The Auron MacIntyre Show - Why Libertarians Are Terrible on Immigration ｜ Jeremy Kauffman and Aristocratic Utensil ｜ 1⧸30⧸26

00:00:00.000 Hey everybody, how's it going? Thanks for joining me this afternoon. I've got a great stream with

00:00:04.420 some great guests that I think you're really going to enjoy. Don Lemon was arrested. That's

00:00:10.540 not the subject of the stream. I just wanted to say it because it's that great. We'll talk to

00:00:14.800 everybody about that in a second. But the core topic of this stream is the problem of libertarians.

00:00:22.080 Once again, sadly, libertarians have largely failed us on the issue of immigration. And I

00:00:29.020 want to talk about why it seems like there's always this impulse, even among libertarians who

00:00:33.280 say that they support border security, to when it comes time to actually do the thing, actually

00:00:38.360 have border security, we always seem to run into this problem. Joining me today to discuss those

00:00:44.040 topics is the very last decent libertarian, Jeffrey Kaufman, one of the leaders of the Free State

00:00:50.600 Project. Thank you so much for coming on, man. Hey, it's great to be here with you. I'm probably

00:00:56.320 going to agree and disagree with you some here, but we'll, you know, we'll hash it out.

00:01:00.580 Absolutely. And of course, one of the best guys to have, if you're going to be mocking anyone,

00:01:05.580 it is Spoon from the Aristocratic Utensile. Thank you so much for coming on, man.

00:01:10.820 Thank you very much. It's good to be here. Get to book fun at the, well, hell of the current times

00:01:16.140 that we live in. Well, before we jump into the libertarian question, I do just want to get

00:01:22.400 everyone's reaction to the Don Lemon arrest. Because I'm going to be honest, I staked my public

00:01:28.100 support for the Trump administration on them arresting these people. I was like, look, if you

00:01:33.820 can't arrest these guys when they like absolutely film themselves violating federal law and, you know,

00:01:40.480 talk about it, boast about it, talk about how they're there to terrorize children. Like if you

00:01:45.140 can't bust these people, you just can't get anyone. And for a minute there, it didn't look great.

00:01:50.960 We had judges turning down, refusing to sign grand jury indictments, you know, arrest warrants,

00:01:58.440 those kind of things. But the Trump administration did stick to it. They did stay through it. Don

00:02:03.260 Lemon has been arrested. Now, it's very likely that some judge somewhere, whenever this finally goes

00:02:09.880 to trial, is going to find some excuse to cut Lemon and the other, those others who have been

00:02:15.380 arrested loose. However, the Trump administration did the thing, the thing that a lot of people

00:02:20.320 said they would not do. So, Jeremy, what do you think about Lemon's arrest? Do you think it's

00:02:26.660 justified? Do you think that this is ultimately a positive step? Do you think it'll stick?

00:02:31.380 You know, as a real libertarian, I probably should properly consult and read all of the laws, but it's

00:02:36.300 certainly superficially looks like a violation of the law to me. You know, someone posted something

00:02:42.720 like, you know, what is the, is the Trump administration, is our new government just

00:02:47.280 going to be whatever Matt Walsh tweets? And I was like, you know, that actually wouldn't be the

00:02:50.940 worst form of government. Like I could imagine, I could imagine worse forms of government than that.

00:02:55.820 You know, so if that's, if that's where we're at, you know, I'm okay with it. This stuff has been

00:02:59.380 one-sided for so long. I'm happy to see it happening the other way. And what about you,

00:03:05.800 Spoon? Do you think that the Democrats or the left are going to get energized by this? I mean,

00:03:10.220 he's a heckin' journalist. They're violating the First Amendment. Next thing you know,

00:03:14.120 they'll come for the Somalians. Oh God, if only. I don't think the left will ever be quite that base.

00:03:19.880 But yeah, I think the case with Don and frankly, any sort of violation of any constitutional rights or

00:03:28.400 frankly, any human rights at all. I think one of the reasons why the right cheers it is

00:03:32.220 they've been considered the sort of beautiful losers for God knows how long. But basically

00:03:37.980 anything that the state does that looks, I wouldn't say authoritarian, just like it runs a functioning

00:03:43.980 state is just something they would cheer for regardless of how heavy handed it looks, which

00:03:49.880 I'm going to be honest, I can sort of, I have really, really, really high tolerance. So what

00:03:56.380 what ICE isn't able to do at this point, just because, like, dude, just look at it.

00:04:04.640 Like, how, how do you not, I wouldn't say like openly cheer it, but at some point you have to go,

00:04:09.840 okay, the state's getting a bit heavy handed, but this is what we voted for.

00:04:14.880 Well, I think you have, at some point you gotta let it go.

00:04:17.640 Well, I think you just have this issue where you have had the left have free reign for so long,

00:04:23.760 and the right has done so little, that even just equal enforcement of the laws we have

00:04:28.680 looks authoritarian to some people, right? Because you just expect that they get away

00:04:33.460 with things. Of course, of course, you know, we do that when we're in power, but, you know,

00:04:36.940 Republicans are never going to do that. Conservatives are never going to do that.

00:04:40.400 And you'd let it go long enough and things have to snap back the other direction pretty hard.

00:04:45.500 So if you let tens of millions of illegals into the country, it's going to be hard to remove them. 1.00

00:04:50.480 Like it would have been easy to remove them when it was 500,000 or a million, but now it's 20, 30,

00:04:57.680 probably more million. And so it's going to take more. It's the scale itself is going to increase

00:05:03.720 the difficulty of these operations and the amount of authority that you have to wield to do it. So

00:05:08.960 I think that's kind of the natural give and take. You can't ignore the law for 30 years. And then when

00:05:14.440 the law is actually enforced, go, oh, no, I can't believe we have laws again. Like that,

00:05:19.400 that just doesn't make sense. But yeah, and they're actually enforced.

00:05:23.040 Right. Exactly. But that leads us to our larger question, right? The true purpose of this stream

00:05:30.160 was the libertarian question. And this is one of those scenarios where, of course,

00:05:35.720 like half of libertarians don't even believe in borders because that's something the state does.

00:05:39.680 And we don't want the state to exist or they shouldn't be stopping the free movement of

00:05:45.020 people. There are left wing libertarians who are very vocal about this, but even others on the

00:05:51.260 right who will say the same thing. And so there's already like a, and this is like the frustration

00:05:56.300 with everyone sharing the title of libertarian, because if you say the libertarians believe this,

00:06:01.320 all of a sudden you have 19 different factions of libertarians saying, of course they don't believe

00:06:05.300 this. It's like, well, since there are 19 factions of you, I really only have one thing I can say,

00:06:10.920 right? Like I work pretty hard to distance myself from like Newt Gingrich and, you know,

00:06:16.260 and Lindsey Graham. And to the point where I try not to even call myself a conservative when,

00:06:21.380 you know, when I can avoid it, it's just so confusing me that libertarians insist on like

00:06:25.140 all sharing this name while like violently disagreeing about like what it means. However,

00:06:30.160 those that even do seem to support borders will come out and say, but not like this, right? Like

00:06:37.420 I supported having borders until someone got arrested. I supported having borders until we

00:06:43.340 started, you know, uh, finding a, uh, a business or, uh, putting a tax on remittances. It just seems

00:06:51.000 like theoretically borders are okay, but any action the state would take to incentivize illegals not to be

00:06:58.480 here or to remove, to remove them is all of a sudden a problem. So I guess Jeremy, as, as our, uh,

00:07:05.180 as our representative of this tribe, uh, what is going on with libertarian mindset? Why is it so hard

00:07:11.720 to have borders as a libertarian? All right. So I, I will, I, and I find a lot of, uh, these people

00:07:18.180 annoying as well, but to defend them a little bit, because I think, I think there is an impulse at the

00:07:23.440 heart of even the left libertarians who, yeah, I think they're very foolish and stupid and I disagree with

00:07:27.580 them. I think there is an impulse here that is good and that should be recognized as good, you know,

00:07:33.200 which is this concept of, of desiring this sort of, of, of universal fairness of, I'm going to have

00:07:38.760 this system, this ethical philosophy. I'm going to be very consistent in how I apply it. This is a good

00:07:46.880 impulse. What, what these people don't recognize is this is a very rare impulse that exists in a very

00:07:52.560 tiny amount of people. Right. And so if, if you are naive about that second part of it,

00:07:58.580 you're going to get very bad outcomes. Your country is going to be overrun by people who don't think 1.00

00:08:02.500 like you, who don't act like you and you're the things that you liked are not, are not going to

00:08:08.580 exist anymore. And so that's the first part of it that I'm always trying to get through the

00:08:12.480 libertarian's heads, which is like other people, aren't you, other people don't hold your values.

