Welcome to Keith Knight. Don't tread on anyone in the
Libertarian Institute. Today I am joined by Jank Ugar,
author of Justice Is Coming, How Progressives Are Going to Take
Over the Country and America Is Going To Love It.
He's the founder of The Young Turks and cofounder of Justice
Democrats. Mr. Ugar, where is the best
place to purchase the book? Thank you, Keith.
It's at tyt.com/justice, tyt.com/justice.
Awesome. Links for that will be in the
description below. Here is an article from The
Intercept. It says according to estimates
provided by the report, at least 86 civilians were killed in
airstrikes and raids carried out in Yemen on Trump's watch.
Most of these killings occurred during the years 2017 and 2018.
Would you be in agreement with me that Donald Trump should be
in jail, not for this documents thing, but for killing 86
civilians in an undeclared war? Yeah, So look, there's an
argument to be made that all the presidents who have done those
drone strikes have broken the law in one way or another.
I would argue that Obama had one of the most egregious violations
because they said that extrajudicial killings were OK,
which they are not. They're unconstitutional.
They killed Anwar Avlaki. They called him a terrorist.
And. Maybe he was, but we don't know.
We never adjudicated it. And he was an American citizen.
And then they killed his two kids and two different bombings.
So I think the drone strikes that we do are deeply
problematic. Are the American people going to
be okay with putting Trump and Obama and and all Biden and
Bush, all of them, in prison? Probably not.
They're probably going to say that that was in the regular
course of their, you know, job of being president.
I might disagree. I don't know how you feel about
it, but unfortunately the American people have gotten used
to it. What if we embraced the
progressive idea of equality and just stop having double
standards for presidents and politicians?
If the Catholic Church, Amazon or I, or you killed 86 civilians
in an attempt to decrease terrorism in the future, we'd be
going to jail. Look, can we just embrace
equality and not have double standards?
Well, I would love that. So Keith, you also then agree,
right, when the Israeli military kills civilians at about 100 to
one rate of the Palestinians and say, Oh well, golly Gee, I was
just trying to stop terrorism. I wound up killing 100 times
your civilians. So while I was doing it.
Oh, but I'm innocent that that, that we should apply the same
standard to them. Unequivocally, yes.
OK, God bless. Yes, I agree with being
principled and disciplined. And and being fair to everyone,
yeah, when it comes to property taxes, that's how schools are
funded in Arizona, where I live. I'm not really sure about other
states. If people are unhappy with the
results of the schooling system, would you support their right to
opt out of chipping in for schools?
No, but that's a complicated one because.
Just the other day on on The Young Turks, the show that I
host the flagship show the TYT network, we were talking about
school boards and how progressives should run for
school boards and and somebody wrote in about being angry at
conservatives taking over school boards and I said, look I don't
agree with their policies. I think that what they're trying
to teach the kids is deeply problematic and and.
Pretty much proper conservative propaganda, but they have every
right to run for a school board. It's called democracy.
So why don't you run and beat them?
And if you don't, it is what it is, right?
But it in terms of how they agree to, you know, what they
teach the kids. Yeah, that's tough because
you've got to balance the parents interest with facts.
So if the parents wanted to teach 2 + 2 = 13.
We can't. I'm sorry.
I know you think it equals 13, but it doesn't.
And so no matter how emotional you are about the fact that it
equals 13, it still doesn't. So that's why it's a really
interesting, tough balancing act as to what we decide to teach
our kids, Yes. And when it comes to something
like that, as far as having a discipline mechanism of keeping
people honest, I think allowing people to vote with their
dollars and opt out of funding them, just as if any private
organization was doing a poor job, we'd be able to
disassociate with them. Why not be able to opt out of
funding schools? So Keith, the reason for that is
because if if we allow people to start opting out of taxes based
on their personal proclivities. Then everybody would opt out of
taxes for everything. So, and for example, I think the
Pentagon's a joke. I think it's a that of
corruption. They can't never haven't passed
an audit in five years. They can't account for half the
money we send them. I think it's organized robbery.
Do I want to pay taxes to have my money stolen by a bunch of
defense contractors? No, I don't.
But I can't opt out of it, because if I opt out of it, my
neighbor opts out of it. And he opts out of it for a
different reason than the guy that on the street OPS out for a
different and then nobody pays their taxes and we don't have a
government and we have Anarch, OK, in the case of the Pentagon,
when they actually have a number of things provoking a World War
on 2 fronts against Russia and China, all the civilians they
killed. Even in that case, people should
be forced to chip into an organization which is in the
process of killing civilians and provoking a World War on 2
fronts. Yeah, that's how democracy
works. And I know when you frame it
that way, it sounds super uncomfortable and awkward, and
that can't be right, can it? Yeah, well, that's the thing you
That's why we if you're a libertarian on the right or
you're progressive on the left, that is why it's imperative to
get involved in democracy and to win.
Because by definition, democracy is communal.
We all are voting for a certain set of leaders and those leaders
are going to do a certain set of actions and we cannot
micromanage them and so. The in in a way, you might want
to say, hey, but we should. Well, OK, then you have to talk
about tradeoffs, right? So for example, in California,
there's an enormous number of ballot measures.
And so there's a great upside to that because it allows us to say
no, no, this is what I want you to spend my money on, and I'm
going to vote yes or no. And it's a little bit more
direct democracy. Now the giant downside of that
is that it leads to endless ballot measures that are
purposely confusing. And half, half the time they're
phrased to get you to do the opposite of what it sounds like.
And then giant corporations come in with millions, sometimes
hundreds of millions of dollars in advertising to trick people.
And then and then they ask you to vote on judges.
How the hell does anybody know all the experience of all the
different judges, right? And then So what happens then
big companies come in and buy off all the judges.
So these issues are complicated. And there's not an easy answer
of like, well, I don't want to pay for that, so I'm not going
to pay for it. Yeah, I hear your brother.
But then nobody will pay for anything, and we'll have
anarchy. But well, as far as whether it
would be chaotic, governments have caused a great deal of
chaos with the First World War, the Second World War, the proxy
wars during the Cold War. So it's not like anarchy is
unique to chaos. But when it comes to really
empowering the workers, if these corporations who can't take a
penny out of my pocket unless I voluntarily give it to him,
versus a state which claims the right to jail me if I don't chip
in for their programs whether they work or not, isn't the
state a much bigger exploiter than the corporation?
No, And I'll explain why. This is a core part of the book.
Justice coming so, so, the state.
In a The way that the Founding Fathers set it up is supposed to
represent the people. And for a long time it actually
did. And I also explained that in the
book. And when the state does its job
and it's a real democracy and it represents people, it is a
beautiful thing. And so I know that the
government is maligned and attacked and attacked, and
sometimes by libertarians for good principled reasons, but
oftentimes like by corporations for their own purposes, which
I'll get to in a second. But for example, and a lot of
examples of this in American industry, but in that between
1938 and 1978, on social issues we were a mess.
But on economic issues, we had real democracy.
And our representatives actually represented us.
And they set up some of the most popular programs the world has
ever seen. And they built the greatest
middle class the world has ever seen.
OK, so now on the other hand, corporations.
The Founding Fathers warned us greatly about they said watch
out, these guys will take over and they are not representative.
They are not built to be representative.
They are not meant to help you. They're meant to help
themselves, and there's still a need for them.
But as James Madison said, they're at best and necessary
evil. And remember that the American
Revolution was just as much against the British East India
Tea Company as it was about. Against the British Empire
because at that point the British companies had taken over
the British Empire and it was the their tea that they had
thrown in the harbor at the Boston Tea Party.
So what wound up happening is the founding father said be
super careful, do not let these corporations form unless they
promised to deliver, not just for their customers and their
shareholders, but for the entire community, right.
And eventually we lost track of that and and in 1978, the
Supreme Court. Killed off our democracy by
allowing bribery, they said. Corporations can give unlimited
money to politicians. There's nuance there in the
decisions of 7678 and then eventually Citizens United, but
that was the thrust of it. You could tell from the
dissenting opinions. So one of the justices wrote in
and said. This is a mortal danger to our
democracy because companies do not care about the general
welfare. They only care about their own
welfare and they will crush everything in their path to
maximize profit because that's what we built them to do.
He was 100% right. That's exactly what happened.
And brother, the number one problem with government today is
that corporations are allowed to bribe our representatives and
turn them into their representatives.
That's why the government has become organized robbery in a
lot of ways. So when I say you got to pay
your taxes so that we can have an efficient, logical
infrastructure, I'm not saying that I love what the
government's doing now. I mean, as a progressive,
there's. Tons and tons and tons of things
that the government's doing that I can't stand.
But what is the core of the problem is the core of the
problem. The politicians woke up and
they're like, like there's some on the right think, oh, I have a
lust for power and I want to control people's lives.
I could make an argument for that for some right wingers, but
and by the way, some extreme left wingers too, OK, but that's
not the thrust of the problem. The thrust of the problem is
they're getting millions of dollars in checks.
That, and they're doing exactly what they're paid for.
They are servants of the corporate class.
And the corporate class says let us committed unadulterated
bribery, unadulterated robbery of the American people.
