Latest / SpaceTomatoes / No Rulers, Just Tomatoes: Principled Anarchy with Michael Storm S3-EP1

Transcript

No Rulers, Just Tomatoes: Principled Anarchy with Michael Storm S3-EP1 · SpaceTomatoes

• 0:00
  I had a conversation with somebody from India, and they don't understand Americans, and they don't understand anarchy, and they want to understand what that's about.
• 0:11
  And sort of trying to explain to them the idea of more liberty than liberty.
• 0:19
  They think – at least this individual has this idea that I think most statists do, especially someplace else.
• 0:29
  In America, we still, some of us think we're free, but they still have this idea that we wouldn't have what we have if it wasn't for government, if it wasn't for the organization of the system.
• 0:59
  All right, everybody.
• 1:03
  Welcome back to another episode of the Space Tomatoes podcast.
• 1:07
  I'm one of your hosts, Havoc.
• 1:09
  I'm the other guy, LX.
• 1:11
  Hello.
• 1:11
  I'm that other guy.
• 1:12
  Look at that guy.
• 1:14
  Today we have a special guest with us, Michael Storm, the principled anarchist.
• 1:19
  Welcome to the show.
• 1:21
  Hi, fellas.
• 1:22
  Thanks for inviting me.
• 1:23
  I really appreciate the opportunity to come chat with you and hang out with you.
• 1:26
  Looking forward to it.
• 1:28
  Absolutely.
• 1:29
  So, principled anarchist. So, here's a good question for you. What started you down the path of anarchy?
• 1:41
  Yeah, I mean, I guess that depends on how you look at it, because I've always been an anarchist. I've always sided with that ideology. I was very young when I first heard of anarchism. I don't know, 12 years old, something like that.
• 1:56
  But I also at the same time met a great libertarian man, a capital L libertarian, one of the earliest members of the Libertarian Party.
• 2:06
  And it just helped guide me.
• 2:09
  Those guys, those early members of the Libertarian Party were all anarchists or minarchists, if nothing else.
• 2:15
  And so I've just always had a young influence in that direction, but maybe not necessarily fully understanding an ideology of anarchy as much as I would today.
• 2:29
  okay yeah that makes sense i know for me i was kind of the opposite raised in you know the olden
• 2:39
  days and uh you know we didn't have free and available access to information outside of the
• 2:45
  five o'clock or ten o'clock news you know what i mean and you could go to a library and check out
• 2:50
  books but there there wasn't you know nobody was saying hey you need to go check out lysander spoon
• 2:57
  or Rothbard or, you know, Mises or, you know, the gosh, now I'm Bastiat or, you know, I mean,
• 3:08
  I can just keep listing authors, but nobody was really saying that. So I kind of grew up in a
• 3:13
  family that was conservative in nature. Yeah. And then, you know, going from that, I became
• 3:22
  disillusioned with that. And then from conservatism, I, you know, this tea party thing was going on and
• 3:28
  I'm like, Oh, well, let me check that out. And then I was like, all right, well, that's not it
• 3:33
  either. And then, uh, you know, I started looking at, you know, constitutional movements and I was
• 3:39
  like, yeah, there's something just, it's not, you know, go back to the, that's what's, we started
• 3:46
  there. Right. And so here we are going back to it, just what prolongs the inevitable maybe.
• 3:53
  And so I was like, and then I looked at the libertarian, big L libertarian, you know,
• 3:58
  concept. And, you know, by this point, yeah, you know, a lot of good messages, great people,
• 4:04
  I think in general, a lot of them. Um, but it's still revolved around the idea of a central
• 4:11
  governing authority, more freedom, more liberty, but still that central governing authority.
• 4:18
  And that's where I kind of started to, you know, there's got to be something else out there. And
• 4:23
  that's where I found, you know, anarchism myself.
• 4:28
  Maybe for our listeners, we can get into a little bit of what exactly the anarchy definition is,
• 4:34
  and what maybe both of you think it is, because I'm not well versed in it that much. And maybe
• 4:39
  there are different varying degrees uh i'm not really sure yeah there is it depends on who you
• 4:47
  want to side with typically anarchism is a leftist ideology but there is a very much a a more right
• 4:55
  i don't left right whatever uh ideology to anarchy in accepting things like capitalism
• 5:02
  and and realizing that there are actual things that are real in this world and it's not all
• 5:09
  just about how you feel about how government and people should act.
• 5:13
  Anarchy is simply no rulers.
• 5:16
  And that's it.
• 5:17
  And so for me, that means that I don't try to rule over other people,
• 5:23
  dictate what they do, determine what they do, unless they ask me.
• 5:28
  If they invite me in and they want my feedback on who they are
• 5:32
  and who I think they should be, then I will gladly give them that input.
• 5:36
  Otherwise, as long as they're not impeding me, I'm not impeding them.
• 5:41
  We're going to do fine.
• 5:42
  We're going to do great in this world.
• 5:43
  We're going to get along just like you and I and everybody else does on an everyday, day-to-day basis without consideration of the need for or the input of authority.
• 5:55
  Yeah.
• 5:56
  And I would mirror that statement.
• 5:58
  I mean, anarchy really comes from Latin, right?
• 6:01
  And I always mess up the second part.
• 6:03
  but an meaning without anarchy or I think it's arca, but I can't recall.
• 6:09
  I always mess this up.
• 6:10
  So double check, leave a comment, call me out on it.
• 6:14
  I'm good.
• 6:14
  I'll respond, follow my sword.
• 6:16
  But the second part means rulers, right?
• 6:19
  And that's literally what it means.
• 6:21
  And the idea is that we're, you know, essentially born into this world in that state, right?
• 6:27
  and, you know, through this program of indoctrination, we become, you know, hopeful
• 6:35
  statist, I suppose. But, you know, it is the most simple form of things and it literally comes down
• 6:42
  to don't harm others or their property and don't impede their ability to do and, you know, do what
• 6:50
  you want. Don't harm others and don't harm their property and don't impede others ability to do
• 6:57
  the following the prior three things right so everyone you know can go and basically do what
• 7:03
  you want you know you know being respectful etc is you know kind of a i think a human nature thing
• 7:11
  right you like this we see this all the time and in the news how people are at each other but
• 7:17
  you know lx you and i have had these discussions on this show right we diverse group of people with
• 7:24
  various ideas and ideologies and we have a great time once a year every year and it you know that's
• 7:31
  the natural state of humans right and so yeah i mirror that so i think the biggest question the
• 7:38
  biggest question i would have is respect is a big thing for me and it seems in my perspective a lot
• 7:48
  of people out there in the world do not have it so how do you um without rulers kind of how does
• 7:56
  everybody follow the uh agreed upon rules or is there rules or does it just does no rulers mean no
• 8:03
  rules or or how does that work and how do you make sure everybody is respectful of everybody else
• 8:08
  without overstepping and telling them what to do basically
• 8:12
  it's a thin line it's there's a thin line that it's it's such a thin line that let me explain
• 8:22
  it this way um there's a lot of political ideology just that suggests that it's multifaceted that
• 8:30
  freedom is multifaceted and that's a lie freedom is a straight line it's on this side is anarchy
• 8:37
  on this side is slavery and everything everywhere in between is just some lesser form of tyrannies
• 8:44
  and slavery. There are plenty of rules. There are all sorts of rules. The thing that the anarchist
• 8:50
  really appreciates about rules is actual rules, rules of law that you will. These are the types
• 8:58
  of things that while you may skirt them for a while, they will eventually catch up with you.
• 9:04
  You can only just jump off a cliff with a parachute just so many times before there's a failure, before there's a number somewhere in there, and the law of gravity takes over.
• 9:18
  And it's the same with people, and this is the answer to your question, really.
• 9:23
  It's about empowering individuals, and so the rules are something that you either voluntarily follow or you go somewhere else,
• 9:32
  and you don't play the game with those particular people.
• 9:36
  So it's based on what those rules are.
• 9:38
  If those rules are something that you can voluntarily participate in and you accept,
• 9:44
  then by all means, become a part of the community and participate.
• 9:49
  But if you're not, then you're not going to get along real well
• 9:53
  if you buck whatever system that you are born into, go into,
• 10:00
  in terms of always trying to fight against it.
• 10:02
  You know, I suggest that one turn their back on it as opposed to try to actively fight this this system that we have.
• 10:12
  And and but that doesn't mean that the rules don't still exist out here, that it's just free for all for everybody that I don't accept government authority.
• 10:24
  Well, then now I'm going to go out and start robbing and and caging and murdering people.
• 10:28
  No, because that's I believe that that's you don't do that to people. You don't take their things. You don't harm them. And and I think that we all already live this way and we don't need an authority to tell us that.
• 10:44
  And the empowered people part is where you get justice for people who are violated because they're empowered to to protect themselves and defend themselves and defend their property at the time, not wait around for some third party that says it can protect you to show up and shoot your dog or whatever they happen to do and then lock you in a cage because you violated one of their rules.
• 11:07
  But there's no victim. Right. Right.
• 11:11
  How do you go about achieving justice for people that are taken advantage of by people that just say, I don't want to be part of any system.
• 11:19
  I'm going to do whatever benefits me and I'm going to take whatever I want and that kind of person.
• 11:28
  Jump in anytime you want, Habik.
• 11:30
  I hear you guys there.
• 11:32
  I hit mute on my end so that I can listen fully to you guys.
• 11:36
  But jump in if you have any thoughts on any of this stuff, because I'm just going to keep going.
• 11:43
  No, absolutely.
• 11:45
  OK, I think, you know, at the end of the day, right, there's definitely rules with society.
• 11:51
  Societally, we have rules.
• 11:53
  A lot of people like to make this.
• 11:55
  Well, it's a law.
• 11:56
  That's why people don't do it.
• 11:58
  I don't know.
• 11:59
  You know, I live here and we all interact and we do our thing.
• 12:03
  And, you know, if someone's not happy, they'll open their window at two in the morning and yell, shut up, you know, and like we've had, there's no, nobody's, you see what I'm saying, right?
• 12:18
  This natural instinct, you know, to go and talk to someone and say, hey, let's, let's work this out.
• 12:24
  This is a problem for me, is there for us, right?
• 12:26
  So there are rules. And like, you know, Michael was saying, you know, the communities are going to have their own kind of sets of rules, right? How we cooperate, how we live together, how we, you know, maybe defend each other, etc.
• 12:40
  And so, you know, this is just a natural state, right?
• 12:44
  And then when you get into the lawbreakers, that's where a lot of people like to go, well, this would never work because roving gangs would set up like this.
• 12:53
  You mean like the federal government or the local government the roving gangs of people pulling you over because a light wasn functioning on a vehicle or something Literally claiming they have jurisdiction over a space
• 13:07
  Right. And so that's the difference. It becomes, you know, it becomes your job as part of a community to, you know, follow societal rules, right?
• 13:20
  norms, almost like norms, not just rules, right? What stops you, you know, people, you know,
• 13:28
  with some exceptions, again, you've got the criminal aspect, right? And there's the other
• 13:32
  aspect that Michael touched on, which is, you know, the self-defense. Right now, there's a big
• 13:39
  fear of defending oneself or one's property, because you're going to end up talking to the
• 13:45
  people than one of the roving gangs and trying to explain to them how this was a justifiable thing
• 13:51
  and good chance you're going to end up cuffed and taken in no matter what. So in this case,
• 13:59
  you defend yourself, you know, you defended yourself.
