
You know, using parables or stories or entertainment to get
people to think about ideas. And I think one of the most
successful people probably in our space who's ever done that
would be I ran, of course, you know, doing Atlas Shrugged and,
you know, Fountainhead and so on and so forth.
So I think that there's a great value to using fiction to
inspire reality. I think sometimes it's easier
for people to hear about ideas through a story and for that to
get them to think about, you know, their own lives and
reflecting kind of, you know, how a mirror to themselves.
So that's kind of what I do with that comic book series is I I
really have a a story. It's like a regular comic book
superhero story in many ways. But there are some key
differences and points of intrigue that do involve deep
philosophical questions about what it means to be really free.
Excellent. Check that out in the
description below. Want to get into the contents of
this book? What is the myth of the rule of
law and why does it matter? Oh, the myth of the rule of law,
you're saying by John Hasnes, correct?
Yeah. So John Hasness, he's definitely
one of my favorites. You know, he was one of the
people who definitely helped refine my thinking and push me
down the path of voluntarism, especially thinking about the
status legal systems. So he's a Georgetown associate
professor of law. And so, you know, obviously he
has some St. cred there, you know, to his name when he
discussed this. But he had a Michigan Law Review
article called The Myth The Rule of Law, and he breaks down many
of the common, I guess you could say incorrect framings people
have about what? The rule of law is, and he helps
people see that no matter what aspect the law you think is
fixed or firm, in reality the law is just a bunch of opinions
of human beings who often actually disagree with each
other, right? They you could get justices at
the Supreme Court, all Ivy League educated top tier schools
right? And you have a 5 four opinion.
And they're conflicting over over what it is that is supposed
to be the law. So how is it that this is so
objective and it's it's so, you know, accurate and easily
understood by everybody, yet you have the supposedly top tier
scholars disagree about what it is.
So what he points to is that it's really about finality.
In other words, people are more so just wanting to have.
A sense of OK, this is just a final judgement.
There isn't really as much a rule of law as much would like
to have that in terms of just having consistency and integrity
and honesty. Unfortunately, you're often at
the the whims of which judge you got, you know, on on the bench
depending on your case and what's going on.
I certainly experienced that when I used to practice a
criminal defense. One of the judges went on a
vacation and I got this nice rotation of like 12 different
judges. Who were substituting in while
she was on vacation in the juvenile court.
And I saw really quickly and directly all the different
flavors of judges within this one court venue, within this one
context of who is going to be more serious, who is more
interested in going to see, you know, the football game
afterward? They just want to be done.
You know who really cared? And you know who had their.
Different type of bias, you can say in the legal system.
So I think that his article really helps people put that
into context that you know, really I don't actually live
under the rule of law. It's kind of a myth.
It's just more so there's a little bit of a framework of of
allowable opinion and these people coming from the same kind
of backgrounds and there's a scope within that.
But really, it's just about finality, you know, that's
that's what it boils down to is people are just, you know,
seeing where the resting stop is for a case and.
Justice is definitely not always served as, as I'm sure you know
quite well. Yes.
What I love about the book is how in such a brief amount of
time you're able to just take a knife to the heart of something
like intellectual property. Just a belief that sort of like
exposing a fish to water. We all assume we have property
rights, you have intellectual property rights and that's that.
So what I would like you to do is we are going to take the
lesson from Henry Haslett that economics is about not just the
short term consequences on one group, but the long term
consequences on all groups of a given policy.
So when it comes to embracing the idea of intellectual
property, walk us through the potential downsides and the
deontological approach that you give in your book.
I believe it is the first one libertarian volunteerism on
intellectual property. Sure.
And and definitely a hat tip to Steven Kinsella as well, who's
definitely a pioneer in this field and someone who I respect
definitely as a, you know, cohort and friend in the in this
field of of thinking about intellectual property.
So big inspiration from him and me.
You know, I'm just further flushing some stuff out,
different framings. But his, his work is great
against intellectual property. So you know, when it comes to
thinking through that, you just have to think about property
rights at the bare bones, right. What makes ethical property
rights? And when we're talking about our
perspective here, that is the libertarian voluntaris
perspective and sometimes tying in the Austrians perspective,
here we're talking about physicality and scarcity, right?
Because again, what we're worried about when it comes to
assigning these things is that you are not deprived of the
physical things that you have. No one's going to come take an
apple as you're about to eat it and be like, Oh no, you know, I
can't eat that apple. So where things lack the ability
to have scarcity over, right? If someone could, you know, have
an apple in their hand and someone through some.
Magical machine, right? You think Star Trek or something
like that and they're able to copy your apple perfectly, but
they don't deprive you of it, right?
You haven't been take you haven't had that apple taken out
of your hand. They're able to somehow
replicate that in a machine elsewhere, but you haven't been
deprived of that. So intellectual property here
means that someone else gets to control your physical property,
your apple, just by virtue of saying, well, I happen to have
this thing first. And you know, for example, if
somewhere to make a a drawing like let's just say.
You know this comic book here, right?