00:08:17.560 Other people don't think like you. And for, and, uh, and for a lot of these people,

00:08:20.800 there's nothing you could have ever done. You know, you're never going to get the average,

00:08:26.380 you know, Somalian or Haitian to be, to be expressing and thinking about the world as you

00:08:31.620 do. And you've got to reconcile your own beliefs with that reality. And that's part of why I'm here

00:08:36.400 in New Hampshire as part of this, uh, new libertarian concentration strategy, where we're much more

00:08:40.700 realistic about the feasibility of libertarianism, you know, sort of writ large as being this philosophy

00:08:47.540 for everyone. Um, the second part of it, and this is more of the types who would say,

00:08:53.160 Hey, I'm for borders, but not like that, uh, is, you know, libertarians are very used to being

00:09:00.660 critics of the state of being critics of the government. It's easy to slip into that frame of,

00:09:06.280 um, of, you know, it's, it's the jackboot. And I have got a little bit of that in me. It's not

00:09:11.240 entirely, it hasn't been entirely eliminated, by the way. Uh, but you know, it's like, there are

00:09:17.800 so many people, there's so many interactions that are going to happen. And this idea that every single

00:09:23.080 one of them, you know, has to go completely perfectly is just, it's just very unrealistic.

00:09:28.420 You see similar criticisms in foreign policy where it's like, okay, well, how would you conduct this

00:09:33.680 war? How would you conduct this action where it's like, it all has to be done perfectly. And it's like,

00:09:38.460 well, I'm not sure that that's feasible in reality. And so it's, it's just this frame of,

00:09:42.980 of, you know, sort of wanting everything to go perfectly. And I think it's unrealistic.

00:09:47.020 It doesn't necessarily excuse it by the way. Like I would still take the position that like, sure,

00:09:51.520 the Alex pretty interaction, like could have gone better. Like that wasn't an ideal outcome. I'm not

00:09:55.880 going to like cry for him and say, we need to abolish ice because it happened. But like, I am still

00:10:00.440 like, that doesn't, that wasn't my, the ideal way the state acts to me, you know, like that,

00:10:05.440 that could have been done better. Okay. I see that is still,

00:10:08.460 the position that I hold. So that's, yeah, that's where I, that's what I think sort of

00:10:12.360 explains this, this dynamic. Yeah. I think you're right that that's certainly a big part of it is

00:10:18.900 like, there's, there is just that, well, if the state is taking an action, then just reflexively,

00:10:23.880 I, you know, I snap back into my, you know, immediate political programming and I get that,

00:10:28.760 you know, I have this with conservatives all the time. Yeah. They're, they're, they're the slogans

00:10:32.780 that they've heard over and over again. And so when they see something happen,

00:10:37.140 they just apply a slogan. That's the heuristic. That's what they know. And, you know, I have to

00:10:41.500 explain them like, no, we actually need to think through this issue. Does this help us here? Does

00:10:46.340 this actually move us forward, acquire us power? You know, somehow forward one of our objectives

00:10:51.240 or principles, not just immediately going back to that, like wrote nonsense of, okay, I saw something

00:10:57.440 and I repeat a phrase or a formula and then I move forward. And in a lot of ways, you know,

00:11:02.480 this is the issue with, with much of libertarianism is, as you say, it's for specific people. I do

00:11:08.920 love, uh, I think it was, um, what was it, uh, uh, Carl Benjamin who said that like liberalism is

00:11:15.380 Sharia law for English people, you know, like it's just their natural way of being, you know,

00:11:20.460 like there are a similar quote. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So, so it's in a way libertarians are the

00:11:27.180 people who just, you know, they look, they have a tradition, but they just don't understand

00:11:30.920 it's particular like to them. Like there's a, there's a, there's a specific thing. It's,

00:11:35.500 it's, uh, I think it was Curtis Yarvin who described libertarians as like a, a beautiful

00:11:40.080 prey animal, like a gazelle, like, like, like, like it's, it's majestic, but if someone doesn't

00:11:45.520 protect it, it's just going to get itself eaten. You know, like you love it. We've got a little

00:11:50.280 bit, we've got a little bit more, uh, a spine, a little bit more muscle in New Hampshire,

00:11:53.780 but I'm, I do agree that this is true of a lot of them. Yeah. So spoon, I guess,

00:11:59.760 why is it so hard to ultimately get that the interaction question that Jeremy was talking

00:12:07.820 about? Like, I think we can agree that, you know, I, I think the goody shooting was a clean

00:12:12.020 shoot. Like that's, that's exactly what you should do. If someone's attempting to run you

00:12:15.700 over end of story, this one, the Peretti one, again, I don't think I wouldn't call it a bad

00:12:21.860 shoot necessarily. I would say it's a far more complex scenario. I think it's very clear that

00:12:26.800 the officers did not know that the person had been armed, that there is this negligent discharge

00:12:31.780 of the firearm when it was removed. Everyone kind of just triggered, like there's a lot of

00:12:36.140 extenuating circumstances. And obviously Peretti was specifically trying to manufacture this outcome.

00:12:40.940 We saw him, you know, pre with, with other videos escalating with the police multiple days

00:12:46.540 beforehand, assaulting, uh, spitting on, uh, ice officers, kicking their car, breaking the

00:12:51.780 tail light. Like this is not some peaceful guy who happened to wander into a, uh, a high

00:12:56.660 pressure situation. He was looking for exactly this. And yet somehow it just is very hard to

00:13:02.180 explain to people like, yeah, you're, you're not going to get a perfect police interaction

00:13:06.480 every time. I understand this doesn't look great, but like when people specifically go out

00:13:11.480 of the way to manufacture this situation, how much of this is on them and you know, can you really

00:13:17.800 expect to just like stop all ice operations because of it? Yeah, no, it's, it's sort of the one thing

00:13:24.700 that I find very irritating about these kinds of situations because I've noticed particularly with

00:13:31.820 the, with, with the good shooting as well. But I think it's similar to this one, which is when I

00:13:36.160 look at like this entire interaction overall, it just strikes me as bizarre that everyone focuses

00:13:42.300 on like the split second of aggression and no one pauses and goes, the person who got shot,

00:13:47.940 just how much of what you just did to lead up to this situation? Could you have avoided if you

00:13:52.760 were just, I don't know, not there? Which just strikes me as insane that you have this person who goes

00:14:00.500 out of the way. I mean, I understand the second amendment, the right to protest and all this stuff,

00:14:05.160 but it strikes me as bizarre when you go, okay, this person was there a couple of days ago,

00:14:09.540 destroying vehicles, kicking it. Just, I don't understand how you protest the state when it's,

00:14:15.620 it's what the state is actually supposed to do. That to me is when your right to protest kind of

00:14:20.440 goes out the window and started losing steam in theory. So when I sort of look at that perspective

00:14:26.760 of, okay, how much of what you are doing is a stupid is that you were literally just protesting 0.63

00:14:33.480 what the state is supposed to do and you're doing it in a very unsavory manner. It's that kind of

00:14:40.000 situation that when they get shot, anyone who's looking at the situation from just a perspective

00:14:45.820 of, is this person good for my nation? No. That's when the sympathy starts to just go out the window.

00:14:51.080 And I feel that that's when the, it ultimately, for me, I think it boils down to who gets animated

00:15:00.500 by what is how many people will justify it versus how many people will kick up a fuss that it's not

00:15:05.720 justified. And it really just goes back and forth to that. Cause I feel at the end of the day, it's just

00:15:09.720 who will, who will use power to enforce their morality is when it falls down to.

00:15:16.680 Well, it's just the scenario where I look, I, I get it. Like, I don't, I specifically didn't like,

00:15:22.100 and I said, so, you know, the, the way that a number of people were approaching the second

00:15:26.300 amendment question in this, like, you know, a lot of people, Oh, he had a gun with multiple magazines.

00:15:31.220 It was a military style gun. Cause it had a threaded barrel. No guys, it's, it's just a gun.

00:15:36.880 And you know, I, I have, you know, I carry very similar setups. I've been doing it for decades at

00:15:43.220 this point. And you know what? I've managed to never get in a fight with a police officer

00:15:47.720 while I have a gun on me. Like I carry a gun legally. It's not a problem. Like, even if I have

00:15:53.120 had a, a situation where like a police officer will pull me over. Cause I was going through a stop

00:15:58.380 sign or something wrong. Like I am very careful if I have a gun on me on how I interact with anyone,

00:16:04.740 but especially the law. And this is just not an issue. You're, you're fine to protest. You're

00:16:10.060 fine to have a firearm on you, but he's obviously going well beyond that. I've never kicked a car

00:16:16.260 with a police officer. I've never spit on a police officer. I've certainly never dove between a police

00:16:21.100 officer and someone that they are trying to interact with while armed. And I would not be surprised if I

00:16:26.360 did, if I did any of that stuff to end up in a bad situation. Now, again, like said, you know,

00:16:32.160 maybe the officer shouldn't go that far, but this is just the conversation with like a minority stop,

00:16:36.840 right? Same thing. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe a police officer is overzealous with a, with a young black 0.99

00:16:41.980 guy. He pulls over. Maybe you can make that case. But if you, as a young black guy are immediately 0.67

00:16:46.800 going into that interaction, trying to start trouble, trying to fight, trying to argue, resisting arrest,

00:16:52.040 all of these things, you know, armed without an ID, everything else. Well, then at some point,

00:16:57.940 the question is, did you put yourself into this situation? Yes. It's an unfortunate outcome,

00:17:03.700 but if you're consistently looking to be in a situation like this, and then the natural

