[00:00:24] **Hirad:** Every day it's like I watch a new footage of like the shooting, I, I really can't wrap my head around this. Like it was, he shifted his body like within a second or maybe like a second and a

[00:00:39] **Trish:** I think it was less, yeah. Yeah.

[00:00:42] **Hirad:** And, and, and if, if he hadn't done that in that particular time, it was over.

Like his, the guy's aim was right on his head. He had him.

[00:00:54] **Trish:** It literally does not, like it doesn't get any closer.

[00:00:58] **Hirad:** No, I can't.

[00:00:59] **Trish:** for it to be, have been any closer.

[00:01:01] **Hirad:** No, it's insane. 

[00:01:04] **Trish:** Is the Secret Service full of idiots?

[00:01:08] **Hirad:** I, I don't know. I, I've seen different things. I haven't actually like spent a ton of time, like researching this myself in depth, but at least it was like one guy on CNN who was like a security expert that they had brought on. And he was saying on CNN, that was like, this level of failure is just too odd. Like, you just don't, this is not like rocket science that they, they would have done this. This is like the most basic things. It wasn't. So he, he actually said that on CNN and the host was like, was super shocked about this. He's like, what are you implying? He's like, I think we need an investigation into what happened here.

[00:01:45] **Trish:** Probably. I mean to me like, and the Secret Service is like, rationale, like, their justifications for their behavior seem so weird. Like, they were like, oh, we thought the roof was too sloped for our asset. But I was like, you guys should be, like, hanging off, like, in a harness out of a helicopter if they tell you to, right?

Like, you sign up for a very dangerous you sign up to be, like, basically a human shield. Like, you're a meat shield. For the president and then you're like, oh, you're worried about some workers comp if someone slips off a roof like I don't know

[00:02:19] **Hirad:** no, that's just like that's just they're offending your intelligence and like telling you that they can get away with it Like that's basically what it is.

[00:02:25] **Trish:** But yeah, I think 

[00:02:26] **Hirad:** I mean just imagine like if the if if they had actually killed him and like what would have happened and like in that moment in that crowd like Just I think they would have probably started a riot Like anyone with green hair within the 10 mile radius would have would have died that day

[00:02:46] **Trish:** I know And like Like, I don't even know if I want to say this on the podcast, so like, maybe we can like, edit it out, but like, I don't really know, did you see the picture? So when all the Secret Service are like, have gone on to him and are like, trying to shield him. And they're all like big guys except for one girl that looks like she's 5'2 And like her spot she's supposed to be protecting is just like wide open directly to his face.

I'm like, I don't mean to be sexist, but can we at least like, if we're gonna have women, can we at least have like the big volleyball player women that like I see around? Like I feel like she just like, it looks, it looks comical. Like I kind of actually felt embarrassed for her because it

[00:03:27] **Hirad:** Oh, she has been, the internet has not been kind to her at all. Cause there's also another footage. I don't know when this footage was taken, but like, there's another footage of her. Where she like pulls her gun out of the holster and she's like holding it. Then she's trying to put the gun back in the holster, she can't find it.

So she tries like a few times for the holster to, like for the gun to find the holster. But, and then she just like continues holding the gun in her hand, like pretending like that's what she wanted to do. And then like another couple of minutes, she tries again and then this time like very carefully slides it in.

[00:04:03] **Trish:** Oh, I mean, I'm more sympathetic to stuff like that. Whatever. But

[00:04:09] **Hirad:** yeah, like she has, she has been, and this is, this is actually the thing about like diversity hires, right? Like That was the, then, then that's the first assumption. Like, it doesn't matter how, maybe she could, she could be like the most competent secret service person ever, but like, because she's a woman and we know how these hiring decisions get made these days, the first assumptions upon any, like, as soon as any kind of like issue comes up, the first assumption is that, Oh, this was the diversity hire,

[00:04:39] **Trish:** Yeah. And it's like, I'm not even, like, Miffed about Her gender or whatever. It's mostly, it's like, you wouldn't hire a guy that's like five, three to be the human meat shield either. Right? Like, don't you just kind of like Trump's very tall. You just need like big people. If like your job is to like jump in front and block stuff.

I don't know.

[00:05:05] **Hirad:** Yeah. Yeah, I think Elon Musk had some funny tweets about this. It was like, if, if you, if you hire like Brienne of Thar, like that, that's fine, but don't hire this girl.

[00:05:14] **Trish:** Well, exactly. Seen the volleyball teams. I know there's tall ladies out there.

[00:05:21] **Hirad:** yeah 

[00:05:21] **Trish:** yeah, no, lots of, it's a strange, did you feel very uncomfortable when the whole crowd started chanting USA?

[00:05:28] **Hirad:** no, I felt, I actually felt like a proud American citizen from afar.

[00:05:34] **Trish:** What? To me it was very strange, I was like, your whole system sort of failed, the guy almost got shot in the face, and they're like, excited, or chanting, like, I don't know,

[00:05:48] **Hirad:** The, so this is actually one of the most remarkable things about this, this thing. The way he got back up and he like insisted on doing the fist pump and like saying something to the crowd in that moment where like the you know, this whole thing just went down with, it's been like seconds or, or like a minute or something.

That's pure instinct. You cannot fake that. And this guy, whatever you may, like, you got to give him credit for that, whatever it is, either to give it like as bravery or as like how good he is at PR, you got to give him credit on some, something. He is unbeatable. Like he is unbeatable on that. And he just, yeah, he, he did exactly, I think the one play that's like the Like that image is going to be like, what second, iconic second only to like that image of like in the civil war with the American soldiers, like pushing up the the flag

[00:06:47] **Trish:** isn't that World War II?

[00:06:49] **Hirad:** or, or World War II.

I don't know.

[00:06:50] **Trish:** think it's, you know, I thought it was in the Pacific. Yeah.

[00:06:54] **Hirad:** I don't know. But you know, the picture I'm talking about where we've all seen the picture, I don't know where it's, where it came from, but it was like a very proud photo.

[00:07:02] **Trish:** Oh, I'm thinking of like the statue. You know the statue of them all? Raising the flag? Anyway, doesn't matter. I'm derailing your thing.

[00:07:09] **Hirad:** I think the one I'm talking about is civil war, where like four or five soldiers are, are raising a flagpole with the American flag on it. But no, I think that's, yeah, that's like, I'm, my mind's still boggled. I, I don't know. Do you have any like theories about this overall?

[00:07:26] **Trish:** No.

[00:07:27] **Hirad:** So I'm, I actually feel like as a, as someone who definitely got into some degree of conspiracy land since COVID. And, and, you know, I, I live in Vancouver normally. So like I have all these like leftist friends. So it's been very lonely out here in conspiracy land with all my leftist friends. Staying outside of it. But since this shooting, it's like the floodgates have opened for, you know, all the people on the left that were like, just trust the narrative, trust the experts and all that.

All of a sudden they're like, no, no, no, this whole thing was fake. The blood was fake. There were no bullets. It was set up by Trump to to as a PR stunt. To win sympathy, sympathy votes. So that's, that's been kind of entertaining to, to watch.

[00:08:13] **Trish:** I mean, if he did set it all up and was willing to have a bullet go millimeters from his face, like,

[00:08:22] **Hirad:** especially within the, within the margin of error of any Rifleman.

[00:08:27] **Trish:** Yeah. It's like, huh. It's like, you'd think you'd have, like, maybe shoot him in the foot. Maybe I'd be willing to take that risk, but like,

[00:08:38] **Hirad:** yeah.

