Is Not Voting the Most Socially Responsible Choice? With Jeremy Hammond

I speak with independent journalist Jeremy Hammond, about the upcoming presidential elections, and about the nature of voting, and of the state, generally.

Is it more responsible to refrain from participating in an illegitimate system founded on coercion? Or should we strive to make things better by choosing the lesser of two evils?

Jeremy is the author of several books, including Obstacle to Peace: The US Role in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, and The War on Informed Consent: The Persecution of Dr. Paul Thomas by the Oregon Medical Board (Children’s Health Defense).

You can find his work here.

And as I mentioned in the episode, this is Mises University week. If you agree with Jeremy and myself that combatting economic ignorance is one of the best ways we can fight for freedom, you'll want to check out the Mises Institute, which, in my humble opinion, does the very best job of this of any organization on the planet. You can learn about them, and support them, here.

Transcript

Speaker A: Welcome to the podcast that's all about solutions. If you're tired of complaining about tyranny and you want to take action to create a freer world, this is the place for you. Join us as we ask, what then must we do? I am here today again with Jeremy Hammond. Jeremy is an investigative journalist, an independent journalist journalist, one of the few genuine journalists out there. He's done fantastic work covering the vaccines, actually, even before COVID writing about vaccine issues. And then into Covid, you can see his books behind him. The war on informed consent, I think, is required reading. It's about the case, which we've talked about this on the show before, of Paul Thomas, but it really is kind of a microcosm of what happens to doctors who go against the prevailing narrative and how they're squashed and how speech is squashed, how our ability as patients and just as people, our ability to get accurate information is really, really hindered. He's also written about Israel Palestine. His book obstacle to peace also required reading if you want to be informed on that topic. Welcome to the show.

Speaker B: It's always great to speak with you. Thanks for having me on again.

Speaker A: So the reason I asked you here today is actually has to do with your journalism because you're very deep into these, into these topics. I know you're very concerned about liberty, about where we're going as a society and all of that stuff. And you came out recently and said you're not going to be voting in the presidential elections. So are you apathetic or something?

Speaker B: No, to the contrary. I think it's the most active thing we can do is to not participate in a system that has no legitimacy. And my view is that the act of voting only serves to legitimize the criminal regime in Washington, DC that people like to call a government. But I don't see a government. I see a criminal organization. And I want nothing to do with it. I don't want it interfering in every aspect of my life as it does. I just want it to leave me alone. And I think a lot of people, you know, I think most people don't really vote in favor of any given candidate. They're voting against who they like even less. And so everyone is voting for the lesser of what they perceive as the lesser of evils. But you know, if you're going to vote for the lesser of evils, you're still voting for evil. And I'm just saying, like, let's just stop voting for evil. Let's stop legitimizing it. Let's just stop. Let's just opt out of that system. And, you know, the regime gets its authority from the people, you know, because if the people didn't consent to it, then we wouldn't have it. You know, we saw this with the lockdowns, where most Americans were deceived into consenting to the lockdowns. Americans are deceived into consenting to criminal wars overseas. They're deceived into consenting to the federal reserve system that literally robs them of their wealth perpetually. So if we just stop consenting to all these criminal actions and criminal deeds, then they won't be able to continue. And the way I see it, I would love to see humanity become civilized at some point in the future. Probably not going to happen in my lifetime, but I believe we can get there. And the primary obstacle standing in the way of humankind becoming civilized is the institution of statehood. Because a civilized society, as I see it, would be one grounded in voluntary exchange for mutual benefit, where people just get along with each other because it's in everyone's best interests to get along and to trade with each other and to work collaboratively toward mutual aims. And I don't see really any reason why humans can't organize a society that way. But that stands in stark contrast to the institution of statehood, which is founded and grounded on the idea of using force and coercion to achieve aims that are determined not by all of us working collaboratively together, but by bureaucrats, whether elected or unelected, who think that they know better than we do. They think they know better than we do how scarce resources ought to be allocated, and I dont think they do. I think I know best how the dollars that I work to earn ought to be utilized. I dont think anyone in Washington or in state capitals knows better than I do how my wealth ought to be distributed. And so its up to me to make the. It's kind of, do you believe that individuals have a right to the fruits of their own labors or not? You know, this gets into the point of taxation is theft. It is theft. If the fruits of your labors are not yours to do with as you please, which you owe all or a percentage of the fruits of your labors to some other party. That's slavery. And so I just wish Americans would wake up to the fact that people don't like to hear this, people don't like to hear that we're not free. People are just indoctrinated into this belief system. I call it the state religion. We're indoctrinated from early childhood into the belief that we live in a free country, the freest country on the planet. Well, we could stipulate that the United States is the freest country on the planet. We could argue that, but let's just stipulate it. Well, okay, but it's not free enough, is it? And so we can do better. I mean, we can do so much better because look at all the criminal deeds that the us government does. Look at the. Look at the us government support for Israel's genocide in Gaza. Right now. It's just when is enough enough? And when it comes to voting, people accuse me of being like a single issue voter. For example. For example, I was actually enthusiastic about Bobby Kennedy's run initially until October 7 and when he started defending Israel's war crimes and Israel's genocide in Gaza. And I made a statement in November of last year withdrawing my support for his candidacy on the grounds that I cannot support a candidate who supports a genocide. And people look at that and say, oh, so you're a single issue voter. You're just voting on the issue of Israel Palestine? And that's not even close. I look at a broad, there's a broad range of issues that are important to me. The economy is important to me. Foreign policy is important to me. Domestic policies, federal reserve policy, all of these things are important to me. The health freedom issue is important to me. I don't look at a single issue and vote based on a single issue. That's not it at all. It's just that I think there ought to be certain positions that should automatically disqualify any candidate from our consideration. And supporting a genocide certainly should be one of those. I couldn't vote for someone who supported the Iraq war. I couldn't vote for someone who is in favor of socialist economic policies and is fully in favor of the Federal reserve system. I couldn't vote for someone who supports Israel's genocide. There are just certain positions that are so extreme and so anti liberty and anti human life that they ought to be disqualifying. And I don't understand, frankly, how people can vote for a candidate who has such an extreme position on one of the more important issues that we face and they're willing to forgive it and just let it go. And I don't understand that point of view, frankly.

