Speaker 1: The latical fundamental principles of freedom, rational self interest, and
Speaker 1: individual rights. This is the ran Brook Show. Oh right, everybody,
Speaker 1: welcome to your own book show on this Sunday, March sixteenth.
Speaker 1: I hope everybody's having a fantastic weekend. I am and
Speaker 1: a lot of shows this week.
Speaker 2: God yeah, a lot of shows. But we're heading towards
Speaker 2: the period ware they're gonna be all.
Speaker 1: A fewer shows, so you know, this is makeup time. Today.
Speaker 1: We're going to talk about the Constitution, or at least my.
Speaker 2: Wishes in terms of how I would I don't know,
Speaker 2: improve it, but we'll get to that. I think that's
Speaker 2: a little too ambitious or a little arrogant, but anyway,
Speaker 2: we'll get to that.
Speaker 1: We'll talk about that Tomorrow.
Speaker 2: I'll be travelings and no shows tomorrow. Tuesday, I'll be
Speaker 2: travelings and no shows. On Tuesday, I'll be in North
Speaker 2: Carolina giving a talk at the Business School at the
Speaker 2: University of North Carolina in Wilmington. Wilmington on the morality
Speaker 2: of finance. So I'm looking forward to that. If you're
Speaker 2: in the area, I hope you come. Definitely come up
Speaker 2: and say hello if you if you are there, and
Speaker 2: you're a listener to your on book show.
Speaker 1: It's always fun.
Speaker 2: For me to meet people who are who are listeners
Speaker 2: to the show, who I don't know, and who I
Speaker 2: do know both. Then I'll be back for a few days.
Speaker 2: When is it Thursday Friday on a Saturday flight to London,
Speaker 2: and I'll be there for a week, and then I
Speaker 2: go to Scotland for a day, and then I go
Speaker 2: to Israel for almost a week.
Speaker 1: So I'll be going two and a half weeks on
Speaker 1: that trip. And so yeah, we'll be.
Speaker 2: Constrained in terms of shows during that period of time.
Speaker 2: We'll do as many shows as we can. So I
Speaker 2: figured at a show today just to kind of make
Speaker 2: that up to you guys, let's see anything else we
Speaker 2: need to cover. Yes, those of you still have not
Speaker 2: heard yet about this. I do have a seminar that
Speaker 2: I'm doing in London on the twenty ninth of March,
Speaker 2: so two weeks from today. It'll be on how to
Speaker 2: apply the objectivist I think, so really how to apply egoism,
Speaker 2: how to be an egoist, and how how to apply
Speaker 2: it to your life in your relationships, your love life,
Speaker 2: sex life, and and in your career and in just
Speaker 2: the time you spend and how you spend it, the
Speaker 2: in life, just life, how you do life. Uh so, uh,
Speaker 2: I encourage you to sign up for that if you're interested,
Speaker 2: if you're in the UK, still got some space. Quite
Speaker 2: a few people are ready. Uh you know, quite a
Speaker 2: few people already signed up. Fort so we've got we're
Speaker 2: definitely doing it.
Speaker 1: And uh, you know this will be.
Speaker 2: Along the lines of Yourn's Rules for Life or my
Speaker 2: series on on being being an egoist, uh and the
Speaker 2: application of philosophy. So but if you're if you're interested,
Speaker 2: you live in the UK, you want to fly the
Speaker 2: UK for this, then come and do it.
Speaker 1: It'll be fun. Now.
Speaker 2: Colleen, Yesterday, day before yesterday, day before you stayed, I
Speaker 2: think on Friday suggested, Hey, why don't you do one
Speaker 2: in the US.
Speaker 1: So here's the thing.
Speaker 2: I'm seriously considering doing one in Denver, Colorado. I don't
Speaker 2: know how many of you in Denver, Colorado, but if
Speaker 2: you're in Colorado near Colorado, willing to travel to Colorado,
Speaker 2: I'm thinking of doing it in May.
Speaker 1: I think it turns out to be May eighth. May eighth, which.
Speaker 2: Is a Thursday, so it is a workday. It's not
Speaker 2: a weekend, but it's kind of the day that I
Speaker 2: can do it, and whoop what I do there? So
Speaker 2: May eighth, something from one to five, twelve to four,
Speaker 2: one to five, maybe in the morning.
Speaker 1: I'm open to suggestions.
Speaker 2: But if you are interested and you would come to Denver,
Speaker 2: or you are in Denver and would like to do
Speaker 2: it in Denver, then.
Speaker 1: Yeah, then sign up.
Speaker 2: And that is not sign up because there is no
Speaker 2: place to sign up. Let me know you're on at
Speaker 2: your on bookshow dot com. You're on at your on
Speaker 2: book show. I need to get a sense of whether
Speaker 2: there's enough people to do it. You're on at ran
Speaker 2: brookshow dot com. That would be That would be May eighth,
Speaker 2: May eighth in.
Speaker 1: In Denver, Colorado.
Speaker 2: All right, those of you asking about the Midwest, there
Speaker 2: will be Midland, Michigan doing a talk there on on Tuesday,
Speaker 2: April twenty ninth, so which I think which is open
Speaker 2: to the public. So if you want to come up,
Speaker 2: there's Northwood University, and then I think I'm doing one
Speaker 2: at the at the God Jennifer.
Speaker 1: Knows what the name of the institute is. I can't
Speaker 1: sharer the name.
Speaker 2: The Mecanows Center the Macinaw Center in in Midland, Michigan,
Speaker 2: so Northwood and then and then Middle and then Macanoe.
Speaker 2: I think both are open to the public, so you
Speaker 2: certainly well, I'm not sure which one is open to
Speaker 2: the public. I think Macinari is open to public. I
Speaker 2: don't know about Noewood because I think I'm teaching classes
Speaker 2: there rather than giving a talk, So I'm not exactly sure.
Speaker 2: All right, let's see what else did I want to say?
Speaker 1: Were all good here?
Speaker 2: Don't forget to sign up for the event in London.
Speaker 2: You can do that on my website. You're on bookshow
Speaker 2: dot com. Scroll down March twenty ninth, click on the
Speaker 2: link to register and you can register and pay and
Speaker 2: do all that stuff. Patrick says, come to Canada, you're on.
Speaker 2: Winter is almost over. I'm happy to come to Canada.
Speaker 2: Somebody has to invite me. Like it's not enough to
Speaker 2: say come to Canada, you're on. You have to say,
Speaker 2: I've got this group at the University of Toronto will
Speaker 2: host you. I've got a businessman luncheon that will host you,
Speaker 2: and all of that. So any of those, yeah, I
Speaker 2: would I would I come where I'm invited and where
Speaker 2: somebody provides a venue and people for me to speak to.
Speaker 2: People do me to speak So so Patrick, we could
Speaker 2: do in the fall, happy to come to to Canada.
Speaker 2: Just get a university group or some business group or
Speaker 2: somebody to host an event.
Speaker 1: And I will come and I will come. All enough
Speaker 1: of all this logistical stuff about traveling around the world
Speaker 1: and going all over the place.
Speaker 2: Let's talk about the Constitution. And and let me let
Speaker 2: me say a few things as a preamble. The Constitution
Speaker 2: as a preamble, so does the show. The American Constitution
Speaker 2: is an extraordinary document. It is I think the second
Speaker 2: most important document in political human in human political history.
Speaker 1: Uh. It is uh.
Speaker 2: It is the test of time over two hundred and
Speaker 2: fifty years, less than two hund and fifty years, but
Speaker 2: almost two undred fifty years, and it has, I think,
Speaker 2: keept this country relatively free during that period of time.
Speaker 1: It is a document written by.
Speaker 2: Some of the most brilliant men in all of human history,
Speaker 2: people who thought deeply about politics, people who thought deeply
Speaker 2: about political philosophy.
Speaker 1: They thought deeply about.
Speaker 2: What they wanted to create in what kind of country
Speaker 2: they wanted to establish.
Speaker 1: And in that sense, it is a novel of a document.
Speaker 2: It is a You know, all the thinkers that worked
Speaker 2: hard to put this document together, from Madison to the
Speaker 2: rest of the people in the Constitution Convention, Madison, I think,
Speaker 2: being the most important there had a deep understanding of
Speaker 2: history of different political systems and how they be tried,
Speaker 2: of what kind of worked and what didn't, and so
Speaker 2: everything they put in this document is really is thoughtful
Speaker 2: and intentional, and they knew what they were doing. And
Speaker 2: if you're going to revise any of it, you have
Speaker 2: to be as thoughtful and as knowledgeable and as much
Speaker 2: of a deep thinker as they were. And one of
Speaker 2: the things that's clear to me is that very few
Speaker 2: people today who could do that.
Speaker 1: And I wouldn't want anybody to touch the Constitution.
Speaker 2: Today because they'll mess it up. In terms of the
Speaker 2: kind of thinking that is necessary to put this together. Now,
Speaker 2: I'm sure there are people that be within I think
Speaker 2: the objectives world.
Speaker 1: That could do it. But what do you need in
Speaker 1: order to really if.
Speaker 2: You're really going to reform the Constitution, you need not
Speaker 2: only a deep understanding of what the Constitution as it is,
Speaker 2: what it says, what it stands for, whatever represents how
Speaker 2: it's been applied, how it's being distorted, deformed, where it's
Speaker 2: been misinterpreted. You have to have a deep understanding of
Speaker 2: the law and constitutional law, and you have to have
Speaker 2: a deep understanding of kind of what what kind of
Speaker 2: law would it be better if you're can improve, what
Speaker 2: would you do better?
Speaker 1: How would you do better?
Speaker 2: And for that again, you need to really and you know,
Speaker 2: when I've asked kind of the the the lawyers within
Speaker 2: the Objectives movement.
Speaker 1: The people who who deal with.
Speaker 2: Constitutional law and other aspects, you know, yeah, why don't
Speaker 2: you write a new constitution?
Speaker 1: They're like they laugh at me. It's like, that's a life.
Speaker 2: Project that is huge, that would really require, you know,
Speaker 2: a fundamental some deep thinking, and it's a big project.
Speaker 1: And it's not clearly what the purpose would be right
Speaker 1: now to do such a thing, but it is a
Speaker 1: big project.
Speaker 2: And the reality is the Constitution of the United States
Speaker 2: as is written is pretty damn good, pretty damn good. Now,
Speaker 2: I am not a legal scholar. I'm not a constitutional
Speaker 2: scholar certainly, and I am.
Speaker 1: Not a.
