Nick Gillespie
Appearances
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
Bob Dylan is arguably the most significant, certainly the most significant artist of the past 70 years. One of the biggest figures in American culture was part of the civil rights movement. You know, was born again, Christian, et cetera. Does anybody know what his politics are? And there it is. He's still making a huge difference in our lives, continues to, without being a rank partisan.
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
Because what happens when you become a partisan is you have to sign on and shut up in order to push the other side in the direction that they want. We might ask, is the bulwark more powerful now that it is so anti-Trump that it's going to align itself with every Democratic cause that comes along? Or would it be better? And I guess you guys were Republicans, right?
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
So you could have stayed in the Republican Party and worked, you know, tried to work from within. I don't know. But you're not making your your influence does not grow when you join a side in partisan politics for the most part. Thanks. Tim Millick.
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
Well, this may you know, I don't know if this fits into the constraints of the topic or whatnot. But the fact of the matter is, is like, yeah, you can vote for whoever you want. If you decide to be if you pick a side and you become a tribalist, which seems to be the case of Republicans and Democrats now. That they are like, OK, I got to buy all in.
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
No, you can't brook the orthodoxy of the party, which is one of the reasons why Joe Biden was running, even though it was clear that he was past his ability to function. I mean, he is he I guess he's still the president. But it you know, if if we actually lived in a world where instead of picking sides and saying we've got to win the next election or else extinction.
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
there probably would have been a different Democratic candidate. And also after he was unmasked as unfit for office, there would have been some kind of Democratic primary or something like that. So to get back to this question of nobody saying like you shouldn't vote or I'm not saying you shouldn't vote. I love voting like Matt.
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
I have an unblemished record of never voting for anybody who wins at any level of any election. Going back to my third grade vice president, you know, election. But it doesn't mean you don't participate and you don't vote and you don't voice things.
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
But it's one of the reasons this election was so screwed up is precisely because people pick sides and were like, no matter what, I've got to beat Donald Trump. So I'm going to stick with Joe Biden no matter how long and how hard I have to drag him into the podium.
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
That's a novel argument that you just came up with, right?
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
We haven't just spent eight years of hearing about Russia all the time, right? That Russian interference is the reason that Donald Trump won. or the electoral college or whatever.
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
Yeah, I disagree with you because I'm not of the right. I recently I went to an event in in Greenwich Village with Donald Trump and badgered him about the amount of money that he added to the debt before COVID. And that doesn't even get into the fact that his COVID policies were disastrous. He's the reason we locked down. He disowns the vaccines that he helped produce in record time.
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
I'm not, you know, of the right and I'm not covering my ass. Yeah. But so, you know, and Donald Trump presents unique challenges. He's a horrible human being. He is probably going to be something of a disaster, but he is not an extinction level threat.
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
And if that is what we're going to hinge everything on is that Donald Trump uniquely among American presidents is the person who's going to bring it all down. I mean, that is on you guys to explain why that didn't happen the first time.
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
So you're definitely reaching the plurality of American voters who voted for him and said, hey, you know what, Tim?
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
Like Donald Trump won. So what do you do now? Well, I do you fight and do you like push your causes?
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
So you're on this side of the debate. Nobody here... I-I haven't heard you, Matt, say, well, Donald Trump won, so now I'm going to become a devotee of Donald Trump or his coalition.
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
You know, that was the one vote I didn't waste.
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
I would have thought that was a disqualifying action by Donald Trump.
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
No, no, no. But what I'm saying is like, you know, he left office. He left office. You know, pathetically, he can't admit that he lost in 2020, but he left office and he didn't glue keyboard, you know, keyboard letters down and things like that. But he just won.
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
but he just died but he just won again in a fair and open election sure and nobody you don't see the democrats being like yeah oh well now it's you know this was stolen um yeah so what's your point
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
What do you do now? Do you keep talking about how it's really a shame that Donald Trump won in the first place and then won on the second term?
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
And, you know, the question isn't what we should be doing, because we know what we're doing. We're fighting to limit the size, scope, and spending of government at every point, at every election, in every policy choice. What are you guys doing? And because you chose to be so anti-Trump in a particular way that you don't have any leverage with anybody.
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
I'm living my best life, so thank you.
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
Yeah, okay. Do we have a video to start or something here? Please hit the video.
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
So that's a prophecy from a 2004 South Park episode. The question, we know that we are always choosing between giant douches and turd sandwiches. The question is, how do we get to something better than that? And what I would argue is by breaking free and showing the political parties that are shrinking in mind share and market share in the latest Gallup poll,
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
30 of people called themselves republican 26 called themselves democrat 42 called themselves independent we need to show our independence in order to get out of this scenario where we are constantly just voting for either a giant douche or a turd sandwich thank you very much sarah longwell
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
Can I just ask, is anybody going to get those cookies?
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
All right. All right. I see how it's going to be.
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
Well, now you're just in the range of total fantasy and speculation, so...
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
No, but when Javier Millay did something stupid, you would point it out.
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
That sounds like a Rush lyric expanded into a... No, I don't... First off, we are talking about this explicitly only in terms of politics, which is a big problem. I know when I meet somebody, if they define themselves, you say, who are you? What are you interested in? And they say, I am a Democrat or I am a Republican in the top three, you know you're in the wrong conversation.
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
We need to get away from politics. to the greatest degree possible. But you're saying like you need to pick a party and then work exclusively through that. That just is a bad way to organize your life, I would argue.
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
And it might mean I don't have as much say in the Republican Party or the Democratic Party, but I still write and I still vote and I still do things that will give me a voice and an ability to express myself and hopefully have some impact on what happens in my communities.
