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Episode 507: Free These People · Words & Numbers

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Coming up next on Words and Numbers, Weed.
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A medical system that's falling apart.
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Carrie Lake and Matt Kibbe joins us from Kibbe on Liberty.
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Hi, I'm James and I'm Anthony. And this is words and numbers.
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This ought to be a good one, Aunt.
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So what's new and exciting in your world this week?
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This is a little bit aged in maybe a month or two I I have a
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list I I keep of quick hits and anytime I run across something
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interesting I put it there and this one has finally bubbled to
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the top. Is it?
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Is it in a spreadsheet? No, but it is in a shared doc
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that I can access with one tap from my phone.
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So anytime somebody sends me something or someone mentions
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something I just open it up. But none the less, you don't
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need to hear about that. Brazil apparently has, at least
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according to this article, 1 of, if not the largest publicly run
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healthcare systems in the world. And I don't know how they're
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measuring this, but this is what the article says.
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But that's not the point. The point is, Brazil instituted
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for the first time a national exam for medical training.
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And as often happens when you have A a government program and
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B some standardized test to evaluate that government
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program, you C get results that half the people are shocked to
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see and the other half could have told you we're coming and
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the results. Are mannequins are in play I'm
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guessing? Oh, not yet, but no doubt they
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will be. This is the first time the the
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test has been run and it has found that 1/3 of the 350
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medical programs evaluated failed to meet minimum
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standards. That's 1/3 of the medical
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programs that are churning out the doctors for this supposedly
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largest public health care system in the world.
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That's item number one. Item number 2 25% of the medical
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students failed, including 13,000 final year students who
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would soon begin practicing. Checks out.
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Now you know what happens. In fact, we've seen what happens
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in this country when you do something like this.
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I think back to what was the acronym for it when they first
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did the standardized testing across all schools back in the
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early 2000s. Right.
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George W Bush, yes, made that business.
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And of course, centerpiece. What happens when you know, you
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have this standardized test and you find that the public service
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that's supposed to be providing X is not providing X, it's
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providing 2/3 of X or something worse.
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You changed the test. So, well, Aunt I, I'm not saying
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that that's happened here, but I'm predicting that come next
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year, we'll be reading a similar article saying all of a sudden
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all of the medical programs passed.
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That's what's that's exactly what's going to happen.
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And you know how I love telling stories of my time at the August
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institution of of Learning and Higher Education, Saint Vincent
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College, your alma mater. They realized as I did that
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their education majors, what's that word I'm looking for, were
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really, really stupid that they couldn't find their way out of a
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paper bag. They were easily the worst
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students I've ever seen. They were inept in every way.
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They couldn't read, they couldn't write, they couldn't do
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basic math. Just what you're looking for in
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a teacher, right? O Saint Vincent College filled
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with it's, it was like a Mensa meeting every time you would
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walk in the door, right? They decided, well, we can fix
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that now We're going to mandate a 3.5 GPA for a person to
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graduate with an engineer with an education degree from Saint
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Vincent College. OK.
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No professor in the Education department ever gave anything
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but an A. From that they forward.
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Yeah, sure. 'Cause they need their people to
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graduate and they knew people like me were giving them CS, DS
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and FS. Yep, Yep.
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It happens literally every time. I predicted it would happen.
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I said every year the valedictorian is just going to
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be somebody from the the education department and that
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person won't be able to write a speech.
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Have fun with that. But anyway, and I also want to
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talk about a medical thing because there's a very
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interesting medical phenomenon happening right now in these
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United States and it's with old people.
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So I guess that's kind of like us you.
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And you're older than I am, you punk.
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Anyway. Only by the.
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Calendar, James. Yeah, Well, the calendar is how
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we measure age. So yes, that's right.
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Only by the thing that does, the thing that we needed to do, only
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by that are you older than me? Old people?
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And I think we're really looking here at 70 and 80 year olds,
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right? They're not going to the doctor
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nearly as often, instead choosing to self medicate with
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marijuana that they go by at the pot store.
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Huh. How about that old old?
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People are the growing market for weed and they overwhelmingly
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prefer edibles. They prefer what edibles, the
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kind you edible instead of the kind of smoke.
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Yeah, yeah. Isn't that interesting?
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Way every time they can't they they have an ache or a pain,
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they just say ah the hell with it, I'm going to get some weed
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and they eat it and their pain goes away.
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How about that? Can't sleep?
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Go get some more weed, there's lots of things.
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In all these years, all these decades, it's been illegal.
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Well, and and, but let's be clear, this is the generation
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that made it so. Right.
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Yes. Right.
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So it's interesting that they're now coming around on it.
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I take that as really good news because now maybe slightly older
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people can come around on a number of things that they've
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had traditional difficulty with. I mean, look, man, I, I had to
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go to, I got, I got thrown out of college and I had to go to
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court for a weed case, cost me more than I can begin to tell
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you. And now you could just go to the
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store and buy it like a normal human being.
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So I'm all in favor of this and kind of warms the cockles my
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stone cold heart to see that old people are on board too.
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But this of course, aunt brings us to the foolishness of the
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week. And this is going to be more
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foolish or more intuitively foolish for people who live out
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here in Arizona, because I want to talk about this idiot, Kerry
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Lake, a name that you probably just kind of remember.
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She was a hardcore election denier in 2020.
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She ran for the governorship of Arizona.
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I think you remember that right, Yeah.
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Claimed that election was rigged and jumped up and down so hard
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and for so long. She was later nominated by Trump
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to lead the agency that overseas the Voice of America and other
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media services like Radio Free Europe, Radio Liberty.