[00:08:38] **Trish:** don't know.

[00:08:40] **Hirad:** No, I think if you, as soon as you grant that there was actually a bullet involved and his ear actually did get shot, then it's a pretty tough sell to say that it was set up in any way, but

[00:08:52] **Trish:** considering, like, it was, like, the New York Times that got that crazy picture where you can, like, see the bullet whizzing

[00:08:57] **Hirad:** yeah, yeah, but yeah, I think, and, and like, it's, I'm getting some like spidey senses just like in COVID when they were like telling, saying things that just doesn't make sense. So this, the things we know so far is like, well, we don't know a whole lot about the kid, I guess, but like, we do know that he, like what, this was one of the interviews that they did with someone that he grew up with, I guess, that he got kicked out of their high school.

rifle team because of what a bad shot he was, but at the same time, he, he almost had Trump like within, if it wasn't for that twist, it was a perfect headshot. So a, this kid who was a terrible shot, got a perfect headshot almost. The security perimeter was somehow there was like a radius, but then this one building was this, like, it was decided that this one building would be excluded.

And now the thing that they're saying, which to me is like, It's really strange is that there was a threat against like on, on Trump's life by like the Iranian government.

[00:10:06] **Trish:** I know they're trying to blame you, Harad.

[00:10:08] **Hirad:** I know. Yeah. So

[00:10:10] **Trish:** Your people are behind it.

[00:10:12] **Hirad:** if they, if they, if they try to, if they try to scapegoat the Iranian government, I'm totally okay with it. That's like, that's, that's one evil, an evil match I would, I would pay to watch.

But yeah, so like none of, none of this actually makes any sense. So I definitely think there was some kind of like foul play here. 

[00:10:31] **Trish:** I'm not willing I'm not willing to say that I agree with you. I don't know. It all just seems strange, but I also like, you can get kicked out of rifle club for being a terrible shot and then just work on it. Like, I just feel like this is a skill. If you decide that you want to kill Trump and you start going to the range every day and like working on it, like it is not that hard with like modern scopes and rifles to like hit something.

And he missed.

[00:10:55] **Hirad:** Yeah. You, you say that except, except, I don't know. It's possible. That's possible. Yeah. He missed, but like, no, he, I think he had a perfect headshot. Like if you, if you, if you make that shot at the range, the target's not going to move.

[00:11:10] **Trish:** far away was he?

[00:11:11] **Hirad:** I, I forget, but I like one, one thing, one report that I watched, it was like way further than like a standard like when you would have a standard target in the range,

[00:11:21] **Trish:** Yeah. Did you hear the thing, how people. In the crowd, we're supposedly, like, saw the guy, like, army crawling on the roof

[00:11:30] **Hirad:** Yeah. That's a, that's another thing. And it took like, it was, they saw him like minutes before this thing. And yeah, people was just like, oh, fuck. I don't know. What do we do? What do we do? The guys up there, I certainly hope the shooter had a hard hat on given that he was getting on the slope roof.

[00:11:51] **Trish:** Yeah. Oh, I know, it's You figure that some, for lack of a better term, heads have got a role for this, but

[00:12:03] **Hirad:** Love,

[00:12:04] **Trish:** One would think. Yeah. In the Secret Service, but I don't know. There have been stories of them being inept for years, right? Like, I feel like this isn't a new thing. I've heard, like, stories of them just like, Have you heard of this over the years, even with Obama?

I feel like the last thing I heard about, good, the Secret Service is when they saved George Bush from choking on that pork rind.

[00:12:27] **Hirad:** I don't remember that

[00:12:29] **Trish:** don't remember that? Yeah, you literally like was choking on a pork rind and one of his Secret Service guys came and gave him the Heimlich. It was like another classic George Bush moment.

[00:12:40] **Hirad:** I, I don't

[00:12:41] **Trish:** that was like the last good piece of press I heard about them actually doing their job. Amazing.

[00:12:53] **Hirad:** it twice. Well, speaking of dying empires actually, no, it's like, there's another thing to talk about with this thing. In the aftermath of of the shooting a lot of people started expressing glee and, or like expressing regret that the shooter had missed. And now there is a, there's a lot of these like right leaning like Twitter accounts, like libs of tech talk and like you know, and woke.

And I don't know if this is one of them that's doing this, but they're all screenshotting like the, the comments that people have made on Twitter in support of the shooter. And they're sending them to like people's employers. They just got some, like, old lady, I think she was like some, I don't know, 60, 70 year old woman who worked at Walmart.

They got her, or no, worked at Home Depot. They got her fired from her job. So basically running the exact same playbook that Cancel Culture on the left has been running for the last 10 years. And they just flipped the script. And, They've been going the other way, which kind of tells you there's never, not any principle in this.

It's just basically like, Hey, now we can do it. Let's pounce.

[00:14:13] **Trish:** Yeah.

[00:14:14] **Hirad:** And that's basically the, the conservative view of it.

[00:14:17] **Trish:** how come no one learns and just like doesn't put things on writing on the internet? Like, can't you just joke about that stuff in the privacy of your home with your friends?

[00:14:26] **Hirad:** No, I think that's actually the thing. I actually think the pull is way too strong to get the internet validation.

[00:14:33] **Trish:** I don't know. I love that like, cause I feel like I have to shut I do think it's like, despicable that people have been You know saying things like that, but at the same time you and I privately joked like I loved your joke after the helicopter crash Where the Iranian guy died and you're like, ah, it's the only helicopter crash in history.

You're worried that there might be survivors I like loved that joke and I like told it to a couple of my friends and stuff and I was like Well, I mean I did say that about that guy. So I

[00:15:07] **Hirad:** like some of the arguments that I've seen and like people are saying things like, oh, political violence is never okay. Like, no, it's actually very okay. It's okay. Often. Like, I don't know. There's like, that's another side of it where people have these like unrealistic views.

But like, what do you mean political violence is not okay? If the things they said about Trump. We're true. Like if you thought that someone is literally going to end all your freedoms and turn your country into a totalitarian state, of course, you should take, take a shot at him. It should be like in fact, it wouldn't be the shooter.

The shooter would have been a hero in that situation. And everybody else who does not take a shot at him would be cowards.

[00:15:53] **Trish:** don't know. Like we live in a society

[00:15:57] **Hirad:** No, the society is a mirage. It's like the thing you can believe while the times are good. The ultimate thing that really matters is, is power. I think this is the thing, I think leftists have it, have this right, the, the postmodernists in some ways. But you know what I mean? Like if you, there's, there's no, we don't live in a society.

If like your North Korea before, like, I don't know, the, the Kim dynasty takes over, right? Like that's, of course, people say that about Hitler all the time. There was an attempt on Hitler's life. You don't, you don't ever say, why was the guy who like smuggled a bomb in there? Like why did he use political violence?

Nobody ever questions that.

[00:16:38] **Trish:** No, I know. I do think that I'm, and like, maybe this is like a stupid, unnuanced view, but like, I don't think you should murder people. Ever. Full stop. And I kind of do have respect for the guys who like you know, or, oh, you know, like those Czech guys that killed Was it Himmler? The Butcher of Prague?

You know how they like, shot him up in his car on the way to work in Prague? It was like, and I like, I really respect those guys and stuff, but I don't, I wouldn't ever do anything. I wouldn't do that. I don't know. I

[00:17:12] **Hirad:** I, I, I pray every day that, that I, it should the opportunity arise. I will have the strength to do it.