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
But if I may, just to interrupt Matt mostly, when you look at issues that matter, things like gay marriage, things like marijuana or ending the drug war and incarceration of people, school choice and things like that, these things operate at a pre-partisan level. And when they become successful and when they become effective, civil rights movement is certainly like this.
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
They are either pre-partisan or trans-partisan or non-partisan. And those are the things that change things.
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
Tim, as I said in my opening remarks, it's you don't have to choose a particular party. You stand on policy and on principles.
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
When Bill Clinton was elected in 92, he had two years where he got to do whatever he wanted, and he ended up doing such a good job at that that he elected a Republican Congress for the first time in anybody's memory. And then what happened was an alchemical kind of reaction or transformation where things ended up working out pretty well.
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
Something like that might happen as well here, and this is where You know, we're talking about all of this in like a great, you know, implicitly in a great man theory of how the world works. Politics is not that important. Donald Trump does not have to be that popular. It might well be that the Republicans actually man up or woman up or whatever and challenge him on certain things.
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
And if they don't, they're going to get, they're going... They're going to get re they're going to get kicked to the curb like they did in 2018. So relax a little bit.
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
I'm stroking out, so thank you.
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
How are you guys okay? I'm not okay. Like Matt, I was expecting and kind of hoping for Kamala Harris to win with the Republican Congress to buy us some time to get to a better place. Donald Trump's trade policy is idiotic. And the immigration, his, you know, promises to do mass deportations is disgusting and vile.
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
And it's something that you will read a lot about in, you know, the pages of Reason magazine, as we did when Obama deported people and when George Bush deported people and things like that. It's just, it's flat out wrong.
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
I said it multiple times in various podcasts and whatnot that my preferred outcome was that Kamala Harris wins with Republican Congress.
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
And just as a quick follow-up, I'm a libertarian because I grew up lower middle class, not in spite of that. I think capitalism and free markets and limited government gives you the most opportunity to actually advance in the world. It also creates a market full of innovation so that suddenly food is unbelievably cheap, even relatively speaking during terms of high inflation.
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
But I think that the argument that libertarianism is simply, you know, the province of upper middle class people who have never really had to think about stuff is just empirically wrong. And it's certainly wrong in my case.
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
Nick Gillespie. Thank you all for coming out, and thank you guys for arguing. We'll continue it later. Thank you, Peter, for organizing this, and Matt, whatever.
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
No, but to follow up a bit on what Tim is talking about, it's exactly because I want to make a better world and a world in which we're all more free to live the way we want, talk the way we want, dress the way we want, and get on with our lives outside of politics. So politics is never going to be the be all and end all. And societies that suck are the ones that are where politics is everything.
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
We want to get rid of that. And one of the best ways to do that, you know, in every part of our lives, we're debundling things. How many of you cut your cable cords? Because, you know, you don't have to buy $200 worth of channels in order to watch the one or two or three things that you want to watch. We're debundling all the time, and it's time we do that with our politics.
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
I don't want to join the Republican Party because I want slightly lower taxes, and then that means I also have to vote for a flag-burning amendment. I don't want to be part of the Democratic Party because I believe in abortion and reproductive choice. But then that means I have to be against school choice.
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
It's like, no, if we continue to play the game where we say in order to make a difference, in order to matter, in order to be serious about our lives, we have to go whole hog and pick a team in politics. We are just going to get beat.
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
bigger and i'm trying to remember this right now it's like we're only going to get more giant turds and bigger and bigger douches or however it works that way madness lies and you know think about the 21st century which is kind of mind-numbing that this you know is what some of us or at least people as old as me dreamed about i was going to be cool in the 21st century and instead society gets more and more politicized
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
and we get worse and worse candidates. That's not an accident, and the way that you can fix that is by not taking partisanship as the be-all and end-all and the summit of how we engage to make a better world. Thanks very much.
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
You win, Andrew Heaton. You've got a trophy with some balloons and a medal.
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
Step up to hell. I want to say it's a good thing that I don't believe in hell. And I don't think anybody here does. I just want to point out, you know, what we just, what we've heard tonight is one of the weakest, most pathetic arguments I've ever heard. And I'm talking about your opening remarks, Matt, of course.
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
What I want to make the case for, you know, if you're talking about Trump and Harris and that's the limit of your horizon, hit the bar now, okay? Because you're already lost in a fog. What I want to make the case for is saying that you don't have... I want to rephrase the proposition. You don't have to be a partisan.
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
You don't have to pick a political party in order to make meaningful impact on social, political, and economic issues. Your right of exit from any given coalition is exactly the thing that helps keep that coalition or that group or that movement focused on what they're trying to achieve. And I want to talk about that in the context of Martin Luther King, Gloria Steinem, and Bob Dylan.
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
Forgive me, I'm a boomer. I have trilogies that speak to boomers. Martin Luther King Jr. was scrupulously nonpartisan.
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
in his political associations, because he knew the minute that he said, I'm a Republican, which would have made sense for a variety of reasons, or I'm a Democrat, which would have made sense for particular reasons, the civil rights movement and the cause that he cared about the most disappears. It becomes part of another special interest group.
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
Gloria Steinem, who helped create modern feminism, and I hope people here are feminists. Can we have it? Yeah. You know, it's a powerful movement.
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
She pissed that away, maybe standing up, when she wrote her one free grope op-ed in the New York Times, and she said, you know what, whatever Bill Clinton does, it's okay because it's more important that we back him rather than the other side, who was, what, Bob Dole? You know, around that time.