For example, right now we give about $20 billion in subsidies
to the oil companies. Why They're the most.
They're the. Most profitable companies the
world has ever seen and they dump all of their costs on us.
Pollution, climate change, you name it.
And they increase prices massively the minute that they
can. But we're giving them our hard
earned dollars. I loathe that the problem isn't
that the government officials just love oil companies by
nature, or want to give away your sovereignty to oil
companies. No, they're getting bribed by
the oil companies. The core of the problem is the
bribery and the corruption and the corporate class that has
taken over this country, not the servants they have in
government, Is offering free college to everyone at taxpayer
expense. A bribe.
No, because you're serving the people.
So for example if you say hey. Keith gave or Jake me, I gave
1,000,000 bucks to a whole bunch of senators and then they gave
me a subsidy for a couple of billion dollars for the couple
of $1,000,000 that I bribed them, which by the way is very,
very common. So I can in the book I explain
how Sheldon Adelson did that a couple of times with Donald
Trump. But by the way, yeah, Soros does
it with Democrats and Koch brothers, does it do it with
Republicans, etcetera, that there's something deeply wrong
with that because they're saying do not serve the general
welfare, only serve my interest, right?
But if you're serving the general welfare, that's exactly
what the government supposed to do when it comes to the minimum
wage issue. I worked at Walmart previously
and both our previous and current CEOH Lee Scott and Doug
McMullen came out in support of increasing the federal minimum
wage. Amazon has voluntarily embraced
a $15.00 an hour minimum wage and recommends that the federal
government embraced the same thing.
Why are these big corporations advocating for the same thing?
The Justice Democrats and the DSAR.
Yeah, so Amazon's a great example.
That's why I did voluntarily. So I'm really glad you brought
that up. So Amazon of course, did not
want to pay 59 minimum wage. Why, if you just think about it,
if you're an average American worker and you're listening to
this. Do you think that corporations
have your best interests in mind and they voluntarily want to pay
you as high a wage as they possibly can?
Everyone listening knows no, they don't.
They have their best interests in mind and they want to pay you
as low a wage as they possibly can because it keep their keeps
their costs low. We all get it.
They want costs low.
Profits. Revenues high, so you can
maximize profit, right? So.
And you are their cost. So Amazon fought that tooth and
nail. They didn't want $15 minimum
wage at all. And Bernie Sanders and and Ro
Khanna in the House 2. Progressives started building
tremendous pressure on Amazon. They introduced a bill called
Stop Bezos Act, and they started pounding away at Jeff Bezos and
Amazon to try to get a quality. And to deliver for their workers
and everyone in mainstream media or corporate media which
despises both the right wing and the left wing, They love the
corporate middle. It's not actually the middle of
the country, It's the middle of corporations.
They have nothing but scorn for Bernie and Roe, and they're
like. That's not how things work.
You can't pressure that poor, poor company to deliver for
their lowly wages. Who cares about their employees?
How dare you do this? And this is not practical.
Progressives can't get anything done.
You know what happened? No.
Ro Khanna and Bernie Sanders kicked Amazon's ass until they
surrendered. And there's this famous video
now when Amazon manager has to go out into the plant and say we
are now raising all of the wages to $15.00 an hour.
And the plant goes nuts and everybody celebrates.
That's what progressives can do when they're fighting for the
average man, right? So now the genius of that move
is not just to put pressure on Amazon and to get them to move.
But they knew, and this is smart and this is how you get things
done, that as soon as Amazon moved to $15 minimum wage, they
were going to try to get everyone else to move to $15
minimum wage because they didn't want to be at a competitive
disadvantage. So they turn Amazon from their
enemy to their ally by getting them to move first.
So that's how you deliver for Americans, by pushing
corporations to do the right thing and not just hoping that
they do it voluntarily, which is never going to happen.
It's not just hoping if there's a union who goes on strike and
says we refuse to spend one more second of our time working,
that's a totally legitimate way of using the leverage that you
have in the marketplace. So are there any legal
sanctions, or does anyone at Amazon go to jail if they don't
pay 15? It just sounds like a ton of
voluntary pressure, which is totally legitimate.
Yeah. No, I think that there's.
So first of all, things don't have to be binary.
They don't have to be 0 or one, right.
We either do nothing or we do something.
There's a wide spectrum. So if someone's not following a
government regulation, there's a lot of different things you
could do before you get to. Prison, which is pretty extreme,
right? But should some corporate
executives go to prison for some of their transgressions?
Absolutely. Do they ever know?
I'll give you a great example, Rick Scott.
He's the current senator from Florida, and he's one of the
biggest crooks in American history.
He committed the largest Medicare fraud and they had to
pay. And by the way, his company
admitted it and they confessed. They were found guilty.
They had two different sets of books and they had to pay a $1.7
billion fine, which was just a fraction of the money that they
stole from your grandmother and your grandfather when they
stole, purposely stole from Medicare.
The guy who ran the company was the CEO was Rick Scott.
So the company was guilty, but nobody went to jail.
So they stole a couple of billion dollars at a minimum,
but only the company was guilty. But you can't put the company in
jail and the company. It still exists.
And Rick Scott, you know what he got for that?
He didn't get prison time. The company paid him $300
million on the way out for a robbery.
Well done. And so this is the absurd system
that we have now where these corporate machines rule us all.
And then they could rob you and then laugh in your face and
reward the guy who did the robbery.
And then he became governor and senator.
So yes, there are some situations where corporate
executives should go to jail. But if you don't start with that
sanction that you move up to that for egregious actions like
the one Rick Scott did exactly. There are certainly evil
corporations, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon and I.
My whole thing is we got to be able to disassociate with them
in our time and money. So if I take that minimum wage
example that all work, it would be mandatory payment of $15.00
an hour. Is that what you're advocating?
Yeah. If you have a federal minimum
wage or state minimum wage of $15, yeah, you have to pay $15.
That's right. So if I go to college and spend
4 years of time working there, I did, and I got paid $0.00 an
hour. That was me choosing to labor
very difficult conditions, even homework for $0.00 an hour while
the college raked in millions of dollars a year.
Is that a violation of the minimum wage principal?
No, because you're volunteering for it.
So let me explain. First of all, I did the same
thing and of course I wish I could get paid for the college,
for law school, etc. We all wish it right.
But that is just a wish and so I'll give you an example from
the left wing criticism that I don't agree with so.
If you remember, HuffPost back in the day used to have a ton of
bloggers including me and a bunch of celebrities, Bill
Maher, John Cusack, etc. And and they all and that was a
huge part of the website and a huge part of what made it
popular and and profitable etc. And then they wound up selling
it to AOL for $315 million. And all those bloggers who had
done it for free? Not all, but a lot.
A lot of them came forward and said Ariana Huffington owes us
money because we blog for her. That was our labor and she
didn't pay us. And now she got rich.
Nope. Wrong.
I was one of the biggest bloggers.
There was actually top three on the site.
I blogged probably more than almost anyone on the site.
I put in a ton of hours there. I did it all for free.
Why? Because it wasn't actually free.
I was getting something else in return.
We weren't all suckers. We were doing it for a reason.
And what I was getting in return was publicity and promotion.
And my blog kept popping up on the front page of one of the
most popular websites in the country.
So you can't squelch on the deal afterwards and go, Well, I
wanted the free publicity and that's why I was writing.
But now that you got money, I want it.
I want it. No, give it to me.
No, that was not the deal. And the same with colleges.
So you went there voluntarily to get an education and that's the
deal. And and that education both
enriches your life and allows you to get a better paying job.
That was the deal. Now these colleges turn into
highway robbery too. But as long as you're
volunteering to go, and probably we will with our kids, then
that's our problem and that's the choice we made.
So if I voluntarily agree with an employer to work for $0.00 an
hour at an internship or one or two, or $3.00 an hour.
That would mean that we shouldn't have a minimum wage
because I'm doing it voluntarily and that's the upfront agreement
and I'm doing it to get on the job experience so I can be a
better, more skillful employee in the future and demand a
higher wage. So yeah.
So yes and no. So once the government lays down
some rules, you have to follow them.
So the colleges aren't violating any rules.
HuffPost didn't violate any government rules.
But if you allow for voluntary $2.00 an hour, then there's
going to be economic pressure for $2.00 an hour and then it
destroys the point of the regulation.
So the regulations that I know the libertarians viewed as a
super dirty word. It's just a another word for law
and we need laws, otherwise we can't function together.
But on the other hand, if you say, hey, I would like to or
about something in the regulations or the law that
allows for internships where you work for $0.00 voluntarily,
because what you're getting back is experience, Yeah, that's
fair. That's a perfectly fair point.
And in fact I agree with that point.
I think that their internship should be allowed.
I think the internship rules now are a little too strict.
But by the way, if I find that the rules are not exactly right,
I lobby against them. You know, just verbally.
I don't have a lot of money, but but I still follow them and
that's the way things should be. But if $0.00 an hour is okay for
my work as an intern, what's wrong with one or two or three
or five? Yeah, Why can't I get some
compensation? Because of the economic leverage
that you talked about earlier. So when we the government in in
the book, justice is coming, I argue for.