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And she fired almost everybody that she came in contact with.
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And a federal judge in 2026 said that Lake lacked legal authority
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to dismantle the institution. So she faced a little bit of
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pushback right there from the start.
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She was put in that position because she made her bones here
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in Arizona as a a news reader on one of the the local channels
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out of Phoenix. But that's only the foolishness
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of the past. The foolishness that we have now
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is that she's been nominated by Donald Trump to be the
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ambassador to Jamaica. Oh.
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My God and. And look, we we all know two
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things, right? We all know that ambassadorships
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are real prize jobs that get handed out to loyalists, right?
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And you take them and you go and you put your feet up and you,
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you twiddle your thumbs. And we also know that the
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ambassador to Jamaica will have to do exactly nothing, right?
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Right. Because that is a meaningless
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post for an ambassador. This is Donald Trump saying I
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need you to get so far away from us here that there's ocean water
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between you and me. So you go to, you go to Jamaica
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and and now we wait because Congress has to confirm her.
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Oh, that's going to be interesting.
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Yep, that's it. Won't be televised because, you
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know, it's just too. Oh come on.
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The one good thing that could come out of all of this?
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And I'm sure you could go to C-SPAN with the 14 other dorks
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who do that sort of thing. I'll watch it on YouTube when it
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hits there and get the 45 second version right after I watched 38
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seconds worth of ads I didn't want to see.
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Anyway, that's that just kind of caught my eye.
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And she's such a blight on the great state of Arizona that I
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wanted to highlight her for a minute.
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What has she been doing? Well, she was with radio.
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What'd you call it? Not Radio for Europe, but the
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the oversight, Yeah. Radio for the Voice of America.
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Voice of America the the flagship.
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Did she go directly from that governor?
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Well, she couldn't have gone directly from the governorship
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to that because we had Biden in between.
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Yeah, the timeline here is is meaningless.
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She ran for gun. Loss.
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No, I was just I was just wondering what what do you do?
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What does what does that hole in a resume look like of ran for a
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governor lost blank running Radio Free Europe ambassador to
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Jamaica fired, fired everybody. Oh yeah, calls the carpet
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Provide to dismantle Voice of America.
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I I think the blank would have to be professional election
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denier right there. There's this hardcore group of
11:00
Trump supporters who you you cannot reason with.
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They just believe in their hearts, which means they know
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for certain that he won the election in 2020.
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And there's literally nothing you can say to any of them that
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will change their minds. Speaking of which, a friend of
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mine recently said something eye opening.
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At least eye opening to me. You notice that you don't hear
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too much anymore, at least not from him, about Trump running
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for a third term. And this, this friend of mine
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said. And I I tell you why?
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Because the Democrats would run Obama.
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I thought, I'm sure they would If, if, if we if the if the
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Republican. Well, and see, here's the thing.
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Neither side's going to pull that because it's thoroughly
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unconstitutional. Oh, right, it's yes.
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On the plain text of the Constitution, you can't do it.
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And to do it would be admitting that you're a pack of autocrats,
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and the last thing a pack of closeted autocrats wants is the
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light of day shown on their autocracy.
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Right. And this is true of both
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Democrats and Republicans because they're all autocrats at
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heart and they govern as such to the degree that they're able as
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soon as they take office. So you're not going to see that
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particular move because that announces to to our fellow
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citizens that the Constitution is no longer a thing and we
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don't care about it. Yeah, and, and let's underline
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here about the autocrats. Just because an autocrat is is
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requiring something that you would like him to require
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doesn't make him less of an autocrat.
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It actually makes you an autocrat.
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Yeah, it makes you somebody who suffers an autocrat without
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complaining, right? Would would I love a program
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that would give me personally a brand new Lexus every every
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three years? Yeah, that'd be great.
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Would I be in favor of it for everybody?
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Sure. Everybody should have a brand
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new car every three years. Think about all the horrible
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things you would have to do in order to make that happen.
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Right. You'd have to confiscate the
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wealth of a nation. Well, bad news for you, because
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we're already giving these sorts of things away.
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Just not in the way I just described.
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Yeah. Right.
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Yeah, I've described many other things, just not Lexuses.
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So I would always prefer a world with less autocracy both here
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and abroad. And I would always prefer a
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world where autocratic impulses, which every politician has, I
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would prefer those impulses be stymied any way possible.
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And even if it's only, and this is straight from the textbook
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of, of James Madison, even if it's only the ambition of
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another politician, you can't have it.
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You've had your turn. Now it's my turn.
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We need people to be saying that.
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And they would, and they would point to the Constitution and
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then one of them would win. And one of the first acts he
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undertook as president, Democrat or Republican, would clearly
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violate the Constitution he just pointed at.
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So, you know, this is just where we are.
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We live in Bizarro World at this point.
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But I have some hope that we can get back to where we once were
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and maybe even do better. Matt Kibby joins us this week.
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I'm going to let Matt introduce himself, but I want to point out
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a couple of things. He was chief of staff for
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Representative Dan Miller from Florida.
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Here in Washington. He was senior economist at the
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Republican National Committee. He runs with his wife Terry Free
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the People and he has what I think is one of the best
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mustaches I have ever seen. Matt, what can you add?
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So now that ANTS introduced, you completely introduce yourselves.
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Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, I, I will
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acknowledge that my mustache stands up with some of the best.
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You know, I'm not, I'm not a PhD economist like you, Anthony, but
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I play one sometimes on TV and that makes me more of a sex
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symbol than an intellectual. But I'm sort of the beautiful
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half of Free the People. And my wife Terry is the
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intellectually substantial half. I mean, she, she, she makes all
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the smart decisions and doesn't let me do that.
