Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:00 So we are here at, uh, 7:00 PM. And we wanna thank you for joining us today. Uh, I'm Scott Schiff with the Atlas society with Atlas society, senior fellow, Rob, zysk doing this, ask me anything. I think you guys are very brave to be doing these. Uh, we wanna mention that our annual fundraising gala in, uh, will be October 6th in Malibu honoring, uh, Bitcoin maximalist. Michael sailor will put up a link where people can buy tickets. And early in, in the day, our scholars will be holding sessions on things like objectiveism and politics as well as other topics, including Bitcoin. So, uh, it's my first gala. I'm glad to be going. And, um, but we wanna encourage everyone to participate in this. Um, if you wanna ask Rob any questions, we would encourage people to share the room. Um, I have some questions myself from our various channels, so, uh, we'll get into that and, uh, try to make it interactive here. Um, Rob, thank you for joining us.
Speaker 1 00:01:11 Oh, always glad to be here. And by the way, I'm gonna be at that gala. I'm gonna be one of the scholars making a presentation, probably talking about politics. There's gonna be one on futurism and about future technology and there's gonna be lots of interesting stuff. So I look forward to that.
Speaker 0 00:01:27 Excellent. That should be good. Well, um, we'll go ahead and just start off with, uh, questions that came up, um, on, uh, the various channels. Um, this one sounded familiar. I hope you haven't had this one before, but they asked, uh, your thoughts on John Adams,
Speaker 1 00:01:48 Ah, thoughts on John Adams. Well, I'm not a huge, uh, his expert in terms of the history of this, of John Adams. I'm although I have to say I have a bias here, which is, I am a Jeffersonian, I'm a big Thomas Jefferson van. Okay. So, um, you know, I've told you before I'm working on my musical Gallatin, uh, because Gallatin, uh, Thomas Jefferson's, uh, secretary of the treasury Albert Gallatin was so much better than, than, than Hamilton in terms of his approach to the says, I think he's an unsung hero and I'd like to bring more attention to him. Um, so, you know, when it comes to the, the conflicts between the Federalists and the Republicans, I'm definitely on the Republican side, uh, circa, you know, 17 circa, uh, 1800. Um, so I, I have a little bit of bias against John Adams, but on the other hand, I mean, it, it's a little bit like Hamilton too, which is that even though I disagree with him, first of all, I do disagree with him a heck of a lot less than I disagree with everybody in politics today.
Speaker 1 00:02:49 So let's have that be said. And also you have to recognize he was this giant who, you know, this enormous achievements. Um, so what I find, I think people like, so there's a, there's a certain trend among historians, especially in the last 30, 40 years, 30 years or so I'd say where they've sort of gone away from loving Jefferson quite so much, and they've gone more toward Hamiltons and Hamilton and Adams, because they're more in line with the general I a little bit more, they're more, it's easier to form them into advocates that are, are consistent with the general morality of our era, which is more big government, uh, less, um, sort of freewheeling and confident in human potential. That they're the, even though they were figures of the enlightenment, but there were less so than Thomas Jefferson. So I think people have, that's one of the reasons people move away to them like Hamilton.
Speaker 1 00:03:46 They like, because he's a guy who wanted government to be really involved in, uh, supporting industry. And he was sort of the, the, he, he was the father of crony capitalism in the sense that, you know, he, he had the treasury in New York, the treasury neck deep in, in, in cooperation with wall street and bailing out wall street and all that sort of thing. So, uh, you know, the, the rotating, uh, the, the under Hamilton, the, the revolving door between the treasury department of wall street really began. And Adams was, I think, as Adams was more beloved by the conservatives, because he had a little bit more of that sort of view that man is naturally sort of depraved, or I don't, he, he probably wouldn't go have gone so far as to say depraved, but the idea is that human beings are naturally, uh, moved by, um, uh, sort of the less noble instincts and therefore have to be, you have to be suspicious of them and be controlled, and that's more of a conservative, so that's why I'm not, like I said, I don't want, I can't get too much of the detailed Hamilton, uh, Brad, Thompson's a big person to look to for this.
Speaker 1 00:04:58 Um, but he's, he's less of my favorite mother than Thomas Jefferson, cuz Jefferson was much more of a figure, the enlightenment confidence and reason, tremendous confidence in what human beings could accomplish. If, you know, if, if left, uh, free of not just politically free, you know, free of, of aristocracy and free of restric government, but also left intellectually free. And so in terms of that sort of optimistic, um, humanistic kind of attitude, Ty Jefferson sort of stands head and shoulders above Adams in that respect. And he was a better president in general because Adams Adams wasn't really cut off via president. He was, um, or even a politician. He, he, he was a very touchy <laugh>, uh, uh, sort of grumpy, uh, uh, he held a grudge for a long period of time. I mean, he, he was a guy who didn't like criticism and, and, uh, you know, didn't have that, um, the, the taste for, uh, convincing people and, and that, and talking to people king, um, compromises.
Speaker 1 00:06:11 And because of that, he had getting himself into a lot of trouble with things like the alien and tradition acts, where he, you know, he just, he, he had a little bit of an autocratic tendency to him, uh, that led to that, like I said, he is head and shoulders above anybody in politics today. I would much rather have John Adams back in the white house than any of these people, but, you know, in the context of his time, he's he, I think he's a great man. Uh, just so I wanted to also talk about the big thing I learned about his role in the revolution was he was the guy who really took the step of saying, we need to be independent. We need to be an independent nation. We need to declare our independence from Britain. Because before that, the whole thing had been, how do we petition the government in Britain?
Speaker 1 00:06:54 How do we get them to recognize our claims and recognize the justice of our claims? How do we basically, you know, reform the system as it is so that the, the parliament in the king will respect our rights. And he's the one who basically said, look, it's hopeless. It's not going to happen. They don't have, you know, all the incentives are there that they're not going to listen to us. And so the only alternative is we are going to have to become an independent nation. That was his big insight. And that was his big contribution to the revolution was being the first of the prominent, you know, the first prominent person to really grasp that and argue for it and convince everybody else that, yes, this is the step we need to take. So, um, like I said, he, he said, you know, enormous achievements, um, some flaws, uh, but you know, I like better as the bottom line.