Speaker 2: Philosophy of philosophy of the law.
Speaker 1: So whatever I have to say about improving the Constitution
Speaker 1: is going to be in broad breast strokes, in terms
Speaker 1: of what I would like to see in a constitution
Speaker 1: that I think would make it better, that.
Speaker 2: I think would make it more internally consistent and more
Speaker 2: consistent with what I think was the intent at lest
Speaker 2: I think of most of the founders or some of
Speaker 2: the founders, or the intent of the idea of the Constitution.
Speaker 1: As I understand it.
Speaker 2: And a lot of this just comes from two hundred
Speaker 2: and fifty years of seeing it in action and seeing
Speaker 2: what the weaknesses are and where it's been attacked and
Speaker 2: where it falls apart, and.
Speaker 1: Where it is not it is not actually.
Speaker 2: Worked, where it does not actually done what it is
Speaker 2: supposed to do. So that's kind of the content next
Speaker 2: of this. There's no question in my mind that after
Speaker 2: two hundred and fifty years anything can be improved. You
Speaker 2: just have more information, more knowledge, more concrete, more knowledge
Speaker 2: about ways in which things could be messed up.
Speaker 1: The founders knew a lot because they studied history, but they.
Speaker 2: Had not lived through capitalism, They had not lived through
Speaker 2: the era of anything like the one hundred and fifty
Speaker 2: to two hundred years that followed, and a lot of
Speaker 2: things happened that are very, very different from what happened
Speaker 2: in history. One cannot learn everything from history. One has
Speaker 2: to be alert to learning from the present and learning
Speaker 2: from the more current history, the things that have happened
Speaker 2: more recently. So what do I think is the biggest
Speaker 2: with the Constitution? Again, as I see.
Speaker 1: It, it's that it's not explicitly anchored to the Declaration
Speaker 1: of Independence. It's not explicitly anchored to the idea that
Speaker 1: the purpose of government, the role of government is to
Speaker 1: protect individual rights and that's it. Now.
Speaker 2: I don't know if the founders fully understood that that
Speaker 2: was the sole purpose of government. They came very close
Speaker 2: to that, but whether they fully understood it, I don't know.
Speaker 2: Maybe that can only happen after Ironband. But if you
Speaker 2: would to reconceive of the Constitution, or redo it or
Speaker 2: tinkle with it, that would be my main concern. How
Speaker 2: do I make it clear in the document? And I'm
Speaker 2: not going to tell you how, because I don't know.
Speaker 2: This is what you would need legal thinkers, legal philosophers
Speaker 2: to do.
Speaker 1: How do you make it clear in the document.
Speaker 2: That the purpose of government, the purpose of all the structure,
Speaker 2: everything that is done here is for the purpose of
Speaker 2: protecting individual rights. And then indeed, the protection of individual
Speaker 2: rights is the sole purpose, the sole.
Speaker 1: Function of government.
Speaker 2: Now, some of this I think the founder's thought was
Speaker 2: implicit because it was in the Declaration Independence.
Speaker 1: It's quite clear in the Declaration that that is how
Speaker 1: they view the world of government. It is.
Speaker 2: Man has rights, unalienable rights, life, liberty, in the pursuit
Speaker 2: of happiness.
Speaker 1: And to secure that, to secure.
Speaker 2: These rights, governments are established, instituted among men, deriving their
Speaker 2: power from the consent of the government.
Speaker 1: So it's that.
Speaker 2: To secure these rights, governments instituted among men that.
Speaker 1: I think should be in.
Speaker 2: The Constitution, should frame the Constitution, should be in the
Speaker 2: preamble to the Constitution. And then and I know this
Speaker 2: is kind of weird, but then what it really needs
Speaker 2: is a definition of rights, a definition of rights. But
Speaker 2: it's unequivocal what exactly the authors of the document mean
Speaker 2: when they say to secure these rights, what that means,
Speaker 2: what that implies, and not.
Speaker 1: Defining rights as.
Speaker 2: A list of rights, Like it's somewhat attempted, attempted in
Speaker 2: the Bill of Rights.
Speaker 1: But even though they know that's wrong.
Speaker 2: So they have a Knight amendment that says, you know,
Speaker 2: it's it's it's not just these rights. You know, here's
Speaker 2: the ninth the enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights
Speaker 2: shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained
Speaker 2: by the people. Right, so they know, But what do
Speaker 2: we mean by rights? This is a politically contentious issue.
Speaker 2: Now it might be very very Maybe it was very
Speaker 2: well understood by the people at the time. Maybe it
Speaker 2: was very well understood by the intellectuals at the time.
Speaker 2: They knew what they meant by rights. The people knew
Speaker 2: what they meant by rights. Everybody understood rights at the
Speaker 2: time in a similar way, and it's quite reasonable that
Speaker 2: they couldn't predict, you know, the contient progressive revolution that
Speaker 2: happened that basically steals the concept of rights, steals it
Speaker 2: completely and completely distorts it and perverts it, and ultimately
Speaker 2: you have a concept and a philosophy that nobody really understands.
Speaker 2: Nobody knows what they're really talking about. So I'd say
Speaker 2: the most important thing to me in a new constitution
Speaker 2: would be to define the role of government.
Speaker 1: As the protection of individual rights.
Speaker 2: And to be clear and what that meant, to be
Speaker 2: clear and what that meant to articulate what rights mean
Speaker 2: and then maybe have something like a Bill of rights,
Speaker 2: which then in a sense concretizes, concreatizes what is meant
Speaker 2: by rights, What rights the people individuals have, and in
Speaker 2: what ways can they be abridged, and what ways and
Speaker 2: how explicitly we want to prevent the government from doing that.
Speaker 1: So you know that I think.
Speaker 2: Would be the number you know, the number one thing
Speaker 2: that I would argue for. And look, he has another
Speaker 2: I think important point, kind of as a preamble to
Speaker 2: all this.
Speaker 1: No constitution, No constitution can survive.
Speaker 2: A culture whose ideas reject its foundation. Again, no constitution
Speaker 2: can survive the philosophical ideas.
Speaker 1: That reject its foundation.
Speaker 2: So no matter how well they would have written a constitution,
Speaker 2: it would have been undermined when justices of the Supreme Court,
Speaker 2: who are responsible for interpretting and understanding the Constitution, lose
Speaker 2: that understand standing because they fundamental philosophy is counter to it.
Speaker 2: They're not going to interpret it right, They're not going
Speaker 2: to do it well. Or what will happen is the
Speaker 2: Constitution we've scrapped and some other document will replace it.
Speaker 1: I mean, imagine if.
Speaker 2: FDR had faced a situation where everything that he wanted
Speaker 2: was deemed, you know, for the right reasons and deep
Speaker 2: down unconstitutional, not just the things that this has been
Speaker 2: quote at the time.
Speaker 1: Actually did rules unconstitutional, but really everything.
Speaker 2: What would have happened in America? Right, I mean, most
Speaker 2: of the people would have said, why is the Supreme
Speaker 2: quote stopping the president from trying to stop this horrific.
Speaker 1: Depression?
Speaker 2: How does the swim Court have the power to prevent
Speaker 2: the President of Congress from doing and relieving the pain
Speaker 2: that we're experiencing. Now, maybe if we stuck the constitution,
Speaker 2: that pain would have never happened, because maybe they would
Speaker 2: have never been a federal reserve, and because that would
Speaker 2: have been ruled on constitutional. And maybe if there was
Speaker 2: a federal reserve, there wouldn't have been a great depression,
Speaker 2: and maybe none of this, all of this would be void.
Speaker 2: But the point is, if people really want something, they'll
Speaker 2: find a way to get it. They'll approve the existing
Speaker 2: constitution of replace it was something different. And some Latin
Speaker 2: Americans countries have had multiple constitutions, multiple constitutions, they keep
Speaker 2: changing them, they keep replacing them.
Speaker 1: And so again I don't think that.
Speaker 2: The bad stuff that's happened in this country, the move
Speaker 2: away from liberty and freedom and individual rights in this
Speaker 2: country is primarily the fault of the Constitution. Wasn't written
Speaker 2: tightly enough, accurately enough. No, not at all, not at all.
Speaker 2: The blame is in the fact that the intellectuals in America,
Speaker 2: the philosophers and intellectuals of America post founding had did
Speaker 2: not have the capacity, did not have the ideas to
Speaker 2: defend the existing Constitution and the existing Declaration of Independence
Speaker 2: and see the connections between the two, and as a consequence,
Speaker 2: the people lost all understanding of the meaning of the Constitution.
Speaker 1: The people lost.
Speaker 2: A sense of what the declaration meant. And then it's
Speaker 2: no surprise that the judges who get who go to
Speaker 2: the same universities with intellectuals teach who are undermining the Constitution,
Speaker 2: that the judges lose all connection to the real meaning
Speaker 2: of these ideas and what the founders actually meant. So
Speaker 2: no matter what would have been written, we'd still be
Speaker 2: in bad shape.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 3: It's also true, though, that are certain issues we are
Speaker 3: much much, much, much much better off for having a
Speaker 3: constitution and than not, and maybe if the Constitution being
Speaker 3: tighter in certain places.
Speaker 1: We would be a little better off.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think that the best example of this
Speaker 2: is is feedom of speech. We have a first Amendment,
Speaker 2: it's clear that the government cannot censor. Courts have mostly
Speaker 2: understood this, not always, not consistently, but they mostly understood this.
Speaker 1: I'd say in more recent time they've understood this better
Speaker 1: than in the past.
Speaker 2: And as a consequence of the United States has more
Speaker 2: free speech, more free speech then other countries in the
Speaker 2: West that don't have a First Amendment, where it's just dependent,
Speaker 2: where it's just dependent on, you know, a majority on.
Speaker 1: Democracy.
Speaker 2: And I think that's true of a lot of the
Speaker 2: freedoms we still have today. We have those freedoms not
Speaker 2: because the people in America appreciate those freedoms, not because
Speaker 2: people in America understand those freedoms, not because our politicians
Speaker 2: get it and want to preserve those freedoms. Big part
Speaker 2: of why we have the freedoms that we have today
Speaker 2: in the United States is because we have a constitution
Speaker 2: that is still respected, not because it's understood necessarily, but
Speaker 2: in respect that.
Speaker 1: Okay, so the founding Document, this is what America is,
Speaker 1: and we'll do it.