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So that's that's kind of how we operate.
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I'm, I'm just going to point out here to save the strife that is
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inevitably coming, not just your your way, man, but all of our
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ways. Terry Kibby is a lovely and
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beautiful woman. And yeah, she's would you sleep?
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Believe it at that. She's she's hot and smart and,
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and I'm I'm just pretty. Well, nature takes care of its
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own, Yeah, anyway. Did I kill the conversation
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already? No Ant will take care of that
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later. That's his role.
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I was. I was hoping that that you would
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kind of give a broad introduction to how you came to
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found Free the People, what it's all about and what your end goal
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is, if in fact you have an end goal.
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Sure, sure. And and Anthony, thank you for
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sort of cleaning out my closeted past having worked for the
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Republican Party and I work for the US Chamber of Commerce and I
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was a government employee. I worked on Capitol Hill.
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My training was actually as an economist at George Mason
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University. I never finished my PhD, but,
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but my entire career projection has been one of using fewer and
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fewer words and hopefully words with meaning to try to explain
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some of these ideas that that turned me on specifically to
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Austrian economics when, when I was, when I was a young man.
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And in it, it, it's worth noting that the Austrian school is, is
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very much focused on, on language and stories and
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metaphors. And, and they, they sort of
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issue the, the complex mathematic formulas that, that
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reduce people into robots. And I, I don't, I don't, I don't
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think that's a very meaningful way to think about economics.
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But as I started to pursue a career in policy and politics,
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I, I realized that it was, it was more important to figure out
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a way to connect with people who probably don't process the world
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in this bizarro economic logic way that I do.
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They, they process the world through their emotions and, and
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over the years and, and all of my career choices, it became
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more and more important to learn how to communicate with people
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so that some of these basics of economics, which ultimately are
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life and death. It's, it's how humanity thrives
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and, and, and flourishes. Like how, how am I turn other
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people onto that? And that, that leads us to the,
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the founding of free the people. It's really a project, you know,
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we're basically a video production crew that is designed
18:35
by entire team, save for one trained economist where they're
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all creatives, creatives and technologists that one, know how
18:47
to create compelling content and two, know how to reach audiences
18:51
with that content. And that that was our idea.
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We wanted to specifically turn on young people who had never
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read Murray Rothbard or Ludwig von Mises or Frederick Hayek,
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probably don't know what the word libertarian is, certainly
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don't know what a classical liberal is.
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But but instinctually and and and in their gut, they, they
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felt that liberty thing and and we called them the liberty
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curious generation and and our our content and our job is to is
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to reach outside of the the bubble.
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We don't we try not to preach to the choir too often, except what
19:27
I'm talking about the Grateful Dead or the greatest progressive
19:31
metal band in the world, brush. And in those cases, I I'm
19:35
intolerant of disagreement. Apart from that Grateful Dead
19:39
nonsense, you and I probably have a very significant overlap
19:43
in musical tastes if you're a Rush fan.
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Yes, yes. We will talk about that at some
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future date. It, it's interesting 'cause you
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know, I'm, I'm not, I'm not an economist either.
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I'm a political philosopher by training.
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And I, I learned early on, I, I think when I really, really
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studied Plato, that it's, it's all about the story.
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Right. You need something very
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compelling. You need characters who you can
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come to know over time. You need a narrative that
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unwinds over time with peaks and valleys and things like this.
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Have you noticed that that in your mind, do you think that
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your choice back when you made it, when did you found for the
20:30
people? We are exactly 10 years old.
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So do you think you made the right call going with stories
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over numbers? And if if I'm assuming you're
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going to say yes and if, if you do say yes, where does it, how
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does it continue right? What?
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How do you? Grow stories.
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Yeah, it, it, it's a great question and, and occasionally
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I'll throw out a number, but I think we have to be careful
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about overwhelming people with data and statistics because it
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can quite quickly become not mind numbing and and lose any
21:08
context or meaning. But yeah, obviously I, I feel
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really strongly and we're kind of not, if not first to market,
21:16
we were early to market with the idea of video production.
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And we were first to market with the idea that A, to the extent
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that I want to talk about something like COVID lockdowns,
21:29
instead of spewing all the data and all of talking about all the
21:34
collateral damage and, and the economic consequences of that,
21:38
we decided to tell a really heart rending story about a dad
21:43
who was trying to save his family and his restaurant in
21:46
Brooklyn. And by doing it that way, I
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mean, there's there's no politics in it.
21:52
We don't mention what the mayor did.
21:54
We don't mention who the governor was.
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We're just talking about the the, the irrational devastation
22:02
of one family. We ended up in a in a shorts
22:06
festival winning the best COVID film in New York City.
22:09
And I guarantee you the entire audience and the entire, all the
22:13
judges certainly would have disagreed with us on economic
22:17
policy regarding lockdowns. And that's, that's what we try
22:20
to do when we're doing our best work.
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It is a classic hero's journey arc, you know, and sometimes
22:28
it's tragic and sometimes it's heroic.
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I wish we did better at the heroic part 'cause I, I think we
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do have to, I think we have to turn people on with this
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audacious vision of what a free society would look like.
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And it's this I I take this advice from Frederick Hayek when
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he talks about the intellectuals and socialism.
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He argues back then, and I would say the argument holds just as
22:53
equally today that we're always trying to fix someone else's
22:56
mess at the margin instead of talking about that big
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beautiful. And he uses the word utopian,
23:03
and I'm not afraid to use that word.
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What is this big beautiful thing where people come together with
23:08
all their differences and all their personal knowledge and
23:10
start cooperating and create something so much bigger than
23:13
they could have done by themselves?