• 14:05
  It's happened to me. What you're talking about has happened to me. It happens about a hundred
• 14:10
  thousand times a year across the nation, if not more, somebody reasonably attempting to defend
• 14:18
  themselves or defending themselves charged just because they have violated some political or
• 14:26
  social opinion. They haven't even harmed anybody. That's the thing about it is that they haven't
• 14:31
  even harmed anybody in these instances. They've used a weapon or fear of some sort to drive
• 14:38
  someone away who threatened them. And the person who does that gets charged instead of the person
• 14:43
  who started the threat, who initiated this violence. There's words and then there's a line
• 14:52
  that's crossed. And when somebody starts approaching you with certain words out of their mouth saying
• 14:58
  they're going to harm you and hurt you, they've crossed a line. And if you're prepared to defend
• 15:05
  yourself and and you do it shouldn't be your fault if you reasonably defend yourself particularly if
• 15:13
  somebody backs away and you don't have to put somebody in the grave that day and uh it happens
• 15:20
  hundred thousand times at least a year across the nation somebody charged along those lines of
• 15:27
  justifiably trying to defend themselves or get this not just carrying a weapon just having a
• 15:34
  weapon and somebody reporting it and saying they feared for their life. It gets lumped in there.
• 15:40
  Maybe it doesn't happen as often as some of the other things that happen out there, but it happens.
• 15:45
  It's one of those things. You asked about justice and justice in a stateless society and an anarchist
• 15:51
  society and an enclave, whatever it happened to be. I love this because people think it's funny
• 15:57
  when I say it, but you want to know what justice is like in a stateless society and in an anarchist
• 16:03
  society, Judge Judy. That's justice. Somebody has a complaint against somebody. This guy violated me
• 16:12
  or he violated my property. Obviously, there are other extreme conditions. I'm talking about general
• 16:16
  conditions where all of us are generally in polite society agreeing that, oh, well, something
• 16:21
  happened here and something has to be done about it. You go before a third party arbiter and you
• 16:29
  present your case to them and you present the receipts and the evidence and that person makes
• 16:34
  a judgment call and and it's not based on uh you know precedent per se or what happened in the
• 16:43
  previous case or some law that exists it exists in this this common law this space that has always
• 16:50
  existed where we as a polite society feel violated by our neighbor we're talking about somebody in
• 16:59
  your community, generally speaking here, who violates you, violates your property, and you
• 17:04
  bring a complaint against them. And of course, obviously, they're extreme conditions. But a lot
• 17:09
  of the times, those extreme conditions are driven by the very nature of the system itself and the
• 17:16
  lack of support you get from the system, the things that the system takes from you and makes
• 17:22
  you weaker in, including just valuing yourself and your property as defensible.
• 17:29
  very well said very well said yeah it's it's uh you know it's
• 17:37
  i guess i just keep coming back to the same thing that's the way we come into this world
• 17:43
  right i mean you come into this world and when you're born there's no concept of a master or a
• 17:50
  ruler or some prime authority over you, right?
• 17:55
  You are free, naked, screaming, and hopefully someone will feed you.
• 18:02
  Hopefully.
• 18:04
  Yeah.
• 18:04
  And then I think an important thing, you know,
• 18:08
  on the anarchist side of the house is there are different factions,
• 18:13
  different ideologies, typically centered around economics, okay?
• 18:20
  And you've got on kind of one side of this, you've got, you know, and I'm just going to say anarcho one time.
• 18:28
  It's just kind of anarcho this.
• 18:32
  And you've got the anarcho socialists, the communists and the mutualists, which all kind of are in that loose area.
• 18:42
  And then on the other side, you've kind of got the end caps or anarcho capitalists.
• 18:47
  See, I actually did say it twice. Individualists kind of sit in between, I guess, those. And then somewhere in there is the anarchists. Right. And these are, you know, black flag, old school anarchists that are like, I don't care about your economy. I don't care about what you want to do. You know, it's just plain anarchy. Right.
• 19:15
  And so there's varying ideas. So the idea behind this is, you know, there would certainly be enclaves or communities, tribes, whatever you want to call them, communes of, you know, communists, socialists, mutualists, individualists, probably not.
• 19:33
  They'd probably be doing mostly their own thing, but work out trade and barter and work whatever with the other communities, you know, and then the anarcho-capitalists, which are, you know, really just the only difference there is, you know, capitalism, right?
• 19:51
  here's a token that represents some worth and i'm going to trade it with you and you're going to give
• 19:56
  me you know that worth right and uh you know it's it's an interesting thing because it's if you want
• 20:05
  to if you want a room of people that can never agree with each other put 10 anarchists in a room
• 20:09
  yeah that's the libertarians too that's why there's such a toothless useless sort of
• 20:17
  political force because they're already disenfranchised with the left and right and what
• 20:23
  they have to offer. And so they just sort of try to meet somewhere in the middle as if that's a
• 20:28
  place that really exists when the left and the right are like right here, right next to each
• 20:33
  other. You can't even put a hair or a piece of paper between them. There's so no difference
• 20:39
  between them. Just some appearance on social issues. But that all waxes and wanes depending
• 20:47
  on the wax job on the hairdo of the guy that's in charge.
• 20:52
  Yeah.
• 20:54
  Yeah, and it is an interesting thing, right?
• 20:57
  I mean, it just is.
• 20:59
  You get freedom-loving people together,
• 21:02
  and just like everyone else, they have different ideas.
• 21:06
  But I've seen a lot more of that community coming together.
• 21:12
  You'll see ANCAP sitting there saying,
• 21:14
  you know hey you know helicopter rides folks you need to chill out that's that's not that's not it
• 21:21
  doesn't fit in the vein of and of an end cap ideology you know you don't take people you don't
• 21:27
  like up in a helicopter and kick them out and the same with the tankies right and the tankies are the
• 21:33
  common and and comms is what they're called anarcho-communists that you know again they
• 21:38
  want to you know impose communism and it's like well that's not and you just take the anarcho
• 21:43
  off of that because you're, you're, and what you're saying is we want to centrally rule,
• 21:48
  right? Everybody shall be like us. And that's one of the big issues, right? Is, uh, and,
• 21:54
  and a lot of why I gravitated towards individualism, but really it just fits me,
• 21:58
  right? I live on a little farm out in the middle of nowhere. I engage with very few people in real
• 22:04
  life. And if I could never leave my property ever again, I'd be very, very happy about that.
• 22:10
  so all right so i got a question for you havoc what is because i would probably self-identify
• 22:16
  because i really don't self-identify as anything as a live and let live kind of person what is the
• 22:21
  difference between that and an anarchist if anything there isn't there is not that's that's
• 22:27
  exactly the principle live and let live don't harm other people don't harm their property
• 22:33
  and you know do what you want right and don't impede other people's ability to do what they
• 22:40
  want and don't harm their, you know, you see what I'm saying is live and let live. You're living,
• 22:46
  doing what you want, having a good time, and you're going to let others do the same. It's
• 22:52
  literally that simple, you know, in another term for the greater, uh, anarchy movement, uh, all of
• 23:01
  the ideologies is you, and you'll hear me say this, right? I'm, I'm a small L libertarian because
• 23:08
  in in the you know old days like 1800s you know even prior to that that was the term used it wasn't
• 23:16
  anarchist it was primary primarily just libertarian and then along came you know the libertarian party
• 23:24
  and now there's there's a need to do you know be distinct in that right i i am not a statist i'm
• 23:31
  not a minarchist at all. I'm not a statist. I don't believe that it is necessary, reasonable,
• 23:38
  or good at all. Um, and libertarians do, they feel we still need, you know, X, Y, and Z. And
• 23:45
  it aligns really closely with minarchy and minarchy is I want anarchy, except we need to
• 23:53
  have a state. We need to protect the borders. We need a military, you know, stuff like that,
• 23:57
  which I don't know why they have Arky in there.
• 24:00
  It's, you know, minimum Arky, I guess.
• 24:03
  Minimum rulers, so.
• 24:05
  I think the biggest roadblock you face with anarchy
• 24:09
  is just the name itself.
• 24:10
  I mean, for me, not knowing anything about it,
• 24:13
  I mean, what, the instant image that comes in my head
• 24:15
  is some 80s punk rocker wearing the leather jacket
• 24:19
  with the big A on the back,
• 24:20
  and he's got the, you know, Liberty spiked hairdo
• 24:22
  and the, you know, spiked chains,
• 24:24
  and he just wants to rebel against everything
• 24:26
  for the simple fact that it's there to rebel against.
• 24:29
  That honestly is accurate as fuck.
• 24:32
  I mean, it is.
• 24:35
  I own a leather jacket.
• 24:37
  I don't have a mohawk.
• 24:38
  I never had a mohawk, but.
• 24:40
  I did.
• 24:41
  I did.
• 24:42
  And a leather jacket.
• 24:43
  But yeah, no, absolutely, right?
• 24:48
  A lot of this, you know, current movement of this, right?
• 24:53
  the upswelling of it came from kind of the punk rock movement, right?
• 24:58
  And if you listen to those songs, you'll hear the cry for freedom, for liberty, for, you know, this is ridiculous.
• 25:05
  Stop, you know, doing what you're doing.
• 25:08
  And a lot of them, in fact, I would say the vast majority of them, you'll find, you know, very strong anti-war messages in them as well, right?
• 25:18
  Right. So in the thing, I think it's really this is an important piece here.
• 25:27
  20 years ago, if you heard the term conspiracy theorist, you're thinking a guy with tinfoil walls and ceiling and floor and maybe a tinfoil hat.
• 25:38
  And, you know, he's like hiding in the, you know, and that's what you thought of.
• 25:43
  Just total whack job. Right.
• 25:44
  The guy's sitting there talking about MKUltra and, you know, Operation Sea Spray and, you know, all of these things.
• 25:51
  And, oh, my gosh, he's just a whack job.
• 25:53
  And now we are like OK well all of that was true and we know it now So conspiracy theories and conspiracy theorists are no longer quite as you know it like what the difference between a fact and a conspiracy theory A few months
• 26:10
  yeah anymore and then of course that's a manufactured term too right i mean that's a
• 26:18
  that's a term that's used negatively by the system to address people and and to to demonize them and
• 26:25
  one of the things they love to do this is something that that was just an interesting
• 26:29
  take on it that happened here recently you know all the the scientists that went missing have gone
• 26:35
  killed themselves disappeared whatever all these things have happened right and they're all
• 26:39
  supposedly tied to the nuclear program.
• 26:43
  And as soon as I've been watching it for some time
• 26:47
  and been bubbling in the background there for a while
• 26:49
  and say anything about it,
• 26:51
  because I know exactly where it's going.
• 26:53
  It goes where this stuff goes all the time,
• 26:55
  whether there's any truth or any validity to it or not.
• 26:59
  There's some manipulation.
• 27:00
  There's something else behind paying attention to it at this point.
• 27:05
  And as soon as it got into the public eye,
• 27:08
  they immediately went,
• 27:09
  These guys worked at Area 51, and it was UFOs, and don't pay attention to this.
• 27:13
  So whether there was anything there or not, they immediately wanted you to not pay attention to it
• 27:18
  or wanted to associate it with the real conspiracy guys.
• 27:21
  They love to get the conspiracy guys with the alien stuff.
• 27:24
  If you can get conspiracy guy and alien at the same time, you can discredit anything else that comes out of his mouth.
• 27:31
  They love that.
• 27:33
  Yeah, and most of that's manufactured.
• 27:37
  Anarchy, anarchism, anarchist, all of those terms have been bastardized now the same way conspiracy theorist was bastardized, right?
• 27:48
  It was actually created by the CIA to kookify people that were like getting info and finding out about things through hunches and then research and, you know, a lot of work on their end.