Speaker A: And just for listeners, I don't want to turn this into a whole conversation about Israel and Palestine, but we have spoken about it before. We spoke about it soon after October 7. So I'll link to that. And I know you've also spoken with, I think, Scott Horton and some other people. I will link to those. So anybody who's saying, well, wait a second, it's not a genocide. It is a genocide. It's so well documented. And Jeremy has done a great job of point by point outlining why this is horrific and nobody should support it. You know, rather than go into all of that, I'm going to link to where Jeremy has defended that position because he does a great job of it. And he's right. He's absolutely right.

Speaker B: Yeah. And people don't have to take my word for it. I mean, the International Court of Justice itself has ruled that it is a plausible genocide. And of course, they won't make a final determination on that for a year or two. Who knows how long it's going to take for them to deliberate. But their initial ruling was that it is a plausible genocide. The government of South Africa made a plausible case that Israel has been committing genocide. So people don't have to take my word for that.

Speaker A: Yep, yep, yep. So at that point, were you, were you, when you say you were, you supported RFK, were you going to vote? Did you support him so much that you would vote? Because I was in this position a few years ago when Ron Paul ran. You know, I had been a committed non voter for many, many years. And when Ron Paul ran, I really had to do some, some soul searching about this.

Speaker B: Yes.

Speaker A: And I determined, you know what? I'm nothing this year anyway. I'm not a principled anti voter. Yes. I agree with everything you said about, you know, legitimate. It helps to legitimize the system. It's better if we withhold our legitimization. But when I saw Ron Paul running, I thought, wow, you know, if he can actually, if he actually gets into office, if he actually turns around our foreign policy, that would change the world. That would save so, like, millions of lives. It would save so many lives. It would, you know, save us from being targeted by terrorists. It would reverse the economic damage that's been done. It would. To me, it was a matter of if I can support this guy into getting into office, if he gets into office, millions of lives would be saved. I felt like I kind of had to. I felt like, yeah, I need to. And so that's where I was.

Speaker B: That's where I was, too.

Speaker A: Okay. Okay.

Speaker B: So I've only ever voted twice in presidential elections. In 2008, I checked Ron Paul off on the ballot. In 2012, I wrote him in.

Speaker A: Yep. Same here.

Speaker B: So. But he was, that was such an extraordinary situation where it was so unusual to have a candidate like him. I mean, most, most candidates want to get into office to utilize the power of the Oval. Oval Office to rule over us. He was the opposite of that. He wanted to get into the Oval Office to roll back the claimed authorities of the government.

Speaker A: He wanted to throw the ring into mount doom.

Speaker B: Yeah. Yes. Yes. And so that was just kind of just an extraordinary circumstance where you had a candidate who actually was worthy of voting for. But this is extremely rare. I mean, it's happened twice in my lifetime, in 2000, 820, twelve with the same. So once with one candidate in my life. And I had high hopes for Bobby Kennedy because, you know, even though, like, I don't really agree on a lot of his economic views, you know, like, he seems to be in favor of, like, tariffs and things like this, he doesn't really. I mean, he speaks in favor of a free market, which I love, but he doesn't really seem to understand what a free market truly is. But, you know, again, this speaks to the point of I'm like, I'm not a one issue voter. You know, there's no, you know, people think, well, you're never going to have a perfect candidate. Well, of course nobody's going to be a perfect candidate. And, yeah, I'm willing to let certain things slide as long as they're not, like, outright authoritarians on a position, things like this. But again, it just, it comes down to disqualifying positions to me. And, you know, I loved his position, speaking out against central bank digital currencies. You know, obviously, he's just been a tremendous leader in the health freedom movement. You know, his outspokenness against lockdowns and the coerced mass vaccination campaign. And before COVID of course, speaking out against the systematic violation of the right to inform consent that occurs as a result of public vaccine policies. He's just been a courageous, amazing leader in those areas, and I love him for it. I was just so disappointed to see his position on Israel Palestine. In fact, I first started kind of realizing that he had kind of a zionist point of view kind of mid summer last year, about a year ago, I mean, a little bit more than a year ago. And so I actually sent him my book, obstacle to peace about a year ago. And unfortunately, I haven't seen any indication that he's read it. But then, of course, October 7 came, and then that was kind of the straw that broke this camel's back, was his support for what Israel was doing, which was obviously just brazen, blatant war crimes, you know, a policy of deliberately starving the Palestinians. You know, how can you justify that? And he tried to, and that was just so disappointing and discouraging to me.

Speaker A: And you, I don't know if you've worked with him directly, but, like, you've written for children's health defense and.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, we had a collaborative relationship. I've never been employed by children's health defense, but, you know, I've worked for them, you know, as a freelancer, you know, writing articles for them. I wrote an e book for them at one point, debunking these media headlines about, you know, so that there was supposedly the study that had shown that had found that children's health defense was the top spreader of misinformation through Facebook ads. And I completely debunked that it was a hoax claim, and I debunked it in an ebook I wrote for them. And he wrote the forward to my book, the war on informed consent. So, yeah, we had a good working relationship. I've communicated with him on many occasions. So it's disappointing.

