Welcome back, friends. Welcome back to the Corporate
Report. It is February of 2024 and
although it just seems like just a few weeks since the last time
we were talking to Keith Knight about one of his new books.
Well, Keith Knight has a new book, as you know, very frequent
guest on the Corporate Report, Keith Knight, who I've talked to
many times in the past. You can of course search the
Corporate Report archives for our previous conversations, but
perhaps more importantly, you could be following his work via
the Libertarian Institute or on his Don't Tread on Anyone
podcast. At any rate, you should know
Keith Knight by now and his books that we've talked to have
talked about before. For example, The Voluntariest
Handbook. Well, he has a new book.
It is called Domestic Imperialism 9 Reasons I Left
Progressivism. This is a very, very
interesting, very in some ways simple read and not a voluminous
read, but one that I think is important for people to to
probably read, even the people who may not think that this book
is intended for them. But we'll get into that a little
bit. First, let's welcome him on the
program. Keith Knight, thank you for
joining us today. James Corbett, thank you so much
for having me on the show and I love the new website
everythinglooksgreat@corbettreport.com. Excellent.
Thank you for that. OK, so let's get into this book
Domestic Imperialism 9 Reasons I Left Progressivism.
It is being published by the Libertarian Institute and I want
to state right up front and off the bat like the voluntary
standbook. This book is of course available
for purchase for people who want to actually support the work,
and please do so if you do appreciate it.
It is also available as a free PDF download and you can access
it for free, for example on archive.org.
All the links will be in the show notes for anyone who is
curious about this, Anyone who wants to check it out, check it
out and then buy it if you like. At any rate, I hope people will
at the very least take a look through this book.
But let's talk about this domestic imperialism. 9 reasons
I left progressives of them. Now now I I know vaguely about
your background and the points of your biography and story.
Keith and I think we probably come from broadly similar kind
of background perspectives. Myself as a Canadian, I was
brought up in the Canadian indoctrination system.
So I was a leftist kind of by default, as most Canadians are.
The government loves you and it's there to help you, And
sure, it makes mistakes, but overall it's a good thing and
everyone loves government, right?
Well, that was the way I was brought up, and that was kind of
what I believed by default. Luckily, I got myself out of
that indoctrination. And from what I understand, you
too counted yourself on the progressive or left side of the
spectrum at one point, but clearly are not there anymore,
broken free of the spectrum as I have.
Let's talk about that. Talk about your background and
and how you came to write this book.
Originally I was introduced into politics by my grandparents in
Sedona at a very young age, and it seemed like the world was
such a bizarre place. Here we have a bunch of people
who want you to be treated equally, and on top of it they
want to give you stuff for free. And then there's a bunch of
people who oppose that thing. They want you to have to pay for
it. That means some people aren't
going to have access to products or services, and if you're
against treating people equally, that means you want some people
to be treated unequally. How could anyone advocate such a
thing? Took a while for me to
understand. Things like opportunity cost and
the cost of increasing the money supplied simply doesn't make
anything free. Nor does the state first taxing
you and then purchasing something on your behalf make it
free. Also this concept of equality,
well, we of course, are not equal to the state.
They have a monopoly, right to issue taxes, conscript men into
fighting wars, start wars and murder civilians by the
thousands. Engaging compulsory education
and a host of other things, constantly regulating voluntary
interactions between consenting adults.
A blatant crime if we saw anyone else do it.
So when I originally saw the world as needing more compassion
or equality, more income mobility, I still held true to
those. But I think libertarianism is a
far better way to achieve those ends than any system that
advocates for a system of supremacy where some people
called the state have rights that no other organization does.
You know, it's it's so funny to hear where you ended up from the
point where, if I remember correctly, did you You voted for
Obama at one point. I was not old enough.
But you would have voted certainly.
Campaigned for him. I have a picture of me in
Washington, DC holding up the newspaper Obama claims
nomination. We got him it it.
It was such a great victory for for so many of us.
I mean, here we have a guy so wildly different than George W
Bush, first black president. This is going to really be a
milestone in our history closing down Guantanamo Bay.
He wants an Affordable Care Act. None of those words are
dangerous at all. This has got to be a good thing.
So yes, very excited about Obama at the time and that's why we
supported him. All right.