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If we can't turn people on to that idea, I think we're doing
23:19
something wrong. So it's, it's I, I feel like
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even though we've been doing it for 10 years, we're just getting
23:24
started. And as, as you may know, we're,
23:27
we've gotten quite involved in comedy now.
23:30
I think comedians are, are some of the most profoundly
23:34
provocative and intellectually curious people of, of any
23:38
communications profession and that they might well save the
23:41
world from ourselves. And, and of course, I have a
23:44
show on Blaze TV, which is where I get to dork out on public
23:49
policy and, and libertarian philosophy and all that sort of
23:52
stuff. But you know, the the the bulk
23:54
of our work is, is communicating in all of its forms.
23:58
It it's interesting you because I agree with everything you've
24:01
said, but the whole business about leading with the story in,
24:07
in my experience, I find that it plays so well with skeptics and
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I think it's absolutely the right approach.
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But weirdly with libertarians, they want the numbers.
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I don't know what's what it is. So what what I found, and I'm
24:22
I'm sure you you have as well as that to lead with the story
24:27
knocks people off their their their set of pre preconceptions
24:34
and some of those people will start to ask how common is this
24:38
versus that thing I thought was the case in there.
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The numbers start to play. The first time I saw this was
24:44
with the IJ Institute for Justice does it does an
24:47
excellent job with that. But tell me this.
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I've been involved in the same space that you are of
24:55
communicating to people the the principles of liberty and and I
25:00
find that after a while I have to remake the same arguments all
25:08
over again because a new generation has come along and
25:11
somehow latched immediately onto the wrong answers.
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So it's as if it's as if I'm playing this story that that
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goes for 20 years and I got to start over and do it again for
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the next 20 years. Yeah, it's.
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So this just seems like an obvious time to quote the great
25:29
moral philosophy philosopher Neil Peart, the drummer from
25:33
Rush. And one of my one of my favorite
25:36
Rush albums is called Hemispheres.
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And hemispheres is a metaphor for the battle between the two
25:42
sides of the brain, the emotional side and the
25:46
intellectual side, heart versus reason.
25:51
And, and I think the reason that you have to keep telling the
25:55
story and keep winning the same battles over and over again is
25:59
that all of us have that endless battle between our sort of
26:03
emotional reaction to the latest thing.
26:05
You know, we're, we're all being they're, they're trying to scare
26:08
us into another pandemic as we speak right now.
26:11
And then last time the emotional side of our, of our animal brain
26:15
really got the best of us. And the question is, will we
26:19
have learned from that experience about the economic
26:21
consequences about, about the consequences for our children
26:25
and, and what we did to their education?
26:27
The list you guys know goes on and on and on.
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I don't think that battle ever ends.
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And, and I think that in, in a lot of ways you, you mentioned
26:39
earlier that that, you know, libertarians want the numbers.
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It's because we're this small little tribe of people that read
26:45
all the same books. We, you know, people my age
26:47
would tell you a story about Ayn Rand and then probably Ludwig
26:50
von Mises, who Ayn Rand tells you to read if you want to
26:52
understand economics. And then a younger generation
26:55
will talk about Ron Paul. And maybe maybe the newbies that
26:59
we start talking to next year will tell you about Thomas
27:02
Massie or something in pop culture.
27:05
And I, I think, you know, politics at its best is a pop
27:07
culture phenomenon where, where certain individuals at least can
27:10
use it as a soapbox to turn people onto ideas.
27:14
I realize that doesn't happen very often.
27:16
But, but I think culture and, and these intellectual ivory
27:22
tower places that we used to sort of cloister ourselves, all
27:26
those walls are gone. And we don't really know what
27:30
happens when we learn as, as a broader community of, of, of
27:36
thinkers and doers, like what happens when we start telling
27:39
really compelling stories because I think it's pretty new
27:42
to us. Yeah, we, you and I should
27:44
probably talk offline because I'm launching this thing called
27:47
the Pop Culture Project right now, because all politics is
27:52
downstream from culture. Everything is downstream from
27:56
culture, right? Culture is always primary.
27:59
And it just dovetails with the, the question I was kind of
28:02
asking you a minute ago, and I want to, I want to press you a
28:04
little bit. Why are heroes so hard to find?
28:09
I can find villains every day of the week.
28:13
Heroes on the other hand, very difficult.
28:16
Yeah, well, I live in Washington DC, so heroes are.
28:20
Ain't no heroes there. I made it very best and
28:23
endangered species. There may be one or two dodo
28:25
birds left perhaps perhaps the wrong metaphor for the
28:30
congressmen and senators I still like.
28:31
But you know, I, I think there, there, but again, like it's a,
28:38
it's sort of a libertarian thing to and, and perhaps a human
28:41
thing to get outraged about the latest thing.
28:45
And that gets our juices flowing and it gets our emotions and,
28:48
and that's our sense of injustice really flows.
28:52
You know, one thing that I think Einrin did pretty well is she,
28:55
she established the idea that not just Howard Rourke and not
29:02
just John Galt could be heroes, but that there are heroes woven
29:06
throughout her story, everyday people that that just live a
29:11
life of responsibility and integrity and telling the truth.
29:17
You know, all that stuff that your mom taught you.
29:19
You know, mom was never wrong about these things.
29:22
And I think one of one of the things that I obsessed with is,
29:27
is finding more of those heroes because they're there.
29:30
And how do you make that sexy? Like right now, a lot of people
29:34
are excited about Thomas Massie because he's fighting Goliath
29:38
and he doesn't seem to bend to the political whim of the
29:44
moment. And he seems to be a lot like
29:46
Ron Paul in that sense. He's always been the same guy
29:48
and he's always going to be the same guy.