Speaker A: Yeah, it is, it is. It's a shame. Yeah. And you're right. It's not that it's a single issue. It's just that there are certain things that you shouldn't. In a civilized society, you should be able to say, well, this is the limit. And yet, look at the. Our history and look at what presidents have done just in our lifetimes, and look at the last four years. It seems like there is no limit. After the Holocaust, everyone said never again, and then proceeded to do more horrific things. I'm not saying that every single thing was on the level of the Holocaust, but it seems like. It seems to me that there is for most voters, and probably just for most Americans, thinking about their own history and the politics of the world we live in, seems like there are no bright lines. There is nothing where you can say, okay, that's too much. I'm not gonna. I'm not going there.

Speaker B: Right. Yeah, that's the thing. I think people have a sense that they have to, again, they don't vote in favor of someone. They just vote against who they like even less. And it's, you know, and I've had communications with readers about this, you know, people, in fact, to that newsletter where I said, I'm not voting, and I explain why. I had quite a few responses to that, and some people were saying things like, well, you know, if I don't vote, for, at the time, Biden, you know, he's still in the, this is like right before he dropped out. You know, if I don't vote for him, then Trump's gonna win, and we can't have that. You know, and some people would be the converse and be like, well, if I don't vote for Trump, it's going to be Biden again, so I better do something about it. And if they feel like they're taking an action to try to prevent the lesser evil from getting into power, but all they're really doing is if the person they don't like does get into office, well, they've just legitimized that outcome by having participated in the process. So. And people would say to me, you know, like, well, you know, are you, you're going to be responsible if you don't vote. It'll always, you're going to be responsible if the wrong person gets in office. And I'm like, no. I said, no, actually, you're wrong. Not responsible for that. You're going to be responsible for that because I didn't vote. I didn't participate in that. I didn't legitimize that. You're going to be the one legitimizing that. And so that was my response to people who would email me that reply. And so I think, you know, I think my position is the logical one, and I don't think there's any way around it. I mean, you know, and short of, like, you, you know, I think there could be extraordinary circumstances in which a candidate would be worthy of a vote. I'm not saying you should never, ever vote under any circumstances whatsoever. I think the point is we need to send a message to the regime. And if there is a candidate who is anti establishment enough, I think that is a reason to vote. Unfortunately, I don't see any candidates who are anti establishment enough. I don't see any candidates who don't cross that red line in terms of having positions on really important issues that are automatically disqualifying.

Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. And it's just, it's such a disempowered or a weak position to be in to think that, you know, that your only choices are these two horrible, awful, you know, candidates. And I, and I feel like that's, it's just sad to me. It's, it's, it's a sad position to be in if that's when you look at the world, it's like that's where your power is. You get to choose between these two awful flavors of ice cream. And that's it. And I do think I went to private school and I went to Montessori and then to public school. And so I kind of got a glimpse of both worlds. And the degree of indoctrination that happens in public school is really astonishing. And I'm sure you don't notice it if that's, you know, if that's all, you know, from being a small child, you don't notice it. But at a certain point, you definitely are given this message that, you know, this is our society, and as a citizen, the way that you have power is to go out and vote. And that's it, you know?

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: No civil disobedience, no creating your own systems, no nullification, you know, all this, all the other things that are available to us. No, this is how you have powers. You get to go out and vote. And I look around, it's like, wow, people really absorbed that message. But what would you say to people who really only see those two options? What would you tell them about other ways they might help to make the world a better place?

Speaker B: Yeah, well, I would say, first of all, recognize what a narrow framework it is to view everything through this lens of this narrow linear spectrum of left versus right, Democrat versus republican, liberal versus conservative. Like, if you view everything through that paradigm, it's just like you've trapped yourself in this tiny little box and there's like, there's this whole other dimension. There are whole other dimensions of, you know, political viewpoints out there that don't fall anywhere within that spectrum. I mean, you and I are just off that chart entirely. We don't, you know, there's nowhere we fall along that line. And, you know, so that's the first thing to recognize is that, you know, if we can't move past that, you know, that that's. That's a pretty hopeless situation. Like, we need to move past that. Everyone needs to get past that and not stop seeing thing everything through. You know, I have to vote for Democrats because I hate Republicans, and or I have to vote for Democrats because I hate Democrats. Well, I hate both parties. You know, they're both awful. They're just two heads of the same beast. And you can vote for this head or that head, but guess what? The beast is there devouring us and.

Speaker A: Devouring the planet wins no matter what.

Speaker B: The beast wins no matter what. And so that's the first point to make. And then the other thing that I think people need to understand is, like you were saying, just how indoctrinated we were as children in the public school system. I went to the public school system, and, you know, I had to go through a process of deindoctrination, you know, where I just started researching things on my own and questioning everything I had been taught and just, like, you know, kind of exposing myself to the fact of how I was, like, consistently lied to throughout my education.

Speaker A: What got you to do that? What was the impetus?

Speaker B: Well, I'd always been kind of just naively against what I called the system. You know, as a little. As a kid, I just remember thinking, like, I didn't like this, what I would call the system. You know, like, this idea that I have to go to school and then high school, and then I got to go to a college, and then I got to get into some career path and work the same job for the rest of my life. And then someday, like, the whole. Like, my. Like, my whole life was planned out for me when, like, I had no say in it apart from, yeah, I had some choices about, like, okay, what school do I call it? What college do I want to go to? You know, what field do I want to get into? But it's like, you know, well, what about entrepreneurialism? They don't teach that in school. What if you don't want to go out and get a job working for someone else? What if you want to start your own business? Well, they don't teach you that. They don't teach you those types of skills. They don't teach you marketing skills, at least, so they certainly didn't when I was going through this.

Speaker A: They don't even talk about it.