So as as you've already laid out there, there are a lot of
reasons why you got off of that plantation, so to speak.
And in fact, the entire political statist plantation,
which is a whole other subject and which I think so people who
encounter the title of this book might think, Oh well, I'm not a
progressive, so, you know, whatever, I get it.
Okay, Yeah. But there's a lot of information
in here. First of all, everyone, I think
in their life knows someone like that on the leftist progressive
side of the spectrum who has a lot of that indoctrination, who
needs to be unindoctrinated. And there's a lot of very good
points that you bring up in this book.
But also I think there might be some things for self reflection
of a lot of the statists that are in the crowd.
But at any rate, let's go through.
I think that probably the best way to tackle this is let's go
through these nine points and just sort of give the overview
bird's eye view and then we can drill down into some of the
areas that I think invite some more philosophical into
introspection. Let's start with point #1,
arbitrary divides. What is this about?
So sometimes you will hear commentators say, well, people
should not be divided. People should come together.
Well, this kind of implies that murderers, kidnappers, rapists,
thieves, liars. We should just get along with
them. Clearly there should be some
divides in society. What the progressive focus is
on, though, is not those principal divides that
differentiates people based on actions they choose to
voluntarily engage in. Especially we're dealing with
consenting adults in in that case, when it comes to the
modern progressives today. And Republicans of course do
this too. But I came from the progressive
side, so I wrote a book on that. We constantly see progressives
pushing fake divides. The biggest one recently was the
vilification of people of Russian descent, constantly
negatively generalizing Russians at every turn, knowing that this
very well could provoke a war with a nuclear power.
We had the Democratic president candidates on stage, Hillary
Clinton saying 17 intelligence agencies, both civilian and
military, have confirmed that Russia is behind the hacking of
my emails. That of course was fake.
Joe Biden said that the the head of the Russian government,
Vladimir Putin, had bounties on the heads of Americans in
Afghanistan. This was completely fabricated.
And of course 50 intelligence officials came out saying that
Hunter Biden's laptop was most likely Russian disinformation
according to Politico. And that one was fake.
So vilifying people based on this large geographical area,
knowing that if there was a war between America and Russia for
violating our democratic sovereignty, this really could
lead to an exchange. Well, they know that someone
like Putin is not going to get hurt.
It would be the civilians. So that is the primary example
that I've come across. But we also see it
differentiating people by gender.
Joe Biden had a tweet the other day.
Women make $0.84 on the dollar for every dollar a man makes.
This does not count for the type of jobs women work, the number
of hours they work, the value you create.
If both Mila Kunis and I work the same job, she's gonna get
paid a heck of a lot more than I will.
It also doesn't account for. And for good reason, by the way
it. Also doesn't account for the the
great disparities within demographics.
If you look at black immigrants versus black Americans who were
born in America, you see a 30% disparity, according to Nielsen
research. I know there's a selection
process, but this rules out the claim that it's just the result
of employers being racist and bigoted.
And the only solution to this great injustice or this
inequality is for the state to have more money and more power.
That is the central scam that all of these problems that the
progressive brings to the forefront.
The solution is always give them more money and always give the
state more power virtually every single time.
Just imagine a friend in your life always telling you
something terrible's about to happen, and the solution is give
me more money and power. That would be so convenient.
We'd see this person as a fraudster.
We should see the same thing with progressives and reject all
arbitrary divides and judge people by their actions and the
words they say as opposed to any arbitrary demographic.
Very well said. All right, #2, The unavoidable
contradiction. What is the unavoidable
contradiction? So a lot of what I say applies
to most of progressives. What makes this contradiction
unavoidable is every progressive by definition believes in it.
So most of the time you'll hear progressives focus on something
like monopolies being one of the primary reasons that we have a
state. Teddy Roosevelt, a Republican,
famously implemented antitrust laws, which limited the scope
and size that firms could be within a certain industry.
The claim was if you have a company that's too big, you'll
eventually get a monopoly or one seller.
In a market, when there's only one seller, you have a huge
power differential between the seller and the consumer.
This leads to higher prices and lower quality products and
services then you'd otherwise get under free market
competition. So you need antitrust laws.
The contradiction is that same progressives always advocates.
The state has a monopoly on guns.
The state has a monopoly on compulsory education.