Speaker 2: And of course we're seeing that president after president after president,
Speaker 2: Congress after Congress after Congress challenge that tweak it, push it,
Speaker 2: try to stretch it to the limit, and the court
Speaker 2: is overwhelmed. We're trying to rein it into the best
Speaker 2: of their understanding. A constitution that was clear on what
Speaker 2: individual rights mean, I think would make it easier to
Speaker 2: preserve the true meaning of the Constitution. A constitution that
Speaker 2: was explicit about individual rights would also allow I think,
Speaker 2: you know, who knows what would happen in the crazy
Speaker 2: world of today. You know, one of the amazing things
Speaker 2: that I find in.
Speaker 1: When we.
Speaker 2: When you watch the proceedings of confirmation hearings for judges,
Speaker 2: Supreme Court judges, it's how anti intellectual most of the
Speaker 2: discussion is. It doesn't really go to what do you
Speaker 2: think the Constitution means? Almost never never a discussion of
Speaker 2: rights and what they mean. It's a lot of concrete
Speaker 2: pro abortion against abortion.
Speaker 1: How would you will on this? How would you will
Speaker 1: un that?
Speaker 2: Very concrete bound, very anti intellectual, very disappointing. I mean,
Speaker 2: if I were a senator, I would want to know,
Speaker 2: how do you understand the Constitution? What do you understand
Speaker 2: the Constitution to mean when it says X, y Z,
Speaker 2: What is the the president. What is the power of Congress?
Speaker 2: And what does the Bill of Rights mean? What is
Speaker 2: the Second Amendment or the First Amendment, fourth Amendment, and
Speaker 2: what is the Ninth Amendment most importantly mean, What does
Speaker 2: it mean that there's still unenumerated rights that are held
Speaker 2: by the people. What are those rights? How would you
Speaker 2: define those rights? How would you find those rights? I mean,
Speaker 2: that would be an unbelievable conversation that would be exciting
Speaker 2: to listen to, and I think, in modern times very
Speaker 2: very very depressing, But it would tell us.
Speaker 1: It would give us the information we need in order
Speaker 1: to make an evaluation of the people who are going
Speaker 1: to be Supreme Court judges. So I think that if
Speaker 1: we had more of that, more legal philosophy, definition of rights,
Speaker 1: examples of rights, what they mean, how they're applied, I
Speaker 1: think that would force the conversation. It would surface it
Speaker 1: to the bring it to the surface, or.
Speaker 2: If the constitutions somehow refer back to the declaration, is
Speaker 2: this is the context?
Speaker 1: I mean, some presidents understood this.
Speaker 2: I know Lincoln, for example, definitely understood the relationship between
Speaker 2: the Declaration of the and the and the and the Constitution.
Speaker 2: The declaration says the purpose of government. The Constitution is
Speaker 2: an articulation of okay, of the structure based on that,
Speaker 2: given the purpose of protection rights, this is, to the
Speaker 2: best of our knowledge, is the best way to structure government.
Speaker 2: And by the way, in terms of the structure of government,
Speaker 2: I really have no.
Speaker 1: Qualms with the Constitution, so.
Speaker 2: Rights, finding them, being clear on what they mean, and
Speaker 2: then as part of that, and being clear about the
Speaker 2: world of governing protecting rights.
Speaker 1: As part of.
Speaker 2: That, I think it would be good to articulate in
Speaker 2: a sense to conquitize what we mean by the government
Speaker 2: protect the individual rights and not and not involving itself
Speaker 2: in other things.
Speaker 1: It would be good in a sense to articulate some
Speaker 1: issues that have.
Speaker 2: Become you know, obviously problematic over the last two hundred years,
Speaker 2: areas where the government is infringing on our rights and
Speaker 2: has infringed in our rights and ever, you know, an
Speaker 2: ever increasing manner. So I mean, you could start with,
Speaker 2: you know, something like education or you know, or actually,
Speaker 2: let's start with something else. Let's start with education is related,
Speaker 2: but let's start with religion. The one area that the
Speaker 2: Founders understood that there was a real danger of an
Speaker 2: erosion and where the state could and would intervene and
Speaker 2: in a way that was destructive to how they viewed
Speaker 2: individual rights. Was in the area of religion. You have
Speaker 2: to understand that the Enlightenment arises out of a period
Speaker 2: of religious wars. The Enlightenment is an error in which
Speaker 2: part of what's driving all the thinkers that to think
Speaker 2: about political philosophy is how do we prevent the app
Speaker 2: solute slaughter.
Speaker 1: That happened during.
Speaker 2: The Thirty Year War and during many of the other
Speaker 2: wars that inflicted Europe in the pre Enlightenment era.
Speaker 1: And they recognized and.
Speaker 2: It was clear to them that much of the motivation
Speaker 2: for the slaughter was religion, and they wanted to make
Speaker 2: sure that this is one thing that they protected us against.
Speaker 1: And that is why you know.
Speaker 2: Amendment number one in the Bill of Rights is Congress
Speaker 2: shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or
Speaker 2: prohibiting the free exercise thereof I mean, that is powerful
Speaker 2: stuff for the seventeenth century, for the eighteenth century.
Speaker 1: I mean today we can take it for granted, but
Speaker 1: that was an era in which most people were religious.
Speaker 1: Overwhelming majority of people were religious, and not just in America,
Speaker 1: but Europe was even more religious. Than America was.
Speaker 2: Every country in Europe had a state religion. While there
Speaker 2: were no religious wars, there was still religious antagonism between
Speaker 2: Catholics and Protestants and various parts of Europe. So the
Speaker 2: Founders wanted to make clear that with they got a
Speaker 2: one set of ideas, you cannot restrict it, you cannot
Speaker 2: prohibit it.
Speaker 1: I think if they'd lived through the twentieth.
Speaker 2: Century, they would have said, huh, it seems like people
Speaker 2: kill each other, not just over religion, but over ideas
Speaker 2: more broadly. Now they already recognize this, and this is
Speaker 2: why the rest of the paragraph, the rest of the
Speaker 2: First Amendment is or abridging the freedom of speech or
Speaker 2: the press, of the press, or the right of the
Speaker 2: people peacefully to assemble and to petition the government for
Speaker 2: redress of grievances.
Speaker 1: So they say, you can't.
Speaker 2: You can't restrict a freedom when it comes to ideas
Speaker 2: and the expression of those ideas. So what Congress here
Speaker 2: creates is a separation of state and religion, which is
Speaker 2: even more explicit than Virginia Constitution.
Speaker 1: But it is pretty explicit here.
Speaker 2: Religion has no role in government, but does a sense
Speaker 2: in which ideas have no role in government all ideas.
Speaker 1: Governor is not.
Speaker 2: An advocate for capitalism or an advocate for socialism, or
Speaker 2: an advocate for anything.
Speaker 1: It's an advocate for individual rights.
Speaker 2: People can hold whatever ideas they want as long as
Speaker 2: they don't violate other people's rights.
Speaker 1: They can apply those ideas in their lives. So I
Speaker 1: would have liked to.
Speaker 2: See a more explicit recognition of Congress shall make no
Speaker 2: law respecting the establishment of any kind of ideas, including religion.
Speaker 2: Guman should separate itself in the realm of ideas, and
Speaker 2: maybe that would make it easier then to see the need.
Speaker 1: For another separation, a separation of the state from education.
Speaker 2: Now, the funny thing is that you know the Thomas Jefferson,
Speaker 2: one of the founding fathers, was really the first to
Speaker 2: on the one hand, articulate these rights and agree with
Speaker 2: these in a sense separations tape of religion, but then
Speaker 2: founds a state university run by the state state of Virginia,
Speaker 2: now now by the federal government. But I don't think
Speaker 2: that is. The principle is when should not mix government
Speaker 2: worth education? And yet the first mix we see in
Speaker 2: American is a mixture of government with education. That's in
Speaker 2: the founding of the University of Virginia. So some I'd
Speaker 2: like to see in a revised constitution, if you will,
Speaker 2: some kind of.
Speaker 1: Language that makes it clear.
Speaker 2: Even though if you define individual rights properly and you
Speaker 2: define the role of government has only protecting individual.
Speaker 1: Rights, this should be obvious, but it's good to articulate
Speaker 1: it explicitly that there should be a complete separation of
Speaker 1: state from education. The state has no role in education,
Speaker 1: has no role in ideas and in religion, and has
Speaker 1: no role in education. It doesn't have a perspective on it.
Speaker 2: It doesn't have a role in It doesn't think it's
Speaker 2: good or bad any particular education is good or bad.
Speaker 2: It doesn't have a position, and it doesn't as a consequence,
Speaker 2: fund it regulated control, it limited restricted, And that, by
Speaker 2: the way, not just should apply to the federal government,
Speaker 2: but to state governments as well.
Speaker 1: And that would be interesting.
Speaker 2: Should a federal constitutions state explicitly these particular things state
Speaker 2: governments cannot abridge either.
Speaker 1: So for example, if we have.
Speaker 2: A Congress would make no law respecting establishment of religion,
Speaker 2: does that apply to the states. What about if you
Speaker 2: separate state from education, can not apply to the states.
Speaker 2: It should what else should we separate, So we separated ideas,
Speaker 2: we separate education. Here's a big one, and a big
Speaker 2: one primarily because this is where we've seen more violations
Speaker 2: of rights, more violations of I think original intent than
Speaker 2: anywhere else, and that is when it comes to economic activity.
Speaker 2: I'd love to see some kind of statement in the
Speaker 2: Constitution says the Congress shall make no laws respecting the production, trade,
Speaker 2: and consumption of goods. Something like that, some amendment, some
Speaker 2: provision that separates.
Speaker 1: Here's another separation government from economics.
Speaker 2: And I think you would do more than just Congress
Speaker 2: shall make no law respecting the restrictions on production, trade,
Speaker 2: and consumption. But then it should have something about government
Speaker 2: should not establish a central bank. Government should not engage
Speaker 2: in any restrictions on money, on the establishment of money,
Speaker 2: government should set a denomination for currency which taxes are paid.
Speaker 2: Other than that, it has no role in money. So
Speaker 2: you know, regulation, what are regulations they're establishing restrictions on production,
Speaker 2: establishing with restrictions are trade, the establishing with restrictions on.
Speaker 1: Consumption. By the way, what a provision like that prohibit tariffs? Yes,
Speaker 1: I have said explicitly a restriction on trade and consumption.
Speaker 2: The constitution should make tariffs impossible by limiting the government's
Speaker 2: ability to.
Speaker 1: Restrict those things. To regulate those things.
Speaker 2: And regulate, of course, is another one of those woods
Speaker 2: that have changed its meaning.