Speaker B: It's like they don't even talk about it. They don't teach you about money. They don't teach you about finance. They don't teach you anything that's important for actually being independent and thinking for yourself. And quite the contrary, they indoctrinate people into the belief that we need government to take care of us. The question, of course, who would build the roads if it wasn't for the government? As Tom woods likes to joke, we'd all be standing around looking over there at the Walmart, wondering, how am I going to get there and get my groceries home? Come on. It's absurd, but this is the belief that we need the government and we need these elected officials to take care of us. But the problem with this was identified by Frederick Bastiat in his book the law so long ago, where he pointed out the fallacy of this way of thinking is that, well, these bureaucrats aren't better than we are. They're not smarter, they're not more angelic. They don't have better moral principles. They don't know better than we do how resources ought to be allocated, so that this is just a fallacious way of thinking about things, that we don't need them. We don't need the government interfering in our lives. And I'm not saying I'm against the idea of government in my household. We have a form of government. We have house rules and we discuss rules and everyone agrees. We have a little contract in our house where everyone agrees to the rules. And this is what happens if a rule gets broken. And so we have government in our household. Businesses have a form of government. So, I mean, there's nothing wrong with government. It's state governments that I'm speaking to. It's the institution of statehood itself, where the government isn't established on a voluntary means, where people have this kind of voluntary agreement to engage with each other in a civilized fashion, with procedures for what to do if conflict arises, where everything is voluntary and mutually agreed. Instead, you have the system, again, where it's founded on the use of force to achieve aims against people's will that people don't volunteer into, they don't agree to. This is the fundamental problem. And so when I speak against the government, this is what I'm talking about. I'm not against the idea of there being governance. I'm not against the idea of there being law. I'm not advocating. This is a big thing. People think, well, if you're against the government, you're advocating lawlessness and chaos. Well, no, I'm not. I'm actually advocating precisely the opposite. I would like to see a lawful.

Speaker A: Society, and that's such an important point because there's a lot of talk now about common law, and I'm glad people are kind of getting, re familiarizing themselves with that, because the whole idea of, at least in the western world, the idea of law and of this common law system is that it applies to everybody. You don't get to go out and commit crimes just because you're the head of the war machine or because you're some bureaucrat somewhere. That's what we've turned it into. It's turned into a system where really they are isolated from the consequences of their actions. We saw this over the last four years. They were murdering people, and they were literally in hospitals killing people. They were preventing people from having access to life saving medication, as you well know, and trying to enforce vaccine mandates, all of these things. They were shutting down other people's business. They were committing crimes against the rest of us. And where are the consequences for that? It's like there's this special space carved out for people who are acting on behalf of the state where the law doesn't apply to them. So what you're talking about and what I am in favor of is, yeah, I want law. I want law that applies to everybody.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: You don't get that with the monopoly state.

Speaker B: No. When they have the monopoly on violence, that they're, they're above the law and they act above the law, and that's why there's no accountability. You know, why isn't Fauci in prison?

Speaker A: Right?

Speaker B: Why is Doctor Anthony Fauci not in prison?

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: You know, why, why are, why is Deborah Birx not in prison? I mean, the lockdowns were a crime, and let's, let's just speak plainly. The lockdown regime was a tremendous crime against humanity, and that's how it ought to be viewed. And yet the people who are responsible for it are walking free. That should not be the case. Um, same thing. You know, the people who perched, you know, George W. Bush, **** Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld, why are they walking free? They're war criminals, but they're above the law because they're part of this special institution they call the government that is above the law, and there is no accountability. And this is what, I mean, there's a criminal organization, and we should not be participating in it. We should not be legitimizing it.

Speaker A: Yeah. When I, you know, when people ask me, well, who's the best, who would be the best person to hold the office of president? I try to ask them, well, what do you think that office means? What is the office of president? And what's that person's job? Because in my mind when I look at that, the job of president is to head up empire. It's basically the job of waging war on other countries and other places in the world for money. And that's it. That's their business. And it's a criminal enterprise, as you say. But if you ask me, well, who should head that up? That's like, well, who should head up? The mafia?

Speaker B: Right. Right. Well, this is another point. I'm like, glad you brought that up, because, you know, the type of person who would actually be a good president is exactly the type of person who would never want to run for president.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: And, you know, government attracts people who crave power. You know, it's the same with corporations. You know, there's the book snakes in suits by, I forget the author's name, that, you know, the researcher into psychopathy, and he describes how in the corporate world, there's a certain percentage of the population, the general population, that are psychopaths. I think it's around 1% is the estimate, but in the corporate world, it's higher. It's like three to 5% or something like that. Well, same is true for government. The power people are attracted to. These positions of power tend to be sociopaths and psychopaths, and normal people don't tend to want to just exercise this type of authority and power over other people. And so the most worthy president would be the person who doesn't want the job. So there's kind of a catch 22 there, whereas anyone who actually seeks the job almost, almost automatically isn't worthy of it.

Speaker A: Right. Right. Well, and the other piece, though, is that you've also got the whole deep state. I don't think you can look at what's going on and say, oh, the president's in charge. He's the one making all the decisions. There's this whole world, this whole network of cronies and agencies, the CIA, all these other pieces that if you did get. I'm glad Ron Paul didn't get into office because I'm certain he would have been assassinated if he had. If he had gotten in for this simple reason that it's a machine. It's not an entity that I'm talking about, just the federal government. It's not run by one person. It's a whole machine. And a lot of those pieces are in place for decades as the president flips over every four years. These other people, what we just call the deep state, that's been there a long time. And if it's not happy with the person in office, that person's not going to be in office. And I just, I don't know if. I don't know how many people realize that.

