RPF0662-Why_is_Joshua_So

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00:00:30.620 | - Welcome to Radical Personal Finance,

00:00:31.860 | a show dedicated to providing you with the knowledge,

00:00:33.420 | skills, insight, and encouragement you need

00:00:35.360 | to live a rich and meaningful life now

00:00:37.360 | while building a plan for financial freedom

00:00:39.060 | in 10 years or less.

00:00:41.000 | Today on the show, I'm gonna tackle

00:00:42.660 | more of the philosophical discussion,

00:00:44.400 | not a lot of real practical nuts and bolts

00:00:46.940 | financial planning in this show,

00:00:47.780 | in fact, nothing of that.

00:00:49.140 | But if you're interested in philosophical discussions

00:00:51.740 | around money and government and things like that,

00:00:54.380 | especially as it relates to tax,

00:00:56.020 | then you might enjoy today's show.

00:00:58.920 | So with that caveat, I'll tell you the question.

00:01:00.420 | The question comes in from a listener,

00:01:01.580 | writes in, says, "Hi Josh, I really enjoy your podcast.

00:01:03.960 | "I've learned a lot and I really like your

00:01:05.560 | "more than average philosophical approach

00:01:07.400 | "to many of the topics.

00:01:08.600 | "However, I have a small rant.

00:01:10.400 | "These different feelings might be

00:01:11.800 | "just because I am from Europe and you are from the USA,

00:01:15.300 | "but I don't understand why so many Americans hate

00:01:18.140 | "or don't trust governments

00:01:19.300 | "and try to minimize tax payments.

00:01:22.000 | "Your last episode on cash advantage

00:01:24.140 | "touched on this as well.

00:01:25.580 | "I understand that government wastes a lot of tax money,

00:01:28.280 | "but it also does a lot of good.

00:01:29.880 | "Infrastructure, financing research and science,

00:01:33.080 | "healthcare, even social care, et cetera.

00:01:35.820 | "We take benefit of roads when we travel

00:01:37.760 | "and police when we need them,

00:01:38.920 | "but we don't like paying taxes.

00:01:40.720 | "Would you rather pay a toll tax for every road you use

00:01:43.760 | "and pay a policewoman every time you need them?

00:01:46.400 | "I know this is a never-ending discussion,

00:01:48.300 | "but just felt like saying this after your last episode

00:01:50.740 | "and the examples that you gave of how to pay cash,

00:01:53.580 | "pay with cash for a mechanic to avoid taxes."

00:01:57.780 | I thought it was an interesting question

00:01:59.220 | and I've received many such questions like this

00:02:02.120 | 'cause certainly I'm not shy in my opinions

00:02:05.380 | of encouraging people to minimize

00:02:07.860 | the amount of tax that they pay.

00:02:09.760 | Hopefully I do a good job

00:02:11.100 | of always encouraging that legally.

00:02:13.400 | I don't wish to encourage people to break the law

00:02:17.460 | and perhaps from time to time I stray too near to that.

00:02:20.080 | I don't know.

00:02:20.920 | I'll talk in a moment about my comment

00:02:23.800 | about paying cash to the mechanic, et cetera,

00:02:25.500 | why that's important even though it's possible

00:02:27.980 | the mechanic might use a cash payment

00:02:29.620 | to not pay income tax on it.

00:02:32.200 | I'll talk about that in a moment.

00:02:33.620 | But I don't wanna be one

00:02:34.460 | who encourages people to break the law,

00:02:35.760 | although I think there is a place and a time for that.

00:02:39.140 | I have a lot of respect for people who are tax protesters,

00:02:42.320 | but I'm not going to be associated with that,

00:02:45.260 | or at least not in the conditions that I live in.

00:02:47.320 | I don't see that as being a useful strategy

00:02:50.060 | at this point in time.

00:02:52.660 | But I thought this listener

00:02:53.500 | raised a couple of interesting questions

00:02:55.020 | that would be worth discussing.

00:02:57.500 | And I thought that it would be interesting

00:03:00.020 | to talk about them

00:03:01.020 | and then give a broader philosophical conversation.

00:03:03.900 | And what I'll try to do is,

00:03:05.700 | towards the latter part of this show,

00:03:07.420 | after I deal with a few technical things here

00:03:09.900 | and just kind of a few quick answers,

00:03:11.940 | I'll try to lay out my vision,

00:03:13.940 | what I see as the ideal vision.

00:03:16.800 | And as part of my preamble here,

00:03:18.440 | you should know, however, that this is, as I see it,

00:03:21.820 | largely theoretical at this point in time.

00:03:25.300 | Very few people agree with my positions.

00:03:27.700 | I have no influence or power,

00:03:30.540 | nor am I seeking any influence or power.

00:03:33.220 | My only thought is to simply try to live my life

00:03:36.800 | in accordance with the principles and philosophies

00:03:39.620 | that I believe are the best,

00:03:42.340 | and try to live as an example for my neighbors.

00:03:44.440 | And that's about it.

00:03:46.320 | So don't think I'm not advocating

00:03:48.740 | for voting for somebody or really anything.

00:03:51.500 | I'm out of the mainstream.

00:03:53.100 | But if you're interested in how I've arrived

00:03:55.380 | at some thoughts after years of thinking

00:03:56.860 | about these things, I'll tell you where I'm at right now.

00:03:58.940 | These shows are always very hard for me

00:04:00.220 | because the older I get,

00:04:02.440 | the more humility I feel with regard to my ideas.

00:04:07.520 | I think it's probably natural when we're young.

00:04:09.140 | We think we know it all.

00:04:10.460 | But it's a little hard to,

00:04:13.880 | when you're on record with your ideas.

00:04:15.420 | It's easier when you're just talking with your buddies

00:04:17.420 | and you can grow and you can change.

00:04:19.220 | But the older I get, the more I realize I don't know.

00:04:21.580 | And yet, how do I ever find the time to sit down

00:04:23.980 | and spend the next 20 years searching out every answer?

00:04:25.940 | I can't do that.

00:04:26.920 | So just take today's show in the tone

00:04:28.640 | of one friend speaking to another

00:04:29.980 | and just sharing with you what I think about.

00:04:32.420 | So first, this listener says,

00:04:34.740 | "It might just be because I am from Europe

00:04:36.660 | "and you are from the United States.

00:04:39.080 | "But I don't understand why so many Americans hate

00:04:42.180 | "or don't trust governments

00:04:43.360 | "and try to minimize their tax payments."

00:04:46.520 | Now this one I think is an interesting question

00:04:48.440 | to begin with.

00:04:49.620 | Because certainly, I am very vocal

00:04:52.740 | about minimizing tax payments

00:04:54.380 | to the United States government.

00:04:55.900 | And there are many of us who are,

00:04:58.740 | and many of us Americans, who are very vocal about that.

00:05:01.660 | And it's in many ways part of our culture.

00:05:04.420 | The United States culture is a culture

00:05:06.920 | that was founded in rebellion, right?

00:05:08.780 | We overthrew King George.

00:05:10.440 | Whether it was a good idea or not, frankly,

00:05:13.020 | if I could trade in and go back and live under King George,

00:05:16.020 | I'd do it in an instant.

00:05:17.260 | The early colonists paid less than 1% of their incomes

00:05:21.660 | in total net taxes.

00:05:22.920 | Whereas today, Americans sit back

00:05:25.040 | and are happy with anywhere from a third

00:05:27.120 | to a half of their income going to taxes.

00:05:29.200 | So all of the nostalgia about somehow things are better today

00:05:33.960 | under a constitution and all this stuff

00:05:36.160 | versus how they were under King George is nonsense.

00:05:38.600 | So if I could, I'd go back to King George in an instant.

00:05:40.840 | I'd give up.

00:05:41.680 | You can have your, what was it?

00:05:42.960 | No taxation without representation.

00:05:45.200 | You can have your representation

00:05:46.600 | and I'll take the no taxation

00:05:48.520 | that the previous colonists enjoyed.

00:05:50.900 | Much of the kind of American mythology,

00:05:54.960 | it really doesn't hold water when you dig into it.

00:05:57.880 | But that being the case, or whether you agree or not,

00:06:01.360 | regardless, the mythology has a controlling influence.

00:06:04.560 | And Americans are deeply, generally,

00:06:06.960 | distrustful of government.

00:06:08.620 | Now that has waned significantly,

00:06:11.000 | especially since the early 1900s.

00:06:13.200 | That has changed substantially.

00:06:15.000 | It's hard to overestimate and over-discuss

00:06:18.680 | the massive change that occurred

00:06:20.200 | from the United States of America pre-1900,

00:06:23.720 | just for an easy round century number, to post-1900.

00:06:27.360 | I mean, it's a completely different society.

00:06:29.040 | But still, there are enough of the roots

00:06:31.080 | of the pre-1900 Americas in the American psyche

00:06:34.800 | and in the mythology and in the general psyche

00:06:37.440 | of the land that it makes us different.

00:06:38.920 | Now, interestingly though,

00:06:40.280 | if you try to compare Americans to Europe,

00:06:42.880 | I don't think there's much of a comparison

00:06:44.680 | that you can make.

00:06:45.640 | Because especially when it comes to taxes,

00:06:48.120 | almost all Americans believe that cheating on taxes,

00:06:51.560 | not paying what you owe,

00:06:53.080 | is morally and ethically unacceptable.

00:06:56.440 | And although I think most Americans

00:06:58.160 | say there's an exception to that, I would give exceptions.

00:06:59.880 | It's not morally and ethically unacceptable

00:07:01.760 | in all circumstances, I would agree.

00:07:03.840 | I believe you should pay the taxes that you owe.

00:07:06.360 | And that's common across the United States of America.

00:07:10.000 | In fact, the voluntary compliance rate

00:07:13.400 | in the United States is usually measured

00:07:15.880 | to be around 81 to 84%.

00:07:18.840 | And that is one of the highest rates in the world.

00:07:22.560 | One of the highest rates in the world.

00:07:23.880 | By comparison, since we're using Europe

00:07:26.560 | and trying to compare Europe to the United States,

00:07:29.400 | Germany has the highest compliance rate

00:07:32.040 | that's measured in Europe.

00:07:34.360 | And Germany's voluntary tax compliance rate is 68%.

00:07:38.280 | Whereas Italy's voluntary tax compliance rate is 62%.

00:07:42.740 | So before you get too bent out of shape

00:07:45.280 | about what's wrong with Americans,

00:07:46.920 | why do Americans complain and moan and grope and gripe

00:07:50.480 | and not trust their governments, et cetera,

00:07:52.560 | and aren't we just European so much better?

00:07:54.800 | The data indicates otherwise.

00:07:56.720 | And my source, what I am alluding to here,

00:08:01.720 | I'm pulling this data sourced from a Wikipedia article

00:08:06.240 | on the tax evasion in the United States.

00:08:08.440 | You can look it up, just search Wikipedia

00:08:09.640 | for tax evasion in the United States.

00:08:11.080 | And there is a discussion there

00:08:12.620 | where it directly cites that.

00:08:14.360 | Interestingly, there was an Atlantic article

00:08:17.020 | published earlier this year in, I think, April of 2019,

00:08:21.940 | right around tax time,

00:08:23.040 | called "Why Americans Don't Cheat on Their Taxes,

00:08:27.120 | "The Weirdly Hopeful Story of How the United States

00:08:29.480 | "Came to be a Leader in Tax Compliance,"

00:08:31.880 | by the writer here, Renee Chun.

00:08:34.540 | And one of the things that's interesting about this

00:08:36.740 | is they go through and the author of this article

00:08:39.200 | points out why and how Americans are so much higher

00:08:44.200 | in terms of the American compliance with the tax rates.

00:08:47.600 | And the author tries to go through

00:08:50.880 | and identify some of the different reasons

00:08:53.180 | why this might be the case.

00:08:55.280 | Why is there such a high percentage of the American people

00:08:59.280 | who say you should pay your taxes,

00:09:00.980 | and why is there such a high percentage

00:09:02.320 | of the American people who do pay their taxes?

00:09:06.140 | They talk about things like the income tax withholding,

00:09:09.820 | which the United States started,

00:09:11.100 | which if I could change one thing, two things,

00:09:14.760 | there was an article, I think Gary North wrote years ago,

00:09:17.920 | on Lou Rockwell's site, where he said,

00:09:21.560 | "If I could have two things changed,

00:09:22.920 | "I would change only two things.

00:09:24.440 | "I would eliminate federal withholding from paychecks

00:09:28.480 | "of people's taxes, and I would move the tax payment day

00:09:31.340 | "to the first Monday of November."

00:09:33.480 | The idea is that the first Tuesday of November

00:09:35.560 | is election day in the United States.

00:09:37.280 | And so if every American had to file and actually pay,

00:09:40.960 | write the check for their taxes

00:09:42.180 | on the first Monday of November,

00:09:43.240 | and then go vote the next day,

00:09:44.640 | that in and of itself would be

00:09:46.040 | a tremendously powerful thing to change.

00:09:48.200 | And I agree.

00:09:50.040 | I find that there's a very different perspective

00:09:52.560 | among business owners who have to make

00:09:54.760 | quarterly tax payments, and often one large tax payment

00:09:57.960 | when their taxes are due, as compared to employees

00:10:01.740 | who don't really see the amount,

00:10:03.600 | they don't even know the amount of money

00:10:04.760 | that's withheld from their paychecks

00:10:06.240 | due to employee withholding.

00:10:08.240 | So in the article, "Americans Don't Cheat on Their Taxes

00:10:10.400 | "from the Atlantic," they talk about

00:10:12.280 | what accounts for this.

00:10:15.680 | And basically, what's hinted at is probably

00:10:18.240 | it comes down to tax morale.

00:10:20.840 | So I'll read just a paragraph here.

00:10:22.800 | "Economists say a third factor,

00:10:24.040 | "one with profound political implications, is tax morale.

00:10:27.560 | "This is a catch-all term for various forces

00:10:29.680 | "that motivate people to pay taxes,

00:10:31.700 | "including social norms, democratic values, civic pride,

00:10:34.900 | "transparent government spending,

00:10:36.520 | "and trust in leadership and fellow citizens.

00:10:39.060 | "People are more inclined to fudge,"

00:10:40.720 | yes, economists use that word, "their tax forms

00:10:42.780 | "if they think others aren't paying their fair share.

00:10:45.300 | "None of this would seem to bode especially well

00:10:47.540 | "for tax morale in the United States,

00:10:49.600 | "where faith in government has been dropping for decades.

00:10:52.180 | "So why are Americans still paying?"

00:10:54.140 | And talks about some of the reasons why.

00:10:57.580 | You can judge for yourself if you think that will continue.

00:10:59.980 | But don't be too quick to say,

00:11:03.340 | "Well, we just in Europe have much higher,

00:11:06.100 | "we're just, everyone's okay with paying taxes,

00:11:08.080 | "whereas in the United States, they're not."

00:11:09.580 | Maybe the difference between Europe and the United States

00:11:11.860 | is simply that there's a difference in tax rates.

00:11:14.260 | The European tax rate is so much higher.

00:11:16.460 | It's much more within your interest

00:11:18.160 | to avoid taxes and evade taxes

00:11:20.540 | if you're paying taxes at a 50% tax rate,

00:11:22.940 | versus if you're paying taxes at a 20% tax rate.

00:11:25.660 | It's just a very different scenario.

00:11:28.220 | So, but don't try to propose Europe quite so much

00:11:32.780 | until you actually look at the rate of compliance.

00:11:35.660 | Again, Germany's is the highest at 68%.

00:11:38.140 | The United States, however,

00:11:39.100 | is 81 to 84% voluntary compliance rate.

00:11:42.580 | Now, the next question that you ask is this.

00:11:45.340 | "I understand that government wastes a lot of money,

00:11:47.340 | "but it also does a lot of good,

00:11:48.720 | "infrastructure, financing research and science,

00:11:51.140 | "healthcare, even social care.

00:11:52.940 | "We take the benefit of roads when we travel

00:11:54.820 | "and police when we need them,

00:11:55.780 | "but we don't like paying taxes.

00:11:57.440 | "Would you rather pay a toll tax for every road you use

00:12:00.380 | "and pay a police woman every time you need them?"

00:12:03.340 | Well, short answer is yes, absolutely.

00:12:07.460 | I would rather pay a toll tax for every road I use

00:12:10.020 | and pay a police woman every time I need one,

00:12:12.520 | than to pay the taxes and income taxes

00:12:16.180 | and everything else the way

00:12:17.100 | that it is generally assessed right now.

00:12:19.500 | Now, there are a couple of red herrings

00:12:20.540 | that we need to get out of the way.

00:12:21.380 | First, taxes are not really doing much

00:12:24.620 | to pay for roads and police women.

00:12:26.860 | This is the biggest fallacy.

00:12:28.820 | It is rather funny.

00:12:29.880 | I don't know if you know it or not,

00:12:30.820 | but it's an ongoing meme and a joke

00:12:32.920 | among more libertarian leaning circles

00:12:35.400 | that you always wind up, "But my roads,

00:12:37.420 | "how are we gonna pay for the roads

00:12:38.700 | "if we don't have taxes?"