29:51
But the reason I think a big reason that he's become so
29:53
popular is that that all the bad guys are attacking him and, and
29:58
that sort of gets our attention. The first project we did at Free
30:03
the People, To your point, hopefully when Thomas Massie was
30:07
a nobody and nobody knew who he was, I think he was either a
30:13
freshman or sophomore had been elected.
30:15
He got elected in 2012 and we made this documentary about him
30:19
called Off the Grid. We did a good job of making him
30:23
into a hero who's just a guy trying to live his life and,
30:28
and, and farming his farm and, and driven by this folksy
30:31
libertarian philosophy. And I wouldn't take anything
30:35
away from him. But I think by telling his
30:38
hero's journey, we helped build a platform where the people that
30:42
wanted to hate him couldn't really hate him.
30:44
And the people that didn't know about him suddenly were like,
30:47
oh, this guy, this guy's a little bit different.
30:49
I kind of like this guy. I want to be this guy.
30:50
I just met a guy the other day at a massive fundraiser who
30:55
literally uprooted his family and bought a farm in
30:59
Pennsylvania because he was so inspired by Thomas Massie's life
31:03
choices. I'm like, wow, that's pretty
31:05
hardcore. It is pretty hardcore.
31:08
And I, I, I take your point about people living quiet lives
31:14
as being heroic, right? Life is hard and people do their
31:20
best with what they've got day in, day out.
31:22
They raise their children, they pay their taxes right.
31:25
They do everything that they think they need to do in order
31:28
to be functional members of society.
31:31
And yet we're always looking for Harrison Bergeron.
31:35
We want the that big idol that we can point to and say, now
31:40
there's a man. And God help me, the the one
31:44
person who's pulled that off in the last 20 years has been
31:48
Donald Trump, right? That's what his followers think
31:53
of him, that he is an heroic figures towering above the rest
31:58
of us. Well, and.
32:00
Like there are things to be learned from that specific
32:03
example. And and Trump, Trump is old
32:05
enough that he's not, he's not really of the influencer
32:08
generation. He was a, he was a typical TV
32:10
star and, you know, famously demanded that the director of
32:17
Home Alone two put him in the movie if he wanted to film in
32:21
his hotel. So he he understands the game of
32:25
getting and keeping people's attention.
32:28
That does not have to be a cynical and manipulative thing.
32:32
And I think I think a lot of us when we're looking for the next
32:37
generation of people that can turn people on to our ideas, it
32:41
has to be someone that can be influential in a decentralized
32:46
system. You know, we've, we've always
32:48
said like, who are we going to run for president or who's going
32:50
to run for Senate? Or, you know, we all know who
32:53
Elon Musk is. But to me, the world is so
32:58
radically decentralized now in a in a great way for all of the
33:02
censorship and all of the algorithmic manipulations, a
33:07
real hero could emerge from that chaos.
33:11
You know, maybe Rogan has him on and then, you know, who knows
33:14
what happens? But but those people could be
33:20
really influential on, on not just American economic policy,
33:24
but but civil society and, and the future of humanity.
33:28
So I, I think we're at this point where that normal guy, the
33:32
guy that you, you know, Eddie Wyler's in Atlas, the guy that
33:35
no one really ever focuses on, that guy could make himself a
33:41
hero in a way that only a New York City billionaire blowhard
33:47
like Donald Trump could have. Back in the top down,
33:50
centralized way when we only had three TV networks and and you
33:54
had to know somebody to get on TV.
33:56
Well, it's interesting you say this because I wouldn't call him
33:59
a normal guy, but it does seem that he came to the fore along
34:04
the lines that you're describing.
34:06
That's Jordan Peterson. That's it's a great example.
34:09
He just said no and all of a sudden he's a celebrity.
34:13
And he, and he turned it into a franchise like early on in the
34:16
Peterson phenomenon. I, I went to one of his concerts
34:21
and I call them concerts on purpose because he was playing
34:24
in outside of Philadelphia at a theater that Bruce Springsteen
34:27
had played at. And, and I was curious about who
34:30
was showing up and why they were showing up.
34:33
I, I would say Jordan Peterson 2 point O.
34:35
It became more typically partisan, sort of bomb thrower,
34:40
but one point O he was teaching primarily young men, but a lot
34:46
of their girlfriends were there with those young men about just
34:50
how to get your together right. Like, how do you how do you take
34:54
responsibility for your own life that you know, that's what make
34:57
your bed is all about? And my only beef with Jordan
35:01
Peterson was that he had such a he said had such a dark
35:05
perspective. And I'm I'm I'm more of a
35:07
Randian in the sense that I I think that that you can be a
35:10
hero. I think you can work hard and,
35:14
and live a satisfying life and live on your own terms.
35:18
And that is a beautiful thing. Peterson, of course, is more
35:22
like, if you don't do these things, if you don't make your
35:24
bed, if you, if you don't take responsibility for your own
35:28
life, you're going to, you're going to find yourself in living
35:31
hell. And that, that may be true, but
35:34
I, I think, I think there's that beautiful hero's journey that,
35:38
you know, whether you like Rand or not, the idea that that
35:41
someone could come from nothing, stick to their principles, work
35:45
really hard, have some intellectual ability and achieve
35:49
something that no one else had achieved before, that, that is
35:52
the quintessential American dream.
35:55
Yeah, and it's interesting with Peterson and I, I, I think
35:58
you're right about the overwhelming darkness that,
36:03
that, that it kind of wrapped around his, his core message.