Speaker B: Yeah, you just brought up two, triggered two points that I would like to expand on there. So the first thing is, yeah, you know, a lot of people pay a lot of attention to, you know, individuals and different positions, you know, people, members of Congress and who's in office and who are the, you know, who's in the cabinet and all these, you know, and I actually really don't pay a whole lot of attention to that. You know, obviously, individuals can matter, but it almost doesn't really make a difference. You know, who's the head of the CDC? Well, it doesn't really matter the policies. The system has a life of its own. And so I do, like, systems analysis.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And so that's really kind of what I do when I do my work. And of course, you know, I'll mention individuals names if it's relevant, but it's really more about understanding how the system operates and how the system functions. And you can replace this head with this head, and guess what? Nothing's really going to change. There might be just kind of like modest little, just marginal differences depending on who might be in power. But in the big scale of things, the big picture is that the system is just this machine that's just rolling on. It's just like a steamroller that's just going to keep moving forward. And that's what I want to stop. And you're not going to do that by participating in the system. I mean, you're never going to get someone elected who's just going to stop that machine, who's going to slay the beast. They're just going to become that head of the beast. And the other point that you made me think of there was people have this idea that, well, the problem with our government is that there's too much corporate influence. And so we need someone in there who's going to just kind of eliminate the corporate influence on the government, and then we'll have this, then we'll be free or something. I don't know quite know what they think is going to happen, but this is a completely backwards way of thinking about it because it's not the problem. The problem isn't that we have corporate, and obviously the big pharma is a perfect example that leaps immediately to mind when you have. The CDC is essentially a marketing agency for the pharmaceutical industry. The government is the pharmaceutical industry. And so we could say, oh, well, we need someone who's going to be in power, who's going to roll back and prevent big pharma from exercising such influence on our regulatory agencies. Well, that's not the problem at all. The problem is that you have a government with this power, with this ability to use force over us to achieve aims such as, well, we say you need to get all the vaccines on the childhood schedule. You'd better do that or there's going to be consequences. They're not going to be good for you if you don't do that. Such as, well, I guess your child isn't going to be in the school system. And sorry if you can't homeschool. Sorry if you're not capable of doing that. It's like, you know, those are your choices. Either vaccinate or, you know, so people are put in real tough binds, you know, parents, and, um, that people are forced to make really difficult choices because of the coercion, because of the systematic violation of the right to inform consent. So the problem is not that you have corporate influence in the government. The problem is that you have the government with this power. That, of course, is going to attract people who are going to exercise that power in corrupt ways. That's unavoidable. And there's just no way, you know, we've discussed this before, where you use the expression that I like to, I've stolen from you since you don't know where you heard it from, but I like to use it now, is, that's not a bug in the system. It's a feature. So that the sale of this power to the highest bidder is just a feature of the system. And you're never going to just eliminate that unless you eliminate the ability of the government to use force, to use that power. And so the, the problem isn't that you have corporate influence in the government. The problem is that you have this government selling influence. And so people are kind of looking at it backwards. And so the solution isn't for the government to have more power and more authority to supposedly stop all these bad actors. It's no, we need to take away that power and eliminate that power and their ability to use force in coercion. And so that's the solution to the problem.

Speaker A: And that's not, I've written about this before. That is not, that's not a solution that you're going to get, generally speaking, by voting. Because from the politicians point of view, that coercive power is what they have to sell. That's what they're, you know, they've got these corporate donors, other, you know, who, who would love to squash their competition, for example. They would love to have you say, oh, look, is that an antitrust violation over there in the guy setting up shop across the street from you? What a shame. That's what they have to sell. That's the reason people give them money for their campaigns, is because they can use that coercion in ways that will benefit those parties. And so it's not, again, it's not a matter of corrupt politicians or bad politicians or bad business people or the fact that business people pay for what they want to. It's this, that's the nature of the system. That's what it is. When you create this coercive mechanism. And then, I mean, that's the source of it right there is, you've created this thing that we say, okay, that coercion is legitimate, we'll accept that in our society. And then you have people voting on who gets to participate in it. What do you think's going to happen?

Speaker B: That's right. And even if, I mean, at best, at best, this is another thing people don't understand about economics and how an economy functions is that consider, I mean, they are forcibly expropriating our wealth to reallocate and redistribute. And so obviously a big part of that is the corruption. And they're making decisions based on their interests, the interests of financial parties who are supporting their campaigns. But just set that aside and just assume that there is no corruption and that a bureaucrat in power is exercising authority as a lawmaker or as an executive really based on benevolent intent. Let's just assume that, well, okay, the fact still remains that government bureaucrats can only make decisions arbitrarily in the absence of the pricing system of the market. People don't understand the importance of prices in a free market and how that helps to determine how scarce resources are allocated. And so government bureaucrats making decisions, at best arbitrarily, don't know better than the market, with its pricing system, how to efficiently allocate scarce resources toward productive ends as determined by the will of the consumers, which is to say by all of us, there is no purer form, no purer manifestation of the democratic principle that everyone says they believe in than the free market system. And that's something that people don't understand. And they're advocating these socialist policies of wealth redistribution. But even if we assumed no corruption amongst the people in power making decisions, even then, there's no way for them to make those types of decisions other than arbitrarily, just based on their own opinions and their own whims. And so that's something that, another thing that people just don't understand about the economy and economic function.

Speaker A: Yeah, and that's a hugely important point. And it's beyond frustrating to anyone who studied economics or who's even familiar with the history of the 20th century, because any kind of planning, as you say, you don't have to be a socialist planner if you're interfering in the work, if you're taking money from taking productive resources from the economy and then deciding how that's going to be spent that's kind of a form of socialism. Its making decisions outside of market constraints. And not only did Mises and Hayek get this right in the debates in what was it, 1920s, 1930s, the calculation debates, they nailed it. They explained exactly why that doesnt work. Then we had to go through a whole century of people trying it out and, you know, killing millions of people along the way. It's like, guys, it's time to wake up. It's time to just, you know, learn. And if I can just do a quick, as an aside, I want to do a quick plug because this week Mises university is going on. So I'm going to put in a little link to that. I'm going to try and get this up in the next day or so, and I'll put in a link to Mises University because that is the cure for what we're talking about. Yeah. Enormously frustrating. It's such, these are such, it's such a basic concept. And yet I think because people have been so indoctrinated against the free market, I mean, again, going back to schools, I remember hearing the term free market is used in a derogatory sense. When you hear free market, you think, you know, children toiling away at factories and lying in the streets and all this stuff, and it's like, that's a, that's the vision of free market that you're given by government schools.

