0:01

Hi everybody, this is God Sa'at for the Sa'at

0:03

Truth. As usual, I have another

0:05

fantastic guest for you today. I've

0:08

got Matt Kibbe. I thought it

0:10

was Kibbe. It's spelled K-I-B-B-E. Kibbe

0:13

is a very famous Arabic dish, but

0:15

Matt assured me that he's not Lebanese

0:17

or Arabic. Matt used to

0:19

be the president of Free the People,

0:21

an organization that seeks to promote, or

0:23

is currently the president of Free the

0:25

People, an organization that seeks to promote

0:27

libertarian ideals. He previously beat the

0:30

president of Freedom Works. He

0:32

is the author of three books, Give

0:34

Us Liberty, a Tea Party

0:36

Manifesto with Dick Armey, Hostile

0:39

Takeover Resisting, Centralized Government's

0:41

Sanglehold on America, and

0:43

the book that I

0:46

delved into the past couple of weeks

0:48

and only finished a few days ago,

0:50

Don't Hurt People and Don't Take Their

0:52

Stuff, a Libertarian Manifesto. I was

0:54

particularly keen to speak to Matt because

0:56

I live in the greatest of parasitic

0:58

states. Welcome, Matt. How are you

1:01

doing? It's an honor to be here. Oh, it's such

1:03

a pleasure to have you. You

1:06

reminded me that we met at,

1:09

I think, the Global Liberty

1:11

Institute gala prior to the

1:15

following day's event. Was it at the

1:17

Glenn Lowry Awards? Was that it? Yes,

1:20

exactly. Yeah, right. It's so good to see

1:22

you. Okay,

1:24

let's jump into it. I

1:26

guess the first question that many people would want to

1:28

know, define for us some of

1:31

the key tenets of what it is to

1:33

be a libertarian. Yeah,

1:37

you can get a 10-hour answer for most

1:39

libertarians on this, but I like to say

1:41

you should be free to live your life

1:43

as long as you don't hurt people or

1:46

take their stuff. It's

1:48

based on a philosophy of individualism.

1:51

Individuals are the objective building

1:53

block of any civil society.

1:58

We just think that beautiful things happen. when

2:01

people are left free to innovate

2:03

and cooperate and work hard and

2:06

do all of the amazing things

2:08

that we celebrate. All

2:10

of that was because some individual had an

2:13

idea and found partnership with

2:15

other people and did something

2:17

greater than they could have done by themselves. That

2:19

process, that process of figuring

2:22

stuff out is only possible

2:24

when people are free. So I like

2:27

to say that most people except for

2:29

psychopaths have a little bit

2:31

of libertarian in them because this is how we

2:33

live our daily lives. So okay,

2:35

the ideal of libertarianism can be applied.

2:37

I mean freedom is an all encompassing

2:40

term. Of course it could apply to

2:42

economic freedom, it could apply to political

2:44

freedom, to freedom of speech, to being

2:48

free from intervening in foreign lands

2:50

and therefore you become an isolationist.

2:53

What does the term freedom

2:55

encompass when you're talking about

2:57

libertarian ideals? So

3:00

there's there's sort of two sides of the same

3:02

coin and I think part of part of it

3:04

and I certainly quote her in my book and

3:07

I was very inspired as a young man reading

3:10

Ayn Rand. Her

3:12

half of the libertarian coin is

3:14

all about my right

3:16

as an individual to control and define

3:19

and live my own life and and

3:21

sheep of course was a refugee of

3:23

the Bolshevik Revolution, a young

3:25

Jewish girl that fled to the United

3:27

States, gave up everything in order

3:30

to do that. So hers was that

3:32

primal scream that you don't own me,

3:34

I own myself and I'm going to

3:36

make my own choices. The other half

3:38

of that which I don't think is in any

3:40

way unrelated is the part

3:43

where free people choose

3:46

voluntarily to cooperate

3:48

and through cooperation you

3:50

can achieve some of these really

3:53

profound values that I think make

3:55

the human experience interesting. Ideas

3:57

like respect, ideas like

4:00

trust, ideas ultimately like

4:03

love, these are like

4:05

the highest achievements that an individual can

4:08

find. And that's only

4:10

done in cooperation with

4:12

other people. And I think

4:14

some libertarians are guilty of de-emphasizing

4:18

that community that comes

4:21

when people are free to live

4:24

their own lives, because we are social

4:26

creatures, even libertarians,

4:28

maybe there's a few who

4:30

aren't, but we're social creatures

4:32

as well. And

4:35

the really beautiful things that happen

4:37

when people are free are something

4:40

that's greater than anything we could

4:42

accomplish on our own. And

4:44

that in no way undermines the

4:46

principles of individualism, it's just

4:49

the logic of that extended to

4:51

how we organize as communities and

4:53

as societies. Very interesting.

4:56

I just wanna tell a tangential side

4:58

story about Ayn Rand, and then I'll

5:00

come back to sort of more substantive

5:02

media issues. I was, actually

5:04

I think it was the trip where we

5:07

met at the Global Liberty Institute. It was

5:09

in that trip, I was walking on the

5:11

fancy street, I don't remember what it's called,

5:13

the one in, was

5:16

it Palm Beach where we were, right? Was

5:19

it Palm Beach? Yeah, Palm Beach, yeah. So

5:21

anyways, on that street, my wife and I

5:23

were just strolling and we discovered

5:26

this antiquarian bookstore. And I

5:28

mean, that's basically my fantasy to walk

5:30

into an antiquarian bookstore. So we walk

5:32

in there, and of course I see

5:35

a, that the most

5:37

expensive book that they had was a

5:39

first edition origin of species, which of

5:41

course would make me very titillated given

5:43

that I'm an evolutionist. But then there

5:45

was another section that were all first

5:48

edition, and I think some signed copies

5:50

of the various books by Ayn Rand.

5:52

Now I know a gentleman in Texas,

5:54

this billionaire oil tycoon who's

5:56

a huge Ayn Rand fan, so

5:59

I call him up. after we had left the

6:01

place and I said, hey, this

6:03

is a story, what do you think? Do you want me

6:05

to try to connect? He goes, well, why don't you go

6:07

buy them for me and of course I'll pay you back,

6:10

which kind of make me chuckle because

6:12

it's, his,

6:14

what he suggested could only come from the mouth

6:16

of a billionaire who thinks that as we're walking

6:19

to the beach, I just happen to have maybe

6:21

50 or $60,000 laying around that

6:24

I can pay it for him. So anyways, I don't

6:26

know if you would know who that oil tycoon is,

6:28

I'm not gonna mention him, but a huge fan, I'm

6:30

not sure if he ended up buying those

6:33

copies, but if you are interested, they

6:35

are first editions in Palm Beach ready for

6:37

the taking. Anything you want to add? Go

6:39

ahead. I have a suspicion who that is

6:42

and I should point out and this makes

6:44

me an extremely weird person. One

6:47

of the most romantic books my wife ever got

6:49

me was not a first edition signed

6:51

copy of Atlas Shrugged, but it was

6:53

signed by Ann Rand and it

6:56

meant a lot to me again because like this

6:58

was the first, Anthem

7:01

was the first book I read as a 13 year old that

7:03

sort of turned me on to this

7:05

entire philosophical exploration.

7:08

Yeah, so I wanna talk about your trajectory,

7:10

which you just kind of hinted at when

7:12

you were 13 and first were exposed to

7:14

Rand's work. So some of the other people

7:17

that I was already familiar with, but in

7:19

reading your book, it kind of, I

7:21

got re-energized in sort of saying, oh, I

7:23

gotta dig deep into these guys. Of course,

7:26

there's one, is it, do you say Mises

7:28

or Mises? Mises, one Mises.

7:31

Which I, by the way, I cite him in the parasitic

7:33

mind in a different context. And

7:36

then you've got Hayek and then

7:38

you've got more recently Rothbard.