The state has a monopoly on commercial regulation.
The state has a monopoly on taxation.
If all these things are so virtuous and totally fine, well
then certainly Amazon can issue taxes.
The Koch brothers can tax your income.
The Catholic Church can, you know, dictate commandments for
you to live by and put you in jail if they catch you
disobeying them. So this inherent contradiction,
I think it's so central to progressivism and all of them,
by my definition, advocate a state, and it necessarily
involves this. So that's why it's so vitally
dangerous. The amazing thing is that the
first opinion on monopoly, that they're very dangerous, they
concentrate too much power. That view is held by almost all
not just average progressives, the top scholars in these
fields. People like, you know, Sam Cedar
or Jankuger if you're just talking about Youtubers.
But every Democrat who I've ever heard speak, every academic
people like Richard Wolf, are constantly saying this.
Yet they advocate the same exact thing when it comes to the the
the state. I I love that point, by the way,
and I think it's such a simple one.
But yes, monopoly's bad. Unless we're talking about, you
know, justice system, guns, police, military, compulsory
schooling, money supply, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
That's all good monopoly. But you know the the other kind
of monopoly we don't like, right?
Anyway #3 Consent to the Governed and Gay Marriage.
So this is a concept where the progressive will say that what
differentiates, you know, some government like a monarchy, one
person ruling over all these others versus democracy is
democracy is ruled by the consent of the governed.
That's why autocracy is bad and democracy is good.
So calling all of these government is, you know, you're
combining things that are totally different.
Well, if we're talking about the importance of consent, what they
usually justify it through is a term referred to as the social
contract. Now, the word contract usually
means James, I will give you $1.00 a month to be part of
corbettreport.com and in exchange I get access to the
great video, the newsletter and everything else you get because
you're a member. Now if I don't pay you the
dollar, I don't get access to those parts of the site.
If you stop giving me access to the site, I no longer have an
obligation to give you the dollar.
It's very clear this is a contract you get.
I give yin and Yang kind of thing.
The social contract that the state abides by does not appear
to be anything like this. If you don't chip in, then yes,
you have to go to jail and if you resist them they will shoot
you. But the question is what happens
if government doesn't keep you safe?
Say they expand NATO after James Baker more or less promised they
wouldn't move one inch eastward, and say this provokes a war with
a nuclear power and gets tons of people killed.
Then did they not keep us safe then?
Do they owe us reparations? Then?
Do we have to stop paying taxes and abiding by their
regulations? What if they kill a ton of
civilians in Gaza? What if they lie us into a war
and we have people saying that Muammar Gaddafi has given Viagra
to his troops and this leads to, you know, a travesty in Libya.
If they don't hold up their end of this contract, not only does
nothing happen, they usually increase the amount of power and
money that they have access to. 911 Pearl Harbor are perfect
examples of that. 2020 riots, of course that they didn't hold up
their end of the social contract and nothing happens.
So if people really can care about the consent of the
governed, what they would want is a private Law Society based
on the concept of volunteerism, where people no longer have
double standards for a group called government and they can
peacefully disassociate from anyone who isn't meeting their
standards. That's the ultimate check and
balance that the free market provides, which the state does
not. Yeah, yeah, exactly right.
I didn't consent to nothing. I didn't vote for any of these
clowns. Don't blame me.
I voted for Kodos. OK #4 Government failure.
There is a gentleman by the name of Tom Hartman, pretty popular
in progressive circles, who said there is one fatal flaw in the
idea of volunteerism, libertarianism, anarchism,
anything. And he says this is referred to
as market failure. This involves when you have
people you know, who are both very kind, virtuous and very
smart, then they could engage in an exchange.
But the problem is, in markets you have a number of things, one
of which is greed. One party could be very greedy
and exploit the other. There could be information
asymmetry. There could be power asymmetry
where one party who produces the printer has a heck of a lot more
knowledge knowledge about printers then the consumer.
Therefore the state needs to coercively intervene and
forcibly stop millions of people from making mutually beneficial
voluntary interactions. Now this is a genuinely true
criticism, but it's true because it applies to all humans since
the beginning of time, applies to all humans in every system
today, and will apply to any system human beings engage in in
the future. So the knowledge asymmetry
aspect can clearly be seen. When you get pulled over by a
police officer, there's huge knowledge asymmetry as to what
you can and can't say in order for him to arrest you.