The Bulwark Podcast
'The Hottest Circle of Hell Is for Those Who Stay Neutral'
And it reduced feminism and the feminist movement to a mere special interest group among Democratic, you know, the Democratic Party. And you lose power that way because then you're suddenly your issue is not that important. And then, you know, there's Bob Dylan. How many of you like Bob Dylan? That's OK. Well, I was expecting a different crowd tonight. But, you know, here's the thing.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
I totally hear where you're coming from. And libertarianism historically, it's like a post-World War II phenomenon, really a post-1968 phenomenon, really, as an organized movement. Really?
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
Well, it was partly the people who founded the Modern Libertarian Party, people who were working at places like Reason. They felt left out of politics, you know, Republicans and Democrats. Like, you know, when you're, especially if you're a young man in a draft year and your choice is Richard Nixon or Hubert Humphrey or George Wallace, you're like, okay, where's the exit, right? You know? Yeah.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
Yeah, yeah. Okay. A huge, huge factor. And people like Ayn Rand, I never personally went through an Ayn Rand phase, but she was massive. You didn't smoke that much pot? See, I went through it. Oh, wow. The objectivists I knew, they didn't even get drunk. Oh, wow. Much of smoking weed. So it's like, okay, I'm out.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
because for me, you know, the 1950s, I mean, post-war America is the first time when America became, you know, kind of a wealthy country and also like it was, you know, that's when individual liberty flourished. Like suddenly you had, even among minorities who had it really shitty in the 50s, like if you were black, you know, I mean, Brown versus Board of Education only took place in 54.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
Schools didn't get fully desegregated until Nixon in the early 70s. I mean, you know, it's bad. But at every level, people were doing so much better and there was so much more stuff to buy, so many more choices to make on every level. It makes sense that libertarianism started to become more interesting and attractive.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
I was more into Jack Kerouac and the Beats who were exploring individual liberty.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
Yeah, you know, so these are all like kind of, you know, parts of a broad movement.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
But in any case, I was going to say that I, you know, I'm a libertarian because I grew up lower middle class, not because it's often characterized as, you know, this is, you know, this is a philosophy for upper middle class people, highly educated people, men mostly, and some women who are like Ayn Rand or something like, you know, use cigarette holders or something.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
Yeah, that's right. You know, my whole point, I agree with you in the questions you're asking. I think capitalism, broadly speaking, as an operating system generates more possibilities for people. I agree. And this is why I'm not an anarchist. You know, when you talk about poor people.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
Yeah, well, part of the problem with political discourse in America, and I think it's always been this way, is that 90% of us say we're middle class. And so you get middle class people, and this happened under, it happened under George W. Bush, it happened under Trump, certainly under Biden, where suddenly households who are making $400,000-
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
are being subsidized by the government and you hear this you know i'm talking to you from hell's kitchen in new york and you'll hear people in new york say with a straight face like oh you know making 300 grand in new york just isn't really a lot it's just not happening right yeah you know it's like you know we're pinched and it's like then move or you know whatever but what i was going to say is that the libertarian argument for helping people
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
who need it. And assistance in the market goes something like this. Or part of it is that, you know, if you're a kid and your parents, for whatever reason, aren't, you know, they're not well off, you don't have a lot of options, giving kids access to education and to healthcare will allow them to grow so that they can fully participate in society, which is a good thing.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
Then we can say, okay, well, that's why we have, you know, Medicaid and why we have public schools. And then it might be the case that we say, well, you know what, let's maybe give the parents money so that they can pick the school their kid goes to. Like the government doesn't have to run the schools, et cetera.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
But there should be some aid and assistance in the interest of helping people fully participate in society.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
I think I can make a case that is consistent with libertarian beliefs and a belief in mostly free markets and laissez-faire and certainly personal liberties, that the state can exist to help people in terms of safety nets and in terms of helping to guarantee or at least multiply opportunities.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
But having said that, the reason why cars became cheaper and better and isn't because the government said, hey, you know what, we're going to give you
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
uh you know a subsidized loan in order to to buy that gremlin you know it actually cars in america got better uh and cheaper when you think about it in terms of the amount of work that people have to do to buy them when we opened up to competition and throughout the you know through the mid 70s
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
uh car markets in america were basically you know it's very hard to get imports um and as a result we got you know the cars that you and i grew up uh driving you know the one good thing is you know i think about this all the time and again this is a question of progress that we should not celebrate uncritically but take note of um i can remember people would have parties on the street if their car made it to a hundred thousand miles and the odometer went to zero sure
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
There were like two or three in your lifetime. Yeah. And now you don't even change the spark plugs on a new car until 100,000 miles. And it is true that business owners want to, they want you to work for as little as they have to pay you. But then if you're a good worker, you're going to be competing. Other companies are going to be like, you know what?
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
This guy is actually pretty good at what he's doing. I'm going to woo him away with a better wage.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
Yeah, no. Well, I also think it's kind of, you know, you can push it too far. I was looking in anticipation for this. I was looking at the percentage of households and whatnot that are on SNAP benefits. And things happen. Like, I think almost everybody in America, regardless of political persuasion or ideology or anything, would say, you know what? Like, we don't want people to starve.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
Yeah. No, it drives me nuts. And this is, again, from a libertarian point of view, I think you can say, okay, we're going to have certain social welfare safety net programs. Those are important. But then when you start getting to like, well, okay, people who are making three times the poverty line or something are still getting a benefit.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
maybe that's not a great use of taxpayer money because that money's coming from somewhere else. But also, you know, and you find this in all sorts of giveaways under COVID and whatnot where people just, you know, okay, well, you know, why do seniors get prescription drug benefits, you know, regardless of how much money they make or why are they getting them anyway if
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
if they don't actually need them.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
It's two things. One is, I would say it would be better to give people like, you know, we know people are poor because they're below the poverty line. Like give them cash, you know, just give them cash and say, okay, here, we trust you not to buy, you know, not simply to buy a Letio cereal for your kid. Right.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
Yeah. And it's like, well, they'll figure out how to do that anyway. But to get to this point, because you mentioned Jeff Bezos, who just recently said he wants the opinion section of The Washington Post to focus on supporting personal liberties and free markets. And it's true, like when government gives a benefit and then says, oh, but you know what?