7:42

So these are some of the main guys

7:44

that we might think of when we're thinking

7:46

about libertarian philosophies. Are there any other folks

7:48

that if we're trying to create kind of

7:50

a genealogy of that thought, who

7:53

might other people be that we might be missing here? If

7:56

you dig into the footnotes of Hayek

7:58

and Mises, you're gonna find... some

8:00

continental philosophers who are fairly

8:02

obscure, but absolutely the Scottish

8:04

Enlightenment philosophers, particularly

8:06

Adam Smith, but the whole host

8:09

of guys who were writing in

8:12

that milieu that Adam Smith

8:14

was writing in. And this

8:16

book, by the way, is my very

8:19

serious attempt to translate the entirety of

8:21

the theory of moral sentiments into a

8:23

tweet. And this is back when tweets

8:25

were short. So it was a heroic effort, but

8:29

I think I mostly captured it. There might be

8:31

some nuance lost. Got you. So

8:33

with other, I think Edmund Burke would be

8:35

part of that gang, correct? Sure.

8:38

Yeah, okay. So 30 years ago- By the

8:40

way, Jerry Garcia absolutely needs to be

8:43

part of that mix. Oh yes,

8:46

I saw your whole ode to the

8:48

Grateful Dead. Yes, I

8:50

got you. So, okay. Oh, and

8:52

of course, Rush,

8:55

fellow Canadians. Yes. Have

9:00

I surpassed the Rush singer as

9:03

the most impressive Canadian? Or is it

9:05

that bastard, Jordan Peterson? Or where do

9:07

I rank amongst illustrious Canadians? I

9:10

think I would put all three of you into

9:12

this category. You're being too kind.

9:15

Yes, I guess I'll put Neil Young

9:17

in there, but he's gotten a little bit

9:19

goofy in his old age. Got you. So

9:22

no Justin Trudeau, I presume. No,

9:24

not at all. Okay, so you're

9:26

13. You get into

9:28

Ayn Rand and then take us through your

9:31

intellectual development from there. So

9:34

when I was 13, I bought my

9:36

first Rush album. And back then you

9:38

couldn't just order things online and you

9:41

couldn't search for the kind of music

9:43

you liked. And so I haphazardly heard

9:45

this. Someone else

9:47

was playing it. And I went to the record

9:49

store to find the album I wanted. Of course

9:52

they didn't have it because old school bricks and

9:54

mortar stores didn't really have what you wanted. So

9:56

I bought 2112 because

9:58

it had this cool. cover on

10:00

it. I'm like, that's cool. I'm going to listen to it. And

10:03

I was devouring the music. And back

10:05

in the day, you would open the

10:07

liner notes on the vinyl

10:10

record case, and you would read about

10:12

the band, you would read the lyrics, and

10:14

there's the first song

10:17

suite of 2112 borrows

10:21

liberally from Ayn Rand's little

10:23

novella anthem. And at

10:25

the bottom of this, it says, dedicated

10:27

to the genius of Ayn Rand. And

10:30

I'm 13. I'm like, who's that guy?

10:32

Who's that dude? And

10:34

then I forgot about it, because I love the music, but

10:36

the name was weird. So it stuck in my head. I

10:39

found maybe weeks later,

10:41

I found an old beat up copy

10:43

of Anthem at a garage

10:45

sale. This is how ideas used to

10:48

spread. It was it was quite accidental. And

10:50

I of course devoured it. And I set

10:53

out on this course to find her other

10:55

books. That particular book was

10:57

so old that Atlas Shrugged hadn't been

10:59

written when when that

11:01

particular book was was published.

11:04

So I went and found the Fountainhead as

11:06

the second book. Eventually, you

11:08

get through her nonfiction books. And she's

11:10

the one that told me as a

11:12

teenager, you need to read Ludwig von

11:14

Mises, if you want to understand

11:16

economics. So this, this was my

11:18

sort of intellectual path. I

11:20

was very introverted, dorky

11:22

kid, who was quite shy.

11:24

So I just read a bunch of books.

11:27

And I discovered through

11:30

trial and error that that quoting

11:32

Ludwig von Mises and Ayn Rand

11:34

to women, hoping

11:36

that they would go out go out with you

11:38

was a tragic mistake. It did not work. But

11:41

you are if I remember correctly in

11:43

meeting you, you are tall, correct? Yes,

11:46

I'm six one. There you go.

11:48

But then again, most people to me

11:50

are tall, certainly most men from the

11:52

United States in Mexico, I'm the tall

11:54

one, but anywhere else, I'm the short

11:56

one. So you weren't able to compensate

11:58

in reading in inciting those guys

12:00

by your height that didn't work out the

12:02

calculus? I will say that

12:05

the first woman who I was

12:07

interested in that wasn't

12:10

scared away by me offering her a book

12:12

to read is my current wife, Terry.

12:15

So she sort of passed the dork

12:17

test or whatever that test was. I

12:21

was not a romantic, but these

12:24

ideas, like when you

12:26

get turned on to ideas, you just

12:28

become obsessed and that obsession is uncontrollable

12:31

sometimes. So then you went

12:33

to university where that

12:35

interest flourished. What

12:37

then led you to decide, I think

12:39

you'll correct me if I'm wrong, but

12:41

you had started graduate school, but then

12:43

left it, is that correct? Yeah.

12:46

So what happened there? So I

12:50

was actually editing the academic journal

12:52

called Market Process at George Mason

12:54

University. George Mason is

12:56

one of the best places to go in the

12:59

world if you want to study Austrian economics. And

13:03

I discovered, and this might resonate with

13:05

you, it might trigger you, I discovered

13:08

the petty and vicious

13:10

nature of the politics of tenure.

13:13

And it was a real turnoff to me. Again,

13:16

I'm young and idealistic, and I think we're

13:18

exploring ideas together and we're gonna lift each

13:21

other up. It

13:23

wasn't like that at all. So the irony is

13:25

I eventually got

13:27

away from my academic pursuits

13:31

to go to Washington DC and

13:33

get into politics, which is

13:35

the irony. Academia was too political for me.

13:38

So I got a job at

13:40

the Republican National Committee as their chief economist

13:42

instead. So that logic may not make

13:44

sense unless you actually have been in a university

13:46

and understand just how awful

13:49

it can be. Given that I

13:52

actually have something to say about the machinations

13:54

within academia, I could spend probably 10 hours

13:56

talking about that. But I'll mention one thing

13:58

that I think does have a- to

14:00

George Mason in a moment. But given

14:03

that you've lived a light, a

14:05

cerebral life, notwithstanding that it wasn't

14:08

in academia, have you ever

14:10

entertained the idea, hey, I think I could probably

14:13

go back now to graduate school and polish it

14:15

off? Or there's absolutely no interest in doing that?

14:18

I have an interest in it. It bugs

14:20

me a little bit that I didn't finish.

14:23

Obviously, not enough to have finished, but I've

14:25

explored several times maybe finishing

14:28

my PhD at a university

14:30

in Europe that has a very different sort

14:33

of style of that. The one thing I am

14:35

good at is I

14:37

consider myself a decent writer. So writing

14:40

a dissertation based on something that

14:42

I'm working on, it's a possibility.

14:45

But honestly, it doesn't affect

14:47

the work that I do. So it would be

14:49

a vanity project as opposed

14:51

to a necessity. I would say

14:53

for whatever it's worth, you didn't ask me for

14:55

my advice, but just do it. Don't

14:59

leave that thing not closed.

15:01

Just close the parentheses. And even if it

15:03

serves you absolutely no interest other than, as

15:06

you said, a vanity thing. Although I don't

15:08

think you don't strike me as someone who

15:10

would do it for just vanity purposes. Just

15:12

do it. By the way, I'll mention two quick stories

15:14

and I'll go back to George Mason. In

15:17

my latest book, in the happiness

15:19

book, towards the end of the book where

15:21

I'm talking about the psychology of regret and

15:24

how you should try to live your life without hopefully

15:26

looking back at your life and regretting things that you

15:28

did or didn't do. I

15:30

mentioned two stories, which I hope will

15:32

resonate with you because you'll see in

15:34

a second why they're relevant. Story

15:37

one is of a gentleman who

15:39

had fled Germany

15:43

as the Nazis were coming in.