00:12:40.380 | I would bet you almost every anarchist,

00:12:43.560 | every libertarian I know,

00:12:45.700 | anybody who's in the more freedom-oriented, less taxation,

00:12:49.660 | if you told us that the only function of government

00:12:52.020 | is gonna be the roads,

00:12:53.460 | and you said that the government's gonna take care of roads

00:12:55.580 | and nothing else, I think most of us

00:12:57.420 | would stop our griping.

00:12:58.780 | Same thing, by the way, if tax rates were more modest,

00:13:01.500 | if tax rates were, say, under 10%.

00:13:04.260 | I can't imagine that,

00:13:05.460 | I can't say I wouldn't gripe.

00:13:08.400 | Hopefully, I'm griping less than I used to,

00:13:11.140 | but I'd probably still gripe,

00:13:12.420 | but it's just not really worth planning

00:13:14.660 | if it's under 10%.

00:13:16.280 | It's when you get into the tax rates that we're at.

00:13:19.680 | I mean, right off the top, 15% of your income is lost.

00:13:22.540 | 15 1/2% of your income is lost

00:13:24.420 | to Medicare Social Security taxes,

00:13:26.100 | plus, then, your federal income tax rates.

00:13:28.580 | So it's very common, the normal situation

00:13:31.140 | is for all but the very low income,

00:13:33.420 | the normal situation is that you're automatically losing

00:13:35.620 | 25% of your income,

00:13:37.220 | and that can grind up to, in the United States,

00:13:38.860 | up to 50, 55 to 60%

00:13:41.300 | in very high-tax jurisdictions of your income is gone.

00:13:43.820 | Well, that's just unacceptable.

00:13:45.460 | And so it's very much within your best interest

00:13:47.220 | to do planning for that.

00:13:48.980 | But the United States government

00:13:50.020 | does not spend money on roads and policewomen,

00:13:53.620 | or at least not much.

00:13:55.340 | The vast majority of spending in the United States

00:13:59.140 | is based upon transfer payments,

00:14:01.180 | trying to transfer money from one person to another.

00:14:05.680 | The primary expenditures are Social Security

00:14:09.220 | and Medicare and Medicaid.

00:14:11.440 | If you add up Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid,

00:14:14.340 | and then add in military spending,

00:14:16.240 | you account for at least about,

00:14:17.980 | I think it's 2/3 of the US federal budget.

00:14:20.980 | It was with those things,

00:14:22.060 | 2/3 of the US federal budget.

00:14:23.860 | And my beef is not with roads and policewomen,

00:14:27.460 | but my beef is with Medicare, Medicaid,

00:14:30.060 | Social Security, and military spending.

00:14:32.280 | Those are my beefs.

00:14:33.660 | And unfortunately, in the United States,

00:14:35.140 | those are the things that are considered to be untouchable.

00:14:37.320 | Those are the things that are considered to be sacrosanct.

00:14:39.540 | So don't have this illusion

00:14:41.640 | that somehow the problem is roads.

00:14:43.540 | Roads are not a problem.

00:14:45.660 | But yes, to implement a system of privatized roads

00:14:49.980 | in today's world would be ridiculously simple to do.

00:14:53.400 | One of the little jokes that libertarians

00:14:55.520 | usually like to point out when we're talking about my roads,

00:14:57.960 | how are we gonna get the roads done?

00:14:59.000 | Governments don't build roads.

00:15:01.080 | They simply don't.

00:15:02.260 | Governments do not build roads.

00:15:04.300 | What governments do is sometimes engage

00:15:07.160 | in a planning process,

00:15:08.760 | trying to figure out where the roads go.

00:15:10.240 | But usually they hire private contractors

00:15:11.960 | to do the studies to figure out

00:15:13.280 | where would be the best place for roads

00:15:14.660 | and road improvements.

00:15:16.480 | Then they facilitate an extremely corrupt

00:15:20.100 | and bloated and inefficient process of securing bids,

00:15:23.500 | which leads to massive corruption of small favors

00:15:27.420 | and donations to campaign donations

00:15:29.500 | by all the large road contractors to the local politicians

00:15:32.500 | to try to help them in the re-election campaign.

00:15:34.380 | And then you wind up with a contract that's awarded

00:15:36.780 | to a private company to build the road.

00:15:38.500 | And the private company is the one

00:15:39.760 | who actually builds the roads.

00:15:41.960 | Governments don't build roads.

00:15:44.780 | So if it's that difficult,

00:15:46.220 | or that's the thing,

00:15:47.500 | it's hard to imagine a government program

00:15:49.360 | that could be privatized easier than building the roads.

00:15:52.540 | Now, there are some things where you would say,

00:15:56.220 | how do we figure out the easements

00:15:58.100 | and how do we figure out the eminent domain

00:16:00.620 | and all that stuff?

00:16:01.460 | It's a little bit thorny,

00:16:02.280 | but I don't know anybody that's all that concerned

00:16:04.540 | about the roads.

00:16:05.380 | I'm not turned off about the roads.

00:16:07.380 | But you don't need to pay 60% of your income

00:16:10.500 | to finance roads.

00:16:12.140 | The other thing about police spending,

00:16:13.740 | frankly, these examples you use

00:16:15.260 | are some of the easiest things to privatize.

00:16:18.260 | Just use police women as an example.

00:16:19.580 | Would I rather hire a policewoman when I need one?

00:16:22.900 | Well, absolutely I would.

00:16:24.700 | And there's an easy, obvious parallel

00:16:27.780 | that could easily be built in the United States.

00:16:30.140 | Now, in the United States,

00:16:31.580 | would be different from Europe,

00:16:32.500 | but in the United States,

00:16:33.820 | if you call the police and they come out to your home,

00:16:37.260 | you don't pay a fee, a usage fee for that service.

00:16:41.180 | You also generally don't get much great service.

00:16:43.960 | Half the time they shoot you,

00:16:46.060 | half the time they don't show up when you need them,

00:16:48.280 | half the time they don't investigate the crimes.

00:16:50.700 | Where I'm from in South Florida,

00:16:53.300 | I have several friends who are police officers,

00:16:55.260 | and at this point,

00:16:56.080 | they don't even bother investigating minor crimes,

00:16:58.580 | minor property crimes, et cetera.

00:16:59.820 | They pile a police report

00:17:00.860 | so you can do it for insurance purposes.

00:17:02.520 | But if your stuff gets ripped off of your house,

00:17:05.780 | you're not gonna have any,

00:17:07.100 | I mean, they'll dust for fingerprints,

00:17:08.420 | but they're not gonna do anything

00:17:09.300 | to try to catch the people.

00:17:10.560 | I had a truck get stolen.

00:17:11.540 | Truck got stolen.

00:17:12.940 | The guys came out and made an effort.

00:17:15.900 | I shouldn't be that cruel.

00:17:17.140 | Made an effort to dust a few places for prints

00:17:19.660 | on my pickup truck after I recovered it,

00:17:22.160 | but they didn't do anything to try to catch the thieves.

00:17:24.060 | There was no massive law enforcement effort to say,

00:17:26.780 | oh, we're gonna go and get these people

00:17:28.080 | who stole the truck and we're gonna get off.

00:17:30.300 | It's just, so you don't get great service.

00:17:32.680 | Now, if there's a murder or something like that,

00:17:34.340 | people, they treat that a little bit more seriously.

00:17:36.480 | But again, where I'm from in many places,

00:17:39.020 | it's not even worth calling them for the except

00:17:41.380 | of get a police report for your insurance.

00:17:43.340 | But you don't generally pay for the hourly work

00:17:46.720 | of having a police officer come out.

00:17:48.900 | Same thing with fire.

00:17:50.180 | But what you do pay for is if you call out

00:17:52.580 | an ambulance service.

00:17:53.700 | And the way that things are often done

00:17:55.580 | is that the fire service and the ambulance service

00:17:58.700 | has kind of have been integrated.

00:18:00.140 | But you get billed if you call out for a medical call.

00:18:03.540 | And so if you call an ambulance,

00:18:04.700 | you get a bill for your ambulance ride to the hospital.

00:18:07.700 | And then you have private insurance

00:18:09.460 | that usually will pay that bill,

00:18:11.140 | if not, you wind up owing the bill.

00:18:12.660 | And then sometimes the bill is negotiated, whatever.

00:18:15.140 | But it's not just automatically covered by the government.

00:18:18.300 | Well, it would be very simple

00:18:20.500 | to apply that exact same thing to firefighters.

00:18:22.900 | And it'd be very simple to apply

00:18:24.220 | that exact same thing to police work.

00:18:27.260 | That could be easily privatized.

00:18:29.140 | You could be easily, even if the work

00:18:31.260 | were actually coordinated by a local government,

00:18:33.580 | you could easily charge usage fees,

00:18:35.380 | call out fees for calling the police out, et cetera.

00:18:37.500 | And that could easily be covered

00:18:38.420 | with private insurance policies.

00:18:40.620 | That's not unknown.

00:18:41.860 | There are many of us in the United States

00:18:44.020 | who out of concern if we ever kill somebody in self-defense,

00:18:48.540 | maintain private insurance policies

00:18:50.500 | to cover court costs and fees and lawyers fees

00:18:52.940 | and things like that, or defending yourself.

00:18:55.100 | That's fairly popular, at least advertised popular

00:18:58.100 | in the United States.

00:18:59.420 | And so there are all kinds of ways

00:19:00.820 | that those things could be covered.

00:19:02.540 | So don't fall into the idea that somehow

00:19:05.060 | everyone is out there griping about police officers

00:19:08.740 | and everyone is griping about building roads.

00:19:13.060 | That's not the gripe.

00:19:14.060 | The gripe is the other stuff.

00:19:15.340 | The gripe is the massive transfer programs

00:19:17.660 | and the entitlement programs.

00:19:19.340 | Now, let's talk about those a little bit.

00:19:21.620 | I don't think that these programs are fundamentally good.

00:19:25.200 | They're fundamentally useful.

00:19:26.340 | I have a number of complaints,

00:19:28.260 | but let me just speak practically.

00:19:29.780 | It doesn't really matter what I think

00:19:31.700 | or what you think about them.

00:19:33.500 | There is a massive political movement

00:19:36.420 | of people who believe that these things are good.

00:19:39.140 | There's no chance whatsoever

00:19:40.580 | that the United States of America

00:19:42.020 | is going to disband Medicaid or Medicare or Social Security,

00:19:46.060 | at least not politically.

00:19:47.300 | There is no political will for that whatsoever.

00:19:50.180 | Every person who even tries,

00:19:51.420 | the last president in the United States

00:19:53.140 | who tried to touch one of these entitlement programs

00:19:55.940 | was President George W. Bush.

00:19:58.120 | And it was interesting, I read about it in his memoirs,

00:20:02.180 | in "Decision Points," I think it was called,

00:20:04.260 | where he was just talking about how one of his big regrets

00:20:06.460 | of his presidency was how he couldn't make any progress

00:20:09.220 | even on a partial privatization of Social Security.

00:20:12.820 | And yet it cost him massively politically.

00:20:16.140 | President Obama certainly didn't try to say,

00:20:18.380 | "Let's minimize entitlement programs,"

00:20:20.260 | the opposite direction.

00:20:21.420 | And President Trump was politically savvy enough

00:20:23.420 | to from the beginning never even bother

00:20:24.780 | to try to say anything about,

00:20:25.980 | "Let's minimize entitlement programs."

00:20:28.100 | Once you get a group of people that recognizes

00:20:30.140 | that they can vote themselves money

00:20:31.620 | from the government treasury, you're pretty much lost.

00:20:34.060 | And so my opinion or your opinion about this

00:20:36.800 | makes no difference whatsoever.

00:20:38.860 | What I think personally will happen, my personal opinion,

00:20:42.240 | is that in the coming decades,

00:20:43.920 | all of these programs will prove to be worthless

00:20:47.960 | because there's simply not gonna be any money.

00:20:50.220 | But that's not gonna be anything fast,

00:20:51.660 | it's gonna be something excruciatingly slow and painful.

00:20:55.460 | And all the people that thought,

00:20:56.380 | "Well, if I just vote myself some more money,

00:20:59.260 | "it'll all work out," are going to be sorely disappointed.

00:21:02.420 | Last week on Twitter, I shared an interesting

00:21:04.140 | Washington Post article,

00:21:05.740 | the headline of which was called,

00:21:07.580 | "Maine Families Face an Elder Boom

00:21:11.260 | "and Worker Shortage in Preview of Nation's Future."

00:21:14.820 | I thought it was a well-written article.

00:21:15.940 | Jeff Stein was the reporter, and he was talking in Maine

00:21:19.260 | and dealing with different people

00:21:20.700 | who were really facing just awful problems.

00:21:24.080 | Even though they're fully qualified for Medicaid,

00:21:26.260 | they can't get help.

00:21:27.780 | Couple of excerpts for you.

00:21:29.420 | Flaherty's mother, Caroline, has for two years

00:21:31.780 | qualified for in-home care,

00:21:33.780 | paid for by the state's Medicaid program.

00:21:36.060 | But the agency could not find someone to hire

00:21:38.380 | amid a severe shortage of workers

00:21:40.200 | that has crippled facilities for seniors across the state.

00:21:43.300 | With private help now bid up to $50 an hour,

00:21:46.620 | Janet and her two sisters have been forced to do

00:21:48.660 | what millions of families

00:21:49.740 | in a rapidly aging America have done,

00:21:52.100 | take up second, unpaid jobs,

00:21:53.900 | caring full-time for their mother.

00:21:55.820 | "We do not know what to do.

00:21:56.960 | "We do not know where to go.

00:21:58.040 | "We're in such dire need of help,"

00:21:59.500 | said Flaherty, an insurance saleswoman.

00:22:01.980 | Across Maine, families like the Flaherty's

00:22:03.980 | are being hammered by two slow-moving demographic forces,

00:22:07.600 | the growth of the retirement population

00:22:09.540 | and a simultaneous decline in young workers

00:22:12.240 | that have been exacerbated by a national worker shortage

00:22:15.220 | pushing up the cost of labor.

00:22:16.940 | The unemployment rate in Maine is 3.2%,

00:22:19.500 | below the national average of 3.7%.

00:22:22.860 | Later, "We've added an entire generation

00:22:24.940 | "since we first put the safety net in place

00:22:26.980 | "with no plan whatsoever for how to support them,

00:22:29.380 | "said Ai-jen Poo,

00:22:30.620 | "co-director of Caring Across Generations,

00:22:32.620 | "which advocates for long-term care."

00:22:34.740 | As the oldest state, Maine is the tip of the spear,

00:22:37.340 | but it foreshadows what is to come for the entire country.

00:22:40.580 | Last year, Maine crossed a crucial aging milestone.

00:22:43.640 | A fifth of its population is older than 65,

00:22:46.340 | which meets the definition of super-aged,

00:22:48.660 | according to the World Bank.

00:22:50.220 | By 2026, Maine will be joined by more than 15 other states,

00:22:53.700 | according to Fitch Ratings,

00:22:54.800 | including Vermont and New Hampshire,

00:22:56.820 | Maine's neighbors in the Northeast,

00:22:58.460 | Montana, Delaware, West Virginia, Wisconsin,

00:23:01.260 | and Pennsylvania.

00:23:02.460 | More than a dozen more will meet that criterion by 2030.

00:23:06.940 | Separately in the article, we read this.

00:23:09.340 | "But with nursing homes across Maine

00:23:11.720 | "closing at an unprecedented rate,

00:23:13.400 | "Honey has been unsuccessful.

00:23:15.200 | "Medicaid pays for a care aide

00:23:16.980 | "to come to his home for 70 hours a week,

00:23:19.320 | "but the state has told Honey

00:23:20.620 | "it cannot find enough workers to cover the hours,

00:23:23.280 | "even though he legally qualifies for the care.

00:23:26.140 | "Care workers in Maine were paid about $11.37 an hour

00:23:29.540 | "in 2017, according to an AARP report

00:23:33.140 | "with a 2019 minimum wage of $11 an hour.

00:23:36.360 | "As Christy Penny, who has cared for Honey for four years,

00:23:39.080 | "noted over the phone,

00:23:40.320 | "even Dunkin' Donuts pays you more.

00:23:42.460 | "Honey said he lives in fear

00:23:44.260 | "of one of the caretakers getting sick

00:23:46.340 | "and quitting or finding another job.

00:23:48.660 | "When you're confined to a bed,

00:23:50.000 | "there's not much you can work with, Honey said.

00:23:52.360 | "It only takes one or two of the girls being sick,

00:23:54.780 | "or one of the two of them quitting,

00:23:56.300 | "for me to not be covered.

00:23:57.780 | "And then you're up a creek without a paddle."

00:24:00.160 | Separately, Congress created a commission

00:24:03.400 | to study the long-term care problem.

00:24:05.020 | In 2013, it issued dozens of recommendations,

00:24:07.600 | including a national strategy to help family caregivers.

00:24:11.040 | But a fair number of these things

00:24:12.780 | have not been implemented.

00:24:14.460 | "Those that have been implemented

00:24:15.600 | "are being implemented far too slowly,"

00:24:17.420 | said Bruce Chernoff, co-author of the commission's report

00:24:20.060 | and president and chief executive of the SCAN Foundation,

00:24:23.320 | which advocates on long-term care issues.