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
You have to get the 2% milk or the nonfat milk because we don't trust you to make a good decision. That is so patronizing to my mind. It shouldn't be allowed.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
You'll have fights over where the line gets drawn exactly, right? And things like that. But to me, and I like the way that you phrase it, it's like, who are the people who are left out? And particularly the people who are left out through no actions of their own, how do we give them a shot at participating in society?
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
Yeah. What you're describing is broadly, you know, a lot of Republicans think this way. I think a lot of conservatives. I think liberals go back and forth when you're talking about Chicago and it's like, oh, we got to help these people. But then if it's some, you know, fat Walmart shopper in a small town in Indiana, it's like, just buck it up, pal.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
Quick break and then back. All right. We are back. This is one of the things that is fascinating about Donald Trump is that he is a master of playing all of this kind of stuff against itself because, you know, when he's talking about tariffs and when he's talking about help, you know, he just was praising the longshoremen.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
Yeah. Well, Donald Trump, and this is probably the only time this sentence has been spoken in the English language, I think of Donald Trump like Bob Dylan. And by that, I mean that he- Hold on a minute.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
Yeah. Yeah. He has- He's certainly blowing in the wind, but what- A million different persona. And at any given point in time, Bob Dylan absolutely believes what he's singing. And when he was anti-war, he believed that when he thought Reuben Carter was innocent. He believes it in the moment. Yeah.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
And then when he thought that God was going to come and kill his friends and throw them into a lake of everlasting hellfire-
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
He got out of that quick. But Trump believes what he's saying. So I don't think he's being calculated and saying, I'm screwing around with the longshoremen.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
Yeah. But it does get into this larger question for the country. Surprisingly, I think my worldview would fix just about everything in the world.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
You know, I've been waiting. No, but what we have now is a government that pretty much at all levels, but certainly at the federal level, is spending way too much. It cannot or won't raise revenue to cover its costs. So it's creating debt. And we can talk about why debt is a problem beyond some kind of accounting fetish.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
Oh, well, thank you, John. It's a real treat. And it's always nice to be called grounded because normally I'm talked about as something less than grounded. So thank you.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
But we are trying to do, the government is trying to do so many things, it is doing them poorly and it's unsustainable. And I think we're reaching a moment where this long period after World War II, And even after the Cold War ended where, okay, there's a reset coming and you can't keep spending, you know, $7 trillion a year and taking in $4.5 trillion, which is what we're doing.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
And we're going to have to make choices. And this is where, you know, I think if we would say, here's the goal of government, the goal of government is not to make sure that everybody ever everywhere keeps the job they had when they were 25, even if they're 65. But it's like government is here to provide several core functions and to kind of keep things moving in a direction.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
Then how do we pay for that? How much does that cost? How do we pay for it? And how do we empower people to use whatever money we're giving them?
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
Yeah, which is a wonderful metaphor for everything.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
Can I push on this a little bit? Please. Yeah, what I was going to challenge is like capitalism is inherently exploitative, you know, and that labor is always getting, you know, punched in the head or hit in the kidneys with a baseball bat by who was the guy and on the waterfront, Johnny Friendly, I think. Yeah.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
Yeah, yeah. No, I mean, you know, and maybe he had a bouncer who was really fat that they called Tiny. I think it was an ironic universe, right? Oh, that's how it worked. Yeah. But I don't necessarily agree with that.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
And in a lot of ways, I would push back on it because when you talk about, you know, okay, you know, the boss, the boss man, and, you know, now we're back in Springsteen universe, right? Because, you know... For Bruce Springsteen, things have never recovered from the Great Depression. He's still mumbling along the mean streets of Rumson.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
What? What? What I'm getting at is that employers are desperate, generally speaking. If you are a good employee, and I worked as a manager at Reason for 20 plus years, if there was somebody who was putting in a better than average effort, I would do everything to keep them. But you're running a small business.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
I hear you, but we will disagree with this to a large degree on this. Oh, okay. I don't think it changed. And I'm not saying that there weren't times where capitalism was red in tooth and claw and exploitative. When was it not? I guess that would be the easier question.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
Well, the reason what I'm getting at is saying that when you, you know, if you go back and this is something there's a type of school of economic thought called public choice economics, which talks about how, you know, the story that progressives tell, capital P progressives in particular tell about capitalism is that it was awful
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
First off, nobody paid those tax rates because those were the printed rates. No, seriously. But that's why people, that's why things like expense accounts and all sorts of things were invented for upper level people. Sure.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
The main engine of things like people being able to buy their own homes and whatnot, it was increases in productivity through industrialization and mechanization. It was not, I would argue, it was not unionization. It wasn't the GI Bill.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
I'm not saying those things didn't have an effect, but that it's because we became wealthier because suddenly we were building an economy that used machines and other things to become massively more productive. Wages went up.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