Speaker 1: Over the over the uh uh, over the decades, centuries.
Speaker 2: Uh it, you know, what does regulate actually mean? Does
Speaker 2: regulate being control? That's how we interpret it today?
Speaker 1: Is that? How right? Is that?
Speaker 2: How they meant it when they say to regulate comments
Speaker 2: with foreign nations and among the several states? Is it
Speaker 2: to make it regular or to control it? And then
Speaker 2: they also say to coin money, which they should never
Speaker 2: live allowed. This is already an intervention in the economy, right,
Speaker 2: there should never have been allowed that the government coined
Speaker 2: money to regulate the value thereof again shouldn't have been allowed.
Speaker 2: Regulates control, So all these regulates should not have been
Speaker 2: in there. Right, and then the whole issue of collecting taxes, duties, imposts,
Speaker 2: an x is is problematic. It's again violation of rights,
Speaker 2: so separation state from the economics. But with a lot
Speaker 2: of thought given to how does that apply to trade
Speaker 2: among people in the state, how does that apply to
Speaker 2: trade with others? Maybe some something about national security, state
Speaker 2: of war.
Speaker 1: Something like that.
Speaker 2: Congress can in extraordinary measures at a you know, at
Speaker 2: a time of war, restrict the trade with the enemy
Speaker 2: as the only exception because it is an exception, because
Speaker 2: it's there. Because the purpose is still to protect individual rights.
Speaker 2: There should be a provision in terms of how to
Speaker 2: raise revenue without violating rights. That would be part of
Speaker 2: a new amendment to the Constitution, right to the Bill
Speaker 2: of Rights.
Speaker 1: So yeah, so separation state fan economics very essential, very needed.
Speaker 1: The realm in which rights are violated the.
Speaker 2: Most these days, right, is in the realm of economic activity,
Speaker 2: in the realm of production and the realm of trade.
Speaker 2: And you need to have it clear in the Constitution.
Speaker 1: That has not allowed.
Speaker 2: And I would say a fourth separate that really comes
Speaker 2: out of our experiences in modern times and suddenly what's
Speaker 2: going on right now, but really that's been going off
Speaker 2: for the last.
Speaker 1: I don't know, eighty ninety years, and that is a
Speaker 1: separation of state from science. A separation of state from science.
Speaker 2: A clear articulation of the fact that the state doesn't
Speaker 2: have a position on science, an opinion on scientific truth.
Speaker 2: It doesn't have a view about what science is correct
Speaker 2: and what is not. It doesn't have it doesn't fund science.
Speaker 2: And again here you would have to have one coveyat
Speaker 2: one exemption, and you'd have to be very clear on
Speaker 2: it because this is an time you have an exemption.
Speaker 1: This is where you could have abuse.
Speaker 2: Right that is, an exemption should be for national security.
Speaker 1: For defense said still be possible under this constitution, this
Speaker 1: new constitution, to have a Manhattan Project and to have
Speaker 1: ongoing a.
Speaker 2: Defense Department funding, particularly lines of research that explicitly and
Speaker 2: unambiguously a serving national security needs. I know, whether it's
Speaker 2: research into missiles, or whether it's research into today even
Speaker 2: into hacking and cybersecurity and things like that. But I
Speaker 2: don't know how you do this, but somehow the burden
Speaker 2: has to be very high to convince that this is
Speaker 2: indeed a national security issue. The government doesn't have to
Speaker 2: buy doesn't have to do research into police equipment, It
Speaker 2: just has to buy it. But when it comes to
Speaker 2: national defense, there are big projects that would not happen
Speaker 2: because there's no use for them unless the Defense Department
Speaker 2: is buying them. So for me, the most important of
Speaker 2: these is again defining rights, making clear what it is,
Speaker 2: making clear what the purpose of government is. I would
Speaker 2: get rid of ambiguous language like in the preamble to
Speaker 2: the Constitution, which says promote the general welfare.
Speaker 1: That has led to again, what do they mean by
Speaker 1: the general welfare?
Speaker 2: And what they meant which might have been securing rights
Speaker 2: for individuals.
Speaker 1: Look at the Declaration independence. That's what we meant.
Speaker 2: Is not what people today or what people in the
Speaker 2: interim were meant. So I'd love to get rid of
Speaker 2: empiguis languages like that and make it more explicit about
Speaker 2: rights with a definition and articulation of what it is.
Speaker 2: And then for separations from ideas i e. Religion is
Speaker 2: one idea or e g. Religion separation from education, which
Speaker 2: is related to ideas. No public schools, no public education,
Speaker 2: no government funded education, no government loans for education, no
Speaker 2: government grants for educational institutions, no government involvement in education,
Speaker 2: no national standards, no tests, NODI requirements, no title none,
Speaker 2: no affirmative action, no involvement of the government in the
Speaker 2: educational process. As long as there's no violation of individual rights.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's fine to say you can't beat your
Speaker 2: students because that's a violation of their rights.
Speaker 1: You can't torture them.
Speaker 2: I mean, there's a bunch of things you can say about,
Speaker 2: but mostly education should be private and left to parents
Speaker 2: and teachers and administrators and entrepreneurs to determine. Complete separations
Speaker 2: stay from economics other than protection against fraud.
Speaker 1: And the articulation.
Speaker 2: Of the essence of property rights and the boundaries thereof,
Speaker 2: and that again should be part of the role of government.
Speaker 2: Part of the role of government is to help define
Speaker 2: property rights in different realms, and I think Section eight
Speaker 2: of the Constitution articulates some of that. It also articulates
Speaker 2: things that are not shouldn't do it, like, for example,
Speaker 2: established post offices and post roads. No, I mean that
Speaker 2: should all be private sector. And then finally, and nobody
Speaker 2: could have foreseen that this would be an issue, that
Speaker 2: this would be.
Speaker 1: A problem until more recent times.
Speaker 2: I'd say climate change, and then everything going on today
Speaker 2: about with MAHA, you know, make America healthy again, and
Speaker 2: all of that, complete separation of state from science.
Speaker 1: The government has no role in science. Those would be
Speaker 1: the major changes I would make. I would make.
Speaker 2: I would highlight the Ninth Amendment again, this idea that
Speaker 2: whatever rights are being articulated, whatever separations are being explicitly
Speaker 2: said this is not the limit this, and I would
Speaker 2: I would I would spend a little bit more time
Speaker 2: saying the standard is individual rights and our understanding of
Speaker 2: individual rights, and that you know, over time we could say, oh,
Speaker 2: we need another separation, we need we need to make
Speaker 2: sure the government.
Speaker 1: Doesn't intervene in this.
Speaker 2: There wasn't explicitly said, just like we probably wouldn't have
Speaker 2: imagined science as being one of the separations needed, or
Speaker 2: even economy back in seventeen seventy six, although right off
Speaker 2: the bad, right right off the bad, after the constitution
Speaker 2: has passed, they start regulating banks.
Speaker 1: Even before the Constitution's passed, they start regulating banks.
Speaker 2: Is certainly at the state level, they were regulating the
Speaker 2: economy and banks and things like that, even even you know,
Speaker 2: right at the beginning. So maybe you could have already
Speaker 2: seen that that was going to happen. But the extent
Speaker 2: of it, I don't think anybody foresaw. But certainly science,
Speaker 2: I don't think they would have foreseen that could have
Speaker 2: been added, and there could be things in the future
Speaker 2: that should be added. But again, if the focus is positive,
Speaker 2: protect individual rights, and here's what rights are freedoms, freedom
Speaker 2: in the individuals that they've lived their lives pursuing their values,
Speaker 2: using their mind free of coercion, force, and authority. That's
Speaker 2: really you know, once you have that, and once you
Speaker 2: articulate the understanding of that. I mean, if I were
Speaker 2: writing in constitutions today, I would footnote constantly Rand's Article
Speaker 2: and Rand's Rights, because that's what you want them to get.
Speaker 2: You want them to get the two articles from my
Speaker 2: man that are crucial here Man's rights and the nature
Speaker 2: of government. And you want them to get in the
Speaker 2: future when they're interpreting the Constitution one hundred years from now.
Speaker 2: You want them to get that these are the foundations,
Speaker 2: this is what it's based on.
Speaker 1: These are the ideas that are being.
Speaker 2: Rearticulated into a legal document called the Constitution.
Speaker 1: That's all large extent is missing, all right.
Speaker 2: I think those are the main things I would do.
Speaker 2: You know, something explicitly saying and I think it's in there,
Speaker 2: but nobody takes it seriously. It's in the Tenth amend
Speaker 2: It's in the tenth Amendment. The power is not delegated
Speaker 2: to the United States by Constitution. No prohibited by it
Speaker 2: to the States are reserved for the states, respectively, or
Speaker 2: to the people I think, I mean, I think the
Speaker 2: two things here. I don't think that is highlighted enough.
Speaker 2: And I think too much power is left to the states.
Speaker 2: I think the states need to be these separations need
Speaker 2: to be it needs to be explicit. Then see separations
Speaker 2: apply to the states. Now let me I mean there's one,
Speaker 2: of course, an elephant in the room if you will,
Speaker 2: that haven't even touched on, and that is, of course,
Speaker 2: the Constitution up amidst slavery. Slavery is exactly a violation
Speaker 2: of rights. It's exactly what neither the federal government should
Speaker 2: be allowed to do or state government should be allowed
Speaker 2: to do. That is, this idea that no rights should
Speaker 2: be violated should apply to the federal government and through
Speaker 2: the federal government to the states. So once you define rights,
Speaker 2: that is the definition that holds not only for the
Speaker 2: federal government, but also it's the state governments. And that
Speaker 2: is what should have made slavery impossible.
Speaker 1: Once the Constitution was passed.
Speaker 2: So Malcolm says, I don't know if complete separation of
Speaker 2: state and education will ever exist. Many free market people
Speaker 2: still think it's a state's business.
Speaker 1: If a child is doing is being educated wrong?
Speaker 2: Yeah, but this is exactly why many free market people
Speaker 2: are in the end unprincipled and useless. Sorry, but you
Speaker 2: can be I mean, put aside free market. You can
Speaker 2: be an advocate for individual rights. You can't be an
Speaker 2: advocate of individualism and think that the state should be
Speaker 2: for defining what wrong education is. So it's because free
Speaker 2: market intellectuals are so utilitarian, so unprincipled, so compromising, that
Speaker 2: it's very hard to fight side by side with them
Speaker 2: and actually make progress towards real freedom.
Speaker 1: But real freedom, real freedom.