• 28:02
  And they're like, we got to kookify these things.
• 28:04
  And if you want a great example of that, pull up Mel Gibson's movie, Conspiracy Theorist.
• 28:12
  And that'll give you a perfect example.
• 28:14
  In the movie, he's highlighted as a whack job, total weird nut, etc.
• 28:20
  He's talking about MKUltra and mind control.
• 28:24
  And all this stuff, again, is well known now.
• 28:27
  But they tried to kookify people, right?
• 28:30
  Make them whack jobs for digging into this stuff.
• 28:34
  And so the same is true with anarchy, right? Now you hear, you know, most people hear anarchy and they think, oh, you know, burning cars and destroying property and hurting people and, you know, all this stuff. This, the antithesis of anarchy or anarchism.
• 28:50
  And what you'll find if you do an honest review of who and what are historically called anarchists
• 29:00
  They're almost invariably just some other socialist statist
• 29:06
  That isn't happy with the power structure at the time
• 29:10
  Almost all of these anarchist movements that come up
• 29:14
  They're socialist movements
• 29:16
  They're leftist communist movements that are out to destroy creativity and free ideas and take over the state in almost every case.
• 29:27
  And you've said a word there a few times.
• 29:30
  We've said the word there a few times.
• 29:32
  That's the big difference between the real big difference, not just economy, between this sort of left anarchists and right anarchists or not politically aligned anarchists.
• 29:44
  I don't know.
• 29:45
  I guess it's economic lines.
• 29:48
  It was just looking at it as economic lines left and right and not political lines,
• 29:52
  which is still not much of an explanation at all anyway.
• 30:00
  I forgot what my point was here real quick.
• 30:03
  That's all right. It happens to me too.
• 30:05
  I'm sure it will come right back to me.
• 30:09
  I'm sure it will.
• 30:10
  So I even write down a couple of notes just so I can come back to a couple of things.
• 30:16
  But oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 30:17
  It was what you mentioned, what we've all mentioned a few times, the big separating line between the types of anarchists, the left and the right anarchists, is the property line.
• 30:26
  It's literally the property line.
• 30:28
  These guys on one side of it don't believe that property is a valid thing.
• 30:31
  And the other guys believe that you come into this world and you make and create and barter and buy what you have and it's yours.
• 30:41
  And nobody has any claim or right to it unless you offer it to them.
• 30:45
  And that includes you as an individual, you yourself, everything that you yourself produce and everything that is you yourself.
• 30:53
  The property line.
• 30:55
  yeah and to be fair right I mean in on the the you know the more I don't like using the left
• 31:04
  right paradigm it doesn't describe it very because and then you have to start talking
• 31:09
  about the economics you have to start talking about the economics of it and you've mentioned
• 31:13
  some of the important points and and then I was pointing over here to Henry Hazlitt here
• 31:17
  so talking about the the the history of anarchy and the long history of anarchy I don't know what
• 31:23
  we had 600 years or something like that uh and and so there's all of these stories and there's
• 31:30
  all these philosophies and there's all these people and i don't know who any of them are
• 31:35
  i i've heard of a few of them i know a few of the names but i aside from the you know reading like
• 31:40
  the constitution of no authority which i got around to reading a couple years ago uh i have
• 31:45
  no idea what what brought me there was a right-wing libertarianism if you will it was learning about
• 31:51
  Bastia. It was learning Hazlitt, Henley Hazlitt, Economics in One Lesson is the only economics
• 31:57
  book I've ever read. And the only law book I've ever read is Bastia. So yeah, that's my, that's my
• 32:04
  basis for my anarchism. Both great books, honestly. And to be fair on the, on the end,
• 32:11
  calm and sock side, right? It's not that you can't, you know, have your home and things like
• 32:17
  that, right? It's what you're using, right? I've taken a good amount of time, you know, engaging in
• 32:24
  conversation with people that are on, you know, mutualist, communist, socialist sides, uh, to try
• 32:32
  and understand it because it doesn't make sense to me because all I've ever known about those
• 32:37
  ideologies is, uh, you know, the statist portion of that. And so, you know, they're basically saying
• 32:45
  their big thing is, you know, you know, they're not big on landlords and things of that nature.
• 32:51
  Right. Whereas like the end cap side would be like, yeah, if I want to own 50 homes and rent
• 32:58
  out 49 of them, I can do that. You know what I mean? And I don't have a problem with either side,
• 33:04
  to be honest with you. I really don't. I don't want to be in, you know, I kind of want to do my
• 33:08
  own thing. I just, just, I'm going to be my individualist self and do my own thing and I'll
• 33:13
  That's perfect.
• 33:14
  Who trade with the ANCAPs.
• 33:15
  Right there as an individualist because that means you probably don't want to necessarily own property because then you're tied to that property.
• 33:24
  You're tied to the city.
• 33:25
  You're tied to the community.
• 33:26
  You're tied to all these.
• 33:27
  That's one of the things that interests me about the ANCOMs and the difference between that understanding of property.
• 33:38
  And I get that the idea of property should be about utility and management.
• 33:43
  But that's what somebody does when they rent out property for somebody else to live in as long as they continue to manage it.
• 33:50
  That's the utility is somebody lives there.
• 33:53
  So I'm at a disconnect.
• 33:55
  I'm in the same space that you are.
• 33:56
  I really don't get it.
• 33:58
  I don't.
• 33:59
  Their arguments fall apart once it gets to the point where you talk about other people being involved in doing and creating and having the things that they have.
• 34:10
  You want to go live on somebody else's property that lets you live there and you eat the dirt and eat what's on the land and what you can grow, then maybe you can live a communist lifestyle.
• 34:22
  But it doesn't scale.
• 34:23
  And frankly, anarchism doesn't scale either.
• 34:26
  None of these things scale.
• 34:27
  Democracy doesn't scale.
• 34:29
  Republican ideals don't scale.
• 34:31
  People scale.
• 34:33
  Ideas about respect for the individual and leaving that person alone, the live and let live.
• 34:39
  that's what scales none of this other stuff scales with it none of it not even anarchism i'd love to
• 34:45
  say it does but it doesn't no it doesn't and that's that's a key ingredient i think a lot of
• 34:50
  people you know when they're interested in learning about it or or engaged in a debate about it or
• 34:58
  wondering if there's any utility to it whatsoever you know they're one of the key questions they
• 35:04
  have well how does that work how do you manage the united states you don't why why would you ever
• 35:10
  want to manage all of that like your community like for me it might be my street right and my
• 35:18
  street has you know very few homes on it but that's it there is if you're in like new york city
• 35:23
  it may be a floor of your building it may be the building it may be a couple of segments in the
• 35:28
  building but it wouldn't be if it grows outside of that then you're you're you're you're back to
• 35:35
  where we don't want to be right you're now managing the lives of someone else that have nothing to do
• 35:41
  with you and you don't even know who they are we know this we know this sociology the sociology
• 35:48
  behind it we know the biology behind it we pretty well understand it at this point and you know you
• 35:53
  get past about 60 people 60 faces 100 faces in your community you don't know people anymore you
• 35:59
  know who they are and so you start that's where it really begins to break down and i'm not
• 36:04
  suggesting that all of our communities need to be any given size or any particular size but i think
• 36:09
  people need to realize that once you get past a certain size of a community that somebody somewhere
• 36:15
  is going to have to make decisions about what's done and and and and it's weird that you wouldn't
• 36:20
  think that people wouldn't think that that would happen because in that other community,
• 36:24
  somebody still has to make decisions, even if they pretend that it's a committee and
• 36:27
  they all show up and they vote for it.
• 36:29
  And they're all happy about the vote when they walk out.
• 36:32
  Ha ha.
• 36:33
  Yeah.
• 36:33
  Yeah.
• 36:34
  No, that's 100 percent true.
• 36:37
  Right.
• 36:37
  And so it's really about small localized communities, tribes, if you will.
• 36:42
  Sorry, I'm trying to get my shoes over here.
• 36:45
  Tribes, if you will, you know, really keeping it local and contained because
• 36:50
  at the end of the day and the interesting piece here right you you just did an episode on on your
• 36:56
  podcast uh and it was about uh this concept of you know self-defense through local voting right
• 37:05
  and i'm personally not big on that but i i understand the concept and and i think if you
• 37:12
  were to apply a vote somewhere and lend credibility to that system in general,
• 37:21
  the only place that it would make any sense to do that is as locally as possible for me.
• 37:27
  Right. I won't do it because it's against my principle period. Right. I just don't believe
• 37:34
  any of those entities. But the concept is, you know, they're going to pass this thing and it's
• 37:39
  going to do X, Y, and Z, and that's bad, so I'm going to vote no on it. It's not so much I'm going
• 37:47
  to vote yes for this new thing, it's I'm going to use my self-defense mechanism to say no, I don't.
• 37:55
  Just stop, you know? Yeah, pretend like they're not attacking you, take the defensive part out,
• 38:01
  and it's still just voting. That's the answer to that question. It works as well as voting does.
• 38:07
  It doesn't. It works on a small scale. It doesn't scale. It just it's not the way we're supposed to live.
• 38:14
  And because it just it gets too big, it's too big to manage.
• 38:17
  And and everybody likes to think, oh, you can put the great management team in place.
• 38:22
  It's not that doesn't work like that. We're not we you don't manage people like that.
• 38:27
  You manage businesses like that. And and the people that work in businesses, you can manage them like that because they stop being people when they walk in the door of the business.
• 38:35
  They are now a cog in the wheel of the business, and hopefully they're there voluntarily and getting paid what they deserve to be paid for.
• 38:44
  But they given up that sovereignty that exists on the other side of that door to suggest that yes there somebody who can run this place better than I can or at least he in charge right now until I get there Either way we accept it And we can accept that in any situation in any little community It all about the fact that we still manage to have the things that we
• 39:15
  have. I just had a conversation with somebody from India, and they don't understand Americans,
• 39:23
  and they don't understand anarchy and they want to understand what that's about.
• 39:28
  And sort of trying to explain to them the idea of more liberty than liberty.
• 39:37
  They think, you know, at least this individual has this idea that I think most statists do,
• 39:44
  especially someplace else.
• 39:46
  In America, we still, some of us think we're free,
• 39:48
  But they still have this idea that we wouldn't have what we have if it wasn't for government, if it wasn't for the organization of the system.
• 39:58
  And I just tell them, and it blows their minds, I think exactly the opposite.
• 40:05
  And I think it's obvious that it's exactly the opposite.
• 40:08
  I think we would be much further along as a society, much better people, more happier society if it wasn't for government holding us back all the time.
• 40:17
  government always interfering and leeching office i mean we're talking about the leech class
• 40:21
  and they call themselves a political class but they are the leech class they don't do any work
• 40:27
  but go around trying to find reasons for us to hire them to do some kind of work like defense
• 40:34
  or something like that that we almost never need and and they can't even meet that
• 40:39
  another previous episode can they defend us recent episode of the show can they defend us
• 40:45
  Can they protect us?
• 40:46
  No, because they're not there.
• 40:47
  They're not there at the time and the space.
• 40:50
  And they just make up all these reasons and excuses why we should have to pay them.
• 40:54
  And they're a leech class.
• 40:55
  They produce jack squat, but wars.
• 41:01
  And we know what wars do.
• 41:04
  I mean, they destroy.
• 41:06
  They're not production.
• 41:08
  It's another one of those false economic ideas, right?
• 41:12
  We were in a depression.
• 41:14
  Things weren't going great.
• 41:15
  So then all of a sudden the war came along and there was all this activity and all this production and everything.