00:24:25.600 | "Left unaddressed, this will be catastrophic.

00:24:27.880 | "We as a country have not wrapped our heads

00:24:30.580 | "around what it's going to take to pay for long-term care,"

00:24:34.860 | Chernoff said.

00:24:36.060 | "Other countries have responded to their aging populations

00:24:38.280 | "with government-provided care,

00:24:39.680 | "and many have beefed up the number of aids and providers.

00:24:42.460 | "America and England are the only

00:24:43.820 | "economically developed nations in the West

00:24:45.620 | "that do not provide a universal long-term care benefit,"

00:24:48.100 | said Howard Gleckman, author of a book about long-term care

00:24:50.740 | and a senior fellow

00:24:51.580 | at the Urban Institute of Nonpartisan Think Tank.

00:24:53.220 | Now, you can read the article if you want.

00:24:55.100 | It's on the Washington Post from August 15, 2019.

00:24:58.980 | But this, in my opinion, is a perfect preview

00:25:02.380 | of what you can expect to see repeated

00:25:04.140 | thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of times

00:25:06.680 | over the next few decades.

00:25:08.160 | No matter how much it might feel good to say,

00:25:10.380 | "Well, we've got Medicaid,

00:25:11.320 | "we're gonna cover all the people,"

00:25:12.700 | the money's not there.

00:25:14.060 | And for these people who retired, what happened is

00:25:16.680 | the culture in the United States voted themselves

00:25:18.820 | all kinds of massive government programs,

00:25:20.860 | which were predicated upon having

00:25:22.420 | a whole bunch of young people building and working

00:25:25.380 | to pay taxes to pay for the old people.

00:25:27.660 | Then, the old people didn't bother to have any children,

00:25:30.340 | so the birth rate declined massively,

00:25:32.060 | and now there aren't many workers

00:25:33.440 | who are paying for the old people.

00:25:35.140 | So, what's the solution?

00:25:37.780 | There is no solution in terms of a government solution.

00:25:40.700 | You can't just magically print babies.

00:25:42.460 | Birth rates continue to decline

00:25:43.900 | in the United States of America.

00:25:45.340 | And you can't increase the taxes more

00:25:46.980 | 'cause people are gonna find

00:25:47.820 | they're gonna be willing to move more

00:25:49.740 | and decrease those taxes.

00:25:51.460 | And if taxes get much higher,

00:25:53.580 | people just simply say it's not worth it.

00:25:55.400 | You're gonna have an increasing press

00:25:57.060 | towards increasing immigration

00:25:58.380 | because that's gonna be one of the only ways

00:26:00.580 | that American politicians see

00:26:01.940 | that they can increase the tax rolls

00:26:03.380 | or to bring in more immigrants to stabilize the population.

00:26:06.100 | But ultimately, what's gonna happen

00:26:07.620 | is the people who are dependent on the government programs

00:26:09.820 | are going to be screwed.

00:26:11.680 | They're going to run out.

00:26:14.420 | They're not gonna be there.

00:26:15.700 | Doesn't matter how great your Medicaid benefits are,

00:26:18.020 | the state can't send you workers

00:26:19.460 | 'cause they're not gonna pay

00:26:20.300 | what the $50 an hour people are charging

00:26:22.060 | in the private market.

00:26:23.400 | When the government gets involved in these markets,

00:26:25.320 | it winds up screwing up

00:26:26.720 | because it's easier for politicians to promise benefits

00:26:29.660 | than to actually pay for stuff.

00:26:31.540 | That's what we've been talking about on this show

00:26:33.180 | for months and months and months.

00:26:34.380 | It's easy to make promises.

00:26:35.620 | It's hard to actually pay for stuff.

00:26:37.460 | So we've got needs and opportunities.

00:26:39.220 | This has to be solved at the community level.

00:26:41.100 | You first, you work on your own children,

00:26:42.640 | making sure that your own children

00:26:43.780 | are willing to take care of you when you're old.

00:26:45.620 | You have a responsibility to take care of your parents

00:26:47.820 | when they're old.

00:26:48.660 | And then you build a community fabric

00:26:50.740 | where individuals caring for their neighbors.

00:26:53.160 | That's the only solution that there is to it.

00:26:55.100 | So I say this to say it's a preview

00:26:56.640 | of what we're gonna expect over the coming decades.

00:26:59.040 | So you can't think that, oh, we have better things

00:27:00.920 | and everything's gonna be fixed

00:27:02.660 | if we just have more programs.

00:27:05.300 | The money's not there.

00:27:06.300 | It's not going to be there.

00:27:07.860 | And systematically, in my opinion,

00:27:09.620 | this is probably gonna lead to a massive diminishment

00:27:12.800 | of the power of the nation state some decades from now,

00:27:16.660 | 30, 50, I don't know, 75 years from now, who knows?

00:27:19.100 | Maybe I'll be around to see it, maybe I won't.

00:27:21.100 | But there are major problems and major moral hazards

00:27:23.940 | of these programs, and these programs are the problem,

00:27:26.320 | not having roads.

00:27:28.000 | That's not the problem.

00:27:29.220 | The problem is the entitlement programs,

00:27:31.260 | the wealth transfer programs.

00:27:32.980 | And what I see happening,

00:27:34.140 | and what I think will continue to happen,

00:27:35.300 | at least in the United States,

00:27:36.580 | is these welfare programs are going to continue

00:27:39.280 | to fuel anger of one group of people

00:27:42.300 | against another group of people,

00:27:43.540 | and anger at the government,

00:27:44.580 | which means probably in time,

00:27:46.100 | the voluntary tax compliance rate

00:27:47.620 | is gonna continue to go down.

00:27:49.460 | I'm convinced that this is one of the things

00:27:51.060 | that are the foremost vanguard of all of the issues

00:27:55.020 | with the immigration debate in the United States right now.

00:27:57.580 | Probably the biggest issue, if not the biggest,

00:27:59.900 | one of the biggest issues right now in the United States

00:28:01.940 | is a major immigration debate.

00:28:03.620 | And this is usually played out in the political circles

00:28:08.020 | as somehow some kind of racist versus non-racist position.

00:28:13.180 | I don't think it's that way.

00:28:14.940 | I've met and talked to lots of people

00:28:17.020 | on all sides of the political issues.

00:28:19.260 | I have never, let me think,

00:28:21.340 | I have never encountered somebody who is,

00:28:26.340 | I have never personally spoken to somebody

00:28:28.680 | who is just racist, who's outright racist,

00:28:32.140 | especially somebody who's in the anti-immigration camp,

00:28:34.780 | or the President Trump build a wall camp.

00:28:37.520 | I've never spoken to anybody who is in that situation

00:28:40.060 | who is racist, who just doesn't like brown people

00:28:43.220 | or black people or whatever the issue is.

00:28:45.900 | Never happened.

00:28:46.940 | But what I have seen constantly

00:28:49.260 | is concerns about the transfer payments,

00:28:51.780 | about trying to transfer money from one person to another.

00:28:55.220 | And there are millions and millions of people

00:28:57.020 | all across the United States who look down

00:28:59.140 | and recognize how much of their income

00:29:00.940 | is stolen from them in income taxes,

00:29:03.500 | and how much is being transferred

00:29:05.240 | in the form of welfare payments

00:29:07.460 | to people who are immigrants to the country

00:29:10.940 | and who may or may not be paying taxes.

00:29:13.380 | Now, there is an important thing to discuss

00:29:15.940 | and actually look at and say,

00:29:17.220 | what's actually happening with the data?

00:29:19.740 | What's actually happening?

00:29:20.820 | Are immigrants actually using welfare programs?

00:29:23.700 | Is there actually a net loss?

00:29:25.220 | But on the whole, if you look at the data,

00:29:27.420 | the only people who in the United States

00:29:29.840 | are net taxpayers over the course of their lifetime

00:29:33.140 | are white men speaking as a group.

00:29:35.820 | And so when you look at that and say,

00:29:37.540 | white women are negative net taxpayers,

00:29:41.320 | black men, black women, brown men, brown women

00:29:44.820 | are all negative taxpayers when taken as racial classes,

00:29:48.740 | you can understand why there's a bit of frustration

00:29:51.500 | on the part of many white men.

00:29:54.460 | And so I think you see a major,

00:29:58.100 | it's almost like the taxes are a bellows

00:30:01.100 | on a blacksmith's forge making the frustration

00:30:04.020 | and the heat drive up.

00:30:05.700 | It's not a matter of racism or non-racism,

00:30:08.380 | it's a matter of why is my money being taken

00:30:11.300 | and transferred to those people over there?

00:30:14.660 | And there is this issue very possibly

00:30:17.900 | could rip the United States apart.

00:30:20.220 | And it comes down to these things

00:30:22.200 | like the government programs and taxes.

00:30:24.140 | Now, I think personally, just indulge me for a moment,

00:30:27.260 | I think I could solve the immigration problem.

00:30:29.900 | And here's how I would do it if I were emperor of the world.

00:30:32.580 | Number one, I would eliminate the welfare state

00:30:34.740 | and eliminate all transfer tax payments.

00:30:37.300 | Every single transfer tax payment,

00:30:39.140 | every single aspect of the welfare state, gone.

00:30:42.100 | I'm not saying you could eliminate all tax.

00:30:44.020 | I personally, I'm not an anarchist.

00:30:46.020 | I believe there should be tax,

00:30:47.720 | I believe there should be government,

00:30:49.260 | I believe it's important,

00:30:50.200 | but it should be a certain type of government.

00:30:52.100 | So I don't personally, I'm not an anarchist.

00:30:55.660 | But if you eliminate all transfer payments,

00:30:58.980 | what happens is you take away a major source of frustration

00:31:03.160 | for individual people.

00:31:05.300 | Because now, if they are paying tax,

00:31:07.700 | they understand that they're paying tax

00:31:09.160 | for something that's for everybody.

00:31:10.980 | If they understand they're paying tax for a road,

00:31:12.700 | they're paying a tax for a road.

00:31:14.300 | They're not paying tax so that money

00:31:15.740 | can come out of their pocket

00:31:16.940 | and be transferred to that person over there

00:31:18.860 | that they see who's not working,

00:31:20.100 | that's not being productive.

00:31:21.260 | They know they're just simply paying for a road.

00:31:23.100 | So number one, eliminate the welfare state,

00:31:25.140 | eliminate all transfer tax payments.

00:31:27.260 | Then you could solve the immigration problem

00:31:29.540 | with number two, establish firm border controls

00:31:32.320 | to process all people in order to screen out criminals.

00:31:34.860 | I don't think that, in my opinion,

00:31:36.620 | I don't think that government should have the right

00:31:38.860 | or should engage in the practice

00:31:40.180 | of trying to hinder the movement of non-criminal persons.

00:31:42.900 | But criminal persons do need to be apprehended

00:31:45.180 | and made to pay for their crime.

00:31:46.860 | Number three, establish free, unhindered,

00:31:49.620 | no cost access to the United States or any country

00:31:52.420 | for any immigrating person.

00:31:54.160 | And then you have the best of both worlds.

00:31:56.900 | You have free access for people to flow

00:31:59.460 | into free markets, to go and pursue work,

00:32:02.640 | to go and pursue community,

00:32:04.240 | to establish themselves wherever they want to be.

00:32:07.320 | That solves a major problem of the inefficiencies

00:32:11.800 | of government bureaucrats trying to say,

00:32:14.000 | well, we need 22,000 of this kind of worker.

00:32:16.960 | We need 15,000 of this kind of worker.

00:32:19.320 | We need to issue 182,000 of this kind of visa.

00:32:21.880 | It's insane to think that somehow

00:32:24.520 | some government bureaucrat somewhere

00:32:26.120 | can engage in effective central planning of immigration

00:32:28.880 | to figure out what kind of worker we need here

00:32:30.780 | and what kind of worker we need is there.

00:32:32.060 | Let the market work it out.

00:32:33.540 | But stop the transfer payments from one person to another.

00:32:37.440 | I think also you could solve a lot of the frustrations

00:32:40.940 | by making sure that there were changes

00:32:43.360 | to citizenship and voting.

00:32:45.220 | I think if you establish careful identification laws

00:32:47.780 | for voting to ensure that only citizens

00:32:49.540 | are engaging in voting, that would make a big difference.

00:32:52.260 | If you lengthen the pathway to citizenship

00:32:54.140 | while simultaneously removing visa restrictions

00:32:57.240 | on workers, et cetera, I think that would solve

00:32:59.220 | a lot of the problems of how do you bring people together

00:33:02.460 | and be open to immigration

00:33:03.820 | while simultaneously bringing a society together.

00:33:06.340 | And then finally, you have to affirm

00:33:07.900 | individual people's absolute right

00:33:11.020 | to control their own property

00:33:12.380 | without other people trying to interfere.

00:33:14.420 | The right of that person to discriminate

00:33:16.060 | or not discriminate with their property,

00:33:17.580 | the right of that person to manage their property

00:33:19.100 | the way they could, and that way every person feels free

00:33:21.980 | and they can handle their own property,

00:33:23.860 | they can handle their own situation

00:33:26.060 | without interference by bureaucrats.

00:33:27.920 | There's Joshua's five-part plan

00:33:31.120 | to solve the stickiest issue in the United States

00:33:34.040 | at this point in time.

00:33:35.180 | But at its foundation, the frustration,

00:33:37.540 | a lot of it stems from these tax systems.

00:33:40.180 | Now, I didn't really mean to start talking

00:33:42.500 | about immigration, but there are rippling consequences

00:33:47.500 | to these programs that can't be seen in advance.

00:33:51.560 | And yet these are the things that make a big, big difference.

00:33:54.940 | Additionally, as the size of government grows,

00:33:57.880 | and as you wind up with government handling

00:33:59.600 | more and more of these things,

00:34:00.600 | you wind up with much higher levels of corruption.

00:34:03.600 | And there's a huge moral hazard

00:34:05.240 | of having large government systems here

00:34:08.040 | where you don't have that

00:34:10.000 | if you have a small and restrained government.

00:34:12.720 | As the size and involvement of government grows

00:34:14.920 | in an economy and in society,

00:34:16.880 | corruption and inequity among persons will always grow.

00:34:20.120 | Now, let me just give you a very simple example.

00:34:22.560 | Let's assume that you have a government

00:34:25.300 | that's extremely small,

00:34:26.360 | and all it does is take care of roads and policewomen.

00:34:30.480 | It has to take care of courts too.

00:34:33.180 | I'll get to that in just a moment.

00:34:34.220 | I think the number one basic function of government

00:34:36.580 | should be to handle the judiciary.

00:34:38.580 | But let's assume that it just does roads,

00:34:40.140 | policewomen, and courts, and there's nothing else.

00:34:42.420 | Now, let's say that you are a wealthy person

00:34:44.780 | and you have a tiny tax rate, a few percent of,

00:34:47.620 | if you were still taxing income,

00:34:48.860 | let's just say it's a 5% or 10% of income,

00:34:50.820 | flat tax across the board.

00:34:52.020 | Every citizen, every resident owes 10% of their income

00:34:55.500 | to the US government.

00:34:57.240 | Is there a lot of incentive for local business people

00:35:01.660 | and wealthy people, et cetera,

00:35:03.140 | to start buying their way in and out of Congress?

00:35:05.660 | Is there a lot of incentive for big companies,

00:35:08.180 | big pharmaceutical companies, big oil companies,

00:35:10.460 | big insurance companies to spend millions of dollars

00:35:14.560 | on their political action committees

00:35:16.140 | to buy their legislation done through Congress?

00:35:19.080 | Is there a big incentive for the local realtor board

00:35:21.740 | to have their political action committee

00:35:23.260 | and raise $150,000 to send to the representative in Congress

00:35:26.020 | to make sure that they maintain the housing exclusion,

00:35:30.100 | section 121 housing exclusion?

00:35:32.540 | There's no incentive to it

00:35:33.860 | because you have a small government

00:35:34.940 | and the government's not involved.

00:35:36.540 | And so you would immediately have

00:35:38.340 | many billions of dollars less of interference and influence

00:35:43.220 | by these companies trying to interfere

00:35:45.020 | in government circles.

00:35:46.540 | But now when you come to a situation

00:35:48.120 | where a wealthy person is faced with a 50% tax rate,

00:35:51.180 | there is massive incentive for that person

00:35:53.620 | to spend several millions of dollars

00:35:56.120 | to have the tax code adjusted

00:35:57.860 | in a way that helps their situation

00:36:00.100 | versus paying the money in tax.

00:36:04.140 | If you've got a $10 million tax bill,

00:36:06.300 | you can afford to spend a couple million dollars

00:36:08.100 | on your local politicians

00:36:09.520 | to make things go your way a little bit.

00:36:11.420 | And the individuals are just the tip of the iceberg.

00:36:14.140 | One of the biggest problems in the United States

00:36:16.060 | is that every single big company

00:36:18.060 | to basically survive in the modern world

00:36:20.460 | when you have a huge, all powerful, all knowing,

00:36:23.260 | all involved executive state.

00:36:25.600 | Basically every single company

00:36:27.180 | has to commit millions and millions of dollars

00:36:29.700 | towards their political action committee,

00:36:31.140 | towards their lobbyists in Washington, DC.

00:36:33.260 | And this leads to incredible corruption.