00:17:09.220 consequences happen, I have a hard time crying for you. And, and, you know, Jeremy, I think that was

00:17:14.760 your point that a lot of libertarians were very angry with you online. Uh, they, they were angry at me

00:17:19.840 too. We, we, we did a point out that perhaps Ron Paul was not making the, uh, the best decision

00:17:24.500 there. And man, did that make a lot of people angry? Uh, but, but that seemed to be the issue

00:17:30.640 that they, they simply could not grasp. Like, yes, perhaps agents of the state did not have the,

00:17:36.820 the best optics in the scenario. Some part of this could have gone better, but the, the like intense

00:17:42.660 reaction to just say, and now ice has to give up and we're, we're losing everything. And we have to

00:17:47.940 get out of there and give the left exactly what they wanted to manufacture. Like, it just seems

00:17:52.260 so short sighted. Yeah. Look, it's, I think it's entirely appropriate to be critical of the Trump

00:17:58.240 administration or any of these people who have said that you don't have the right, or you shouldn't

00:18:01.580 be carrying a firearm at a protest. This is entirely your right as an American. I've been to protests here

00:18:06.440 in New Hampshire where there were dozens, if not hundreds of people, you know, who were carrying,

00:18:11.420 no one got shot. Okay. Um, yeah, it does. When, when you start and look, I've, I've been arrested

00:18:19.340 on purpose more than once. Well, actually only once on purpose, once by accident. Uh, but in both

00:18:26.280 cases, I was not, uh, disobeying a police officer. I was wholly compliant. You know, this is that, that is

00:18:34.440 the role that they are, are playing. And it is an interaction that is inherently, you know, dangerous.

00:18:41.940 Like this is not, they, they do have, they do have guns. They do have the ability to kill you.

00:18:46.980 And this idea that this interaction can be, that you can be disobedient and that, that, that this is

00:18:53.760 supposed to be risk-free is, is, is clearly fallacious. That can't make sense, you know? And so, um,

00:19:00.740 there is an extent, you know, and especially libertarians, you're supposed to understand

00:19:04.060 trade-offs. You're supposed to be able to think like economically, like, okay, there has to be a

00:19:09.440 rate. Like the, the amount of times that someone resisting arrest ends up killed over, uh, over a

00:19:16.000 long enough time series or over enough instance, it cannot be zero. Like that you have, you know,

00:19:20.840 it's like, it's the same thinking of like, you know, if you've, if you've flown hundreds of times,

00:19:25.680 you probably should have missed a flight, you know, like, or you're, or you're getting to the

00:19:29.540 airport to like, like the, the, the optimal amount of, of, of violence in response to resistance

00:19:35.620 cannot be zero. That's not, that's not an equilibrium that, that works. And so like,

00:19:40.840 there could be an argument that they're being too violent, that they're being too dangerous,

00:19:44.160 but you can't deduce that from one interaction. And so to say from one interaction, uh, that

00:19:48.980 therefore, you know, we need to abolish ICE and ICE needs to, you know, quit doing what they're

00:19:54.080 doing. That's a, that's a ludicrous response. There, there could be more substantive claims

00:19:58.580 about ICE is how ICE is acting and this kind of stuff, but you can't deduce it from, you know,

00:20:03.420 one person who is disobeying. And it wasn't, again, I do think it was a bad outcome, but you

00:20:07.620 can't go from one bad outcome to, and say, Hey, we've got to stop doing this entirely. That doesn't,

00:20:13.880 that doesn't make any sense. And of course we're not seeing this in other places. This isn't

00:20:17.900 happening in New Hampshire. This isn't happening in Texas. This isn't happening in Florida. This is

00:20:21.380 happening in places where the state government is resisting, is fighting, where there's organized

00:20:28.120 opposition, you know, so this was not just this random incident because ICE behaves this way.

00:20:32.760 This was part of a systematic resistance that is specific to Minnesota and a minority of places.

00:20:38.920 Yeah. I should say that there's famously video of you, like, uh, screaming at federal agents who show

00:20:44.940 up at your house. So, you know, I don't think I screamed at them after they drove away, maybe.

00:20:50.160 No, like, look, I know. And I've, I have, I have pushed them. There's a video that I should

00:20:54.780 probably upload. There's a video that very few people have seen comparative comparatively.

00:20:58.920 Cause it was before I was like kind of internet famous where I, I moved to New Hampshire. I only

00:21:03.060 been here for a year or two and I intentionally got arrested in like 2017 or so, because the house

00:21:10.840 I was living in, um, had like a shared back L, uh, driveway. And that's how everyone in this block

00:21:17.160 got in and out of the, of the property and the police had had both sides blocked off for like

00:21:22.920 eight hours. And they had said that there was someone in this building over there that was

00:21:27.360 like barricaded. And I was like, look, I consent to the risk that this guy somehow shoots a bullet

00:21:33.280 out of the window and hits me when I'm leaving. Like, I don't consent to being trapped in my house

00:21:37.820 by the police. Like I, we, this, we, the police work for the citizens. Like you are making this

00:21:43.040 independent risk assessment. Like we don't agree. Like I'm happy. Please let me leave with my car

00:21:48.640 so that I can go and pick my child up, uh, you know, from, uh, from school or whatever. It wasn't

00:21:53.260 school. There was somewhere else, but I needed to go and pick up my kid. And my, I was trapped in my

00:21:56.820 own house by the police whose salary I pay. And I said, like, I would like to leave. They said,

00:22:01.180 you can't. And I said, what would happen if I attempt to leave? They said, you'll get arrested.

00:22:04.300 And I said, arrest me. And I got arrested. But, uh, to me, that's how, if you're gonna,

00:22:10.440 that's, you know, that's how you do it. Like I said, look, I'm willing to get around. And then,

00:22:14.020 by the way, they dropped the charges. They chose not to pursue it. Um, uh, uh, and to me, and like,

00:22:19.140 I, so I still do believe that police can overreach. Like, I don't believe the police whose salary I pay

00:22:23.360 should keep me safe from things I'm saying I don't want to be kept safe from, you know? Um, uh,

00:22:28.980 so anyway, I do like, I, so I do, I am still a libertarian. I am still willing to,

00:22:33.940 you know, resist the government when I think that they're overreaching. But I also understand that if I'm

00:22:38.640 going to directly disobey a cop in a physical way, I'm taking my own life into my hands. And I don't

00:22:43.960 think that's, I think that's the only reasonable way to think about this. Well, and you know, there,

00:22:48.840 there is of course a long tradition of civil disobedience, but it's understood, as you say,

00:22:55.060 if you're going to put yourself in a position where you're going to get arrested, you probably

00:22:58.700 shouldn't arm yourself in a way that's your, you're also going to like, you know, when you get

00:23:03.520 arrested, end up, uh, you know, exchanging fire. The point is I know what's coming. I have prepared

00:23:08.840 for this scenario. I'm going to deescalate the consequences when it happens. So that if I'm

00:23:14.640 trying to make that point, I'm making that point without like getting in a gunfight. That's not the

00:23:19.480 objective. Even if you are intentionally looking to get arrested and make a point in civil disobedience,

00:23:25.160 the whole point is you're the peaceful one. They're the one with violence. That's the,

00:23:29.600 that's what you're the dynamic you're trying to show the injustice of the violence. If you show up

00:23:34.860 with a gun, okay, well now you're just in a gunfight, right? Like, and again, I'm not against

00:23:39.000 people having guns. I've carried a gun for, for, for many decades, have interacted with law enforcement,

00:23:44.700 been to protests with one on me. It's fine. I'm just saying, I don't put myself in those situations.

00:23:50.140 It's really not that hard, even when you have a gun on to know how you should be behaving in that

00:23:56.120 scenario. Uh, but, but this really does just, I think it underlie the larger problem, which,

00:24:02.420 you know, Jeremy identified early on, which is there's just those instincts in libertarians when

00:24:08.320 it comes to seeing the state do anything right. Like, but, but it does seem like the defect,

00:24:14.380 you know, defection does come pretty consistently specifically with immigration, uh, spoon. Cause I,

00:24:22.580 I, I know that libertarians, they need to say, at least the, you know, the, the sane ones need to

00:24:28.460 say we're against open borders. Like they recognize at some level, even if that like will have some

00:24:34.580 impact on their abstract libertarian understanding that it's just an unwinnable position. It's

00:24:40.680 ultimately just unfeasible to maintain an open border, whatever libertarian understanding of free

00:24:46.560 movement of people simply cannot apply to everybody. They say that, but then just kind of

00:24:52.160 really reliably when it comes time to vote on, you know, border issues or support the president

00:24:58.740 of border issue. We just don't see it. Like I like Thomas Massey and Rand Paul on a lot of stuff,

00:25:03.780 but I consistently make libertarians angry because I say they're going to betray me on the border.