15:45

He moved to Canada, was always

15:47

interested in being a well-educated person,

15:50

didn't have a chance because of life circumstances,

15:53

retired in his 60s, and then said, hey,

15:55

you know what? I'm healthy and

15:57

I think I've got things to offer. Why don't I do

15:59

it? go now and pursue my undergraduate

16:01

in his 60s. This was at my

16:04

current at the university that I'm at before

16:07

it joined. There were two separate universities

16:09

that joined together that became Concordia University.

16:11

So he was at this place called

16:13

Sir George Williams University, if I remember

16:15

correctly. So he does his bachelor's and

16:17

then he's in his 70s now says,

16:19

Hey, I'm healthy. I'm still vigorous. Let

16:22

me pursue my master's finishes his master's.

16:24

And then I think in 96, so

16:26

this is maybe two years after I

16:28

joined as a professor at Concordia, the

16:30

newspaper at my university and

16:32

the front page was finally a doctor at

16:34

91 or 92. And then

16:37

within a year of that, he passes away. So

16:39

it's actually the exact opposite of vanity, right? It's

16:41

the purest reason for being for doing a PhD,

16:43

which is it's not going to serve you in

16:46

any way in a career ascent, but he just

16:48

did it for the lover. So that's story one

16:50

story to a gentleman, another

16:52

gentleman who got his MD in, I

16:54

believe in University of Vienna in Austria,

16:59

became a medical doctor then in

17:01

1967, while training to be a hematologist,

17:03

picked up a PhD in biochemistry,

17:05

but his love, his first love had

17:07

always been physics. So after he retired

17:10

from a long career in medicine

17:12

and well into the 70s and 80s,

17:14

he then at the age of

17:16

89 completed his PhD in

17:18

physics and actually came on my show.

17:20

So based on those two guys, you're

17:22

a you're a fetus. So you still

17:24

have tons of time. I'm

17:26

just a baby. So there is

17:28

like there's there's a certain logic to

17:31

like my career trajectory has been

17:33

further and further away from sort

17:35

of wonky, heavy academic

17:38

stuff towards communicating

17:40

as simply as possible to

17:43

a broader audience. But but those

17:45

old silos and you and you're a

17:47

walking talking example of this, those

17:50

old silos that separate academia from

17:52

from communications and popular culture don't

17:55

exist anymore. So I can

17:57

I can see where it would make more sense than

18:00

perhaps 10 years ago

18:02

when I was sort

18:04

of maniacally focused on how

18:06

do we reach a broader audience? How do I turn on

18:08

more people? It's not going to be

18:10

just quoting the dead economist that I love so much.

18:13

Yeah, exactly. Okay, let me close the

18:15

loop on the George Mason. So back

18:18

in 2011, I had been

18:21

invited to give

18:23

a talk at Chapman

18:26

University. Chapman University

18:28

had that at the time

18:30

had hired the Dean at

18:34

George Mason and the Faculty of Arts

18:36

and Science to become the Chancellor at

18:38

Chapman University. You're nodding

18:40

your head, is that because you know who I'm talking about? I

18:43

don't know what you're talking about, but I know

18:45

a lot about Chapman. One of my friends, Vernon

18:48

Smith, spent quite a bit of time there.

18:50

Well, I'm going to come to that. So

18:53

I was invited to the thing because it

18:55

called the Economic Science Institute, or I can't

18:57

remember what it's called. So Vernon Smith, who's

18:59

the Nobel Laureate, had been whisked

19:02

away to join Chapman and they had

19:04

a really nice group. And

19:07

I had been invited and the Chancellor

19:09

who had been poached from George

19:12

Mason and the President

19:14

had been very, very keen on

19:16

me joining Chapman. And the whole

19:19

setup had been, you know, all the

19:21

T's were crossed and all the I's

19:23

were dotted. But then precisely for petty

19:28

academic reasons, it fell through.

19:30

Although I was officially told

19:32

that it was due to budgetary reasons, it

19:35

had nothing to do with budgetary reasons. And

19:37

that has always been a very sour point

19:39

because I thought that, you know, we had

19:41

finally made it to the to the promised

19:43

land meaning Southern California. And at the last

19:45

minute, it has been whisked away. So you're

19:47

you're exactly right that your disdain for the

19:50

political backstabbing in academia is

19:53

certainly not pretty. You

19:55

want to add anything to that? Or should I move on

19:57

to the next question? Just very quickly, I'm remembering one of

19:59

the I won't name names, but

20:01

one of the places I was considering

20:03

was in London to finish

20:05

my PhD. And this is back when I'm

20:08

still a tea party guy.

20:10

And cancel culture was a big

20:12

thing there that I hadn't at

20:14

least wasn't on my radar

20:16

screen yet. And I thought, like, if anything, it

20:18

might be a little bit prestigious

20:20

to have this guy who writes these

20:22

best-selling books be part of

20:24

your program. And he was scared. He

20:27

thought that it would draw undue attention to

20:30

his department. So that obviously

20:32

never materialized. Well, I

20:34

tell you, I often call academics

20:37

a new species that is an

20:40

invertebrate castrati class, meaning not only

20:42

do they not have spines, they

20:44

don't have testicles. And it's

20:48

so grotesque because the

20:50

mechanism of tenure is precisely to

20:52

make sure that if you were

20:54

otherwise cowardly by disposition, well, the

20:56

mechanism of tenure can now serve

20:59

as the courage that you need

21:01

to compel you to speak out

21:03

because by definition, you can't be

21:05

fired. And most academics, if you

21:07

go boo, they suck their thumb

21:09

and they go into a fetal

21:11

position. I

21:14

find that so grotesque because it would be

21:16

so nice in the same way that we

21:18

select Navy SEALs on

21:21

their physical abilities, on their bravery.

21:23

It would be nice to have

21:25

intellectual Navy SEALs in academia, but

21:27

we certainly don't select on bravery.

21:31

Well, the solution probably isn't

21:34

within academia. In my sense,

21:37

you would have an opinion about this. It's

21:39

got to be sort of breaking

21:41

those rules from the outside in

21:43

and forcing these old, tired institutions

21:45

to either follow or die in

21:47

the process. And I think again,

21:51

like the fact that there is now

21:53

a place where young

21:55

people can, I make

21:57

up a word called self-curriculate. You can actually.

22:00

find the ideas and the

22:02

thinkers and the books and the

22:04

explorations that you want. You

22:07

can do that regardless of who you

22:09

are, regardless of whether or not you're the

22:11

right race to get

22:13

into Harvard. You don't

22:15

need permission anymore. I think

22:17

that might either discipline these old tired institutions

22:19

or just put them out of business. I

22:22

think the only obstacle

22:24

that I see to what you're talking about,

22:26

which is that now knowledge is truly democratized.

22:30

You can pick your 20 top

22:32

professors in any field and go

22:34

to their lectures online and learn

22:37

in ways that you couldn't have

22:39

imagined 15 years ago. How

22:41

do we deal with the imprimatur

22:44

of the credentials? Is there

22:46

a way for us to solve that? That's

22:49

going to require the first brave few.

22:53

Peter Thiel has spent years

22:55

encouraging people not to go to college

22:57

and to go straight into innovation.

23:02

You need first generation people that

23:04

are going to stick their necks out and do that and

23:06

make it normal so that when

23:09

you go out there to get a job, it's

23:11

not just assumed that

23:13

a degree from an accredited

23:15

government approved university is

23:18

the best way to judge someone's ability.