[00:17:19] **Trish:** Sigh. Laughter.

[00:17:24] **Hirad:** not. No, but I, I, I, I, this, I disagree with that. Like, I mean, whether you would do it yourself or not, it's like, okay, that's, that's one thing. And whether it's like, if your moral compass says it's okay, or it's not okay. I think there's a lot of situations where it's okay. Like it's.

These people have power. There is like a, they can really impact your life. And if you think they're going to do it in a way that is, I don't know, if like Stalin starved millions of people, would it be good to take him out? Of course.

[00:18:01] **Trish:** I mean, we did, like, I kind of used that exact same logic in like 2003 about Saddam Hussein and that didn't really get us as far as we thought.

[00:18:12] **Hirad:** In what sense?

[00:18:13] **Trish:** Well, like, like, oh, and Yeah, and just like now like then like how that's all gone because I kind of thought it was like Oh, he's such a terrible guy. He gasses all these villages such a repressive regime, you know tortures and everything Like why literally this is what I thought I was like the world would just be a better place without him What harm can there be from getting rid of a murderous dictator and look where Iraq is now?

Cannot necessarily argue it's doing any better.

[00:18:43] **Hirad:** Actually, I think now they're doing a little better, but there was this, there was this period where there was this very long period where they weren't.

[00:18:50] **Trish:** was much worse. So I feel like this like Yeah, and that that was literally my exact logic is like any of these bad guys You know just take them out moral high ground liberalize the world It feels so quaint and up. It feels so optimistic think back on

[00:19:11] **Hirad:** Yeah. I, I, I, I, I grant the point that there, there is like, I mean, there can be like unintended consequences. And of course you don't really like foresee everything when it like it, arguably this guy, If you really believed how bad Trump would be, let's just assume, assume that that was the motivation and that's, that's why he did it.

Then he did his own objective, a huge disservice at this one, because he basically like sealed the deal. Like he basically made sure that the very bad outcome that he's trying to avoid happens,

[00:19:43] **Trish:** I know

[00:19:44] **Hirad:** you should, you should take into calculation. But no, overall, I do, I do think this notion of Avoiding political violence is so naive, and only, you can only say that if, like, you, you haven't really suffered politically.

[00:20:04] **Trish:** No, I disagree, right? Because I feel like, isn't this why Mexico is in this mess? Like, hasn't there been a thing that everyone who runs for public office in Mexico, half of them end up murdered?

[00:20:16] **Hirad:** Yeah, yeah, I'm, yeah, but that's, that's not really like, that's more like

[00:20:20] **Trish:** It's political violence!

[00:20:23] **Hirad:** Okay, yeah, but I'm not saying all political violence is justified. I'm saying that there's, it's definitely, the idea that political violence is never justified is, is naive to me.

[00:20:35] **Trish:** Maybe it's naive, but I think that this is definitely the system we should be going for.

[00:20:39] **Hirad:** Yeah, ideally, yes. Ideally, we have other mechanisms of, yeah, sure. Like, ideally, we have other mechanisms of settling political differences, of course. But if you have, a group of people that are not interested in say conversation or debate or like a rules based system of settling differences then, then I think it's, it's totally legitimate and justified to to expect political violence.

And, and the thing about like the, that's actually the thing that's so disheartening about this idea of like the, the right wing. Kind of flipping cancel culture on his head and going after these people that have been you know, hoping that Trump gets gets shot because we're, it's actually like a evidence that we are not really We don't have that culture anymore or whatever the causes are.

This idea that we're going to use some like rules based system to settle differences and be happy with it, both in terms of elections. Like that's one thing that elections are like politics. That's what it is. It's like fighting by another means. Right. So you. If you don't respect the outcome of elections, which increasingly neither side does, and it's not just a, like a Democrat or Republican thing.

And, and yeah, you do, you don't apply these norms of civility to people who have different opinions and from you and you try to like hurt them in their personal lives as much as you can it's like increasingly breaking down you know, those other mechanisms of settling differences that we have.

That's not a good thing, but I still think there are times where like political violence is absolutely justified.

[00:22:25] **Trish:** No. I just feel like everybody, like that, like everyone feels like their version of political violence is justified. Right? Like, you know, like, so to me, it just, it doesn't hold

[00:22:42] **Hirad:** Was political violence, by, George Washington justified when, when,

[00:22:48] **Trish:** you could make a very good argument that they should have just waited. Like Canada was able to become its own independent country without having to fight a war. Was that the better route? Maybe. I think you could like young men dying for something that probably could have been handled peacefully. I think you could make that argument.

[00:23:10] **Hirad:** yeah, okay. You can, yeah. I, I was going to ask you if you prefer to live in Canada or or in the U. S. right now, but I guess you are living in Canada,

[00:23:17] **Trish:** I am living in Canada. I know, but you know, problem is you fall in love with a Canadian and you're there forever. So

[00:23:25] **Hirad:** But here's a way that if you are living in a society where people increasingly just don't want to follow these norms of civility because they just don't, there are groups that are just too far apart in values. They don't want to share this, essentially share a political body with each other. You know, what's a great solution to avoid political violence and still resolve differences peacefully.

[00:23:55] **Trish:** secession.

[00:23:57] **Hirad:** There you go. Exactly.

[00:24:02] **Trish:** Let's, let's get into the libertarian la la land.

[00:24:07] **Hirad:** That's it.

[00:24:10] **Trish:** So the actual subject of the episode, the newest book, Democracy, the God that Failed.

[00:24:17] **Hirad:** Yep.

[00:24:17] **Trish:** Little bit of an older one from early 2000s, I believe, by who's the author?

[00:24:23] **Hirad:** Hans Hermann Hopper.

[00:24:25] **Trish:** Oh, nice pronunciation. So the, I don't know if it was published by the Mises Institute, which is like the big think tank that loves, they're basically anarcho capitalists, but this thing is a little Maybe not full anarcho capitalist, but this thing is as libertarian as it gets.

And once upon a time, I just ate this stuff up. I don't know if I'm there anymore, but it seems like you are loving this book. So we're gonna talk about the first half ish today. See how

[00:25:01] **Hirad:** Yeah.

[00:25:02] **Trish:** it goes.

[00:25:04] **Hirad:** Sure. Yeah. I mean, the book you know, the title is Democracy, the God that Failed. So it kind of gives away the ending a little bit in the title. Basically, I guess, is trying to apply economic theory to make a case for the ideal system of government. And it's partly in terms of like economics and also in terms of, I would say something kind of like a moral framework of how we should evaluate different systems of government, I guess.

So I guess to, to like take it from the top, this is the foundation that all of his theory is built on is basically this idea that if we want greater wellbeing, the greatest, that's like I'm putting it in, in, in these words, if we want the greatest wellbeing for the greatest number of people, the way to accomplish that is through civilizational progress, more or less, or technological progress and advancement.

I forget if, like, exact term he uses. I guess it's like civilization. But how do we, how do we get there? How do we get progress? Well, we get there by making investments for the future. And it's one of the key concepts that All of the theory that he presents in the book are based on if you have some resources, it could be fruits, whatever, whatever, like if you're a primitive person, whatever, whatever it might be.

And you want to, you have, you have some decisions to make. You have to decide if you want to use those resources immediately today, or one way or another, you want to accumulate resources and save them for. greater use in the future. And how you make that decision is affected by a few factors.