• 41:19
  And we came out of this Great Depression.
• 41:23
  Not really.
• 41:25
  There's a whole different side to that.
• 41:27
  There's a whole other side to that you're missing in that conversation a lot.
• 41:33
  I mean, think about what we're doing right now.
• 41:35
  Each of us has a screen in front of us, a camera, a microphone, some kind of a listening device, probably a mixer, a computer, keyboard, mouse, all these things.
• 41:51
  What was government's role in all of that?
• 41:55
  I'm sitting in a house right now.
• 41:58
  What was government's role in that?
• 42:01
  They'll send you the tax bill every year.
• 42:03
  Well, of course.
• 42:05
  But, but you see what I'm saying in that to the point right there, you just made the point they take, that's all they do.
• 42:12
  They take and then they fund whatever they feel like funding.
• 42:17
  And, and, you know, it's, it's, it's absolutely painfully obvious to anyone that pays even a modicum of attention that they don't work for you.
• 42:28
  Right.
• 42:28
  The, the current war unpopular, you know, there's a number of things that are vast.
• 42:35
  vastly unpopular. And I don't know if you saw it, but Mike Huckabee, who is now the ambassador
• 42:42
  for Israel, came out and, you know, there was an interview done. I just caught a clip of this. I
• 42:48
  didn't watch this episode because I can't stand to listen to those people for more than a minute or
• 42:53
  so. But, you know, he was asked, you know, well, you know, do the American voices matter? You know,
• 42:59
  the constituents that these people represent, do they even matter? And Huckabee said, yeah,
• 43:05
  of course they do. And I'm paraphrasing. I'm not quoting this exactly. Yeah, of course they do.
• 43:10
  And they said, you know, the question was, well, what about this war? You know, this Iran war,
• 43:15
  it's, it's not popular. Well, we can't leave, you know, big decisions up to the people.
• 43:22
  There it is. He just said the quiet part out loud, right? You aren't being represented,
• 43:28
  you're being dictated to. And, you know, they're going to give you all the promises in the world.
• 43:33
  And when they get in, they're going to do whatever the heck they're being told to or they feel like doing.
• 43:38
  And most of the time, that's going to be very inclusive of making sure that their donors and, you know, other classes are getting paid well, very well on your dime.
• 43:53
  It usually comes out of money.
• 43:55
  Every time I've ever asked myself why it comes out of money in the end.
• 44:00
  Yeah, it's always money.
• 44:01
  you know always but the funny thing is you know i mean like you know uh ayn rand atlas shrugged
• 44:08
  right money is a tool it's it's just something to transact with it's you know but we've put it on
• 44:15
  this pedestal as something far more than that right and furthermore the government has been
• 44:22
  choosing winners and losers for a very long time you know you want to go start your own shop and
• 44:28
  and, you know, go, you know, get a building and start doing all this. You're, you're on your own,
• 44:33
  man. You're just on your own. Uh, you know, BMW comes in and they're like, Oh, would you like a
• 44:38
  railway coming up to your door? And, you know, a nice freeway on off ramp right at your facility.
• 44:44
  And, you know, Hey, maybe we could just take your taxes off the bill for, you know, 20 years or so.
• 44:50
  And, you know, all you could do is promise us a few jobs, you know, you're going to create a
• 44:54
  couple of jobs here and there. And, you know, so right there, they're choosing winners and losers,
• 44:59
  right? You didn't get anything. Sure. You could go apply for an SBA loan or something and,
• 45:04
  you know, do something like that. But, you know, I mean, these guys get courted like,
• 45:08
  Hey, we have this, would you like to move here? You know what I mean? It's a completely rigged
• 45:14
  system when it, when it comes down to it. And so, you know, government doesn't create,
• 45:18
  it doesn't create well you know yeah i guess even then it doesn't create right
• 45:25
  it just buys stuff and and takes your money to do it they're real good at spending the money though
• 45:32
  yeah they just take money from one place and and spend it that's what they do yeah and
• 45:38
  unfortunately they don't they don't do a a lot of other good in the process and and it's just
• 45:46
  kind of wasted money going to them unfortunately because i think most of these things the you know
• 45:51
  the smaller communities can be come together and have things done it's an interesting thing
• 45:58
  somebody was talking i don't even remember who it was i was watching could have been anybody
• 46:03
  but they were they were talking specifically about oh it was mike rowe and he was talking to
• 46:12
  who was the guy i'll never remember who it was uh they but they were just talking about
• 46:18
  they're just talking about sort of life in general and and and it just it was funny because
• 46:23
  the other guy he happened to mention something that struck me weirdly because he said one of
• 46:30
  the best greatest things that ever happened and i'm a capitalist so don't get me wrong don't
• 46:35
  this isn't going in in the wrong direction was the stock market coming along and i said
• 46:42
  no wait wait a minute that's a guy who i think he was a sociology professor a big guy in sociology
• 46:49
  and and so he understands people but he doesn't understand this he does he doesn't understand how
• 46:57
  how the stock market is just gambling for rich people and how it displaces investment it takes
• 47:05
  money that a rich person could be investing in his own community and puts it into some company
• 47:11
  somewhere else, some corporation out there on Wall Street. And so it just strikes me as there's so
• 47:19
  many people that believe that Wall Street, good thing, good thing. And so many people that believe
• 47:23
  Wall Street, bad thing. And there's so many different aspects of it to it to point to it,
• 47:31
  But just the general idea of what it does in terms of redistributing wealth out of states and competing states and making states compete against each other for things they wouldn't otherwise have to compete against.
• 47:46
  If you didn't have this legalized market for gambling on these companies, obviously you have to have a market for investing in anything anybody wants to.
• 47:56
  That's natural.
• 47:57
  But this created this space where it's protected and there's rules and, well, the government gets a cut.
• 48:08
  It's not going on in some boardroom or some back room somewhere that nobody knows about and they get their cut out of it.
• 48:15
  It's rules for thee, not for me.
• 48:19
  Yeah, and back to the they're good at spending money.
• 48:23
  Well, everyone is when it's not yours, right?
• 48:26
  I mean, if I gave you a card and said, hey, you know, here's this card.
• 48:30
  It's unlimited.
• 48:30
  Just go ahead.
• 48:31
  Go whatever you need.
• 48:32
  Just go for it.
• 48:34
  You're going to go spend money.
• 48:39
  If it's your card, you're going to think really hard about every purchase, right?
• 48:45
  And that's the difference.
• 48:46
  They have no incentive to think about what they're doing with it.
• 48:49
  There's none.
• 48:52
  That's true.
• 48:53
  It's not up there.
• 48:54
  I was thinking my facsimile in the first appearance of Wolverine was up there.
• 48:59
  First cover.
• 48:59
  I was going to say that you give me the credit card and tell me I want to do with it.
• 49:04
  It's the difference between me owning the original and the facsimile.
• 49:09
  Right.
• 49:10
  Yeah, exactly.
• 49:11
  And that's that's the thing.
• 49:12
  It's it's really easy to spend other people's money.
• 49:16
  It really is.
• 49:17
  It requires almost no conscious effort.
• 49:21
  And there's no penalty for it.
• 49:23
  That's the thing that they've learned over the years is nobody ever pays for it.
• 49:26
  Every once in a while, one of these guys will go to jail or get sued or something like that.
• 49:32
  But given how many of them there are that are grifting people on a daily basis, because we all think about the large central government.
• 49:41
  Well, what about the large state government?
• 49:44
  What about the large county government?
• 49:47
  They're just as corrupt, if not more.
• 49:49
  I think it's more
• 49:55
  I think it's more corrupt
• 49:56
  On the state level
• 49:58
  And the county level
• 49:59
  And certain cities too
• 50:02
  I don't know
• 50:04
  Because on the central level
• 50:06
  All they have is their show
• 50:09
  They get to put on their big show
• 50:11
  For democracy
• 50:12
  And for strength
• 50:16
  So that's all they really worry about
• 50:19
  Whereas when you get down to the state level, you can start getting to the county level and things like that.
• 50:23
  You actually get down to the resource management and the things that are going on in those states.
• 50:29
  And and and, you know, who and you're talking about government picking winners, you know, happens there, too.
• 50:37
  Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And it's it's funny. It's like, you know, another big argument is, you know, well, people need help.
• 50:45
  Right. And, uh, you know, there's people that need help, they need assistance and that doesn't stop. Right. I mean, if I, if I had all the money back, I would be far more charitable with my own community. You know what I mean? Um, and back in 2000 range, somewhere around 2000s, I remember seeing something online where someone had posted, you know, that only a small fraction of what is actually paid in goes to
• 51:15
  recipients, you know, welfare recipients. So I decided, um, I'm going to go down this rabbit hole.
• 51:22
  And I started digging things up and pulling numbers and everything else. And this is back
• 51:27
  in 2000. The average payout for someone on, you know, assistance was about $12,500.
• 51:35
  The amount that went, that was actually paid through that system to get that person,
• 51:41
  $12,500 was $85,000.
• 51:45
  So if you're arguing that government is necessary to help people, just think about the fact that that same person would have gotten an $85,000 check, not a $12,500 one.
• 51:58
  Which one seems more helpful to you?
• 52:00
  Isn't that crazy?
• 52:01
  Yeah, even if it was only half of that amount, it's still.
• 52:04
  you know, even, yeah, just a little less. Yeah. Yeah. And they're all living beyond gated
• 52:10
  communities and driving brand new cars. Yeah. So it's one of these things that, you know, look,
• 52:17
  we, whether we like it or not, at the end of the day, you, we, we are indoctrinated pretty much,
• 52:24
  you know, the second we start learning to read and, and, you know, talk and, you know, uh, you
• 52:31
  know, become slightly educated, right? Some argue from birth. Some, yeah. And it's possible. Yeah.
• 52:39
  I mean, there, there, there definitely are. Yeah. Homeschool. That's another rabbit hole.
• 52:42
  But that's, that's a whole show on its own. But, you know, so, you know, and, and look,
• 52:50
  parents are, are amazing. Right. But at the end of the day, you know, we all do, you know,
• 52:55
  We all have or do, and maybe not all of us, there are some communities that are wise to this and doing home births and homeschooling and everything else. And I'm a huge fan of that. But outside of those communities, which which exist and they are flourishing, but they're smaller and they're few and far between.
• 53:15
  And, you know, we then get put into this inter indoctrination camp where we spend the next 12 years being taught what, you know, what a good status does.
• 53:27
  You know, let me let me give you the history as we wrote it.
• 53:31
  Maybe it's not real.
• 53:33
  Maybe it is.
• 53:34
  You may find out someday.
• 53:36
  But, you know, we get talked about the political system.
• 53:39
  We don't get told about anarchism.
• 53:41
  We don't get told about agorism.
• 53:43
  We don't get told about, you know, even libertarianism, right? Maybe, maybe in a small, I remember hearing about the Green Party, but never libertarian parties. And so it's really, oh, well, you're either blue or you're red, you know, and, you know, so you're going to have to find which one is your voice, you know, and, you know, this indoctrination to become a good statist happens from an early stage, right?
• 54:07
  And so it's, you know, it's no wonder that people protect that system because they've been taught throughout, you know, years and years of having this pounded in their head that this is, you know, this is good.
• 54:23
  It's freedom.
• 54:24
  You have, you know, more freedom than anywhere else in the world.
• 54:28
  And, you know, I love that.
• 54:30
  What was that?
• 54:32
  Oh, gosh.
• 54:33
  The opening five minutes of the newsroom.
• 54:36
  If you've never seen that series, just pull up that that opening five minute scene.