Sometimes they're higher, sometimes they're higher, sometimes they're lower. But like right now in America, we're basically, we have like the highest median household income that we've ever had adjusted for inflation.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
No, you have to look into what that means. 60 plus percent of Americans own their own home compared to in the 50s, it was much lower. They have college educations, they have more stuff.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
Massively higher. And food is cheaper. You know, everything is more abundant. Plus, you get the personal liberty stuff, which I think is part of capitalism. I don't think, you know, it's not like capitalism is an economic thing and then, you know, it's the weekend and you're going to go to Plato's Retreat or Studio 54. You know, they're all part of the same system, right? Yeah. Right.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
Having said all of that, I mean, just to get back to it, it's like what capitalism does and there's an economist named Joseph Schumpeter, the guy who created, he coined the term creative destruction and in a book during World War II called Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, he said, you know, the great achievement of capitalism was not making more silk stockings for Queens, the Queens of England, the Queens of Europe, but bringing them in reach of factory girls.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
So you've heard of the massive economic crash that happened in the early 20s. That was bigger than the stock market crash in 1929. No. Yeah. And the government didn't do anything, and the stock market recovered very quickly.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
Yeah, I think so. And part of it is that I grew up as a journalist, or I started working as a journalist, then I went to grad school for literary studies. And then I had to come back. It was still in my blood. Somehow that big payoff in being an English professor didn't materialize.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
I'm not saying everything would have been fine and it would have been difficult. But the New Deal, it's worth going back and looking at how did the New Deal affect the economy? And did it string out bad times? Because there are two economic depressions in the 30s that economists talk about. And that every government intervention has costs and benefits. And oftentimes, we have lost sight of things.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
And particularly if I might, that was behavior that was heavily incentivized by the federal government in terms of guaranteeing mortgage loans and things like that.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
No, I mean, but it was the Federal Reserve, first off, like kept interest rates artificially low for a long time. And then the government had a policy of its government sponsored entities buying up all of the mortgage paper that was going. So banks did not do the due diligence. But they jumped into that later. Everybody has some schmutz on their hands from all of this. The schmutz.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
I would argue that it's also, you know, we would probably agree on, you know, on a similar path because I suspect, I mean, you know, we went, I was looking this up beforehand in 2000, in 2001, which was Bill Clinton's final budget year as president. You know, he left office in 2000 or early 2001. Fiscal year lasts, you know, a little bit longer. He spent less than $2 trillion.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
That was the entire federal budget. We are over $7 trillion now. In 2019, the year before COVID, we were spending $4.4 trillion a year. That went up to $6.6 trillion in 2020. It is now $7.2 trillion. um, in spending. And I suspect that you would agree with me that we should not be, it's not clear why we're spending $7.2 trillion.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
But like, why at all? Like, how do you go from, you know, we're post COVID, right?
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
Well, I actually did get my start working at teen magazines and music magazines. I worked for a place called Teen Machine at some point. Teen Machine. But even in my teen mag days, I was always interested in starting with some facts. It's not like a card you lay down and then the conversation stops. I've been a reason since 1993. The magazine started in 1968.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
Yeah, no, we can definitely be more effective in intervening in economic, you know, Yeah, I don't think part of the government's role should be like, it's not like going to a personal trainer and you come in and they're like, hey, you're looking a little fat. Let's do some abs today and have the government constantly be smoothing the economy.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
Or I think it's hubris to think that it can control things. It's one thing when you have a catastrophic adventure.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
No, but it's also like, remember, you know, in the early 2000s, you know, we had the tech bubble crash. Yes. And then we had a bunch of, you know, accounting rules that were going to make sure that, you know, big, you know, the financial sector never fucked around with shit anymore.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
Then, you know, the financial crisis hits large, I would argue, is largely because of government actions or is heavily abetted by government actions.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
This is, you know, public choice economics talks about how like we think people want to think of the government as acting somehow differently than the private sector, but it's oftentimes completely captured. by the interest that it's supposed to regulate, or it is also just trying to build its own empire. So it's going to try and regulate more and more stuff.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
Not necessarily remove it completely, but minimize its attempt to rig the system in favor of particular outcomes, whether that's for the little guy or the big guy or whatever. And let the natural order.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
Yeah, I don't. And I say this again, this is coming from my father was born in Hell's Kitchen in the 1920s. He did okay. I did much better than him. But what I'm getting at is the idea that I actually think that capitalism offers more opportunities specifically for people to rise up from the lower classes and the middle classes.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
Yeah. Or like a super regulated market where you're only getting into schools because of what family you come from and all of this kind of stuff. Right.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
Absolutely. No. And nothing is perfect, right? Nothing is perfect. But we came out of the financial crisis with, oh, now we know we're not going to do anything too big to fail, right?