So Bernie calls the democratic socialism.
I'm not a socialist, I'm a capitalist.
And so there's A and we we believe in very similar rules,
but there is an important difference and and the way that
I frame it is I believe the democracy should check
capitalism. So the capitalism means the
companies are out for themselves, okay, no problem,
right. But they need to be somebody out
there, out for you, to protect you.
And so before the government did that, capitalism ran wild.
And so we had a seven day work week or at least a six day work
week for sure. And often times people were
pressured into seven days a week.
We had child labor, we didn't have 40 hour week, we didn't
have the concept of overtime etcetera.
And the economic leverage and power of the companies created a
situation where people had to volunteer for seven days a week,
otherwise they'd be fired. They had to volunteer to have
their 12 year olds go down a coal mine, otherwise they
weren't going to be able to eat. It's too much power and leverage
and you need the government to equal that out to some degree by
allowing for unions, by passing some reasonable regulations so
we could have weekends, etc, and protect the American people.
So it's a balancing act. It's a balancing act between
regulation and and and leverage and power and all of these
things to create a situation. And in that balancing act, if
you don't set a floor for wages, corporations will have too much
power and be able to drive prices down and then pretend
that it's all voluntary. When in reality the worker
doesn't want to volunteer for $2.00 or $7.00.
That they're only forced into those market conditions when the
government doesn't work to protect them.
When it comes to things like child labor, is that unique to
capitalism? My understanding is kids have
been working since ancient Mesopotamia and it's not it
applied to capitalism, but it's not unique in any way.
Is that your understanding of history?
Oh, definitely. Look, humans are beautiful,
wonderful, cooperative creatures.
And we're also ugly, competitive, dangerous
creatures. We are both.
And we live in that balance. OK.
And if you allow people to do whatever they want, not
everyone, but some group of people will rise up that will do
anything to get power, wealth, privilege, status, etcetera.
And so will they use child labor?
Of course they will. Will they do slavery?
Of course they will. Will they destroy the planet to
just make an extra nickel? Of course they will.
So not everyone will. In fact, most people won't, but
some will. And if you let them run amok,
they will do those terrible things.
It is not at all unique to America.
The whole world is done in and and it's been done historically.
That is why it's important to have a democracy where we all
get together and go, you know what?
We're not comfortable with that and we're going to use our power
as a combined community to say, get your hands off our kids,
then you cannot send them down a coal mine when they're 12.
We're going to set some boundaries here.
We're going to set some laws that you have to abide by.
When it comes to empowering the workers, the thing that stood
out to me was research from the Cato Institute saying jobs
requiring an occupational license increased from 5% in the
1950s to 22% in 2021. So if we know that needing a
license to vote hurts the poor, needing many licenses to get
your job and years of schooling hurts the poor even more and
actually stops them from getting the job in their dreams.
The job of their dream stops them from getting their foot in
the door. Would you support
decriminalizing all economic activity between consenting
adults and abolishing occupational licensing to
empower workers? No, absolutely not.
So again, we have a balancing act here.
If you say, hey, it's gotten a little too much, 22 percent's a
lot. And I'm not sure that we need
incredibly stringent board certification for hairdressers.
I said, maybe you're right. I mean, I there's a lot of
barbers in Turkey with my, the country I originally came from.
And I don't think they're board certified by anyone.
They do a perfectly good job. OK.
And. And the market decides which
hairdresser or Barber you'd like to go to.
But if you're saying we don't need board certification or any
kind of licensing for doctors. Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no.
I don't agree. So because then the doctor comes
up and goes, oh, yeah, I got this ivermectin.
Sure. Yeah.
I know it's for worms inside your stomach, but I'm going to
pretend that it's for COVID and it doesn't help at all.
But haha, the government can't do anything about it.
I can lie to you all day long. Oh, cancer.
Yeah. You know what?
I'm going to pray over it or I'm going to give you this snake oil
and that's going to solve it. No, we're not going to let you
harm people's health or cost them their lives.
If you're in an important position like that by saying,
oh, it's a free for all, and you'll figure out if you were at
the right doctor after you died. But that is an actual example of
my body, my choice. I can take any medicine from any
doctor because I'm like consenting adult kids.
Different story. You're correct on that issue.
But this is an actual my body, my choice issue where if I want
to make an exchange with a doctor of who was certified,
maybe in another country, maybe in another state, maybe they're
going through medical school. Why can't I do that?
Why should the state forcibly stop us from achieving something
we want to achieve? So there's two parts of that.
So number one, as long as they're clearly labeled, let
let's say they're a doctor from Trinidad, Okay, perfectly great
country and and their medical schools are fine.
But on the other hand, you know, I don't know which of their
medical school school you went to, right?
So I don't know if it was a good one.
It was a terrible one. It's a sham.
It's not. I have no idea, right.
But they put up a diploma and it says it's from Trinidad and you
decide that you wanted to go to that doctor.
Okay, I can see it. But if they say they're a doctor
and they're not a doctor, no, that's that's lying to you,
right. And so we're not going to allow
that. And so then if they say hey, or
they're licensed Dr. They went to American Medical school,
etcetera. And they go, hey, listen
brother, my opinion is that ivermectin works and then you go
okay. I like it and I want to take it.
I'm not going to stop you. Like everybody was high on
ivermectin during COVID, and I wanted people to take the right
medicine, so it saved their lives and we lost a million
people. We can get into that debate,
etc. But if someone took ivermectin,
I was like, don't let them. No, you could take it all day
long if you want, right? I'm just trying to help your
brother and so. And then there has to be rules
about how doctors can't lie to you because they could tell you,
Oh my God, this bubble gum is gonna save you from cancer.
Oh my. Don't don't do proper treatment
that the other doctors tell you. Take this magic bubble gum for
$1,000,000 and it'll save you of your cancer.
No, we're not gonna let you lie to people and cost them their
lives. Excellent point.
I'm totally against fraud. Fraud should certainly be
prosecuted. The reason this is such an
intimate issue with me is I had a brachial plexus injury when I
was born. My arm is indefinitely broken
for 27 years. As a result of medical issues, I
recent I go about a year ago. I was 290 pounds.
I was in very terrible shape and I was just miserable.
Both of those things I went to doctors for a very long time and
got no solutions, went to an unlicensed massage therapist and
my arm is in better condition than ever.
And I heard about a lowcarb diet and had to exercise from an
YouTube channel called Gravity Transformation Fat Loss Experts.
And those two did more for my health than anything and I've
experienced in the medical industry, that's why it's
important. Is there anything else I'm
missing on this medical licensing issue?
Well, I mean first of all, on the massage therapist.
I don't know why she's unlicensed.
She seems like she's perfectly good at her job.
Wish she would get a license. I don't know the intricacies of
the massage laws. I can't say if it's dangerous or
not dangerous for them to be licensed or unlicensed.
So, you know, maybe it is in. In a way I could envision why
massage therapists could need to be licensed.
On the other hand, I could also envision a scenario where you
say, no, you don't need a license for a massage.
And I'm open to that. I'm totally open to that.
Right. It's just a discussion of where
we draw the line in terms of the listening to the guy on YouTube.
Oh yeah, that's your choice, brother.
Right. And so and and and it worked for
you. I'm super happy about it.
What's wrong with that? I mean, I if it turns out that
it works for you, but you're the exception and 9 out of 10 people
wind up getting really hurt from their advice and that they know
that it's fraudulent advice, OK, then the government can do
something because it's fraudulent and it's hurting the
majority of people, even if it helped you.
But it doesn't sound like that's the scenario.
It sounds like they were just giving you advice that you could
take relieve you took it and it worked for you.
That's called the hashtag freedom.
Got it. The book is Justice Is Coming,
How Progressives Are Going to Take Over the Country and
America is going to love it. Links are in the description.
I want to ask you about this just because there are wars
being provoked with Russia and China.
Here at sss.gov it says federal law requires nearly all male
U.S. citizens and male immigrants 18 through 25
register with Selective Service. Do you support military
conscription? That also depends.
So for example, in Israel they had they and they still do have
military conscription. Did Israel need military
conscription in the beginning? Absolutely.
So they were being attacked fairly regularly.
And if you go to the country, which the ultra orthodox do, and
they go, OK, I want everybody else to protect me, but I'm
going to sit on my ass over here and and not get involved.
You guys go risk your lives. But I'm not going to do it and
I'm not going to have my son do it.
Well, that's not fair. We're either in this together
and we're going to survive together or we're not.
So on the other hand, you have a perfectly, you know, large,
developed, mature country like America.
Do you then need conscription in a draft?
Well, it seems less clear, right?
And so, and then we haven't done a defensive war since what, the
War of 1812, right? Almost all of our wars have been
offensive. So if you say, hey, I need to do
conscription for your kids to go send them to go die in Iraq so
we could drive up oil prices and defense contractor profits, my
answer is, hell no, you're not going to take my kid.
So it depends on the situation. I think that right now, the
mill. But by the way, there's also a
downside of not having a draft. So we just have to be open
minded about all of the factors, right?