Speaker 0 00:07:46 Good answer. Um, I, I could follow up with that, but, uh, I'm gonna keep, uh, going to the, um, to the ones we've got here. Um, the, uh, the next question, and I, I know you wrote about this in your letter, uh, your view of the Margo raid.
Speaker 1 00:08:07 Oh boy. Yes. <laugh> all right. So I'm one thing I wanna say, first of all, is that there's a lot of information that's not out there about the Margo raid and about what had happened and what they were looking for and the whole timeline. Uh, so a lot of what you're gonna see is a huge amount of speculation on both sides. You know, because every time this is all, all the way, going back to the whole Russia, uh, collusion case, right, is that you'll have, um, everybody wants there to be an enormous scandal that will totally discredit the other side and they wanna on both sides. So in the left are saying, you know, uh, the Democrats and people on the left are saying, you know, we hate this guy, Trump so much, this Trump so much, we haven't been able to totally defeat him and, and knock him out of America.
Speaker 1 00:08:57 We're hoping something will come along. And Robert Mueller will come up with an indictment and he'll finally be, you know, totally knocked out by this, this gate, like scandal, uh, the way Nixon was. And, uh, then there are people on the, on the right, and especially the Trump supporters who are like, oh, this is a witch hunt. We're finally going to expose this witch hunt. And that's going to Watergate that will totally discredit side. And the Mueller investigation, you know, the Russian invest turned to be a dud for both of those people, because it showed that the Trump people did a lot of bad, but there wasn't any full blown, you know, traitorous, uh, uh, collusion. Not that we could prove at least. And on the other hand, the, you know, the, the, the investigate, the Mueller investigation ended up with enough substance there enough, uh, connections of different ways that people on, on, on Trump's team, especially Paul Manafort, and those guys had attempted to cooperate or cooperate in some extent, and had sort of unsavory connections to Russia.
Speaker 1 00:10:02 There was enough there that wasn't just a totally made up investigation. And the, you know, the conclusions of the investigation were fairly well balanced. So neither one got their big, a lot of them convinced themselves that they got it, but neither one actually got their big, this is the scandal that totally discredits everybody else. I've got a feeling we're gonna end up that in that place with this one as well. I think what's gonna happen is yes, it is looking very much to me. Like Trump was holding on some highly classified documents that he shouldn't have been storing at Mar Mar alive. Um, and that he was demand asked repeatedly to return all those documents. He didn't do it. He stone walled. He, you know, he and his people stone walled and, and failed to cooperate. And so they had to send guys down there to go dig through and grab the stuff and take it.
Speaker 1 00:10:52 You know, they, they couldn't, you know, Trump wouldn't hand it over, so they had to go, just go take it on the other hand. I'm not sure that's going to lead to some blockbuster criminal indictment. You know, the, the, the, the attraction for people who are the Democrats and, and, and people who don't like Trump, including me, the, the temptation here is I think that some of the, uh, uh, uh, uh, laws related, uh, handling of classified documents if convicted the, the person who's convicted is then barred from holding public office ever again. Right. That's one of the penalties is they, they are, they in, in the future, they are barred from holding public office. And so you can see a lot of people S sling of like, yes, if Trump gets convicted of this, he can't run again. He'll be barred legally for running for office.
Speaker 1 00:11:39 Um, I I'm skeptical that that's going to happen. I think maybe that might catch some lower level guy in Trump's, uh, like cash Patel, who was, I mean, cash Patel is this guy sort of hanger on of Trump who was, um, going around on talk shows basically promising to release classified information to the public. Uh <laugh> and he might be in trouble. Right. So, but I don't know they're gonna catch the big fish. So all of it's speculation at this point, and it's the kind of speculation that his people's partisan sweet spot, where, you know, people wanna say, oh, this is total per, by a politic asides weapon, FBI. And there are other people gonna say, this is finally caught him. We're gonna convict him. And he's not gonna be able to run for president. I would bet money. Neither one of those things is going to happen.
Speaker 1 00:12:26 All right. So the one thing I do wanna shoot down on this though, is the idea that somehow the raid is inherently illegitimate. So I wanna make two points about that. And these are, I wanna sort of stick to the higher level philosophically of these points. One of those that the rule of law says the law applies to everybody equally objective. I like to put it in terms of objective law. Objective law says ASA, the law is the law. It doesn't mean one thing for you. And one thing for your political opponents, it doesn't mean one thing for you for a prominent, powerful person. And another thing for the, the low man of the totem pole and some obste government agency point out, you know, Trump is the guy who, you know, during his campaign where the big chance in his campaign was lock her up.
Speaker 1 00:13:08 They were gonna lock up Hillary Clinton for, um, mishandling classified info information. And furthermore, um, they were going to, uh, uh, Trump actually signed into law, a bill that increased the penalties for MIS classified information. And people have been over the years there, you know, a couple dozen people who have been prosecuted for violating these laws, um, uh, some of them very seriously, you know, prison terms, cuz they were planning to do it for espionage purpose. They're like somebody who was planning to sell these or the Russians and was thrown in jail for basically for 30 years. Um, uh, but they're also people who, you know, just people who accidentally who mishandled it or accidentally did things and got, you know, lesser much lesser penalties, but they still got, you know, had directed with the law. If other people have to have this law apply to them, then Trump should have to have this apply to him.
Speaker 1 00:14:02 He should be answerable to the government for how he handles these documents. And the second point I wanna make is there's another reason why he should be answerable to the government for how he handles these documents, which is that these are not his personal property. That is, uh, there's several different laws governing this, including like the presidential records acting it's called that basically says classified information and the records, you know, anything related to the president's work, any records related to the president's work, including like his own handwritten notes on something. Those are the property of the us government and the property of the national archives that, you know, they, that they're not his personal property that you can do with whatever they are. Uh, you know, he is required to keep those and hand them to the people who keep the official records and keep the official archives.