00:36:35.420 | I used to sit in this stuff,

00:36:36.660 | I would go to every year,

00:36:37.740 | I'd go to an annual meeting

00:36:38.580 | for the insurance company I used to work for.

00:36:40.380 | And I would always go to the legislative lunch update

00:36:43.000 | where our company's lobbyists would come

00:36:44.580 | and give us a report.

00:36:45.780 | And several times I went

00:36:47.300 | and did the political action days up in Tallahassee, Florida

00:36:50.860 | with my local insurance boards.

00:36:53.020 | We would say, "Here are our issues."

00:36:54.260 | And I would go up to Tallahassee

00:36:55.580 | and go around and meet with all the state senators

00:36:57.420 | and the state congresspeople and say,

00:36:59.060 | "Here's our thing, here's our issue."

00:37:01.980 | When you have the government involved in these things

00:37:04.900 | where there's no reason for it,

00:37:06.620 | you have nothing but massive political spending on it.

00:37:10.500 | And so as the state grows,

00:37:11.740 | you're always gonna get more corruption.

00:37:13.300 | And so one of the things I see

00:37:15.020 | is that if you minimize your tax payments to the state,

00:37:17.240 | you wind up with less corruption.

00:37:18.460 | You wind up with more efficiency

00:37:19.620 | 'cause they have less money to spend,

00:37:20.960 | which is incredibly important,

00:37:22.860 | but you also wind up with less corruption.

00:37:24.820 | The United States of America

00:37:25.660 | is one of the most corrupt countries on earth.

00:37:27.300 | And what has happened to happen is,

00:37:29.020 | it's not the old way,

00:37:29.980 | it's not the way that it is in,

00:37:31.540 | insert little banana republic country here

00:37:37.020 | or little African dictatorship here.

00:37:39.620 | It's not as simple and easy as here's a couple

00:37:42.380 | of hundred dollar bills

00:37:44.420 | or here's a briefcase full of cash.

00:37:46.260 | That kind of corruption is petty

00:37:47.880 | and it's simple to deal with

00:37:49.160 | 'cause everybody can get through it.

00:37:51.360 | The corruption in the United States is big money

00:37:53.560 | and it has to be done massively.

00:37:56.000 | Look at how much money is spent on a presidential election.

00:37:59.680 | Look at how much money is spent

00:38:00.760 | on every single senator and congressman's election.

00:38:03.280 | It's insane.

00:38:04.360 | And yet this is a result

00:38:05.640 | of having a giant executive state involved in everything.

00:38:10.480 | Now, I'm opposed to tax evasion.

00:38:15.480 | I don't think that should be done.

00:38:16.760 | I don't think it's a good strategy

00:38:17.840 | and especially, it's just not a good strategy in my opinion.

00:38:21.300 | I'm sensitive to the times

00:38:22.580 | where it has been a good strategy.

00:38:24.180 | I'm sensitive and sympathetic

00:38:26.400 | with many of the arguments of the tax protesters.

00:38:30.220 | But at this point in time,

00:38:32.080 | I don't think it's generally a wise strategy.

00:38:35.280 | Now, I have, thankfully,

00:38:36.920 | I have become a little bit more moderate in my own opinions

00:38:41.480 | and my frustrations over the years.

00:38:43.520 | Over the years, I used to be very frustrated about it.

00:38:46.400 | These days, I've lost a lot of that.

00:38:48.800 | I just simply view taxation as basically payments to the mob.

00:38:53.040 | I basically think of the US government

00:38:55.840 | like a mafia mob that controls a certain neighborhood.

00:38:58.320 | And that neighborhood has certain attributes.

00:39:00.080 | Some of them are nice, some of them are not nice.

00:39:01.940 | If I wanna live in that neighborhood

00:39:03.340 | and get the benefits of living in that neighborhood,

00:39:04.960 | I have to pay the mob.

00:39:06.680 | And it's just practically,

00:39:08.000 | it's far too dangerous for me to not pay them

00:39:11.160 | and have my legs broken.

00:39:12.120 | It's far too dangerous for me not to pay them

00:39:13.680 | every cent they owe, they want,

00:39:15.840 | and have, get locked in prison or something like that.

00:39:18.800 | It's just too dangerous.

00:39:19.840 | So either I pay the mob their extortion fee

00:39:21.840 | or I leave and go somewhere else.

00:39:23.560 | And it's no different than dealing

00:39:25.400 | with any government official anywhere else in the world.

00:39:27.200 | It's just a practical assessment of how much money I make

00:39:29.400 | after the cost of the extortion fees

00:39:31.000 | and if it's still worth my time.

00:39:32.480 | Think about it with a tariff example,

00:39:36.960 | because it's a more direct tax,

00:39:38.280 | which by the way, I think tariffs, nevermind.

00:39:41.040 | Let's say I have a product that I wanna sell

00:39:42.600 | and I wanna go and sell my product

00:39:44.440 | in the national borders of Loompa land.

00:39:48.060 | Well, if the government of Loompa land

00:39:50.080 | imposes a tariff on me,

00:39:51.560 | then I have to simply sit down and do a calculation.

00:39:53.680 | Is it worth it?

00:39:54.760 | How much can I sell of my product in Loompa land?

00:39:58.200 | I think the Loompa leaders are dumb for imposing tariffs.

00:40:00.720 | It only hurts their citizenry, makes them pay more money.

00:40:03.360 | It's not my business to fight about it.

00:40:04.720 | I just calculate the cost and say,

00:40:06.160 | do I wanna participate or not?

00:40:07.800 | So, and as an advocate for freedom,

00:40:10.640 | practically speaking,

00:40:11.560 | the first goal of living a free lifestyle

00:40:13.160 | is staying out of prison.

00:40:14.260 | So I pay taxes and I recommend you do too.

00:40:16.460 | And thankfully, when you live in a tax system

00:40:20.360 | where the taxes are as high as the US

00:40:22.040 | or many places in Europe,

00:40:23.440 | then you have a system

00:40:25.680 | where because of the high levels of corruption,

00:40:27.980 | then there are wrinkles in the law.

00:40:30.040 | And so if you simply read the wrinkles in the law

00:40:32.740 | and align your activities with them,

00:40:34.760 | then you can follow all of those adjustments

00:40:39.080 | and put yourself in a situation

00:40:41.080 | where you can follow the law perfectly

00:40:43.640 | and yet result in a very low tax rate.

00:40:46.240 | And that's the double-edged sword of a large state.

00:40:49.360 | When you have it, you always have wrinkles

00:40:50.880 | and anybody can get around it.

00:40:52.800 | The Realtor Board, the US Association of Realtors

00:40:55.200 | has been incredibly effective in lobbying

00:40:57.960 | and continually lobbying for the deductibility

00:41:00.440 | of mortgage interest against your taxes

00:41:02.600 | and in the exclusion for capital gains

00:41:05.700 | on the sale of a personal residence.

00:41:07.700 | Thank the local association of Realtors in your community

00:41:10.840 | for keeping it that way.

00:41:12.280 | Well, I don't think it should be there.

00:41:13.620 | I don't think the local association of Realtors

00:41:15.280 | should have it.

00:41:16.120 | I don't think they should have a PAC.

00:41:16.940 | I don't think they should do lobbying.

00:41:17.780 | I think that I wish it weren't that way,

00:41:20.400 | but it is that way.

00:41:21.500 | So I can still come in

00:41:22.720 | and I can buy an individual house that I live in.

00:41:25.680 | I can live in it cheaply.

00:41:27.000 | I can mortgage it to the hilt.

00:41:29.280 | I can deduct the interest against my other taxes.

00:41:31.840 | And then I can sell that house two or more years later

00:41:35.080 | and I can pay no tax on the gain from that residence.

00:41:37.900 | It's truly tax-free income.

00:41:40.000 | I followed every single law.

00:41:41.460 | I just use the fact that the local board of Realtors

00:41:44.660 | has this political clout, has this political power

00:41:47.380 | and the US government has chosen to set up the tax code

00:41:50.560 | in this way.

00:41:51.400 | You can do it too.

00:41:52.220 | And so that's what I spend the vast majority of my time

00:41:54.620 | talking about on this show.

00:41:57.040 | That's what I spend all my time discussing

00:41:58.900 | is teaching you how to do that,

00:42:00.540 | following the law carefully.

00:42:02.680 | Now, I briefly touched on

00:42:05.540 | and what this listener was talking about.

00:42:07.520 | I just simply said that one of the benefits of paying cash

00:42:09.700 | is often you can get a discount.

00:42:10.860 | If you're gonna pay with cash,

00:42:11.700 | always ask for a cash discount.

00:42:13.140 | And that cash discount can be offered by the person

00:42:15.620 | for many reasons.

00:42:17.300 | Not the only one of which might be that the person

00:42:19.860 | who I'm doing business with may or may not be paying taxes

00:42:22.820 | on the money, the cash that comes in.

00:42:24.740 | There are many reasons why you get a cash discount on cash.

00:42:28.780 | For example, just the security of cash.

00:42:32.500 | It's possible that if you write a check,

00:42:33.780 | the check may not clear.

00:42:35.000 | It's possible that if you swipe a credit card,

00:42:36.920 | the company may issue, you may get a charge back.

00:42:40.320 | Those of us who run merchant accounts,

00:42:41.480 | you have all kinds of problems with charge back sometimes

00:42:43.640 | and figuring out how to get people to pay.

00:42:46.440 | Just having the security of knowing there's cash in hand

00:42:49.240 | has a significant value to a merchant.

00:42:52.360 | It's cash, it's here, it's now,

00:42:54.320 | and it can't be taken away from me.

00:42:55.960 | That's a big, big deal.

00:42:57.400 | Another example would just simply be the low cost.

00:42:59.760 | Credit card transactions eat up a couple to 3%

00:43:03.260 | of your fees, depending on the kind of credit card.

00:43:06.980 | And so most merchants still offer the ability

00:43:09.220 | to process credit cards because it allows them

00:43:12.900 | to get more business and higher sales, et cetera,

00:43:15.340 | which is worth the 3% fees, but it's still a cost to them.

00:43:19.540 | They're still paying those fees every single transaction.

00:43:22.620 | Where do you think your credit card rewards points

00:43:24.300 | come back?

00:43:25.140 | Where do you think your credit card cash back schemes

00:43:26.260 | come back from?

00:43:27.940 | That's where it is.

00:43:28.860 | So you can get a discount for simply that.

00:43:31.760 | That's probably worth a 10% discount.

00:43:33.960 | So there are lots of reasons there.

00:43:35.300 | And then of course, I did point out that whether

00:43:37.480 | or not the person reports the money, that's up to them.

00:43:40.080 | Now, I don't personally, it doesn't personally bother

00:43:42.640 | my conscience to do that.

00:43:46.880 | It's none of my business how another person interacts

00:43:48.880 | with the government.

00:43:50.580 | And I like the privacy of making sure

00:43:52.920 | that I can simply pay, that I don't have to have

00:43:55.280 | all of my personal data exposed

00:43:57.520 | by having their credit card.

00:43:58.840 | You go to the mechanic and you give him your credit card

00:44:00.580 | and all of a sudden you get all kinds of junk mail

00:44:02.080 | from him and whatnot, because you have to give him

00:44:03.300 | your address.

00:44:04.140 | I'd rather just give it here, fix my car, here's money.

00:44:06.880 | It's done, it's simple.

00:44:07.800 | I don't have to give you my name.

00:44:08.960 | I don't have to give you my address.

00:44:10.120 | I don't have to give you my phone number.

00:44:11.460 | I just want my car fixed.

00:44:12.640 | That's it.

00:44:13.480 | Once the car is fixed, I'm done.

00:44:15.040 | I don't have to have all of that data.

00:44:16.940 | All of the data on a credit card, all the data

00:44:19.080 | on a debit card, all of that data is shared

00:44:20.800 | among hundreds of companies in the financial sphere.

00:44:23.080 | So I have no personal privacy on anything that I buy,

00:44:25.600 | because all the data, if I swipe a Chase credit card

00:44:27.760 | or an American Express, it's all sold and shared

00:44:30.360 | across the industry.

00:44:31.360 | And so it creates a spending profile.

00:44:34.100 | So I'd rather avoid all of that.

00:44:35.600 | There are major reasons for it,

00:44:37.040 | the least of which involves taxes.

00:44:39.980 | Now, I like the fact that I can personally

00:44:43.080 | be a little bit of an activist,

00:44:44.520 | and I can force a question of conscience

00:44:46.260 | on another person by paying cash.

00:44:48.320 | Now, if the person reports the income to the government,

00:44:51.140 | then I force them to physically manually pay taxes on it,

00:44:54.800 | which forces them to consider what they're getting for it,

00:44:57.220 | which is really important.

00:44:58.540 | So by paying cash to somebody who's used

00:45:01.040 | to having all their money deducted,

00:45:02.280 | I can force them to know you have to write a check

00:45:05.200 | on April 15.

00:45:06.180 | I like that.

00:45:07.120 | I wish I could force every person in the world

00:45:09.200 | to have to write a check on April 15.

00:45:11.000 | Then Uncle Sugar, instead of being seen as this great thing

00:45:13.400 | of, "Oh, I just can't wait till I get my tax refund."

00:45:15.640 | Half the population in the United States thinks

00:45:17.880 | that Uncle Sugar is out for them

00:45:20.480 | because they get a tax refund on April 15.

00:45:22.240 | I wish every person had to write at least a modest check

00:45:24.780 | so there could actually be some recognition

00:45:26.560 | of I'm paying money.

00:45:29.120 | So I can force that by paying it.

00:45:31.100 | That makes me happy.

00:45:32.300 | Now, what if the person doesn't pay tax on the money?

00:45:34.080 | What if they don't report it?

00:45:34.920 | They just take the cash and they put it in their pocket?

00:45:36.880 | Well, not on my conscience.

00:45:38.740 | That's up to them.

00:45:39.720 | I'm happy if the government has less money.

00:45:41.460 | Now they're forced to be more efficient

00:45:42.680 | with what they do have.

00:45:43.840 | And more importantly now,

00:45:45.680 | there's no way that person can,

00:45:47.460 | without becoming an incredible hypocrite,

00:45:49.480 | advocate for higher taxes on me or on you.

00:45:52.400 | They're the ones who now have to sit down and say,

00:45:54.980 | "Oh, I'm choosing not to pay taxes

00:45:57.940 | "and I'm choosing to keep this money quiet

00:46:00.240 | "and keep it in my pocket here

00:46:01.600 | "that Joshua just gave to me.

00:46:03.340 | "Why should I tell somebody else

00:46:05.020 | "that they have to pay more money?"

00:46:07.660 | Now, they know they're cheating on their taxes.

00:46:09.780 | So if they know they're cheating on their taxes,

00:46:11.220 | how can their conscience allow them

00:46:12.620 | to simultaneously vote for

00:46:14.780 | and advocate for more tax on others?

00:46:17.500 | I think hypocrisy is hard to stomach for a long time.

00:46:19.820 | Maybe there are some people who are genuine psychopaths

00:46:22.720 | who can handle all of these moral,

00:46:25.960 | they can handle moral hypocrisy.

00:46:27.520 | Most people can't though, I don't think.

00:46:29.280 | So one thing or another has to break.

00:46:30.920 | So I can, by just simply paying cash,

00:46:33.000 | I can force a crisis of conscience on them.

00:46:34.640 | What are they gonna do with it?

00:46:35.640 | And that makes me happy.

00:46:37.440 | I don't see any problem with that.

00:46:41.080 | So, it's kind of a ranty, forgive me,

00:46:45.940 | but there are major, major benefits of doing this.

00:46:50.940 | And I don't expect it to have any kind of impact.

00:46:55.480 | I don't.

00:46:56.720 | I hope it does,

00:46:57.560 | but maybe I'll influence a couple dozen people,

00:47:00.480 | but that's about it.

00:47:02.160 | But it still makes me feel good by doing that.

00:47:04.840 | And I need, and there are, again,

00:47:05.920 | tons of other benefits of paying cash.

00:47:07.280 | One of the things I'm most concerned about

00:47:08.880 | is that more and more financial institutions

00:47:12.920 | are getting involved in activism.

00:47:14.720 | I find that insane that Bank of America says,

00:47:19.640 | we're not gonna process gun sales manufacturers.

00:47:23.080 | We're not gonna let you use our services.

00:47:24.480 | We're not gonna let you bank with us.

00:47:26.280 | It's insane.

00:47:28.780 | And it's a major, major danger

00:47:31.420 | because if everything gets digitized,

00:47:33.540 | well, how do individuals do business with one another?

00:47:36.380 | Now, there'll always be solutions.

00:47:38.500 | I've done all kinds of business in black markets

00:47:40.220 | all over the world.

00:47:41.060 | There's always a method of transaction.

00:47:42.260 | There's always a method of exchange,

00:47:43.740 | whether it's a box of food,

00:47:47.580 | whether it's cryptocurrency,

00:47:49.180 | whether it's a silver coin,

00:47:50.660 | whether it's a stack of cash, we don't know.

00:47:52.980 | There'll always be an opportunity,

00:47:54.180 | but it makes it a lot harder

00:47:55.740 | when you have this kind of activism

00:47:57.740 | is what's happening in the United States.