One of them is, can you, can you guarantee that future use? So if you think like you can, you can use these resources in a greater way in the future, can you still guarantee that you will own it? Can you still guarantee that it'll be there for you to use or is it going to get stolen? Is it going to get rotten or is some kind of natural disaster going to inhibit your use of it?

And once all these like different obstacles have been sorted out and then you will decide to, okay, I'm going to use what I need today and I'm going to accumulate this? Air quotes, capital for, to have more wealth in the future. And for these like resources, you can say like insert, whatever it is.

Could be money, could be primitive goods, whatever.

[00:27:29] **Trish:** Yeah, the idea is sort of like, like a moralistic thing. Are you going to have the sort of moral backbone to delay gratification and to work towards some sort of future greater payoff?

[00:27:45] **Hirad:** Yeah. So there's, there's the two sides of the moral decision here. One is your ability to delay gratification as the person, as the owner of, of capital or resource. The other is. others ability and willingness to hinder. Your or to, to threaten your capital accumulation which will, if they do that successfully, if they're, if, if you, your sense of security with regard to your capital goes away, then you will become more present oriented naturally because you, you can't trust the future use of your resources.

So you will aim to consume more today and just accumulate less for the future. And the idea is that what like the more we do this, like accumulation for the future, this is civilizational progress. This is where we get to build more and more things. We get to have more and more resources.

[00:28:38] **Trish:** This is how wealth is generated for everybody. 

[00:28:41] **Hirad:** Yep 

[00:28:41] **Trish:** yeah. And then so in the book, they extrapolate that. From a personal level, economic level to sort of a government level and they say the problem with government is that there's no incentive for like long term investment because of the election cycle so that it really incentivizes really short term consumption and this is destroying wealth and this is just like not, not an efficient use and this is why we're doing this.

Democracy is no good

[00:29:20] **Hirad:** yeah, so he actually spends like a lot of the first half comparing or a lot of the first like few chapters, definitely comparing monarchy, like real monarchy, not the, not the symbolic showpieces we have today. With with like. I guess social democracy yeah. And, and how, how this theory gets applied to, to these two forms of government is that monarchy is considered privately owned government basically.

So you have like one family or one individual or family that is. that are the private owners of government. And much like private owners of anything, they can extract resources from it. But the same calculus applies to them. If they, if they consume their resources excessively today, they will have nothing tomorrow.

They need to invest somewhat for the future such that their privately owned state can keep producing for them and their family for a long time. And because of that monarchy has this element of being a little bit more long term oriented. And there's a lot of like details about monarchy that he kind of talks about in the book bit by bit, like what happens if You know, you get a shitty monarch.

Well, like you have a whole family that's kind of in charge and wants the inheritance here. So they have different mechanisms of, of dealing with. incompetence or malice and stuff like that for their own personal interests, of course. And, but the contrast that with democracy, in democracy, there is, there's public ownership of government.

And what that means is whoever is in government at any given time is kind of the caretaker,

[00:31:01] **Trish:** hmm.

[00:31:02] **Hirad:** for that time, they have no There is no future use of the government apparatus for them. And so their incentives are more to extract as much as they can for them and their friends, such that they can like they can maximize the present use of government, but they don't need to worry about you know, future orientedness or like investments for the future that will become like someone else's problems later.

And, and that leads to yeah, that needs to You know, things, resources being squandered and wasted and corruption and all of that. And there's a lot of kind of interesting supporting points on this and which I haven't dug into, but if I have any doubts about like the quality of the arguments that, that Hoppe makes it's maybe in some of these things.

So one of the, one of the key points is that he claims that during the monarchical age in Europe which is like they're looking at about a thousand year period. Political economists generally believe that taxation never exceeded five to 10 percent of GDP. Whereas now it's easily in excess of 50%. They claim that other factors are also things like. Can a monarch dilute money? Because when you dilute money, that is basically a, another kind of a hidden taxation.

And he claims that with private government people were always on guard about government encroachment because they never had this illusion of, Oh, maybe like I'll be part of the royal family one day. So now the royal family is a real family and it's never going to be you. And so when they take something from you, it's a very clear, Kind of encroachment on, on your private property.

Whereas like today with like public government, we're always like, oh yeah, it's for everybody and have this like illusion that you can, you are part of the system, you know, that you were like one of the owners. And so. When they start expropriating your resources, it's like, it's an expropriation that has legitimacy.

And so there's no defense you can put up with it. If you had thieves taking 50 percent of your income, you would hire a security company to like protect yourself from it. But there's no security company that you can hire to prevent the CRA from, from doing that. Who are also thieves. Thieves.

That's just my, my little, little bit there. So yeah, and because of these elements there's a, there's certain types of corruption that actually never happened in the, in a monarchical age in Europe, even though the, the, the kings would try. So they would try to do things like reduce the contents of gold and coins.

And to try to, like, keep a little bit more for themselves they tried these things, but it would, like, sometimes they succeeded, but the claim is that they generally couldn't succeed too much. They couldn't, like, push that too much. Whereas with the rise of, like, liberal democracy they're basically like, you know, shit's gone crazy, basically.

Like we, we have this money that's completely un untethered from reality. You can print it all you want. And yeah,

[00:34:06] **Trish:** And to be clear, I mean, he is very critical of the government, but he also seems to be like, you're just giving people what they want. Like, the government is sort of like, it's almost like responding to a market. Right? Would you say that's clear?

[00:34:23] **Hirad:** no. What do

[00:34:24] **Trish:** that's what he's saying. The problem is, is that people, like, want to vote the money and stuff back to themselves.

They want to vote to, like, redistribute wealth.

[00:34:32] **Hirad:** You, the, the people or like the caretaker?

[00:34:35] **Trish:** No, like, like, so that's his, like, his issue with democracy, I don't think, is that, like, the government is necessarily, like, too coercive. He sees it as just sort of, like, people are using this, As a tool to like redistribute wealth to themselves.

[00:34:51] **Hirad:** That's part of it. I think, but part of it is also like the actual people who are the caretakers of, of the government. So like, one of the things would be like there. So one of the bits of the theory would be that. If, if let's say government provides certain goods and services, right? And they have a monopoly on violence is like basically the main thing that we can define a government by.

It's a monopoly of violence within a certain territory. They use that monopoly to, they, they, theoretically, they provide you with security and some goods and services. But those goods and services, you're not allowed to buy anywhere else. There's no open market for them. And so you have to buy those goods from the government and they also get to set the price. And just by pure assumption of self interest, you can assume that the price will consistently increase and the quality of the goods will consistently decrease, which is kind of what we're experiencing right now. I feel like reading this book in 2024 is very timely because I feel like maybe in 2000, you know, people would not, this wouldn't hit a chord probably when it came out, but

[00:35:58] **Trish:** See, I don't know. I kind of feel like,

[00:36:01] **Hirad:** other way.

[00:36:02] **Trish:** I don't know. I've been thinking about this a lot. I don't want to take us too far like on a tangent. If we want to just kind of like finish up like the synopsis, this is what the book is saying. But I feel like like you can sum it up like, like he gets into like a lot of examples, right?

And, I mean, I kind of thought this book was a little bit brutal because it's written by an economist. So it sort of feels like someone is reading a graph out to you. Did you ever get that feeling? It's like he was trying to explain the graph. So it was a little bit brutal, but like it, you can like sum it up in sort of like a few sentences, right?

Which is just that, like the foundational things are like private property, like the shortsightedness of government at least where we are so far.

[00:36:45] **Hirad:** Yep.