36:08
And even though I'm obviously the curmudgeon of, of our, our
36:12
little twosome here, you really, if you want, if you want to make
36:18
a dent in, in the broader culture, you would best show up
36:23
with a smile on your face and a song in your heart, right?
36:27
You, you've got to, you've got to believe that people are
36:30
capable of it. And and that's an incredible
36:34
level of optimism that you have to have before you even walk
36:37
through the door and try to accomplish anything.
36:41
And I think we're all, at least I, I refer to myself and I hope
36:45
you guys too, as some very happy warriors, right?
36:50
I'm not, I'm not here to take any, but I'd love to get to meet
36:53
you, right? Be great to have a chat, maybe
36:57
get a cup of coffee. And you seem to, to just take
37:00
this as a given. I mean, am I reading you
37:02
correctly? It's kind of like for me, it's
37:05
kind of baked into my personality.
37:06
I'm not. And it's this sometimes affects
37:11
the number of clicks that you can get on a post.
37:14
If you're, if you're yelling and if you're screaming about the
37:17
other guys and the bad guys and you're sort of setting up a
37:20
straw man and knocking it down. I know those get more clicks,
37:25
but is that, is that a community that's going to stick with you?
37:28
I think there's a, there's an untapped market for more happy
37:32
warriors and people looking for optimism.
37:35
And I think Jordan Peterson very much tapped into that.
37:39
They, they were wanting someone to tell them that if, if you
37:43
make the right choices in your life, everything is going to be
37:45
OK and, and, and you're going to have a beautiful life.
37:50
That to me is, is the market opportunity for, for liberty.
37:55
And if this kind of gets into some, some things we could think
38:00
about, because I, I think, I think one of the, one of the
38:03
failures of, of my libertarian brethren and I'll, I'll lump
38:07
myself in there, is that we're so focused on the rugged
38:12
individualism half of the coin that, that you don't want to be
38:16
detained, that you want to live your own life.
38:18
No one's going to tell me what to say or think or do.
38:22
That is the libertarian gut reaction to everything.
38:26
But of course, the other half of the coin is the beautiful things
38:30
that happen when free people gather in communities and in
38:34
cooperation and they they start doing things together and they
38:38
start spontaneously developing rules of the game that allow for
38:44
incredible expansion of, of what my old professor Don Lavoie used
38:49
to call a greater social intelligence.
38:52
And that, that sounds kind of a commie thing, right?
38:55
But it's not, it's, it's just free people working together.
38:59
And I, I, I so want to figure out how to tell that story.
39:03
Well, because I think going back to, to Hayek's mandate, it is,
39:09
it is utopian compared to where we are today, where you, you
39:15
probably don't think you have much control over your own life.
39:17
And you're looking at all of these outside forces.
39:20
And, you know, crony capital is colluding with, with big
39:23
government. And we all know those critiques.
39:27
Yeah, it can feel pretty dark. So how do, how do we turn people
39:31
on to that beautiful thing so that we don't have to go back
39:34
every 20 years and say, no, no, no, don't listen to AOC.
39:41
You can be a billionaire. You can actually work that hard
39:44
and create that much value. And we, we, we actually want
39:47
billionaires to, to build beautiful things.
39:50
But you don't have to be a billionaire to build beautiful
39:52
things. And you don't have to be special
39:55
or your dad doesn't have to know AUS senator.
39:58
And you don't have to be rich in order to live a beautiful,
40:02
productive, fulfilling life. I think the obvious question is,
40:07
at least for me, why is it I'm, I'm assuming too much here?
40:14
Do you think people are frightened of the concept of
40:17
freedom? And if so, why?
40:21
I, I do think we should take that seriously.
40:23
And I, I think the unknown is inherently frightening.
40:28
It's scary if, when you tell people like one of the core
40:31
tenets of Austrian economics is basically that we don't have any
40:35
idea what's going to happen tomorrow.
40:37
We know what happened yesterday and we, we know that there's,
40:41
there's certain rules of, of, of nature and civil society that
40:46
probably give us some sense for what's going to happen tomorrow.
40:49
But you don't know. And to, to, to say it that way
40:52
sounds really scary. And I think, I think we have to,
40:57
you know, again, going back to Hayek, I, I think the way he
41:00
said it is, I want to create a sense of adventure that the fact
41:05
that we don't know what's going to happen tomorrow could either
41:08
be a scary thing because it's probably going to disrupt our
41:10
lives and something that we didn't expect is going to
41:12
happen. And it might not be a good
41:14
thing. And we might have to figure out
41:15
a way to solve that problem. You could frame it in a
41:19
fundamentally different way and say tomorrow might be the day
41:24
that something so amazing happens you can't even
41:26
comprehend it today. And the best you can do is
41:30
prepare yourself for that moment.
41:33
Work as hard as you can work, keep your word with your friends
41:36
and neighbors and, and figure out other people to surround
41:40
yourself with that share those same values and add, add
41:43
productive elements to your life as well.
41:46
And who knows? You might, you might end up like
41:48
Jordan Peterson or you might end up like Elon Musk.
41:52
And that that to me is the challenge.
41:55
Like, are you going to be afraid?
41:56
This goes back to Neil Peart's dichotomy.
41:59
Are you going to live a life of happy happiness or reason?
42:03
Are you going to live a life in fear?
42:05
Are you going to live a life where the most beautiful thing
42:09
that you can't imagine yet is going to happen right around the
42:12
corner of history? In, in the, the unfortunate
42:15
thing is you've got with that approach, you've got to fight
42:20
the person who's saying, oh, no, don't listen to that.