When it comes to a lot of the lawyers in the legal system, the
defendant and you know, the prosecutor, tons of information
asymmetry. Even with the judge, When it
comes to the average citizen and members of the FBICIANSA who
have access to classified information, there's massive
amounts of information, information asymmetry.
So the idea that a state is justified and coercively
intervening because of things like information asymmetry or
greed or potential short sightedness of people, those
things exist and always will exist.
The question is, since they'll always exist, what sort of
system should we have? One where we could have
competition among providers for a good or service and
disassociate with bad actors who inevitably are greedy, are short
sighted, engage in information asymmetry.
Or one where we must fund them against our will and be put in
jail if we resist. So that is the concept of
government failure. It takes the market failure
criticism and say yes, it applies to the market.
It also applies to the state, and much more so because the
state doesn't face competition. College Four years of work for
$0.00 an hour. This is my favorite title for
one of your chapters. I like this one.
Thank you. I remember, you know, I sort of
a lost interest in Barack Obama and said, well, I guess Mitt
Romney is a good alternative and was watching these debates.
And I remember Ron Paul saying that there shouldn't be a
minimum wage in me saying, well, this guy's just absolutely
insane. I don't know how he said that
with a straight face. I don't know who's paying him
what drugs he's on. But I later considered it and
eventually changed my mind. And I thought, what would I have
to say to, you know, the old me in order to, you know, really
give me a good idea of how to understand this issue
reasonably? And I thought, well, are there
any examples of people doing very large amounts of work and
not just getting less than the federal minimum wage, getting
$0.00 an hour, and in most cases having to pay tons of money in
order to perform the work? College, when I was there, I was
working six hours a day at college, you know, listening to
the teachers, taking notes, and then when I get home I do more
work for $0.00 an hour. So I did all this work without
getting directly compensated, and the question is, if you
advocate the minimum wage, this has to be illegal.
This is one of the greatest crimes against the exploitation
of the working masses that's ever existed and the massive
extraction of their surplus value.
So clearly by the minimum wage logic this should be illegal.
My argument is that it should not be illegal because there are
a great number of reasons why people would do such a thing.
They don't currently have many skills and want to acquire
skills that they can use in the future to be more marketable on
the job and get a higher income than they otherwise would.
Two, they don't necessarily need a very big income.
Three, they don't want to commit to much and they just want to
get their foot in the door. I want to look at business or
philosophy or science or technology or engineering or one
of those things, And giving them a lot of money to do so would
disincentivize producers from bringing them on board.
And it would stop you from getting your foot in the door if
someone else had to constantly pay you or compensate you for
this time when it's at a point in your life when you're not
providing much value. So what I tried to do was
extract the principle by which the minimum wage is justified.
All work is worth $15.00 an hour.
I then found college to be something that almost all
progressives constantly advocate, which is him
implicitly saying that state education K through 12 is not
that impressive at all. And then even though we've seen
a 280% increase in per student funding adjusted for inflation
according to a Reason Foundation, still nothing to
brag about after all this time, All that money, all those
resources, all that opportunity cost and time, and this is what
we get. So even though you can say
something like, well, it's mutually beneficial if it's
voluntary and it's between consenting adults.
That is a good theory, but you might think that people are
going to be so exploited you have to have some minimum wage.
We see a massive aspect of the economy college where people do
tons and tons of work for $0.00 an hour and the vast majority
drop out if they don't like it or say that you know what, it
was worth it. And I'm glad I got that
experience. So giving people that choice is
vitally important. You know, I'll just point people
in the direction of my podcast episode on the dark history of
the minimum wage, which makes the point that actually minimum
wages were initially brought in to keep people out of the
workforce. And what should give
progressives some pause for thoughts, specifically black
people and these other undesirables that we don't want
jobs, give jobs, will make a minimum wage so they can't get
their foot in the door anyway. Yeah, the as usual, the reality
is quite the opposite of what it's now received to be.
But anyway, let's move on to number six, Equality and the
Iron Law of Oligarchy. What is the Iron Law of
Oligarchy? I want to get the exact wording
right. This is a idea that I was
introduced to by James Burnham in a book titled The
Machiavellians. He's summarizing the work of a
gentleman named Robert Mchell. Here's how he defines it.