Speaker 2: Requires the separation of state from education complete.
Speaker 1: And if that can't happen, then nothing else will happen.
Speaker 2: That is, if you don't understand why the state should
Speaker 2: have no role in education, then I don't think you
Speaker 2: understand why the state should have no role in economics.
Speaker 2: Because the reason the state should have no role in
Speaker 2: economics is not some utilitarian economic argument. It's not that
Speaker 2: it's more efficient if the state stays out of it.
Speaker 2: It's again an argument from the perspective of individual rights,
Speaker 2: from the perspective of freedom. Principled argument for individual rights
Speaker 2: and freedom leads to the other states should not be
Speaker 2: intervening in the economy, and that leads to the best
Speaker 2: economic outcome possible.
Speaker 1: But you don't start with the best economic outcome. You
Speaker 1: start with the issue of of how individuals should live
Speaker 1: in order to have the opportunity to be the best
Speaker 1: human beings, the best people possible, and to be the
Speaker 1: best that we can be as human beings. The one
Speaker 1: thing we need is freedom. The one thing we need.
Speaker 2: From government at least, is the extraction of force, the
Speaker 2: extraction of violence, the extraction of cosion from human society.
Speaker 2: And then it's our responsibility to embrace the things that
Speaker 2: lead to happiness. That is reason and a morality of egoism.
Speaker 2: But that can be imposed from.
Speaker 1: The top, and it should not be in the state
Speaker 1: run curriculum. The curriculum should be determined by teaches, entrepreneurs
Speaker 1: and teachers and parents. Sorry, teaches, entrepreneurs and parents.
Speaker 2: In the marketplace, schools are no different from a marketplace
Speaker 2: perspective than they need good needs, healthcare, any of the
Speaker 2: things that today the market that the goverman intervenes in
Speaker 2: and regulation controls and owns to a loge extent. All right,
Speaker 2: that is my I want to thank Troy for funding
Speaker 2: the show.
Speaker 1: Troy sponsored the show, so thank you Troy. Who's Australian.
Speaker 1: It's not even American with American Constitution.
Speaker 2: But thanks Troy for sponsoring this, and I'm curious to
Speaker 2: see if in the questions you guys bring up other
Speaker 2: issues relating to the Constitution and maybe your ideas on
Speaker 2: how it should be reframed or restated. That would be
Speaker 2: a great use of a super chat is to present
Speaker 2: your own views about this topic and maybe and I
Speaker 2: can comment on them.
Speaker 1: But but yeah, you.
Speaker 2: Know again, this is something that one day, when relevant
Speaker 2: or in getting close to being relevant, philosophers of law
Speaker 2: have to sit down and actually writes a constitution, actually
Speaker 2: do it from scratch.
Speaker 1: I mean on the.
Speaker 2: Basis I think of the existing Constitution, but updating the
Speaker 2: language and updating the references and updating the issues and
Speaker 2: integrating I think the ideas that I've articulated here into
Speaker 2: a proper legal document.
Speaker 1: Which is not easy, not straightforward at all, will be
Speaker 1: a great you know, great, great, great, huge achievement. But
Speaker 1: too early, it's too early today, It's just too early.
Speaker 2: I mean, it doesn't have any practical uses and somebody
Speaker 2: really doing it. We need some real giants of legal
Speaker 2: philosophy to do it. Constitution two point zero.
Speaker 1: I like that.
Speaker 2: All right, Thanks everybody again, thanks to Troy making the
Speaker 2: show possible and getting me thinking about this, and I've
Speaker 2: thought about it for a long time, but getting me
Speaker 2: to articulate it.
Speaker 1: To you in one session that was great. I enjoyed it.
Speaker 1: I hope you did too.
Speaker 2: Let's see what else do we want to Yes? No,
Speaker 2: I mean Cato Institute cannot do this.
Speaker 1: Sorry.
Speaker 2: As much as I respect certain things about the CATO
Speaker 2: in this institute, the Cato Institute does not have a
Speaker 2: philosophical grounding to do this. They understand some extent existing constitution,
Speaker 2: they have a constitutional center there, but they don't have
Speaker 2: a proper understanding of political philosophy and a proper understanding
Speaker 2: of the mall foundations of that political philosophy to actually
Speaker 2: write a good constitution. Their constitution would be better than
Speaker 2: this one, but it wouldn't be the right one.
Speaker 1: Wouldn't be the right one. And because most again most
Speaker 1: people a CATO.
Speaker 2: And are utilitarians, and this is not a smear, this
Speaker 2: is what they would think. You need an objectivist philosopher
Speaker 2: who understands individual rights.
Speaker 1: I think most people, I think a lot of people
Speaker 1: at CATO, I don't know how many individual rights. They're kind
Speaker 1: of a useful concept, but it's not that important, you Telici,
Speaker 1: your instn't think individual rights are that important. You need
Speaker 1: a rights perspective.
Speaker 2: And to have a rights perspective, you really need to
Speaker 2: have a morality of individualism. You need to understand that
Speaker 2: individual rights a moral concept, come from morality, and then
Speaker 2: you have to have the right morey to underpin them,
Speaker 2: and that morality is egoism.
Speaker 1: It has to be an individualistic morality. And so you
Speaker 1: cannot be religious and do this right.
Speaker 2: You cannot be a contient, you cannot be an altruist
Speaker 2: and do this right. There are absolutely such things as rights.
Speaker 2: Just look, there's such thing as justice, and just like
Speaker 2: there's such thing as love. These are abstract concepts, but
Speaker 2: they are absolutely rights. And if you don't have a
Speaker 2: concept of rights, and if you don't understand the concept
Speaker 2: of rights, and you can't articulate the concept of rights
Speaker 2: and you don't understand where it comes from and what
Speaker 2: it's established on, you cannot You cannot touch the Constitution,
Speaker 2: leave it as it is better than anything else that
Speaker 2: will come about. I mean, outside of objectivism, the concept
Speaker 2: of rights is completely messed up heinmand is the real
Speaker 2: error and completa of the Enlightenment project in political philosophy
Speaker 2: and moral philosophy. But you have to have the right
Speaker 2: maral philosophy to be able to have the right political philosophy.
Speaker 2: I mean the argument the idea that there are no
Speaker 2: rights on your agreements. That idea is the destroyer of freedom.
Speaker 2: That idea is the destroyer of rights and of liberty
Speaker 2: and of freedom. All right, Okay, if you want to
Speaker 2: ask questions, make a comment, suggest something. The superchat is open,
Speaker 2: so I f you're fee up, jump onto the super
Speaker 2: chat and.
Speaker 1: Do that.
Speaker 2: We are way behind on our goals for today. Today's
Speaker 2: just like any other show.
Speaker 1: We have goals.
Speaker 2: One hour goal was still about one hundred dollars short
Speaker 2: of our first hour goal, and we're already on the
Speaker 2: second hour.
Speaker 1: So it would be great if we can at least
Speaker 1: achieve our first hour goal. That would be amazing. Daniel
Speaker 1: here has really set the tone. It's his first super
Speaker 1: chat ever, I think that's what YouTube tells me, and
Speaker 1: he has.
Speaker 2: Already done fifty dollars. That's amazing, So thank you. Let
Speaker 2: me just thank some stickers before we get to Daniel Brady,
Speaker 2: thank you for the sticker. I think I saw a
Speaker 2: few others. You two can just support the show with
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Speaker 1: So please consider doing that.
Speaker 2: Remember, value for value, the show is made possible from
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Speaker 2: support you guys provide. Don't get any grants from anybody.
Speaker 2: We have a couple of sponsors, but that's not a
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Speaker 1: All right, let's start with Daniel who I get again? First?
Speaker 1: Super said question, so this is great. Fifty dollars that's amazing.
Speaker 2: Abundance by Eza Klein and Derek Thompson gives a progressive
Speaker 2: vision of abundance with a communist view of technology and
Speaker 2: social progress, a ploy to capture the term for central planning.
Speaker 2: Suddenly it's a way for them to capture the term
Speaker 2: for the left. And I think though that there are
Speaker 2: people on the left as a client, and Derek Thompson
Speaker 2: among them, And Derrek Thompson often writes very good stuff
Speaker 2: I think in Atlantic about progress and about the need
Speaker 2: for progress and the need for economic growth.
Speaker 1: But people like no Smith and others who really do
Speaker 1: believe that we need economic growth and economic growth is
Speaker 1: good and abundance is good, and we want to have
Speaker 1: more abundance.
Speaker 2: I think they really believe that. I think, as a
Speaker 2: client believes that. I think Dearrack Thompson believes.
Speaker 1: That, but they are gravely mistaken. Whether those mistakes are
Speaker 1: consequence of just errors of knowledge, or whether those mistakes
Speaker 1: are consequence of evasion and not being wanting to be
Speaker 1: too radical or of.
Speaker 2: Altruism, could very well be evasions resulting from altruism. They
Speaker 2: really do believe that central planning, or at least some
Speaker 2: central planning elence of clentral planning, are needed in order
Speaker 2: to reach amundance. So, for example, I think a lot
Speaker 2: of these people, Klin and Thompson, no Smith, and others
Speaker 2: really believe and I think that they honestly hold this,
Speaker 2: although again within the scope of what they're willing to
Speaker 2: look at. They believe that government is necessary for scientific
Speaker 2: progress and therefore for technological progress. So I don't think
Speaker 2: as a client Dery Thompson would say we should nationalize
Speaker 2: Silicon Valley. But what they do say is we should
Speaker 2: be investing a lot more government money into scientific research
Speaker 2: that then can be spun off into you know, projects
Speaker 2: of silicon value. I mean they would argue, and there
Speaker 2: is some maybe not much, but some reason to do this,
Speaker 2: that you know, something like the Internet is a product
Speaker 2: ultimately of the government. The governments set up the first
Speaker 2: communication between computers and set up the first Web. And
Speaker 2: they would argue nothing would happen without the government, that
Speaker 2: this was a necessary thing, and indeed more of that
Speaker 2: should happen, and the way to achieve more of that
Speaker 2: is for the government to spend more money on science
Speaker 2: without them rejecting markets for certain things. So they again
Speaker 2: utilitarian thinking. They think governance necessarily for certain things. I eat,
Speaker 2: big projects like NASA and the you know what they
Speaker 2: view as the Internet, So that was never the intent
Speaker 2: of the people who started nuclear research other things, and
Speaker 2: that's what you need government for. And the private sector
Speaker 2: they can commercialize it and make it more efficient, more productive.