• 54:43
  Just look up, you know, opening scene newsroom and just listen to what this gentleman says.
• 54:50
  You know what I mean? Because we aren't a free.
• 54:53
  You know, there's how many countries that have freedom as defined by, you know, the powers that should not be right.
• 55:01
  probably 180 of them plus that have that same level of freedom.
• 55:07
  But we're told that we are the freest country in the world.
• 55:12
  Make it make sense.
• 55:15
  Yeah, I don't think anybody's going to make it make sense because we're so disconnected,
• 55:21
  even in a totally connected world like we are now.
• 55:24
  We're so disconnected.
• 55:26
  You know, talking about earlier, talking to the guy in India or wherever it was,
• 55:30
  I don't remember exactly where it was.
• 55:31
  It was somewhere over there in that part of the world.
• 55:34
  And they just don't know.
• 55:37
  They only know what they see on the TV.
• 55:39
  They have no idea.
• 55:40
  They think we're either all running around with blue hair and bras or ARs and cowboy boots.
• 55:52
  When most of us are probably somewhere in between.
• 55:57
  I mean, I kind of like bras and cowboy boots as a mix, but whatever.
• 56:04
  If you're going to go for sexy.
• 56:06
  I like my boots, but I don't think I'm going to wear a bra.
• 56:10
  Come on, man.
• 56:13
  You can rock the bra thing.
• 56:14
  I'm going to have to gain a bunch of weight before I need a bra, man.
• 56:18
  Hey, Cup City.
• 56:21
  Right.
• 56:22
  Yeah.
• 56:23
  Yeah, no, it is interesting.
• 56:25
  And it's, you know, we have the same thing, right?
• 56:28
  I mean, it's a global phenomenon, right?
• 56:30
  I mean, you can go to this current war, right?
• 56:34
  And a lot of people thought, well, this is just a bunch of mullahs out there and, you know, Hylex trucks with, you know, AK-47s.
• 56:43
  And this is a real, you know, I would consider them a first world country.
• 56:49
  I really would.
• 56:50
  I mean, beautiful cities, you know, culture, heritage, extremely intelligent, very big on on, you know, education, you know, and it's just this whole thing.
• 57:03
  We get this weird idea that everywhere else is not free and really just a crap country, you know, with varying levels of how bad they are.
• 57:15
  Right. And it's, and how bad they'll be if we, if we don't stop them, how bad they'll make us,
• 57:21
  we don't stop them. And where does that all come from? We know where it comes from. It comes from
• 57:26
  that central authority trying to save its own job, trying to make itself something useful.
• 57:31
  It's money. It comes back to money, right? If we don't control all the central banks and they don't
• 57:36
  all, you know, uh, transact in us dollars, then we don't live the lifestyle we live. Um, and I'm
• 57:44
  okay with that i'm 100 okay with that we were the free country life before it if we were the free
• 57:50
  country we would have the hilux pickup trucks not the uh bloated tacomas that are way overpriced and
• 57:56
  that nobody can afford we'd have the 12 000 new pickup trucks you know what the afghanis all call
• 58:03
  their their politicians their bureaucrats the people in office etc they all call them thieves
• 58:09
  there's literally what they they call them they are thieves wow they get it right oh yeah
• 58:16
  they're like they're all thieves we live in the same place man they're all thieves it didn't change
• 58:23
  because it was you know over on the other side of the world it's it's the same thing they're all
• 58:29
  thieves but we don't want to think about that where we live come on man that's a bad thing to
• 58:34
  think about yeah and that's that's part of the indoctrination right you know repeat after me i
• 58:40
  am free i am free i am free now go get that job so you can pay your taxes like a good wage slave
• 58:46
  yep yeah it's a chant right now right well they start chanting it actually right away right because
• 58:58
  well and that's why i started to hint at there when i said about from birth a little bit ago
• 59:04
  some people believe from birth because you we are banknote property for the corporation of america
• 59:11
  that's what it comes down to us as individuals and they bank on our productivity in our lives and
• 59:16
  they make us produce an amount of wealth and there's somebody somewhere and even if it's not
• 59:22
  a nefarious scheme which clearly it must be if they've been doing it all this time and now they
• 59:28
  finally got somebody who can sit around and and tally all that up and say well you know the average
• 59:33
  person is worth X amount in tax dollars over his lifetime.
• 59:37
  You know, this is what we can plan on this person that's being born today.
• 59:42
  And here's their banknote certificate to store in the vaults for the American Banknote Corporation.
• 59:49
  It literally says that on the birth certificate.
• 59:53
  So there you go.
• 59:54
  If you want to think, it's about the money.
• 59:57
  It's about the money.
• 59:58
  It's always about the money.
• 1:00:00
  You know, no matter what it is, if you dig enough, it's money.
• 1:00:04
  It's always money.
• 1:00:06
  And, you know, people say, well, and power.
• 1:00:09
  Power comes from money.
• 1:00:11
  Sorry, it just does.
• 1:00:13
  Right?
• 1:00:13
  Look at Musk.
• 1:00:15
  Well, because power, you can buy somebody else.
• 1:00:18
  You buy things.
• 1:00:19
  You can buy the tools.
• 1:00:21
  And that's the thing about it.
• 1:00:21
  Everybody says, oh, dictators are terrible.
• 1:00:24
  It's illegal to buy people now.
• 1:00:27
  Yeah?
• 1:00:27
  Well, you can use almost anything to buy somebody. Sympathy, you can buy somebody. People aren't that hard to buy, especially when you have a large number of people who aren't getting paid, who are poor, who don't have a lot of outlook for the future.
• 1:00:46
  And, you know, maybe it could be better if there wasn't somebody that was leeching off the entire system all of the time, making it harder for the rest of us out here who are producing things to be able to give charitably, to be able to construct our world as we see it, to develop the new tools, the new technologies, the new toys, whatever it is that we want without regulation, without taxation, without favoritism, without all these things that only government offers.
• 1:01:16
  The free market doesn't offer these things.
• 1:01:18
  The free market offers competition and chance.
• 1:01:21
  The government offers, you know, pay us and we'll protect you.
• 1:01:26
  It's a protection racket.
• 1:01:27
  It's racketeering by definition.
• 1:01:30
  It's worse, in my opinion, because if you pay the mafia, they actually do protect you and leave you alone.
• 1:01:36
  Yeah, tend to, right?
• 1:01:37
  Period.
• 1:01:38
  Yeah.
• 1:01:39
  If you make the weekly payments, they stay away.
• 1:01:43
  It's when you don't make the payments that somebody gets a bloody nose.
• 1:01:46
  Yeah.
• 1:01:46
  Yeah.
• 1:01:47
  And that is not the same with the state.
• 1:01:49
  No, not really.
• 1:01:50
  The state will still come after you for various oddities and trinkets.
• 1:01:55
  So, you know, it's one of those things that it's very hard to open someone's eyes to it.
• 1:02:03
  But once you do open their eyes to it, it usually has an effect of them really kind of digging in and going, OK, wait a second here. Are you telling me? Yes, I'm telling you.
• 1:02:16
  Well, that's why racketeering is such a good word for it, because racketeering in and of itself describes a business or a person or a group of people or whatever who are creating the need for themselves.
• 1:02:33
  There's no need for them, so they create the need for themselves.
• 1:02:37
  And that's what government does.
• 1:02:38
  That's what we've been talking about this whole time.
• 1:02:40
  Oh, they're going to protect us.
• 1:02:41
  Oh, they're going to manage the economy.
• 1:02:42
  Oh, they're going to keep the borders closed and safe and make sure that we're all just nice and safely tucked into bed with our 55-inch TVs and our brand-new EV cars.
• 1:02:57
  Because they were all given to us by the government.
• 1:03:00
  They're going to give us everything.
• 1:03:01
  They're going to protect us.
• 1:03:02
  They're going to take care of us.
• 1:03:03
  All we got to do is just give them what they say.
• 1:03:07
  85%.
• 1:03:08
  I believe that's probably still a good number.
• 1:03:12
  The number you were talking about, that 85%.
• 1:03:15
  I think that's probably still right because anytime I've ever gone and looked at it, that's about it.
• 1:03:19
  They shave about 80% to 90% off for themselves to stick in their pockets to manage their bureaucracy.
• 1:03:27
  Yeah.
• 1:03:28
  Yep.
• 1:03:28
  And that goes back to the 85%.
• 1:03:30
  What's a good course of action for somebody that recognizes the situation they're in and that they're ensnared in and wants to opt out?
• 1:03:38
  I mean, how do you do that?
• 1:03:41
  That's what you do. You opt out.
• 1:03:42
  In a practical sense.
• 1:03:43
  You opt out You option right the hell out of it all You realize oh this is the scam These are the scammers These are the thieves the murderers and the liars
• 1:03:54
  I'm not going to feed them anymore. I'm going to do everything that I do.
• 1:03:58
  Everything that I talk about, everyone that I talk to is going to hear about how they're thieves and everything that I do.
• 1:04:05
  Every time I conduct business, whatever it is, wherever I can keep a dollar or keep them from knowing I have a dollar or made an exchange or did anything, I'm going to do it.
• 1:04:16
  And I'm going to work in black and gray markets every single day as much as I can.
• 1:04:21
  I'm going to deal in cash.
• 1:04:22
  Even if it is their cash, it's still cash.
• 1:04:25
  As long as people are still accepting it, you're using cash for whatever.
• 1:04:30
  You know, when when the currency changes, you know, maybe we'll get lucky.
• 1:04:35
  Maybe it'll be a hard currency. But, you know, maybe not.
• 1:04:39
  Or, you know, I mean, so the suggestion I would have is to dig in and, you know, do some searching on what agorism is.
• 1:04:48
  That's A-G-O-R-I-S-M, right? Or Agora.
• 1:04:54
  And look into that.
• 1:04:56
  But really what it comes down to is the idea is that anarchists in general are, you know, mostly pacifists.
• 1:05:04
  The vast majority are pacifists.
• 1:05:07
  Now, they're not true pacifists in that they'll allow you to attack them and hit them.
• 1:05:12
  But they don't they're not looking for a fight.
• 1:05:15
  They're not looking to harm anyone.
• 1:05:16
  They're looking to live their lives and be left alone.
• 1:05:19
  And it's only in self-defense that violence is ever warranted.
• 1:05:24
  Right.
• 1:05:24
  so you know uh shoot see it happens to me too well sounds like what you're saying is a lot of
• 1:05:32
  the world's problems could be solved if everybody lived by the golden rule of well yeah just treating
• 1:05:37
  others like you'd like to be treated yourself yeah and so that's that's what i was going to say is is
• 1:05:42
  and there it goes again dang it i hate when that happens i had a really good thought it was really
• 1:05:50
  good you guys would have loved this one but you know uh yeah it'll come it'll come to you if we
• 1:05:56
  just keep going it will that's the way that's the way it works sometimes sometimes it doesn't
• 1:06:01
  sometimes you can never find your way back that's what i always loved about live radio
• 1:06:04
  doing like i did live radio for so many years and it's you know and and i just remember early on in
• 1:06:10
  my career uh my my favorite instructor talking to me about it in college and just saying don't
• 1:06:16
  paint yourself into a corner and don't don't talk yourself into something you can't talk yourself
• 1:06:21
  out of and don't let too much dead air go by between guys
• 1:06:28
  a little bit's okay just not too much and then there's always the the my favorite argument with
• 1:06:37
  the long flat things you know who but who will build the roads the same people that build them
• 1:06:44
  No, because the government doesn't own an asphalt company.