[00:36:45] **Trish:** And the re redistribution of wealth through like coercive government policies. Mm-Hmm.

[00:36:52] **Hirad:** One bit that I thought was really interesting is as about like the rise of the welfare states. It says, There's a public ownership of government, aka democracy, will always lead to redistribution. And it always takes like one of three forms, like from the haves to the have nots providing goods and services below market rates, such as healthcare, which basically is another way of confiscating people's skills.

And, and giving it away for less than what they're worth. And protectionism for particular groups. And he, he says the, the, these regulations have a two fold effect on civil society. One is that the mere fact that such redistribution is possible via legislation increases time preference, so it makes people more present oriented.

They makes, makes them want to consume their resources today because the rules of the game are malleable. This is another one of those claims that I, I thought was really interesting that I would love to dig into. He basically says this idea of legislation, as we understand it today, is a result of democracy because, Before the idea was like the law came from, you know, humans don't make laws.

Like the law was like God's law. And like the job of the government is like executing that more or less.

[00:38:10] **Trish:** Alright. I feel like, so immediately I just wanna get down to like, whether you are buying into the foundational assumptions in this book, because I kind of thought after, you know, 800 pages of grabber, I'm kind of surprised that you're eating this up so much.

[00:38:30] **Hirad:** I actually think this goes with Graber like hand, like hand and glove. I don't know. I don't know what the, what your perceived, tension is between this and Graber.

[00:38:40] **Trish:** I would say that I got really hung up on their model of the civilizational process and how that looks. And that as if like the way like sort of post agricultural revolution where you need to like spend all day in the backbreaking sun in order to like have your grain silos fall so that you can sell it to the guy who makes nails and all this, like, I just feel like it's not like.

You know, like, and he does, I think, like, say somewhere explicitly that, like, like, oh, like, hunter gatherers, you know, they just found something and ate it. They, like, had no forethought of the future. And, like, that's just so, like, we can agree that's stupid, right?

[00:39:24] **Hirad:** Yeah. But I also don't think that's like so central to the, to the arguments.

[00:39:31] **Trish:** Yes, it is. Well, how, how do you think it's not? Like, so, like, that process of having to, like, behave and generate wealth in, like, A certain way, like it just feels so narrow that like, I, I like this book, if you're going to talk about like one very specific economic system and how the rules should work, but like, I kind of thought after all this Graber, we kind of were letting you like throw out the whole system just like we want to accumulate more, we want to accumulate more, we need more stuff, we need more like wealth to be happy, like, don't we kind of

[00:40:08] **Hirad:** Sure. Yeah, but I don't think that's like so central to this book. I, it is central to, yeah, I mean, like he is He's basically saying, he's basically saying that as like, this is the most moral way to act. But his criticism of like the, like the comparison of like different forms of government are valid even if you don't take the alternative that he has in mind as like, it's like, oh, I want to go towards that.

Like, you can still accept the criticism of democracy as very accurate and like his theory as like more or less sound on that front. Especially given that we do live in like that, we're like the, we, we are still within that framework of accumulation. Right. So if you want to say like, Hey, I like, we want to break out of that paradigm completely.

That's okay, but like the current system is failing within its own paradigm, like that's,

[00:41:07] **Trish:** right?

[00:41:08] **Hirad:** so at least like that criticism is, is valid on that front. And then the question of all of this looks like this kind of like the background that we gave kind of paves the way for saying, Hey, so what do we do about this?

And he has some prescriptions on that front and those prescriptions to me. Are exactly what we talked about with, like, when we left Graeber, basically, the conclusion was we think like the, the roots to more political, I guess, prosperity is like more political experimentation. Well, how do you have more experimentation?

You can't have jurisdictions that are so large and take up the entire landmass of the earth,

[00:41:46] **Trish:** Yeah.

Don't want a global government.

[00:41:48] **Hirad:** Yeah. So then, then you need something more like secession of, of sorts. And this is the part where I think like the two of them go hand in glove, like

[00:41:57] **Trish:** Right. Yeah. I'll give you that. Yeah. Graeber would love the secession part.

[00:42:04] **Hirad:** yeah,

[00:42:06] **Trish:** The problem, yeah, so, I guess like we read up through chapter 5 today and that's where he starts to lay out this idea that you would, People should be able to vote with their feet for what sort of system they like and move around.

So I got a little tripped up on this. Maybe you can clear it up for me. It's like, people should be able to vote with their feet and move around, but in your little fiefdom you should also be able to sort of control who gains entry. Right?

[00:42:36] **Hirad:** Yeah.

[00:42:38] **Trish:** So it's not just like a free for all, mass movement, open borders situation.

[00:42:45] **Hirad:** Yeah. He does say about the free movement of people that like free movement is good because like, if people are moving, then you can assume that there is like an economic incentive there. Like things are kind of like the mark, that's the market working more or less.

And it's like things are evening out. Like you have resources that are not wanted in one place and they're needed in another place and the resources move. And they, like, all of that, like kind of works itself out. So on that front, he says that you should want free immigration. But he also acknowledges that, like, sure, but this this is like a one line that I thought was, like, very interesting.

It's like, but there is a bit where people may not, like, evening out economic resources may not be the only things that people care about. So, then limits on immigration may be justified if there are other values at play. So I thought that was interesting that he did acknowledge that. 

[00:43:43] **Trish:** he likes the idea of like, you would have all sorts of like small little kingdoms, like kind of like how there's like Monaco and Luxembourg and Andorra and like weird little places. He likes a model like that where people, there's like just small, self governed areas, but that would be able to control.

Because I think that he thought that you needed to you couldn't just sort of let in everybody because then you get into the problem of whether you're forcing your immigrants to integrate or not. And that forced integration was like coercive. So I think that the idea is what's his last name? Hoppe. The way Hoppe sees it is that by that often with like amalgamating a lot of different people groups you kind of are going to be stuck in a situation where you kind of force integration.

Which is interesting that he's so negative about it because like the idea of the American melting pot is something that's like kind of praised so much. In America that it kind of had me challenging some of my assumptions. I kind of like the melting pot, but yes, but he talks about that. If you just sort of let people break off into their own little groups and enjoy like their own unique cultures, then you don't end up with A lot of the problems you have by forcing people to sort of integrate and then, you know, you end up having to, like, allocate a lot of resources, whether that's through, like, different rent controls or, like, affirmative action, and this sort of, like, breeds tension and contempt between groups.

I don't know if that was, like, a great explanation. You can perhaps say it better, but that's the idea.

[00:45:23] **Hirad:** No, I think that that was great. Can you, can you think of like, what's us, can you think of how this relates to our situation today? I mean

[00:45:35] **Trish:** Just say what you want to say. You're trying to team me up for something, but

[00:45:41] **Hirad:** So when I read this, of course, like the way it's presented is like, Oh, like melting pot is usually think of like immigrants and like different cultural practices and all that. Right. But that's not the only dimensions, like, along which the people differ. I actually think this, to come back to, like, the original thing we were talking about, this idea of, like, civility.

What kind of civility am I going to extend to other people who have different political opinions than me? We're getting to the point where, like, the, like, I think we're getting to the point where, like, If you, if you look within, let's say, like, mega republicans, or, like, and, within that group, you'll find all kinds of people.

It's like a whole universe. And then if you look among like the leftist again, you'll find a whole range and a whole like universe of beliefs. It's not, it's not uniform. But

the two groups, like the two large groups are quite far apart from each other. And even in terms of like the ethnic makeup of each group, there's a lot of people who are more conservative religious, but not Christians.