I have, I have this artwork, and if someone were to go with their
own pencil and paper and to draw this exact same thing, I
wouldn't have a right to say, well, you can't fashion your
property, which again, it's it's not my pencil, it's not my
paper. I wouldn't have the right to
say, Oh well, you can't fashion it like this cover because that
would be me saying, oh, I get to control how you form your
totally independent property. And to have this intellectual
property paradigm in the state means the government is going to
threaten that person with violent force for doing that,
for using what is totally their own physical property, the
pencil and paper, to make something that is in similitude
to this. And so that's really where we're
at. At the core is that we reject
this idea that just because someone makes their property,
their physically owned independent property, in
similitude to something that you may have made, that that doesn't
merit the initiation of force against them to stop them.
And so when it comes to creativity and innovation and
things like that, we have to think outside of the
intellectual property paradigm in order to have that done
ethically. And it's not something that is
even weird or unusual to do or or to think about, because it
already exists, in large part thanks to the ease of copying
and digital technologies. You know, back in the day, maybe
you could try to stop people from making copies of records a
little more readily, or cassette tapes somewhat.
But once you got to the Internet and and computer technology,
anybody could rip songs and boom, distribute them across the
globe instantaneously from Napster to Limewire and then so
on so forth. People just ripping things off,
YouTube, whatever. You couldn't stop it.
Like there's no meaningful way to stop people from sharing
things. So people had to adapt.
And we already know what that looks like.
We know what it looks like for musicians to adapt to those
situations, to think about how to monetize.
Outside of just purely distribution of music, and that
includes things like live performances, special merch
there, Crowdsource, fundraising to create things, sometimes
doing special releases or limited things, you know, to
fans and stuff like that using patronage.
There's just a bunch of different ways that people have
come up to circumvent that type of issue.
And you know, I think that this is just something that applies
across the board to any type of thing.
Some people say, well music, you know is one thing, but what
about trying to make complex electronics or washing machines
and this to that. And I do touch a little bit
about how even right now that stuff is also readily copied in
places like China and other places where it's it's hard to
control what people are doing over there and they're taking
technology and they're and they're ripping it and they're
immediately coming out with something new.
You you really have to have a product offering off that in
customer service and other things that make you stand out.
You're not going to just be able to stand out just by resting on
the idea and the first iteration of that alone.
So, you know, fundamentally that's just all boils down to is
we have this ethical principle that, hey, you can't control how
other people fashion their property.
And now you just have to think, OK, within the context of that
ethical confine, how do you innovate and how do you provide
value to others in an ethical way?
And once you have that grounded, it's not that crazy and
everything else kind of falls into place.
I think one of the main reasons that very good people who are
well intended disagree about so many political issues when more
or less in the, you know, greater scheme of life they can
agree on most other things and act in a civilized manner is so
often when people are talking about government, they don't
even agree on what the definition of government is.
Very often government is when people come together and
organize themselves for the greater good.
I can't tell you how many times I've gotten that definition, so
it makes perfect sense when, if that's your starting point.
No wonder we end up on the other side of every single issue.
So before getting into the philosophy of government a
little more, when you're talking about government, do you
differentiate that from a state and what are those definitions
we're dealing with? Sure.
So I use government and state interchangeably generally.
I don't. Some people say, well governance
is not the same as government. And you know when we're talking
about the political realm, we're we're talking about governments
being states. That is, you know, groups of
people. Typically it's very rare that
someone is solely able to carry this out themselves.
Usually it's an oligarchy of sorts.
But the group of people who is claiming to own everybody,
Everything that's already existing in a region by
unilateral forcible decree. And they're doing this by, you
know, essentially saying, oh, well, I'm your ruler and I get
to own you and your house. Yep.
I don't care that you're already been born.
I don't care that you already have a house built and you're
just living your life. I own you and your stuff.
And whatever you decide to do with that and whatever you
decide to trade with others by virtue of that decree, and it's
backed up, of course, by force. And traditionally, this was kind
of funded through different means.
You know, often it would be someone who.
Would hire mercenaries and promise them spoils from others.
Like, hey, help me get control over these people and I'll give
you spoils, you know, as part of that.
Of course over time it evolved into more sophisticated systems.
You know from the direct violence model to try to make it
seem like oh see, this is of the people.
It's not a bunch of of bandits who are ruling you.
It's it's people like you and you're you're us.
Even though you have nothing to do with establishing the
constitutional laws or anything whatsoever.
They just say, yeah, yeah, this is you.
You're part of what we're doing here is.
They're the ones who get all your resources and money and
control you and the ways that you know you can't do back to
us. So that's really where we
delineate here. You know those terms from other
things. We're talking about government
and states in in that construct. In a way that's that's this
initiation of force that's distinct from other types of
rudimentary violence. Amazing how they can say that
with a strike face. Oh, so I can tax your income?
No, but I can tax yours. Can I issue regulations on your
ability to conduct commerce? No.
That would actually make you threatening A politician, which
makes you a terrorist. OK, this doesn't feel like an
extension of me. Representative, in book one on
page 62, you ask the vitally important question.
Compared to what? When having philosophical
discussions, or even just everyday empirical discussions.
Why is it important to ask compared to what?
And please provide us with an example.
Sure. So compared to what I think one
of the people who I especially think about this whenever I hear
the term, it is, you know, Stefan Molyneux from back in the
day doing that philosophical deep thinking of of the compared
to what's to remember that we are not in this world where
every single perfection about everything is is written in the
stars for us, right? We are not told, here's what
moral ethical behavior is by default.
We're not told, here's how all of science works.
We're not told. Here's all, all of math works.