00:48:00.460 | Now, forgive me if that was too ranty.

00:48:05.060 | I'll try to just give you a few ideas

00:48:07.080 | on what I think is the ideal expressions of government.

00:48:12.080 | And I'll explain to you why.

00:48:13.420 | I think it's ideal.

00:48:14.740 | And to just be a little bit philosophical,

00:48:16.720 | you can consider if you like any of these ideas,

00:48:19.120 | but they're not gonna be accepted this year,

00:48:22.300 | maybe a century from now, who knows.

00:48:24.080 | But here is what I think,

00:48:25.820 | how I think the government should be properly diminished

00:48:29.700 | and limited.

00:48:30.680 | First, a comment for my anarchist friends.

00:48:34.900 | I personally am not an anarchist.

00:48:37.340 | And the reason is because I'm a Christian

00:48:40.340 | and because I affirm the authority of the Bible.

00:48:44.220 | And the Bible makes very clear

00:48:46.160 | that government is a gift from God

00:48:48.500 | and that government has a specific function.

00:48:51.180 | That specific function is to punish evil doers

00:48:54.340 | and to serve as a restraint against evil in a society.

00:48:58.540 | Doesn't give any license beyond that,

00:49:00.340 | but that is the specific function.

00:49:02.720 | And you see that in Romans chapter 13,

00:49:04.880 | one of the important passages on government,

00:49:07.280 | you see very clearly that as Paul is writing

00:49:09.900 | to the Romans, he simply says

00:49:11.660 | that would you have no fear of government

00:49:13.140 | and do what is right for government

00:49:14.580 | is a terror to the evil doer.

00:49:16.780 | And so there has to be a mechanism of restraint

00:49:21.060 | against an evil doer.

00:49:22.700 | And that in my opinion is the proper role of government.

00:49:25.900 | That doesn't give license for everything else.

00:49:28.500 | And so my anarchist friends and I

00:49:30.660 | would have lots of things in common,

00:49:32.340 | but it does mean that I do affirm

00:49:34.300 | that there is a position for and a place for government.

00:49:38.260 | Now, to the extent that a population of people

00:49:42.460 | has fewer evil doers and less evil being done,

00:49:46.660 | you have less and less of a need for government.

00:49:49.860 | So if you can help people to no longer be evil doers,

00:49:53.780 | to no longer be sinning,

00:49:55.180 | to no longer be abusing their neighbors,

00:49:57.660 | to no longer be killing and raping and stealing

00:50:00.500 | and harming others and breaking their word, et cetera,

00:50:04.180 | then you have a diminished need for government.

00:50:06.440 | But we all expect that there will always be some people

00:50:09.620 | who are not restrained

00:50:11.220 | by their own individual self-government.

00:50:13.780 | And so because of that,

00:50:15.220 | there needs to be an external civil government

00:50:17.940 | that is involved in the restraint of those people

00:50:20.660 | and that is involved in the punishment of those people.

00:50:23.540 | So that's the first thing.

00:50:25.360 | Now, if we affirm that we have a basis for government,

00:50:30.360 | then we could say,

00:50:31.580 | how would we know what's the right kind of government

00:50:33.700 | to have?

00:50:34.520 | And I think that if we're gonna reason with this

00:50:36.340 | with moral philosophy,

00:50:37.900 | we should stop and simply bring things down

00:50:40.700 | to a level that we can understand.

00:50:42.460 | 'Cause I have no concept of how to deal

00:50:44.480 | with 300 million people or half a billion people

00:50:47.740 | or a billion people.

00:50:48.660 | It seems impossible to even think about that sometimes.

00:50:51.900 | But if you take things down to an individual level

00:50:54.180 | and to a community level,

00:50:55.600 | you can start to see perhaps some principles

00:50:58.080 | that can be extended out to a broader example.

00:51:01.260 | So I like to do that

00:51:02.300 | because it helps me to understand

00:51:04.140 | things that are morally permitted

00:51:06.000 | and things that are morally not permitted.

00:51:08.420 | It's morally instructive to collapse an action by society

00:51:12.220 | into a small neighborhood or to an individual level

00:51:14.620 | to understand if something is morally right or not.

00:51:17.380 | And then once you're clear on what's morally right

00:51:19.480 | or morally wrong,

00:51:20.800 | then you can understand and say,

00:51:22.460 | well, how could this be extrapolated to a larger society?

00:51:26.260 | So let's give it an example.

00:51:27.340 | Let's pretend that you and I

00:51:28.900 | are part of a small neighborhood

00:51:30.460 | and for use of a beautiful metaphor,

00:51:33.660 | we're part of a small neighborhood

00:51:34.940 | on a desert island somewhere.

00:51:36.460 | And there are a total of a dozen families in the community.

00:51:38.900 | You lead one family, I lead another family.

00:51:40.660 | There are a total of a dozen of us.

00:51:42.140 | And let's talk through some different things

00:51:43.860 | that could happen in the community.

00:51:46.340 | Let's begin with the clearest example.

00:51:48.620 | First, assume that one of the men in the community

00:51:51.580 | murders another man.

00:51:52.780 | It's unfortunate, but it has happened throughout history.

00:51:57.100 | From the very beginning of history all the way to the end,

00:51:59.140 | there are going to be people who are murdering other people.

00:52:01.700 | So we hear about it.

00:52:02.740 | And for the sake of a good clean illustration,

00:52:05.100 | let's assume the facts are crystal clear.

00:52:07.380 | We have at least two reliable witnesses

00:52:09.740 | who witnessed the murder.

00:52:12.100 | We know what happened prior to the murder.

00:52:13.860 | We know exactly how the murder happened

00:52:15.500 | and we know the aftermath of the murder.

00:52:17.620 | Even better, we have physical evidence

00:52:19.500 | that corroborates the testimony of those witnesses.

00:52:22.660 | So we're confident that the witnesses

00:52:24.800 | are not bringing false witness against their neighbor.

00:52:27.060 | We're confident in their words.

00:52:28.820 | Well, what do we do?

00:52:30.160 | In this situation, we bring our community together

00:52:33.180 | and we hold a public trial of the accused.

00:52:36.680 | We put together a community of jurors.

00:52:38.580 | We have somebody who facilitates the proceedings

00:52:41.140 | and keeps order in the proceedings.

00:52:43.320 | We make sure that we protect the rights of the accused.

00:52:46.040 | We assume that they are innocent until proven guilty.

00:52:49.280 | We protect their rights.

00:52:50.800 | We listen to the witnesses.

00:52:52.160 | We listen to the evidence.

00:52:53.680 | And then with deliberation, we make our verdict.

00:52:57.280 | Now, we need to make sure that we follow due process.

00:53:00.120 | One of the things I build and try to build and understand

00:53:03.000 | build most of my philosophy on the biblical precedent.

00:53:05.120 | The biblical precedent requires

00:53:06.240 | there always be two witnesses.

00:53:07.920 | And that's super, super important.

00:53:09.760 | Without two witnesses, the person goes free.

00:53:12.280 | One witness is not enough.

00:53:13.800 | And the idea here is that it's a much more fearful thing

00:53:17.080 | to condemn an innocent man

00:53:19.200 | than it is to have a guilty man go free.

00:53:21.520 | 'Cause the guilty man still has to deal with his conscience

00:53:24.040 | and the guilty man still has to face God someday

00:53:26.320 | at the final judgment.

00:53:27.560 | But an innocent man who is condemned,

00:53:29.720 | that's a fearful thing.

00:53:31.760 | And that weight falls on the people.

00:53:34.080 | One of the things I have a great interest in

00:53:35.840 | is I've watched a lot of the justice projects

00:53:37.960 | and the different things where people are going back

00:53:40.600 | and opening old cases.

00:53:42.120 | And you wanna have your heart torn out.

00:53:44.080 | Just go back and find all the people

00:53:46.040 | who after decades are released from prison

00:53:49.320 | and proven to be not guilty,

00:53:51.440 | proven to be innocent of the crime

00:53:53.000 | that they were convicted of.

00:53:54.760 | Finding the people that were executed

00:53:56.240 | and yet later you find that they were truly not guilty.

00:54:00.120 | Even people who confess to a crime

00:54:02.120 | and find out why did they confess to a crime.

00:54:04.440 | And it'll sure put a soberness in your heart

00:54:06.360 | and a humility in your thinking to say,

00:54:10.560 | we're not so good at judging truth as we should be.

00:54:14.440 | So I'm not a lawyer, maybe someday I will be,

00:54:16.760 | but I study all this stuff out.

00:54:18.160 | But there should be a very, very high standard of evidence

00:54:20.880 | to convict somebody of guilt.

00:54:22.440 | Better for a guilty person to go free

00:54:24.680 | than for an innocent person to be convicted.

00:54:27.160 | But assume here in our beautiful case,

00:54:29.080 | there is a clear guilty verdict,

00:54:30.680 | we have good evidence,

00:54:32.000 | then we, in this case, what's the proper punishment?

00:54:35.880 | Well, the proper punishment for murder is execution.

00:54:38.200 | So as a community, we come together

00:54:40.120 | and we execute the murderer.

00:54:41.640 | And that should be done, in my opinion,

00:54:43.080 | it should be done in a way that's public,

00:54:44.480 | should be done in a way that's close to the event,

00:54:46.240 | not like the United States,

00:54:47.240 | where if you're rich, you never get executed,

00:54:48.840 | but if you're poor, you get executed a decade later.

00:54:52.760 | It should be equal to all people.

00:54:54.440 | And my opinion, I think it should be done in a way

00:54:56.760 | that the community sees it and knows it

00:54:58.280 | and has to bear the moral weight,

00:55:00.800 | the moral responsibility of that.

00:55:02.640 | I don't like how the United States executions

00:55:05.040 | are hired out to some hired killer

00:55:07.560 | to do the lethal injection

00:55:08.880 | in a locked away prison somewhere.

00:55:10.320 | I think the community,

00:55:11.160 | if the community is going to come together

00:55:12.920 | and do something as morally weighty

00:55:15.400 | as condemn somebody to death,

00:55:17.120 | then we should all have to face that.

00:55:20.000 | Because it's, what a horrific and awful thing.

00:55:23.000 | We should face that, straightforward and not flinch at it.

00:55:26.440 | Now, back on track.

00:55:30.280 | So, in my opinion, this is a proper function of government.

00:55:34.080 | This is a proper, this is a kind of thing

00:55:36.880 | where you need government

00:55:37.840 | and you have a community of people coming together.

00:55:40.440 | Now, what needs to happen is when you then take it out

00:55:43.560 | to a larger degree, you can understand

00:55:46.320 | how there starts to be a division of labor.

00:55:48.440 | In our little community of a dozen people,

00:55:50.480 | we would understand that there would be a murder

00:55:53.000 | every four generations.

00:55:54.600 | This is not something that's happening every week.

00:55:56.720 | But if our community grows

00:55:57.840 | to be now many thousands of people,

00:55:59.360 | we might have things like a murder

00:56:01.160 | or much more minor crimes,

00:56:02.840 | which is the majority of judicial disputes,

00:56:04.920 | happening more frequently.

00:56:06.160 | And so now, as your community expands,

00:56:08.320 | you have a much higher division of labor.

00:56:10.800 | And then, and that division of labor

00:56:12.360 | starts to also apply to governmental functions.

00:56:15.360 | In our dozen family community,

00:56:16.720 | we don't need a full-time judge.

00:56:18.840 | You don't need a police officer.

00:56:20.880 | You don't need any of this kind of thing.

00:56:22.680 | But if we're a hundred families,

00:56:24.280 | things start to dig in, start to expand.

00:56:26.760 | If we're a thousand families, if we're 10,000,

00:56:28.560 | if we're a million people,

00:56:29.760 | now you start to have a specialized division of labor.

00:56:32.600 | But the moral principle still remains.

00:56:34.680 | It goes from the community of a dozen people

00:56:36.360 | to a community of a hundred million people.

00:56:38.360 | It's just that you have an increased specialization of labor

00:56:41.080 | as things grow out.

00:56:42.840 | Now, let's go on to something different.

00:56:45.160 | Next scenario.

00:56:46.000 | What's the second thing?

00:56:46.840 | Let's assume that one of the men in our little community

00:56:48.600 | of a dozen people steals his neighbor's property.

00:56:51.640 | So one man goes, steals the property from another person.

00:56:55.120 | Now, again, we need a trial and evidence.

00:56:57.360 | We need witnesses.

00:56:58.360 | We need maybe a confession.

00:56:59.760 | We need to find the property,

00:57:01.160 | but assume that we've had a trial,

00:57:02.600 | we've had evidence, and the thief is guilty.

00:57:06.080 | Well, in that situation, the community must come together

00:57:08.800 | and compel the criminal, the guilty person,

00:57:12.200 | to make restitution for his crime.

00:57:14.600 | So the original property needs to be restored

00:57:16.840 | to the person it was stolen from,

00:57:18.520 | plus additional bonus for restitution.

00:57:21.000 | And what that system does is it compensates the victim

00:57:25.360 | for the loss of their property.

00:57:27.120 | It compensates the victim for the loss of their property,

00:57:32.120 | makes them whole again,

00:57:34.400 | and then the additional restitution does two things.

00:57:37.560 | It compensates the victim for making sure

00:57:41.360 | that they have an additional benefit

00:57:44.320 | for the inconvenience of having lost their property,

00:57:46.800 | and it makes sure that the criminal,

00:57:48.480 | the person who stole it, has to pay extra,

00:57:51.480 | extra for what they've done.

00:57:53.400 | It wouldn't be right if you just had

00:57:54.720 | just simply a restoration of property.

00:57:56.480 | One neighbor goes to another, steals the bicycle,

00:57:58.280 | goes joyriding it in the afternoon, and then brings it back.

00:58:00.800 | Well, what's the harm

00:58:02.240 | if the person just gives the property back?

00:58:04.080 | But now if that person has to go and spend three weeks

00:58:07.360 | working to make an additional bonus payment

00:58:09.560 | for restitution for their theft,

00:58:11.760 | now all of a sudden it really wasn't worth it

00:58:13.600 | for them to take the bicycle.

00:58:15.480 | So the criminal needs to be made

00:58:17.640 | to pay restitution for his crime.

00:58:20.040 | Now let's assume that the criminal

00:58:21.240 | doesn't wanna make restitution for his crime.

00:58:23.560 | He says, "No, I'm not gonna respect you guys."

00:58:25.920 | Well, now we have the proper use of violence and force.

00:58:30.560 | As a community, we come to that person

00:58:32.320 | and we say to that person, we go to their house,

00:58:34.840 | we take the property, we take it, we sell it,

00:58:36.640 | whatever we have to do to make sure

00:58:38.360 | that the judgment of the community,

00:58:39.840 | the judicial judgment is carried out.

00:58:43.440 | And so even if that involves force,

00:58:45.600 | where we all bring our guns to this person's house,

00:58:47.600 | we take their property, or we compel them into labor,

00:58:50.720 | we compel them to do hard labor for three months

00:58:53.080 | in order to earn the, for the person that they stole from,

00:58:56.160 | in order to compensate them for the crime,

00:58:59.000 | we're executing justice as a community.

00:59:02.640 | That is a proper function of government.

00:59:05.120 | Now, let's discuss a different situation.

00:59:09.600 | Let's now assume that my son is sick.

00:59:13.240 | And unfortunately, I don't have any money to buy medicine.

00:59:18.440 | And let's assume that your son is not sick,

00:59:21.640 | and what's more, you have a lot of money.

00:59:24.480 | Now, can I come over to your house and quietly say,

00:59:27.120 | "Listen, can we sit and talk for a few minutes

00:59:28.560 | "on your front porch, and I tell you my son is sick,

00:59:31.720 | "and I explain to you that I don't have any money.

00:59:34.540 | "Can I ask you for money?"

00:59:37.680 | Of course I can, I can ask you for money.

00:59:39.760 | And you can say yes or no.

00:59:41.880 | And what's more is I can come to you,

00:59:43.440 | and I can say to you, "Listen, will you lend me money?

00:59:46.640 | "I need $100 to buy this medicine.

00:59:48.740 | "Would you be willing to lend me this money?

00:59:50.600 | "I can pay it back to you in three months

00:59:52.540 | "after my son is better and I am able to earn the money."

00:59:55.680 | And you can say yes or no.

00:59:57.920 | You can do that to me.

00:59:59.040 | But what if you are not willing to give me the money,

01:00:02.600 | or you're not willing to lend me the money?

01:00:05.400 | The question is this, can I bring my gun over to your house

01:00:09.480 | and point it at you and say, "Give me the money,"

01:00:13.460 | and take your money to pay for my son's medicine?

01:00:16.840 | Well, clearly, obviously you would say no.

01:00:21.360 | That's wrong, you're stealing, it's immoral.

01:00:23.760 | But I say, "No, but my son is sick, I really need the money."

01:00:26.040 | You would say, "No, you're stealing.

01:00:28.080 | "You're pointing a gun in your neighbor's face,

01:00:29.640 | "and you're saying, 'Give me the money.'"

01:00:31.840 | And it doesn't matter what it's for.

01:00:33.720 | It doesn't matter that my son is sick.

01:00:35.040 | It doesn't matter that he's gonna die.