23:21

But it's a cultural institutional

23:23

shift that requires somebody to

23:25

go first. One

23:28

of the things that I've been

23:30

most disappointed in my academic career, and this

23:33

is now my 30th year, I can't believe

23:35

it, my 30th year as a professor, is

23:39

that I thought that more

23:42

academics would be

23:44

intellectuals and they're not. I

23:47

think you're exactly on the side. So think

23:49

about the old continental European

23:52

public intellectual who could talk about

23:54

the philosophy of aesthetics if you

23:56

want, who could talk about formal

23:58

logic if you want. who can

24:00

talk about Austrian economics if you'd like. He may

24:02

not be an expert in any of those, but

24:05

that person is a well-rounded intellectual that

24:07

can speak intelligently about a broad number

24:10

of fields. Christopher Hitchens might be an

24:12

example of that, even though he didn't

24:14

have a PhD and he wasn't, of

24:16

course, an actual academic or professor. I

24:19

find that academia has become

24:21

very much careerist-oriented,

24:24

so that when I

24:26

first started going to conferences, all

24:28

these super fancy academic conferences, and

24:30

I would try to engage people

24:33

with ideas, I

24:35

found a lot of them baffingly

24:38

shallow, right? Because they knew how to play the

24:40

game. I need to publish a certain number of

24:42

papers, and okay, of course, that's important. You need

24:45

to be productive. You have to push the

24:47

research frontier. But can we just go for a

24:49

coffee and talk about some ideas? And so, in

24:51

a sense, I could be reading

24:53

your book, Matt, and you

24:55

can exude greater intellectualism than some

24:58

of my psychology colleagues who've published

25:00

100 papers, who

25:02

once you ask them about anything short

25:05

of what they publish on, they're babbling

25:07

fools. Yeah, performative

25:09

technocrats. And in

25:11

that way, it's like the bureaucracy

25:13

in academia feels almost exactly

25:16

like the bureaucracy in government or the

25:18

bureaucracy in corporations where

25:21

the performative art

25:23

of doing what you're supposed to do

25:26

overrules the things that you

25:28

would really hope that they were capable of

25:30

doing. Yeah, exactly. And

25:33

I've seen this even in the pedagogic

25:36

orientation that

25:38

professors use when, let's say, they're

25:40

teaching their doctoral students. So I've

25:42

seen colleagues who will teach

25:45

their doctoral course as

25:47

a way to game how to

25:50

publish in certain journals, right? So

25:52

you may or may

25:54

not know these statistical techniques. Yeah, well,

25:57

this journal really wants you to do

25:59

a media. Mediational analysis and so

26:01

let me teach you how to do

26:03

a mediational analysis because it's going to

26:05

be very unlikely For you

26:07

to publish in this important journal if you don't do that

26:10

who thinks like that, right? I mean

26:12

nature doesn't abide to your methodology, right?

26:14

In some cases. I might use this

26:17

methodology this data And I like technique

26:19

this and so I always found it

26:22

Fraudulent in this I mean in an

26:24

epistemic sense I don't mean fraudulent in

26:26

the sense that you're cooking the data

26:28

or plagiarizing I like Claudine gay, but

26:30

it still feels fraudulent to me because

26:32

you're not saying I'm interested Let me

26:34

discover something in nature. You're just playing

26:37

a game and I despise that and

26:39

by the way maybe

26:41

to my credit or maybe it was a fault I Refused

26:44

to play that game so that

26:46

I specifically chose to not publish

26:48

in certain journals because then I

26:50

would feel Inauthentic if I simply

26:52

responded to the reviewers quest just

26:54

so I can get my paper

26:56

in this this

26:58

is one of the fundamental struggles with academics

27:01

who are Influenced

27:03

or explicitly off of the Austrian

27:05

tradition and economics is Austrianism

27:08

by definition is sort of multi-disciplinary

27:14

There's there's history. There's philosophy. There's psychology.

27:16

There's there's all of these things that

27:18

influence what we do and the

27:21

the fetishism about Making

27:24

economics a science has

27:26

replaced all of that with

27:29

really esoteric equations That

27:31

have extracted the humans and their actions

27:33

out of the whole process So it's

27:35

it's very difficult for Austrian succeed in

27:38

in those kinds of Institutional

27:40

incentives that you're describing. Yeah,

27:42

no, that's that's beautifully said because I

27:44

of course I saw this even in

27:47

my own training So I was trained

27:49

in my PhD within the behavioral decision

27:51

theory framework So, you

27:53

know my doctoral supervisor who's a cognitive

27:55

psychologist was you know was was friends

27:57

with a mo Amos and Amos

28:00

Tversky and Daniel Kahneman. One of my

28:02

professors was Richard Thaler,

28:04

who won the Nobel Prize in

28:06

behavioral economics. And of course, that

28:08

approach to decision making is, to

28:11

your point, is so radically different

28:13

from the ultra mathematical folks. Now,

28:15

by the way, it's not as

28:17

though I'm intimidated for mathematics. I

28:19

come from a mathematics background myself,

28:21

but I quickly realized that, as

28:23

you said, the economists who were,

28:25

we used to call them the

28:27

quantoids, they truly

28:29

did suffer, not to get Freudian,

28:31

but they did suffer from physics envy,

28:33

right? Because if there's a lot of

28:36

Greek symbols, then holy God, I must

28:38

be doing something important. But if you're

28:40

doing the Austrian stuff, the synthetic thinking,

28:42

the big thinking, then that's kind of

28:45

wishy washy bullshit. You need to show

28:47

me a triple integral for this to

28:49

be meaningful. Exactly. Exactly.

28:52

And do you feel that that's, you

28:55

know, has there been an auto correction to

28:57

that? Or has the

29:00

mathematical orgy continued unabated?

29:02

Well, it continues in academia, but

29:05

I think it also delegitimizes economics

29:07

as a profession. And the one

29:09

thing that's even funnier than lawyer

29:12

jokes or economist jokes, because, you

29:15

know, we've become a laughing stock because

29:17

they have created this belief

29:19

that there's some sort of mathematical formula

29:22

to figuring out the inputs and the

29:24

outputs. And if you do all of

29:26

these things, and by the way, we're

29:28

having the government do all those things

29:31

to manipulate the economy, we will

29:33

get X plus one. And

29:35

of course, they're always fundamentally wrong

29:37

about everything. And part of it

29:39

is that pretense of knowledge, this

29:41

is a Hayek court, the pretense

29:44

of knowledge that

29:46

goes into the the

29:48

scientific pretensions of fake

29:50

economics. So I

29:52

didn't know that term from Hayek, but I'm going

29:54

to link it to one of

29:57

my former professors

29:59

for a year. Long Proseminar and Cognitive

30:01

Studies and my PhD has

30:04

a paper on the illusion

30:07

of explanatory profundity.

30:10

And the idea, I mean, exactly

30:12

that point. So I then applied

30:14

that concept to the brain imaging

30:16

paradigm. The idea is that

30:18

people, when they see a, you

30:21

know, an image of the brain in

30:23

a paper with all these colors, because

30:25

it corresponds to the different lit up

30:27

regions of the brain, it just feels

30:30

serene. Right. Whereas if I didn't have

30:32

that image, even though that image doesn't

30:34

predict anything, it has zero explanatory

30:36

power to anything, but it just

30:39

feels sciencey. Right. So with one

30:41

of my current doctoral students, who's

30:44

kind of lagging his feet, if he's watching

30:46

right now or listening, we're

30:49

looking at how something

30:51

is packaged, affects

30:54

how sciencey it feels. So

30:56

you're using these completely irrelevant

30:58

cues, whether it be the

31:00

triple integral or the nice

31:02

brain image to signal

31:05

that this is very rigorous when in

31:07

reality it's explaining nothing. Yeah.

31:10

Yeah. Well, it's, they're losing

31:12

their credibility. And I think,

31:15

um, scientism applied all

31:18

over the place, tragically is

31:20

undermining the fundamental

31:22

essential nature of

31:24

scientific exploration and discovery. And

31:27

of course, we saw that in spades during

31:29

lockdowns and our

31:33

religious obsession with Bauchism, right? He's

31:35

like, I am the science. And

31:37

at some point, you start

31:39

to doubt science instead of doubting the

31:41

guy that's pretending like he knows what

31:43

he's doing. Yeah. And you just

31:46

for you, for the viewers, you, you kindly sent

31:48

me a paper on exactly on that, which I

31:50

look forward to reading. I

31:52

mean, I guess in a sense, whether it be

31:54

Fauci or others of his ilk, what

31:57

they're doing is they are exactly not

32:00

exhibiting what a true intellectual would, which

32:02

is epistemic humility, right? I mean, the

32:04

more, and it sounds like a cliche,

32:06

but it truly is true that the

32:08

more I know, and I probably know

32:10

more than most people, the more I

32:12

realize how little I know, because I'm

32:14

actually aware of all the knowledge out

32:16

there, and I know nothing. Whereas

32:19

the people like Fauci, perhaps

32:21

the God complex, perhaps the

32:23

white coat, I am

32:26

science. What a grotesque, non-intellectual

32:28

bent that is, isn't it? Well,

32:30

he's, and he's, this goes back to

32:33

the academic disease that we're talking about,

32:35

but it's sort of built into the

32:37

process when it comes to

32:39

government action and government

32:41

bureaucracies and all

32:44

of these arrogant people

32:47

with so much arrogance

32:50

that they think they can redesign

32:52

a complex social order.