All complex organizations, regardless of how democratic
they are when started, eventually develop into
oligarchies. Since no sufficiently large and
complex organization can function purely as a direct
democracy, power within an organization will always get
delegated to individuals within that group, elected or
otherwise. So we could see this in almost
every aspect of society. A very small portion of
comedians are as successful as Brian Reagan and Jerry Seinfeld.
A very small percentage of singers can sell out Wembley
Stadium or are as good as, you know, Adele.
A very small percentage of NBA players sell the vast amount of
NBA jerseys. So notice we're taking people
within an industry they're already excelling in not just
comparing, you know, LeBron James to the average person, but
to his direct peers. We constantly see in this
division of Labor, we see some people outperforming out shining
could even or having a much greater say in outcomes than
other people. So you might think that there's
inequality where there's huge power differentials and then
there's systems of equality. Now looking at places like North
Korea, South Korea, America, basically any, you know, social
arrangement since the Egyptian empire, you constantly see a few
people with a ton of power and the average person with not that
much institutional power. So immediately that's not to
justify it, just to say that it exists, but it is to say that
with all these systems, we see a very few people having a greater
deal of sway and institutional power within their organization.
It's worth noting that someone like Alexandria, Ocasio, Cortez,
Ilhan, Omar, the main progressives today, Bernie
Sanders, have more institutional power than 99.9% of their
constituents ever will. That's because by our very
nature, the opportunity cost of getting everyone informed and
then everyone having a say on how more or less everything goes
is so costly that people just delegate to authorities who they
trust. So knowing this iron law of
oligarchy which so worked of social arrangement, should we
have? Which makes it so the oligarchs
can't get a second of our time or a penny out of our pocket
unless we voluntarily give it to them.
And that, obviously, is a free market cause.
A oligarchy that's attached to a state, of course, will abuse it.
They will probably abuse any power and then later rationalize
it. So so long as we have the
freedom to disassociate with the inevitable oligarchies that will
exist in any society, we're in a much better position than we
than we otherwise would. The classic example that Mckel's
uses is that of a labor union. So he says, well, you might say
I am so sick of the bourgeoisie. I've just had it.
We are going to form a union. Well, the problem is not
everyone wants to go to the union meeting after a long day
of work. Even if they have the day off,
they might not enjoy meetings and want to do other things.
Not everyone's going to speak up at the meeting.
Not everyone who speaks is going to have equally good ideas.
Not everyone who speaks is going to be equally as good looking,
as equally as persuasive as other people.
So you end up with Jimmy Hoffa and a few of his friends running
the union for 10s of thousands of truckers who more or less
don't have much of A say. So this gets to the heart of
progressivism. That everyone should be involved
and everyone should have an equal say is a complete fool's
errand. It's not only undesirable, it's
unachievable. We will make you have equality
whether you want it or not. Go to the meeting.
Yeah, exactly right. And and even at best, it's a
quality of outcome for you guys. But somebody has to manage that
and make it happen. I guess we have to be this
special class. Oligarchies always develop,
don't they? Anyway #7 voter suppression
versus economic suppression. So there was a story that I came
across. I actually came across a number
and I put him in the book. Here was one that really stood
out to me. This is a story out of
Washington, DCA. Gentleman named Jay Austin saw
the great deal of homelessness that exists in a wealthy country
like America. And, you know, didn't just talk
about it. He actually, you know, put the
pedal to the metal and started making change.
Here's a brief summary of what happened.
At a cost that ranges from 10 to $50,000, tiny homes like
Matchbox could help ease the housing shortage in the capital
city. Heating and cooling costs are
negligible. Rainwater catchment systems help
to make the home self-sustaining.
They're an attractive option to the very sort of residents who
the city attracts an abundance single, young professionals
without a lot of stuff who aren't ready to take on the
large mortgage. But tiny houses come with one
enormous catch. They're illegal, in violation of
several codes in Washington DCS zoning ordinance.
Among the many requirements in the 34 chapters and 600 pages of
code are mandates defining minimum lot size, room sizes,
alleyway widths, and accessory dwelling units that prevent tiny
houses from being anything more than a part time residence.
So here we have a huge problem. I am devastated when I drive
around South Phoenix and see so many people without homes.