Speaker 2: Markets are good for that. They also, to their credit,
Speaker 2: I'd say, I think that local government should be massively
Speaker 2: deregulating so that we can build more, but they don't
Speaker 2: extrapolate that to other ways in which we should deregulate.
Speaker 2: And I think the key here is they come in
Speaker 2: everything from a welfas state utilitarian perspective, and what they
Speaker 2: ignore and what they don't talk about it at all.
Speaker 1: What they don't relate to it all is rights.
Speaker 2: Is the idea that there are such things as individual
Speaker 2: rights and that the government violates them when they regulate, that,
Speaker 2: it violates them when it taxes money and spends them
Speaker 2: on research. They don't see that, they don't care about that,
Speaker 2: they don't philosophically, don't relate to.
Speaker 1: That at all. So I think they want aboundon. So remember,
Speaker 1: and this is in a sense, they are a a
Speaker 1: what do you call it, you know, kind of a.
Speaker 2: Backward look at old the old left, the left of
Speaker 2: the forties, fifties, sixties, early sixties before the new left
Speaker 2: replaced him. The old left, the Marxist left, the real
Speaker 2: Marxist left, not that modern nihilistic left, the old Marxist left.
Speaker 2: Marx isn't believed in progress. Marx's utopia is a utopia
Speaker 2: of abundance. It's we have everything we need and we
Speaker 2: could do whatever we want because our material stuff is
Speaker 2: taking care of how exactly he never tells us.
Speaker 1: But Marx is pro abundance. Marxism is pro abundance.
Speaker 2: It doesn't have an idea how to get there, So
Speaker 2: what Client and Thompson are doing is resurrecting an old left,
Speaker 2: a left that believed in industrialization, believed in abundance before
Speaker 2: it was taken over by nihilists and environmentalists and haters
Speaker 2: who focus on hate. They believe that abundance needs the state,
Speaker 2: i e. State investment, state regulations, state control, states, intral
Speaker 2: planning to be achieved. And they're wrong in that, But
Speaker 2: they are hearkening back to the age of the Left
Speaker 2: being Marxist versus the modern left, which is anti progress,
Speaker 2: anti achievement, anti wealth, anti industrialization. I'll take them over
Speaker 2: the new Left any day, right. So I don't think
Speaker 2: it's quite that they're trying to capture the term. It's
Speaker 2: more that there's a way in which they believe that
Speaker 2: that is what they want, even though a lot of
Speaker 2: their prescriptions for it a destructive to abundance. Central planning
Speaker 2: is clearly destructive to abundance. Thank you, Daniel, thanks to
Speaker 2: the first super chat, hopefully the first of many. Andrew,
Speaker 2: what are the false premises behind the claim that if
Speaker 2: government didn't provide X service education then there would be
Speaker 2: no X.
Speaker 1: Or inferior X.
Speaker 2: There seems to be a very low opinion of humanity
Speaker 2: implicity in that. Yeah, there's a low opinion of humanity.
Speaker 2: There's a low opinion of markets and how they work.
Speaker 2: There's a lack of understanding of markets and how they work.
Speaker 2: But there's also, you know, an implicity galitarianism there. That is,
Speaker 2: government is the only one that can make sure everybody
Speaker 2: gets it and everybody gets the same, and the rich
Speaker 2: don't get a better product than the poor because the
Speaker 2: reality isn't a free market. It's quite likely rich will
Speaker 2: get a better education, at least in some dimensions than
Speaker 2: the poor world. The rich school will have swimming pools
Speaker 2: and football courts and football fields and baseball fields, and
Speaker 2: they'll have a better experience than their you know, the
Speaker 2: poor schools. And that is offensive to anybody who believes
Speaker 2: in egalitarianism. So I think it's a lack of understanding
Speaker 2: of how that works and also.
Speaker 1: A certain reality that and this is unfortunate because of
Speaker 1: how it evolved. Well, the first schools in America were
Speaker 1: not government schools, most of them because they weren't govern
Speaker 1: schools were schools run by churches. Religious schools or schools.
Speaker 2: Maybe they didn't focus on religion, but they were managed
Speaker 2: by religious orders, So if you wanted a secular education,
Speaker 2: it seemed like the only one available was from the government.
Speaker 2: And then the government steps in and it happened very
Speaker 2: quickly in the late nineteenth century and then into the
Speaker 2: twentieth century. Is the government monopolizes education and it crowds
Speaker 2: out private capital.
Speaker 1: And just at the point where private education probably would
Speaker 1: have taken off, where private education became feasible.
Speaker 2: Because the middle class there was a middle class. Now
Speaker 2: people had money they could pay for their kids' education.
Speaker 2: You could even have you had enough money in the
Speaker 2: hands of some people so that you could create scholarship
Speaker 2: funds for poor kids to attend a private edged schools.
Speaker 2: Just when that could have bubbled to the surface, where
Speaker 2: entrepreneurs could have started schools and charged money and kids
Speaker 2: would have come, it's about the same time the state
Speaker 2: decided to get involved and basically crowded out that private education.
Speaker 1: Said no, don't do that, we'll do it. We got it,
Speaker 1: we got to cover it.
Speaker 2: Don't worry about it, you know, And there are other
Speaker 2: things like you know, there's a lot of places around
Speaker 2: the world where healthcare is the same thing. And again,
Speaker 2: underlying the healthcare argument is if you had private rich
Speaker 2: people would get better healthcare.
Speaker 1: Than poor people. That's true. People don't see the mind.
Speaker 1: Or rich people eat better food.
Speaker 2: Rich people drive nicer cars, rich people live in better homes,
Speaker 2: bigger homes, nicer homes. But when it comes to healthcare
Speaker 2: and it comes to education, egalitarianism kicks in and we
Speaker 2: demand that everybody get the same. So it's a galitarianism
Speaker 2: really driving it. And education, as I said, markets never
Speaker 2: really developed, so what you got from the beginning was
Speaker 2: public education. And you think people think therefore that it's
Speaker 2: just like just that. And with health care, there were
Speaker 2: enough challenges with the private because the private ticket was
Speaker 2: never truly private. There were distortions and perversions, starting certainly
Speaker 2: with World War two in America, so that a healthy
Speaker 2: private market never developed in healthcare, and the government stepped
Speaker 2: in and started taking over big chunks of it, or
Speaker 2: or by giving taxt baks the businesses created they center
Speaker 2: for them to buy insurance and providing the market very
Speaker 2: very quickly and very very easily.
Speaker 1: So those are the kind of reasons.
Speaker 2: But I think the basic premises egalitarianism and the idea
Speaker 2: that markets can't provide these services.
Speaker 1: The economic idea all right, I'll ask again stickers, stickers,
Speaker 1: so we can make our goal. We are now what
Speaker 1: are we? You know, another.
Speaker 2: Sixty dollars short of our one hour goal, which would
Speaker 2: be nice to reach sixty, or somebody should come in
Speaker 2: with a.
Speaker 1: Sticker for fifty bucks. That'd be great, Richard. Thank you.
Speaker 2: In defining rights, it bears repeating that a right applies
Speaker 2: only to individual action or speech. It's not an entirement
Speaker 2: from the government, such as a right to health care housing.
Speaker 1: Yes, exactly.
Speaker 2: So that's the kind of thing that needs to be
Speaker 2: explained in a definition of rights and an explanation of
Speaker 2: what we mean by rights. Now, of course there's a
Speaker 2: sension which you do have a right to health care.
Speaker 2: You have a right to receive whatever healthcare.
Speaker 1: You can negotiate with those who provided and you get
Speaker 1: to choose who do negotiate with and who not to
Speaker 1: negotiate with, who to engage in their service, and who
Speaker 1: not engage in their service.
Speaker 2: That's what it means to have a right to healthcare
Speaker 2: or right to housing. You have a right to go
Speaker 2: out there, buy and engage in trade with whoever is
Speaker 2: willing to trade with you. And that's the sense in
Speaker 2: which the right is only a right to action, not
Speaker 2: to stuff, not to an outcome, just to the act
Speaker 2: of pursuing No, William, the government should not deal with
Speaker 2: water or electricity or any other thing, or roads or
Speaker 2: canals or anything that you might have difficulty wrapping your
Speaker 2: head around. This is what it means to think in principle,
Speaker 2: the government is not protecting individual rights by dealing with water.
Speaker 2: It is not protecting individual rights by dealing with electricity,
Speaker 2: So it has no business there other than if somebody
Speaker 2: is violating property rights, or somebody is committing fraud, or
Speaker 2: somebody is polluting the water in a way that makes
Speaker 2: people's sake, or you know, killing people with their electricity.
Speaker 2: Government has no role other than protect individual rights.
Speaker 1: Well, that's tough.
Speaker 2: If you don't have a choice, it's not the government's
Speaker 2: job to provide you with choices. First of all, you
Speaker 2: have a choice to move, you have a choice to
Speaker 2: live without, you have a choice to dig your own well,
Speaker 2: you have lots of choices, And the fact that you
Speaker 2: can't conceive today of having choices around those things is.
Speaker 1: Just a lack of imagination.
Speaker 2: Markets provide for choices in ways that are hard for
Speaker 2: us to imagine.
Speaker 1: When we allow markets to actually function.
Speaker 2: But markets don't function with regard of water, not in
Speaker 2: terms of the private ownership of water with the source
Speaker 2: or the private ownership of the pipes and the ability
Speaker 2: to provide you.
Speaker 1: With multiple sources.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because you have a choice to go well on
Speaker 2: your property, you don't have a right to somebody providing
Speaker 2: you with water.
Speaker 1: Figure out how to get water to your property. No,
Speaker 1: I'm absolutely one hundred percent serious you.
Speaker 2: If you can't figure out how to get water to
Speaker 2: your property or how to buy water for somebody who
Speaker 2: provides the water, then you won't have water.
Speaker 1: This is what it means to thinking principle.
Speaker 2: And your lack of ability to imagine the two providers
Speaker 2: of water would build pipes into your neighborhood and to
Speaker 2: your home is your lack of imagination.
Speaker 1: But that's the point.
Speaker 2: I don't know exactly how you solve problems in the marketplace.
Speaker 1: I leave it to the market.
Speaker 2: And electricity in the original When originally electricity was put
Speaker 2: in place, there were competitors of electricity. It's only when
Speaker 2: the state came in and in a sense, forced monopolies
Speaker 2: onto these things did was electricity then restricted to one provider?
Speaker 2: You can call it silly all you like, but it
Speaker 2: is reality. There's no such thing as a natural monopoly,
Speaker 2: and there's no such thing as the government should provide
Speaker 2: you with fill in the blank.