32:56

And this is one of the

32:59

fundamental libertarian critiques of

33:01

central planning. Generally

33:03

of government attempts to

33:05

redesign the economy is

33:08

they just don't know enough, and they couldn't

33:10

possibly know enough, because the whole purpose of

33:12

an economy, it's not a place, it's not

33:14

a thing, it's this process of

33:17

people figuring stuff out and

33:20

taking all of this dispersed knowledge and

33:22

bringing it together in a

33:25

world that is in real time radically

33:27

uncertain. And if you

33:30

pretend like you can redesign that from the

33:32

top down, you're going to have small and

33:35

catastrophic human disasters. Ultimately,

33:39

this was the Austrian critique of

33:41

central planning, and we've seen

33:43

it play out again and again, but we're still having

33:45

the same argument. I've

33:49

often asked the following question as

33:51

applied to the ancient Greeks, where

33:53

I asked, say, a classicist, what

33:55

was there in the water that

33:57

made the Greek miracle possible? And

34:00

of course, there are several possible answers that one can give.

34:03

So similar question, what was

34:05

in the water that

34:07

made the Austrian way of

34:09

thinking when it comes to these issues uniquely

34:12

different from other traditions? Well,

34:14

it I'll

34:17

make up an answer that I think is mostly true. They

34:20

come from starting with Carl Menger,

34:22

who's who's a an

34:24

economist living in Vienna, Austria.

34:27

Ludwig von Mises, inspired by him and

34:30

some of his students becomes part of

34:32

the Vienna circle. I was gonna ask

34:34

about that. Okay, good. Yeah. Famous

34:37

interdisciplinary hangout where for whatever

34:39

reason, some of the smartest

34:41

people in history

34:43

are gathering together and having arguments and

34:45

getting coffee and hashing things

34:48

out. Look at this guy. Sorry. I

34:50

don't know if you know this guy. I know his name,

34:52

but I don't know him that well. Oh,

34:54

you should read his stuff. It's absolutely mind

34:56

blowing. Kurt girdle. Go ahead. So

34:59

so this is all happening. And

35:03

in the middle of this, this

35:06

guy Hitler decides to

35:08

take over Austria and Ludwig von Mises

35:11

has to flee to the United States.

35:14

Hayek flees to the London School of

35:16

Economics and and all

35:18

of that that interdisciplinary stuff is

35:20

kind of halted in its tracks

35:23

to be picked up in other places, but it's probably never

35:25

quite the same. So I think there

35:27

was probably that that magical moment

35:29

where intellectual

35:32

life was as it should be, where

35:35

people were willing to put their ideas on the

35:37

line, willing to have that conversation, willing to listen

35:39

to people from other disciplines and and figure stuff

35:42

out. And I

35:44

think I think that's where the interdisciplinary nature of

35:47

of the Austrian school comes from. Oh, I

35:50

mean, you're you're you're you're

35:52

you're speaking to my heart

35:54

because I'm probably the

35:56

epitome to my detriment in academia.

36:00

the ultimate interdisciplinary and that I've

36:03

published in countless, I mean, I've published

36:06

papers on psychiatric disorders

36:08

in medical journals while

36:11

housed in a business school, right? I

36:13

mean, I have a paper on Munchausen

36:16

syndrome by proxy and a Darwinian announced

36:18

that what does that have to do

36:20

with consumer behavior and economic decision making?

36:22

Nothing, but I didn't care because the

36:25

problem interested me and I said, oh,

36:27

I think I've got something hopefully

36:30

interesting to say about this and so I went for it. Now,

36:33

the same university that I mentioned earlier,

36:35

Chapman, a few

36:37

years after the first foray

36:39

of trying to hire me, tried to hire me

36:42

again and one of the

36:44

problems that they had with me

36:46

was that my research while

36:49

great, I'm using their word, while wonderful,

36:52

seemed too scattered because I had

36:54

given a talk where I demonstrated

36:57

the number of different places where

36:59

one can apply the evolutionary lens.

37:01

So by definition, I had structured

37:03

my talk as one that traverses

37:06

many disciplines to show that the

37:08

evolutionary lens can kind of unlock

37:10

the mysteries in many fields. They

37:12

viewed that as a detriment because

37:15

you have to be a hyper

37:17

specialist. It's grotesque, Matt. And

37:20

by the way, the other factor I

37:22

think that goes into Austrians and perhaps might

37:26

very much reflect where you and Jordan

37:29

Peterson have found yourself. The

37:32

Austrian school was also defined by the

37:34

events that consumed all

37:37

around fascism

37:39

and Hitler on one side,

37:41

Stalin and communism on the

37:43

other side. And here you

37:45

have these classical liberals who

37:47

believe in free people and

37:49

free markets and the free exchange of

37:51

goods and services and ideas and everything

37:54

else surrounded on all sides.

37:56

So I think if you look

37:58

at early

38:00

work on money and then

38:02

his critique of the failure of

38:04

central planning and then Hayek's entire

38:08

project was really a

38:10

response to central planners, not just

38:12

socialists, but John Maynard Keynes,

38:14

who thought he could manipulate

38:16

the economy through macroeconomics. So

38:19

what they're known for is

38:21

their critique of the

38:24

failures of government planning. And that,

38:26

of course, attracts a lot of

38:28

libertarians, but there's the methodology and

38:30

the intellectual tradition, but there's also

38:33

the circumstances that force them to

38:36

explain why these were really bad and

38:38

anti-human ideas. Very interesting. Of

38:41

all the different intrusions that

38:43

a government can commit,

38:47

maybe it's difficult to come up with a

38:49

hierarchy. The one that probably has caused me

38:51

the greatest amount of pain and

38:54

most recently over the past few years as

38:56

the book royalties of my highly

38:59

successful books have come in is

39:01

taxation. I mean,

39:03

until the book royalties,

39:06

I mean, I've written previous books, but they

39:09

hadn't been so massively successful that

39:11

it caused a

39:13

psychological existential pain. And

39:16

when you're paid as a professor, when

39:19

the taxes are taken at the source so

39:21

that you only see half of it right

39:23

away, then that's a way for you to

39:25

psychologically kind of swallow it. But when you

39:27

get the money and you take ownership of

39:30

it in your bank account, because

39:32

it's not taxed at the source, because my

39:34

publishers are American, so they send me without

39:36

taxation. But then under the mechanism

39:39

of world income, Canada and

39:41

Quebec take it, you could

39:43

go on Jupiter and make

39:45

money there. It's Quebec and

39:47

Canada's money. So because

39:49

I had already exceeded a certain threshold

39:52

of what my income was, my

39:54

additional income was taxed at 58%. So

39:56

that now There

40:00

is something unique, Matt, and you'll agree

40:02

as a successful author

40:04

yourself, there is something unique. All taxation

40:06

can be very painful because all people

40:08

work hard for their money. But

40:11

royalties are unique in that they

40:13

are part of the collective knowledge

40:15

that humanity built. That's why Ireland

40:17

doesn't have taxes on art creation

40:19

and on book royalties, because they

40:22

recognize that that's a unique thing.

40:24

Whereas in my case, I

40:26

only have 42% rights to

40:29

my neuronal firings, to my personhood.

40:31

So I work from January till

40:34

about September for the government. And

40:36

in September, the government says, now

40:38

you keep your money, but not

40:40

really, because the 42% that you

40:42

can keep, if

40:45

you spend anything with that 42%, we tax you at 15%. How

40:51

is it that people tolerate this?