00:25:08.080 They always betray me on the border. And this is my problem because the border is the existential

00:25:13.020 issue, right? Without a border, the country is over without deportations. The democratic system

00:25:19.880 simply cannot continue as it's going. And so if you are a libertarian and you want to maintain

00:25:25.700 any understanding of your libertarian principles, you have to have a system in which you can't just

00:25:30.620 let people in who aren't libertarian. Like that's just the most basic thing in the world, but

00:25:34.380 libertarians never seem to follow through. They always defect specifically on this issue and kind

00:25:40.180 of help out the left. Why is it this issue in particular? Cause I don't think it's just the use

00:25:46.020 of government though. I think that that is a consistent impulse, but for some reason,

00:25:50.280 specifically when it comes to immigration, we see over and over again, they talk the talk,

00:25:54.600 but when the walk comes, it's always defect. Investing is all about the future. So what do

00:26:01.020 you think is going to happen? Bitcoin is sort of inevitable at this point. I think it would come

00:26:05.700 down to precious metals. I hope we don't go cashless. I would say land is a safe investment.

00:26:11.340 Technology companies, solar energy, robotic pollinators might be a thing. A wrestler to

00:26:17.400 face a robot that will have, they'll have to happen. So whatever you think is going to happen

00:26:22.580 in the future, you can invest in it at Wealthsimple. Start now at wealthsimple.com.

00:26:28.600 I wonder how much of that is demographic. Cause I feel like if I look at that just from an

00:26:35.340 outside perspective, it seems to me there's, there's just a fear of we either get Weimar Republic

00:26:41.280 or the Third Reich. Like there's no middle between those two. Like, yes, you can't get 0.92

00:26:46.400 let in everyone into the world, but then you're still going to rely on the state to, okay, well,

00:26:50.340 who gets to decide who comes in? And if you went by, okay, let's just be brutally honest.

00:26:55.000 If you went by, okay, purely talent and like actually competent talent, not just flood the

00:27:00.100 place with H1Bs, you're looking at like parts of China, maybe mostly Japan, Korea, and Western 1.00

00:27:07.660 Europe. That's basically the only immigrants you will ever take in because they would be 1.00

00:27:12.080 top-notch performers. They would also be culturally compatible with Western values because that's

00:27:16.960 where your original stock comes from. That's just the reality. If you want a functioning

00:27:22.700 nation state and you want the state to continue the way it is, that's the people you want to

00:27:26.680 bring in. Everyone else, you tend to just cause chaos. It's just call a spade a spade.

00:27:31.520 Yeah. And Jeremy, this is something I've seen you comment on again regularly, which is something

00:27:38.060 many libertarians won't address, but you, you said something pretty similar. I think I actually

00:27:43.140 saw that on, on your, uh, on your, uh, Twitter today saying something like, you know, basically

00:27:48.680 libertarianism is for 115 IQ Anglos. It's that that's who can do it. And so, yeah. And so if you, 0.95

00:27:57.080 if you do select specifically for the ability to live in those types of societies, you will

00:28:03.480 demographically produce a specific, uh, outcome. Do you, do you think that is something that weighs

00:28:09.180 on the minds of many libertarians when they're kind of bailing out of the, uh, border situation?

00:28:14.780 Yeah. Well, that's one of the drums I beat regularly, although I think it is important to

00:28:18.160 understand that it's libertarians are disproportionately Anglo, not necessarily all Anglos are disproportionately

00:28:23.900 libertarian. Absolutely. Of course. Um, and so sometimes people struggle with that, that,

00:28:28.740 that, uh, second part of it. Um, but not, not saying people here, uh, you know, I think, but to,

00:28:34.060 I wanted to bring it back a little bit to your comments about Paul and Massey and like why

00:28:37.420 libertarians, you know, kind of trend in this way. And cause like, cause I can't, like, I have

00:28:41.440 different positions on this issue than I did 10 to 15 years ago. And, you know, because there really are

00:28:47.880 very good. And in fact, if I have an issue with sort of the right in general, where I wish they

00:28:54.160 could appreciate this idea from libertarians, it's like, it's the idea of markets, the benefits of

00:28:58.900 markets, that markets are this really special, uh, thing there, they produce, uh, incredible

00:29:05.000 coordination between humans and they're responsible for a lot of our, the good parts of our, of our,

00:29:11.580 of our modern world. And I often find that, you know, people on the right, some people on the

00:29:16.960 right. Or some conservatives, you know, want to solve problems in ways that are anti-market where

00:29:22.660 a market, even if you want to solve the problem, a market would solve the problem in a better way

00:29:26.740 than the proposed conservative solution. And so I think the impulse here is it, cause it is true.

00:29:31.880 Like it is true that I can take, that we could take someone from, you know, Haiti or wherever.

00:29:38.700 And like, they would be more economically productive here. Some of them would be worth, you know, nothing,

00:29:43.760 but some of them would actually, would actually be more economically productive here. That is,

00:29:47.700 I think that is a true claim. We can debate it if we want, but I think that's a true claim. And,

00:29:50.700 and so, you know, there's this impulse that's like, oh, well, like we could all be, you know,

00:29:54.540 more prosperous. We don't want to get in the way of, of a market and labor is a market just like other

00:30:01.040 things. What these types of libertarians miss is that these people come with negative externalities

00:30:09.000 in libertarian terms. There are costs that aren't born by the employer who is doing the hiring. And

00:30:17.780 there are aspects of our society culturally, in terms of how our courts work, in terms of how,

00:30:23.740 in terms of having, you know, order in our local parks and our local environments and so on that aren't

00:30:29.500 born by the employer. And these people, what, if you, if you have too many people who don't share

00:30:35.380 your way of thinking, you will stop having the things that you value about your society.

00:30:42.480 But the reason that I think libertarians end up reflexively in this position, at least some of

00:30:46.620 them is because they appreciate markets and, and that they apply that impulse to the market, you know,

00:30:53.540 for, for labor. But I think this is like being a little, this is like trying to be nicer than Jesus.

00:30:59.160 You know, it's Ricardo was, didn't believe in free movement of labor when he was coming up with a

00:31:06.280 comparative theory of advantage, right? Like that, that was the whole point was like that the, you

00:31:10.900 would favor your country and you would like capital and labor would largely be fixed. And that's why

00:31:16.540 I'm here on the show as a libertarian. So I've got to defend my people. I'm not, I'm not just going to

00:31:21.220 be here and, uh, and, and trash them and say, the libertarians are, are awful. I tend to think that even

00:31:26.340 when I disagree with the libertarians, the impulse is coming from a good place. And so I'm going to

00:31:30.880 defend where that's sure. But, but, and, and look, so I want to say this because I know, look, I know

00:31:36.780 I give libertarians a lot of crap. I get that. And people will often say, well, then why are you

00:31:40.860 talking to them all the time? Why, why are you in Tom Woods friendly? Like, I don't get it. It's like,

00:31:44.880 well, because actually I think libertarians are so close and that's why I'm so hard on them because

00:31:49.740 they're close to the answer, but this is, this is the beauty. Okay. So, so, uh, I'm probably not telling you

00:31:55.860 anything you don't know, but for the audience that, you know, members who may not have been

00:31:59.400 familiar, like this was the whole point of Neo reaction. Like this was the beautiful synthesis,

00:32:03.960 right? This is why everybody in Neo reaction was a post-libertarian because the whole point was,

00:32:09.620 we know this isn't going to work by itself. So Hoppe's right about like, uh, uh, a lot. However,

00:32:17.840 like you need, basically you need authoritarianism on the outside and libertarianism on the inside.

00:32:24.000 You need, you need the hard shell so you can have the, the, the soft, uh, you know, chocolatey

00:32:29.240 center. So, you know, we, we, we want a high degree of order and, uh, you know, uh, a high degree of

00:32:36.460 power in the ability to maintain the state and keep people who shouldn't be here out. But once it's

00:32:42.640 comes to the internal workings, we want a fairly open society, right? Like that, that's, that's the

00:32:49.160 model. That was the whole NRX model, uh, you know, libertarianism in one state, if you will.

00:32:54.560 Uh, and so that, that, that was kind of the whole idea. And this, this should be like the solution to

00:33:01.360 this problem. This is always what I'm trying to get libertarians over the line on. They're like,

00:33:05.140 oh, you're, you're an authoritarian. I'm like, well, only in one way, like in exactly one way,

00:33:10.900 but it's the way that allows me to not be an authoritarian everywhere else. And if you don't do

00:33:16.220 this one thing, you don't maintain order in this one thing, then you don't get to have the freedom

00:33:20.880 in any other aspect. And that's, that's why I'm hard on libertarians. That's why I'm being a myth.