The downside of not having a draft is that in the old days in
America, the kid from Kansas and the kid from the Bronx got
together in a trench. Whether there was a war, there
wasn't a war. And at least they trained
together, they lived together, and they learned to empathize
with one another and realize that they're way more similar
than they realized. Without that, we have a country
that's greatly divided. So all these are complicated
issues. But if you said to me right now,
conscription in America, I understand them registering us.
I do not agree with them drafting us.
With the case of Israel, you also had a lack of safety
because Ergon, Stern and Hagana were bombing Israel into
existence with the Zionist terrorist organizations.
So it's not like, well, we're just here sitting defenseless,
so we need someone to help us. There's so often, every time you
look under this sort of like, you know how we got attacked out
of nowhere on 9/11, except for the fact that it was the result
of Iraqi sanctions and support for Israel atrocities in Lebanon
and occupying the land of the two sanctuaries.
So even when we're in this situation where a draft might be
quote needed, it's so often is the result of provoking a
situation where one wouldn't be. Are there really any examples of
when there should be military conscriptions, either throughout
history or today? Vladimir Zielinski on February
24th of 2022 instituted military conscription and as is Vladimir
Putin. Is there ever a justified time
to force someone to perform labor against their will in
these terrible conditions? Yeah, there is.
So let me take it one at a time. So on the issue of Israel, yeah,
it's complicated and it's nuanced.
Were there some Zionist organizations that did terrorism
before the formation of Israel to drive out the British from
the British Mandate? Yes.
Were they actually critical to that goal?
The answer is probably. And did some of their leaders
become prime ministers of Israel later?
Yes. These are just undeniable facts.
So there's the, you know, double standard that we have here.
When a Muslim does fights for their rights in healthy ways and
in unhealthy ways through terrorism, which I don't support
at all, we say they're all monsters, right.
But when Israel did it, we say they're angels.
Well, let's make up our minds. OK.
And so I so I think Israel has the right to exist.
I think there should be a two state solution.
I'm in favor of Iron Dome to protect the Israeli civilians.
But I have radical ideas, which are not at all radical that the
great majority of Americans probably would agree with, but
no one in Washington agrees with, which is, if we're going
to give Iron Dome to Israel, why don't we give it to the
Palestinians? Why can't we also save their
lives? Right, So, but so that's the
Israel issue. Back to military conscription,
War of 1812. They, the British invade.
They burned down the White House.
There's an excellent chance that we lose the country.
Everybody's got a rally. Sorry, but we all got to go
fight and and save the country. So yes, there are scenarios
where it is necessary. Are there a lot of scenarios
where it's necessary, especially modern day world and especially
in America. No, there are not a lot of
scenarios where it's necessary. But when it comes to the the
reason that I originally embraced progressivism was this
unapologetic love of justice imperialism inherently bad.
I don't give a damn what the economic benefits are.
Racism, inherently bad. Sexism, inherently bad.
Slavery and forced cotton picking is inherently bad.
But then when it comes to forced military conscription, where
you're more likely to die, more likely to get PTSD and get your
limbs blown off than if you were forced to pick cotton, well then
all of a sudden these issues are really complex.
Can't we just say that forced labor is immoral and if the
government wants to get people to be troops, they got to pay
more. They got to provide better
conditions. You can't just exploit us
against our will. No, we can't.
We have to use nuance. I'm sorry, but it's true.
It's it's the spectrum that we talked about before.
It's not binary. So it depends on the situation.
So if you say the government forcing your labor or
conscripting you should be incredibly rare, I totally agree
with you. Okay.
If you say there is no situation where that's necessary, I don't
agree because you have a problem with the comments.
So in a situation where you really need the whole community
to chip in for whatever reason, whether it's taxes, it's a war,
etcetera, and some people go, Nope, I'm not going to do it.
I'm going to sit on my ass and I'm going to make you risk your
life and I'm going to send your son, but I'm going to keep my
son, come perfectly cushy and and comfortable over here and
you go die for me. And it's a situation where
really are all of our lives are on the line.
No, you don't get to do that, brother.
You got to chip in. That's why it's a community.
So look, you know, my issue with libertarianism, and I considered
it when I was younger, is that it's too utopian.
It expects human beings to be perfectly lovely, and we aren't.
Sometimes we need to be forced to do things.
So when someone, you know, takes another human being as a slave,
you're saying, oh, well, they're forcing that person's labor.
That's terrible. Good, good.
Couldn't agree more. But then when the government
says I'm going to force you to not have slaves, well, I don't
know about that. No, no, no.
I do know about that, though. Sometimes the government needs
to force you to do something. And so it's should be relatively
rare. And we if you say, by the way,
if you make the argument as a libertarian today that we've
gone too far and we've got to dial it back, I probably agree
with you, right. But I do not agree with the
extreme scenario where the government can never do it.
So it's not everyone would be drafted.
According to sss.org, it's men only.
So it's a sexist policy. Would you allow women to just
sit back like you feared would happen up from the rich?
Or should women be conscripted too?
I would leave it up to democracy, but if I was voting
and without having studied the issues, I would say no.
I would conscript conscript women as well.
Okay. Men are 50% of the population,
yet 95% of those killed by police, according to the
Washington Post. Is this proof of discrimination
against men? No.
Men are definitely more violent and more prone to criminality.
You know, there's all of these biases that we have.
Oh, you got a. You know, you got to surveil
Muslims. They're inherently dangerous.
Ridiculous. There's 1.6 billion Muslims in
the world. They're human beings just like
you are right, we got to surveil.
Now the right wing right And some of their groups are
dangerous militias that are looking to kill people, etc.
Yeah, that's where the government has to surveil you.
Sorry, that's not you don't have the rights or the freedom to
kill people. So if you have a specific plot,
that is the job of the government to protect us, right.
But should they be surveilling right wing groups in general?
No, no, that's ridiculous. Stop and Frisk in New York
targeted blacks and Latinos at a rate of 96%.
It's absurd. It's crazy.
We want you to stop the criminals, not random black
people and Latino people. So on the other hand, if we were
going to pick one group to be careful with, tell cops the you
know a TSA at the airport etc. Keep a little bit more of a wary
eye. It would be young men cuz young
men commit to overwhelming majority of crimes.
And do you think that's mostly biological as the result of
higher testosterone levels, since it's young men
specifically? Yeah, I I do.
I mean, look, I'm not a scientist, so I can't or by, you
know, trained biologists. So I can't tell you with great
certainty if it's testosterone, other hormones, the way that our
brains develop, etcetera. But the proofs in the pudding
there's it's not America, it's the whole world over is we've
got prisons filled with young men.
And so is it biological? Very, very likely.
Yeah, and the reason that I bring that up is if I didn't
know about the male, the men who are committing violence, I would
just think that the world is sexist against men and for no
reason were disproportionately represented when it comes to.
This issue in racial terms Doctor Roland G Fryer of Harvard
University published an empirical analysis of racial
differences in police use of force, and he allegedly came to
the conclusion after studying 18 cities, that there is no
difference when it comes to blacks and whites getting killed
by police. When you take into account the
circumstances of the event, do you think race is a really big
issue with police in general? I do.
But I think that it's complicated because it's got
race is an issue and class is an issue and those intermingle and
that intermingling is where it gets really interesting.
So I'll give you a bunch of examples to explain what I mean.
So if you said to me, and by the way, I don't just trust that one
professor, a lot of other people have done studies that show that
race is a factor, but it also depends on the situation.
So does poverty create more crime?
Yes. Is it because poor people are
more immoral? Of course not.
It's just that when folks have limited resources, just the
nature of human beings, and it again applies all across the
world, across all races and ethnicities, people get more
desperate and are willing to do more things to try to provide
for their family. So a good example is my home, my
parents hometown in southeastern Turkey.
It happened to be near the Syrian border.
And back then in the 1950s and 60s, they had these absurd
tariffs. So everything was a lot less
expensive in Syria. And folks, the great majority of
folks down there were very poor. So a lot of people in my dad's
hometown became smugglers. Did they become smugglers
because they're naturally evil? Of course not.
No. They became smugglers because it
was a rare way to make money and actually eventually a decent
amount of money which they didn't have any access to.
Otherwise, the laws made no sense.
No one got hurt. And so they, a disproportionate
number of them became smugglers. And that had nothing to do with
the fact that they were Turkish. It had everything to do with
their circumstance. So is it oftentimes about class?
Of course it is. Right.
So. So for example, if you said,
look, unfortunately because of the way history has gone down in
America, they're blacks and Latinos are disproportionately
poor and that leads to more crime because of their class,
not because of their race. And so we have to control that,
etcetera. Yeah, there's definitely
validity to that. On the other hand, there are
also factors that are just racial that also affect the
issues. So for example, marijuana smoked
at the same rate by white people and black people in America, and
black people are arrested at nearly four times rate.
It's actually 3.7. Another way to look at that is
370% greater rate than white people.
Is that because all cops decided we hate black people and we're
only going to arrest them? No, not exactly.
Is that just because of class? No, not exactly.
No. And a pretty decent explanation
of it was given to me by a former Baltimore cop on when I
interviewed him on The Young Turks.
They said, look, Jane, we had a quota.
We weren't supposed to have a quota, but we all do, Okay.