We're in a constant state. Of discovery and learning and
evolving and adapting. And because of that, sometimes
people will critique what your position is, even if your
position may not necessarily be the end all, be all of
solutions. They might critique you, but
then their own position is much worse or more vile in terms of
the harms caused. You know, against people, right?
So. You sometimes have to be like,
OK, there could be critiques about what I am saying
potentially, but compared to what?
As in what are you advocating for?
And a lot of times this comes into play when we're talking
about the nature of statism, right?
Because we're often thinking in terms of state violence with
thinking about how the state is actually operating and what
they're doing compared to what could be done if that wasn't the
means of funding things or that wasn't the means of
orchestrating, you know, human behavior.
And so that's a lot of times what we're trying to get people
to wrestle away from is this idea.
Oh, the only way to do this thing is, is the state.
And you're like, oh, well, you know, how will that ever arise?
You know, they'll just be warlords and this or that.
And it's it's like, no, you know, here's how roads can be
funded privately and and can be made right.
It's not like, oh, OK, that's not possible to make roads,
right. So you know, you have to sit
there and and get people to walk through those things and say OK.
Here's how you're advocating for things to be funded and things
to be orchestrated. And what are the actual
specifics in, in terms of what each person's doing to get
there? And they say, OK, well, what if
we, you know, in the comparative we're to try to achieve that
without all the threats of force and violence and these automatic
mandatory takings that end up being used to fund massive wars
over in the Middle East and spending trillions of dollars on
things that people truly don't want to enrich.
You know those in power, right? So it's it's it's just a great
discourse to have on anything that you you want to talk about.
And it obviously is very easy to show, you know, if you get a
little verse in in some of the details, how much the government
actually causes harm in the comparative, especially for
interventions. And you know what was before
they intervened or in places where you know, you can actually
see where the government has gotten out of it in some
miraculous way and how things have flourished.
So I like to think about it like that.
Oh, yes. Shout out to the Airline
Deregulation Act. Thank you very much, Jimmy
Carter, for basically only that. The reason that was so important
for me is because I would always think, well, the problem is, you
know, under like a system of anarchism, I don't, you know,
there's no guarantee that my body isn't protected.
There's no guarantee that my, you know, house and all the
things I've worked for aren't protected.
To which you should have, to which I should have asked then
compared to what? Is there a guarantee now?
Tons of rioters, Tons of looting, tons of wars with
indiscriminate bombing, taking 30% of my income and then
bragging about it and then never thanking me, which I will never
get over that, That no politician has thanked me for
all the taxes I paid, whereas anytime I buy a cup of coffee at
a private organization, they say thank you so much.
It's just ridiculous. So, compared to what is so
vitally important for people to have in their intellectual
repertoire in order to combat propaganda, on page 94 you have
the citation which I thought was very interesting.
You cite Forbes magazine. Private security outnumbers the
police in most countries worldwide.
It's an infographic from 2017. What do people need to know
about the reality of private security?
Not just how it might or I would like to get in how things might
work hypothetically, but also there's so much private security
we have today that we don't appreciate.
Please enlighten the audience with the private security that's
constantly all around us. Yeah, the whole private security
thing is, is kind of mind, mind boggling, because in some ways,
I think people have gotten so used to it, they don't even,
like, kind of think about it in those terms anymore, right?
You know, you might see a bouncer at a club or an armed
guard at a bank. You know, or you might see that,
you know there's some private security getting people in at a
sporting event, right? But they don't look at that and
immediately reflect on that in economic terms, they're like,
huh, OK, not everybody is is police, right?
Like, not, you know, not every single security thing is.
Oh, OK. There's going to be a cop at
every single gas station, A cop at every single sporting event,
a cop at every bank, a cop that sits outside, you know, your
house when you go to sleep. Right.
It's something that should be more obvious.
But you know, for people it just doesn't connect when it becomes
just kind of normal and they're not really like focused, you
know, on that economic thinking. So in reality, you know, around
the world especially private security is outnumbering police
in many places because the governments.
And they're really suck. You know what I mean?
Like a lot of these places are, you know, really not not the
best places to be. And and you know, basically
they, they need armed security to move transport, you know,
moving goods across the world. You know, there's literally
pirates that can try to take down ships.
And so there's there's literally, you know, guys with
machine guns and even rocket launchers protecting cargo
vessels from getting taken over. And these are just, you know,
common things. It's it's just normal stuff if
you're in the global scale of business.
That you don't like really think about, you know what I mean?
It's not like, OK the the US government's going to sign a
cruiser, you know, to this giant you know, tanker or this, you
know, giant cargo ship that's shipping over you know, 10s of
millions of dollars of goods. They have their own private
security to to stop people who would try to you know board them
and pirate them and this and that.
So private security is quite the norm in, in most places, you
know, as the first rung of defense because you know, police
are not just sitting out there and and private security is
needed for all types of of establishments.
So moving toward that end, you know, I I think that if people
were to recognize that value of having that frontline security
and not having to wait and taking things into their own
hands and kind of valuing that, I think they can more readily
see how we can move away from police being this like total
security force that they're always, you know, imagined to be
there when you need them and then they're not there in time.