01:00:36.280 | It is wrong, it is theft.

01:00:38.840 | So you say, "Well, obviously that's wrong."

01:00:42.480 | Well, now here's the case.

01:00:43.880 | What if, remember there's a dozen families

01:00:45.160 | in our neighborhood, what if I go to some of my neighbors

01:00:47.960 | that I have a close relationship with,

01:00:49.840 | and frankly, that they don't have much money,

01:00:52.200 | but they all know that you have money,

01:00:54.080 | and I go to them and I schedule a secret meeting,

01:00:56.160 | and I say, "Listen, guys, my son is sick,

01:00:58.620 | "and I don't have money, and none of the six of you

01:01:00.880 | "have money, but there's seven of us here."

01:01:04.640 | The seven of us should go over to your house,

01:01:07.920 | 'cause you're rich, and we should take the money

01:01:11.360 | to pay for my son's medicine.

01:01:13.560 | So we all come over to your house,

01:01:15.720 | and we knock on the door, and there's seven of us there.

01:01:18.360 | And we say, ultimately, "Listen, give Joshua the money

01:01:21.920 | "that he needs to pay for his son's medicine."

01:01:24.120 | And you say, "No, I'm not gonna do it."

01:01:27.600 | So then we go home and we get our guns,

01:01:29.000 | and now there's seven people with guns

01:01:30.080 | on your front porch saying, "Give Joshua the money."

01:01:33.040 | Did the fact that the majority of us in the community

01:01:35.360 | are there asking you for the money,

01:01:37.280 | or the majority of us are there pointing guns at you

01:01:39.160 | and taking the money to pay for Joshua's son's medicine

01:01:42.040 | make it right?

01:01:43.020 | Of course not.

01:01:46.360 | Obviously, it's a difficult situation.

01:01:47.920 | My son's gonna die without the medicine,

01:01:49.720 | but that still doesn't make it right.

01:01:52.120 | It still is not okay in that situation to use violence

01:01:56.000 | or the threat and intimidation of violence

01:01:58.440 | to get money from you just because you're rich

01:02:00.800 | and because Joshua's son is dying.

01:02:02.180 | It doesn't matter the circumstances.

01:02:03.760 | The point is it's the theft.

01:02:05.640 | Now, there's a big difference between the seven of us

01:02:07.480 | there on your porch with guns saying,

01:02:09.960 | "Give us the money for Joshua's son,"

01:02:13.520 | versus the seven of us on the porch of the guy

01:02:15.880 | who stole from his neighbor saying, "Give us the property."

01:02:19.140 | If we take the property from the thief

01:02:24.600 | plus the restitution fee and restore it

01:02:27.640 | to the person who was the victim,

01:02:29.280 | all we are doing is righting something that was wrong.

01:02:33.740 | If we took more property from the thief

01:02:35.860 | than what was just for the making restitution,

01:02:39.020 | then we would now be stealing from that person.

01:02:41.580 | But if we just compensate the victim,

01:02:44.340 | we're now in the world of right.

01:02:46.440 | But if the seven of us are there on your porch

01:02:48.380 | and we're taking your money to pay for Joshua's kid

01:02:51.700 | because Joshua doesn't have any money,

01:02:53.620 | we are committing theft.

01:02:58.620 | I have just described to you Medicaid.

01:03:01.040 | That's fundamentally what Medicaid is.

01:03:05.240 | It's people looking and saying,

01:03:07.700 | "Listen, there are people who are really hurting.

01:03:09.580 | "They're poor people.

01:03:11.160 | "There are poor people who don't have access to a doctor.

01:03:13.760 | "They can't get money for their medicine.

01:03:15.960 | "And yet there are rich people who have lots of money.

01:03:18.780 | "So let's a majority of us get together

01:03:21.120 | "and then send the tax man to go and take

01:03:22.940 | "from the rich person and then give it

01:03:25.360 | "to the person who is poor."

01:03:28.560 | That's in a moral sense what's happening.

01:03:31.920 | Now I was having a conversation with a guy online recently.

01:03:33.680 | He said, "Well, it's just not violence."

01:03:34.840 | No, at the end of the day,

01:03:36.160 | taxation always involves a threat of violence.

01:03:40.040 | Now the vast majority of us simply pay our taxes.

01:03:42.400 | So no one has ever come into my house,

01:03:44.080 | pointed a gun at my face and said, "You have to pay it."

01:03:47.720 | But here's the thing.

01:03:48.980 | At the end of the day, what's actually happening?

01:03:53.060 | The end of the day, if I don't pay my taxes,

01:03:55.640 | and if it's found out, somebody rats me out to the IRS

01:03:58.780 | and says, "Joshua doesn't pay taxes."

01:04:00.220 | And now all of a sudden I've got an IRS auditor there

01:04:03.060 | looking at my affairs.

01:04:04.260 | And then they find enough evidence of a criminal case

01:04:07.260 | and they haul me into court

01:04:08.380 | and they bring a criminal suit against me

01:04:09.940 | because Joshua is willfully and intentionally

01:04:12.740 | committing felonious tax evasion.

01:04:15.660 | I lose my case and I get locked in prison.

01:04:18.460 | And the bailiff has a gun on his hip.

01:04:20.460 | I get locked in prison and I can't get out

01:04:22.060 | 'cause there's guys with guns guarding the door.

01:04:23.800 | That is violence.

01:04:25.620 | Now, if I stole from somebody,

01:04:27.780 | then you can argue it's a right application of violence.

01:04:31.220 | Violence in and of itself is not right or wrong,

01:04:34.500 | just because it's violence.

01:04:35.580 | All violence is not wrong.

01:04:37.300 | It's the moral underlying nature of the violence

01:04:39.720 | that makes it right or wrong.

01:04:41.400 | If somebody is in fear of their life

01:04:45.060 | and is in danger of being raped,

01:04:46.820 | violent defense is violence.

01:04:49.140 | It is absolute violence, but it's not morally wrong.

01:04:53.180 | Whereas the person who uses violence

01:04:55.100 | to take another person's life or to rape them,

01:04:57.260 | that violence is morally wrong.

01:04:58.820 | And the same thing happens with taxation.

01:05:01.020 | Taxation always involves the implicit threat of violence.

01:05:05.180 | Now, let's go on and discuss a different situation.

01:05:10.260 | We've just talked about Medicaid.

01:05:12.860 | What about this?

01:05:14.300 | Let's assume that Joshua has an elderly parent

01:05:17.420 | who is mentally incompetent

01:05:19.100 | and not able to work to provide for their needs.

01:05:22.620 | Let's assume that you have money.

01:05:24.300 | Can I come over to your house and say,

01:05:27.180 | "Listen, I'm really struggling right now.

01:05:29.980 | "My elderly parent is requiring a lot of time

01:05:33.120 | "and I need some money.

01:05:34.540 | "Are you willing to give me some money?"

01:05:36.540 | Absolutely, I can do that.

01:05:39.440 | I can come to you and ask for help.

01:05:41.900 | Of course I can.

01:05:43.180 | And you can look at the situation,

01:05:44.500 | you can say, "Joshua, I can see how much you're struggling.

01:05:46.580 | "Tell you what, here's some money

01:05:48.120 | "and I'll give you some money to help you.

01:05:49.420 | "You've been a good neighbor."

01:05:50.540 | Or, "Here, I'll let you take food from my garden."

01:05:53.020 | Or whatever, you can figure out,

01:05:54.180 | "Or I'll come over and I'll spare you once a week

01:05:55.940 | "and I'll watch your parents

01:05:56.780 | "so you can go to work," or something.

01:05:58.260 | You can figure out how to help me.

01:05:59.940 | That is well within my rights

01:06:02.620 | and your rights to ask you for help.

01:06:04.860 | I can ask you for a loan and it's your property.

01:06:06.740 | You can choose to lend it to me or not.

01:06:09.020 | But can I come and take your money

01:06:10.780 | just because you have plenty of it?

01:06:12.580 | No, it's wrong.

01:06:16.100 | It is theft.

01:06:17.860 | Whose responsibility is Joshua's parent?

01:06:21.120 | It's not the community's responsibility,

01:06:22.840 | it's Joshua's responsibility.

01:06:24.200 | It's my parent.

01:06:25.560 | I'm the one who's responsible for that.

01:06:27.700 | So I can't take my responsibility

01:06:29.360 | and try to shift it onto the community.

01:06:31.840 | I'm the one who is responsible to care

01:06:34.060 | for my elderly parents.

01:06:36.440 | And I can't just come and take your money

01:06:37.960 | because I think you have plenty.

01:06:39.560 | And it's no better if I get six of my neighbors,

01:06:42.080 | and again, we don't have money

01:06:43.320 | and we all come and say,

01:06:44.160 | "Listen, Joshua's parent is not doing too well.

01:06:46.640 | "We think that in the future,

01:06:47.660 | "our parent might not be doing very well either.

01:06:49.960 | "Let's do this.

01:06:50.800 | "Let's all go to your house because you're rich

01:06:53.800 | "and say to you, listen,

01:06:55.560 | "there's a majority of us here.

01:06:57.000 | "And so because there's a majority,

01:06:58.120 | "it makes more right 'cause we voted on it.

01:06:59.900 | "There's seven of us here.

01:07:01.460 | "And we've all decided that you have to give us money

01:07:03.880 | "to pay for our parents."

01:07:06.680 | It doesn't matter that there's seven of us there

01:07:09.320 | and thus we created a majority

01:07:10.760 | and we had a majority vote.

01:07:12.080 | It's still theft.

01:07:13.960 | If we're telling you, you have to give us money

01:07:16.920 | and we're threatening for it to do it.

01:07:19.240 | The violence is wrong.

01:07:21.400 | You can come and say, you have to give us money

01:07:22.920 | but if we're not threatening you,

01:07:24.120 | you just say, "No."

01:07:25.240 | And we walk away.

01:07:26.420 | But of course, that's not what we're talking about.

01:07:28.100 | We of course all bring our guns

01:07:29.240 | and we point them in your face, figuratively speaking

01:07:31.760 | and we simply look at you and say,

01:07:33.860 | "Here, you have to give us the money."

01:07:35.720 | And in fear of your life, you give the money.

01:07:37.760 | By the way, back to the taxation is not violent thing.

01:07:40.280 | The IRS is a useful thing here.

01:07:41.600 | What does the IRS do?

01:07:42.560 | If you make a transaction here

01:07:44.280 | and then you make another transaction,

01:07:45.600 | you make another transaction,

01:07:46.520 | you make another transaction

01:07:47.920 | and the final transaction and the first transaction,

01:07:50.400 | if you look at them, result in some tax savings

01:07:53.280 | that was not exactly legal

01:07:55.160 | but the fact that you put three or four transactions

01:07:56.840 | in the place muddied the waters.

01:07:58.680 | Well, that's called a step transaction.

01:08:00.640 | The IRS will collapse it.

01:08:02.360 | They ignore all the steps in the middle

01:08:04.000 | and they look at the first step and the last step.

01:08:07.200 | So when I say taxation is always violent,

01:08:10.940 | there's always a threat of violence,

01:08:12.740 | then what I'm basically doing

01:08:15.720 | is applying the step transaction doctrine of the IRS.

01:08:17.880 | And saying, let's look at what actually happens.

01:08:20.200 | I just collapsed it all

01:08:21.240 | from years of threatening letters, et cetera.

01:08:23.480 | And I collapsed it from the demand payment,

01:08:25.760 | pay us 50% of your income

01:08:27.520 | to the final result of the bailiff,

01:08:30.080 | armed bailiff marching you into prison and locking you up.

01:08:32.960 | I just collapsed it.

01:08:33.840 | Let's look at the moral reality of it.

01:08:35.880 | It's a step transaction, let's collapse it down.

01:08:38.720 | So the fact that seven of us come together

01:08:40.800 | and compel you to give us money

01:08:42.440 | because we have an elderly parent doesn't make it right.

01:08:46.240 | And it doesn't make it right if we say,

01:08:48.040 | listen, we're gonna do this for the next 50 years.

01:08:50.360 | So you, when you're old, if you don't have money,

01:08:52.960 | we're gonna go ahead and give you systems,

01:08:54.480 | we're gonna give you money as well.

01:08:56.400 | I've just described social security.

01:08:58.260 | So these systems don't make it right.

01:09:02.880 | Now, what about war?

01:09:05.780 | Because I'm trying to deal with the big expenses,

01:09:09.880 | Medicare, Medicaid, social security,

01:09:12.160 | the big ones in the United States,

01:09:14.180 | biggest costs, most expensive programs.

01:09:16.560 | But then the next one is military spending.

01:09:19.120 | What's the right aspect of military spending?

01:09:21.600 | Is it right?

01:09:22.440 | Is it just?

01:09:23.760 | Well, if we're gonna have an answer to this one,

01:09:26.000 | we have to look at the morality and the justice of war.

01:09:31.000 | And of course, there are many perspectives on this,

01:09:32.960 | many discussions on this,

01:09:34.200 | but in general, the large majority of people

01:09:37.440 | believe that self-defense is morally justified

01:09:41.480 | and morally permitted.

01:09:43.720 | Whereas aggressive offensive violence

01:09:46.580 | is not generally morally justified or morally permitted.

01:09:51.000 | That's a majority position.

01:09:52.160 | There are minority exceptions.

01:09:53.800 | I respect many of those exceptions,

01:09:55.760 | but the majority position at the moment,

01:09:57.240 | which doesn't make it right,

01:09:58.440 | but just trying to relay the facts as I understand them,

01:10:01.340 | would be that this, the proper thing is,

01:10:03.320 | are we dealing with self-defense or not?

01:10:04.940 | Back to my violence example.

01:10:06.640 | If I come to you and I use my size, intimidation,

01:10:10.000 | and weapons to commit violence against you,

01:10:12.480 | to try to cause you to do something,

01:10:14.520 | whether it's to give me money,

01:10:17.280 | whether it's to perform some act that's against your will,

01:10:21.760 | doesn't matter what it is,

01:10:23.520 | that's offensive violence, which is wrong.

01:10:26.660 | You are justified in using defensive violence against me,

01:10:29.880 | necessary to a level necessary to overcome the threat.

01:10:33.420 | Now, if you are in fear of your life,

01:10:35.680 | that level of violence that you would have justified

01:10:38.440 | in your response would be up to and including killing me.

01:10:41.680 | And you'd be morally justified in killing me.

01:10:44.040 | If you're not in fear of your life,

01:10:45.520 | the level of violence must be less.

01:10:47.780 | Now, if we expand that out to our community,

01:10:52.560 | we have an understanding of the same moral principle

01:10:57.240 | in our dozen of us.

01:10:58.440 | Let's say that our neighbors,

01:11:00.320 | we look out across the water and all of a sudden,

01:11:02.360 | the neighbors on the neighboring desert island,

01:11:04.440 | they're coming at us and they've got,

01:11:06.320 | they're in their canoes, they're in their boats,

01:11:07.680 | they've got their cannons ready,

01:11:08.600 | and they're coming to attack our desert island.

01:11:10.920 | Well, in that situation, they're gonna take us,

01:11:12.960 | they're gonna plunder our houses,

01:11:14.600 | they're gonna, what's the thing from the old movies?

01:11:18.120 | Plunder our women, plunder our goods.

01:11:19.560 | Anyway, they're gonna steal all our stuff

01:11:20.760 | and they're gonna kill us.

01:11:22.120 | Well, in that situation,

01:11:23.440 | our violent response is morally justified

01:11:26.360 | to defend ourselves.

01:11:27.700 | But now, if we're the ones who look across the water

01:11:30.720 | and look at our neighbors and say, you know what?

01:11:32.020 | Our neighbors are living pretty well over there.

01:11:33.600 | They got a lot of stuff, they got a lot of money,

01:11:35.320 | they got a lot of resources.

01:11:36.600 | Let's take our canoes and our guns and go and attack them.

01:11:39.680 | Well, that's wrong.

01:11:40.680 | So now let's bring money into the affair.

01:11:45.100 | We've established that defensive violence,

01:11:50.460 | defensive military violence is morally permissible

01:11:53.800 | if our neighbors are attacking us.

01:11:55.660 | Whereas offensive military violence,

01:11:57.800 | to go and to take their stuff is not morally permissible.

01:12:01.540 | So what about the cost of repairing?

01:12:04.320 | 'Cause we could look and say, you know what?

01:12:05.560 | Our neighbors are looking kind of warlike.

01:12:07.400 | Maybe we should build some fortifications on our island.

01:12:10.840 | Maybe we should buy some guns.

01:12:12.520 | Maybe we should protect ourselves

01:12:14.200 | and that's gonna cost money.

01:12:15.760 | And we can go to one another and we can say, listen,

01:12:18.960 | everybody needs to chip in $100

01:12:20.640 | 'cause we need to build these fortifications here.

01:12:23.560 | Well, I think most people in that situation would look

01:12:25.960 | and say, hey, this is necessary.

01:12:27.720 | We should probably fortify our island

01:12:29.480 | so that we could repel an attack if necessary.

01:12:31.480 | We lock our doors and our houses at night.

01:12:33.320 | We arm our alarm systems.

01:12:34.840 | Let's do the same thing for our islands.

01:12:36.360 | Let's all chip in $100 so we can do this together.