That's that's what happens for police departments across the
country. And we had arrest a certain
number of people. And even if you were assigned to
a rich suburb of Baltimore, you didn't arrest anybody there.
I said why? He said because if you arrested
someone there, it could be a judge's kid and then you're
going to be in a lot of trouble, right?
You go arrest black people in the inner city Baltimore, and
you're going to have no trouble at all.
They have no power. You just put them away, put them
away and make your quota Right. So.
And and then I said, well, did some cops enjoy that?
He's like, oh, yeah, they did. They did.
They enjoyed arresting black people as opposed to white
people. So you see how it combines.
And so and it's hard to take those factors and and divide
them out. And so for if somebody tells you
it's only racial and it has nothing to do with class, that
is not remotely true, cuz you could take race out of it in so
many different contexts. And class matters a lot, right?
But if you say no in America, it has nothing to do with race.
That is also not true, and you could show different strands,
different theories, different studies that show that race is
also a factor. When it comes to disparities and
income, so let's accept that it's has a great deal to do with
class when it comes to. Different incomes According to
the 2018 US Census, median household by income, ethnic
groups, Indian Americans are at the top.
Then Taiwanese, Chinese, Japanese, Pakistani, Filipino,
Korean, Cambodian, Vietnamese and then whites are 11th.
What is it about these other groups?
What are they doing that whites, blacks and Hispanics can embrace
so they could increase their skills?
And have higher wages in the future.
We also see a disparity between black immigrants to America at a
rate of 30% according to Black Enterprise as opposed to native
blacks. What can people do outside of
using the state if we could just take a break from that to
increase their income and be able to compete with Taiwanese,
Indian and Chinese Americans. Yeah, so again, I'm in the in
the group and this is a tiny group these days, unfortunately,
where I think both culture and class matter, right.
So if you start out poor, your chance of becoming rich is much
lower. It's not impossible.
And my dad did it. He was a dirt poor farmer and
and by the way, one of the ways that the principal way that he
did it was in Turkey in the 1960s, they offered a free
college education and we had to score high on your test to get
it. And my dad worked his ass off to
score high, but that gave people and opportunity they would not
have otherwise had. So my dad didn't have to become
a smuggler. He became a mechanical engineer
instead. My uncle became a doctor
instead. We have to provide people with
opportunity, and I think that's the right way to do it.
Now, when you look at the immigrants that you're talking
about, culture also matters, and that is where it gets really
sensitive. And a lot of, I lose a lot of
people on the left and they get very uncomfortable about saying
some cultures are more correct and more incorrect.
You know, not overall, not in general, but about specific
strands of the culture. That's where they get very
uncomfortable. And and now I lose the right
wing. I'm not saying libertarians, but
I'm saying the the Trump acolytes, mega etcetera, in my
opinion, because they go, no, my culture is better than your
culture. Well, dude, you haven't even
looked into it, first of all. I mean, look at the stats that
you just gave. Apparently your culture, if
you're, you know, in that class of white Americans or right
wingers who are sure that your culture is better, apparently
congratulations, you're #12. Is it 11 or 12?
It's 11 according to 2018 US Census median.
Apparently you're not number one.
Apparently your culture is 11th best even in America.
So so OK, So what is the quote UN quote right?
Culture. Well, valuing education and
valuing hard work, so sorry to everyone who doesn't agree,
whether you're on the left or the right, it's just true.
So you can get super mad at me and it ain't going to make any
difference at all. And those Taiwanese kids are all
going to do better than you because they believe in
education and they believe in hard work.
So I'm an immigrant. When I came to the country, I
actually found a list just like that Keith in my local library.
We didn't even have the Internet back then.
And I was actually kind of stunned to find it in a
magazine. And it actually had back then
because there wasn't as many Asian immigrants.
The top two ethnic groups in the country based on income were
Turks and Greeks. How's that for funny?
OK, By the way, in Germany, Turks come at the bottom.
Here in American, Turks come at the top.
I could explain why later. But you can see that it has
nothing to do with race. It has to do with circumstance.
OK, so now in terms of that immigrant mentality, I'm an
immigrant that had that mentality.
My wife is from Taiwan. Our kids are mixed race Chinese
and Turkish and and we and she's an immigrant.
I'm an immigrant and we brought that mentality here.
So why do they do better in school?
Because A, we believe in them. B we expect greatness from them.
If my kids get B's I am very dissatisfied and and and they go
to a public school and I went to parent teacher conference just
the other day and the teachers are wonderful and and my God
there's some brilliant teachers in that school.
But there was one teacher in particular who started talking
about hey don't be satisfied if your kids get C's because the
D's could also get them in trouble and I was like what what
is this conversation? I do not want my kids involved
in this conversation at all. This is the wrong cultural
mindset. We get A's.
We don't get. We don't even think about C's.
No, A/B is not good enough. You got to give me A's because I
know you're capable of it. My parents did that for me.
I would bring home a 98 and my dad would say where.
Where'd the other two points go? You know what that got into my
head, Keith? I get it.
That creates stress, and it's got its downsize, right?
But what it burrowed into my head subconsciously was you're
capable of 100 every time. And that's what you got to teach
your kids. And that's great culture.
One final thing on the race issue, according to doctor
Wilfred Riley at Kentucky State University, He said there is no
race war going on in the USA and currently there is no epidemic
of white on black crime. In fact, interracial crime on an
annual basis have been consistently 75 to 85% black on
white for the past 30 years. So if you and I are not
addressing this issue, David Duke and Jared Taylor are going
to have a monopoly on this issue. 80% of violence between
the races. The black is the aggressor, the
white tends to be the victim. What is it about these stats?
Are they untrue? Have you heard about this?
And what is the proper progressive way to analyze
something like this? OK, so first of all, yeah, I
have not seen that study and I don't accept it.
And I don't mean I don't accept it, as in, I don't accept facts.
I mean, I just haven't had a chance to study it.
And and I've seen studies that show very different numbers.
So I I can't stipulate to a study I didn't see.
So now having said that, what is it believable that blacks could
commit a little bit more crime or midsize more crime?
Whatever the the numbers wind up being against white people than
white against black? Yes, that is definitely
possible. Is it because blacks are more
racist against whites? Of course not.
No. The there's two factors here,
Keith. One is again, we have class.
And since the average black person is born into a family
with 1/8 of the household wealth of the average white person,
they start in a hole. And I know, you know, we were
poor, we were middle class, my family.
And then people say to me, I run a company, it's, you know, TYT
network and they I often get pressure.
Why aren't you guys bigger? Why, why?
Why haven't you beat CNN yet? Well, brother, I started in a
hole and I did. I spent a lot of years, decades
climbing out of that hole. Right?
So give me a minute. So class does affect people.
It affects the amount of crime that's committed.
Not, again, not because they're bad people, but because of their
circumstance. And by the way, sometimes people
who commit crimes are terrible people.
And I'll get back to that in a second.
But there's a second thing to Keith, which is like Israel and
Palestine, when Palestinians have no state power, they're
called terrorists. When they do violence, when
Israel does state violence, they go, That doesn't count.
That's not terrorism. So, but wait a minute, one side
is killing 100 times the civilians and the other side,
why doesn't their violence count?
No, because by definition we said state violence is OK and
individual violence is not OK Well, that doesn't make any
sense. And so here in America you have
white people are generally more in charge.
That doesn't mean like, oh, it's like a white supremacist state
and the leaders are secretly KKK.
No, I just mean that because of the institutional power that
that extra wealth brings, they are more likely to be educated,
they're more likely to get higher jobs, etcetera, and
they're more likely to be in the in the ruling class, if you
will, right. And so they set the laws that
help them and don't hurt them, right.
So white people, while they're not necessarily committing as
many crimes against black people, have a massive
institutional advantage. So for example, they're locking
black people up at four times the rate for the same crime of
possessing marijuana. So you can't just discount the
state power that white people have in this country.
And I don't say that is against white people.
I'm just the stating the fact of the reality of this country and
and any race that had that advantage would have the same
would use it in the same way, right.
So that's why that situation is, is not at all apples and it's a
little apples and oranges based on what you just said there.
OK, now. But I will say one extra thing
where now we've gotten into some fights with the extreme left on
our on our flank there, which is I think progressives stand for
justice for all. And I talk about that injustice
is coming and it doesn't mean justice for us.
It doesn't mean justice for some and it doesn't mean justice for
just people accused of crimes. No, it means justice for all,
including the people who are victims of crime.
And so now there's this crazy line of thought in in the
extreme left where they think, no, because they're
underprivileged, they should be allowed to.
Like, I mean, look, sometimes it gets so extreme.
Some are in favor of abolishing prisons.
No, you don't have a right to to smash somebody's face in with a
brick. That's not a right that you
have. And so some folks got to go to
jail. Well, they were underprivileged,
OK, Yeah. But they still got to go to
jail. I don't.
And like we'll discuss how to fix those issues on a macro
scale, big picture scale, and we'll talk about how to get to
justice for everyone to the best we can.
We'll talk about getting to the right balance.
But that brother who just hit that Lady in the face with a
brick is going to go to jail. And if you don't agree with
that, sorry, but 99% of the country doesn't agree with you
and you're way more extreme than you realize.