Of course. And instead of thinking about,
oh, OK, well what what would a free market and security look
like if people were able to actually choose and have more
accountability. So you know, that that's kind of
that note there is to kind of put things into perspective for
people about what is. And I think that's that's often
what we have an advantage. And I think in in our discourse
is that there is a lot that we can point to right now around
the world in different pockets, different places about solutions
outside the state, whether it's because the government's just
not intervening there or the government's just too
incompetent and solutions are needed.
So people have to step up. So, you know, I always try to
point to reality to get people grounded in that to see where we
can go. Yeah, I did some work with an IT
firm and to watch them when one of their clients had a
ransomware attack where their most vitally important items
like this is, their entire life's work was just gone.
And you know, there's just a note on the screen.
Send us 300 grand and we'll give you your files back.
Maybe. None of them, not a single one,
said quick call 911. They called the IT company in
Arizona who backed up their files with private security on
Google. They had PayPal private security
keeping all of their finances intact.
They also had Venmo private security.
They had multi factor authentication with Microsoft
for all their emails and all that information for all their
contacts. It was amazing to watch in the
most dire circumstances. This organization, probably not
run by anarcho capitalists at all, just as a means of
efficiency, said what am I going to do?
Call the NSA and say my property's been, you know,
stripped from me? They wouldn't.
They don't have the knowledge or incentive of what to do.
But private organizations do. Excellent part in the book.
What are some lessons you've learned when it comes to the
possibility or reality of private arbitration coming into
existence? So this is actually kind of fun
because this topic was something I was just looking into a little
bit as I'm working on my next non fiction book which is going
to take a bit longer to do. So this was is going to be a
book on libertarian legal theory in terms of a proscription.
And so this, this might be interesting as me and Kinsell
are going to you know, have our our books on this coming out in
the near future or this in the future.
We'll see who gets there first. Kinsella has a lot, you know, he
can put together from the past, you know sooner.
So, so I was looking at the arbitration issues and and
thinking through a few things about private market solutions
And something that's that's interesting about it is that
with arbitration, obviously there's private arbitration
that's been generally respected in terms of US courts saying OK,
you know if you agree to arbitration, you know you got to
do that thing. And so there's been conflicts
about different issues not getting resolved because
arbitration wasn't going as well as people had hoped or there was
just like complications and stuff like that, people getting
justice. And then there was this kind of
wake up moment where all these attorneys at once like oh you
know, we could do class actions through arbitrations by like
filing 12,018 thousand arbitrations at once with big
companies to try to you know basically drain them of
resources in order to you know get a class action going that
way. Essentially.
You know, not like a legit class action in terms of you know,
filing for a class action but like essentially using mass
arbitration filings to get results.
So I think that the possibility of arbitration and private
dispute resolution is is of course, you know, not even a
question about reality. Yes, it does happen.
The effectiveness you know is going to I think really depend
on to what extent people are both savvy about, you know,
their contractual terms and legal backdrops about what norms
are required to contract in the 1st place.
And that's actually something that you know, I'm going to be
tackling head on, which are you know, the business cultural
norms of what you need in order to have a valid, both a valid
contract and capacity to even consent to a contract.
So I think that these are some issues that are requiring market
realignment. You could say because for so
long people have gotten into this comfy idea that the
government is going to save them no matter what, right?
Sign whatever you want like that.
You know, I think it was Apple, like one of the people putting
the contract together for their, their TOS, put in like we get
your first born child into the TOS, like just to mess with
people just to show that nobody reads it and nobody had read it,
like, you know, so many downloads and nobody had, right.
So we have, we have a real problem I think with this idea
that the government's the salvation, you know, and we'll
take you out of any bad situation, sign away, sign,
whatever, who cares, You know, go to California and you know
court shop. So you know all these
distortions in the market, I think you know, have really
caused people to not value reading through contracts and
not really, you know, take them seriously.
So ultimately I think that when we move toward a market, more of
a market system over time, I think those things need to be
addressed and and need to be addressed from a strong
philosophical backdrop that respects property rights.
So I I think that that's really more the thing that needs to be
done because you know, arbitration is something that
normally, you know, happens. It's not like something crazy or
wild. It literally exists now and even
US courts, you know, will be like, no, OK, your contract says
this, whatever. But you know, there's there's
even issues there. There's always issues of people
trying to either not comply or to try to get out of it and this
or that. So you need to have more market
mechanisms that people can build into those things for insurance
or escrow and other incentives to make them more legitimate.
Because the if people think that, well it doesn't matter,
you know what I mean? I can get away with whatever, it
doesn't matter state law or private arbitration, but then
what difference it make, right? You need to have meaningful
accountability and reciprocity and upholding of those things in
order to have a strong legal system, you know private or you
know some type of quasi government thing in transition.
So I think that those those are things that need to to really be
addressed at the forefront. But otherwise you know private
arbitration or or private dispute resolution is very easy
to do and already exists. You know what I mean, widespread
now. I mean, most people when they
sign their agreements, are already agreeing to some type of
private arbitration most of the time.
You know, a lot, you know a lot of the times these boilerplate
contracts are already doing that, so.