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
and it's like in fact the financial industry uh the financial sector is more um you know is more concentrated than it ever was and everybody in it knows that like oh no we're too big to fail which also means we can around and find out how that's right just watch us it is a very tricky thing and once you start thinking like okay the government can control stuff and make good outcomes like it it does until you know you realize oh this was a big catastrophe
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
I did a cover story about how everybody was talking about, and this was a big Hillary Clinton thing. children were at risk like they had never been before like you know worse than the little rascals those those kids had a good compared to kids growing up in the fucking like late 1990s and all i started with was like a list of you know how much better children are doing right
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
And I think with something like the COVID stuff, when we're talking about it, there's economic issues which are worth talking about. And I think the massive increasing and extending of unemployment benefits was really bad. And it's generated so much debt. That's not going away, even if the annual GDP growth is increasing and things like that.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
There were so many interventions into the economy where if the government had done smaller targeted things for shorter times, I think we would be better off.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
Well, this is not an extreme philosophy and it is not a fringe philosophy. It is most people- Although can be exploited as such by people. Oh yeah, totally. And it can be vilified wrongly and it can be taken in bizarre directions and stuff. But basically what you're talking about is you want to live in a world where you can figure out who you are and build the world that you want to live in.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
And not to get too libertarian on this, it means that if you want to marry, if you're a man and you want to marry a man, anything that is among consenting adults is good. If you want to smoke weed rather than drink whiskey, you shouldn't go to prison for that. And it shouldn't be illegal to buy and sell this shit. And if you want to run a
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
If you want to run a business that does this versus that, like, you know, anything that's peaceful.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
But that's part of what government is designed to do, right? I mean, I don't think that's a bug. I think that's a feature of government. And you would argue, and I understand this, capitalism's the feature is- That's what I'm saying. It is like, really, no, we need more girls in the shirt waist triangle factory.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
So that is, you know, it's a fascinating kind of question. And I can't really speak for other libertarians. Sure. But I am, you know, what I liked about Trump winning. is that I think it put a cap on a broad series of developments and kind of policies and attitudes that had settled over the country, kind of like, you know, a DDT fog that wasn't going away.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
Well, you know, I'm 61 years old. I was born in 1963. The average lead levels in kids growing up in the 60s would have triggered massive medical interventions in the late 90s because, you know, lead, leaded gasoline, lead paint, lead pencils, you know, lead cereal, I'm sure.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
Popping a wheelie on my banana seat and all this. And that had to do – there were certain things about wokeness and about kind of policing of speech in a public way. That was onerous, you know, and the only solution to that really is for people to say, like, you know what, I'm not going to allow you to call me a racist, you know, and I'm going to speak my mind. I'm going to be public about that.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
No, no. I mean, people are now talking about the woke left is being replaced by the woke right. And I mean, the idea that policing language so that if you're in the presence of Trump or a Trump-tard and you call it the Gulf of Mexico, They will be like, you no longer exist to me or something. And like, this is not progress by any stretch.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
Oh, it was great, though. And I like that. I mean, I think it's empowering even as it fractures us.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
Yeah, yeah. And I mean, I was early on in Twitter, or not that early on, but I remember when Bill Cosby, you know, he was coming back with like a Netflix special and a tour and stuff like that. And he had a Twitter feed, an official Twitter feed. And they would put out stuff saying like, you know, hey, you know, Dr. Cosby wore great sweaters on the Cosby show, you know, post your favorite sweater.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
And everybody just like immediately went after him for all of the sexual assault and rape allegations. Yeah. And it's like, that's a world I want to live in, where the big people and the little people are suddenly kind of in the same room. And that can be terrifying. It's especially terrifying if you're a big person, right?
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
But then you get to places where it becomes implemented in terms of various kinds of speech codes, as well as hiring policies at universities, at corporations, because corporations are not in the business. Corporations are just doing whatever they can do to make the next buck.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
I know. I agree. And, you know, and I'll say, you know, because you brought this up. You had a really good and powerful and instructive moment when you were raising questions about the lab leak theory on the, you know, on Stephen Colbert show.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
And again, it's like what we found under Biden, and I suspect if you go back far enough, there was some of this under Trump and under Obama and Bush and back before the FCC, all of this stuff, but where the government was actively leaning on people to say, do not permit this discussion or tamp it down, etc., Have they ever not? Less now than ever.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
And this is one of the things, to bring it back to Trump, he signed an executive order saying that nobody in his administration should be trying to shut down conversation on social media. Does he mean that?
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
Yeah. So what I will say, and again, this is, you know, I didn't vote for Trump. I voted for the libertarian candidate because, you know, why not? But Trump will be ineffective. He's not going to actually jail people.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
And they filled you up for the whole day, yeah. No, but so, I mean, this just gets back to the point of like, I think it's always important to, when we start talking about stuff, especially today, because, you know, people are nuts, is like, can we agree on some common facts, right? Yeah.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
Yeah. It's terrible. No, it's not all that matters, but it is bad and he should be called out for it. I mean, in a way, Trump, in a way, his whole career, his whole politics career is the triumph Of talkback, you know, of telling the system, go fuck yourself, because nobody wanted him. The Republicans didn't want him originally. Nobody wanted him.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
So in a way, he personifies a world in which we are freer than ever to just say, fuck it, I'm doing whatever I want. Unless it's against him. Yeah, as president, it is an awful thing.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
And when you look at governors, DeSantis did this, Greg Abbott in Texas did this too, where they started writing laws that were tailored to screw over social media companies they didn't like because they thought they were censoring conservative voices, which turned out not to be true.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
Yeah. And you could argue they didn't have to maybe, but it's all bad. Like any, anytime the government, you know, you know, Congress shall make no law, you know, a bridging speech. That's it. Like, and that, that, that should be the case at the state level too. And all of that.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
i don't necessarily know that that's what they're doing it feels awfully inefficient the way they're doing it but well and it's a it's a real mix of uh you know for me the biggest problems with trump as a figure were had to do with immigration policy and tariffs um and you know he's just categorically awful you would not a libertarian would not be protectionist in terms of you even made the point earlier in terms of cars
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
I mean, is there a sports league that got worse after blacks were allowed to play? No, and in every possible way, right? It's just like you were walling off a huge source of powerful possibilities.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
Unfortunately, those policies never had any – they weren't reaching those people. I mean, that's –
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
Yeah. Well, I am very excited by the idea of having a government that has done an audit of its workforce and of its activities.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
Yeah, no, well, actually there's more like that. And this is, I was excited the other day when there were a bunch of tweets saying that, oh, Doge has entered the Pentagon. And it's like, okay, yeah, this should be very interesting.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
That's right. And, you know, a good example of this, an economist friend of mine wrote about how at the FDA they had cut, apparently they had like cut 200 regulators, like people who actually go through stuff to see whether or not it's...