Speaker B: So the 2008 financial crisis was caused by too much freedom in the marketplace.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: You know, the Great Depression ended by, you know, by the New Deal and we're indoctrinated with all these myths. Yeah, we need the federal reserve system for monetary stability. You know, there's all this nonsense and all these myths and all this really just absurd claims. But people believe it. People believe all of this nonsense and it's just like really outright delusional beliefs. But people are indoctrinated into those type of belief systems.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And so this is why, like they don't even see how, how the Federal Reserve system, for example, literally enslaves them. Again, you know, if, if you, because I mean, that the government has two ways of raising funds essentially for its criminal operations. One is direct taxation. The other is the stealth tax of monetary inflation because, well, what happens when you print off trillions of dollars of new, you know, out of thin air? Well, you're diluting the value of every single one of those dollars in circulation. And that takes time for that effect.

Speaker A: And it benefits the ones who get first.

Speaker B: So, you know, there exactly the cantelon effect where the people who first receive the new newly printed money or benefit from it because theyre able to use those new dollars to buy up assets. And then later on, you see the effect where as prices start to increase for consumer goods, and so the average person is just being hurt tremendously by that monetary inflation in the form of price inflation and paying more. So you worked yesterday for to earn some dollars, and thats the fruits of your labor, but now you go tomorrow to spend those dollars and you cant buy as much with it. So its the theft of our purchasing power. So that affects this upward transfer of wealth from the poor and middle class to the political and financial elites who have the connections to be able to utilize the government use of force to achieve their financial aims. And so just eliminate that, and then we'll have a society where you can have equality in terms of people talk about economic inequality, but they don't understand that. Well, that, again, is not a bug. It's a feature of the system. It's designed that way. It's literally designed that way. And you have a whole class of economists whose essential role is to indoctrinate the public into the belief that we need the Federal reserve to be stealing our wealth this way. And so, yeah, there's just so much indoctrination into the belief that we need this system of essential servitude. And again, I'm not saying that people just say things like that, and you'll hear responses like, well, if you don't love America, you should move to a different country. I'm not saying that. You know, again, I could stipulate that America is the freest country in the world, right? That doesn't mean people are still enslaved. And we might not have physical chains anymore in terms of slavery, but there's mental servitude. And that's what I try to do with my work, is to try to free people from this mental slavery that limits their ability to think about things critically and to see that there is a different path. There is a path towards civilized humanity. And so I want to move there. Like I would like to, you know, as a father, you know, before I became a father, I was interested in these topics and interested in this. But, you know, obviously, my motivation has, you know, is obviously much even greater.

Speaker A: It becomes a lot more father.

Speaker B: And I think about, well, what kind of world do I want my son growing up in, you know, and this isn't it. And so what can I do to help create a better future for him and future generations of humanity? And I think people just, they lack imagination because they're so trapped in these belief systems where they hold literally delusional beliefs about things. So just completely ahistorical nonsense. Yeah, this completely has, it bears no relationship to, like, historical reality or to economic reality. It's a delusion and. But they cling to that delusion and it's like the matrix. This is why I loved the first matrix film so much, because that was such a great allegory for real life where people will actually fight to keep the system that is literally enslaving them. And so this is, I guess so my fundamental point is just there is an alternative path and it isn't the case that the only. Well, I have to vote. It's my patriotic duty. I need to be an active member of society and participate. Well, yes, but that's not the means by which you can participate most, you know, beneficially, and it's not encouraging you to do it.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And not voting is a way you can participate.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I feel like everything you're talking about, the delusions and the clinging to delusions, for me, so much of it, again goes back to government schools. And my experience of that was for the most part, you're being trained to say the right things, to spit back information, to do well on tests, to see this person at the head of the classroom as the authority, and to respect that authority and to develop this mindset of taking in information from certain sources as legitimate, but without necessarily digging into that information yourself. And I know there are exceptions. I know there are some great teachers out there in all kinds of schools. I know that. But I would say in general, the mentality that's being cultivated is one of having an authority figure from whom you get your truth, or maybe a group of authority figures. But there are these people who are sort of ordained as truth givers, and you don't contradict them. Whatever they say is gospel. And you don't develop those skills of really questioning and going into. There's this refrain that I can't believe anybody is still saying, but the trust the experts or you're not an expert. How dare you speak on that topic. You're not an expert. Shouldn't everybody have the ability to dig into a claim and decide what you know? Of course, not everyone's going to become a nuclear physicist. Not everyone's going to go deep on every topic. But if there's something contentious, if there's a claim that you think, huh, that's interesting, or I don't really think that's true is your only option to defer to the experts on it? I mean, shouldn't everybody have some ability to dig into the truth? I feel like that's something that's been deliberately stripped.

Speaker B: Yes.

Speaker A: As a culture, and that we need to fight to get that back.

Speaker B: Yeah. You know, I just had a post, again, removed on LinkedIn. Back at it. LinkedIn's back at it. Because I think we've talked about this before, where I was banned. I had a permanent ban from LinkedIn.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: I managed to get my account back after a so called permanent ban. And since then, I haven't really had too many problems. But just funny, just this past week, I had one where I had reposted an older article of mine from probably a couple of years now old, where I had written about, there was this, I forget what media or company had published this article denying that public health authorities had lied about Covid-19 vaccines effectiveness. And so I just, I wrote a rebuttal to that article explaining how they're just totally gaslighting. And I just quoted official, you know, Fauci and Birx and Trump and like, all of them, you know, like, lying and saying that two doses of an mRNA vaccine was going to end the pandemic by conferring herd immunity because they would stop infection and transmission.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: They were claiming that the vax, two doses would confer durable sterilizing immunity. That was the claim.

Speaker A: It was. It's all on the record.