42:24
I actually know what's going to happen, follow me and this is
42:27
what it's going to be. And of course, whoever it is is
42:29
saying that has no idea but somehow attracts the followers.
42:35
The, you know, the, the demagogue of the day,
42:37
everyone's, everyone's angry at Donald Trump because he's, you
42:41
know, he, he convinced a, a majority of voters that, you
42:45
know, America had gone to hell in a handbasket and, and he
42:50
could make it great again. And somehow he pulled that off a
42:53
second time. And it's, it's fascinating.
42:57
But that again, that's typical, right?
42:59
Like all politics is politics is primarily driven by people's
43:03
fears and. It's so interesting that it's
43:06
it's in so many ways the anti Reagan where Reagan said, look,
43:11
things are getting better. We just need to get the
43:13
government out of the way and let the people do where his
43:16
approach is. No, America's down the toilet.
43:19
You need to elect me and I'm going to fix it.
43:21
Yeah, by, by the way, the Great Communicator, right?
43:25
He could tell. He could tell a story and he
43:27
could tell a joke. And a joke, right?
43:29
And he could convince people that their best days were ahead
43:34
of them. And it's, it's, it's the, it's
43:37
the framing, it's the message, it's the messenger, It's all
43:40
that stuff. But ultimately, like, you know,
43:43
as as pessimistic and and black pilled as libertarians get, we
43:47
should be the optimist because we actually understand how
43:52
beautiful things happen when people are free.
43:55
I think that one of the things that that stands in the way of
43:58
that is is we get, we libertarians get so hung up on
44:04
violations of libertarianism. And so we say, well, we forget
44:08
that the world is a wonderful place and we're going to move
44:10
forward even with an imperfect system, and we keep fighting for
44:15
a perfect one. Yeah.
44:18
The great has been the enemy of the good with the libertarians.
44:21
For probably since there have been libertarians, every
44:24
organization I've worked for, there's been an induct a, a, a
44:28
liberal, a liberalism or a classical liberalism or a
44:32
libertarian litmus test on the way in the door right.
44:36
And this is no way to have a movement.
44:39
But if you if you if you step back libertarian ideas when year
44:46
after year after year, libertarian politicians can't
44:51
can't get anything done. But I am so much freer and in
44:56
material, material terms, in better shape than anyone in my
45:01
family has ever been. Think, think about that all the
45:05
way back. For all of the humans in my
45:07
family tree. I'm freest.
45:13
That's amazing. It, it gets to the project and,
45:17
and our collaboration, which I just teased and I'm going to let
45:22
you guys announce, but it gets to this idea that we can reach
45:28
outside of our bubble and we don't have to apply that
45:32
libertarian litmus test. I'm not, I'm not particularly
45:35
interested in applying it to anybody because I, I, I have a
45:38
very broad swath of, of collaborators and friends and
45:42
colleagues who come from very different places.
45:46
And I always, I always sort of wear my libertarianism on my
45:48
sleeve so the people know where I'm coming from.
45:50
I'm not going to pretend that I'm something that I'm not.
45:53
But when I talk about this audience, the liberty curious,
45:58
they probably voted for Bernie in the primary six years ago.
46:03
I think that's fine. I, I understand why they did
46:05
that. Or, you know, maybe they voted
46:08
for Trump this time, having voted for Bernie the last time.
46:11
And I, I understand that too. Or at least I'm going to be, I
46:16
try to be a little bit empathetic when, when, when
46:19
people start trying to explain to me where they're coming from.
46:22
And I, I learned this, I learned how bad I was at it when I was
46:27
hanging out with some progressive friends for the
46:29
first time. And I, I realized just how
46:32
tribal and confusing and almost incoherent to me their language
46:37
was. They're speaking perfect
46:39
English, but I didn't understand what they're saying.
46:41
So instead of making fun of them, I'm like, guys, just so
46:45
you know, I'm trying to understand what you're trying to
46:47
say, but you got all these secret handshakes and code words
46:50
that you use. And and then I came back to my
46:53
tribe and I realized we do the same damn thing.
46:57
That's part of being in a tribe. Yeah, but I like, I it's hard
47:02
not to be optimistic about the idea that the three of us, you
47:09
know, if we catch a wave and maybe the algorithm isn't going
47:12
to punish us and maybe the censorship industrial complex is
47:16
not offended by anything we said on this podcast.
47:20
You might, you might catch a wave and turn on a bunch of new
47:24
people and that might build over time.
47:27
And, and to me, we should, we should be sort of humble and
47:30
experimental upon how, how we reach those audiences.
47:34
It's going to change everyday, you know, culture changes so
47:37
quickly now, but it's a, it's a worthy project to, to, to speak
47:44
to anyone that's willing to listen.
47:46
So Aunt first Kibby teased with something and then could be used
47:54
the word teased when referring back to that thing.
47:58
So it's probably time to talk about that thing would go for I
48:03
guess knowing what patterns are and being able to recognize them
48:08
and so. Are we going to add some
48:09
dramatic music and post to build up this moment?
48:13
I, I, I would suggest a, a Susa March, maybe something like this
48:18
that you could get the rights to real easily and not get sued
48:20
over. But Matt, why don't you, you
48:22
tell our, our nice people in our audience what's going on?
48:25
Oh. I thought Anthony was going to
48:27
do it. But he's not interested.
48:29
I thought James was going to do it.
48:30
I am interesting, OK. TuneIn next week when we
48:35
actually tell you. TuneIn Yeah, let's.
48:38
Let's just end it right now so that people have to watch again
48:41
next week, find out what their thing is that that that.