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
And if you keep the regulations in place and cut the workforce that is going to see if they're complying, like you just make everything worse. And this is where I think the Trump administration, not across the board, but in certain circumstances may actually be a good thing. So- You take the FDA, they named a guy Marty Macri, who's a professor from Johns Hopkins, who's pretty smart.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
He'll be reporting, I guess, ultimately to Robert F. Kennedy, which is a whole other weird bag of- Weird, right? I don't know. But if the FDA, and this is something coming out of a libertarian perspective and analysis, it costs way too much to bring new drugs to market. It takes too long and it costs too much. There are ways to bring more drugs to market without compromising safety.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
And if the government would restructure the FDA and Macri has talked about this, RFK and the second, his deputy at Health and Human Services have talked about ways to do this. Like if they do that so that it doesn't take a couple billion dollars in 12 years to bring a new drug to market. That's a big win. And that is something that we could completely do. We could do it overnight.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
You have to be because you want to go where the jokes are and you want to be able to think a certain way and then express it.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
perfection that anybody who's ever let out of prison cannot re you know recommit a crime or else we have to make the system utterly ridiculous it have no but you know and in and in its best iteration or its best kind of sense if doge is going to help us go through and just trim out like you know clean out the house there's just too much shit in the house
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
man i just don't have confidence yet i know and i i agree because of the question of um you know like are they doing it well i have been thinking about this you know like elon right is is bragging about how you know he's got like a bunch of pre-teen coders who are quants and they can go through spreadsheets and the stuff they're finding like you know they keep finding massive mistakes like where they were claiming a uh a contract they ended with ice
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
was at $8 billion and it was actually $8 million and things like that. I worry that people think because you can fucking do Excel, you suddenly have wisdom.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
And people at the Department of Defense, the Department of Justice, and National Intelligence, Tulsa Gabbard said, hey, don't comply with this. So you're already at odds. Having said that, it is important. And this is where Trump won. And more important, like he gained in almost every possible demographic subgroup. So people are ready for a change. And that's the most important thing.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
Yeah, we've only been married like less than six months. So, yeah.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
In any case, you know, so what we're at, we are at a place where we understand, you know, this is why the Republican Party and the Democratic parties don't make sense. Like, again, since the end of World War II, certainly the end of the Cold War, maybe even the beginning of the century, like... it's all kind of played out and it's not working that well.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
Yeah. So, and this is where I guess I am grounded because I'm not an anarchist or an anarcho-capitalist, which a lot of people say where, you know, no government is ever necessary or kind of the same thing that anything the government does is by force and theft and is illegitimate. And they also suck at everything they do. Why would we have them do anything?
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
Like we need to, maybe the house isn't a complete teardown, but we need to clean it up. We need to repaint it. We need to say, you know what, we're going to sublet that whole part of it. Like we don't need to be doing that. And that's really important and vital. And I agree with you in this sense of like saying, if it's adversarial, if everything becomes adversarial,
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
then what we we've this whole century we've been going between you know control whole or partial control of the white house and the house of representatives in the senate from republicans to democrats back and forth in a way that hasn't been seen in over a century and it's because we haven't figured out a new consensus that is actually that people can live with and so we just go from biden being insane in this direction now trump you know and we're not getting to a resolution
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
Well, I think let's – yeah, it is the opportunity that's here. And then the remedies that are being proffered are not great. What is interesting is to see – we're not even 100 days in, right, to Trump. It's like a month and change.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
I am withering. Yeah, it's really, really hard to think back even six months to what was going on. But again, it's helpful and it's essential because, you know, when we look back on where we were, like we've gone through most of this stuff before and we figured out ways to kind of improve on the past or to, you know, be better at what we're doing. And I think we need to do that.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
You know, right now, in a way, you know, Trump has the high ground for a little while. But this is also true of every president, you know, by the summer. you know, we'll know whether or not he is popular, like if his specific fixes are popular or not. I suspect that they will be less popular over time.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
But again, some of them like, you know, let's you know, let's legalize drugs at the federal level and just stop worrying about a whole bunch of shit we've been worried about for 100 years. Let's come to you know, there is a broad recognition that the U.S. should not be the world's policeman.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
Yeah, no, well, that's different.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
Yeah, no, I mean, this is where it's confusing, you know, and we need to get to a place where the solutions that are being discussed are actually good and legitimate. And it'll be interesting to see if the Democrats, you know, like I'm... You know, very bothered by people being like, oh, my God, the Democrats have nobody. The Republicans will win every election for the next thousand years.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
You know, that's one strain of kind of libertarian thinking. I'm much more like Milton Friedman, you know, a proud New Jerseyan, everything good. Friedman? Where was he from? He's from, I think he was born in Newark and grew up in Robway. You know, Robway's two most famous residents are Milton Friedman and Reuben Hurricane Carter.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
Yeah. Everybody has said that every, you know, when Bush was elected and then reelected and then when Obama.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
And he, but he was, you know, in a way he was right in the saying, you know, that liberal democracy is the way forward. And the one thing, you know, I mean, there's retreat now, kind of, kind of, but it's also true that like China is, you know, China is not democratic, but it's more capitalist than it was when he said that.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
I totally agree with that. But all I'm saying in China is that people are getting richer around the globe. I mean, one of the most important and fascinating facts that nobody discusses, and I think this should be talked about much more, there is a global middle class. The majority of people on the planet are at the middle class or above level for the first time in human history.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
There's a guy named Romi Karras at the Brookings Institution that's been writing about this for a decade. And most of it is happening in Asia and in Africa and South America. And so, we don't really care about that. But you know what happens when people get a little bit of extra money and then you say, oh, here, you've got more money in the bank, but you can't spend it the way you want to.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
People are like, fuck you. And like- This is a good problem to have globally and things like that.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
uh for things but nick uh i'm i'm cognizant of your time i really appreciate the conversation i i've enjoyed it so much thank you i appreciate it too and uh you know what i mean one of the things that you're doing which i think a lot of people who would identify themselves you know as not being a you know republic like a mega republican right like you are not freaking out on externally i am not
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
Well, I mean, yeah, but everybody is so oppositional that it's like you're either voting for Harris or you're voting for Trump. And if you're not totally on board, people don't want to talk to you. Right.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
But there are more people now, and this continues to grow, you know, that are independent. And we can argue about whether or not there are real independents politically, but fewer and fewer people are willing to identify as Democratic or Republican in polls. And that's saying something. And it means that these organizations don't represent the large masses of people anymore.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
And parties work better when they figure out, okay, where's the majority at? And how do we deal with that?