40:53

Now, before you answer, I'm going

40:55

to answer it for you. Could

40:57

it be that the parasitic state

40:59

rests on the premise that it

41:01

requires suckers like me to

41:04

fund the rest of the Ponzi scheme,

41:06

whereas most people benefit from the parasitic

41:08

state, and therefore they're never going to

41:10

speak out against it. Go ahead and

41:13

write other good books, Jew Boy, and

41:15

give us the money. The

41:20

fact of the matter is, and this is a

41:22

favorite libertarian slogan, taxation is

41:25

theft, and vulgar democracy, where

41:28

50 plus 1% of the population gets

41:31

to do whatever they want to the other 49%, is

41:35

just outsourced theft to a

41:38

third party. And it's

41:40

hard to explain this to people because

41:42

we've been conditioned to expect the government

41:44

to do X, Y, and Z, and

41:46

there's all these salacious promises that

41:49

they make us when they're trying to get

41:51

our votes. But it really

41:53

comes down to two questions. Like,

41:55

would you ever cross the line?

42:00

on to your neighbor's yard, knock on

42:02

his front door, and hold him

42:04

up and steal his money because you

42:06

have this beautiful idea that you're going

42:09

to go help other neighbors, let's say

42:11

with child care. You

42:14

would never do that. And yet when you go

42:16

to the voting booth, you actually do hold

42:18

up your neighbor

42:21

based on some promise that some

42:23

politician's going to make. And

42:26

this is a core question about

42:28

the organization of civil society. Do

42:30

we use cooperation

42:32

and respect and trade and

42:37

all of these beautiful things that we aspire to

42:39

do, or do we use violence? And

42:43

my view is that there's

42:45

not good government or bad government. There's

42:47

only limited or unlimited governments. So if

42:50

you want to limit the amount of

42:52

theft, you have to limit the

42:54

size of government. So can you

42:56

ever foresee a time? So in Canada,

42:58

and I'm almost certain that

43:01

the history of taxation, I

43:03

mean, personal income taxation is roughly the same in

43:05

the US, I think in Canada until 1917, no

43:10

income tax. Then all we just need

43:12

is going to be very temporary, as

43:15

Milton Friedman said, there's nothing as permanent

43:17

as temporary government services

43:20

and so on programs. In

43:23

1970, we're just going to tax a few

43:25

people very temporarily. And then we watch for

43:27

the next 105 years, where

43:30

the orgy becomes parasitic beyond

43:33

imagination. Could you ever

43:35

conceive of a time where the fulcrum

43:37

will swing the other way that we're

43:40

back to, I don't know, 5% income

43:42

tax, or that train has failed, and

43:44

you shall never return to the good

43:47

old days. It's difficult

43:49

to imagine how to unwind it, which

43:51

is why I support,

43:53

I would support a flat income

43:55

tax instead of replacing it

43:58

with a national sales tax. for

44:00

the simple reason that no government

44:02

program's ever going to go away. And

44:05

all we'll do end up doing is adding

44:07

a value added tax or a national sales

44:09

tax on top of all these other things

44:11

because every idea that is implemented by government

44:17

becomes a monster. It takes on a life of

44:19

its own. There's all of these interests that ensure

44:22

that you can never unwind these things. It

44:24

is absolutely true of the tax code and

44:27

there's something even more insidious going on. And I

44:30

know more about the US than Canada, but

44:33

there's only so much money

44:35

you can extract from people through taxation.

44:38

There's only so much money. Once you've hit

44:40

that, then you start borrowing money that

44:43

you can't pay back. And there's only so much money you

44:45

can borrow. The third and

44:47

most insidious way that governments expand

44:49

their power is by printing currency

44:52

and expanding the money supply, which

44:54

is an explicit transfer of wealth from

44:57

the have-nots, the working class, to

45:01

all of the special interests and elites

45:03

that know, they know how to play

45:05

the game. They know how to protect

45:07

their wealth from inflation. And that's where

45:09

we're at now. And

45:12

you would think that that would cause

45:14

a grassroots revolution. All you gotta

45:16

do is go buy a dozen eggs and

45:18

wonder, I think

45:21

they've literally tripled in cost since

45:24

lockdowns in 2020 at my grocery store.

45:27

This should be a revolution because

45:29

they're stealing your money, but

45:33

it's hard to see, right? It's

45:35

obscured by the complexities of money

45:39

and financing and all that stuff. So no,

45:42

I would be pessimistic

45:45

about this except

45:48

the possibility of the emergence

45:50

of crypto technologies and cryptocurrencies

45:52

as Hayek would have said

45:55

as an end run around

45:58

this top-down system. I think... That's

46:00

why people like Elizabeth Warren are

46:02

going bananas about Bitcoin because

46:05

they know that these

46:07

sorts of technologies completely

46:10

undermine the Ponzi scheme

46:12

of tax borrow, spend

46:15

and print. So

46:18

earlier I said that one of the reasons

46:21

why people may not fight back against very

46:23

high taxation is because the net

46:26

benefit to them outweighs whatever they pay in taxes. I

46:28

think in Canada, 40% of

46:30

people don't pay federal income tax. The

46:35

histogram of how much the top

46:37

people pay is just unbelievable. And

46:41

then you hear people saying, why don't you pay

46:43

your fair share? Why do I

46:45

have to pay 25 times what you pay

46:47

for the exact same server? What's the moral?

46:49

Well, it's just the psychology of envy. It's

46:51

the psychology of resentment. Why

46:53

did you write the great books that

46:55

sold a lot whereas I didn't? And therefore,

46:58

give me your money. You owe me that

47:00

money. But could it also

47:02

be beyond what I just said? Could it

47:04

be that most people feel

47:07

helpless to be able to

47:09

in any way alter

47:12

the Goliath that's moving? I mean, what's my

47:14

voice going to change? And therefore, let me

47:16

just go on in my little life because

47:18

it is what it is. Yeah.

47:21

I think there's a lot of helplessness

47:24

and frustration and just throwing up

47:27

your hands. And politics

47:29

is a joke and you don't expect either

47:31

party to actually do anything that they

47:33

said they were going to do. And this, I

47:35

think, is ultimately what broke. I was

47:38

a Tea Party organizer. And

47:40

our whole mantra spontaneously

47:42

emerged, not from the top down,

47:45

but we were for

47:47

individual freedom, fiscal responsibility, and

47:49

constitutionally limited government. Every

47:51

activist anywhere would say some version of

47:53

the same thing. And

47:56

they sort of heroically rose up and said, you

47:58

know what? I'm going to get involved. in

48:00

the policy debates, I'm going to

48:02

get involved in the political process. I'm

48:05

going to elect people who will promise to

48:07

sort of live by these values. And

48:09

every step along the way, we

48:12

were the precursors to the

48:14

modern conversation where anybody that

48:17

challenges the government in Washington,

48:19

DC, you're called a

48:21

bigot, you're called a racist, you're called a fascist.

48:24

These are not new tactics

48:27

from the Alinsky left. And

48:29

then they survived all of

48:31

that, they elected Republicans

48:34

that said they were true to these

48:36

things, but nothing changed.

48:39

And I think this is how Trump

48:41

ultimately courted at least some Tea Partiers

48:43

to come over because he's like, you

48:45

know what, they don't respect you, the

48:47

system's broke, it's a swamp, let's

48:49

blow it up, figuratively speaking.