Speaker 1 00:14:53 But what he was doing is said is he brought them, he was storing them in the, basically in the basement of his own personal house. So he has to answer to the government for how he's handling those and what he's doing with them and, and whether he's trying to destroy them, uh, or, uh, or, or, or keeping them in an unsecure way. And I think the issue, the philosophical issue behind that is to always remember, you know, the president answers to the people, right? The, the thing to the, to the Trump presidency are not his whole property, cuz that's not his personal fiefdom, it's an office. He holds in trust to the people of the United States. So he answers to the people in the, of the United States and how he uses those documents. He answers to the government, uh, in terms of how he, of, of, of, of the records he keeps and how he, and how he stores them and all that sort of thing.
Speaker 1 00:15:41 So that's why I'm gonna say that. I, I rejected the arguments that there's somehow something inherently illegitimate about the raid. Now he can go into the courts that argue factually that, well, they didn't have a basis for this or, you know, they, this thing was actually declassified and they said it was classified. He can go in the courts and argue that factually and get his lawyers. Um, I think his lawyers are kind of the Keystone cops, so I don't think it's gonna for him. Um, but you know, that's a factual dispute that can be handled in the court, but there's nothing inherently illegitimate about holding an ex-president to the standards. You know, there's some laws that he signed into, into, into, uh, into effect standards of how to handle classified information.
Speaker 0 00:16:24 Well, uh, I could go on about that, but I wanna give Lauren to,
Speaker 1 00:16:27 I'm sure a lot of people will go on about that. So if anybody wants set up, go ahead. Do that. I'll I'll answer objections.
Speaker 0 00:16:33 <laugh> Lawrence. I wanna give you a chance to get in here.
Speaker 2 00:16:38 Yeah, thanks. So I have a, a different question and Rob, I was hoping you could clarify this for me. I, I feel like when I listen to objectiveness, this is a stickler that is not necessarily consistent and that's regards to, uh, immigration and borders. And what role does the government have in, you know, securing borders or, and whatnot? Um, I would think open borders to an extent is more the policy that I hear, but I wanted to get that clarifi because libertarians seem to be across the board on this. And then you have people who are like, uh, the Anar communists who are workers should be free to go wherever. So when to get your thoughts,
Speaker 1 00:17:22 Right? So the, the I'm sure among libertarians, you could even Wilder variety of things. Um, yeah. So on my, so I wanna look at it from the sort of the broadest level here, which is okay, so first of all, we can talk about open borders. I mean, the idea of totally open borders, there's no borders at all. This is sort of what I, this is in a category or something I call libertarian debate club. Right. So it goes with things like, um, um, does, should the government actually be, uh, in a position to issue driver's license, maybe they, maybe driver's licenses are illegitimate or can we fund the government totally with no coercive taxes at all? And the answer's probably yes, but it's also something I call libertarian debate club because it it's something we can sit around to debate amongst ourselves in this very abstract way, but it's so far away <laugh> from anything that's going to happen in our actual politics right now that I sort of view it as like, okay, this is, you know, we, we can have a discussion amongst ourselves and it can be very intellectually satisfying and it, it it's, it's also very abstract and theoretical hypothetical at this point.
Speaker 1 00:18:30 So we don't really need to settle that question right now. So, um, you know, right now the question isn't whether we should have open borders, the question is, should we have, you know, be more open to immigration or less open immigration? So there, we have to say, you know what, uh, uh, the issue I see the fundamental issues I see it is simply are more people, more people coming to America and becoming Americans. Is that generally a good thing? And I think obviously it's a good thing. I mean, uh, you know, the, the, the joke on this, uh, and most people recognize this. I mean, one of the guys, one of the guys, the most is head of some think tank that is like the most anti-immigration conservative think tank out there. The guy's name is CRI Corian. Now, what name is name is CRI Corian.
Speaker 1 00:19:16 It's Armenian, you know, his people came from Armenia about a hundred years ago because the Turks were killing their people. And so it's like, you know, the, the, the running joke on this is the person saying my, my ancestors didn't come to America. So they're gonna be overrun by all these immigrants. Right. <laugh> that, that we are, you know, I'm, I'm the descendants of Polish and Irish immigrants. Most of us are descendants of some sort. Um, we all came here, you know, within the last 400 years or so. Um, you know, what, from England and, and displaced the native inhabitant, uh, to some extent. So, uh, this is a nation of immigrants and this has the nation that has historically thrived on having lots of new people coming here. And this is the big point that I, you know, in, um, I think Julian is sort of associated with this, but I think it's totally consistent with what I ran about the role of the human mind, uh, in, in, in, in, uh, in, in human life, which is that, you know, the ultimate resource, more people means more people working, more people thinking more brain solving problems.
Speaker 1 00:20:24 And so the more he, he brought this up in the context of population growth, uh, you know, famous quote from his, uh, uh, of his or famous story, he told about how he came to this viewpoint is he was actually working on population control measures. Uh, Julian Simon was off in DC meeting at a meeting where he is proposing control ideas. And he saw the E the, uh, uh, Toma that's I think, in DC. And he was looking at, and he recalled a speech, uh, given at a funeral of a Memorial service for the, uh, for the, uh, servicemen who died in Jema where, uh, the pastor cap camp and said, you know, which one of these people who died might have been D or Beethoven, right. Who might, might have gone on to create something amazing. And it showed the blue that <laugh>, uh, why am I, why am I trying to arrange it?
Speaker 1 00:21:19 So there are fewer people born in the world, each of whom might be in Einstein or a Beethoven. Now Einstein's a great example because he was an immigrant. Uh, I actually saw an article recently that, uh, uh, a photo I'd never seen before of Albert Einstein in 1940, taking the oath of America ship along with, I think, um, his secretary and his daughter or something like, um, and, you know, ask this sort of thing is that you, when you bring in immigrants, you will get Einstein's, you'll get, um, Elon Musks, you'll get, you know, he's south African, uh, you'll get, uh, all sorts people coming in from all these different places who will become entrepreneurs, who will become small business owners, who will become, who will be industrious and create things that build things and grow our population and grow our wealth. So it's obvious to me that we don't need fewer immigrants.