01:12:38.560 | Most people would look at that.

01:12:39.760 | In a moment, I'll deal with the question

01:12:41.160 | of should we force people to do that?

01:12:42.960 | But most people would look at that and say,

01:12:44.320 | we should do that.

01:12:45.640 | Then we could change the situation.

01:12:48.440 | What if now we say, we're gonna go

01:12:50.360 | and we're gonna go and collect $100 from each of us.

01:12:52.800 | We're gonna use it to buy some new boats.

01:12:54.080 | We can paddle across to our neighbor's island

01:12:55.720 | and take all their stuff.

01:12:57.820 | Well, you can understand why,

01:13:01.000 | or I can understand why you wouldn't

01:13:02.880 | wanna participate in that.

01:13:04.440 | You might look at that and say,

01:13:05.520 | no, I'm not gonna give $100 for us to go

01:13:07.720 | and buy new boats to go and steal our neighbor's stuff.

01:13:09.680 | That's stealing, we're not gonna do it, it's wrong.

01:13:12.240 | And I think you would be justified in your position.

01:13:17.800 | So things like military spending

01:13:19.800 | are a little bit more complicated

01:13:21.960 | because we have to figure out,

01:13:23.560 | well, is the underlying military action right or wrong?

01:13:28.280 | And there aren't many people

01:13:30.320 | who are entirely opposed to violence.

01:13:35.480 | It's just the question is,

01:13:36.320 | is it violence in self-defense of my community

01:13:40.040 | and my location, or is it offensive attacking another person

01:13:44.880 | trying to plunder their resources, plunder their country?

01:13:48.140 | And that raises some real questions.

01:13:50.920 | How can my money be involved in that?

01:13:53.400 | Now let's go to roads

01:13:54.440 | and then we'll talk about compelling people.

01:13:56.480 | Should the government be involved in building roads?

01:14:00.400 | Let's think of your little community of a dozen people.

01:14:02.960 | We come together and we say, listen,

01:14:04.520 | it would really benefit us if we had a road

01:14:06.440 | right down the middle of our island,

01:14:08.200 | but we need money to build the road.

01:14:10.200 | And this would benefit all of us.

01:14:11.720 | We think that everybody should commit money

01:14:13.480 | to build the road.

01:14:15.280 | So you market the idea to your neighbors

01:14:16.920 | to gain their support.

01:14:18.040 | Now, I believe one of the most important things to do

01:14:21.740 | is to gain support for your ideas peacefully,

01:14:24.660 | not to engage in violence and coercion,

01:14:27.080 | but to engage in peaceful reason,

01:14:29.760 | discussion, salesmanship,

01:14:33.200 | trying to lay out why this is in your best interest

01:14:35.720 | to do this thing.

01:14:36.680 | And if it's truly in your best interest,

01:14:39.440 | I think most people, probably about 80% of the people,

01:14:43.200 | are willing to listen to reason

01:14:44.640 | and do things that are in their best interest.

01:14:47.000 | Now, what about, so we take up a collection.

01:14:51.500 | There's a dozen of us in there.

01:14:52.800 | 80% of us say, yeah, we'd like to build a road,

01:14:55.260 | but 20% of us say, no, we've got three holdouts.

01:14:57.600 | Nine, four, three holdouts.

01:14:59.560 | They say, no, I don't wanna pay money for that.

01:15:01.480 | Question is this, should you use the threat of violence,

01:15:05.760 | taxation, against those three?

01:15:09.680 | Should you say to those three, no, listen, you're wrong.

01:15:12.520 | We've all voted.

01:15:13.360 | Nine of us have said, we're going to do it.

01:15:16.060 | We're gonna build this road,

01:15:17.280 | and we're gonna come to your house,

01:15:18.360 | and we're gonna take $100 out of your house.

01:15:20.100 | Should you do that?

01:15:21.240 | Bring your guns and force it.

01:15:23.520 | Well, my answer is I say, personally, I say no,

01:15:26.820 | probably not.

01:15:28.400 | Now, I'm not gonna argue these situations

01:15:30.480 | as extremely as I've argued the other,

01:15:32.800 | but I'll say that when you automatically resort

01:15:34.700 | to the threat of violence,

01:15:35.960 | and automatically resort to taxation as your first answer,

01:15:38.960 | you miss out on a lot of other things that could be done

01:15:41.720 | that would be a lot stronger.

01:15:43.300 | So for example, I could imagine,

01:15:45.400 | in our little hypothetical community of a dozen people,

01:15:48.100 | where we voted nine to three in favor of building the road,

01:15:50.740 | I could imagine that after the majority vote,

01:15:53.360 | one or two of those three say, you know what?

01:15:55.600 | I don't think we need the road,

01:15:57.240 | but I wanna be a good neighbor, so I'll participate.

01:16:00.840 | But what about the one or two that still say, no,

01:16:03.000 | I don't wanna have the money,

01:16:04.280 | and I don't wanna give the money?

01:16:06.740 | Should we take our guns and go take the money from them?

01:16:09.520 | I say no.

01:16:10.480 | If the rest of us are convinced we need a road,

01:16:13.700 | let's go ahead and chip in a little extra

01:16:15.300 | to cover the costs.

01:16:16.540 | Why do you have to force every single person

01:16:18.840 | to do what the majority want?

01:16:20.880 | Why do you have to say everybody has to do this,

01:16:22.960 | so it's not right?

01:16:24.720 | After all, in a modern progressive tax system,

01:16:27.800 | we're content with a tiny percentage,

01:16:29.880 | what, the top 10% of people paying 50% of the taxes?

01:16:33.540 | So in that situation,

01:16:34.440 | why not let the eight or nine pay for the road

01:16:36.360 | and leave the other two or three out

01:16:37.600 | that don't wanna participate?

01:16:39.320 | We already do that.

01:16:40.860 | So the fact that I say,

01:16:42.000 | let's not use violence and intimidation

01:16:43.900 | and coercion for this, let's just leave it alone.

01:16:46.780 | We live in a system where a tiny percentage of people

01:16:49.160 | pay the vast majority of the expenses of the government.

01:16:51.840 | So all we're doing is saying it differently,

01:16:54.080 | but we're just not trying to force everybody to do it.

01:16:56.920 | So I say, no, let's not use force,

01:17:00.480 | or let's wait until everybody's in it.

01:17:02.840 | Now, it's easy to do that in a community of 12 people.

01:17:04.920 | It's harder to do that in a community of 12 million,

01:17:07.080 | but let's just wait.

01:17:08.840 | Now, is it fair?

01:17:09.760 | Is it fair that not everybody chips in for the road,

01:17:11.920 | that somebody might use the road without paying for it?

01:17:14.880 | I don't know.

01:17:15.720 | I don't know what,

01:17:17.520 | let's say there's two men who don't wanna contribute money.

01:17:19.400 | I don't know what those two men are dealing with.

01:17:21.420 | Maybe one of them would really like to build the road,

01:17:23.880 | but he'd like to put in the money,

01:17:25.480 | but his wife is sick,

01:17:26.440 | and he's spending all his money on doctors and medicine.

01:17:28.920 | Question is this, should we force that person to come in

01:17:32.040 | and give us his money for the road?

01:17:33.720 | Because we've said this community needs a road,

01:17:35.820 | we're gonna build it,

01:17:36.680 | and now he doesn't have money to take care of his wife?

01:17:39.420 | I say, no.

01:17:42.000 | His wife is his responsibility,

01:17:43.520 | and that's a higher priority than building a road.

01:17:45.500 | Leave him alone.

01:17:46.340 | Let him handle his money the way that he wants to.

01:17:48.680 | The old saying, those convinced against their will

01:17:51.760 | are of the same opinion still.

01:17:53.320 | Fundamentally, when you force someone

01:17:54.960 | to do something with violence,

01:17:57.140 | it basically means you've lost your case.

01:18:00.080 | The vast majority of people are thoughtful.

01:18:02.720 | They're good natured.

01:18:03.600 | They wanna be good members of a community.

01:18:05.580 | They're willing to listen to arguments

01:18:07.920 | and debate and reason.

01:18:09.000 | They're willing to be a part of a public conversation,

01:18:11.240 | and they're even willing to sacrifice,

01:18:13.460 | even if they're in the minority position,

01:18:14.960 | if they believe that it's the right thing to do.

01:18:17.000 | They wanna be involved in a local community.

01:18:19.240 | And what I see happening in the United States of America

01:18:22.580 | is that more and more, we've grown so accustomed

01:18:24.760 | to using violence and coercion and intimidation

01:18:27.560 | to get our way, that now it's basically the only way

01:18:30.200 | that people can get things done,

01:18:31.820 | is to use violence and intimidation and coercion

01:18:34.340 | to force the other people to do

01:18:35.920 | what we think you have to do.

01:18:37.520 | Well, it's not helping things.

01:18:39.860 | It's not making people feel like more

01:18:41.640 | of a part of a community.

01:18:42.480 | It's not making people feel heard.

01:18:44.960 | The United States government was designed

01:18:47.780 | to protect the rights of the minority.

01:18:52.280 | And we should keep that system going

01:18:56.080 | in all of our thinking.

01:18:57.560 | We should always seek to protect the rights of the minority.

01:19:00.960 | It's not hard to protect the rights of majority.

01:19:03.320 | History is fulfilled with societies

01:19:06.920 | that always focus on the rights of the majority.

01:19:08.880 | That's easy.

01:19:10.440 | But protecting the rights of the minority

01:19:12.560 | is where you have a truly just system.

01:19:17.480 | Where if you're gonna use coercion

01:19:21.100 | and violence and intimidation,

01:19:23.080 | it's only in the tiniest number of circumstances

01:19:27.060 | for the most clear things.

01:19:29.080 | Increasingly, just look at the US culture

01:19:35.140 | and what you see is that, at least what I see,

01:19:38.460 | one of the major problems that's systematically

01:19:40.700 | fracturing the US American culture

01:19:42.700 | is that the majority of super monumental decisions

01:19:45.580 | and legal impositions that are accomplished today

01:19:48.240 | are not achieved through the slow moving political process

01:19:51.600 | of debate and voting and building political consensus,

01:19:56.000 | but through judicial decree.

01:19:57.800 | By saying, the majority saying,

01:20:02.880 | "Ha, we got the majority.

01:20:04.360 | "We're gonna force these people

01:20:05.480 | "to do what we want them to do."

01:20:07.080 | And increasingly you find people

01:20:10.780 | who are just not that interested in being told what to do.

01:20:13.740 | No one's gonna listen to judicial decree

01:20:15.560 | if it's not dealt with politically.

01:20:17.840 | Interestingly, earlier in the show,

01:20:19.840 | I alluded to the Affordable Care Act,

01:20:22.280 | when, I don't think I mentioned it,

01:20:23.600 | but long-term care.

01:20:24.880 | There was, when the Affordable Care Act was passed,

01:20:27.040 | I was talking about Maine, the problems with long-term care.

01:20:29.360 | When the Affordable Care Act was passed,

01:20:32.560 | there was a provision in it that established

01:20:34.400 | a government run option for long-term care insurance.

01:20:36.840 | I think it was called the CLASS Act, if memory is right,

01:20:39.120 | but don't quote me on that.

01:20:40.440 | And I was interested in it

01:20:42.200 | 'cause I was selling a lot of long-term care insurance

01:20:43.860 | at the time.

01:20:44.700 | And I started learning about it.

01:20:46.180 | And what was amazing to me

01:20:47.020 | is a few months after it was passed,

01:20:48.780 | it was voided and the entire program was disappeared

01:20:51.580 | because it had been built on such faulty assumptions

01:20:55.740 | of actuarial assumptions

01:20:57.980 | that it was totally gonna be a disaster.

01:21:00.300 | But the Affordable Care Act is a good example

01:21:03.700 | of something that was politically settled

01:21:05.320 | by the barest majority vote,

01:21:07.080 | and then enforced by judicial decree,

01:21:11.980 | but didn't have the political will of the people.

01:21:14.660 | How'd that work out for you?

01:21:16.060 | You had a last day kind of Christmas break,

01:21:20.460 | bare majority vote with a, what was it,

01:21:22.340 | the resolution process instead of an actual

01:21:24.400 | passing the bill, reconciliation process.

01:21:27.040 | Basically, by the thinnest of margins,

01:21:28.540 | you had this Affordable Care Act rammed through Congress.

01:21:31.380 | Well, what's amazing to me is here,

01:21:34.980 | you look at it, what, a decade later,

01:21:37.380 | and you have, at least on the Democratic side,

01:21:39.760 | you have basically every single Democratic candidate

01:21:42.420 | says, "Well, that thing failed.

01:21:43.720 | "It didn't work.

01:21:44.640 | "It was a waste of time.

01:21:46.060 | "We need a new system.

01:21:46.940 | "We need Medicare for all,

01:21:47.900 | "so we'll pound this down the American people's throat."

01:21:51.020 | Now, we can debate the reasons it didn't work.

01:21:52.780 | Maybe it was bad from the beginning.

01:21:54.540 | Maybe the hollowing out of it made it collapse.

01:21:57.740 | Who knows?

01:21:58.580 | We can argue that.

01:21:59.580 | My only point is look at how ineffective it is

01:22:02.300 | to ram things through, to use the force of law

01:22:05.180 | to force people who didn't want health insurance

01:22:07.900 | to go and buy health insurance

01:22:09.540 | and to otherwise pay a penalty.

01:22:11.780 | I found that, the individual mandate

01:22:15.420 | and the imposition of fees,

01:22:17.300 | I found that the most insulting, infuriating,

01:22:20.740 | disgusting tax ever.

01:22:23.060 | Now, I've always maintained health insurance

01:22:27.020 | or health protection of some kind,

01:22:29.560 | but when you say you're gonna force me to do something,

01:22:33.480 | it makes my hackles rise

01:22:35.340 | and probably some parts of my character

01:22:38.100 | that still need to be worked out,

01:22:39.500 | but it makes me basically say, "Screw you.

01:22:42.660 | "I'm not gonna do it.

01:22:44.200 | "I'm gonna cancel my health insurance.

01:22:45.980 | "I'm smart enough to read the law, find the exceptions.

01:22:48.180 | "I'm not gonna maintain health insurance.

01:22:49.620 | "Screw you, I'll make you guys pay for it."

01:22:52.300 | And look at the disaster that has happened

01:22:54.660 | in the last 10 years because of this very thin

01:22:57.220 | ramming through and trying to force people

01:22:59.880 | to do what you think they ought to do

01:23:01.300 | because you think it's a good idea.

01:23:03.660 | And so many of the hot political issues

01:23:05.620 | in the United States happening exactly the same way,

01:23:08.380 | where the political process of gaining consensus

01:23:11.780 | and working together and building political consensus

01:23:15.260 | is basically utterly broken

01:23:17.100 | and has been broken for a couple decades now.

01:23:19.340 | Look at, I guess a good example would be,

01:23:22.920 | look at how the legalization

01:23:24.420 | of homosexual practice has happened.

01:23:26.220 | From the 1600s through the 1990s in the United States,

01:23:29.940 | sodomy was illegal, illegal.

01:23:32.900 | And this was as late as, I think it was 1986,

01:23:36.420 | there was a case, I think it was Bowers versus Hardwick,

01:23:38.500 | where the illegality of sodomy

01:23:41.020 | was confirmed as constitutional.

01:23:43.100 | Now, those laws were largely unprosecuted and unenforced.

01:23:46.380 | The point is from the 1600s through the 1990s,

01:23:51.100 | sodomy was illegal.

01:23:52.360 | But then you have this tiny span of time,

01:23:56.420 | about 15 to 20 years.

01:23:57.540 | In 2003, you have Lawrence v. Texas,

01:23:59.380 | which ruled all those sodomy laws unconstitutional.

01:24:01.620 | The remaining 11 states that had extant sodomy laws,

01:24:05.920 | those were vacated by the court.

01:24:07.900 | Then from 2003 to 2015, you have a series of court cases

01:24:10.980 | steadily pressing the issue forward

01:24:12.780 | until the 2015 Obergefell decision.

01:24:15.280 | In 15 years, you have a series of unelected judges

01:24:19.460 | who systematically changed three centuries of precedent.

01:24:22.680 | Question is this, how's that working out for you?

01:24:26.160 | Now, there was, in that 15 to 20 years,

01:24:31.100 | a clear change in public opinion.

01:24:32.800 | I've previously talked about the public relations campaign

01:24:35.180 | that was necessary to accomplish that in the United States,

01:24:37.820 | and it was one of the most effective

01:24:38.660 | public relations campaigns ever.

01:24:40.500 | But my point is this, how is that working out for you?

01:24:43.260 | How's the current state of the US American society

01:24:45.640 | with regard to peaceful relationships among neighbors?

01:24:48.340 | People being able to trust their neighbors.

01:24:51.700 | You got now lawsuits on every hand,

01:24:56.140 | sue this person 'cause they don't wanna bake this cake,

01:24:58.480 | sue that person 'cause they don't wanna do this thing.

01:25:01.180 | You don't change people's minds with that.

01:25:04.860 | All you do is create a fractured, divisive,

01:25:08.620 | untrustworthy society where people start

01:25:11.020 | to resent their neighbors.