Who would be more inclined to be on like the, the MAGA Republican side, even though like there, there, there's, in that camp, there would also be some people who don't want any non Christian people in that camp. But, Yeah.

All of these things that we're talking about today in terms of like the, the decline in civility and, and and just like how polarized we are. The minute I read that, the thing that was like in my head was like, Yeah. like these, these are the two camps. We don't, we don't want to vote for the same candidates on the same ballot. Like we don't want the same candidates on the, on the ballot. Like why? But we have these like election systems that like force you to do it.

It's like the thing that also happened in, in, in France, like you, you have like the, the so called far right and the far left. And then the, this like leftist coalition, like the, the, the, this far right group Of like Marine Le Pen, they won like the first round of the presidential election. And then the Second round the leftists actually won.

One of the reasons why they won was they started gaming the system of like pulling out candidates from competing parties so that all the left leaning votes kind of go to one and They get to win more seat That was one of the like electoral games they played for the second round to be able to actually like win And, people will like put this stuff up as like, Oh Yeah. those are the rules of the game, this is always how it's been, that's a fair election, don't complain.

Like no, you just like missed the whole like purpose of like what democracy is for. It's like, you want to be represented, just because you gamed it. And like gaming it is normal, it means it's like, that, that doesn't make it okay, that just means it's like a system that's failing at the substance of the goal of what it was promising to do.

And the reason for that is like, look, these two groups of people, we don't want to be in the same, we don't want the same candidates on the same ballots, like we just don't even want to be in the same political body. We don't want to share things. If you can leave us alone, if, and we will leave you alone, then maybe we can have some peace where like your corner of things is run the way you want.

And our corner of things is run the way we want. That's what I connected it 

[00:49:10] **Trish:** which is like basically federalism, 

[00:49:11] **Hirad:** But I mean, I mean, I guess like the US was supposed to be Federalist, but now it's like, everything is so polarized. centralized in the, in the and that's another thing that he says in this chapter is like the, actually it was in one of the footnotes.

I don't know if you, if you notice it, the he basically says, 

[00:49:33] **Trish:** This book is literally 

[00:49:35] **Hirad:** some of them, they had some 

[00:49:36] **Trish:** are all footnotes. Like it's kind of crazy. 

[00:49:38] **Hirad:** footnotes. Yeah. 

[00:49:39] **Trish:** sorry, you were saying.

[00:49:41] **Hirad:** Yeah,

no, he says like secession is a much more effective way at doing this like division of power thing instead of having a state have its own like internal constitution to pretend like it has different, it has like internal divisions that you know, that like weaken , the state was like the court system is part of the state, the legislative body is part of the state and the executive is part of the state and one of the key examples he gives, I think is very interesting is post German.

unification a court in high court in Germany ruled that the confiscations of private property by the communist government, I guess, like post World War II in East Germany was fully legal. So like they could just completely recognize it. And all of those assets went to the state. So. And he also like has another case from the U. S. Supreme Court that basically says like makes states rights basically null and void. And it's like, this court is part of the apparatus that it's, it's meant to rule against. So it was like, he basically says, you can't really count on this internal organ of the state to vote 

[00:50:55] **Trish:** Mm 

[00:50:55] **Hirad:** the organ, against the state. 

[00:50:57] **Trish:** Yeah. I mean, yeah, I I'm really I like that idea. Yeah. of sort of letting people secede. I think that a lot of it feels inherently very uncomfortable because, I mean, like the libertarian argument was that, like if, you know, when the South wanted to secede from the U. S. they should have been like, okay, see ya, like have fun.

And that would have, and I mean, as you know, And that feels hard for me because, like, slavery is obviously so morally reprehensible that, like, it feels like, like, do you not, like, it feels like a cop out, right? That's like, oh, we're just gonna, like, let you guys go and keep, like, keep doing the thing that you're doing if it's horrible.

[00:51:46] **Hirad:** Yeah.

So that's, Yeah.

That is a, that is a huge moral quandary because then he actually, Hapa does cite the American Civil War as basically the death of state sovereignty because like the whole idea of the American promise was You can opt out like that was the states are supposed to be powerful And if you don't want it, you can opt out and people try to opt out and the government was like, no, we're going to kill you.

And, and then any kind of promise of like sovereignty at that level or like limits on the power of like the federal government was like thrown out. But Yeah.

it is, it is like a moral quandary. What do you do about that? Because they also like, 

[00:52:28] **Trish:** And I'm sure, and that's, like, the same argument that people are having about, like, states. Spanning abortion too, right?

[00:52:36] **Hirad:** Yeah. And it goes to a lot of things like like I have this argument with a lot of people with regards to like, to Iran, I would say a lot of Western libertarian types. They are very awkward, like for me, it's very awkward, like they're very awkwardly comfortable with the Iranian government because they actually just want the American government

[00:52:57] **Trish:** Yeah. Yeah. Very isolationist. 

[00:53:01] **Hirad:** Very isolationist. 

[00:53:02] **Trish:** like, it's literally like, not our problem. Right? What you guys are doing over there, like, we don't care. Like, not our problem. Is the attitude.

[00:53:11] **Hirad:** yeah which. Is interesting. Like, what do you do about like my, one part, part of what I've been thinking about that is like, well, if you, if you're consider yourself a libertarian, presumably you want some individual liberties and your moral system can't stop at a boundary. Like your moral system can't be like, oh we only want individual liberties within our box, but.

But like within your, we don't care what you do. If you want to like produce goods using slavery, we're just going to buy it. Cause that's your business, whatever you do there. definitely quite, quite their wrinkle. And one, one of the things that I've been thinking about is this is one of the reasons why I think religion is so important is religion can be the unifying.

But no, so like in, in, for example, in like, like networks. Like computer networks operate on this principle where you have no idea who else is on the network But as long as they speak Within like a certain protocol, then you can all collaborate. Like everybody can connect to the internet and like, it all just works.

One of the things that I've been thinking about with with this model of like many small states is what if you, you don't just like cooperate with everyone, which is like counter to the model that like Hoppe is, is, is proposing, you actually automatically. Kind of like join forces or cooperate with other co religionists.

They have their own, you can't violate the, the laws of the religion, like you, you've all sworn by it, I guess, but, but you do but like outside of those, you get to do whatever you want. So that, but one of the things that also is like, I do see a lot of centralizing trends for like any, any of these scenarios that I can think of.

Like, I also see like directly down the line with like, everything is just going to go back to being centralized. 

[00:55:05] **Trish:** Yeah.

[00:55:06] **Hirad:** what, tell me, hit, hit 

[00:55:07] **Trish:** No, no, I don't know. I guess, yeah, so like, I don't know what to do I feel the same quandary as you, like it's interesting when this book came out because I was thinking about sort of like where this fell and like sort of what was happening like in the larger You know, talk, coming out of the nineties, like it was such a, you know, there was so much wealth that was being generated around the world.

Like you saw like the rise of so many, you know, over the last 50 years. Like, you know, half the world had been like lifted outta poverty or whatever. Like it was just, it was heady times, right. And we kind of thought liberalism was gonna be the answer to everything, right? Like, it was like, Fukuyama's. End of history, right?

It's like everyone's going to liberalize and we're going to realize that we all get richer if we're peaceful, so we're just going to be peaceful. And it was, yeah, like, you know, the Lexus and the olive tree with the McDonald's theory, you know, that if you had like enough economic entanglement, you would never go to war.