Speaker 1 00:22:08 We need more immigrants. And currently our system is our system is like the most perverse, um, uh, cruelest version of, of immigration policy could come up is we officially allow very few immigrants in and make hard. We have enormous paperwork, enormous bureaucratic hurdles to become a citizen legally, but at the same time, we don't. And really can't keep everybody from crossing the border illegally. So people complain about illegal immigration, but that's our system right now, our system is we're gonna make it impossible for you to become a citizen legally, or make it very, very difficult for you to come here legally, but then do very little to prevent you from coming here illegally. So we're basically telling people, we want you to come here illegally. So the aspect of that, we should allow a lot more people to come here. Legally. Now, the most interesting proposed live seen recently, uh, is somebody who, who has this program.
Speaker 1 00:23:06 They're pushing called the 1 million talents program. HES, look, if America really wants to get ahead and own the 21st century, the way we owned the 20th century, we should have a program where we go out, not just allow this happen, but go out and actively recruit a million of the best and brightest people from around the world. Like actually go to them and say, we will, you know, here's all the paperwork. We will grease the skids for you. We want you here. We're begging you to come here. We should go out and actively recruit, you know, scientists and engineers and mathematicians. And, you know, right now we have thousands and thousands of really talented people coming in every year to go to our, our universities. Our universities are, are some of the best in the world. So we have thousands of people coming from around the world, going to our universities, getting degrees, advanced degrees and, and acquiring all these amazing skills.
Speaker 1 00:23:58 And then being told, well, you know, if you don't have a sponsor, you know, there's all this paperwork. We, you can't, you can't stay here. Well, that's insane. We should absolutely be begging them to stay here. Uh, one of the stories was about a, um, uh, I think it's a, a Turkish mathematician who was one of the guys who developed some of the theoretical basis for 5g communications, uh, you know, solved certain mathematical problems on data compression. And, uh, he was refu. He's working on this stuff. As a graduate student at an American university was basic. Couldn't find a sponsor was told, no, go home, get outta here. We don't want, you went to Turkey, developed this stuff some more and bunch of his patents to China. And he's here in America where we ought to have side. So the now I, I, you know, the, the talented, highly educated, highly trained people are the eyes for people we should in America.
Speaker 1 00:24:53 I think also, you know, I don't denigrate who are not educated and not, you know, don't have PhDs, but who are, you know, players and framers. And my wife's an architect. She works with a lot of, you know, ends up working with a lot of these guys, uh, on building projects. And these are really super industrious people who want to be Americans, uh, uh, there's a framer named Eddie, uh, who's from Mexico who, you know, he's got like, he, he, he wrote her a check cuz she was, she was doing some work, um, on a project of his and his checks have the American flag and blazed on them, total classic first generation immigrant stuff about how excited he is to be an American. These are people we should also be, you know, welcoming. So I, I, I'm sort of, you know, there's a guy who we're at a 1 billion Americans.
Speaker 1 00:25:37 We basically said we should bring in so many immigrants that we soon have 1 billion Americans that maybe that's a bit too much too fast. But I do think we should definitely be saying, let's bring in millions of extra people the best and the brightest, the hardest working the most industrious from around the world, we should have more immigrants rather than fewer human beings are good because they are a source they're creators of wealth. They're creators of new ideas. And we should want more human beings here. And also because Americ better job than any nation in the world of assimilating immigrants of making them become part of our, of, of inducting them into our, into our existing culture while also to absorbing some of the best of what they bring to our culture. You know, there's a whole genre, I mean, half 80% of American, if you think of what American cuisine is, 80% of American cuisine is what I call hyphenated American cuisine.
Speaker 1 00:26:31 It's, it's the food brought here by Italians and then adapt, you know, but it's stuff that doesn't, you can't get back in Italy cuz that's what the Italians brought here and then adapted to the local, um, you know, to the, to the food, the, the, the, the ingredients that were available here and developed their own traditions or stuff that the, you know, the, the Thai PE Thai immigrants brought here or stuff that Vietnamese immigrants brought here. And, you know, like 80% of what you think of as American cuisine is the cuisine of us who came here and created new dishes and, and, uh, popular new kinds of food that everybody eats based on based on something that they brought from their own, their own place. And that's the model for how we have people integrated you, the melting pot, doesn't everybody eats Veda and becomes a bland American.
Speaker 1 00:27:21 It means that he becomes, you know, adopts the American creed, uh, of, of individualism to some and brings all little parts from their culture to create, you know, a vibrant, uh, ever changing and ever, um, experimenting American culture. So that's my big soap box at immigration. I'm very much for it. Um, we could talk, if you, any us do the libertarian debate club thing we could talk about, should there be any borders at all? Uh, I think we're so far away from that. It's like, you know, how can we fund the government without taxes? We could talk about that in 50 years maybe. Um, but I do think what we should have is, is what somebody said to, you said, uh, um, uh, somebody said high walls with wide doors. And I think if we had the doors wide, relatively wide, we don't even need the high walls because most of the people who wanna come here will be able to come here and I think America would thrive and prosper for that. So that's my soapbox on that.
Speaker 0 00:28:19 Thanks for that. Um, yeah, this may be tangent gently related. Um, what do you think is the best objectives solution to future possible unemployment? Once companies replace workers with machines?
Speaker 1 00:28:37 Okay. I, I love this topic, so I've, I have strong views on this, cuz I think now I actually just, this morning, you'll probably go up tomorrow at symposium. I did an interview with, with Louis Anslow now, uh, Louis Anslow is the creator of something called the pessimist archive. I've I've mentioned it before. So I reached out to him and I got him to do an interview and, um, he is very much fighting against the sort of techno pessimism and there's no form of techno pessimism, more entrenched than the idea that the robots are gonna take our jobs. You know, if the immigrants are gonna, aren't gonna take robots are gonna take our jobs. Um, and I think that there's, there's a number of different problems with this idea that the robot everything's gonna be automated and the robots are gonna take our jobs. One of them is people have been saying this for like 60 or 70 years.