Speaker 1: Just isn't.
Speaker 2: Mary Mary say she owns a property where water is delivered,
Speaker 2: But you have a right to have a pipe delivering
Speaker 2: water to your property. And indeed, development would have happened
Speaker 2: in a different way. Developers would have thought about how
Speaker 2: to provide people with alternatives to electricity and for water
Speaker 2: as they developed neighborhoods if they wasn't a state monopoly
Speaker 2: over these things. Imagine one big tunnel that is dug
Speaker 2: under neighborhoods, that which they do today with cable and
Speaker 2: other things, where you can put whatever kind of pipelines
Speaker 2: or whatever kind of cables that you want.
Speaker 1: I mean, I remember the days, during the days where
Speaker 1: nobody could conceive of how you could ad Internet unless
Speaker 1: the government guaranteed the internet. Right. William C.
Speaker 2: Says, I have two or three water providers, Well the ego,
Speaker 2: So what's so silly? You have already two or three
Speaker 2: water providers. So what does the government have to be
Speaker 2: involved here? Choose you should have two or three electricity providers.
Speaker 2: You have multiple providers of internet service. Even though I
Speaker 2: remember in the nineties everybody thought it was a monopoly
Speaker 2: it could only be one.
Speaker 1: It could it was the telephone.
Speaker 2: It all came on the telephone line, and whoever owned
Speaker 2: the telephone line had a monopoly. Having two or three water.
Speaker 1: Providers is certainly a free is relatively free market.
Speaker 2: A lot of people don't have two or three because
Speaker 2: it hasn't been allowed. So, going back to Richard, yes,
Speaker 2: you're not entitled to anything. You're entitled to be left free.
Speaker 2: But even if you only have one, it doesn't mean
Speaker 2: you're entitled to it. You don't pay your bill, they'll
Speaker 2: cut your water off, and if they jack up the prices,
Speaker 2: they jack up the prices, and then people will start
Speaker 2: thinking about how to create alternatives. But no, a free
Speaker 2: market is.
Speaker 1: Gunman. Doesn't guarantee you any economic product.
Speaker 2: Any economic product doesn't guarantee your water, doesn't guarantee you electricity.
Speaker 2: You know, I'll tie to anything.
Speaker 1: You have to pay for it. You don't pay, you
Speaker 1: don't get it, and you have to pay what the
Speaker 1: market bears.
Speaker 4: All right, tom uh I recommend restoring the Lost Constitution
Speaker 4: by Professor Randy Barnett.
Speaker 1: He'd make a good interview. Guess yeah.
Speaker 2: Randy's really good on the Constitution and he's really good
Speaker 2: on interpreting the Constitution. He's a bit of a I
Speaker 2: mean it's a bit of an originalist, and he is
Speaker 2: an anarchist.
Speaker 1: I think the best book about constitution is about about
Speaker 1: thinking about the Constitution is Tarah Smith's book. I forget
Speaker 1: its name now, but Tara has a really good book.
Speaker 2: Uh, kind of a legal philosophy that would go into
Speaker 2: a constitution.
Speaker 1: I'm just looking up the name of the book. Where
Speaker 1: is the actual book? A book?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a judicial review in an Objective Legal System.
Speaker 2: So a lot of that kind of thinking about the Constitution,
Speaker 2: about how to think about the Constitution, how to think
Speaker 2: about in a sense of tipening in the Constitution.
Speaker 1: That's what judicial review is.
Speaker 2: You know, is there highly recommend it. It's you can
Speaker 2: find it in an Amazon. God it's expensive on hardcover,
Speaker 2: but you can get it on kindle for a pretty
Speaker 2: good price. So Judicial Review in an Objective Legal System
Speaker 2: by Tara Smith. If you're interested about these topics, Tom,
Speaker 2: if you've read a Barnett, you should definitely read Tara Smith.
Speaker 2: She's critical of certain aspects of Randy's content, but also
Speaker 2: positive on a lot of other things that Randy's done.
Speaker 2: Michael Trump still went through with a few hundred deportations
Speaker 2: despite a judge pause. His lunacy is getting dangerous. But
Speaker 2: I don't see anyone in Congress having the balls to impeach. No,
Speaker 2: nobody's gonna impeach you in Congress. Forget about that. That's
Speaker 2: not going to happen. Let's see if he continues, and
Speaker 2: let's see what the quote does and and and how
Speaker 2: people respond to it.
Speaker 1: But yeah, you.
Speaker 2: Know, he's got people like Elon Musk standing next to
Speaker 2: him saying we should just impeach the judges that reverse
Speaker 2: your decisions. You should be able to do whatever you want. Andrew,
Speaker 2: how do you ground in reality? The proper meaning of
Speaker 2: rights to life is against the right to be given
Speaker 2: the things one.
Speaker 1: Needs to live well. The proper grounding in reality is to.
Speaker 2: Really think about why we need rights, What is the
Speaker 2: concept of rights, what.
Speaker 1: Purpose does it serve, what purpose does it serve? And
Speaker 1: to understand that, we have to understand the nature of
Speaker 1: human beings, and really before even what human beings require,
Speaker 1: what humans being need?
Speaker 2: When they come into society when they are in a
Speaker 2: group in a social context. So we should start with
Speaker 2: the nature of human beings, and one has to understand
Speaker 2: that the nature of human beings is to be rational.
Speaker 2: Rationality is what makes us human, what makes the pursuit
Speaker 2: of values possible, what makes human success at living possible.
Speaker 2: So human success at living requires rationality, requires reason. Now
Speaker 2: what does reason require? Reason requires the absence of force.
Speaker 2: That is, when we come into interaction with other people,
Speaker 2: the thing that can obstruct our ability to think and
Speaker 2: to act on those thoughts to pursue our values, to
Speaker 2: achieve our values in there for to achieve our happiness.
Speaker 1: Is force incursion.
Speaker 2: That is, the enemy of the individual, the enemy of
Speaker 2: an individual list, the enemy of an egoist, the enemy
Speaker 2: of a rational animal, because it is the enemy of reason.
Speaker 2: It obstructs ability to reason. So writs a way to
Speaker 2: formalize that, the way to formalize the idea that a
Speaker 2: rational being needs to be free of coasion and force
Speaker 2: in order to be able to pursue his happiness, in
Speaker 2: order to be able to use his mind in pursuit
Speaker 2: of his happiness.
Speaker 1: That's it, and the whole idea of getting things you
Speaker 1: need to live well. That mdically should be suspicious because
Speaker 1: the only way you could get them is if they're
Speaker 1: taken from those who produce them.
Speaker 2: And that means those people don't have a right to
Speaker 2: live free or force incosion. They are now just tools
Speaker 2: for me to live well. That means rights are not universal.
Speaker 2: But rights are universal, just as human nature is universal.
Speaker 2: So uh, rights can't. It's a contradiction, the idea that
Speaker 2: you have a right to other people's stuff, that's an
Speaker 2: immediate contradiction.
Speaker 1: The only right you have is to be left alone.
Speaker 2: So the engagement with other people requires an understanding the
Speaker 2: coosion is banned, that there is no cosion, and that
Speaker 2: is what the concept of rights captures. And if somebody
Speaker 2: violates that, if somebody doesn't want.
Speaker 1: To agree, oh I think qusion is great, I'm going
Speaker 1: to go rape and pillage. Okay, Well, we have a.
Speaker 2: Mechanism a police that captures you and throws you in
Speaker 2: jail forever, because we don't need your agreement to do that.
Speaker 1: We don't need your agreement to put you in jail.
Speaker 1: You have violated right, the fundamental necessity for human coexistence, Richard,
Speaker 1: how could you tighten the Constitution to completely prevent buying
Speaker 1: and selling government influence. Well, I don't think you really can.
Speaker 1: What you can do is.
Speaker 2: Restrict the influence government has so that there's nothing to buy.
Speaker 2: There's nothing to buy. If I, you know, can't give
Speaker 2: subsidies because that's a violation of the principal separation state
Speaker 2: from economics, why would you lobby me.
Speaker 1: If I can't give out favors, why would you lobby me?
Speaker 2: So the only thing is government contracts, and government contracts
Speaker 2: even there would be limited, government would be relatively small,
Speaker 2: and the main contracts would be defense contracts, and you
Speaker 2: could have something in there about, you know, the illegality
Speaker 2: and the wrongness of bribery, but that could be in
Speaker 2: legislation afterwards in terms of exactly how to procure defense
Speaker 2: contracts without corruption. But and you can't have a will
Speaker 2: it prove anything, right, So corruption is always possible. But
Speaker 2: if we reduce the influence.
Speaker 1: Of politicians, you reduce the need to lobby them, the
Speaker 1: ability to lobby them, the purpose of lobbying them, it's gone.
Speaker 1: They have no power.
Speaker 2: Make politicians impotent, and then you don't have to worry
Speaker 2: about the influence of lobbying.
Speaker 1: All right, Merrivins.
Speaker 2: The federalist papers resemble experimentation, isolate variables aspects of the Constitution,
Speaker 2: and test them against the objections of the public forum. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean they were partially to do that. They were
Speaker 2: partially to educate the public. They were partially to test
Speaker 2: them against each other. That is, the federalist papers are
Speaker 2: debates between some of the people engaged in writing the Constitution,
Speaker 2: and they were testing out their theories against one another.
Speaker 1: But yes, and against the public. So I think that's right.
Speaker 2: And you think about how beautifully written they are, how intellectual, how.
Speaker 1: They are, how deep they are.
Speaker 2: That that is right. Williams says. Defense is another good
Speaker 2: example of an industry. We don't have a choice it.
Speaker 2: It's the only industry. Government is a monopoly over the
Speaker 2: use of force. Goverment is a monopoly over the use
Speaker 2: of force. The only thing should be monopolized in our
Speaker 2: world is force. That means policing and military.
Speaker 1: That's it. That's it.
Speaker 2: Now the government chooses between different arms of manufacturers. So
Speaker 2: the arms of manufacturers still can be in a private market,
Speaker 2: in a free market.
Speaker 1: But you, as a citizen, the only choice you have
Speaker 1: is the state.
Speaker 2: In this country, you'll leave. But in this country, the
Speaker 2: government has a monopoly over the use of force. You
Speaker 2: cannot take a gun and go and enforce the laws.
Speaker 2: You can't hire a private security firm to go and
Speaker 2: enforce the laws. Only the government can enforce the laws.
Speaker 1: That is the only, the one and only.