48:53

I think people are cynical and

48:55

frustrated because they have

48:58

every right to be cynical and frustrated about

49:00

their ability to reform what is

49:02

supposedly a representative democracy

49:04

supposedly constrained by constitutional limits

49:07

on government power. It's hard

49:09

to find the American vision

49:11

and what's happening today. If

49:14

you were to compare, so when I read your,

49:16

let me just put it up again, people go

49:18

get this book 2014, go get it

49:20

right now. As I read

49:23

it, I mean, you certainly were intimating,

49:26

you know, there's a

49:28

revolution coming, people are taking

49:30

action, people are assuming personal

49:32

agency. So if I were

49:34

to take that optimistic message and fast forward

49:37

10 years later, has it

49:39

improved or has it worse? Have people adhere

49:42

to the clarion call or are

49:45

you more pessimistic than you were in 2014? So

49:48

it's, and there's a chapter, it's been a while

49:50

since I read it, but I think there's a

49:52

chapter called the right to know, and I'm

49:55

very optimistic about the

49:57

democratization of not. knowledge

50:01

through technology, completely

50:03

not anticipating, although

50:06

I described the problem as like

50:08

the problem with all of these

50:10

beautiful technologies is one,

50:12

they're incredibly liberating, use

50:14

the right way, and two, they're an

50:16

incredibly dangerous way that the government can

50:18

control us and what we've

50:20

seen. And I think I'll even draw some

50:23

optimism out of this, but the insane amount

50:26

of granular censorship to

50:29

come out of particularly the,

50:31

I'll call it the defense

50:33

industrial complex, the intelligence industrial

50:35

complex, tells me

50:37

that people with

50:40

the freedom to figure stuff out on

50:42

their selves was an existential threat to

50:46

the, I'll call it the regime. This is a libertarian

50:48

word, but I don't know what to call it, but

50:50

the machine, right? Like you

50:52

have this insanely expansive government

50:55

power structure and

50:57

they're actually going in and

50:59

dictating to Twitter employees, hey, this guy

51:01

just told a joke about a politician

51:04

that we have to stop that. It

51:06

tells me that they're scared and

51:08

it tells me that Elon

51:12

Musk has to be a hero

51:14

in this story because he blows the lid

51:16

off of this. And

51:18

there are now plenty of

51:20

new places where people can discover this

51:23

process. I believe in the

51:25

wisdom of crowds and I believe that

51:27

these technological tools are very much a

51:29

good thing, but the government has

51:31

weaponized them against us and we have to

51:33

figure out how to solve that problem. Right.

51:36

Speaking of Elon Musk, just today I

51:39

retweeted, someone said that someone

51:41

had nominated him for

51:44

a Nobel Prize and I retweeted and I said,

51:46

I second that. And as soon as he bought

51:48

Twitter, I had gone on record. I think I

51:50

put out a clip on my channel

51:52

where I said that of all the great

51:55

initiatives that he's been involved in, and that's

51:57

more than probably 10,000 men put together. none

52:01

will come remotely as historically

52:03

important as him having opened

52:06

up the public square. So

52:08

I'm assuming based on what you said you would

52:10

all hardly agree with that premise. Yeah

52:12

I would endorse that but you can

52:14

also see this gets back to somebody has

52:17

to go first and in a

52:19

lot of ways Elon Musk has gone

52:21

first and he has an insane amount

52:23

of FU money that that protects him

52:25

to a great extent in ways that

52:27

it wouldn't necessarily perfect for protect a

52:29

college professor right but but just look

52:32

at what they're doing to him like

52:34

all of the attacks on on him

52:37

and his contracts with with

52:40

with his companies and

52:42

you know Biden himself saying we got to

52:45

investigate that guy the intimidation

52:47

is real and he just

52:49

happens to be it looks

52:51

like he's tough enough but he's definitely wealthy enough

52:53

to sort of fight that machine but it's a

52:56

it's a it's an amazing thing

52:58

that normal people probably don't want

53:00

to bring that that sort of weight

53:03

down on their families right

53:06

but that's why by the way in the personic

53:08

mind in the last chapter I say you know

53:10

activate your inner honey badger and the reason why

53:12

I do that the reason why I use the

53:14

honey badger and some of my listeners

53:17

have probably heard me explain this on

53:19

a few occasions you don't he don't

53:21

give a shit he don't give a

53:23

shit right so you see what you

53:25

know the reason why people like Elon

53:27

Musk and Donald Trump are so intimidating

53:30

because well what's more intimidating than an

53:32

animal that if you sting it it

53:34

keeps walking if you bite I mean

53:36

I don't know if you've ever seen

53:38

this footage there's a footage where a

53:40

constrictor has completely suffocated a

53:44

honey badger the honey badger

53:46

finds a way to get out and escape

53:48

when it's like literally almost dead

53:52

the instinct instead of now running

53:54

as far away from the massive

53:57

constrictor it says I'm going

53:59

to kill you. It comes

54:01

back, kills the constrictor. There are

54:04

jackals coming that are trying to

54:06

steal what he just killed. He

54:08

fights off the jackals. That's

54:10

Donald Trump. That's Elon Musk. You may like them,

54:12

you may not like them, but god damn it,

54:14

you're going to respect the fact that they're honey

54:16

badgers. Yeah. And

54:19

that's like, in a very different

54:21

sense. Somewhere in my

54:23

book, I quote, probably my favorite

54:25

quote from Ludwig von Mises about the

54:27

entrepreneur. And the entrepreneur is

54:29

that guy that looks around the corner

54:31

of history and imagines a better future.

54:33

Maybe it's a product or

54:35

service or whatever it is. And

54:38

all along the way that the

54:40

masses are mocking him and laughing at him

54:42

and trying to stop him and trying to

54:44

marginalize him. That's

54:46

what we need, but that's always

54:48

what American culture

54:51

has been about. That our founding

54:53

was an impossibility. But

54:55

some crazy bastards said, you know

54:58

what, this thing is important to

55:00

us. We're going to do it. We're probably going to get killed,

55:03

but we're going to do it anyway because

55:05

we have this radical idea that the individual

55:07

is more important than the government. And

55:10

that is almost an

55:12

immaculate conception kind of thing.

55:14

I think you could imagine

55:17

a very few people brave

55:19

enough in public life to stick their

55:21

necks out like that. But this is

55:23

how social change happens. Somebody goes first,

55:27

other people say, hey, that looks like a

55:29

really good idea and I'm not alone anymore, so

55:31

I'm going to join. And eventually

55:33

it was everybody's idea in

55:35

the first place. That's how

55:37

social change happens. Exactly. Well, there's

55:39

a great quote by JBS

55:42

Haldane, who's an evolutionary geneticist who

55:44

is also very famous for having

55:46

these great quips. And I always

55:48

say that my favorite scientific

55:50

quote by anyone, and that's saying a

55:53

lot. There are a lot of very

55:55

horrible academics throughout history. It's one that

55:57

I actually put as an epigraph.

56:00

in the last chapter of The Consuming Instate, my 2011 book.

56:03

And what basically J.P.S. Haldane argues is that

56:06

radical scientific revolutions

56:09

or ideas go through four stages. I don't have

56:11

the exact quote in front of me, but I'll

56:13

kind of paraphrase it. First

56:16

stage, when you first are exposed to an idea,

56:18

oh, this is such bullshit. Stage

56:21

two, well, this is largely true,

56:23

but largely unimportant. And

56:25

then, I don't know what the third stage, and then the

56:27

final stage, to your point is, oh, I always thought so.

56:31

And this is the reason why I

56:33

love this quote so much, because it's

56:36

the perfect autobiography to my scientific career,

56:38

because I try to come in into

56:40

the business school and Darwinize it. How

56:43

do we apply evolutionary thinking to understand

56:45

entrepreneurship, to understand behavioral economics, to understand

56:47

my area of consumer behavior? And most

56:49

people said, what are you on? If

56:53

you want to do biology, go study giraffes.

56:55

You're in a business school. This is bullshit.

56:57

And then, of course, if you're dogged enough,

57:00

if you're enough of a honey badger, if

57:02

you are true to the

57:04

scientific method, the evidence eventually builds up. And

57:06

then, the same person who sent you an

57:08

email in

57:10

1997 and said you were a bullshitter, writes

57:12

you 20 years later and says,

57:14

we would be delighted to have you as

57:17

our plenary speaker. And regrettably for

57:19

him, I'm an email hoarder, so I kept

57:21

the email from 97 when you said I

57:24

was a complete bullshitter. And depending on what

57:26

my mood is that day, I might actually

57:28

remind you that you gave me that email

57:30

20 years ago. So exactly to your point,

57:32

if you're dogged enough, stick to your principles

57:34

and hopefully you will win. Before

57:37

we wrap up, I have one other technical question

57:39

that I'll ask you about any current projects you're

57:41

working on. So

57:43

often when I look at the literature

57:45

on how political

57:48

orientation affects something, how

57:51

is happiness affected by whether you're

57:53

conservative or liberal, it's always broken

57:55

up into these camps, conservative, liberal.