00:33:25.580 It's not because I hate them. It's because they're so close to the answer and I need them to get over

00:33:29.960 the line. Yeah. Yeah, totally. I mean, it's a, it's a classic sort of, um, Ford called it the

00:33:34.940 narcissism of, of small differences. Uh, Renee Gerard has this quote about, you know, the people that we

00:33:41.440 always want to condemn the most are our neighbors, you know, and it's because it's because we are

00:33:45.880 close, you know, we do have, we have a lot of overlap and it's like, uh, we, we're that much

00:33:52.080 more frustrated, you know, by the, by the small differences. So I do think it makes sense that

00:33:56.680 that drives a lot. Can I steal manual authoritarianism for a moment? Yes, by all means. I was actually

00:34:06.380 going to pivot to you on this, so go for it. Yeah. Because I've, uh, I've spoken to Europeans

00:34:11.320 and Americans about this and okay, how can I say this in a, in a nice way that doesn't come off

00:34:17.080 as too mean. I feel like I'm talking to two different species of people when it comes to

00:34:22.700 this kind of stuff, because I feel like to, to Europeans authoritarianism is action to Americans

00:34:29.420 authoritarianism is structured in the sense that to us or rather to the Americans is that

00:34:37.280 if you basically do, cause I asked a friend of mine about this, I said to him, cause he's an

00:34:42.960 American, I said, tell me if you agree with this, do an American authoritarianism is the state does

00:34:46.680 something I don't like expediently. And he said, yes. So it does, it's not a focus on, is the state

00:34:53.700 doing something that it can or shouldn't do? It's more just, it's doing it in a way that I don't like,

00:34:58.840 even if it is a competent state craft orientated action, it seems to be more very heavily focused on

00:35:06.520 the state should not be able to do this and therefore it's bad. And so when I sort of look at

00:35:12.460 basically anything that the state does in, in the American sense, I've noticed a lot of the protest

00:35:18.220 on it is very much driven by it's violating a sense of structure and there's very little conversation,

00:35:25.680 if any at all, about what should people in government actually do with power, especially when

00:35:31.860 is limited by the constitution, when sort of a lot of people are going, if it's, if it's hampering us

00:35:38.060 in a way from actually executing what a functioning state should look like, it's, it's becoming a burden

00:35:43.800 in a way that Americans find very difficult to move away from because that's basically all they know.

00:35:50.240 Yeah. I think there's a lot of truth to that. And this is why, so one of my issues is trying to

00:35:58.240 shift. Uh, Americans have been told that small government is a goal. Uh, and I think that small

00:36:05.360 government is generally good because it allows for, uh, the cultivation of virtue. Uh, but I don't

00:36:11.680 think that the, the smallness of the government itself is the actual goal. And I think that's what

00:36:18.720 gets Americans so confused rather than competence. Yes. Yeah. Right. Right. And rather than asking is,

00:36:25.980 is what's happening here good for the people or not, the question is just, is there less government?

00:36:31.260 And sometimes the answer is less government is the good thing. And in fact, it's probably the answer

00:36:36.620 more often than not. But I think making that your only gauge is the problem. Uh, I, I, I, I am,

00:36:43.860 I am Aristotelian in the sense of, I think we have a Telos as a people. I think we should be

00:36:48.780 orienting ourselves towards an end and a shared outcome. And what does that, what gets us there

00:36:55.000 is the good that, that, that, that is the positive thing. Now for Americans, I think our Telos is one

00:37:01.900 that is largely one of, of Liberty and small government. I think that does actually get us

00:37:07.420 where we want to go, but the point is where we want to go. And if that, if the government being

00:37:12.520 smaller in an area helps us, then we should do it. But if the government, you know, doing something

00:37:17.680 critical will help us along that line. That's okay. That, that is not in and of itself an evil.

00:37:23.440 I don't want to abolish the state. And I don't think that ultimately that is the answer. I do

00:37:28.760 want a smaller state when it achieves the type of goal we're looking for. But, but I think you're

00:37:34.160 right, Spoon, that just having that, that, that singular goal of small government as the only end

00:37:40.640 of our understanding of like how we should govern or how we should be ruled. I do think that does,

00:37:45.600 you know, run us into a problem with, uh, a lot of American conservatism and, and, uh,

00:37:50.480 libertarianism, but I don't know, Jeremy, do you, do you, do you infantarily disagree with that?

00:37:55.420 Have we, no, I mean, I, I would say I, I, I broadly disagree with that. I mean, I'm often

00:38:01.620 having these debates as well about, you know, these, uh, one term for them is sort of these

00:38:06.060 nap tests, these like nap absolutists where they're like, well, all I have to do is never violate

00:38:11.500 the nap and I don't have to consider the consequences. And I, I, I, I don't really

00:38:16.820 get this thinking. You have to consider the consequences at some point. Like if, if literally

00:38:20.680 just following the nap resulted in the destruction of, you know, everything, your family, your way

00:38:25.380 of life, then like, I would just, I would just violate the nap. It just doesn't even seem like a

00:38:29.260 hard, you know, a hard choice. Um, to defend these people a little bit, like there are consequential

00:38:36.640 reasons that we want a nap like, or, or deontological rule-based government, which is that

00:38:44.020 it's predictable, which is that we can predict how the government will act and how others

00:38:50.260 will act towards us. I would posit that this is still a consequence. So it's still ultimately

00:38:55.340 something that we, we value because of, of the results to some degree, but you know, like

00:38:59.880 there's this, these classic trolley arguments, like, you know, would you pull the trolley lever

00:39:03.920 to save, you know, five for one? And then they do this other one of like, you know, would

00:39:07.980 you push a fat man off of a bridge, you know, to, to save five lives, right? Like, and a

00:39:14.240 lot of people will say, well, I would pull the trolley lever to save five instead of one,

00:39:17.980 but I wouldn't push the fat man off the bridge to save five lives. These are the most common

00:39:25.240 answers that, that, that people get. And some ethicists and philosophers like to say that these

00:39:29.360 answers are contradictory, but I actually don't think that they are. Uh, they're, they're

00:39:33.100 speaking to the type of society that we want to live in. If there's some contrived scenario

00:39:36.940 where I have to pull a lever, yeah, pull the lever. What is this? This isn't like a real

00:39:42.140 thing that happens in the real world, but in the real world, I don't want to worry that

00:39:46.220 I go into my doctor and he chooses to harvest my organs because it would save five lives instead

00:39:51.320 of one. And it would be more, you know, efficient or whatever, you know? And so I think to defend

00:39:56.440 sort of the nap ish positions in a consequential way, it's about having a government or having a

00:40:04.680 state whose behavior is predictable that won't arbitrarily violate rights because it produces

00:40:10.080 good consequences. Yeah. And, and of course I understand that to an extent, but this is,

00:40:16.240 I think ultimately the problem, uh, with, uh, you know, this understanding of human nature and

00:40:22.740 structuring society, you know, you can never actually do that. Right. And, and there's a,

00:40:28.360 there's a goal of reducing, uh, the, the arbitrary nature as much as possible. Right. But this is kind

00:40:35.740 of the entire point of Joseph Demestria or Carl Schmitt. Eventually someone always decides, right.

00:40:40.860 There's always the exception. And so you can structure your system to be as predictable as you

00:40:46.300 can for as long as you can. But at some point, uh, there, there, there, it comes down to,

00:40:52.080 do you have a good ruler? Do you have somebody who's ruling in the interests of your people?

00:40:56.700 When the exception comes, when the decision comes, are, are you willing to, to take those steps? And I

00:41:02.320 think that's the thing that's so hard for many libertarians to get. It's like this binary of

00:41:07.800 either, you know, you're, you're licking the boot of, of, uh, you know, Stalin, or you are like just 0.81

00:41:14.900 this, uh, nap following, you know, uh, Ron Paul acolyte. And the answer is no, like you can actually

00:41:22.680 find a ground where you are making the government as predictable as possible as, as non-arbitrary as

00:41:28.620 possible, but recognizing that when that moment comes, you do actually have to care who's in charge

00:41:34.000 and they will be making decisions and that reality is going to come. And in that moment,

00:41:38.160 like maybe the thing isn't to defect, defect, defect, defect, maybe the thing to do is recognize,

00:41:43.660 okay, while generally I would prefer not to have this level of authority being exercised,

00:41:49.020 you know, like you said, I'm not going to avoid violating the nap. If my wife and kids lives are

00:41:54.780 on the line. And if my country's on the line, then, you know, we figure it out. Like, you know,

00:42:00.780 not, not, not to get too crazy on you, but he, who, you know, uh, saves his country violates no law

00:42:05.820 at the end of the day. Uh, look, I do, I, I do think immigration approaches lifeboat type 0.99

00:42:11.300 scenarios. That's what they're often called in the liberty. Like it's a lifeboat scenario. Should

00:42:15.580 you violate, you know, and as should you violate the, the non-aggression principle of lifeboat

00:42:19.300 scenario. And yeah, I do, I, I do think immigration approaches these, um, these types of scenarios and I

00:42:25.100 completely, and I have this argument with libertarians all the time. It is, it is, it's all,

00:42:28.780 it's always ultimately ruled by men. Like you can imagine your perfect decentralized anarcho-capitalist

00:42:34.820 patchwork, utopia, whatever system that you're imagining. There's still judges who are resolving

00:42:39.760 disputes. There's still armed men who are the, who are the enforcers, you know, should that

00:42:45.580 disagreement require, uh, you know, actual violence. And so even I, cause I, I do really want,

00:42:53.780 um, I, I do, I do still like the spirit of a lot of these people, even if I think they're naive or

00:42:59.620 foolish. Like I like it. Like I think a world in which they were in charge would mostly be a better

00:43:05.600 one. Um, but I want them to imagine, cause if they could get the last part of like, okay, how would

00:43:12.300 you now maintain a system of judges that makes the type of rulings that you want? They would get the

00:43:18.700 last piece of the puzzle, which is you have to make sure that the population is compatible,

00:43:23.340 is going to produce these kinds of judges. And that, cause that's really just the one piece that

00:43:27.480 they're missing. Like that, like that, that impulse towards, cause this is part of the, part of the

00:43:32.740 problem with mass immigration is they don't have this impulse towards universal fairness. They're 0.99

00:43:37.660 clannish. They will not be consistent. You can't trust them on a jury. You can't trust them to return the

00:43:42.500 shopping cart. And like, and of course you're not returning the shopping cart is not in my rational

00:43:48.860 self-interest. It's not a Randian. I mean, it's, it's an act in certain, it's rational self-interest

00:43:53.560 in my self-conception of like an ethical being, but it's not in the, you know, it's costing me time.