When I was reading this book, it really came across to me that so
many of our of our ideas are so commonly held when it doesn't
come to the state as far as interacting with people on a
consensual basis, having things like informed consent and all
these other things when it comes to, you know, recent issues in
the Middle East. The nicest people I have ever
met are both calling for a mass genocide of the occupying
Israelis and a flattening and turning into the parking lot of
Gaza. It is amazing how good people
can be tricked, sort of, into justifying the most unbelievable
atrocities. When you were doing research for
this book, did anything jump out to you as an explanation as to
how such good people? Can make such a 180 when it
comes to dealing with the state or even just dealing with other
groups in general. Oh, well, I mean when it comes
to people's social psychology on different forms of state
violence and picking sides, I think the more that there is a
personal history or an entrenched history, that's where
it gets tough for people because they're going to, you know, read
into the situation, OK, you know, this is the worst
aggressor. This is the less aggressor.
And I don't know, maybe we, you know, should port them or or,
you know, they're going to generalize against a whole group
of people and rationalize things, you know, to short
circuit having to deal with the complexities of of these
situations and that. And that is a big part of it, is
that it is complex and it isn't neat and it isn't easy to deal
with because we're dealing with issues of people who are trying
to maintain state power all across the board.
We have people who just literally are like, I want to
have my, you know, utopian vision of control over this area
and I want to, you know, do it by force and establish my
version of of government. So it's it's unfortunate that,
you know, a lot of people fall into that trap so quickly and
miss the bigger picture about all the rationalizations for why
people are trying to do what it is they're doing in the 1st
place. And I think that in order to do
that, you have to, you know, stop thinking about, you know,
these, I guess we'd say historical geopolitical games.
You know, like, oh, OK, you know, this government gave them
this in the past and this government did this and this,
you know, and just realized it's like, OK, forget all that
nonsense that, you know, none of these governments had the
ethical right to do any of these things in the 1st place.
You know, we should be working toward actual peace, actual
property rights ending, you know, forcible, you know,
evictions or destruction of property and and and all those
kinds of things. It's it, you know, that's really
what it boils down to. And so you know, for that
situation especially, you know, if we're talking about what's
happening over in Israel and you know West Bank got a lot of good
stuff. You know, it's it's such a
tragic situation because everybody is losing in the end,
right at, you know, at the end of the day, you, you just have a
bunch of people who are killing each other and then enacting
even more state control and more brainwashing and destroying, you
know, people's lives. And so, you know, a lot of the
times, you know, with what what people are advocating for, they
end up creating no winners in the end.
They end up just creating more blowback and more destruction.
So, you know, it's just sad all around.
That is an excellent point. In March of 1948, Winston
Churchill published The Gathering Storm and in the
introduction he says. The human tragedy reaches its
climax, and after all the exertions and sacrifices of
hundreds of millions of people, we have found neither peace nor
security. And we lie in the grip of even
worse perils than those we have surmounted, referring to the
fact that now the Soviet, Bolshevik, Bolshevik regime now
has half of Europe, so even after the most justified war
that could ever be justified. It still turns out that even the
Prime Minister of Great Britain said, well, even after all that,
there were some unintended consequences.
So for their best example, they still have this and they're
still willing to go to war against Iran, China, Russia and
all of these these other groups. Just terrible.
That's why I love having books like this, where people can see
the lights and not get fooled. When it comes to not being
fooled, you have a section on schooling or education.
And you reference a possible alternative, referred to as
unschooling. What is unschooling and what can
people do to combat any trickery they came across in state
education? Sure.
So a little background about me on this and how I came to be
interested in it is that, you know, my past work, I've been a
juvenile defense attorney. I've been a public school
teacher. You know state school teacher,
I've been a tutor, company owner, substitute teacher and my
dad was a 30 year career New York City school teacher.
So I come from a background with a lot of schooling things and
young people and I saw through that all how much the, you know
nature of compulsory, you know that is forcing someone to learn
at the tune of a bell, these subjects in this order, you
know. Otherwise you're labeled as a
failure or behind you know or just not smart.
You just work at McDonald's, right?
I I saw how much that destroyed young people's creativity and
self drive and self worth in ways that just were absolutely
absurd. Considering that, you know,
whatever you're doing, most of it's going to be forgotten by
the time you graduate. It's just it you can't retain
all the information you're covering, you know, keep only a
little bit. So I thought that it was, you
know, time to really take a look at this whole picture and say,
OK, what is the nature of ethical education?
And so the education that is, you know, most compatible with
the voluntarious libertarian mindset is unschooling, where
adults act as facilitators, learning that it's helpers
instead of performance judges. And what this means that young
people are are free to choose whatever it is that they would
like to do in terms of learning within, you know, safe
boundaries. You know, obviously they can't
go and like set up C4 at someone's, you know, house and
that kind of thing, It's it's, you know, it's meant to be with
the respect of property rights, of course.
But the the idea there is that kids are naturally curious about
the world. They are thirsty for knowledge.
They have questions about everything and they just want
adults there to help them with their questions or or provide
resources as needed instead of telling them what to do and tell
them that they're going to be stupid if they don't learn this
particular thing at this particular time.
And by and large, most every young person who goes through
this learns all the basics, the fundamentals of reading,
writing, arithmetic and numeracy.
You know, world history just by engaging the culture and the
tools of the culture. And this is done at many
different types of places, from unschooling co-ops to official
unschooling centers like the Sudbury Valley School in
Framingham, MA, which they've had to program then since 1968
to just homeschooling. Not really at home, but like
unschooling in the context of home schooling, sometimes called
world schooling, especially if you if you travel with your
child to different places around the world, help them learn new
languages, experience cultures and things like that.