So it just like, it's so interesting that sort of this also came out of that same time. And I feel like that's sort of like why I'm here. It felt like you could invade the world and like bring your morals and everyone would just get on board because it was so obviously like it was it was like we were on a like political escalator and at the top was like liberal democracy and that's where everyone was headed and that like we just needed to like push people along so that's why it's kind of interesting because this is very counter that right and to come out in that time it's kind of fascinating that he's like 

[00:56:44] **Hirad:** yeah. And I guess like, you can only do that. You can only do that if you're like, we have a lot of faith in 

[00:56:51] **Trish:** Yeah, and it's funny because I feel like, like, he does a lot of speculation if like X, Y, Z would have gone this way, the world would have looked different and I'm very dismissive of that because like, you just don't know. Right? It's sort of like, you can just like, you can create whatever stories what would have been, you know, for anything.

And to me, like, it just is meaningless. But like, he is kind of right on this in that like, the one idea of just sort of like, model of liberalization that we thought was not going to be the answer. And that, like, to me, like the answer is there. It's like, just let people do what they want in their own little states.

[00:57:30] **Hirad:** Yeah. Yeah. And like, it's crazy that like, now we're reading this in 2024 and it just, for me, it just like seems like he's nailed it. But I, But

I also, if I read it in like 2015, I wouldn't 

[00:57:44] **Trish:** yeah, I mean, the thing is, like, I like the overall argument so much, and it is sort of like, given the world we live in, it's sort of the economic system that I sort of like. Like, I don't want to go full ANCAP. But so many of the examples in the book, and I think this is where I keep getting hung up on it, like the way he talks about time preference, like he really sort of has like a social Darwinism thing going on.

Pretty hard wouldn't you say in his like in the first couple chapters of that like poor people. 

[00:58:11] **Hirad:** those with low time preference are 

[00:58:13] **Trish:** Yeah, and that like you kind of like Economically you get what's coming to you like which I think you're like we can Like, I think that they've done a lot of studies, like, this is obviously untrue. So, like, a lot of that, like, really rubs me the wrong way.

And I get, so this is where I get really tripped up, because I kind of disagree with so many of his foundational assumptions and the way he explained things, but somehow, like, I kind of end up Exactly, right? And what do you do with that? Yeah.

[00:58:48] **Hirad:** So I actually like what I definitely want to support this project like project of secession. Another situation where I actually don't fully see it being possible without some degree of political violence, but we could park the mechanics for later. But I do think more secession, the more secession, the merrier.

I actually had like a friend of mine of talking about. Some, I don't even, I don't remember exactly what it was, it was like some new thing where like with like aboriginal rights in Canada where like they got some more rights to do like certain things that nobody else can do. And and he was like kind of complaining about it. I was like, you know. what? Good. Let them do whatever they want to do. The more, more power to them let more, the more like the, if the federal government of Canada is like willingly giving up its own powers, then like, you know, let's vote Trudeau again. If

he keeps 

[00:59:39] **Trish:** Maybe we should do, because isn't that a lot of like when Nunavut was formed? Isn't like a completely sort of different idea there? Like we should look into that and do an episode on that. That would fit, I feel like, would tie, not that like obviously that's secessionist, but I feel like it, like the governance of that is a lot different than the rest of Canada.

[00:59:59] **Hirad:** Yeah, I mean, I always assumed that with none of it because 

it's a territory. It's not a, which means it is administered by the federal government. So it doesn't even have a provincial government, no? 

[01:00:12] **Trish:** Like I literally don't know anything about it. I should talk to my aunt. I think that she was a lawyer and she was involved in when it was created. 

[01:00:18] **Hirad:** Yeah. 

[01:00:19] **Trish:** But

[01:00:19] **Hirad:** Yeah. What were we talking about? So, 

[01:00:23] **Trish:** the time preference stuff and a lot of his economic and even just like how he views like money and stuff. Like I think that the libertarians fall victim to like this. It's like the exact same thing like we had with Rousseau and stuff of like the civilization. Like they just, they buy into all this like Storytelling, European storytelling where they like make up their own history, but it's not actually based on any anthropological surveys or anything.

Right. Where like Adam Smith, you know, like in all his thought experiments, it's like, Oh, you know, like we money was invented because the double coincidence of needs, right? Like I might need nails. The other guy needs. It's eggs and you know, like who we, you know, we needed a medium because like this, this was a problem that needed to be solved.

We're like, that's not supported in like any anthropology, like literature and anthropology. So like, I don't know, like how can someone, yeah, like I, I get a lot, really tripped up on a lot of that in this book,

[01:01:32] **Hirad:** So what were some of the main ones that are like the assumptions that you're 

[01:01:36] **Trish:** like, I don't even know if I, well, like I said, this idea that. It's sort of like the moralizing of the time preference and the worship of productivity, the be all and end all, I just think is like fundamentally, and I think it also rests on an assumption too that anything like in the private free market is going to be efficient.

And it's just, it's not true, right? I mean, it's gonna be more efficient than government, but, like, isn't that how we ended up in the economy now, where, like, the only thing we value is, like, how hard a person works, even if it's at a bullshit job? And even if it means, like, it's at the expense of their well being, their family, their soul, like Yeah.

Mm 

[01:02:25] **Hirad:** Yeah. So I have, so this is like, I've been kind of trying to assemble some like grand unifying theory here. This is like one part of it. In the case with both. Government and big corporations is basically that some excess amount of capital, whether it's like money or power accumulates somewhere. And that accumulated resource attracts parasites.

Those people that work bullshit jobs or like invent bullshit jobs or like cause to produce bullshit jobs. They're, they're parasites. They enrich themselves and others by. essentially leeching off of the, this excess, whatever. Same with like government bureaucrats that constantly make work for themselves or, you know, this, this, we have lots of anecdotes.

I actually like this, the secession idea really ties in well with that theory, because if you actually guarantee to make things small, the, these like parasites really don't have a whole lot to attach themselves to. And in that sense, like then you're actually attacking the bullshit job issue as well.

It's like, you end up with more. Smaller businesses, you will have less bullshit jobs because you'll have more distinct businesses that are well run. It does

have 

[01:03:47] **Trish:** you might be able to skew it more in that direction, but I think that there's like fundamentally something about human nature, right? That like, seems like you like feeling like you're like the head of some Like you like having like power over other people. You like being the boss. You like having a bigger team.

You may be like, well, maybe it's your idiot kids who are kind of useless. So they have to like work for the family company. Like, I don't know. I just like don't feel like this is like the silver bullet.

[01:04:19] **Hirad:** it can't, it can happen, but only if there's money to pay for them. If there's no money to pay for them, you can't have, your instinct may be that, but if you don't have money to pay for it, you won't, you just can't. So, and that's really what it comes down to actually, like on that topic too, it's like the, we didn't really talk about like all the money stuff that he talks about in terms of like.

How in the monarchical age, they try to the Kings would try to like dilute the coins and everything. And he kind of has a few different anecdotes on this on, on this topic and where, whereas like today we just like print money and it's like, I'm completely detached from, from reality. That is. actually like, you know, as I say, like people say money is the root of all evil, shitty money.

Shitty money is actually the root of all evil and it getting taxed.

[01:05:09] **Trish:** and this is like an interesting thing that Libertarians wanted to do is because like they buy into this like mythology that money was created sort of like on the free market and it can exist without a government and they, that's why they really latch on to gold so much because that seems to be like the only thing that they can, you know, we've sort of does seem to have broad appeal between cultures, you know, it doesn't break down, like all the reasons, you know, that like.