• 1:06:48
  The government doesn't own a concrete company.
• 1:06:50
  The government doesn't own road workers.
• 1:06:53
  They contract out to people that actually do that.
• 1:06:56
  Private businesses that do that.
• 1:06:59
  You know, there's what I was going to say.
• 1:07:03
  See, came back.
• 1:07:04
  The concept behind it is not violent at all.
• 1:07:08
  The concept is starve the beast.
• 1:07:10
  just stop feeding it anywhere and everywhere you can cash you know uh you know hard you know
• 1:07:19
  physical items whatever gold silver copper palladium whatever bloots your boat uh and i
• 1:07:27
  would even say uh you know cryptocurrency there's no middleman right you transact with me and i
• 1:07:34
  transact with you there's no middleman as long as somebody will accept it trade whatever you want to
• 1:07:39
  trade exactly and so it's just about getting out of the system where you're paying in you're paying
• 1:07:46
  the middleman for the privilege of having a transaction with someone which is really what it
• 1:07:51
  is right why am i paying you for my transaction for this pair of socks why why do you need two
• 1:07:58
  bucks for this you know twelve dollar pair of socks what what is that about you know what do
• 1:08:04
  What are you giving me in this transaction?
• 1:08:06
  Nothing.
• 1:08:08
  And generally nothing.
• 1:08:10
  A lot of people, oh, roads.
• 1:08:11
  You said the long, flat things, roads.
• 1:08:13
  And as soon as somebody says something about taxes and roads, you immediately know they don't understand how even the basics of things work because the gas taxes pay for the roads.
• 1:08:23
  And that's it.
• 1:08:24
  That's what they're supposed to do.
• 1:08:26
  And if they're not, that's a problem with the system, not a problem with, you know.
• 1:08:31
  And that's a reasonable thing, right?
• 1:08:33
  That's the sort of thing that a community would do.
• 1:08:35
  The community would get together and say, hey, you know what?
• 1:08:37
  We have to have roads, and we need a way to fund them, and it's beneficial for all of us to participate in this.
• 1:08:44
  How about we all contribute through paying a little bit extra when we fill up our gas tank,
• 1:08:49
  and that extra is put into the city's coppers, and it goes to pay these guys to maintain the roads.
• 1:08:56
  Wow, what a horrible idea.
• 1:08:58
  We need almost nobody to manage that.
• 1:09:02
  And yet that I just that simple idea alone leads to like 50 agencies and 90 buildings in downtown.
• 1:09:11
  You know, it's just ridiculous.
• 1:09:13
  A thousand employees and 300 of them are cops that are just there to enforce the opinions.
• 1:09:19
  Not even they don't even do any damn work to do it.
• 1:09:21
  You fix anything, you know, it would be nice to see one of them out there on a street sweeping something up once or, you know, just anything to see that they're actually useful.
• 1:09:30
  because there's 300 people on the payroll right here in town that are completely useless, basically.
• 1:09:38
  Yeah, yeah.
• 1:09:40
  And the other part to that is, you know, when you look at it,
• 1:09:43
  if it were community-based and there was, say, a shopping center,
• 1:09:47
  the community would likely want to have a road there.
• 1:09:51
  But if, you know, Jim Bob decided to put a farm way out over here,
• 1:09:56
  he'd be like, well, Jim Bob, get your tractor and grade out your dirt road.
• 1:10:00
  but I'm not paying for you to have a road up to your house.
• 1:10:03
  I'm not going to stop you building one if you want to, but,
• 1:10:06
  but I don't want to pay. And if you need some help, I'll probably, you know,
• 1:10:09
  donate some funds to help you, you know, but in general, that's your gig.
• 1:10:14
  It's like my driveway is about 300 yards long.
• 1:10:17
  Nobody does anything with that, but me.
• 1:10:19
  So I don't know what the hell you're talking about.
• 1:10:21
  I can effectively manage that. I could effectively manage a lot more of it.
• 1:10:26
  You know, am I going to go build a super highway? No.
• 1:10:29
  Do we really need as many super highways as we have?
• 1:10:33
  No.
• 1:10:34
  Right?
• 1:10:34
  Stop buying avocados in February on the East Coast.
• 1:10:38
  What are you doing?
• 1:10:40
  Maybe you should start charging tolls on your driveway.
• 1:10:43
  Just saying.
• 1:10:44
  There's an idea.
• 1:10:46
  Well, I mean, if people use it, it's an entirely reasonable idea.
• 1:10:50
  If you happen to work for one of these bureaucracies or something,
• 1:10:55
  then your toll is automatically 10x what it is for everyone else.
• 1:11:03
  Absolutely.
• 1:11:04
  Yeah, come on out.
• 1:11:05
  You said you needed to talk to me about something, about business.
• 1:11:08
  Yeah, come on out.
• 1:11:09
  Pay the toll.
• 1:11:12
  I might actually put a sign up out there for that.
• 1:11:14
  That would be funny.
• 1:11:16
  So what's the deal with all those comic books behind you?
• 1:11:20
  I own a comic book shop.
• 1:11:21
  Oh, okay.
• 1:11:22
  That would explain that.
• 1:11:23
  My own amazing fantasies here in Topeka, Kansas.
• 1:11:27
  And we got a quarter of a million books in the store.
• 1:11:33
  Oh, wow.
• 1:11:34
  Tens of thousands on the floor at any given time.
• 1:11:38
  Geek collectibles, Magic the Gathering, Pokemon, stuff like that.
• 1:11:43
  That's my thing.
• 1:11:44
  That's my ultimate dream, I guess, to own a comic book shop.
• 1:11:50
  And so I do.
• 1:11:51
  Nice.
• 1:11:52
  Yeah.
• 1:11:52
  Oh, I used to love that. I used to be super into the X-Men. That was my gig, man. I didn't own anything. I doubt it was ever worth anything, but maybe now it would be.
• 1:12:04
  Depends on when you got into the X-Men.
• 1:12:07
  It would have been late 70s, early 80s, I think.
• 1:12:11
  There's some great Chris Claremont things in there, some wonderful stuff in those time periods, for sure.
• 1:12:16
  And that sort of bronze era, it's actually happened here fairly recently.
• 1:12:21
  It's been something we've just been noticing around the shop.
• 1:12:25
  Every time we turn around, all that sort of bronze era stuff,
• 1:12:28
  the 70s and 80s bronze era, it's exploding.
• 1:12:35
  For so long, it's worthless, just totally worthless.
• 1:12:38
  And now all of a sudden, every single one of those books is $5, $10.
• 1:12:42
  It's crazy.
• 1:12:43
  wow yeah well because it's it forces us to adjust our business model because of basically our
• 1:12:48
  business model is sell a whole hell of a lot of two dollar comic books all these back issues but
• 1:12:53
  at some you know what it is right it's a dollar it's a destruction of the dollar it's the destruction
• 1:12:59
  of the economy because those things haven't really gone up in any interest or value there's not any
• 1:13:05
  more people looking for them and they're they we know how many of them are out there you know it's
• 1:13:10
  not like they're new things that are generating interest like a like a new absolute batman that's
• 1:13:16
  a big title now that dc's on top for the first time ever with this new batman character and the
• 1:13:22
  first issue of it probably has three four million different covers and copies and yet the a cover
• 1:13:31
  200 comic book modern era uh yeah crazy and but none of those others you know those other books
• 1:13:40
  from that era they don't have that same push with they're just they're just that age and with the
• 1:13:47
  economy the way it is just the price of everything has gone up like 25 to 50 percent and and it's
• 1:13:54
  starting to catch up now in the comic book industry apparently you think part of that's
• 1:13:59
  due to like the age of the uh the the clientele for for that product and and like the nostalgia
• 1:14:06
  factor because i noticed that with like the nintendo games i used to buy those when they
• 1:14:10
  were you know at yard sales 25 cents a piece or a dollar and now they're i can't afford to collect
• 1:14:16
  nintendo games anymore i figured maybe something like that happened with there's none left as well
• 1:14:20
  there's none left what are you missing like three cartridges or something
• 1:14:25
  look at the back right there's none i know i see it's crazy i've been i've been looking at it the
• 1:14:32
  whole time it's just wild but it was it was fun just go you know for the hunt of it and now it's
• 1:14:37
  you know people want a million bucks just for stupid common you know the one that came with
• 1:14:41
  the system but that's another story no it's the same thing in some ways yeah i think i was paying
• 1:14:49
  like 25 cents 50 cents for a comic back then when i first started yeah well that's pretty yeah the
• 1:14:58
  average comic now is probably $4.99.
• 1:15:03
  That makes sense.
• 1:15:04
  There's some that are still in the $3.99
• 1:15:06
  range. Well, it's...
• 1:15:08
  So, Batman's
• 1:15:10
  going to be $4.99.
• 1:15:12
  Wonder Woman's going to be $3.99.
• 1:15:15
  That kind of thing.
• 1:15:18
  Superman's
• 1:15:18
  everywhere in between.
• 1:15:20
  I'm actually kind of amazed DC took
• 1:15:22
  the lead there.
• 1:15:24
  It took him a lot. It took him 85
• 1:15:26
  years 90 years whatever to finally get on top but they done it and i don know if they hold it but i have to as a batman fan batman my favorite character uh as a batman fan i i a fan of this new
• 1:15:41
  batman he's it's been a fun read they're a couple years into it at this point almost
• 1:15:46
  and they didn't seem to be any stop to it it's just sort of hit after hit after hit issue after
• 1:15:52
  issue even the following issues at the first 12 issues every one of them's worth 20 bucks and
• 1:15:57
  And these are books that they're printed a lot.
• 1:16:01
  Let's do there's a lot of them printed.
• 1:16:02
  There's more.
• 1:16:03
  There's more than there's a lot of them.
• 1:16:07
  What would be your white whale for for that?
• 1:16:12
  I mean, you have to go.
• 1:16:14
  You have to go with the first Batman, the detective 27.
• 1:16:17
  Now, that would be it because I've had some of these others.
• 1:16:21
  You know, I've owned the first Wolverine.
• 1:16:23
  I've owned the first Ninja Turtles.
• 1:16:25
  You know, I've owned some of the ones in my time.
• 1:16:27
  I've owned a lot of them, even first Silver Age, you know, characters like the Batman bad guys, you know, Penguin or somebody like, you know, I've even known those.
• 1:16:40
  So, yeah, it would be the that would be the big one.
• 1:16:43
  The first Batman, it would have to be because all the rest of it were just super cool.
• 1:16:48
  But they wouldn't have any necessary meaning for me in terms of, oh, yeah, that's my character.
• 1:16:53
  That's where it all began.
• 1:16:54
  So, yeah, that'd be the big one.
• 1:16:56
  And it is the big one.
• 1:16:57
  Action Comics gets a lot of attention, but I think there's demonstrable proof that Batman is the better character.
• 1:17:06
  He's sold many more copies of comic books over the years than Superman has.
• 1:17:12
  And even back then, just some useless geek trivia for you.
• 1:17:15
  So Action Comics 1 through 4, the appearances of Superman in Action Comics 1, 2, 3, and 4 are the basis for Superman issue number one,
• 1:17:27
  and they come out about a year after
• 1:17:30
  Superman's first appearance in action comics
• 1:17:33
  so Batman comes along
• 1:17:34
  he gets his first appearance
• 1:17:36
  in detective comics
• 1:17:38
  and about a year later he gets his own book
• 1:17:40
  all new material
• 1:17:41
  not like Superman
• 1:17:44
  Superman had to show
• 1:17:45
  here's the old story back
• 1:17:47
  not the Batman
• 1:17:49
  more dynamic character
• 1:17:52
  obviously because he's human
• 1:17:54
  he's not an alien with super powers
• 1:17:56
  mine's goofy my my favorite comic book character is super goofy everyone's like what um and honestly
• 1:18:05
  just it wasn't at first but became my favorite character when it's it's you know he's affectionately
• 1:18:12
  referred to as banff uh but it's nightcrawler i just always always loved that guy kurt wagner yeah
• 1:18:21
  Great character.