Speaker 2: Monopoly that exists, and it's a state granded monopoly. And
Speaker 2: it's the whole purpose of a state. There's no purpose
Speaker 2: of a state other than to be the monopoly over
Speaker 2: the use of force. And that's what it really means
Speaker 2: to have individual rights. It means they have an entity
Speaker 2: that protects your rights. In order to protect those rights,
Speaker 2: it has to have a monopoly over the use of force.
Speaker 2: And they are held accountable through voting. That's what you
Speaker 2: have a constitution for. That's why constitution has a separation
Speaker 2: of powers. That's why it limits the power of each
Speaker 2: branch of the government. That's why each branch of the
Speaker 2: government is supposed to correct the other branches of the government,
Speaker 2: look over and check on the other branches of government.
Speaker 2: And then ultimately, since all those branches are government, ultimately
Speaker 2: re bound to a vote by the population.
Speaker 1: That is what holds them accountable. A Constitution and voting
Speaker 1: hector on.
Speaker 2: Most of the US didn't have a high school diploma
Speaker 2: for a long time, that's right, And for a long
Speaker 2: time that wasn't needed.
Speaker 1: Today, more and more it is needed.
Speaker 2: Maybe not the high school diplomas that are being granted
Speaker 2: out there, that is garbage, but a proper high school diploma,
Speaker 2: a high school diploma that actually represents a teaching of
Speaker 2: skills of knowledge, knowledge that is necessary in order to
Speaker 2: function in.
Speaker 1: The modern world. That I think is required.
Speaker 2: We live in information to chnological age, a computer age,
Speaker 2: where certain basic knowledge needs needs to be there. Jacob,
Speaker 2: how much of the Constitution was feel in by case
Speaker 2: law within the first five decades of the country. Would
Speaker 2: you change or altered this structure? Well, I mean the
Speaker 2: more explicit the.
Speaker 1: Constitution had been about rights and what they meant, the
Speaker 1: less you would have needed that.
Speaker 2: Filling in, so part of that would be taken care
Speaker 2: of that. But yeah, I mean, I think the Constitution
Speaker 2: needed to be more explicit about certain things so that
Speaker 2: it relied less on that case law.
Speaker 1: And I don't know how much of it. I'm not
Speaker 1: a scholar of the history of.
Speaker 2: The Constitution, and so I don't know how much of
Speaker 2: that I would revise today. I'd have to know a
Speaker 2: lot more about what was decided in those first five
Speaker 2: decades and.
Speaker 1: How much of it was good and how much of
Speaker 1: it was bad.
Speaker 2: Ian you focused on the things that documents should forbid,
Speaker 2: but I think it would be more important to be
Speaker 2: very explicit that the government is not allowed to do
Speaker 2: anything that isn't explicitly listed as.
Speaker 1: Okay, well, I don't know if that's true, though.
Speaker 2: The government is that to protect individual rights, and it
Speaker 2: might be that because of technology advanced, so because of
Speaker 2: something else. There are certain things that the government in
Speaker 2: the future will have to do to protect rights that
Speaker 2: we didn't think of that it is not listed.
Speaker 1: So I think the real crucial part is.
Speaker 2: To gain an understanding of rights and to gain an
Speaker 2: understanding of what it means to the government to protect rights,
Speaker 2: and then it needs to do whatever it needs to
Speaker 2: do in order to protect those rights. And he has
Speaker 2: some examples of things that it can do.
Speaker 1: I don't know that you need to go through a
Speaker 1: whole constitutional amendment in order to do that.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure that's right. I don't think that's a
Speaker 2: particularly efficient way of doing it. So here's a bunch
Speaker 2: of things that the government needs to do.
Speaker 1: But for example, there's.
Speaker 2: No way the founders could have imagined a Manhattan Project.
Speaker 1: There's just no way they could have imagined that.
Speaker 2: And if you'd had a separation of state from economics
Speaker 2: and state from educational, state from science, then how do
Speaker 2: you get the Manhad Project. Then they wouldn't have put
Speaker 2: in there. I don't think national defense and da da da,
Speaker 2: da da, because they couldn't have thought of it.
Speaker 1: And now it was essential that in a state of
Speaker 1: war that they've come to do this, and not as
Speaker 1: a violation of the Constitution, like let's say Lincoln. Certain
Speaker 1: things that Lincoln.
Speaker 2: Did during the Civil War a journey the Civil War,
Speaker 2: which he understood as violation as a constitution but were
Speaker 2: necessary but not and they were wrong what Lincoln did,
Speaker 2: but not as violation of constitution, but yes, consistent with
Speaker 2: the Constitution. But things that couldn't have been predicted Manhattan
Speaker 2: Project being an example, Tom to play Devil's advocate, Do
Speaker 2: we need the state to support science as a facet
Speaker 2: as its role in defense. No, outside of very narrow
Speaker 2: fields which can explicitly and equivocally be linked to defense.
Speaker 2: Otherwise there's no limit to it. I mean, biotech can secures.
Speaker 2: I mean, so it has to be clearly linked to munitions, missiles, satellites,
Speaker 2: even things like that.
Speaker 1: But it has to be it's very, very slippery slope.
Speaker 2: And look how defense is being used today to do tariffs,
Speaker 2: to do a million things that the government intervenes in.
Speaker 2: Would egoism be an explicit part of just implicit basis
Speaker 2: for a proper constitution. A right to pursue one's own
Speaker 2: happiness is a very abstract statement, though powerful.
Speaker 1: I think I think it would be implicit.
Speaker 2: I mean, even a right to pursue your own happiness
Speaker 2: does not necessarily imply morality of egoism. I mean it does,
Speaker 2: it's the only place it could come from, but it doesn't.
Speaker 2: You know, people can still be ultruists and still call
Speaker 2: for that in some bizarre way. So I would say,
Speaker 2: I would say that it's implicit. The better understood egoism
Speaker 2: is in the culture, the more likely the constitution is
Speaker 2: to be adopted, accepted, and preserved. And that is where
Speaker 2: the focus of the teachings need to be. Because once
Speaker 2: once you get egoism, the rest is relatively easy. Freedom
Speaker 2: is easy for an egoist to freedom. The reason we
Speaker 2: struggle so much for freedom is because altruism does not
Speaker 2: lead to freedom.
Speaker 1: So we are constantly having to figure out how to
Speaker 1: advocate for freedom from all perspective that is not consistent
Speaker 1: with it. And that's why the culture struggles so much
Speaker 1: with the concept of freedom. Stevens says, should punitive damage
Speaker 1: be allowed in contract cases?
Speaker 2: I don't know, probably not or yes, but they should
Speaker 2: be pretty obviously capped. That is, if somebody is violating
Speaker 2: a contract on purpose, there should be a penalty above
Speaker 2: and beyond what is lost, the economic value that's lost.
Speaker 1: But that penalty can be a million acts.
Speaker 2: So you know, these juries that find gazillions of dollars
Speaker 2: punitive damages, there has to be some limits, so they
Speaker 2: have to be some constraints on that. I'm not against
Speaker 2: punitive I e. You did this on purpose, you should
Speaker 2: you should you should pay for that more than just
Speaker 2: you know, you should pay damages. But it can be
Speaker 2: it can be you know, uh, just a way to
Speaker 2: penalize whole businesses and penalize.
Speaker 1: You take from the rich and give to the poor.
Speaker 2: The whole legal structure and legal liability and laws of
Speaker 2: liability and laws of lawsuits need to be changed and
Speaker 2: need to be rethought.
Speaker 1: What's your view of a DPA. I don't know what
Speaker 1: that is.
Speaker 2: If you're protecting rights at the state level. Shouldn't be
Speaker 2: easier to appeal death penalty sentences? Yeah, I mean I
Speaker 2: think it should be easy to appeal death penalty sentences.
Speaker 2: I think you should be easy and fast and quick.
Speaker 2: I'm not particularly in favor of the death penalty, so
Speaker 2: I'm fine with doing away with the death penalty. But yeah,
Speaker 2: I think it should be much easier, much faster to
Speaker 2: appeal and to get a final answer about death penalty.
Speaker 2: I think the fact that they drag on for years
Speaker 2: and years and years is ridiculous, really really ridiculous. Objectives
Speaker 2: claim that psychologizing is wrong. I can't see how it
Speaker 2: is desirable or even possible to avoid inferring one another
Speaker 2: person's mentality is based on their actions what objectives do,
Speaker 2: and objectives do it all the time.
Speaker 1: I think the point.
Speaker 2: Is that one should judge people based on their actions.
Speaker 1: And sure, you can infer somebody's.
Speaker 2: Mentality, but I don't think one should give them a
Speaker 2: pass on judging their actions based on their mentality or
Speaker 2: penalize them more given their actions based on their mentality,
Speaker 2: based on their psychology versus what they explicity.
Speaker 1: Say.
Speaker 2: So again, I encourage everybody to listen to Gatte's talk
Speaker 2: from a year and a half ago at OCONN or
Speaker 2: two years ago from OCONN on psychologizing.
Speaker 1: I thought it was very good. There's a Turk.
Speaker 2: Dichotomy here you're on yesterday you mentioned a vision of
Speaker 2: a cybernetic future where human integrates technology and we enhance
Speaker 2: and modify.
Speaker 1: Super inspiring. Thank you.
Speaker 2: I think that's the way we're going to evolve. I
Speaker 2: think it is a mistake to see humans and robots
Speaker 2: as two separate entities that I think ultimately be a
Speaker 2: good division of labor between the two, and there'll be
Speaker 2: an integration and division of labor between the two. All right, everybody,
Speaker 2: thank you, Thanks all the super chatters.
Speaker 1: I appreciate the support. Uh and.
Speaker 2: Thank you thank you again for Troy from making the
Speaker 2: show possible and for sponsoring it. And I will see
Speaker 2: you guys on Wednesday. Remember no show Monday, no show
Speaker 2: Tuesday Wednesday. In the meantime, those of you would like
Speaker 2: to support the show on a regular basis Patreon, Patreon
Speaker 2: dot com, put in your on book show and you
Speaker 2: can do it. I get almost every day I get
Speaker 2: one new supporter on Patreon. That is a great pace
Speaker 2: that I hope we can.
Speaker 1: I hope we can. We can keep to.
Speaker 2: Uh you know, one to day it would be amazing.
Speaker 2: So you you be the one for today. You I
Speaker 2: can see you right there.
Speaker 1: All right. Thanks everybody. I will talk to you on Wednesday. Bye, everybody.