Speaker 1 00:29:23 They've probably been saying it for a hundred years. Uh, I mean marks to some extent, I think Carl, the, the theories of Carl Marks were based on this totally exaggerated idea of what automation was going to accomplish. Right? Cause he looked at the industrial revolution. He looked at the tremendous productivity of the modern factory and basically concluded this whole thing will just run itself. And you know, we don't, we don't need, you know, we can have from each according disability to each, according to his needs because this modern industrial system is just gonna run itself and we don't need the profit motive anymore. Uh, so you know, this goes, all this goes back to the beginning of the industrial revolution, these over optimistic things about how, how much everything is going to be automated. So we can look though at the history of this, is that things have been automated.
Speaker 1 00:30:09 A lot of things, you know, one thing after another has become automated over the past 225 years, roughly, you know, since the Dawn of the industrial revolution and it has not put everybody out of a job. So what happens is the nature of people's jobs change. So I, I put a challenge up on Twitter a while back say name to me, a profession that has actually disappeared because of automation and most of the ones that people could name that were unambiguous. Uh, well, Mo most of them actually there's so people who do it, but it's a big, very small number where things like elevator operators and, uh, uh, um, and telephone operators. And, but the thing is these were things, these were jobs that were created by technology in the first place, right? It was the telephone operators existed because you had the new technology, the telephone, and there was a period of a couple decades there before automatic switches came in, that you had huge numbers of people employed as, as you know, switchboard operators or the, the elevator, you know, before, when then the elevator was created.
Speaker 1 00:31:10 But before you had the automatic, you know, the button, you just push, they're still elevator operators, by the way, my, uh, like share, share my wife used to work, um, in the building services department of a very, of a big skyscraper in, in Chicago. And there was a guy whose job was to manage the freight elevators and to make sure the contractors went to the right place, you know, when they were doing work in the building and that sort of thing. And there was, so there was a guy who was basically the elevator operator, uh, for, for the, the skyscraper. But, uh, the other example, somebody brought up was Sawyer. Now a Sawyer is somebody who, you know, who'd saw wood would make, uh, you know, they'd be down in the pit, pulling on the saw, uh, sawing wood, taking a log and sawing it into planks.
Speaker 1 00:31:53 Well, this was somebody mentioned that to me, the funny thing is, oh, just a week earlier, I had a meeting with a Sawyer. Uh, now a Sawyer in the modern age is a guy who owns a portable sawmill. So we had a tree that came down and we're thinking of having a cut down into planks to make wood out of it. Um, and it starts have a too, unfortunately the tree was too big for his machine, but, you know, so the interesting thing is that's the example of how technology actually changes the way people work. It doesn't say humans won't work. It means humans will do different things. So it doesn't mean you won't have anybody who has the job of being a Sawyer. What it does mean is that a Sawyer, instead of being a guy operating a hand saw is gonna be a guy running a portable sawmill, you know, gasoline powered port, portable sawmill, uh, and you know, he's gonna be spectacularly, more productive.
Speaker 1 00:32:42 And these guys are, you know, are, are, are, um, skilled laborers and entrepreneurs. You know, the guy buy buys a portable sawmill, toes it around behind his truck and goes around from place to place and makes good <laugh> from what I could tell you, nice. He had a nice truck. He makes a pretty good living, uh, uh, because you know, the modern machinery, the automation has made him so spectacularly productive. So I think that's gotta be our default assumption, our default model for how automation in the future is going to work, which is that more things that you do will be automated. Your job won't disappear, but it will be that the things that can't be automated you'll, you'll be doing the parts of the job that can't be automated. The things that require higher conceptual judgment, rather than the things that are easily automated.
Speaker 1 00:33:31 Now, the last thing I will add on that too, is that the other thing, the history shows us is even when you have this huge amount of new technology, there's a lot of stuff that still can't be automated. Um, and so what's, and, and even if things, stuff can be automated, the first stuff you get automated is the stuff that is either the most easiest to automate or the most productive to automate. You know, you pick the low hanging fruit first and stuff that is, you know, difficult to automate and doesn't make a huge difference economically. That's gonna persist for decades and decades. Um, yeah. So the thing is that I think people get so exaggerated. They have this techno pessimism. That's what I was talking to Los Anslow about this techno pessimism that they automatically assume, oh, new, technology's gonna have all these. He calls it the black mirror fallacy, cuz there's this British show that every episode of the show is it's.
Speaker 1 00:34:23 I said about Twilight zone type of thing, but every episode of the show is about here's some new technology let's look at how it could possibly go horribly wrong. And uh, so cause the black mirror fallacy that every time there's new technology, we focus on all the horrible ways. It can go wrong when the actual historical record is, these things have, you know, every new technology when it comes in has generally improved human life by a very significant margin. So I think what's gonna happen is automation in the future is simply going to mean some more menial tasks, tasks that don't require a thinking or tasks that only require physical work. And don't require a lot of heavy thinking. Those are gonna get automated. They're going to be, uh, but, but that automation will be something that simply, you know, take some part of your job away.
Speaker 1 00:35:11 And then you get to focus on the fun parts of the job. The interesting parts of the job, the parts of the job that require a human being, which are the more, uh, uh, intellectual and conceptual aspects of the job. So the one implication that I would draw for what we should do is make sure you're not in an easily automated line of work, right? If you're just a guy who shuffles papers, uh, without doing a lot of thinking, your job's probably gonna automated. If you're just a guy who twists a bolt on an assembly line, something that could be easily automated. Yes, you might get automated. The, the, the, I'd say the action item for people who are concerned about this is make sure you're doing something that requires a thinking brain that can't easily be farmed out to, uh, a neural network or to a, uh, a computer algorithm or to, uh, a, a clever new robot.
Speaker 0 00:36:06 I've been shuffling papers for 30 years. <laugh>
Speaker 3 00:36:12 Well,
Speaker 1 00:36:12 You know, what are the problems with this is you have people who, you know, they get into a rut in their job and they get into a routine. And a lot of people become very passive about their work. And then those are, the people become absolutely terrified by auto about automation, cuz it means, you know, I've, I've been doing this same job in day in, day out, you know, as a total RO rote routine for 30 years. And now I have to think and I have to change how horrible that would be. So I think that's, that's part of how this hysteria about automation comes apart about is you have people who are like legitimately terrified because it requires them to do something they haven't done, you know, some fundamental thinking about what their job is and how, and they, and to require new skills and change their work that they haven't done in a long time.