So that is really the ethos of unschooling and it is a fairly
well developed at this point. It's, you know, the philosophy
behind it. And there's a great book by
Kerry MacDonald, who is a Foundation for Economic
Education fellow called Unschooled Raising a Curious
Children, well educated children outside the conventional
classroom. I highly recommend people check
that book out. She herself holds a masters in
Education from Harvard. She's unschooled her four kids,
so she has, you know, the academic credentials for those
who need it and the lived experience.
So I think that that is a great start.
Obviously she's not the only one by far, but I think it's a great
start for people to really dive into it and understand what it
means. And so I've done a lot of work
helping families exit the school and paradigm through my page the
Honest teacher and I've gotten numerous families to finally
make the jump get their kids out of compulsory learning and to
unschool and and every single one you know who's done that so
far to me, you know who's communicated with me about it
has said wow this has been an incredible experience amazing
journey. I had no idea that I was you
know basically stopping their learning and and actually you
know curtailing it through the forced a schooling paradigm and
the shame and and the other things like that.
So you know and then parents too, they, you know, sometimes
have to decompress themselves from the schooled mindset.
They have to kind of work back all the structures they have in
the psychological fears they have from the schooled mindset
where they think Oh my gosh, if my kid isn't in this you know, K
to 12 program, you know, for school, they're just going to be
broke or this is that so. And and kids of course through
unschooling, you know, doesn't mean they don't have ever any
textbooks or a class or anything.
They're they're free to take it as they're interested.
And if they want to take a class on Japanese language, of course,
if they want to take a class on computer programming, of course
it's up to them. It's just a matter of their
election, their choosing based on self direction, and that's
where the learning is actually deepest and most meaningful.
Yeah, and I think not going by that principle is so dangerous
for both sides. Once the kids, the kid becomes
sort of resentful or does, you know, just the bare minimum.
But it also is bad for the teacher or parent because it
doesn't really get them to the point where they say okay.
I need to motivate this child to learn about history, economics,
philosophy. How am I going to make this
interesting for them? How do I communicate it so
effectively to where they realize that history really is
important in teaching us lessons with how to deal with things
today? When I was in school, I felt
like they could not care less about respecting my time.
So it ends up being both in the benefit of the teacher and the
student when we embrace ideas like this.
I want you to lead by example and give us an unschooling
lesson on five of our heroes. I know you had to have read a
lot of their work in doing research for this book.
Please walk us through the most important lesson you learned
from Murray and Rothbard. So Murray Rothbard, I would say
there's a lot of lessons that I've learned from him in terms
of thinking about state violence.
But I'll say in some ways my favorite things from Rothbard
are more so thinking about what I liked to change and and be
different. So for example, when Rothbard
talked about the the market and children thing, I didn't like
how he framed that. And so I changed that, of
course, noted that in my books as well to something about a
stewardship relationship with children.
It's not ownership. You don't own the body of the
child. They're not your property.
It's a stewardship relationship. So I really appreciated him
making these types of statements session The Ethics of Liberty,
because it helped me see that there was, I thought, room for
improvement of ways to communicate these things and
that it wasn't just, oh, everybody's dead and there's
nothing to improve upon. There's nothing to do better.
But you know, I I love his scathing review of what the
state really is in the United States.
That's definitely one of my favourites of his.
But the The Ethics of Liberty I thought was is probably one of
my favorite books of his and and what inspired me in some ways to
do my own writing and and write my own articles and eventually
do that to write my own book. OK, and why is it that liberty
is ethical as opposed to coercion?
Or what the opposite of liberty would be.
Yeah, yeah, the opposite of of liberty would be a total
slavery. But the ethics and and how I
frame that is specifically about an adoptive ethic psychology.
So what we're talking about here is not necessarily, oh, this is
the absolute truth of the universe like this.
God created everything or there wasn't a God of this that I
sidestep all that and just simply focus on the nature of
how people empathetically view each other and those
relationships and develop that ethical code of conduct from
what people expect for themselves.
And that's where we start with the consent ethic, how people
cannot want their consent violated.
It's it's logically impossible to want somebody's consent to
it. And so it builds a strong
foundation of reciprocal empathetic, you know, outlook on
how you actually act with other people and have consensual
relationships. So I would say that that that is
a little bit different from other authors.
You know for example on Rand and Objectivism and rationalism or
Rothbard uses natural law theory, which I'm not a natural
law theorist, I I do you know take a divergent from there.
But I think that this type of thinking, this type of framing,
where I'm asking the person that is the the reader to think about
their own selves, to me that is the most effective way to get
people into this type of psychology and into this type of
respect. Because you can.
You can tell someone all day, here's what the world is and
here's what you should think. And like Macy's did a great job
of it. Let me write every single brain
spill thing about everything I could possibly think about, you
know, in human action. But at the end of the day, if
that person you're talking to doesn't have that same
knowledge, worldview, experience, what good does it
do? They're not going to relate to
it. You have to get someone to
relate to these ethical principles on their own terms,
their own lived experience. And if you can do that, it's
going to be way more, you know, to me, meaningful and deep and
lasting because they are actually going to relate to this
in their own view and their own, OK, you know, I that's right.
I don't want my body to be violated by others.
I don't want people to, you know, steal from me and and to
come in the middle of the night and to stab me and all this
other stuff. Right.