You actually had someone creating homes at a much lower
cost, which would drastically increase the supply of housing
in Washington DC. It would give people with lower
incomes access to a place to have a roof over their head.
And the state actually confiscated the houses in in
this case. I also provide an example in Los
Angeles where they did the same thing.
So what this is is economic suppression.
It is coercively stopping two people from engaging in a
mutually beneficial voluntary exchange.
The reason this is important is because Bernie Sanders, the one
of the most popular progressives, came out after the
last election and said, well, one of the tragedies we've seen
is the great deal to which voter suppression has, you know, can
really affect an election. Now, the reality is, if a
person's vote is put in the voting box or in the shredder,
it's not going to make a difference in the actual
outcome. Whether or not you have access
to a house really, really has an effect on your life.
Same with occupational licensing.
They're constantly engaged in economic suppression.
When they coercively stop people from getting a job where they
want to learn on the industry, maybe they want to go there two
or three days just to see if they like it or not, just to get
them on the job experience. Nope.
Got to have a license from the state, as opposed to voluntary
private certification agencies giving their stamp of approval
saying these people are good, these people are bad.
Yelp reviews. Amazon reviews.
Word of mouth, anything like that we could have instead of
the economic suppression which they advocate.
So the progressive simultaneously believes that
it's vitally important that you get a one in 510,000,000 vote
once every four years between two line psychopaths.
But your ability to make decisions in your life that
affect you every single day, well that's not that important
and actually you could choose wrong.
So it's kind of important that we engage in imperialism just
domestically and coercively stop you.
You're welcome. That'll be 30% of your income.
And if you don't like it, you have a one in 10 million chance
of helping to sway the next selection between the next two
lying psychopaths. Yeah, exactly.
OK 8 Government provided does not mean universal.
There is a dichotomy among people such as Stephen Grumbine,
the creator of real progressives, who will say
things like instead of having this for profit system, what we
should have is universal healthcare, universal education,
universal housing. Now what the bait and switch is,
is he's immediately changing from a goal to advocating a
process to achieve a said goal. I want everyone to have all the
things that he lists, assuming they want those things in the
first place. So he says we want a goal of
everyone to have anything, therefore automatically implying
the state should coercively fund the operation to achieve this
goal. It's equally as ridiculous as
saying I want peace in the Middle East.
Therefore we should send Netanyahu a blank check.
Just because you want some result doesn't necessarily mean
the process you're advocating will achieve that result.
Now, we don't have to get too theoretical about this.
All we have to do is look at cases which the state currently
provides things for free by increasing the money supply or
first taxing you, and see if they are universal.
Well, the Progressive immediately sees that, well, the
police not only aren't free, they cost a lot of money.
And then the Progressive says we should, you know, abolish or
defund the police. So immediately they see that the
state at least costs something to run.
There's always an opportunity cost.
Second, you can see that not everyone has equal treatment to
police functions. It's well known that people with
higher incomes are more likely to get, you know, lower
sentences than someone who's poor, who's committed the same
crime. Joe Biden committed murder a
number of times, most famously August 29th of 2021 in Kabul,
Afghanistan, Seven children dead as a cause of result of him.
It wasn't even a question that universal free, guaranteed
justice would be performed. The question of the state
providing education? Is everyone therefore equally
educated since the state provides it and guarantees it
for free? No, this of course is not the
case. Is everyone protected and having
their guaranteed rights protected because the state
coercively funds and controls the police or military?
Of course not. There is not free, universal,
guaranteed justice because the state controls the court system.
So the concept that I want everyone to have something, it
does not follow, therefore the state should be providing it.
This is really important because it really psychologically gets
to the average person who opposes such a thing and says,
well, if I'm not for universal, that means I only want some
people having it. And they, the kind, virtuous
progressive who, you know, gladly puts billions of
obligations on total strangers without their consent, well,
they want everyone to have it, and that makes them better.
So it really tugs at your heartstrings.
And anytime you don't want to be, you know, shunned by the
people in your society, you want to say, OK, yeah, I think we
should have some sort of universal system.
The goal and the process are two very different things.
The state monopolizing the process does not guarantee
results. In fact, it gives them every
disincentive to create low cost, low cost, high quality goods.