Gold became a standard of currency, but I don't like, I don't think that that's how money came about. And this is like, I mean, this is why I want you to read the other Graber book and do it on the podcast. But like, I feel like, like money has always been a government construction and like came out of like, that's a way to extract resources in the form of taxation.

So like, it's a very funny thing that libertarians are trying to like shake out, I kind of see as something that's like. Inextricably linked.

[01:06:06] **Hirad:** Yeah. 

[01:06:08] **Trish:** And I'm not sure how that would work.

[01:06:09] **Hirad:** Yeah.

I mean, I don't, I don't necessarily have any, so he does actually talk about that, I guess in chapter five, is it that like you, if you have a lot of small States then they will necessarily, they won't be able to like maintain a billion different currencies and they will necessarily have to use like, okay.

a reliable currency that they all can trust. Which then is like, according to him, it would be something like that's more gold backed. Today might be Bitcoin. The other thing that I thought was like one of the assumptions that like, okay, I don't know. First of all, like a lot of these claims, a lot of the first few chapters were claims around Portion of taxation as a percentage of GDP during the 

monarchical age so that we can compare them with like What they are at today, and I don't know how you calculate the GDP of Great Britain in the year 1000 A.D. R know how much people are getting taxed and how and like I don't know.

I, I just, I find that, and it wasn't like, if you read the footnotes, it was like a lot of very specific numbers. But like, that's something to like, dig into the sources to be like, how do you know this? 

[01:07:24] **Trish:** Well, and also, like, it just seems like it's not necessarily an apples to apples Comparison because once upon a time, like kings couldn't be that effective rulers cause it was just like literally hard to coerce people with like the technology that they had. But I feel like now with like technology, it's just like a totally different ball game.

Like then it's like, yeah, it was more difficult to rule over people just because like they were spread out and they could literally like, You maybe had a sword, but they had a pitchfork. Like, I don't know. You know what I mean? Like there wasn't a huge technological difference. It was just harder to force people into stuff.

[01:08:05] **Hirad:** Yeah.

He does kind of like I think the technology bit actually makes a lot of sense, but the, one of the arguments that he makes is about why the monarchy was better was that the king's legitimacy rested on this idea of private property, the king being the private owner of government. And and because of that, he says the king is incentivized to not violate private property laws because by then he's like, he's attacking his own legitimacy, more or less. I, from my reading of history, I don't know if that's Has this ever been shown to be true? I don't know like King seemed to have like, I think to your point, I think the technology one like argument is like very compelling that like, Hey, they, they couldn't exert their power. We've talked about this with the, with the greater episode today, like they could, they had absolute power as far as their eyes worked beyond that it was like on shaky grounds.

But. I don't know. Like I, I don't know if there was anything stopping them from from violating private property. 

[01:09:14] **Trish:** Yeah. I don't think that there was, I just think that again, it was like difficult. But like you do get the sense of like they rolled in somewhere and they're like I'm gonna make a magnificent palace right here So everyone get off like that. That was probably like everyone just had to move like that just happened Well, there is like a funny thing too that like I also just don't I think like the logic that someone will be Who is a king will want to keep the kingdom sort of in good shape for the future Generations and their children and stuff.

There is a logic on one hand, but it just anecdotally besides like the couple of wells he keeps going back to which is like the Habsburgs or Whatever in Europe like it doesn't really feel like the dictators and dynasties we have going on now do that great.

[01:10:07] **Hirad:** So that I have a theory about and my theory is that actually, and that's something to keep in mind when you're like thinking about future forms of governance and, and comparing 'em to like what we had in the past 'cause. In the past, I think everything did work kind of in the model that he's proposing, which is there, there was this situation where like, if you were like squandering wealth and you're not like keeping your private state in, in good shape, somebody will come and take it from you.

Like some, there will be some sort of like adjustment. Right. The reason why that doesn't work today is a lot of like incompetent States can be propped up because we have such a, such a global world. You, States are not in this like isolated world anymore. Like they can be propped up externally regardless of what they do internally.

And in a way, actually, like it, those States kind of become like an extraction means by like another party somewhere else. So for example, like in, in Iran, we had this like throughout the 19th century we had this like super corrupt, super inept dynasty. But even by the 19th century, that was like.

That was recent enough that the only thing this dynasty, like every king in this dynasty, the only thing they had to do was keep Russia and England out Both happy and at each other's throat like just constantly just balance these two That was the only way that like Iran first of all didn't get fully colonized So these guys basically got to keep their jobs by like by getting one to fight against another like keep the other one in check But that was the only requirement because other than that then they had like a revenue they had like they had their position and And that was it.

They had no other need and then like later on, of course there was, there was oil. So then there's like, well, if you have, if you have that like, like today you really don't need the rest of the economy to, to do well, which is also why like a lot of these like resource rich countries are 

the 

[01:12:14] **Trish:** Yeah. And like, it feels like also, like, cause when he's just doing a historical retrospective, he'd be like, Oh, look, like, eventually, you know, they were wasteful and eventually they failed. But I would also argue that it's when you're living in that dynasty, like the fact that eventually at some point in history, it dies, like it doesn't really feel useful, right?

Yeah, like, on the ground, like, the fact that, like, czarist Russia eventually, like, failed doesn't really, like, I feel like, help anyone who is living through, like, all those regimes, right? And it's kind of the same thing when they say, like, who would like the guy with, like, the terracotta army in China? It's like, yeah, eventually it fails, but, like, it kind of takes a while, and it's not really that useful to tell, like, someone on the ground when, like, everything's just, like, slowly, you know, Slipping down the drain.

They'd be like, oh, oh, but don't worry. Maybe, maybe in 200 years, you know, like it'll be Some other, like, system will come in. So it just sort of feels like a little bit like an unsatisfying Argument? On some level, if that makes sense?

[01:13:21] **Hirad:** Yeah, a hundred percent. Yeah. But if you're living in a collection of small states, you can escape 

Tsarist 

[01:13:29] **Trish:** or bust. 

[01:13:32] **Hirad:** Yeah, 

[01:13:33] **Trish:** Sorry. I was a joke. Cause don't, doesn't the Pacific Northwest want to like secede like Northern California and just make like Cascadia. 

[01:13:41] **Hirad:** think now, 

[01:13:42] **Trish:** I want. I want them to take Vancouver with them.

[01:13:44] **Hirad:** yeah, I don't know if I would want to, I actually hope a lot of these like aboriginal tribes end up like forming their own governments and like micro states within, within Canada. That would be amazing. I 

also 

[01:13:59] **Trish:** it'll be inter it'll be interesting, but like, it's not going to be like some utopia. Yeah. Yeah.

[01:14:07] **Hirad:** no, none, none of them would be, you, just like, you go here, you go there. Yeah. 

[01:14:16] **Trish:** They're not going to have me.

[01:14:19] **Hirad:** He was like, we, we had you last time we saw how that ended up. Go take your smallpox elsewhere. Yeah. Anything else you want to cover for, 

[01:14:30] **Trish:** Not necessarily anything that comes to mind for you. 

[01:14:33] **Hirad:** I thought that was good. Yeah.

Yeah. Cool. Well, in that case, thanks everyone for joining us. And, 

[01:14:41] **Trish:** Part two.

[01:14:42] **Hirad:** we'll, we'll, we'll talk to you when we do part two.