Speaker 0 00:37:03 Good stuff. Thank you, Roger. Thanks for joining us.
Speaker 3 00:37:07 Oh man, this is good. Um, I just wanna, uh, confirm that I agree with Rob and then I have a question form. Uh, I come from a sales background and automation always scared sales people until they realize the smart ones, uh, how it could be their friend. One of those ways is in the sales development, how do you get in front of a customer? Automation really helped that it used to be, if you hired 10 sales people, they were spending 80% of their time, at least trying to get in front of the customer and then 20% or less actually selling to them with the automation, those same 10 sales people are now spending 80% of their time actually conducting sales meetings. And so productivity goes through the roof. So you're totally right. Um, and, and that's just one area in my life that I've seen it, uh, play out. Exactly.
Speaker 1 00:37:55 That'ss a great example. Yeah, go ahead.
Speaker 3 00:37:57 Yeah. My question for you, uh, is on a conversation. It was an argument that I got into on social media, which I I'm trying to tell myself, quit doing that, but it's, uh, it's so tempting. Um, if you had to say, what is the least bad tax? Um, you know, I, I went into this conversation about income tax being immoral, talked about the 137 year period of the United States where we didn't have an income tax minus, you know, that nine year period during the civil war. Uh, and, and then there was the proposal that came like in 1894, uh, that got shot down, which it ended up leading
Speaker 1 00:38:34 To the passing of the 16th amendment. But what is the least bad tax according to Rob TKI? Oh, crimey it's, this is like the opposite of, you know, asking someone to say, which of your children do you love the most? This is like the inverse of that. It's like, you know, of, of these things that you loathe, which do you loathe the least <laugh>, uh, I I'd like to say, you know, like I said, I say, I love all, I love both my children equally. I loathe all taxes equally, but if you forced me to let me think about this,
Speaker 1 00:39:07 I hate sales tax. I think there's a lot of there's. Some people argue sales tax is superior income tax, hate sales tax. I hate income tax. Cause I hate the idea that, um, that just, you know, but the, on the very first dollar that you earn, you know, the income tax is always like, oh, this is gonna be a 1% tax on millionaires. And then pretty soon everybody's paying it on the first dollar that they earn. Um, I hate capital gains tax because it's like taxing you twice. You, you make the money, you invest it. And then you pay taxes on your investments. Um, I hate property tax. God, I'm having a real hard, I hate tariffs. I'm having a, I, I, I am really legitimately struggling to come up with the least bad tax. Um, I think there are probably some economic arguments you can make for
Speaker 1 00:40:01 As a homeowner. I hate to say this there's some economic arguments you can make for, for property taxes. Um, I, the way I would like to see the government actually funded is through, um, things that are not really taxes, but our fees on all sorts of various things that people do when they interact with the government. Right? So you wanna register a contract, uh, you wanna have a contract enforce, you have to register it. You have to pay a stamp to have the contract registered with the government. And there it is. It's and, and it's, uh, and you pay a, a fee that is based on a percentage of the value at stake in the contract. So a multi-billion dollar company emerges with another multi-billion company. They sign a contract and they pay this large amount of money in order to have that contract registered and therefore enforced.
Speaker 1 00:40:49 That's the sort of thing I could see as a, as a tax that, that doesn't make me cringe, uh, with horror. Um, I, I think I, what I don't like is any tax that is a tax on a direct tax on economic activity as such, right. It's something that, that gets in the way of people doing things. And that's why I think if the taxes I hate the most are sales tax and income tax, uh, because it's directly like we're pun you want out and you've, you've created something and you've made money and you've engaged in commerce and we're gonna come and just, we're gonna punish you for it directly. But I think, you know, that, that if you, if you quartered me, that's what I'd probably say, an economist might come up with economic reasons why one is less disruptive to the economic system. But again, it's like, you know, it's asking me which, which of these things that I utterly loathe do I loathe the least
Speaker 0 00:41:43 Appreciate it, Rob. Good. Thanks for that. Uh, Justin, thanks for joining.
Speaker 5 00:41:52 Thanks for having me on the stage.
Speaker 0 00:41:56 Sorry about that. My alarm went off. Justin, are you there?
Speaker 5 00:42:00 Yes, sir.
Speaker 0 00:42:01 All right. Do you have a question?
Speaker 5 00:42:04 Uh, my question is, is that, um, I, I, I'm a former veteran and, um, currently have a personal situation. Um, when is the aggression of the state in everyday life trumping or going to, uh, over succeed? The idea that non-aggression, I is the principle that should be abided by, um, when is the use of force viable when the overall, um, imposition of barricades is too much for an individual to bear.
Speaker 1 00:42:46 So basically asking when would it be okay to stage your revolution or an uncertainty? Is that where you're getting at?
Speaker 5 00:42:51 Yeah, I mean, um, when, when is the oppression, uh, or the operation of oppression, uh, too much to it's beyond reproach.
Speaker 1 00:43:03 Okay. So that's a good question. That that's one that's been debated many times over the years in different contexts. Um, so first I would say is, you know, uh, I, I don't think we're anywhere close to it now. And, uh, opening the flood gates of a civil war or an insurgency or at a revolution would actually be horrible because what you would be probably what you would probably end to with both is not a freer society. You probably end that when you start a contest of force going on in a society, you break all sorts of institutions, all sorts of norms, all sorts of sort of moral guard rails that people have. And it was AOL Hitler who said that, uh, going to war is like, uh, is like walking into a dark room. And, you know, it's like, you don't know, you know, the minute you start this going, you don't know what the consequences are going to be.
Speaker 1 00:43:56 Now, if he had only actually taken that seriously, because of course he, he did precisely that he, you know, he, he rolled all the dice and lost horribly, um, uh, and destroyed his country in, in a lot of ways. Um, but, uh, so I think, you know, we, we should take that seriously, that he was actually correct about that part, which is that when you start a contest of forest, you are starting something that has a very uncertain outcome and you could be unleash. You could be destroying a lot of good things in a society and unleashing a lot of really bad things in a society. Um, and you know, the history of revolution. I mean, we, we, we have this wonderful history of the American revolution because everyone was so civilized and everybody was so committed to these enlightenment ideals, not just in terms of the content of, you know, individual rights and that sort of thing, but also the enlightenment approach, you know, Ville talked about how extraordinary it was.