Yes, Disincentive. That's right.
Yeah. OK, Yes, OK.
And finally, Chapter 9. It takes a little bit different
form than the other chapters, which are argued more
straightforwardly. This chapter.
It contains quotations from the don't tread on anyone podcast,
little less excerpts and snippets from that podcast.
It is entitled How Could anyone be an Anarchist?
Which it's a question that a lot of progressives would ask.
What isn't it? So how do you answer that
question? So as I list you know, 8
chapters of me complaining about something the average person
might say. Well, progressivism is the worst
system. Except for all the others.
All you do is complain about things.
What are the alternatives? So what I try to briefly make
the case is that the system of anarchism, while may not be, you
know, widely accepted by the masses, there is still a its
first, logically reasonable and economically sound, and 3rd it's
quite around. It's all around us in a number
of ways. So in the case of even something
like roads where they say this is the ultimate, you know,
knockdown, turns out the 1st Rd. built in America, the
Philadelphia Lancaster Turnpike was of course privately built.
Today we have people like Vinci concessions constantly building
roads on every continent that when you research Vinci, Vinci
concessions, they're a great company providing transportation
now. So immediately you see some
things being privatized. But you might say, well, not
like really, really important things.
Maybe some small things can be done.
It turns out I got a job in the tech field some time ago and
when a company experienced A ransomware attack, they called
us the private company to save their most valuable information.
This is all their work for 20 years was being held and it was
totally encrypted and none of them.
I did go to the office and spoke with people there.
None of them said quick call 911, quick call the FBI.
Our, you know, our property rights are the most sacred thing
we have around is has been stolen, is now encrypted and we
don't have access to it, even though they could have.
They just saw that it was so inefficient that they called the
private IT company, got a hold of Paypal's security team, got a
hold of the Dropbox security team, got a hold of Google Drive
security. They cancelled their credit
cards because of those information.
All of their banks had private security on the back end, not
because, well, all these corporations are so good and
they care about the masses. They're self interested just
like anyone else. But because they want customers,
they provide the security that everyone wants.
So when everyone says, well, what about security?
What about the roads? The fact that everyone wants
those is a good indicator that they will be provided by
entrepreneurs in a marketplace. So the way I try to pique
people's interest is I get these are all four professors, I
believe, or at least well recognized authors in this
field, and I just asked them. There are a lot of criticisms of
the free market. Are there any unique criticisms
of the free market that don't also apply to government?
And they make the case that there are no unique criticisms
of the free market. Of course you have terrible
things that could happen. However, that in no way
justifies forcibly stopping billions of people from engaging
in voluntary exchanges. So what I'm trying to do in that
chapter is provide an alternative for the way people
see the logic of anarchism. Also give some empirical
examples and say that very well accredited people in their
fields do recognize this as a very reasonable alternative
compared to statism. Right.
And isn't it funny how anarchists are called utopians?
Oh, you've got utopians think no, no, no, The statists are the
real utopians who think, oh, don't worry, it's government
funded, so it's taken care of. No, no, no, no, no, it's it's
exactly the opposite of reality. All right.
And after that point, you have some quotes from a wide number
of individuals on a lot of different subjects and an
appendix and then afterward. But I I, I want to just look at
a couple of quotes, one that I think is great because I think
this is a genuinely handy little tool for people who are sick of
hearing from progressives in their lives about the Swedish
model. And can't we be more like the
Scandinavian countries, etc. You have a quote from Johann
Norberg from Lessons from Sweden.
The funny thing is that if the Sanders is and Ocasio Cortezes
of the world made the US more like Sweden, what would really
happen? They haven't updated their
perception of Sweden. And if the US became more like
us, the United States would have to have more free markets, more
free trade, pension reform with private accounts, a National
School voucher system with freedom of choice and public
funding going to private schools as well, low corporate taxes and
no taxes on wealth, property and inheritance.
Be careful what you wish for, which is a good point, because
yeah, I think people don't know what they're talking about.
Yeah, we should be more like Sweden.
What, you mean Sweden from the 1960s or something?
What are you? What are you basing this on?
But there's another quote in here that I think is a good
launching point for perhaps a different exploration.
Because, OK, again, these are all points that you could
certainly use. Absolutely.