It's way more lasting for someone to have that reflective
process in my opinion, and to be able to sit there and say, OK, I
can see how this reciprocally if they don't do this to me and I
don't do this to them, then I'm actually going to have peace.
So you know that that's kind of where I, I take my stand and
kind of stick out from, you know, some of these other
potential lenses about thinking through the development of human
ethics. What is the most important
lesson you've learned from Auburn Herbert?
So, funny thing. And he's actually on this, this
cover here, he's like hammering out on that little pedestal.
So I actually didn't even have much anything to do with him or
any real knowledge of him until way later in my journey because
I was more so on the, I guess you could say, the Internet
voluntarius and the people who were really chugging away at
that between 2006. Yeah, 2006 and and 2010.
So like Neil, so, Larkin, Rose Mark Stevens and stuff like
that. And you know, going back to
even, you know, people from the Voluntarius, oh, I got a cameo
back there where you know, I must speak out the best of
Voluntarist magazine. A 299 Carl Wagner.
So this, you know is a little bit of, you know, the the modern
voluntarist thought, you know, kind of encapsulated in this
book. So Herbert, you know, wasn't
really as much of a big influence on my journey until,
like I was like, oh, OK oh, and that's where that guy, oh, that
guy came up with this stuff. So for him it was just more
like, oh, OK. So he's the one who kind of
encapsulated the voluntariest, you know, thought process and
removing your consent from the state and, you know, the group,
the, you know, the voluntariest group that he was a part of.
And that's where that, you know, coin turn comes from.
So that's my appreciation for him is is that him kind of
taking the ideology and and conceptualizing and giving it a
name? Yeah, he is the main motivation
behind the title for my next book, which I'm titling,
Domestic Imperialism. What he does is he makes a very
clear, concise argument against that.
You know this imperialism is certainly unjustifiable.
He's using the example of the British in Ireland if.
I recall that correctly and says, and by the way, this
principle also applies to domestic populations.
So you know what's really wrong for those British to coercively
impose their ideas on those in Zimbabwe?
Well, the fact that they're geographically very far from
Britain doesn't. What if it's my neighbor?
What if there's the closest person on planet Earth to me is
threatening me with violence if I don't?
Either chip in for this schooling scheme, chip in for
this infrastructure bill, or, you know, refuse to use these
drugs. He completely obliterates this,
you know, line between foreign imperialism bad but domestic.
Well, that's different 'cause you get a vote once every four
years. I love Herbert's work work, and
I am so glad you're keeping his message alive when it comes to
what Ludwig von Mises most important lesson you learn from
him. So with Macy's, his work on the
deduction specifically, you know, past his a priori, which I
would say I have a disagreement with.
With that aspect I you know I diverge on on the the
abstraction of man but I do really value the deductions he
made past that a talking about human action specifically with
people acting in their self interests in order to meet their
you know specific wants and needs and how that plays you
know on the broader scale of of the economic calculation.
So you know to me that that's where I think he's really
basically you know kind of taking the cake on explaining
all those different things. I mean he he's very verbose at
walking through here's every single thought of human action
when people are in the market and they're looking and
perceiving at every you know every other person and and
they're you know without all these different people
coordinating you know together there's having spontaneous order
you know especially of course you know inspiring A Hayek
later. So I to me those foundations I
think are excellent and inspiring and, you know, great
economic foundation and way better, of course, than Adam
Smith, so. I remember, I think it was in a
book titled Bureaucracy, where Mesa said something it it was
just so short and beautiful, he goes.
If man's fallibility is a justification, is an argument in
opposition to the free market, it must also be in opposition to
statism. Or it it was just something so
brief like that where I just read it and I go, that's
interesting. Yes, people are fallible.
Well, who runs the state? Owls, plants, zebras.
Yeah, humans who we just conceded are fallible when we're
talking about the voluntary sector.
There are just so many gems in In Mesus's work that I'm glad
that he made the cover of of your first one.
When it comes to Lysander Spooner, that's who this is.
Right at the very bottom. Yeah, at the at the bottom
middle, that's sponer. OK, yes, so he made the cover
well deserved. What is the most important
lesson the audience could learn from Lysander Spooner?
So Spooner was definitely one of my favourites and definitely on
my top tier list even in my early days, because his
constitutional authority was just such an excellent critique
on the constitution. And of course very impressive
considering, you know, his time period in 1800s being so ahead
on this like hey, you know, you made this constitution, but we
didn't agree, right? So I I think that his
encapsulation on, you know, the the man being stuck in a
battlefield when it comes to voting is kind of a fun
encapsulation that I I kind of like that when it comes to
political action. He sticks out from other
voluntary as saying that the act of voting in and of itself is
not support of the state. If you're just trying to stop
them from literally killing you or robbing you.
I I 'cause I think that that is a justifiable form of
self-defense. I don't think that you know,
there and that's that is like a big split with involuntarism is
you know, voluntarists who are against all political action
categorically, you know, none of that whatsoever.
And then those who think, yeah, voting in self-defense, like if
you can alleviate any type of government theft, murder,
whatever, do it. I fall into the latter camp.
I think that if we can end wars with a vote just because I don't
care, it's like I don't want people being mass murdered.
It's like anything to stop that you know, is ethical to me.
Anything to stop people being stolen from again, that's that's
ethical. You're not murdering more people
to stop. You're saying, oh hey, we're
going to stop having this tax. Whatever.