00:43:58.800 It's costing me, you know? Uh, and, and so getting this through these people's heads that the, the

00:44:05.500 psychology that even allows them to think this way is so rare is special psychology. And it

00:44:12.100 will die if, if you, if you don't, uh, ensure that the popular, like the population is compatible

00:44:19.340 enough. Now, I will say this spoon, you know, there, you know, we, we, we've, we've spoken about,

00:44:24.820 uh, libertarianism as kind of the, um, you know, the default setting for, uh, for many Anglos, uh,

00:44:31.780 not, not as Jeremy pointed out the entirety, but that you're going to have more of those than anyone

00:44:35.760 else. But at the same time that, you know, that doesn't seem, you know, that, that a lot of

00:44:41.120 Northern Europeans necessarily are pushing for a whole lot of libertarianism. So to play devil's 1.00

00:44:46.540 advocate here, uh, you know, is, is that, you know, even with the stronger States, these States

00:44:52.220 that are increasingly, uh, becoming, uh, more authoritarian in a lot of ways, uh, they seem to

00:44:58.240 also not care about their borders. So the, the, the increase in authoritarianism in, in many, uh,

00:45:04.220 Northern European countries doesn't seem to be benefiting the people in the case of, uh, the,

00:45:10.660 the border security area. So it just, you know, not, not, not that again, we, we were doing much

00:45:15.720 better over in America, but it just, uh, you know, I, I think of libertarian would probably

00:45:20.900 point that out, right. Would say, well, you know, you're that, that authoritarianism isn't

00:45:24.880 really helping the, the Europeans with this problem either. So why is it so great? 1.00

00:45:30.320 Yeah, I, I would, to come back to Jeremy's point, I think it ultimately comes down to,

00:45:35.340 we need better rulers and like an actual class kind of sense. Cause I feel like as a monarchist,

00:45:44.700 I hate saying this cause it's kind of cringe, but one of the things I've realized, if you try to pitch

00:45:48.980 the idea of monarchy to people as a concept, they imagine the people in charge now with more power

00:45:55.300 and that scares the crap out of them. It's not that they can't imagine a good ruler. It's that

00:46:00.040 they can't imagine anyone now because no one in charge of governments, pretty much anywhere in

00:46:05.680 the Western world looks like they could run a freaking McDonald's, let alone a nation.

00:46:11.200 And so when you're sort of pitching them idea of a libertarian society, they just sort of look at

00:46:17.120 things and go, okay, these ideas that you wish to have in place, these are not ideas that are

00:46:23.560 universalized literally ever. We can't even get democracy to freaking work with multi-ethnic society. 0.97

00:46:29.280 So how are you going to do libertarianism? I think is kind of insane. If, if you look at it from that

00:46:36.060 way, I would say the one thing that markets do not do is it does really a really bad job of valuing

00:46:45.680 something that isn't measured with raw dollars. I agree with that by the way. So yes, that is one

00:46:52.600 thing that the moment you say to people, okay, look, um, your perfect society that you wish to have,

00:46:57.480 there are things that we want in our society that isn't measured with hard currency. And you wish

00:47:04.220 the state to sort of, I don't want to say like step on the pedal here, but you need the state to act

00:47:11.220 in a way that is in the interest of the people. And that isn't just maximizing profit. And that's

00:47:16.640 where things get dicey because once you, once you realize that people wish to have a society that

00:47:24.720 isn't just based on who can get me the most amount of money, it tends to snowball into culture, which

00:47:29.300 snowballs into race and ethnicity. And then you're like, everyone else thinks if you go down this road,

00:47:34.220 this will inevitably enter the third Reich, which I think is ridiculous because like literally every 0.92

00:47:39.040 society ever prior to like, I don't know, 1960 civil rights act was this society. It's like,

00:47:45.920 you just basically got the sixties and go, okay, we're going to ignore all of human history and try

00:47:49.840 this insane experiment that has never worked ever. And you've been warned for like, I don't know,

00:47:55.040 70, 80 years. This is going to get the result that you're, this isn't going to work, but Lord knows how

00:48:00.640 we're going on that road.

00:48:01.700 What do you guys think about attempts to sort of blend immigration systems with markets? Like one could

00:48:06.160 imagine something like some sort of, you know, insurance system where someone is being assessed

00:48:11.680 for their compatibility and they're assigned, you know, some sort of risk. And so it'd be very,

00:48:16.400 very expensive because these people start, you know, for certain people, it'd be, you know you're

00:48:22.320 cheap or very affordable. If you're say, you know, a Western European you're, but you're being assessed

00:48:28.000 in risk. You have to pay an amount of money. And if you're deemed incompatible, you can still be

00:48:33.200 removed. There's some sort of, you know, process for this.

00:48:36.560 Uh, I mean, I, I think that, uh, you know, we're calling that a market, uh, but really,

00:48:42.080 I mean, and, and yeah, in a way we've, we've, we've marketized, we've made that an economic

00:48:47.760 decision, but this is just the way that, you know, immigration worked or was supposed to work

00:48:53.040 for a very long time. Like Aristotle was talking about this. Like you have a sponsorship,

00:48:58.000 you bring someone in, you're real, you know, you're, you are responsible for that person while

00:49:03.680 you're there. This is what hop basically like reiterated and democracy that got the failed,

00:49:08.720 right? Like that you, you'd have the governmental community and you have to sponsor the person to come

00:49:12.640 in and you're responsible ultimately, you know, like those are solutions. I just don't, I don't

00:49:17.680 know if they're market solutions. It's just as like the way the world had worked. You know,

00:49:21.760 there's a reason that Aquinas picks up the three generations, uh, uh, you know, um, a model of

00:49:28.080 immigration, uh, again, from Aristotle, because like, that's the natural amount of time it would

00:49:32.640 take to vet your family over time to see if they are part of and compatible with the community. So,

00:49:38.720 yeah, I think there's a lot of wisdom and come what you're sitting there, but I think we're just

00:49:41.200 taking like classic wisdom and trying to turn into economics there more than we are, you know,

00:49:46.800 coming up with a, a solution that's novel in any way.

00:49:54.440 Well, I guess, I guess you're under democracy, like a lot of the solutions are to me, at least

00:50:00.640 in America. And I, I will admit, I don't know all this history, so I should probably learn some more,

00:50:03.920 but the, we're using democracy. You know, we elect representatives and the representatives vote,

00:50:09.940 and they often produce, it's a quota system. Uh, we can handle this many. And of course,

00:50:14.040 you know, pre hard sellers, different quotas. Now we have different quotas today. Uh, but in,

00:50:19.080 in, you know, basically for America and for a long time, it's been a quota system and in a market

00:50:23.240 system, you might have sliding scale pricing. You might have it, the prices get more expensive

00:50:28.040 as more people want to come. You can, but it's part of what makes it different. You know, and,

00:50:32.120 and again, this is part of where I often do, you know, break with, with, with substantial portions

00:50:38.600 of the right is, you know, I think anytime you're using a quota system, anytime you're having

00:50:42.440 democracy produce an exact number, you, you aren't in market territory. Whereas a market like system

00:50:47.880 would be somewhat more free floating would, uh, uh, allow for, you know, uh, various, uh, you know,

00:50:54.760 parties to be participating in a, in a, in a, in a sort of more bottom up way, as opposed to

00:51:00.600 a top down, you know, singular design. Gotcha. Yeah. I mean, like I said,

00:51:05.800 there's certainly merits to the, uh, suggestion. I, I'm just not sure if, uh,

00:51:10.200 if we aren't in some ways transposing what would just be ancient wisdom on this.

00:51:14.760 This is utopian thing. It's not on the table politically. So I'm not, you know,

00:51:17.880 it's not going to happen. It would certainly be, it would certainly be improvement over what we have

00:51:22.760 now. I would easily vote for it over our current, uh, understanding.

00:51:25.720 I, I have somewhat skeptical of a meritocratic world, and I will just pitch this sentence.

00:51:33.720 The best person for the job is not always the right person for the job.