There's a lot of good ammunition in here to for your arguments
with status and progressive progressives specifically, but
also for status in general. And there's a great, great quote
here from Michael Malice that I think makes a point that comes
up all the time. I'm sure you've heard it a
million times, He says. If the government didn't have a
monopoly on security, only rich people would be able to have
security. Just like when the government
got out of other businesses, the only cars produced were
limousines, the only clothes produced were tuxedos.
And the only food produced was foie gras.
Yeah, exactly Right. Yeah.
No one would ever try to provide any sort of service to anyone
except the billionaires, right? Oh, wait, that's not how it
works in reality. No, there's actually.
Yes, businesses are catered to all sorts.
And there are people who to the lowest rung of the economic
pyramid and the highest rung as well, and they can all exist.
Why not both? Yeah, it's such a simple point,
but it does speak to, I think, what could be another.
And correct me if I'm wrong, I don't know what your intention
was in writing this book. But I think this this book might
also be useful for status who are not progressives and don't
consider themselves on the left side of the spectrum at all, but
who still have a lot of status conditioning to maybe question
some of their own assumptions and some of the things they
think about, what government provided, security and other
sorts of things might be necessary.
Tell us about your intention for who you think that this book
might be beneficial for, what audience you're writing for?
So I definitely wanted to catch people's attention with the
title and the provocative cover where I have my sort of Mount
Rushmore of terrible progressives from Woodrow Wilson
to Ocasio Cortez. Not that she's as powerful, but
she is certainly making the ideas of statism so popular and
so widely respected among people, especially in my
generation. So the original audience
actually was progressives. That's why I kept it so short
and sweet. And even the chapters
themselves. Elves can be read individually.
That's why I might round off with the same point a number of
times throughout. That's why the last section is
just miscellaneous. Quotes don't even have to read
them in order, can sort of go randomly.
So it was sort of to provoke interest by progressives
originally. But also, I knew that there were
a lot of people who do not like progressivism who wanted a
summary of why someone who was a progressive left those ideas
behind and wanted it in a very concise form.
My last book. Was 318 pages and quite a few
people said, yeah, I really enjoyed it, but gosh, so many
other books to read, so many other things to do that I'm
like, OK, I gotta make something so short that even each chapter
is going to make a point that's at least going to provoke some
thoughts in the mind of a progressive.
Not because I think they're going to say, well, thank you,
27 year old for writing this book.
I've been wrong forever, but just to sort of create some
insecurity in this position. So the goal is to plant seeds in
the minds of progressives, and I tried to use enough variety so
anyone can learn something new, or at least find a productive
way to think about a position that they.
Currently hold it's certainly you've definitely accomplished
that. This is certainly readable in
bite sized little chunks and even for people who aren't good
readers or or fast readers, they can certainly just put this on a
coffee table or what have you and just get through it pretty
easily and pretty quickly. It is not a difficult read, and
in fact if you're a fast reader, we have spent more time talking
about it now than it would have taken you to read this.
So at any rate, here we are. I don't know what else to say.
This is an important book to have as ammunition in your info
arsenal, especially especially if you are inclined to argue
with a a progressivist, I think even for statists who haven't
quite broken their conditioning. At any rate, tell people again
where they can get the book. They can get the book at
libertarianinstitute.org, right? When you go on the website,
you'll see it. The book collection.
We got a ton of variety of books there, from people like Tom
Woods and Laurie Calhoun Getting into the issues with the COVID
hysteria. We have people like Sheldon
Richmond providing insights into the Israeli Palestinian issue
going back to 1897. I believe his book starts and we
have people like Joe Salas. Mullins published a short book
titled The Fake China Threat. We Really try to provide Variety
at libertarianinstitute.org. Excellent.
Well, of course the link will be in the show notes, as people
already know. So if you didn't find it at
libertarianinstitute.org, you can go to the show notes to find
it and to find links to Keith's other outlets and work.
Keith, you always do good work and a lot of food for thought
here. So and I once again, I just want
to say I appreciate the fact that you put this book out as a
free resource as well. I certainly hope people will
support the book and buy a physical copy for to have
physical media and to support the person who's making it.
But also it's there as a free resource for people to use in
their information dissemination efforts.
So we'll leave it there for today.
Keith Knight, thank you so much for your time.
James, thanks so much for having me.