Speaker B: It's been all on the record. And I just quote after quote from these people lying to us.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And then, of course, and then there are admissions that that turned out to be not true, that the data show that wasn't true. And so they lied. It's just, it's just, it's just so clear cut and dry and there's just no ambiguity about it whatsoever. They lied. They made a claim. They claimed to know something to be true, and they didn't know that. They were guessing. It wasn't science based, it was hope based. And the CDC director Wilensky afterward explained. But she literally came out, and she was in an interview where she explained when the subject came up of how the vaccines had rapidly waning immunity. She was like, well, nobody ever thought that they would wane so rapidly. We had a lot of hope in these products. And she talked about how it was literally not science based. Our proclamations were not science based. They were literally hope based.

Speaker A: Wow.

Speaker B: And you had people like me at the time, this isn't hindsight. I was saying at the time that they're making it, when they're claiming that two doses is going to be effective and provide durable sterilizing immunity. I said there's no scientific evidence for that. So they're lying. And I was pointing it out at the time. This isn't hindsight. And so LinkedIn censored that post when it was reposted to my timeline this past week, which speaks to. Yeah, in 2024. Now they're still trying to censor that. Like, you can't tell the truth about what happened.

Speaker A: So that's, that just happened to me, too. I did an interview with Bob Murphy back in 2019 talking about vaccine mandates and things. And just a couple days ago, Facebook, no, no, no. YouTube took down that video. And they, the point in the interview that they cited was the part where I'm talking about, you probably remember this, this claim that after the Wakefield paper MMR vaccination rates in the US went down and that caused lots of measles cases. Well, they didn't go down. They didn't go down. And the CDC numbers show that they didn't go down. And that's what I had linked to. And so anyway, so I was just, I did a post about that, too. I was just kind of stunned that really in July of 2024, you guys are still going at this? You still think you can get away with this.

Speaker B: Yeah, it's right. And this is a result of, I mean, obviously, you have companies like Google who's invested in pharma, in pharma. Facebook is invested in meta, is invested in pharma, Amazon is invested in pharma. So you have those types of influences. But also, it was just the government they were censoring on behalf of the state. Yes. The government was pressuring them, coordinating with them. It was an organized campaign of censorship to prevent people from learning the truth.

Speaker A: Which, by the way, for everyone who says they want law and order, that's illegal. That's a violation of the First Amendment.

Speaker B: Yes, yes, absolutely. Yeah. But again, there's no accountability. And so you have, you know, like, what I like to call the high priests of the state religion. And you were talking about how, like, they have the, they have a way, they have a monopoly on truth. We're just supposed to trust these experts and authority figures to tell us what's true and what's not. And you never, never mind your own eyes. Don't believe what you see for yourself. Don't do your own thinking. It's not just that the public school system doesn't teach people to think critically. They're literally training people to not think for themselves. They don't want people to think for themselves. The message is, dont think for your. Dont you dare think for yourself. Dont you dare think, you know, better than me, the expert. I mean, its so condescending. And people, people who kind of fall into that trap of actually accepting that its like, well, im not an expert. What do I know? I better just listen to my doctor. When they tell me that I ought to take this pharmaceutical drug, I should just listen to them because what do I know? Hes the expert. Well, that type of thinking gets people really sick, you know, so people better start thinking for themselves. It's in everyone's own best interest to think for themselves and think critically and to not just trust people because they're in a so, you know, a supposed position of authority, you know, and I've had my own health journey trying to deal with doctors whose ignorance was matched only by their arrogance and their condescension and where like, you know, like I was telling them, they would deny. I went into doctors with symptoms of what I self diagnosed doing my own research, going to pubmed dot gov as leaky gut. And you go into the doctor's office and talk to them about it and say, well, I think I have leaky gut and literally mocking me because they thought, they denied that it existed. And I would tell them, go into pubmed dot Gov and just put in a search term, leaky gut and then do it in a separate tab, put in this search term intestinal hyperpermeability, and see the thousands of studies that come up and they're talking about it like it's this controversial claim, this non existent thing. And it's like in all of the hundreds of studies that I've consumed dealing with that. So, but to be able to diagnose myself, I never once came across any paper, an inly published study that I read about it, that, like questioned it or treated it as something controversial. It's completely uncontroversial. And these doctors were like denying its existence. And so it's like, you want to trust these people, you want to trust them with your health. It's just, it was dumbfounding to me, that experience. And I had to learn. I had to kind of teach myself to, I'm going to just stop listening to the doctors and I'm going to start trusting my own judgment. Same thing, of course, becoming a father and having to make decisions about vaccinations. I mean, people really need to learn to think for themselves and to stop trusting these so called authority figures, because, man, I tell you, these are supposed to be experts. But anyone, anyone who's got a modest amount of intelligence and an ability to do their own research, which is pretty much everyone, if they have an Internet connection, can. Can do a better job of making good judgments about things like their own health than. Than most doctors can do. And so people just need to start learning to trust their own judgment. And that's a real challenge because people are just trapped in this indoctrination of, you know, we need to trust, trust the experts, trust the science. And you have Fauci out there saying I'm the science.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, I. Maybe I'm being overly optimistic here, but. But I feel like that's one of the things that really took a hit in the last four years. This whole. Yes, it's sort of risen to the top and everybody's screaming it, but at the same time, you hear from so many people who just say, my whole worldview was broken, really, I had no idea. I didn't know that I couldn't trust my doctor. I didn't know that. I didn't know any vaccine could be harmful. And now this. So now I'm looking at the childhood schedule. You know, a lot of people are starting to question things that they just never questioned before. And I'm wondering, and I'm hoping that it might mean not just that they're questioning these things that I happen to be happy they're questioning, but are they maybe taking a different attitude towards life itself? That you can't just put your life in your decisions in the hands of someone who claims to be an expert or who is an expert, that you really do have to do the hard work of. If it's an important decision, you've got to think it through yourself. And do you think that's happening on a wide scale?