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
Let's go to a child-run factory in Bangladesh. Yeah.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
I was going to say, if you don't name somebody from the prison, you're just not working hard enough. Right. But over the course of my career, I've become much more of what I call a directional libertarian, which is that I'm not that interested in like, okay, let's build a perfect philosophical foundation that makes perfect mathematical and philosophical sense.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
Oh, it's my pleasure. Thank you, John.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
It's like, are we heading in the direction of more individual freedom where people can live how they want to, where business owners can do what they want to, where people you know, where things are looser and people are able to make more choices that matter in their lives.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
For me, the question isn't, you know, whether or not the government is funding something, it's are we going in the right direction or not?
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
And so to bring that back to this question of regulation of things like lead, you know, the single biggest thing to help air quality in the United States, arguably, was the environmental pollution, you know, kind of standards that were passed in the late 60s and early 70s under the
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
Yeah, and by banning, and it took many years.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
Well, no, because I'm a libertarian, I will pick a nit with you about DDT in just a second. But with leaded, getting rid of leaded gasoline, and the atmosphere is a common. So it's not like you can't say, oh, the lead you're emitting, I'm going to sue you in court for that because it would take forever and it's never going to work or anything. But
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
And, you know, by saying, okay, we're taking leaded gasoline. I mean, you know, most people in America now, I think probably were not, you know, grew up with leaded gasoline versus unleaded, you know, and all of that kind of shit. And it's like by taking leaded gasoline out of the air, that had a major positive effect on the environment.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
Yeah, no, it's like, just breathe in, you know, because you're huffing anyway. That's right. So even when you're saying like, okay, we're going to build a consensus and say, we want to get leaded gasoline out of the air because it has these negative effects. You can do it smarter and dumber.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
And like the way the government did it, and this was Nixon's EPA said, okay, we're going to mandate catalytic converters, which is a particular type of technology that takes a lot of the lead out of emissions. I mean, as well as changing how we formulate gasoline.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
um but um you know it's like the government probably shouldn't be dictating technology or it could set a goal and say you have to reduce pollution by so much but then we're going to let you and we're going to let the market innovate to figure out what's the best way to do it are you for government then incentivizing those kinds of changes like is would that be or is that considered an intervention that
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
Yeah, well, I mean, it gets complicated pretty quickly and, you know, obviously, right? Yeah. But it's where it might be that, you know, we want you to reduce your amount of pollution, however we define it. That's one thing. But then say, oh, and by the way, we're going to give you a massive taxpayer subsidy and then give taxpayers credits to buy this one kind of technology.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
You know, it could be a solar panel, you know, I don't think build your own wind farms have taken off yet, but I'm sure they're coming. You know, like you probably, you want to make it as simple as possible to say like, okay, we've come up with like, here are the basic rules.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
And then what free markets are really good at is figuring out innovative ways to do stuff for lower costs with better outcomes. And that's not always perfect and it's not always, you know, sometimes it needs a kick in the pants or sometimes you just need a top-down regulation or restriction on something.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
But I think things generally work better, you know, when you let markets operate more freely to kind of figure out what people want to, because a lot of times we don't know what we want. and then how to get there more quickly.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
Yeah, DDT is a really interesting example. I mean, the kind of planetary ban, almost complete planetary ban on DDT comes from Rachel Carson in Silent Spring.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
And she was making a series of cases. And the modern environmentalist movement in a lot of way comes out of that book and the movement that she helped inspire. And it turns out that DDT is really good at killing mosquitoes. The best. Yeah. And its banning was not necessarily a good thing because everything has costs and benefits.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
And it turns out in certain places, people are using lower levels of DDT in order to really powerfully eradicate mosquitoes. And so like- People, we are constantly held captive by these old things like, you know, DDT was killing people, you know, as if like everything good didn't come out of an era where boys were riding spider bikes, jumping ramps into vats of DDT.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
But, you know, it turns out that it gets much more complicated and we, you know... It's worth going back and thinking about this stuff. And you mentioned polio. I'm sure we'll talk about Robert Kennedy at a certain point. You know, Robert Kennedy, who's old enough to really remember polio, is like, you know, the polio vaccines have, you know, killed more people than they saved.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
And it's like, you know, I want to see the stream of iron lungs, you know, going up in front of Health and Human Services.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
At certain levels, right? Because this, yeah. And then this is, you know, one of the things I gave a talk last fall, you know, which was about what I call the agony of abundance. Like the biggest problem I think we have today, you know, in a kind of macro sense is we forget how to learn from the past. And- Boy, howdy. There was a poll last year and it's- Preach.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
Yeah, and it's like almost 60% of people last year said that life was better in America in 1974. Because you were a kid. Yeah, let's go look at 1974 and like the Pinto was the best-selling car in 1974.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
Well, I was partial to the Pacer because I just remember them having an ad where a guy delivered a six-foot sub in the back of the Pacer. Yes, sure. But then it was all glass, so by the time it got there, it would have flies and maggots on it.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
The Pinto not only was explosive, literally and figuratively, well, not figuratively, just explosively, but it was a bad car. And we have done so much better to make better cars, but yet people are constantly being born back into the past thinking that it was a simple decision. Yeah.
The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Libertarian Says What? with Nick Gillespie
Okay. What's an example of that?