So you have to draw the line somewhere.
And I draw with my own side as well as the other side.
Currently in America, the government generally runs the
police, the military, the courts and compulsory education.
Not all education, but they are the only ones who have
compulsory education rights. Is it fair to describe these
things like police, military and schools as free, universal and
guaranteed services? Well, you know, again, you're
going to get into definitions, but should the government
provide those things? Yes, those are core functions of
the government and should they be quote UN quote free?
Absolutely. In fact, I can give you an
example that's in in the book again and again.
You could order the book at tyt.com/justice in in in this
country, Keith, we used to have a private fire departments and
that turned into a disaster. We tried it so Bob wouldn't pay
his fire insurance and they would literally let his house
burn down. But they found out pretty
quickly, if you let Bob's house burn down, the house next to him
is also going to burn down. And the one after that and the
one after that, and it doesn't matter that those guys pay their
insurance. And we quickly realized, no, the
fire departments have to be public, otherwise we all burn
together. So that's my take on it.
But go ahead ask. You can ask specifics.
The reason is because the military, it's something like
800, nine, $100 billion a year. So it certainly is not free.
However, when it comes to things like healthcare or college.
It's sort of described as the state can make this free if
government controls it, but that would mean that nurses and
doctors don't get paid, they're all just volunteers.
So it it seems like you're dividing things whether they
should cost money or they should be free.
They both cost money, They both cost resources and face
incentives and constraints. So do you think it's honest to
say that we can make healthcare free if the state controls it?
Yeah. So they're saying free in the
context of government. And so if you want further
clarification on that, no problem.
And in fact, I'll give you that clarification right now.
So when they say free, what they're saying is that it's not,
they're not saying that it's magic and it's magically free
and falls out of the trees, right.
What they mean is that they're it's communal, so and hence free
to you on a specific level. Whereas having to pay for that
sandwich or that tank of gas is specifically not free.
You have to pay for it on an individual level.
But cops are free in the sense not that we don't pay for them,
but that they we don't have to pay for them on an individual
level. So when someone busts into my
house, I don't have to pay the cops 100 bucks for them to show
up because we're all contributing to our communal
treasury, and out of that treasury we're paying for the
things like cops, fire department, schools, etc.
And hence they're free. In that sense, you don't have to
go and pay for 3rd grade history class, but it's not free as and
it doesn't cost money. OK, I'm all four sense of
community. One of the great things I
learned in economics is that even if you are just reading a
book by yourself. You didn't write the book.
You didn't cut down the tree to make the pages.
You didn't invent the words. You didn't make the ink.
We're always cooperating, and we need to look at the world in a
very cooperative lens. Even people who happen to be
born on the other side of the world who are evil immigrants.
Yes, you still have to treat them with justice.
You're constantly engaged in this complex web of social
cooperation. I'm all for communities coming
together. My entire criticism of
progressivism is they don't let me out.
Opt out of fun and conservatism. They don't let me opt out of
things that I think are non communal versus things that are
actually communal because it's not like, well, if you don't
chip in, well then the government just says, hey, can
we do better next year? The government will put you in a
cage, shoot you if you resist, confiscate your house for
property taxes. So it's not like there's just
greed on one side of the equation.
The government seems to be far more great, at least with that
fire fire department example. They at least let you opt out
without trying to put you in jail.
Government will put you in jail and take away the house that
might have burnt down if you don't chip in for their fire
department. How is that any better?
No. So Keith, you you have to have
the government be able to enforce rules.
Otherwise we have no communal experience at all.
We have no community and it's a free for all.
What you're saying is that you don't like some of the places
where they've drawn the lines. And by the way, on at least half
of your examples, I agree with you.
And that's why I fight to have us draw lines in different
places and pass different laws. But yes, the government has the
power of the community. The community disapproves of you
hitting that old lady with a brick in the face.
So we have the power to arrest you, take away your freedom, and
stuff you into a little cell. Now that is an awesome power.
I don't mean awesome as in good, I mean as in amazing, gigantic,
enormous power, right? And but the government needs it.
Otherwise people are just going to take whatever the hell they
want, and we're going to have complete anarchy.
And by the way, we will also try that throughout history.
And it never, ever, ever works. And so and by the way when we
tried it from the left. And extreme communism.
What what happened? Dictators happened instantly cuz
there is no utopia. I remember being in freshman
year management 101 class and they start teaching us alternate
alternative forms of management, right?
They go well we're in the capitalist system but we're also
gonna teach you about Marxism. This then the other thing and
and we get to Marxism and at that point I haven't read
anything about it. And the first thing they teach
us is, and I know this is for the Marxists out there, sorry
brothers and sisters, I know it's a little bit of a
generalization, but you know that it's generally the
direction that Marks went in and what he wanted, which is take as
little as you need and give as much as you can.
I'm like, yes, but on which planet?
Because that doesn't happen on this planet at all, OK, people
work as little as they can and take as much as they possibly
can in the in the verse. It's just human nature.
So I literally asked the management professor, can we
skip this part because this is nonsense.
No human being acts like this, so and I I look, I'm sorry if
I'm going to offend, but I think the libertarians are sometimes
go all the way around the bend and get close to Marxism.
Where they think, oh, it's utopia.
Everybody will act perfectly lovely.
No, they will not. We need government power to some
degree. But if you're worried about
government power overreaching, I hear your brothers and sisters
and a lot of the time I totally agree with you.
So we have to be careful with that awesome power that the
government has, but it needs it. Otherwise we can't have any
rules. We can't have anything that's
communal. We can't ever.
Like the whole point of insurance, by the way, is.
If you by the time you have cancer, it's too late.
The costs are too high. You all have to pitch in when
you're healthy and when you're sick, all of us pitch into a
communal pod and then you take out of it when you need it,
right? That's health insurance, whether
it's private or it's public. So there are some things that
need to be communal and some power that the government has to
have. The the better conversation,
Keith, in my opinion is where you draw those lines instead of
saying that those lines should not exist, Okay.
So when it comes to, let's take the example of healthcare.
Since we've agreed that there's no such thing as truly free,
what you mean is free at the point of access to that
individual. On the specific circumstance.
When it comes to some things having decreased in price and
increase, it looks like from the research I've done, things like
hospital services, colleges, medical cares and child care
have drastically increased in price where things like TV's,
toys, computer software, clothing and cell phones have
drastically decreased in price. Do you have a general theory as
to why some privately owned things decrease in price
overtime while increasing in quality?
And then maybe we can apply this to the healthcare industry?
Yeah. So there's a whole host of
factors involved there. One is, is a domestic or is it a
world market? If it's a domestic market, there
is by definition less options, right?
And so that affects the supply and demand curves.
Whereas if it's a global market for TV's, then their global
competition is going to drive prices down.
And so, for example, in China, this doesn't apply to TV's as
much, but it did for Korea and Japan for a long time.
When they were poorer, they're not anymore, but when they were
poor. They could pay us lower costs to
their employees that allow them to produce lower price TV's.
And so in a world market, there's a lot of factors that
drive prices down, OK. So a lot of the things that you
show their medical care etcetera are domestic market and where we
have less choices now in a domestic market, we have an
extra layer of complexity which is.
The corruption that we talked about earlier, so we allow all
of our politicians to be purchased by different
industries. And in fact, a very conservative
Republican, Mo Brooks, who was in the House for a long time,
who I disagree with on almost every policy issue, had a
brilliant and incredibly honest speech when he was running for
the Senate a couple years ago. I put that in the book as well
because it was stunning his admissions, he said.
If you want to be the chairman of a committee.
In the house, you have to purchase it and you can't And
you it's about $1,000,000 that it costs.
Now they don't ever say this in the press and the press knows
it, but they never cover it. I'll tell you why.
They never covered in a second, but he said, but where you going
to get $1,000,000? You can't get it from average
Jane and Joe and Jane Citizen. They don't have that kind of
money. So you have to go to industry.
Which industry do you go to? Well, whichever one the
committee is regulating. They want to purchase you more
than anyone else does. So you get $1,000,000 from the
guys you're supposed to be regulating, then you get this
committee chairmanship and you don't lot that money to other
people, other politicians in your party.
So you just disperse the bribes. I mean, look at how criminal
this is, right? And he explained it's not me,
it's Republican Mo Brooks explaining it.
Okay. So and then he says at that
point that when you get into the chairmanship, it's a quid pro
quo. You have to do what the industry
told you to do. Now if you do that with TV's.
Yeah, Sony can buy American politicians too.
But it gets, it gets harder, right?
But when you have a domestic market, oh, that's beautiful.
The smaller the market, the easier it is to bribe government
officials and drive up prices. I'll give you a specific example
of that, too. This is also in the book in New
Jersey, and then later also in Texas, Virginia and other
states. Some of the industry groups that
give the most amount of money campaign contributions.
Is how the New York Times CNN politely call bribes give most
to state politicians. So they have a lot of power.
By the way teachers unions, police unions, real estate,
these are very powerful at the state level and at the local
level and so. But in the case of the auto
dealerships, Tesla was not using auto dealerships, so franchise
auto dealerships, so they made it illegal to sell without.