Speaker 1 00:44:51 Uh, I think he was talking about the constitutional convention that, you know, uh, when Americans wrote the constitution, this is, you know, some like four or five years after four years after the, uh, the end of the, of the revolutionary war, he was amazed at this idea that, you know, Americans sat down and calmly debated what kind of government they were going to have. Uh, you know, when there was a crisis, when there was a problem, they just calmly debated it amongst each other and made this incredibly rational decision. And I think that shows the inf the, the pervasive influence of enlightenment ideas and the enlightenment idea of reason and persuasion and people, you know, settling their disputes by talking it out and, and debating with each other on commonly held principles. We don't have that today. <laugh>, I would not be confident that we'd get as happier results from a new American revolution today, because I'm not as confident that people have that commitment to saying we're gonna soberly, uh, you know, talk, talk out, you know, if we, when we win the war or as we're fighting the war, they we're gonna Soly talk out and persuade each other and come up with rationals, a rational, uh, new, you know, orderly in a rational and orderly way, come up with the new system of government.
Speaker 1 00:46:02 I think you you're starting the bar rolling. So that's, that's why I'm saying this's gonna be a very, very high bar for this now that's as opposed to, there's all sorts of forms of resistance and non cooperation that you, that that average citizen can do when faced with, uh, an oppress with faced with an overbearing government. I got, uh, you know, if, if there's all sorts of ways you can avoid paying taxes or, um, you know, find ways of working that aren't as regular find areas of, of, uh, business or ways of working that aren't as regulated at various ways you can avoid or resist, or, you know, you could start, um, RA BALCO for recent magazine had a great article, uh, recently about the abuse, petty abusive power by code authorities in, I think it was Nashville, which is where he lives. And these people are just, you know, going on harassing people arbitrarily.
Speaker 1 00:46:59 And there's one particular lawyer who basically made it as campaign to go into the little kangaroo court, where they forced these things. And just go in and start, you know, you have all these ordinary people who don't have a lot of resources who don't know the law who go in there and get railroaded. So he made his job to go in there and cause trouble and represent these people and point out, you know, the, the lack of legal authority these people have for most of what they're doing. And there's lots of stuff like that, that people can do in the court system right now. And in political activism, not just in the national level, but the local level to resist various forms of overbearing government. Right. So where, when would it finally be? So given that it's extremely high bar to go all the way to saying let's fight, let's shoot people.
Speaker 1 00:47:44 Uh, I would say two to their two. The main issue is freedom of speech. And that's sort of a standard answer, I think, and I think is correct. The main issue is the only time you can go fight is when you can't do you can't persuade, you can't talk to people anymore. It's when you have actual government control, you have widespread censorship and Twitter canceling somebody's account does not count as this. You know, this it's too small, there're still so even with some of the tech companies overstepping and, and AR using their ability to, to block people arbitrarily, we still have far more avenues for talking to people for persuading, people for reaching other people's minds, far more ability to do that than when I was a kid, right? So I'm, there's somebody argued recently. Now, I I'm convinced by it that we actually live for all the complaints we have.
Speaker 1 00:48:39 We actually live in one of the great eras of free speech, uh, because, you know, despite you can complain about various, um, social media companies and what they do, but the internet has rapidly expanded and, and, and, and, uh, grown by orders of magnitude, uh, your ability to be able to broadcast your ideas, to communicate with other people to, to get a hearing. Uh, so I think we're very, very far for the point at which reason and persuasion and, uh, making your case in, in the court of public opinion is futile and given the extreme dangers and the extreme, you know, uh, uh, risks of a contest of force. I think we're very, very far from the point where, uh, revolution is, uh, is necessary. Now, if the government's really oppressing you, if they are really doing something horrible to you, you know, seek legal help. <laugh>, there's a lot of people, there's a lot of people, there's a lot of organizations out there that will actually, um, you know, go to bat for you find, find somebody who's, who's able to make your case in the press or, or bring your case to somebody's attention. There's a, but my point is that we are very, very far from the point at which revolution is going to be either justified or a wise idea.
Speaker 0 00:49:58 Thanks for that. Uh, just as a quick follow up, you know, what about on a more, I don't know about personal level, but when you see people, uh, you know, that are willing to call you a monster or heartless to, you know, or bigot to get you to go along with their political agenda and just, you know, it's that kind of boiled lobster approach that I think gets people so angry.
Speaker 1 00:50:24 Yeah. And I, I see that. And, um, you know, part of that, though, part of my answer to that though, to people is man up, uh, that now I, you know, it's easy, a little, maybe a little easier for me to say, because of course I make a living by going out there and saying controversial things and identifying the things, you know, that the things you're not supposed to say and saying, oh, you don't want me to say that, well here, you know, here's three columns about it. Uh <laugh> uh, let me, let me, you know, I make a living by poking the bear on that. Uh, on the other hand, I do that partly because, um, uh, I chose, I made a decision at some point in my life that, you know, it's gonna be more difficult in some ways to go through life, being the guy who says the controversial things, and I'm gonna go ahead and take the heat for that.
Speaker 1 00:51:07 And I think I see so many people and, you know, the thing is I do this as a writer writer, Don make a lot of money. We don't have a lot of, you know, um, job security. Uh, so, you know, I do the, I see people who are way more comfortable and who have way more, you know, more money, more job security, better position, you know, position in professional position in their life. You know, these university presidents and people like that, who cave in at the first sign of pressure. Now, I think it's partly because they got to those very secure lives and very secure positions because they never took any risks. Right. <laugh> uh, so if you've have this whole life that, you know, go along to get along and never take any risk, it's really hard faced with the need to do it, to actually then make yourself, you know, stand up and disagree with everybody and be the hated guy.