00:51:39.400 No, I, I agree with that. And, and, you know,

00:51:43.400 Can you expand on that? Uh, okay. Um, let's just say if you're looking at a sport team,

00:51:48.920 you have like 15 best players on, uh, on a rugby field, for example, statistically,

00:51:54.440 I can guarantee you the best person is not going to be as good as like 15

00:51:59.160 players who play together. Well,

00:52:00.520 Because you need to know how do they play with each other? Like, for example, in rugby,

00:52:07.400 there's people that are far more kicking orientated. There's people that are far more

00:52:11.720 passing orientated and you can look at the people go, okay, this is the person that makes the most

00:52:15.320 line breaks. This is the person that can pass better, but you need to get them in a way that,

00:52:19.480 okay, this person's like running game is really good, compatible with the nine that plays really

00:52:23.880 fast. So you can get all these people that go, okay, statistically, I can get this person,

00:52:27.880 this person, this person, because these are all the stats that I'm looking for. But if I put them

00:52:31.880 in the team, those stats are not really compatible with each other. So you need to have the people

00:52:37.960 who can play well together, because that's what makes the best team. It isn't just an individual.

00:52:42.600 It's how well can those individual components like collectively crank and fire.

00:52:46.840 Gotcha. Yeah, I think that makes perfect sense. It probably gets semantic on what best means. But

00:52:52.360 with that definition, yeah, I think that makes sense. Yeah, it's the old money ball issue, right?

00:52:57.080 Like, at some point, they thought, okay, well, if we just, you know, crunch statistics properly,

00:53:02.360 we're going to produce the best outcome. But this isn't true in anything sports or real life. And

00:53:07.880 that is ultimately the problem I think a lot of libertarians have. It is a useful tool in certain

00:53:13.880 situations. But the attempt to turn it into a universal moral philosophy, way to view the world,

00:53:19.800 everything, you're just become a Marxist, you just become a materialist, everything is

00:53:24.600 something I can, you know, work out on, you know, on some kind of spreadsheet and some kind of formula.

00:53:30.840 It's too obsessed with rap, hyper rationalization. Yeah, I've said this before, and I really mean it.

00:53:37.960 Libertarianism is the attempt to replace God with contract law, which therefore makes it like the

00:53:42.440 most Anglo thing you can ever imagine. Like, but it really is this desire to say, well, you're just, 0.67

00:53:50.440 we don't, we don't need authority, we don't need the possibility of human interaction, because we can

00:53:57.880 quantify everything and freeze it in place. And of course, there are many amazing things you can do

00:54:03.240 with this. But ultimately, if you just you view the world this way, you're going to end up in,

00:54:08.600 I think, the kind of the disasters that we often end up in. So I, and that's not just libertarian,

00:54:14.840 and that's not just a libertarian problem. That's a modernity problem. But libertarians are just

00:54:19.560 participating next year, because I, you know, I'm actually I used to be a huge sabermetrics sports

00:54:24.840 nerd guy. That's probably not surprising, given my personality. But, you know, it is it is clearly

00:54:30.760 true that this stuff, you know, there was a lot discovered via sabermetrics. I think it's

00:54:36.600 simultaneously true that you can't purely spreadsheet your way to the best basketball team. Like I'm not,

00:54:41.800 I wouldn't make that claim either. But I think it's also true that there is hidden value that can be

00:54:48.440 detected via these, like these methods have added value, they don't explain everything,

00:54:54.120 you can't do everything this way. And it's a mistake to lose sight of, of, you know, sort of our

00:54:59.720 instincts and our gut, and a sort of more synthetic judgment. But at the same time, I think there has

00:55:06.520 been added value from some of this stuff. So I would say my answer is like a bit complex, but I

00:55:10.680 wouldn't want to, I wouldn't want to throw all that away either. No, and that's why I'm saying,

00:55:15.080 you know, there is value in parts of the libertarian understanding. I'm not, I don't want to throw it all

00:55:20.440 away either. Again, like I said, they're so close. That's my whole problem is like, it's not, it's like,

00:55:25.880 obviously there is value in this understanding. But like I said, I just think when you try to

00:55:31.540 universalize it, totalize it, that's when you run into the problem. When you, once you walk away

00:55:36.840 from putting those revelations that libertarian understandings can bring into wider context,

00:55:42.920 that's what gets, I think, people in, into trouble. But I'm certainly not saying there's no value in this

00:55:49.720 any more than there's no value in statistics in sports. Like, yes, these things are valuable,

00:55:54.120 but if you live and die by them, you know, if you're trying to run your company and the only

00:55:57.880 thing you can see is the spreadsheet and not like, you know, actually maybe that Indian cheap labor 1.00

00:56:03.240 isn't the best for my bottom line. Cause it's going to have, you know, some problems down the line,

00:56:07.400 like until you can understand that and have that total understanding, then it kind of ends up hurting

00:56:13.160 you at the end. All right, guys, well, we have some, uh, we have some super chats stacking up here.

00:56:19.000 So we should get to them. So we're not here forever. Uh, before we move over to the questions

00:56:23.560 of the people, uh, Jeremy, where can people find your work? What are you up to?

00:56:28.120 Yeah. Uh, I'm most active on x, x.com slash Jeremy Kaufman. I rarely do video stuff,

00:56:35.480 but I'm actually going to be doing a live stream on Monday night at 6 30 PM Eastern on my YouTube

00:56:40.760 channel, which is Jeremy Kaufman NH. And for anyone curious about New Hampshire, this is an excellent,

00:56:46.520 and it's scheduled. You can, uh, turn on the bell or whatever. Uh, this is going to be an excellent

00:56:50.280 chance for anyone who's curious about the free state movement to learn more, uh, about it. So

00:56:53.800 follow me on X or catch me on YouTube on Monday night. Excellent. And spoon, where can people find your

00:56:58.760 work? Um, it's here on YouTube, um, under aristocratic utensil and it's on Twitter as well,

00:57:05.160 or X as we now call it, although I know you don't like doing that or never, um, no, I, I have to,

00:57:12.120 because it's a South African that owns in there. So I'm compelled by national loyalty. Um,

00:57:16.760 it sounds like you're on a pornography site. Is it just me? No, like, uh, anyway,

00:57:20.840 if it was triple X, I could understand, but if it's just X and yeah, but yeah, but, um,

00:57:26.440 arrows underscore utensil will, you'll get me on Twitter there. Excellent. All right. Well,

00:57:31.800 I appreciate the, uh, the South, uh, South African solidarity there. Uh, let's see.

00:57:36.840 Red dragon says, uh, we libertarians love to say, don't hurt people and don't take their stuff. And

00:57:42.200 many forgot that this relies on everyone, uh, broadly agreeing on what those words mean. Yeah,

00:57:49.000 absolutely true. And, and Jeremy's point, I think that, uh, that the, the problem with,

00:57:53.480 with libertarianism is trying to remember that not everyone's a libertarian. Like that's pretty,

00:57:57.240 that's a man who gets it. That's the key question. That's a man who gets it. I'll say that.

00:58:01.480 Uh, cherry Coke, Nixon says, Lulbert's continued to take else first. Their neoliberal economics were

00:58:07.160 discredited and another, uh, social beliefs to Nixon greater than Goldwater every single time.

00:58:14.280 Oh, I'm still a Goldwater American. So we'll have to fight. I don't know.

00:58:17.400 I mean, at the very least he did push back against the civil rights act. So you gotta,

00:58:21.240 you gotta give him credit there. Well, Nixon said a lot of crazy stuff. Um, and by crowd,

00:58:26.920 I don't mean like in a bad way, like just like opening, like writing on the wall,

00:58:29.720 like these people are the enemies and it's literally everyone we can't stand today.

00:58:33.080 It's like Nixon was way ahead of the curve. Whatever you do, don't listen to the tape,

00:58:37.480 uh, conversation between him and Billy Graham in the white house. Uh, moving on.

00:58:41.000 Some of them are hilarious. Uh, Dan says, uh, how do we help, uh, our dear academic friends

00:58:48.200 suffering from TDS and seeing everything through slot vision? Um, I've just, uh, Dan, I've, I,

00:58:56.120 I've just kind of steered clear on that one. Um, but, uh, yeah, unfortunately, look, I get it.

00:59:02.600 Uh, but I don't know. I guess this is probably a better question for, uh, the aristocratic

00:59:07.320 utensil here, but, um, it does. I, I understand why some of what MAGA says or does has driven some

00:59:13.640 of the Europeans crazy, but there is, there does seem to be a healthy dose of Trump derangement

00:59:18.680 syndrome that is swept through again. I'm not saying don't criticize Trump. I'm just saying there,

00:59:23.000 there, there has become a little bit of an obsession with, uh, with current, current hatred

00:59:27.160 of Trump, uh, at the moment. And it does seem to be, uh, skewing, uh, some of the, some of the takes

00:59:33.240 coming out of the, the right-wing Euro sphere. I don't know if you want to speak to that at all.

00:59:37.080 Uh, am I to defend my, my fellow Europeans here for a moment?

00:59:40.360 Yeah, you defend, attack, whatever you'd like to do with it. I just, I have greatly annoyed

00:59:45.560 than I would have. I, I, I, I largely, like I said, avoided the phenomenon because most of these

00:59:50.200 people are my friends, but it has been hard to not notice. Yeah. Um, um, I've generally annoyed

00:59:56.280 my audience with that lately because I've seen some of the Europeans defend Trump while also

01:00:02.200 admitting that he has destroyed the, anything right-wing in Europe. And just from my perspective,

01:00:06.840 I'm going, okay, if you can acknowledge he's wrecking any right-wing movement in Europe,

01:00:10.840 why the hell are you cheering for this man? That makes no sense. Like just purely from a,

01:00:15.240 the interest of your kin. And if your interests are not being met, they're actually being damaged

01:00:21.640 by a foreign power. Then yes, I would absolutely oppose everything that Trump does just because

01:00:26.360 I'm not American. Like if it's an Englishman cheering for that shit, I think that's insane.