Going through a dealership, that's the most anti capitalist,
anti free market thing I have ever seen.
I'm a million percent against that law.
That law is nothing but criminality.
OK. And luckily in that case and a
guy I don't love Elon Musk, but he had enough power to be able
to fight back and he bought a bunch of politicians and then
they got to a level of parody on the bribes and then they changed
the law back that you could sell cars any way you like.
But the reason I gave you that example is because.
The smaller the market, the better the bribes work.
So a lot of those industries that you showed with that have
higher prices, They got there just by purchasing our
politicians and getting rid of the free market and limiting
your options so that they could drive prices up.
Drug companies are the best example.
So in response to that, should we increase the amount of
trading partners we have by declaring universal free trade?
Just as we have trade between the states, we should trade
voluntarily with other countries to decrease the monopolistic
powers of domestic industry and increase consumer choice.
No. So this one's also complicated.
Why? If you did completely free trade
right now, 10s of millions of jobs would be gone almost
overnight. It, it would create an economic
situation where you'd be crazy not to outs.
If you're a company and it and it cost you, you know, eight
cents or let's go crazy and say $0.80 an hour in Vietnam to pay
someone as opposed to paying them 15 bucks here, 25 bucks,
etcetera, you're going to go to Vietnam, OK.
So you're going to put your factories there, etcetera.
So if we don't set some boundaries, the level of
unemployment in this country would be monstrous.
So you've got to be careful with the laws that that you're you're
passing. On the other hand, if you do the
kind of tariffs that Donald Trump is suggesting, it's going
to go in the opposite direction, create a different problem, also
a giant problem in the opposite direction, because both of those
are extreme. You have to achieve balance
where you protect the American worker, but you still have
enough free trade to drive prices down for consumers.
When it comes to education, according to the National Center
for Educational Statistics, there has been an inflation
adjusted increase of 287% when it comes to per student spending
from 1960 to the year 2010. Do you think the education
system in general has a spending problem or a management problem
or an incentives problem? What's the progressive take on
education? So it has a lot of those
problems, and education is so fascinating.
So, you know, unfortunately this reflex in this country of
America's #1. And so, you know, it might not
be a great system, but it's the best system in the world.
No, it depends. We are #1 in a number of
factors, like the military. I don't know if that's something
to brag about, but what we are not, number one, is in
education. The South Koreans kick our ass,
for example. There's many examples, but
they're usually in the top three.
But so is Finland. And they have taken very
different approaches. They're usually the top two
countries these days in both math and in other aptitudes that
we test across the world. And South Korea works their
students to oblivion. I mean, my God, I think that
culture way over does it on on how hard they work their kids.
They've also got to have a childhood.
I don't agree with that balance. OK.
Finland, on the other hand, eliminated homework.
Eliminated private schools and pay their teachers as high as
they pay lawyers and doctors and magically they became number one
and they weren't #1 until they made those changes.
So it's definitely the changes. So that's why sometimes
different methods work in different places and for
different reasons. So in terms of education in
California? We took away tons of money from
public education proportionately to what we used to spend per
capita per GDP. Back in the 90s, sixties and
70s, California had one of the top education public education
systems in the country. Now we're near the bottom.
That's because we passed the law saying we can't increase
property taxes. And so it got its store.
And then? We allowed for private schools
where every rich person in California took their kids out
of the public school system and now pay some exorbitant,
ridiculous 40,000 a year for a second grader. 50,000 a year,
60,000 a year for 3rd graders, 4th graders.
It is unbelievable how much it costs.
And then since they're already paying that much, they don't
want to pay in the public school system.
Their kids don't even go there. So they steal and steal and
steal from that public school system until it becomes a
disaster. Alabama and Mississippi spend
the lowest amount of education and they get the worst education
result results. Now, is it possible that you
still spend a lot and get bad results?
Of course. Could it be partly because of
mismanagement? Of course.
So you have to work towards what is the right balance and how you
fund it and what is the right balance in the rules that you
have for those kids so they can get the best possible results.
With all the free PDF's online and all the abilities for
private organizations to share their work in the form of things
like PDFI would think, can't you just copy the curriculum of
schools that are doing much better and start teaching that?
I don't know what the whole holdup is like.
Students are really expected to work hard and do what it takes,
but on the teachers side it's like, well, we just we need more
money and until we get more money we're going to try and
close the schools during COVID and we can't expect to have
better results. They have very high standards
for the students and very low standards for themselves.
Why can't they copy the curriculum of schools that are
doing very well? So look, I don't believe in
creating the private charter schools that then SAP money more
money out of the public school system and create another
hierarchy where so the public school systems are left with
only folks who are poor and in lower middle class etcetera and
they have no resources at all. On the other hand, look, I'm as
you could probably tell through this interview.
I don't believe in rigid ideology and oh, the left says
this. So I must agree with whatever
some dude on Twitter came up with as the leftist ideology, or
some dude came up with leftist ideology 80 years ago or 200
years ago. No.
Or use independent judgment. So it when it comes to the
teachers unions, they are right that they don't get paid nearly
enough and if we paid them more, I think we would get better
results on the other hand. Yeah, Sometimes unions have a
downside of they make very rigid rules and they don't want to
change things. So they'll say, no, I'm not
going to the teacher. We don't want new curriculum.
We don't. That's change.
And we're opposed to change. Well, look, brother, I got your
back when you want more healthcare, when you want higher
wages, but I don't have your back when you say I don't want
to try anything new. I don't want to do something
different that might help the students.
No, that I don't agree, Doctor. Chris Freeman, a professor, said
that the government could seize all of American billionaires
wealth and it wouldn't be enough to fund its spending for a
single year. When it comes to how much more
should taxes be raised? In 2022 the government spent
$6.27 trillion. How much more money does this
organization need? Why do you advocate increasing
taxes? So there's two different issues
here, Keith. One is how much should taxes be
and two is what are you doing with them?
OK, so first, let's tackle the first one.
I'm not saying that I'm in favor of these rates.
I'm just giving you historical facts.
So and these are marginal taxes. So this does not apply to
everyone. In fact, it does not apply to
the overwhelming majority of the American people.
And when they did it, it did not apply to the overwhelming
majority of American people. But in that golden period that I
talked about, the period that a lot of times when.
And Aga says Make America great again.
They are referring to that same period, the 50s, sixties,
etcetera, when everything was booming.
In that time period, we had the most progressive presidents the
world this country has ever seen.
They were super strong and they passed laws that made a
difference. And at that point, the tax rate
for the highest bracket was 91%. So I'm not saying you should be
91% now even for the highest bracket.
I'm definitely not saying that. But apparently that worked
because that is when our economy was at its best, and that is
when we created the biggest middle class the world has ever
seen. So if you think at the very
highest brackets, incredibly high taxes can't work.
It is factually incorrect. It can work and it did work, and
in fact it works spectacularly even now.
I wouldn't agree with it, but it may be I'm wrong.
Right. So because those are, those are
things that actually happen now. But Keith, today the problem
isn't whether the highest marginal tax rate should be 35%
or 39% or even 70 or 90, right. No, the problem is where they
spending the money. And so that's where bribery has
made all of the difference. Once this and I call those
Supreme Court decisions the Four Horsemen of our apocalypse,
because once they said corporations are human beings.
Absurd, with unalienable rights given to them by their creator.
Absurd. God didn't create corporations.
We did. And they don't have
constitutional rights. They don't have natural rights.
They don't have human rights. That's insane.
But once they did that and they said they have the freedom of
speech, and money is speech. You just flat out legalized
bribery in America, and you made America the most corrupt country
in the world, The most corrupt. And that breaks my heart,
because in other countries it's still illegal to bribe people.
You still have to risk getting caught.
You still have to bring in like a suitcase full of money.
No, here. It's perfectly legal.
You just give it to them. And yeah, they theoretically
spend it on their campaigns, but it gives them power or fame.
It allows them to give paid speeches, write books, etcetera.
And half the time they funnel the money to themselves Anyway,
that's how the Clintons get into office broke.
They come out having $150 million.
And when I tell that to Democrats, they they they, oh,
my God, you must be a right winger.
No, brother. They're also stealing from you,
right? Pelosi and McConnell,
Republican, Democrat, they both took a billion dollars in
legalized bribes. And NPR and New York Times would
have you believe that when McConnell did it, he was the
devil. And when Pelosi does it, she's
an Angel, no? They're both taking bribes.
They're both servants of the ruling class, and they both do
exactly as they are ordered. So the problem isn't the rate of
taxes at this point. The much larger problem at this
point in American history is what they do with them.
And right now, what they do with them is hand it right over to
their donors. And we see this even in the
golden age of forties, 50s and 60s.
In the 40s we had like 200,000 Japanese civilians murdered by
the government with Operation Meeting House, Hiroshima and
Nagasaki. We had the Vietnam, Laos and
Cambodia mass murder of civilians, £260 million of bombs
dropped in Operation Barrel Roll.
So whenever I mentioned the benefits of Walmart, Amazon and
Apple, I'm always told to look at well, there's also downsides.
When it comes to government, even at its best years, they're
still committing large scale atrocities the likes of which
the Ku Klux Klan couldn't even imagine committing.