Speaker B: There's definitely a very noticeable difference. It was definitely a mass awakening from pre to post Covid, post pandemic. And polls show that looking at polls of people's trust in the CDC. And I wrote an article about one of those polls some time back, which was interesting to me because, of course, the media treated as they were, bewailing this and moaning about it is like, oh, people are losing trust in public health. Public health. And so that's a bad thing. So the assumption is that everyone ought to trust the CDC and trust the FDA and trust people like Anthony Fauci. And it's bad if they don't trust, but of course, the opposite of true, that this is a great thing. It's wonderful because they're completely unworthy of our trust. And the fact that people have awakened to that is a wonderful thing and it's a step forward, not a step backward. But then when you break it down and look by political affiliation, you get back into that linear spectrum. And it was interesting because among Republicans, yeah, the Republicans had much less trust in the CDC, along with independents afterward, than pre pandemic. But then among Democrats, just demonstrative of the outright delusion when it comes to the role of government in our health, they actually had a slight increase in their level of trust for the CDC, which blew my mind. Right.

Speaker A: Wow, that's astonishing.

Speaker B: It was, and I couldn't believe that when I saw that. And I just like, what, what could they possibly be thinking?

Speaker A: Just, just to play devil's advocate here, is it possible that so many people no longer identify as Democrats that the only ones left are the hardcore and it's a smaller number? I just, there has to be a, there has to be some sensible.

Speaker B: That's an interesting hypothesis. Yeah. And thought of that. But maybe, maybe, maybe there was a flight from the democratic party to, like, independence or to some other party and therefore that affected that outcome. So it was only like the hardcore, like, pro Fauci type people who were old as Democrats that could possibly explain it. Actually. That would be a better explanation. That would be a more hopeful explanation.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Because the alternative is that, no, actually they really are that delusional.

Speaker A: Right. Which is scary.

Speaker B: Yeah, it is scary. Yeah. It was frightening to see that outcome because you think about what if this happens again? What if there's another.

Speaker A: And to get back to the voting thing in the election. We're almost up at the hour, so I'll wrap this up just to get back to the voting. When I look at everything that's gone on with Biden and now Kamala and just the circus that it's become, and Biden was clearly suffering from some kind of mental decline, which on the one hand is like, well, how can you guys look at this and think that this is the guy, this is your candidate? How can you still be thinking this is normal or okay. And on the other hand, who are the people doing this to him? Who are the people putting him, forget what a horrible person he was before? You know, he's clearly impaired now and you're putting him up on the world stage. Who would do that? You know?

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: The whole thing is just, it's so demented. It's just so the clown show is kind of the only thing. It's just, it's like, in a dark way, too.

Speaker B: Like, it's just how his, his mental, his cognitive decline was obviously throughout his whole first term. And it was like suddenly the Democratic Party just awakened to it all of a sudden at the debate. Like suddenly they, oh, God, he's got dementia. Like, as though it wasn't obvious before. I don't, that's one thing I don't.

Speaker A: Get, really can't think for themselves and are just accepting whatever their experts tell them.

Speaker B: Well, they were gaslighting about that, too. You know, like, oh, he's fine. He's got no cognitive decline and he's perfectly fine. Well, obviously nothing. So that's one thing. But the other thing is that it goes to show, I mean, anyone who thinks that Biden has been, like, running things.

Speaker A: Right?

Speaker B: Well, wake up. Hello. Obviously not. So who is running things? I mean, this is the thing. The president is really a figurehead and there's other, you have the deep state and you have people pulling his strings behind the scenes. And you could see this when Trump got into office. And of course, everyone viewed him as kind of this anti establishment candidate. What does he do as soon as he gets into office? He talked a good talk on many points, for example, in terms of foreign policy and wanting to have friendly relations with Russia and not being enemies with each other, all great. But as soon as he got into office, he was involved in Syria, getting involved there on the opposing side of Russia, sanctions against Russia, all these policies that were really the opposite of what he had run on, which is just so typical. Of course, they run on one thing, but then as soon as they get into office, they do something else. Well, who was pulling his strings? Yeah. You know, you know, and that was partly a result of the whole Russiagate hoax and just the pressure that was being put on him. But this is the thing. Even if somebody's not directly pulling his strings and he's not being a puppet in that way, they have ways of influencing and pressuring someone in office to do what they want. And of course, the deep state was involved with that whole hoax along with the Democratic Party. But, you know, it goes to show that who's really running things is not the faces we see on the television.

Speaker A: Right. Right. Any final thoughts? Anything you want to tell, you know, anyone who's thinking about voting and might want to come over to our side.

Speaker B: Yeah. You know, I mean, I respect people who feel that they need to vote. I mean, I, I wouldn't condemn or criticize people if that's what they feel like they need to do. I would just say, have some standards, just have some basic principles and vote on principle. If you are going to vote, then at least have some principles about it. Seriously consider what you and I have talked about and really give it a lot of thought. I think what we've been saying, and I think you're, as far as I can tell, you're on the same page as me. I was on the same page as you with Ron Paul because I had never voted before and I haven't ever voted since. So I think what we're saying is really logical and factual. And I think if you really think it through, that is the most logical conclusion that the best thing you can do is to, not to vote. And I really would challenge anyone who doesn't agree with that to really give it a lot of serious consideration. Point out where does my logic break down? Where does my reasoning break down? Because I don't see a flaw in my reasoning. And so I would challenge people.

Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. Thanks for coming on the show again. It's always great to have you and hope to talk again soon.

Speaker B: Yeah, sure. It's always a good time speaking with you. Always appreciate our discussions.

Speaker A: You'Ve been listening to. What then must we do the podcast? For those who understand that the state is the problem and are seeking solutions. For more episodes, go to Bretany dot substack.com. that's Bretigdne dot substack.com and subscribe.