Fine. You know what I mean?
So I don't I don't see that as inherently supporting the state
or saying it's legitimate. I see it as you know basically
doing whatever you can to try to stop the theft and violence that
is the state. So you know I think that's
that's good you know nerd them debate there.
You know, it's actually within the the voluntary sector and a
lot of the the mainline ones, especially in in this grouping,
you know, involuntariesvoluntaries.com,
they were definitely more apolitical teetering on pacifist
people. So, you know, there's definitely
some risks as among those people, you know, whether that's
that's OK or not, but. So I'm trying to remember,
because I've read the Constitution of No Authority
some time ago, the argument is that there is no treason when
you don't obey the state because you never agreed to it.
So when we're calling people treasonous for not blindly
obeying the mass murder in government, did I just make that
up or is that his general argument?
What does he mean by no treason? I I'm not.
I'd have to relook at that myself.
I I thought that that was what it is that you said.
But I'm having a brain fart and I don't remember exactly.
I'd have to like revisit that to say whether no treason, as in
the act of rejecting the Constitution, is not treasonous.
I thought that's what it was my assumption, but I'd have to
double check that. I want to ask about Frederick
Bastiat. I just got to read my favorite
Bastiat quote and then I'm going to let you take over.
But on page 49, Bastiat says. Please understand of his book
The Law. Please understand that I do not
dispute their right to invent social combinations, to
advertise them, to advocate them, and to try them upon
themselves at their own expense and risk.
But I do dispute their right to impose the plans upon us by law,
by force, and to compel us to pay for them with our taxes.
It was so vitally important for me to hear something like that
when I thought that government was equating with society and
anyone who was anti government is kind of against society in
general. What's wrong with people getting
together to do things? Bastiat makes that so crystal
clear that that I just got so much out of him.
What are the most important lessons you learned from the
work of Frederick Bastiat? Yeah, his his law.
The law is obviously the the flagship there.
It's it's it's pretty pretty great the his quote with you
know socialism and saying that the socialists would accuse you
of not wanting to have bread or religion or or anything else
just because you don't want the government doing it.
I thought that is just such a strong encapsulation, especially
tied back to what you're saying with the compared to what?
Just calling out people who say, oh, OK, well, just because I
don't want the government doing this doesn't mean, oh, I want no
food or I want no security, you know, or whatever it is that
they're saying. Oh, well, you know, if you don't
have the government, then you have nothing, you know.
So I thought that his scathing critique of the socialists
there, and I love how it's of course encapsulated as
socialists, 'cause that's, you know, that's who's facing the
time stands up, you know, throughout the test of time.
And it's always the same thing. People, you know, you argue in
the Internet and you say, hey, maybe the government shouldn't
do this thing like, oh, you don't want roads.
You know, like so it's it's something that is is so
incredibly timeless and that's probably one of my favorite
statements out of there. It's unbelievable to find out
that that was written in what, like 1850?
I think he wrote the law just something like forever ago, like
right after the French Revolution.
So yes, Jack, remind us where we can find you and where can we
purchase the book? Sure.
So the books here that you can see do a little zoom here.
So these three books that we were just talking about in the
philosophical Voluntarism, Vision for Libertarian Future,
Definitive Guided, Libertarian Voluntarism, those books are all
printed on demand through Amazon.
So they're only in print. They're not in digital.
People say why not digital? I say because these artworks are
super cool and they make for a great display piece.
When you're done, you're going to want them.
So that's why I keep them in print.
But and they're not that hefty and you know, people like, oh, I
got a big bookshelf like these, These can slip, slip in anywhere
you're good. So you can get them, you know,
just looking up on Amazon. Of course, if you go to my
website, Jack JCKV as in Voluntariest, Lloyd LOYD, Jack
V, lloyd.com, I have links there to pretty much everything that I
do to some degree, whether it's the non fiction books or my
comic book series, which I'm super excited about.
We actually just finished the remaster on the Origins arc,
which is 6 issues and there's a trade paperback for that and
they'll be up soon enough. You know the first two issues
are are still waiting pending queue a placement on the
website. But in the meantime you can
check out that comic book series on Amazon Digital and on Indie
Planet and do all kinds of other cool stuff too.
I mean, we have a music video coming out I think within about
a week and a half. The next music video is called
Break the Great Reset. This one's going to feature a
philosopher, so I worked as producer on that and writer
slash, you know, costume prep person.
So that is going to be a fun music video coming out talking
about the great reset and mocking, of course, the Evil
World Economic Forum and Klaus Schwab.
So I'm super excited for that. And we have some other cool
things come out too. Later on this year, we're going
to do another campaign for the next Suit Saga, the next art
called Suit Saga and Voluntarist.
And then we have a top secret project that we've had in the
works for a year coming out January 1st, 2024.
So you'll find out what that is soon enough.
But I think, I think everyone's going to eat it.
They're going to love it or hate it or or they're going to be
like, Oh my gosh, what the heck is this?
And then they're going to open it up and laugh.
So that's all I can say. I can't say the specifics, but
it's going to be something really funny.
Thank you to everyone for watching Keith and I don't tread
on anyone in the Libertarian Institute.
Jack Lloyd, thank you for your time, brother.
Oh, it's my pleasure. Always you, Keith.