Is there ever a point at which you would concede that
government is the problem in and of itself because of the
incentives that it has, and everything should be moved to
the voluntary sector? What would you need to hear to
give up progressivism? You know, that's such an extreme
position. No, I would never agree to that
extreme position where we have no government.
Keep the very first thing that would happen if somebody would
come to your house and take all of your stuff and they go, hey,
I did it voluntarily. Good luck to your brother.
And then you'd have to arm up and he'd have to arm up.
Next thing you know, we're all killing each other and to no
end. So now I'll go to your specific
examples, though you're not wrong that the number of
civilians we killed in World War 2 and and the atrocities that
we. Partaken before we even bombed
Hiroshima and Nagasaki, we killed more people in the fire
bombings of Tokyo. The houses were built of wood in
Japan. We knew when we dropped those
fire bombs into the middle of Tokyo, it was going to kill
hundreds of thousands of civilians, little babies,
grandmothers, everyone. It was indiscriminate.
The nuclear bomb was, and so was the fire bombing.
We also did it of Dresden in Germany.
And the Germans did it of London.
It's. And it goes on and on and on.
So that sounds like, oh, and in fact, even Robert McNamara, who
at the time was basically a glorified accountant.
And he kept track of how effectively we were killing not
only enemy soldiers but enemy civilians.
And later he would become Secretary of Defense when during
Vietnam. And he said, oh, we've lost
World War Two. Of course we would all been
tried as war criminals. Like he acknowledged it.
Right? Okay, Then you said, Well, you
see the government is monstrous. Hold on.
Context is super important. If our government hadn't fought
back against the Axis, so the the Germans, the Italians and
the Japanese at the time Hitler. Was doing far, far, far worse.
And so were the Japanese by the way, Rape of Nanking and and
others. So imperialism is real.
It's not just limited to America, it's also other
countries also do it. And yes, we had to fight back
against the Nazis and Imperial Japan.
You could have a bone to pick with how we did it.
And I don't know if that's Monday morning quarterbacking it
or that's legitimate criticism or probably a combination of
both. But yes, we need the government
to fight back against the Nazis. When it comes to another thing
we agree on. By the way, the the name of the
book is Justice Is Coming, How Progressives are going to take
Over the country and America is going to Love it.
Links will be in the description below.
When it comes to things that we agree on, you mentioned in the
book that you are opposed to the drug war, so we both agree on
this. What is your principled reason
for opposing the drug war? And let's try to stretch out
those implications to see what else we can come to an agreement
on. Well, I like this.
I like look, I think that the that a lot of wings of the of
the political spectrum these days have more agreements than
they realize. But corporate media is in a
sense paid to drive us apart. So they emphasize the culture
wars because it gets people very emotional and very divided and
fighting each other to no end. So I don't love the culture wars
from the right or the left and. If we unite on economic issues
that we care about, people are going to be shocked at how much
we agree and how effective we can be if we can get past the
corporate media propaganda that divides us.
And I'll just do one quick aside before I get to your drug war
question I mentioned earlier, where does all the money from
the bribes go? Well, it goes to the politicians
in the beginning, but what are the politicians do with it?
They largely buy ads in media. So last midterm cycle they spent
$17 billion in those elections, which is mind boggling.
And almost all of it went to corporate media.
So corporate media has 17 billion reasons to not see the
corruption, not report on the corruption and go Oh no, those
are honest politicians having honest debates about their
principles. Oh golly Gee, I guess the people
with most money won again. But.
They don't tell you no, they got bribed and that's exactly why
they passed that bill. So now on the drug wars, so for
sure marijuana should be legal. There's no question about that.
That's crazy. It's the equivalent of having a
Coors Light and we put people in prison for that.
That's mental. So on the harder drugs, there's
an argument to make to make them all legal, and and Portugal's an
interesting example. That doesn't mean that when you
make it legal, you then go, oh, it's wonderful and you should
all try fentanyl. No, no.
There's a way that you could provide those drugs in an
environment where people then become less likely to take them.
Go into a cold government, sterile, you know, office, and
be prescribed your drug drugs. Etcetera.
And it does. It makes it less sexy, less fun,
etcetera. I'm not saying that that's going
to just solve it magically by itself, but we have to think
through different solutions. And sometimes government can
say, hey, that fentanyl is almost certainly going to kill
you. I'm sorry, I can't let you take
it right. It's but.
But maybe the answer is no. There's a different way to
tackle that problem for the Super hardcore drugs where it
yes, you can take it, but we're gonna try to discourage you from
taking that in 1000 different ways.
OK, So what would you invoke the My Body, my choice principle
when it comes to drug use in general?
On the lower level drugs, for sure.
On the higher level drugs that have an incredibly high
percentage chance. Of doing massive damage to your
body your mind and your life. It gets hard and and I'd love to
hear different proposals what some that have no government
restrictions. Some that have a lot of
government restrictions and everything in in the middle to
see what model worked. And I would go to other
countries and different states, different countries to see what
they tried and what was the most effective.
Because our goal is the same limited damage to the average
American that these drugs create.
While giving as much freedom as we can so that people can make
their individual choices. Excellent.
Final question. Thank you so much for your time
here. Thomas Sole wrote a book titled
Basic Economics. He says in reality, most of the
great fortunes in American history have resulted from
someone's figuring out how to reduce costs, so was to be able
to charge lower prices and therefore gain a mass market for
the product. Henry Ford did this with
automobiles, Rockefeller with oil, Carnegie with steel Sears,
Penny Walton. Jeff Bezos is also in creating
Amazon drastically decreased prices, increasing the amount of
options that consumers have and also the number of jobs.
Steve Jobs as well has done this with things like iPhones and
really empowering the average person.
When it comes to empowering the average person, should we look
more so at the free market when we have all these empirical
examples? Or am I still missing something
about the free market that only the state can provide?
So again, nuanced answer here. So and why are so many answers
nuanced? Because you need balance to get
to the right solution. And so you can't.
It's easy to go to an extreme, but it doesn't get you the right
answer. So in this case, I look, I told
you earlier, I'm a democratic capitalist, and so I believe in
free markets. Let me first quickly say that
what we have today is not free markets.
So what we've created is corporatism.
And corporatism is the enemy of capitalism.
It looks for monopoly advantage to artificially increase its
prices. And it tries to destroy
competition. Adam Smith warned about it.
He said you must not allow bribery and you must not allow
monopolies. OK, Because if you do, you won't
have free markets anymore. So for example, you've said a
number of things where what we call, quote, UN quote, the free
market today in America has driven down prices.
But I could show you many things where it has driven up prices.
In fact, the number one example is what I mentioned earlier,
drug companies. So drug companies are not a free
market at all. They have complete government
capture. They bribe government officials
more than any other industry, even more than oil or bankers or
the defense contractors. It's stunning that they bribe at
a greater volume than defense contractors.
So those drug companies then go in and say you must pass laws
where you can't even negotiate with us.
What? That's not the free market.
That's insanity, right? That's corporatism on steroids,
where corporations have won. They cut off small businesses,
they cut off their competition and they charge exorbitant
prices so we can't negotiate drug prices.
They extend their monopolies through patents.
It is very literal. It used to be five years, now
it's up to 12 years. They have set the rules in so
many different ways to drive up prices because of corruption
now. Sometimes prices have driven are
driven lower by the free market and the closer it is to a free
market that is. And when it's.
When I say free, it doesn't mean there are no regulations.
You actually need the regulations to ensure that it is
free, because if you have no regulations, it will not be
free. Whoever gets to the top first
will set the rules so that no one can compete with them.
Read The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith.
He explains this. Free market does not mean no
regulation, It means you must have regulation.
The question is how much regulation.
Too much regulation strangles the market, Too little
regulation strangles the market. So, so some prices went down
because of the phenomenon we talked about earlier in the
interview with that. It's a global market and Vietnam
and China etcetera are driving down the prices by having lower
cost. Now some of the examples you
mentioned about the robber barons, I think unfortunately
that is very disingenuous on Seoul's part.
Because some of that stuff is true, like the Ford example.
But some of it he's leaving out massive critical parts.
They drove down prices. How?
By working their employees to the ground.
No safety regulations. People would die at far greater
rates. No weekends, no overtime, child
labor. I mean, they mangled their
employees to get to those lower costs.
So just lower cost is not the only factor you should look at.
And that is why we need regulations to protect the
average American, both their wages and their physical safety.
But again, if you have too much regulation that it's, you're not
helping the workers. The prices will go higher,
businesses will get bogged down. So when I say that, the left
gets angry at me. But no, the extreme answer is
also not on just the extreme left.
It's not on the extreme right either.
The answer is how much regulation do we need to protect
all of us? And to give us the best possible
market where we can get low prices but still protect the
American workers, the book is Justice is Coming.
How Progressives are going to take Over the country and
America is going to love it. Links will be in the description
below. Thanks to everyone for watching
the Libertarian Institute and Keith and I don't tread on
anyone. Janki Ugar, thank you so much
for your time. Keith, thank you for the smart,
interesting, engaging conversation.
I really appreciate it.