57:58

Is there a reason why? rich body

58:00

of literature that looks, for example, at

58:02

the psychological profile of a

58:05

libertarian. Is there a lot of that

58:07

work? And if not, why not? I

58:11

think the thing that comes to mind is

58:13

some of the work, great work that Jonathan

58:15

Haidt has done on

58:17

this subject. And I

58:20

am not an expert on this. I'm aware

58:22

that the libertarian mindsets

58:25

that don't tread on me, let me work

58:27

my own path, let

58:30

me fail and succeed on my own merits. I

58:32

realize that that's not necessarily

58:34

a normal thing, neither

58:36

is processing all of your

58:39

world around you through

58:41

logic and the

58:43

laws of economics. So

58:46

I think we libertarians have to get

58:48

better at translating

58:50

our ideas into emotionally compelling

58:52

stories. And that's where my

58:54

career has taken me and

58:57

my wife and I started

58:59

Free the People six

59:01

years ago now. And we

59:03

really just wanted to tell stories and

59:07

turn people on. You know,

59:09

there's basically two types of stories, both

59:11

of which are some version of the

59:13

hero's journey, right? It's either a horrible

59:18

oppressive government that has held you back

59:20

and you fight against that and

59:23

you succeed or fail, but that is a

59:25

version of the hero's journey. But there's also

59:27

this beautiful version where you

59:29

create something beautiful and you

59:32

do it in cooperation with other people and you help

59:35

other people and you lift them up and

59:37

that's where progress in society comes from.

59:40

We libertarians got to get a little bit

59:43

better at that second version of the story

59:45

because we're very good at

59:47

raging against the machine. And it's

59:49

righteous to do so, but there's

59:53

some really amazing things that people do when they're

59:55

left free to cooperate.

59:57

And I think we need to focus on

59:59

that more. Or to show

1:00:01

people, like if we're the

1:00:03

lost leaders way out

1:00:06

front wanting to shift more

1:00:10

power to civil society and

1:00:12

away from government bureaucrats, we've

1:00:14

got to show people how it works in practice,

1:00:17

not just on a chalkboard. Well,

1:00:20

of course, I wholeheartedly agree with

1:00:22

the importance of narrative. And

1:00:24

as a matter of fact, there are

1:00:27

evolutionary arguments that support that we are

1:00:29

a storytelling animal. I mean, that's why

1:00:31

literature appeals to us. And

1:00:34

I've noticed it in my own writing, so

1:00:36

that whenever I'm in the parasitic

1:00:38

mind, I link it to my

1:00:40

own personal journey. So if I want to

1:00:42

talk about identity politics and how that's an

1:00:44

idea pathogen, well, what better way than to

1:00:47

show you what happens to the perfect society,

1:00:49

perfect in quotes, that is built on

1:00:51

identity politics. It's called Lebanon. Right.

1:00:54

And so now I can take you back to

1:00:56

Lebanon and link you to my childhood. That becomes

1:00:58

a very powerful narrative. So I think you're you're

1:01:00

spot on that. Contrary to the

1:01:02

mathematically ization of economics, people respond a

1:01:05

lot more to narratives than to triple

1:01:07

integrals. Okay, last question, although, of course,

1:01:09

I could keep you here for four

1:01:11

hours. What are

1:01:13

some current projects that you might want

1:01:16

to tell us about that people need

1:01:18

to know about? Three

1:01:20

things quickly. One is we've

1:01:23

we produce a lot of documentaries

1:01:25

and a lot of stories.

1:01:28

I still do some economic explainers because

1:01:30

I can't help myself. My

1:01:32

team is basically a video production cream, a

1:01:34

bunch of artists and technologists that

1:01:36

know how to both tell a story and

1:01:39

hopefully get people to to

1:01:42

see it. We've

1:01:44

gotten in the last year and a half into comedy

1:01:47

because we've seen the revolution happening

1:01:50

where we're comedians starting with Dave

1:01:52

Chappelle and Joe Rogan, Russell

1:01:55

Brandt. So the list goes on and on

1:01:57

and on. People that probably came from the

1:01:59

left. but then this

1:02:02

speech policing anti-First Amendment

1:02:05

authoritarianism coming from the left has

1:02:08

pushed them to sort of reconsider.

1:02:10

It's because comedy is allowed

1:02:13

to say things that apparently the rest of us

1:02:15

aren't allowed to say anymore, and there's

1:02:17

a lot of power in that. So we're doing a lot of

1:02:19

comedy, and in a lot of ways

1:02:21

I consider it a gateway drug for young people

1:02:23

that are not going to sit

1:02:25

through a three-hour podcast about Austrian

1:02:28

economics, but if you sort

1:02:31

of plant some of those nuggets in

1:02:33

shorter, funner bits, that's

1:02:35

a good thing. So one's called Comedy is Murder because

1:02:38

speech is violence, and

1:02:40

the other is called Adults are Talking, Lou

1:02:43

Perez, Andrew Heaton, great comedians that

1:02:45

we're collaborating with. Another project

1:02:48

very different is something

1:02:50

that I'm working on with in cooperation

1:02:52

with Senator Rand Paul. It's called The

1:02:54

Cover-Up, and it's a

1:02:57

series of investigative conversations with

1:02:59

really smart people like Scott Atlas,

1:03:02

who we were talking about earlier, like Jay

1:03:05

Bhattacharya, like Rand Paul, probably

1:03:08

some of the folks that did the Twitter

1:03:10

files, but I don't think we have an

1:03:12

answer as to what exactly

1:03:14

Fauci at all we're covering up. I

1:03:17

think we need to know because we need

1:03:19

to make sure that it never ever ever

1:03:21

happens again, and

1:03:23

I've structured it in a way that I don't

1:03:25

really have an ending to this story yet because

1:03:28

I don't know exactly what the ending is. That's

1:03:30

going to be released, the first episode is going

1:03:32

to be released just in a couple days, and

1:03:35

finally I just bought a copy of your book on

1:03:38

happiness because my wife and I are

1:03:40

trying to write a

1:03:42

series of stories about

1:03:45

our life called Love, Liberty, and the

1:03:47

Pursuit of Happiness, and

1:03:50

it's a way to try to get

1:03:53

people to appreciate

1:03:55

some of these principles we've

1:03:57

been talking about, but just in the context of

1:03:59

our own lives, the ups, the downs, the

1:04:02

tragedies, the successes. And

1:04:06

that has to get done this year. Otherwise,

1:04:09

I'm going to do something

1:04:14

publicly, humility myself for failing to do that because

1:04:16

I think that this is our job, right? Our

1:04:18

job is to tell stories and we have to

1:04:20

do it. It has

1:04:22

to be personal. I know you go back

1:04:25

to your childhood to tell fairly

1:04:27

devastating stories. Well,

1:04:30

everybody deals with that stuff, right?

1:04:33

Everybody in their own lives have to deal with

1:04:36

bad things and good things and we got to

1:04:38

make it so that we

1:04:40

can humanize freedom

1:04:43

so that people can sort

1:04:45

of be passionate about taking

1:04:47

the risks that are

1:04:51

required of you to get to happiness, right? Well,

1:04:53

it does come across in this book,

1:04:57

your love and affection for

1:04:59

your wife does come through.

1:05:02

And it actually had struck

1:05:04

me because one of the things

1:05:07

that people often say about my

1:05:09

public engagement is that how effusive

1:05:11

I am in the public display

1:05:14

of love that I have for my wife. Actually,

1:05:16

my last thought that I gave a few weeks

1:05:18

ago, actually, in Montreal, the person who introduced me

1:05:20

spent quite a bit of time talking about that.

1:05:23

So it's lovely to see a fellow

1:05:26

man honoring their wives

1:05:28

the way that you do. Such

1:05:30

a pleasure having you. I look forward. I think we

1:05:33

talked about the possibility of me coming on your show.

1:05:35

I'd be delighted to do so at some point soon.

1:05:38

And of course, you could come back anytime that

1:05:40

you like. Thank you so much for coming on the show. Thank

1:05:42

you, sir.