Speaker 1 00:51:56 But I think that part of the problem is that we've, we've lost that expect, you know, we don't have enough that expectation of, of citizens to say it is your job to go out there and take the heat and stand up to people. When somebody says, you're a racist to say, well, no, there's no basis for saying that. I refuse to accept any guilt for that. And you refuse to apologize at the first touch of pressure. And so I think we need to have, uh, um, I think it's Abigail Schreyer. Who's she wrote a book about the whole transgender ideology in area there, and of course got hated and reviled and threatened, and, you know, took a lot of heat for that and, and was very unflappable. And she gave a talk to college students saying, don't sit there like a bunch of sock puppets, right?
Speaker 1 00:52:38 What are you, what are you doing with your lives? You know, you're young people who, you know, uh, at the beginning of your lives, you're, you're strong, you're intelligent, you're capable. Why are you letting this happen to you? Why are you letting somebody dictate what you can and cannot say? And I think you have D they have more people sort are going around shaking their fellow citizens by the lapels and telling them that instead of, you know, complaining quietly behind the scenes about, oh, somebody might, somebody may say something bad about me, go out and take those risks and stand up for yourself. And I think that's that we need a critical mass people who will do that.
Speaker 5 00:53:13 Can I follow up or
Speaker 1 00:53:14 Yes, I'd love that.
Speaker 5 00:53:15 So, uh, one of the things that I'm talking about is when you're being extorted, to the extent that your life is no longer financially livable, even though you do make a decent income, but you are obligated to the state to say, well, I need to make, meet this financial obligation, whether it was, uh, created by myself or a previous generation. What, when, when, when does it come down to the point where I'm no longer, even if there's no violence involved, I'm no longer voluntarily participating in this, because most of the time participating in state authoritative, uh, uh, entities is no longer voluntary. It's because there's the structure of no, you have a social security number you have a birth certificate number we've already borrowed money on your labor that is anticipated for your lifetime, yada yada yada.
Speaker 1 00:54:16 Yeah. So I, I, I don't really see an example of how that would force you to say something, not say something, I'm not saying something. I mean, the fact that I have a social security number has never been in my mind, any kind of obstacle to saying whatever I want to say. So I, I you'd have to give me an example of a really compelling example of how it is that somehow the state is coercing you
Speaker 5 00:54:37 Well, if they, if the state decides that, okay, well, uh, a family member has passed away that was being, um, funded, uh, medically through Medicaid or, uh, a publicly funded entity. And then, well, that person no longer exists now. So now somebody has to pay that money back, even though it's being portrayed as a public service to that individual at the time of when their life is on their way out.
Speaker 1 00:55:03 Okay. I've never heard of anybody being of relatives being forced to pay back Medicare for somebody's medical Medicaid. So I Medicaid, Medicaid. Okay. I, I have never heard of that as,
Speaker 5 00:55:15 Okay. Well, if, uh, I'll tell you right now, right now, I'm in this situation where, uh, my mother-in-law has passed away. Um, she was in, she was a ward of the state one and then two, because she was award to estate, could not make, uh, uh, decisions for herself as far as mentally or physically. And then she had a chronic disease along with her mental health issue, but because she had enough savvy to buy a house cash and it's bought and paid for, um, as an asset. Now the government's coming back at us saying, well, you owe us $65,000. Her house is only worth 55,000, but if you want the house, you have to buy it from the estate in order to satisfy this debt to Medicaid and then move forward.
Speaker 1 00:56:08 Okay, well, so, uh, there, I would say, you know, ask a, don't ask a philosopher, ask a lawyer. Uh, I'm not really sure I can, I can answer to how that works. Uh, I know by the way, one of the perverse incentives of Medicaid I've seen this is that it actually, you know, know if somebody's, uh, elderly at the end, you know, and towards the end of their life, getting end of life treatment, and they're actually better off like selling their house. I knew somebody actually gave her house away, essentially sold it for a nominal price to her, uh, to relatives so that she would, that she deliver basically making herself poor and penniless because then the government will pay for everything and, and you don't have to pay it all. So it has, it's a whole, the welfare thing full of all these weird incentives. But again, I don't see how that prevents you from speaking freely from, from having freedom of speech and going on to clubhouse and complaining about it. So that's the other thing is you're going
Speaker 5 00:56:58 No, no, no, no. No's okay. There's a discrepancy of whether, like I, I stated in the chat, I said, when does violence become the avenue of which the oppression of the state is no longer going to be the oppressor, but going to be the one being oppressed? Um,
Speaker 0 00:57:14 The thing is we're wrapping up
Speaker 1 00:57:16 After this. So I, I wouldn't. Right,
Speaker 5 00:57:18 Right. But let me finish. It's the belief in the systems right. Of government and these systems that arbitrarily run our lives, whether it be through a fi currency or any of these other systems. And, and when there is no longer a belief in those systems, when does a person for their own personal sovereignty say, I'm no longer participating. Um, it's not about, you know, a philosophical give
Speaker 0 00:57:42 A chance
Speaker 1 00:57:43 Stand. So I'd say, but again, you go back to my thing, resistance and non-cooperation are always options. I know you probably you're wave your better ones. Don't start an in urgency over house. All right. So next, uh, um, uh, Scott, one more one person maybe in a minute or so we got left.
Speaker 0 00:58:00 Yeah. I we're probably right at that time. Um, honestly, because, uh, we've got, um, just some, some stuff to talk about coming up this week, but, uh, I wanna thank you for doing these questions. Um, you know, uh, Thursday at 4:00 PM Eastern, uh, Atlas society, founder, David Kelly will be back here doing and ask me anything. Uh, then right after that at 5:00 PM Eastern, the Atlas society asks Charles Nagy, a professor fired from UCF for speaking out against woke narratives. Uh, then Thursday at 8:00 PM. Eastern Richard Salzman will be back with his morals and market series. This went on how markets elevate our morals. And, uh, then Friday back here on clubhouse at 4:00 PM. Eastern professor, Jason Hill will discuss America in the age of nihilism. So there's, uh, much more good programming this week. Uh, we hope you're able to participate again. The Atlas society gala is, uh, October 6th in Malibu with Bitcoin maximalist, Michael sailor, and, uh, hope to see everyone at these events. And, uh, again, Rob, uh, you had some great answers there. I especially like the stuff on moral bravery.
Speaker 1 00:59:17 Thanks. Thanks. And thanks everyone for coming.