• 1:18:22
  One of the great X-Men for sure.
• 1:18:24
  I'm an X-Men guy too.
• 1:18:27
  If it wasn't Batman, it was X-Men.
• 1:18:31
  And that's pretty much it.
• 1:18:32
  I mean, even to this day, that's what I read out of those main guys.
• 1:18:35
  Most of my stuff, this is Wednesday's books coming out this Wednesday.
• 1:18:43
  And they're all independent.
• 1:18:46
  It's all stuff that smaller creators have written.
• 1:18:50
  And that one's called Odin of the earth.
• 1:18:53
  It's about oil.
• 1:18:54
  Yeah.
• 1:18:54
  This is terrible.
• 1:18:55
  Oh,
• 1:18:56
  there.
• 1:18:57
  Backwards.
• 1:18:58
  Dead teenagers.
• 1:19:00
  That's a big one right now.
• 1:19:02
  Yeah.
• 1:19:02
  I don't know that there's a new one.
• 1:19:04
  Yeah.
• 1:19:04
  I,
• 1:19:05
  a lot of,
• 1:19:05
  a lot of independent stuff,
• 1:19:07
  uh,
• 1:19:07
  because it,
• 1:19:08
  that superhero stuff,
• 1:19:09
  it's been done and done and redone and.
• 1:19:13
  Yeah.
• 1:19:14
  Yeah.
• 1:19:14
  It's,
• 1:19:15
  I mean,
• 1:19:16
  it's still successful though.
• 1:19:18
  I mean,
• 1:19:18
  Oh yeah.
• 1:19:18
  Yeah.
• 1:19:19
  No,
• 1:19:19
  There's nothing wrong with it.
• 1:19:20
  I enjoy it.
• 1:19:21
  It's just, it has the same power, the same problem that they have with Magic the Gathering and Yu-Gi-Oh.
• 1:19:32
  Pokemon seem to manage it fairly well because they don't do anything different.
• 1:19:37
  That's actually been their smart thing.
• 1:19:39
  But it's a power creep.
• 1:19:42
  It happens with superheroes, too.
• 1:19:45
  It happens in comic books.
• 1:19:46
  You need power creep.
• 1:19:47
  And so guys become too powerful and you have to, you have to find ways to either create more powerful people that can beat them up or you have to create creative ways to make those people less powerful so that they're back down on the left.
• 1:20:03
  And whereas these other stories, just, it could be anything.
• 1:20:06
  It could be podcast murders.
• 1:20:08
  It could be, you know, whatever, anything.
• 1:20:11
  Whereas in Marvel and DC, it's, it's guys in capes and tights and, you know, scantily clad women.
• 1:20:19
  Women.
• 1:20:20
  Yes.
• 1:20:21
  Like, and it's a perfect thing.
• 1:20:23
  Like one of the things I, you know, and I love the character.
• 1:20:27
  I really do.
• 1:20:27
  I love the development of the character, especially.
• 1:20:29
  but like in in the x-men series you've got the world eater that comes along right and you start
• 1:20:34
  getting into these like holy crap how do you ever like and then poof there's phoenix and it's just
• 1:20:40
  like okay i give up this lady can just you're just gone you just disappeared you just turned
• 1:20:45
  into a bunch of atoms sorry bye yeah they they've uh they have their problems every once and that's
• 1:20:53
  what it comes down to because it is that battle about you know how do you how you make somebody
• 1:20:59
  powerful how do you make somebody how do you how do you make those extremely powerful people feel
• 1:21:06
  like humans to get people to get humans to read them and and that that's the basis for my idea that
• 1:21:13
  that batman is always has been always will be a better character than superman you there's
• 1:21:19
  certainly a human element to it and there's limitations because of that human element right
• 1:21:24
  So I've never been a DC fan.
• 1:21:30
  I enjoy Batman, but I've never been a Batman fan because I've always been, I guess I was raised on the superhero side of the house.
• 1:21:39
  And you look at Batman and it's like, you see Superman versus Batman.
• 1:21:43
  Come on.
• 1:21:44
  I'm sorry.
• 1:21:45
  It's a bit silly, right?
• 1:21:47
  12,000 miles away, I just cut you in half with my laser eyes.
• 1:21:51
  Right.
• 1:21:51
  And then go on about his business.
• 1:21:53
  Right.
• 1:21:54
  Oh, it didn't work out so well.
• 1:21:56
  Let me just reverse time by spinning her.
• 1:21:58
  Oh, yeah.
• 1:21:59
  Oh, God.
• 1:22:01
  Some of those movies.
• 1:22:03
  Right.
• 1:22:03
  Did you ever see Brightburn?
• 1:22:05
  Did you ever see that?
• 1:22:06
  I don't think so.
• 1:22:06
  That was the evil Superman.
• 1:22:08
  Oh, Brightburn is what it's called.
• 1:22:11
  Really great.
• 1:22:12
  That's like the MCU with some attitude there.
• 1:22:17
  Oh, nice.
• 1:22:18
  Nice.
• 1:22:18
  Yeah, it's a really good movie.
• 1:22:19
  It's basically just if Superman were like, yeah, I am all powerful.
• 1:22:25
  You betcha.
• 1:22:27
  What do you think about these guys that buy this stuff just to resell it?
• 1:22:32
  You know, they're jamming the doors at Target or Costco or whatever to buy this stuff.
• 1:22:36
  And I mean, do you have to deal with any of that?
• 1:22:38
  Yeah, it's a wild thing, actually.
• 1:22:40
  Trust me, when I do a lot of social media stuff, I will tongue in cheek, but I mean it seriously.
• 1:22:46
  Say, do not drive a truck into our store.
• 1:22:48
  we do not have sealed Pokemon.
• 1:22:51
  Just don't do it.
• 1:22:53
  You won't get it because that's what people are.
• 1:22:55
  People are holding up shops and taking Pokemon,
• 1:22:58
  beating each other up at the target over it.
• 1:23:00
  Actually, it's not really much of a problem for us
• 1:23:03
  because there's an interesting thing that happened.
• 1:23:06
  More geek, insider geek stuff for you.
• 1:23:09
  The interesting thing that happened with Pokemon,
• 1:23:11
  they never gave us any problems.
• 1:23:12
  We have a professor.
• 1:23:14
  We have an actual Pokemon professor,
• 1:23:15
  a guy that's fully trained in teaching and playing and managing Pokemon
• 1:23:21
  with the kids and the parents and everything.
• 1:23:24
  And we've had him for years.
• 1:23:25
  He's been around for years.
• 1:23:27
  And then all of a sudden at one point they said, oh, wait a minute.
• 1:23:30
  You're a comic book shop.
• 1:23:31
  That's adult material.
• 1:23:33
  It can't be near the Pokemon.
• 1:23:35
  And they took our Pokemon license away from us.
• 1:23:38
  Oh, dude.
• 1:23:39
  Is that a Nintendo thing?
• 1:23:41
  Pokemon Corporation I think
• 1:23:44
  is separate enough from Nintendo
• 1:23:47
  that you can't point at Nintendo
• 1:23:48
  and go it's Nintendo
• 1:23:49
  I don't think you can do that
• 1:23:52
  they recently changed it
• 1:23:54
  to their credit
• 1:23:55
  it only took them a couple years to figure out
• 1:23:58
  that was stupid
• 1:23:59
  that we don't have adult content
• 1:24:01
  we have a not safe for work box
• 1:24:04
  on the floor it's literally one box
• 1:24:06
  it's less than 100 comics
• 1:24:08
  and if you were offended by it
• 1:24:10
  don't shop here i don't care i you know i don't need you here i don't need you kids here i don't
• 1:24:15
  need you know i don't need that because if that's what you're offended by in thousands and thousands
• 1:24:21
  and thousands of other comic books and and lines and prints and thoughts and ideas and that's what
• 1:24:26
  you're going to focus on then your energy is misplaced and i don't need you makes sense it's
• 1:24:35
  It's crazy. It's a crazy world.
• 1:24:38
  The whole idea of buying things on the off chance that you're going to be able to resell them for more money, particularly quickly.
• 1:24:46
  Obviously, that's what I do every week when I buy the new comic books and I buy with the idea that I'm going to sell them for more.
• 1:24:56
  Then I had to pay for them, but to make it exponentially more like these guys want, it's weird.
• 1:25:04
  I've watched people in our community, other people buy up.
• 1:25:09
  It's not like I can't buy Pokemon.
• 1:25:11
  It's not like I don't have them in the store.
• 1:25:12
  I just don't have authorized events in the store.
• 1:25:14
  And I don't get serviced by them, but we will again.
• 1:25:19
  But other people around, other game stores around have fallen into the trap.
• 1:25:24
  For one, what's happening is these people are going over to Walmart and stealing this stuff.
• 1:25:31
  That's what started it all.
• 1:25:33
  And then it started going, oh, well, there's more money in opening them if you get one of these cards.
• 1:25:38
  And then those guys that were stealing this stuff before are now buying this stuff, hopefully, and trying to rip it open and try to make money on selling it in the aftermarket.
• 1:25:49
  But so the stores locally got in on it.
• 1:25:52
  And so they started offering people sort of 70, 80 percent of actual value of some of these things that they were buying.
• 1:26:01
  and now they can't sell them necessarily.
• 1:26:04
  Or they have to hold on to them for such long periods of time
• 1:26:07
  that they've wrapped their money up in something that was unnecessary.
• 1:26:11
  Especially if you're a retail store, just trying to flip the new thing,
• 1:26:14
  the new thing, get out of it.
• 1:26:15
  I don't want the old product.
• 1:26:17
  I don't want that stuff hanging around.
• 1:26:20
  I need it to sell.
• 1:26:20
  I'm not trying to keep any of it.
• 1:26:23
  Do you have any problems with, like I know with the Nintendo games,
• 1:26:27
  it was never really a problem back when I started because it just wasn't a thing,
• 1:26:30
  but now they have reproductions or, you know, essentially counterfeits or fakes, you know, like whatever you want to call it.
• 1:26:36
  It's not too big of a problem because it's very hard to copy these things.
• 1:26:41
  It really is.
• 1:26:42
  If you know what you're looking at, you can't copy a comic book of any value.
• 1:26:47
  Right.
• 1:26:48
  You can't copy, you know, a book from 1940 or something.
• 1:26:52
  It's not going to happen.
• 1:26:54
  And with the cards, it's almost if you know what you're looking for, you're never going to get caught.
• 1:26:59
  i think the bigger pro i think the thing with the nintendo the bigger problem with it is something
• 1:27:06
  that we have experienced in the comic book industry over the last couple of years it was
• 1:27:10
  actually a big deal so you see that graded book in the middle there so it in it in case you don know what in it it just whatever you believe what in it is what in it It was some people swapping some things around and doing some various stuff
• 1:27:22
  I think that's what was driving the thing with the Nintendo stuff
• 1:27:26
  is that it was easy enough to swap around the insides
• 1:27:28
  of a particular cartridge or wrap another.
• 1:27:31
  So you didn't have to recreate anything necessarily.
• 1:27:34
  And so I think it was a little easier to do.
• 1:27:37
  It's pretty tough.