01:25:13.060 | Now, how's that gonna work out for you in the coming years

01:25:15.140 | when you try to continue to impose taxation?

01:25:17.340 | How's it gonna work out for you?

01:25:21.280 | Think it's gonna lead to more peace,

01:25:24.220 | more neighborly relationships,

01:25:26.060 | you forcing your will on other people,

01:25:27.800 | forcing them with coercion and violence and taxation

01:25:30.340 | to do what you think they're supposed to do?

01:25:34.500 | Think if you look at relatively recent history,

01:25:36.860 | you can see how fraught with danger it is

01:25:42.480 | to move with the force of law.

01:25:44.940 | Now, I believe there's a place for judicial decree.

01:25:47.940 | I support the judicial state.

01:25:50.900 | I think that bad laws should be ruled as unconstitutional.

01:25:54.120 | I think there can be times where things are right,

01:25:56.660 | times where things are wrong.

01:25:58.580 | Just because something is settled doesn't mean it's right.

01:26:01.540 | I believe I'm not opposed to the judiciary functioning.

01:26:05.340 | What I'm saying is if you look at a society,

01:26:09.100 | look at the United States of America society,

01:26:11.300 | and you soberly ask yourself,

01:26:12.820 | how's it going trying to force other people

01:26:14.700 | to do what I think they should do?

01:26:16.400 | When you just use courts and use laws

01:26:20.320 | that are inherently forcing other people,

01:26:22.560 | you wind up with a dangerous, fractured society.

01:26:27.080 | So my point is simply this.

01:26:29.700 | We should be very careful, very restrained

01:26:33.740 | before we ever try to use force on our neighbors,

01:26:38.340 | before we ever try to coerce somebody

01:26:40.900 | to doing what I think they should do

01:26:42.140 | just because I think they should do it.

01:26:44.100 | If I'm in that community of a dozen people

01:26:47.060 | and I think we need a road, and nine of us agree,

01:26:51.060 | if I'm in the community and I think we need a road

01:26:52.980 | and three of us agree and nine of us don't,

01:26:54.780 | let's say I'm in the three,

01:26:56.620 | nine of us say, no, we don't need the road.

01:26:58.900 | I'm just gonna keep on lobbying, right?

01:27:00.940 | I'm gonna keep saying, listen,

01:27:01.860 | here are all the ways that would benefit us,

01:27:03.380 | and in time, maybe I'll win you to my position,

01:27:05.700 | but I don't have the right to come and tell you

01:27:07.140 | you have to do it this way.

01:27:09.200 | Now, if nine of us agree we need the road

01:27:11.060 | and three of us don't, I still don't see much benefit

01:27:13.740 | in forcing the three to participate.

01:27:15.540 | Let's be gentle.

01:27:18.940 | Let's not coerce other people to do our will.

01:27:21.180 | I'm not gonna advocate for forcing our neighbors to do it.

01:27:25.300 | Now, to wrap up this show,

01:27:28.660 | I don't know exactly how a lot of these things hold up.

01:27:32.220 | When you go from Joshua's fantasy metaphor

01:27:36.020 | of a dozen people on a island nation

01:27:39.540 | to a 21st century mega city with 23 million people in it,

01:27:43.040 | I'm not trying to do anything other than to talk

01:27:47.100 | about the underlying thing.

01:27:49.540 | I'm not advocating one way or the other.

01:27:52.380 | If all the government did was build roads

01:27:53.940 | and arrange for a proper court system,

01:27:55.940 | fine, I'll pay it and move on.

01:27:58.520 | But my argument is this.

01:28:01.900 | The majority of the functions of our modern governments

01:28:05.500 | are built on institutionalized immorality.

01:28:08.580 | Instead of government that exists,

01:28:12.220 | that's commissioned to provide justice,

01:28:14.180 | to provide relief and restitution for the victims of crime,

01:28:17.520 | where you have a victim that can bring a lawsuit

01:28:22.340 | and say, "I was wronged,"

01:28:24.700 | that's the proper function of government.

01:28:25.980 | Instead of that, we live in political systems

01:28:28.540 | that are based upon encouraging sin and immorality.

01:28:32.900 | Politicians encourage covetousness,

01:28:35.420 | teaching people that they're entitled

01:28:36.580 | to the property of others.

01:28:37.780 | Listen, if you vote for me,

01:28:39.140 | we'll make sure that we soak those people

01:28:41.940 | for what they owe us.

01:28:43.540 | That's covetousness.

01:28:44.760 | And theft by majority vote.

01:28:49.020 | If you'll just vote for me,

01:28:49.860 | I'll make sure we go get some of their property for you

01:28:52.180 | and I'll reward you for it.

01:28:53.900 | That doesn't work.

01:28:55.260 | That's not gonna have long-term success.

01:28:58.020 | It was not always this way in the United States.

01:29:00.860 | I can't comment on European history

01:29:02.820 | and I don't know all the demarcation points,

01:29:04.700 | but I understand American history pretty well.

01:29:07.580 | Was not always this way in the United States.

01:29:09.920 | There was a sociologist, Robert Nisbet,

01:29:13.560 | one time in an essay,

01:29:14.980 | remarked that in the year he was born, 1913,

01:29:17.780 | the only contact that most Americans had

01:29:19.860 | with the federal government was the post office.

01:29:22.420 | And it was later that year

01:29:23.540 | that the Federal Reserve Act was passed

01:29:25.100 | in a late session just before Christmas break.

01:29:26.860 | And that was when the income tax came into effect.

01:29:28.860 | And since that time,

01:29:30.340 | the ongoing never-ending expansion

01:29:33.900 | of the federal government has just continued.

01:29:36.340 | And it will, in my guess,

01:29:37.920 | it will probably continue until bankruptcy.

01:29:40.960 | So what do we do?

01:29:45.260 | I think we just start by repenting of our own sin,

01:29:48.460 | of our own covetousness and theft,

01:29:51.860 | and rebuking it wherever it comes.

01:29:54.780 | If I see that I'm looking over at that guy

01:29:56.740 | 'cause he's richer than me,

01:29:58.380 | and I'm saying that, well,

01:30:00.340 | he owes me money because he's richer, that's wrong.

01:30:03.500 | And so I have to stop by saying, I'm not gonna do that.

01:30:07.380 | And if a politician comes along

01:30:08.880 | and tries to stir up my covetousness

01:30:10.580 | for another person's property

01:30:11.740 | and make me greedy for another person's property,

01:30:13.860 | I acknowledge what they're doing

01:30:14.980 | and I rebuke them and say, stop.

01:30:16.580 | If they earned their property lawfully and justly,

01:30:21.840 | without stealing from others, that's their business.

01:30:24.700 | Their property is not mine.

01:30:26.580 | Now, if they've stolen from others,

01:30:28.660 | whether through whatever means,

01:30:29.940 | whether through outright theft,

01:30:31.500 | through abuse of contracts or something,

01:30:35.260 | something that's theft, and that needs to be righted.

01:30:37.580 | And there's plenty of that.

01:30:38.740 | Rich people are not all rich

01:30:39.900 | because they're all just virtuous people.

01:30:41.620 | There's a whole lot of theft that's gone on.

01:30:43.740 | And nothing that I'm saying is going to change that.

01:30:47.900 | I'm not saying there's not a place for us

01:30:49.260 | to stand up against people who are stealing from others.

01:30:52.880 | But I gotta start with myself.

01:30:54.800 | I gotta start by controlling those impulses that I have

01:30:59.460 | of greed and covetousness and a desire to steal from others.

01:31:02.600 | And then not trying to vote for things like that.

01:31:05.240 | Beyond that, I teach my children

01:31:07.720 | not to be greedy for other people's property,

01:31:09.960 | to be proud of working

01:31:11.280 | and generating the property of their own

01:31:13.200 | through honest, peaceful trade and commerce

01:31:17.240 | with other people, voluntary relationships with people,

01:31:19.740 | not trying to use intimidation and force to get their way.

01:31:23.220 | And then I focus on helping my neighbor,

01:31:26.380 | loving my neighbor, encouraging them the same way,

01:31:28.340 | and then helping them

01:31:29.460 | so they won't be greedy for another man's property.

01:31:32.220 | If your neighbor has a need, you gotta solve that need.

01:31:34.980 | What's bad is if your neighbor is struggling

01:31:37.740 | with a sick son,

01:31:39.340 | if your neighbor is struggling with an incompetent parent,

01:31:42.140 | and then you're not there as a community,

01:31:44.100 | well, of course they're gonna vote

01:31:46.540 | to try to get some of your money

01:31:47.680 | 'cause you're not standing up and helping them.

01:31:49.920 | That foundation though,

01:31:53.280 | when you build a society on covetousness and greed

01:31:55.680 | is not a stable society to make.

01:31:57.400 | It's breaking down in the United States,

01:32:00.960 | it's breaking down in Europe.

01:32:02.760 | You have increasing tension,

01:32:04.360 | you have increasing racial tension,

01:32:06.400 | you have increasing political tension,

01:32:08.400 | you have increasing political instability.

01:32:11.060 | I think you could trace some of this

01:32:14.300 | to some of those problems.

01:32:16.940 | (birds chirping)

01:32:19.180 | It's a major moral hazard.

01:32:21.800 | So that's my idea.

01:32:26.540 | It's kind of what I think would be

01:32:27.860 | an ideal system of government,

01:32:29.780 | a judicial system that settles disputes

01:32:32.080 | and seeks to protect victims.

01:32:34.880 | You feel free to consider these ideas.

01:32:36.740 | I don't ask you to agree with me.

01:32:38.540 | Not lobbying for you to join me in anything.

01:32:41.020 | Just consider the ideas.

01:32:42.580 | And then if you like any of these ideas,

01:32:44.740 | start imposing them in your own life.

01:32:46.620 | I'd say the biggest thing is simply,

01:32:49.900 | if you have the choice,

01:32:51.340 | stop engaging in coercion or violence towards other people

01:32:56.220 | and engage in peaceful speaking, reason,

01:33:01.220 | preaching, entreaties, engage in those things

01:33:05.460 | and stop participating in all the rest of that stuff.

01:33:08.160 | When you can win converts to your ideas

01:33:12.660 | where people don't feel coerced,

01:33:15.460 | don't feel trapped by you in some way,

01:33:17.140 | don't feel intimidated by you,

01:33:18.300 | they just freely choose to become a convert to your ideas,

01:33:22.780 | you can build a powerful neighborhood.

01:33:26.300 | You can build a powerful community.

01:33:28.260 | But when you engage in forcing other people,

01:33:30.620 | basically as I see it,

01:33:32.140 | people will retreat to entrenched tribalism

01:33:36.460 | and that stinks.

01:33:38.060 | So those are my answers to my listener.

01:33:41.900 | Why so anti-tax?

01:33:43.140 | Well, it's because of this, not anti-tax.

01:33:46.540 | And I do, I wish I weren't so loud mouthed

01:33:51.540 | in some of my opinions.

01:33:52.740 | I have moderated, I have become much more relaxed.

01:33:55.540 | For me, once I found the escape clauses,

01:33:58.980 | now I spent 10 years studying tax.

01:34:02.580 | I remember when I was a new financial advisor

01:34:05.220 | and I remember the first time,

01:34:07.140 | here I am, I'm licensed, I'm selling insurance,

01:34:10.340 | I'm selling investments and whatnot.

01:34:11.820 | And I remember the first tax time I sat down

01:34:14.260 | with an accountant to do my taxes,

01:34:16.580 | I didn't have a clue how a tax return worked.

01:34:19.300 | Did not have a clue.

01:34:20.980 | Nothing had prepared me for it,

01:34:22.020 | I hadn't done it previously, I didn't have a clue.

01:34:24.500 | But I started working at it.

01:34:27.220 | And I would say in the last year,

01:34:30.020 | I had a number of epiphanies where finally,

01:34:32.380 | I understood how to follow the law

01:34:34.180 | and yet how to totally break out of the tax system.

01:34:37.380 | Today, I've worked out how I could earn 10 million bucks

01:34:40.700 | a year and not legally not pay a dime of income tax.

01:34:43.820 | I've worked out how to save taxes on capital gains tax,

01:34:47.180 | so that we're all that stuff.

01:34:48.660 | Now, whether I hope I'd like to earn 10 million bucks

01:34:51.180 | this year, but at the moment, we're not on track for that.

01:34:53.660 | But so I'm tiki-hawking theoretically,

01:34:55.820 | but once I found kind of the escape clauses,

01:34:58.140 | once I worked it out, and I followed and worked out

01:35:01.780 | how to follow the law carefully and strictly,

01:35:04.180 | 'cause I feel a special burden being in a kind

01:35:07.060 | of a loud mouth voice.

01:35:09.060 | I assume whenever I file a tax return,

01:35:10.780 | I assume it's gonna be published on the front page

01:35:12.340 | of a local newspaper.

01:35:14.100 | And so it better be exactly right.

01:35:16.940 | But once I worked out the escape clauses,

01:35:19.100 | once I worked out how I could peacefully

01:35:21.300 | and voluntarily disassociate myself

01:35:23.820 | and remove myself from the system

01:35:26.700 | without engaging in violence,

01:35:28.580 | without engaging in revolutionary conduct, et cetera,

01:35:31.940 | I moderated a lot.

01:35:33.180 | It helped me to be a lot more relaxed.

01:35:34.900 | It lost a lot of my anger and frustration.

01:35:38.020 | Maybe, maybe that's in the first half of the show

01:35:40.380 | was pretty ranty.

01:35:41.980 | Maybe there's still a bit more there than I'd like.

01:35:43.860 | Hopefully in a few years, I'll be much more sanguine

01:35:46.940 | about the whole thing.

01:35:48.620 | So I apologize if I push too hard

01:35:50.580 | or if I go too hard to the line.

01:35:52.260 | I get tired of seeing people abused.

01:35:54.260 | And as far as I'm concerned,

01:35:56.140 | it's just another expression of bullying.

01:35:58.780 | I hate bullying.

01:35:59.740 | I hate bullies.

01:36:00.900 | And I hate it when you have a majority of people

01:36:03.380 | that say, "Oh, we're gonna vote ourselves

01:36:05.460 | somebody else's money

01:36:06.500 | because we think that they should have it."

01:36:08.660 | And it causes me to be, I feel so angry

01:36:13.060 | when I look at these bullies.

01:36:14.740 | And I watch political candidates who are bullies

01:36:17.340 | and they use the power of the vote

01:36:19.220 | to try to, and the power of the pen

01:36:21.460 | and the power of the government

01:36:22.460 | to try to force people to do things.

01:36:23.900 | And I think at some point,

01:36:26.740 | can we get to a society

01:36:28.820 | where people just simply leave peacefully with one another

01:36:31.020 | and don't force others to do it?

01:36:33.700 | I've experienced it certainly, thankfully,

01:36:35.980 | in my local church.

01:36:36.940 | And you can experience the freedom

01:36:39.860 | that comes within a local community

01:36:41.940 | of like-minded people who live and let live and whatnot.

01:36:45.460 | But I get so tired of the public debate

01:36:48.380 | and the bullies who think that they can toss around

01:36:51.860 | the power of the government.

01:36:53.180 | It's the bullies and it infuriates me.

01:36:55.700 | So I apologize if I get emotional sometimes.

01:36:58.100 | That's the underlying emotion that reflects out.

01:37:00.580 | But I hope to be more sanguine in the future.

01:37:02.540 | Hope to be careful with my words.

01:37:03.820 | I don't wish to,

01:37:04.740 | I'm happy to live and die by the words that I believe,

01:37:07.740 | but I don't wanna live and die by carelessness.

01:37:10.140 | And so I hope that I'll be,

01:37:11.100 | learn to increasingly control my tongue

01:37:12.860 | and be much more sanguine about the whole thing.

01:37:15.380 | Thank you for listening to today's show.

01:37:17.460 | What should I plug as I go?

01:37:18.460 | Oh, I guess, well,

01:37:19.460 | I had a bunch of you that reached out to me

01:37:21.700 | for more personal consultations.

01:37:23.340 | As I mentioned in, I think, the previous show,

01:37:25.980 | my life has stabilized more

01:37:27.140 | and I'm able to do more personal consulting work.

01:37:30.140 | So if you would be interested

01:37:31.260 | in any kind of personal consulting work,

01:37:33.180 | I promise I won't talk your ear off about this nonsense.

01:37:36.260 | This stuff, it's important, it's not nonsense,

01:37:37.860 | but it's just not practical.

01:37:39.940 | I try to keep the show 95% practical

01:37:44.580 | and 5% theoretical for fun,

01:37:46.700 | but this stuff is not practical.

01:37:48.060 | But if you want practical solutions,

01:37:49.500 | you want practical things to help you save money,

01:37:51.980 | invest better, earn better,

01:37:53.900 | work out some of the thorny financial issues that you face,

01:37:56.020 | I'd be happy to work with you.

01:37:56.860 | Send me an email, joshua@radicalpersonalfinance.com.

01:37:58.820 | I'll connect with you, give you all the details.

01:38:00.460 | Joshua@radicalpersonalfinance.com.

01:38:02.740 | And I wish you well, be with you soon.

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01:38:35.540 | [MUSIC PLAYING]

RPF0662-Why_is_Joshua_So_Anti-Tax