01:00:31.320 If it's a European saying, yeah, I'm going to oppose this. I can understand. So just it's, 0.94

01:00:37.000 for me, it's just a perspective of what side of the aisle are you on? If you're a European

01:00:41.720 and you wish to get under the thumb of the American empire and the, you see the American

01:00:45.960 empire weakening you, I would absolutely understand if they oppose the Americans.

01:00:51.480 Sure. I guess the biggest problem for people is like, they forget that nationalism means

01:00:55.640 actually looking out for your nation's interests. And so the funny thing is like, you have like this

01:01:00.040 international alliance of nationalists and it's like, all right, well, we're, we're, we're pro,

01:01:05.160 you know, uh, nationalism and particularism until we actually start thinking about our own nations.

01:01:10.760 Then it's like, what do you mean? You're not an international friend of the nationalists.

01:01:14.680 You know, that, that seems, I, I also think YouTube skews largely American. And I think for

01:01:22.040 a lot of the Europeans, they, uh, they don't wish to annoy their American audience. So they are more

01:01:28.360 sort of, you know, playing friendly with them. Whereas I don't give a rat's ass. I'll offend anyone.

01:01:32.200 I don't care who you are. If you have a crappy take, I'll give you hell for it because that's just 0.99

01:01:35.800 the right thing to do. Well, I think also to be fair to some of the European commentators,

01:01:40.200 there is a scenario where you appreciate Trump acting in the interest of his own nation.

01:01:46.600 And you want to see that for your own nation. Even if you don't like that, his actions are having

01:01:52.120 a negative impact on your movement. Right. So I guess there's that as well. Yeah. Nixon also says,

01:01:58.600 uh, Lord was trying to fit in with the leftist theater kids by reminding them they share views on the

01:02:04.360 cool issues against, uh, the locker stuffing chuds. You know, I do think that that does happen 1.00

01:02:09.880 sometimes, but I think in this case, it really is just a, uh, expression of state power thing.

01:02:15.560 Um, uh, there are situations in which I do think, especially some libertarians will side with the

01:02:21.000 leftist because it will get them, uh, you know, it's easier. Uh, it doesn't push, you know,

01:02:25.240 it doesn't trigger the defense mechanisms of the regime. But in this case, I really do think it is,

01:02:29.640 it is mainly just the, the utilization of state power that they're, they're kind of kicking back

01:02:35.160 against, uh, automatically. So also some libertarians are actually leftists. Yeah. Right.

01:02:41.160 Not, not, not a problem. Some of them just actually genuinely are dispositionally leftists.

01:02:46.200 That is actually absolutely true. I mean, we don't even get me into the last, uh, candidate for the

01:02:51.480 libertarian party. Uh, may Aramaic discourse says most of libertarians seem, uh, to be politically,

01:02:57.960 uh, political astrology. Pretty sure I'm not the only one who has fought, uh, fought this. Uh,

01:03:05.000 you know, I mean, it, it is an identity to be sure it, in some cases there is, there are people

01:03:10.680 who are just libertarians because that is like their thing. That is, that is their identity. That

01:03:15.560 is their, uh, their, their brand. Uh, but I don't, I don't know, uh, astrology, uh, so much. I mean,

01:03:22.440 though at some point all political labels are that right. Like what, Oh, are you, are you, uh, you know,

01:03:27.160 a monarchist, uh, NRX? Are you libertarian? Uh, what's, what's your obscure niche, uh, you know,

01:03:33.160 internet, uh, yes to all of those. Yeah. Yes. That is, that is a great thing in NRX. You can contain

01:03:40.800 multitudes. Yes. Uh, Nixon says comic, uh, uh, comic Dave Smith in shambles. Look, I like Dave. I'm

01:03:49.560 friendly with Dave. He's just wrong on this one. Uh, it's okay. He'll, you know, he'll, he'll be right on

01:03:54.780 another one. Uh, but, uh, you know, I haven't, I haven't gotten too hard at him though. I, I did,

01:03:59.800 you know, he was yelling at Matt Walsh about debates. I was like, I'll, I'll be a Huckleberry.

01:04:03.580 Let's, you know, let's, let's, I, I offered as well. Yeah. I never got a response to that. So,

01:04:08.940 you know, uh, you know, we'll see, we'll see where Dave goes. Uh, Nixon also says Cato,

01:04:15.440 we have no borders and no, uh, welfare. Well, oh, so at first I was actually thinking of the Roman

01:04:22.800 Cato and like, I was like, I don't remember Cato being against more. It took me a minute,

01:04:27.640 but yes. Yeah. Institute. Yes. Yes. Uh, thug, uh, thuggo says libertarians think everyone is a

01:04:35.240 rational economic actor, but real humans pursue their interests, commit crimes, make alliances

01:04:39.700 influences. I mean, this is true though, to be fair. I, I, I do think that libertarians do factor

01:04:46.280 in, you know, that, that people have non-economic interests as well. They just tend to think that they

01:04:51.180 eventually manifest themselves economically. And this is where we talked about there being

01:04:55.740 limitations to economic expressions of reality. Yeah. That's still, I mean, that would, that would

01:05:00.880 rationality involves pursuing your interest. That doesn't have to, in terms of man being

01:05:05.380 irrational and whatever that doesn't mean just economically. Yeah. Nixon says, uh, libertarianism,

01:05:12.520 uh, requires both an educated and moral population. We have neither, uh, when theory meets reality,

01:05:17.560 it fails, uh, Adams beats Jefferson in reality. Yeah. And again, that's, that's the problem with

01:05:21.740 as, as, as, as I think we've all kind of agreed here to some extent, you know, you libertarianism

01:05:27.600 can only exist in particular circumstances and you have to be willing to use power to generate

01:05:32.640 those circumstances before you get the libertarianism. It's the order of operations thing

01:05:37.400 that always seems to catch them. We didn't get into this and I don't want to start it now,

01:05:42.020 but it's also, you know, if your elites are libertarian and understand the limits for,

01:05:47.220 you know, people who might not be, that's also another way of, of sort of fusing these things.

01:05:54.080 Yeah. Let's see here. Uh, Nixon also says, thank you for being a good sport, Jeremy. Yes,

01:05:59.960 we should say, I appreciate you stepping to lion's den, uh, on this one though. I mean,

01:06:04.380 we're going to be more friendly to you, uh, obviously. Uh, but, but still, yeah, we, it is largely

01:06:09.220 a stream about, uh, uh, about dunking on some libertarian, uh, ideas. So appreciate you, uh,

01:06:14.740 I appreciate you. I need to find meaner shows actually. People are always tuned. I'm like,

01:06:18.480 I want to, I want to get in a real fight here. And I never, I never seems to manage to happen.

01:06:22.600 I mean, I, you know, spoon completely unleashes. He could be, he could be rather cruel, you know,

01:06:27.560 you got that, you got that club in your bag, you know, that's, that's, you know, when you

01:06:34.860 set up on somebody, you can get them. Yeah. I've not really done it in a, in a sort of debate

01:06:41.360 format because usually if I'm on somebody else's show, my reaction is, okay, it's like being in

01:06:46.400 somebody else's house. So you don't go around, you know, clubbing the windows just for the shits

01:06:50.640 and giggles. If it's on my own one, yes, that I will be ruthless, but, um, somebody else's show,

01:06:55.320 I'm, you know, polite and mannered as the, uh, avatar suggests. Yeah. And, and, you know,

01:07:00.560 that that's been my experience too. Every time I'm supposed to be getting into some knockdown

01:07:04.460 drag out debate with people, usually once we're in a room, uh, you know, it, it tends to be a lot

01:07:09.080 more agreement than, than you'd expect. Uh, that's actually how civilized people, you know,

01:07:14.500 conduct themselves. So, uh, yes. Exactly. All right, guys. Well, I appreciate both of you

01:07:21.860 gentlemen coming on. It's been fantastic talking with you. Everyone should be checking out both of

01:07:26.180 your works here. So everyone go and follow both spoon and, uh, Jeremy. And of course, if it's your

01:07:31.980 first time on this channel, guys, you need to subscribe on YouTube, click the bell notifications,

01:07:36.880 all that stuff. So, you know, when we go live, if you want to get these broadcasts as podcasts,

01:07:41.000 make sure you subscribe to the Orr McIntyre show on your favorite podcast platform. And I will be

01:07:45.060 hosting Timcast on Monday. So if you'd like to watch and support and come by and say something kind to

01:07:51.680 the Timcast crew while I'm there, please make sure to do so. Thank you everybody for watching. And as

01:07:56.940 always, I will talk to you next time.

The Auron MacIntyre Show - January 30, 2026

Why Libertarians Are Terrible on Immigration ｜ Jeremy Kauffman and Aristocratic Utensil ｜ 1⧸30⧸26

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