• 1:27:38
  I actually was in an economic conversation the other day
• 1:27:41
  with somebody even you know pro-capitalism anti-capitalism uh they were talking about
• 1:27:47
  the sort of we're talking about the the cryptocurrencies and the the value of
• 1:27:52
  cryptocurrencies and if they have any inherent value and he started to i compared the way bitcoin
• 1:27:58
  is to comic books and collectibles because they weren't it functions exactly the same as there's
• 1:28:03
  only a certain amount of people who have any interest in it at all and if you want to trade
• 1:28:08
  it for something else you have to take it to somebody who's interested in it like a comic
• 1:28:12
  book shop or a bitcoin store whatever you want to call it somebody who wants to buy it from you and
• 1:28:16
  convert it to some other bit of money and then you can go buy what you want and then and i mentioned
• 1:28:21
  that it functions that way in the market and they say well but they you know the sports cards and
• 1:28:27
  comic books and collectibles can be copied and i said no no they can't no i mean you can fool the
• 1:28:33
  average idiot off the street trying you know with pokemon cards you get grandma goes on uh wish and
• 1:28:41
  and buys a great big box of pokemon cards and the charizard is in there and you know that's fake
• 1:28:49
  and and they look fake and once you point them out to the person and you you go this is the real one
• 1:28:56
  and this is the fake one there's no quite they're even going oh geez yeah that's clearly yes you
• 1:29:02
  can't you can't fake it it's not really a problem we have the bigger problem is the graded stuff
• 1:29:07
  so what happens is is they started separating the label from the book and so they're in separate
• 1:29:16
  compartments and so you could actually put a different book with a different label and so
• 1:29:21
  and they fix some of these problems and there was somebody and it was kind of an inside job it was
• 1:29:26
  somebody at the big guys doing it and like taking customers,
• 1:29:31
  uh,
• 1:29:31
  higher quality books and swapping them out for their own lower quality books
• 1:29:36
  and then grading the lower quality books and sending them back to the customer.
• 1:29:40
  It's been there where the big part, but raw, you know,
• 1:29:43
  managed collectibles for you to me, nah, not go fool me.
• 1:29:48
  There's a lot of trust in those grading, uh, authorities or your companies or
• 1:29:52
  whatever they are. Yeah. I mean,
• 1:29:54
  You're going to send a lot of misplaced.
• 1:29:56
  One of them just closed.
• 1:29:58
  One of the other really big one just closed down because ultimately they lost tens of thousands of dollars of people's comic books in a couple of big instances.
• 1:30:11
  And ultimately that's what I'm pretty sure that's what did it, man.
• 1:30:16
  Yeah, that's an interesting, interesting thing.
• 1:30:19
  I hadn't even thought about that.
• 1:30:21
  That's a great question laying there, Alex.
• 1:30:23
  yeah yeah and and we deal with it we deal with all of it you know people try to fake stuff
• 1:30:29
  all the time but not like that you can't it's it just can't be done you it would cost you more to
• 1:30:35
  fake it than it would to you know that's the thing about it they've they've to get past especially
• 1:30:41
  any of the higher value cards common cards you know they'll go ahead copy them nobody cares
• 1:30:47
  they you know it's the bigger cards but the bigger cards tend to be the nicer cards they tend to be
• 1:30:52
  the full art cards they tend to be the special things that are multi-layered and multi-printed
• 1:30:58
  and and and foiled and embossed and all these things that if you were to try to do that as an
• 1:31:04
  individual even with all of these wonderful fantastic printing tools and crickets and
• 1:31:08
  things like that you you can't duplicate that stuff yeah that's going to require some heavy
• 1:31:13
  duty printing equipment yeah it's not worth it the only guys that ever got away with stuff like
• 1:31:19
  that are people that got their hands on printing plates afterwards those are the only guys who've
• 1:31:24
  ever gotten away with stuff like that including like reprinting uh you know the posters from the
• 1:31:29
  movie posters from the 70s indiana jones star wars stuff like that that was a big thing a lot
• 1:31:34
  of misprints or reprints out there that were printed from the original plates because somebody
• 1:31:40
  else or you know somebody somewhere got a hold of something that they weren't supposed to have
• 1:31:44
  And so they had, you know, almost the real thing.
• 1:31:48
  Yeah, very close, I imagine.
• 1:31:51
  I can see where that could be confusing.
• 1:31:53
  If you're not an expert and seen a lot of them.
• 1:31:56
  I've seen a few of them come across my desk over the years.
• 1:31:59
  And if you don't know what you're looking for, luckily, with the Internet now, information gets around.
• 1:32:05
  And it's so hard to fake stuff now.
• 1:32:09
  You're playing a silly game.
• 1:32:10
  The only people that are doing it now are the Chinese mass-producing stuff,
• 1:32:15
  and they're not even trying to tell you that it's actually the real thing.
• 1:32:19
  That's what they're doing.
• 1:32:21
  They're trying to fake everything.
• 1:32:22
  I mean, even auto parts on Amazon now, they're faking spark plugs and oil filters and guitars.
• 1:32:30
  You get a fake Gibson for $200 these days.
• 1:32:33
  If you don't know what you're looking at, they look kind of like what they're supposed to be.
• 1:32:37
  If you know what you're looking at, they look nothing like it.
• 1:32:39
  Well, since the government came in and told Gibson that it can't use certain wood to make certain guitars with, because blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
• 1:32:46
  Well, there you go.
• 1:32:48
  Back to government again.
• 1:32:51
  You got to have some.
• 1:32:52
  But that's what creates a market.
• 1:32:55
  That's what creates a market.
• 1:32:56
  That's true.
• 1:32:56
  The overpricing of things or the overvaluing of, you know, handbags knocked off all the time.
• 1:33:02
  and nobody who buys a $50 handbag on the street corner
• 1:33:07
  believes that they're buying a real Michael Kors bag.
• 1:33:10
  They know they're buying a fake.
• 1:33:12
  And they know and they're happy with it
• 1:33:13
  because they don't have to pay the price of the actual Michael Kors bag.
• 1:33:17
  So that means there's a market that Mr. Michael Kors is missing,
• 1:33:20
  not that he's being robbed.
• 1:33:23
  Right.
• 1:33:23
  Yeah.
• 1:33:24
  Yeah.
• 1:33:25
  All right.
• 1:33:26
  Well, I think this is probably a good place to wrap up.
• 1:33:29
  Yeah, probably, right?
• 1:33:30
  Let's go to that one question that we always like to ask our guests.
• 1:33:36
  It's just an opportunity to give back.
• 1:33:39
  And throughout our lives, there's a person that makes a massive impact on our lives, right?
• 1:33:47
  It has a lasting and long impact.
• 1:33:49
  It could be a mom.
• 1:33:51
  It could be a sixth grade science teacher, an author, a historical figure.
• 1:33:55
  but we like to give our guests an opportunity to shout out a person that had that impact in their
• 1:34:00
  life all right yeah no when you said that up front i already knew i was going to talk about
• 1:34:08
  i've already mentioned him there's a lot of people a lot of people a lot of great people
• 1:34:12
  wonderful people people i know people i don't know uh but this was somebody i knew who influenced
• 1:34:17
  my life. I mentioned him earlier. His name is Kenton Riggs, and he was the number seven member
• 1:34:25
  of the Libertarian Party. Ran around in the late 60s and early 70s with a bunch of anarchists and
• 1:34:33
  a bunch of ideologues that called themselves little L Libertarians and thought they might
• 1:34:38
  like to make a political party and see if they could usher America a little bit, literally,
• 1:34:46
  toward anarchy. That's where the phrase toward anarchy, my show, comes from. It's out of the
• 1:34:51
  Libertarian Party. David F. Nolan himself suggested that that be their slogan toward anarchy,
• 1:34:58
  and that the logo be the Anarchy A with an arrow, like the Avengers logo with the arrow pointing
• 1:35:07
  through it, and pointing toward, at the time, what was the Nolan chart. It was a square then,
• 1:35:15
  it's a diamond now and they've twisted it around a little bit but ultimately is the maximum point of
• 1:35:21
  economic and personal uh liberty liberty and that was anarchy and you're moving toward anarchy
• 1:35:28
  and you can see remnants of that idea in a lot of the state logos if you go and look at the
• 1:35:36
  libertarian party state logos a lot of them have an arrow
• 1:35:41
  yeah and that's what that arrow is that's toward anarchy so ken riggs number seven guy in the
• 1:35:48
  libertarian party i met him when i was probably 10 years old going to church as a young lad and
• 1:35:55
  he just became a mentor and he taught me about things like the federal reserve and and and anarchy
• 1:36:02
  and and libertarianism and federal reserve notes and the difference between money and currency and
• 1:36:08
  fiat currency and yeah so yeah that that's the guy all right that's a great shout out all right
• 1:36:16
  well what do you have going on what are you working on where can people find you
• 1:36:21
  i am i'm in my comic book shop every day that's that's what i'm doing uh but then i do all these
• 1:36:29
  you know i put out i try to do at least one interview and sort of one sort of me ranting
• 1:36:35
  about something hours so every week at toward anarchy.com available in all the the usual places
• 1:36:42
  and apple podcasts and spotify and all that it's just toward anarchy and i just i just chat i just
• 1:36:49
  chat about things that i find interesting people that i find interesting just like you guys do i
• 1:36:54
  don't have i tend to never have any questions i used to play around with that early on
• 1:36:59
  but I don't tend to have questions necessarily.
• 1:37:03
  I just have an idea of what I want to know about the person,
• 1:37:08
  what brought them to write their book or do whatever it is that they do.
• 1:37:14
  A lot of authors, it seems like, musicians, things like that,
• 1:37:17
  if I can get away with it.
• 1:37:19
  So much more fun than political stuff.
• 1:37:22
  But yeah, that's me, towardanarchy.com and towardanarchy anywhere else, I guess.
• 1:37:28
  All right.
• 1:37:28
  that's a wonderful thing
• 1:37:30
  thank you so much for giving us some of your time
• 1:37:33
  we really appreciate that
• 1:37:35
  and thank you
• 1:37:37
  for giving us some of your time as well
• 1:37:40
  you know where to find us
• 1:37:42
  we're everywhere
• 1:37:42
  now hosted on fountain.fm
• 1:37:45
  if you feel like doing some V for V
• 1:37:47
  value for value
• 1:37:48
  you feel like giving us a few coins or something
• 1:37:51
  go ahead and check it out
• 1:37:53
  and you can do that there
• 1:37:54
  if you don't you can still check it out for free
• 1:37:56
  it doesn't cost you anything
• 1:37:58
  It's just like Spotify.
• 1:38:00
  It's just different.
• 1:38:03
  If you liked us, thumbs up.
• 1:38:05
  If not, leave a thumbs down.
• 1:38:07
  Drop a comment.
• 1:38:07
  Tell us you liked us.
• 1:38:08
  Tell us we sucked.
• 1:38:09
  I don't care.
• 1:38:10
  We'll respond to both.
• 1:38:11
  It doesn't matter.
• 1:38:12
  If you have an idea for a topic or a guest on the show, leave a comment.
• 1:38:17
  We will respond to your comment.
• 1:38:19
  We will work, probably, work on trying to get the guest on, depending.
• 1:38:24
  and then remember
• 1:38:27
  wherever you are
• 1:38:29
  whenever you're watching this
• 1:38:31
  have an amazing day
• 1:38:34
  thanks for coming by Michael
• 1:38:35
  see you everybody
• 1:38:36
  thanks guys
• 1:38:38
  appreciate you
• 1:38:54
  .