48:43
That's right, that's right. Or or you could watch Kibby on
48:46
Liberty on the 27th and get even more of this exact same
48:52
conversation would be my guess. Yes.
48:56
All right. I'm going to do it if and then
48:59
do you I think, James, your job on this show is is to correct me
49:03
every time I make an intellectual.
49:05
Error. That's that.
49:06
That is my goal in life and and no doesn't.
49:08
Hesitate. No, I don't know that our fans,
49:12
the followers of Words and Numbers, named themselves.
49:16
We had nothing to do with it. They refer to themselves as the
49:20
Wankers. So don't tell W what's going.
49:25
On W ampersand NKERS. If if I had known that this
49:30
announcement would have come out different than it will.
49:32
But you, you, everyone, you may have anticipated this by now.
49:36
But we are joining in an official partnership, voluntary
49:41
cooperation, words and numbers and free the people.
49:45
We're not going to change anything about this product.
49:48
There are no rules other than those imposed by your Co hosts.
49:53
But the idea would be to try to reach a bigger audience.
49:58
And, and one of the things that we've, we've noodled on quite a
50:02
bit of Free the people is like not not just the content side,
50:06
but like how to, how do we reach audiences on all these social
50:08
media platforms that ultimately could be quite collaborating.
50:12
So you will find that on May 28th, Words and Numbers is
50:17
moving to Free the People. The only thing that probably is
50:21
going to be disruptive is that the release day will will be on
50:27
Thursday starting on that day. And that's that's my fault
50:31
because my show to be on liberty on Blaze TV is on Wednesdays.
50:36
And that is something that Blaze TV decided, not me.
50:39
So we're we, we didn't want to compete with each other, but
50:43
maybe, maybe they'll be some sort of semi hostile crosstalk
50:47
when you guys say something I disagree with on your show and
50:50
then I'll take it back to my show.
50:52
Oh, that'll be fun. I actually I look forward to
50:54
this with great relish. This is going to be fantastic.
50:58
But I, I, I told you this guys this privately and I'll, I'll
51:02
say it publicly, I, I love your show and I've loved it for
51:05
years. And, and the idea of making
51:09
economics and basic philosophy of liberty stuff available and
51:14
accessible to a broader audience has been at the heart of soul,
51:17
heart and soul of what we'd like to do.
51:20
But I've already established that I'm more pretty than smart.
51:23
So I thought it made sense to actually bring some some smart
51:27
people. I won't comment on on the
51:29
prettiness part, but I thought it might make sense to add some
51:32
smart people to the roster. We're we are, as they used to
51:37
say, damn happy to be here. Yes.
51:40
So thanks for the cordial invitation and thanks for having
51:45
us and we will hopefully reflect well on this wise choice you
51:51
have made. It's going to be cool.
51:53
It's going to be awesome. We just on on free the people's
51:57
YouTube page. We just received our in fact I
52:00
have it right behind me if I could.
52:03
Oh, you got one of? Those, if I could brag for just
52:05
a minute, I'm going to put it in front of my face in order to how
52:09
do I do this? So can you see this?
52:10
That is our YouTube 100,000 subscribers prize.
52:17
Fantastic. My team is really proud about
52:19
that against all expectations. So, so when I was running a
52:24
group called Free the People, I had a, a massive Facebook page,
52:27
a public page. There's still 900,000 people on
52:31
that. And when we're finding new
52:33
traction on Facebook, you know, if you'd asked me two or three
52:36
years ago, I would have totally given up on it.
52:38
But I think, I think Mark Zuckerberg is facing more
52:41
competition. Instagram and X are also working
52:45
really well. So we're going to, we're going
52:47
to be distributing on all those platforms and, and the ideas
52:50
like those short clips pull people back who are willing to
52:54
spend the entire hour. We have found that on our
52:59
YouTube page and, and our content, generally, we get a
53:03
really nice watch time. So we're not these, these aren't
53:07
the fake number like you can, you can talk about impressions
53:10
and, and they don't really mean anything.
53:12
And you know, if, if someone's watching a podcast for two
53:15
minutes, it really doesn't mean anything.
53:17
But but the idea is to create things that are compelling
53:19
enough that that people want to immerse themselves.
53:22
And you know, as Ronald Reagan said, a rising tide lifts all
53:27
boats. And I think a lot of
53:28
organizations that sort of compete for eyeballs instead of
53:33
sharing eyeballs miss the point that you can, you can grow both
53:37
audiences simultaneously And, and that's what I know is going
53:43
to happen in this case. I'm, I'm very confident that
53:46
you're exactly right. What and we, we couldn't be
53:49
happier. So thanks for thanks for having
53:53
us on board. And I think in the end it'll
53:57
work out great and everybody will be happier for it.
54:00
Yeah, so some more more Howard work than Jordan Peterson.
54:06
And thanks for joining us. And to our listeners, you can
54:09
catch both me and James on Free the People's episode on the
54:15
27th. What have you said, 27th?
54:18
What have you said, 28th? So you, as I understand it, the
54:22
the my overlords say that you you guys are officially moving
54:27
to free the people's platform on the 28th.
54:29
So my, my, my show can be on liberty with you guys, will be
54:33
on the 27th, 27th, and there'll be an explosion of enthusiasm.
54:38
I I just hope that our robots can even handle this.
54:41
But it's going to be big ugly. We're looking forward to it.
54:45
Yeah. Looking forward to it.
54:47
Matt. Thanks for coming on.
54:48
Thanks for making the announcement and thanks for
54:51
everything. Yeah, good catching up and let's
54:53
let's cause some trouble. Yeah, let's make, let's make,
54:57
let's make some trouble. All right.