Sometimes power is Right. Sometimes power is wrong. Always and everywhere, power defines and is defined by what you should think do. And say, if you wish to flourish. This is the only sure way to know whether you are a dissident or a collaborator. Welcome to Keith's night. Don't tread on anyone. That is a quote from our guest today. Mr. Curtis Jarvan. You can check him out at gray, mare. Dotsub stack.com sir. Is that the best place to find your work?
That is the best place to find my current work. You can Find my archives of my old blog which is a very large amount of material and unqualified Dash. Reservations dot-org. I'm actually also my sub stack is currently although this will probably change accessible through the sub stack a homepage. I'm Number 15 in politics. The, you know, I don't expect, I'll stay on that page, but you can find me from there for right now. So so yeah.
Thank you for having me on. And happy to talk about whatever you whatever it is. You want to talk about. You wanted to talk about Hans Hermann. Hapa was that one of the goals, but I'll let you, I'll let you lead here. So I'm going to clip this into three separate videos. I want to start off with a discussion on Democracy. The God That Failed a collection of works by Hans hop up and he opens up talking about time preference. What is the important of
importance of Time preference. Well, you know the thing is if you know, if you know meets us, of course, you know, I expect you know, I don't know your podcast well, but I expect most of your listeners are Libertarians and it certainly sounds like a Libertarian podcast.
So if you know the thinking of Muses and rothbard, you know, the course of the concept of time preference, you know, this is really a my season kind of core Austrian economic, you know, definition and Essentially, if you have low time preference, you're willing to say there's a test actually, the sometimes given to Children which is a test of pride of time preference, which is do you want one? Marshmallow now or two marshmallows in an hour?
And the kid who can say I want to marshmallows in an hour is more likely to go on to be a nefarious, International Banker. Yeah. Or more generally. More likely to succeed in life or you know, this this thing that we call life these days, right? So so that's time preference and you know time preference, of course indicates your ability to you know, sort of prefer the future, you know, to the present or discount, the future less
than others. Might now one way to understand, you know, the role of time preference in a like The way you use a piece of property is, let's say you rent a car. In a sense. You don't really care what the condition of that car is in a year or six months. You care that it not fall apart while you're driving it, and you not get billed for anything. So, you know, no one has ever changed the oil in a rented car ever. And that's what that demonstrates is.
It demonstrates the benefits of ownership for the property. See that is owned. You want to be controlled by someone? If you're a car. Just imagine for a second you're a car. Try to kind of compose yourself. Think like a car. Do you want to be a rented? Car? Answer is no, do not want to be a rented car, because the person who drives the red a car is like who gives a crap, right, you know, and and so that's that the experience of being a rented car
is a fairly rough one. When you're basically controlled in a way by people, who don't really care, what happens to you. They have more and more of an incentive to essentially behave in ways that indicate High Time. Preference High tunnel preference being bad. They basically want to like, you know, treat you like a car that they just stole enjoying, you know, got to Joyride in for a couple of hours until the gas ran out. And then the You know, the key expired or whatever, right?
And and you know, those cars are not treated very well. And so the analogy of that that's interesting is when you say, okay? And this is a very simple comparison that Hapa makes let's compare. And in some ways, it doesn't really compare very well to Modern situations because of the reality that our system of government is more an oligarchy than a democracy, but let's Compare very, very pure democracy, where you elect a
president with absolute power. Every four years compared to electing a king with absolute power every four years. So, the amount of power over the government, though, the men of power over the country, that the government has is exactly the same. And actually, the structure of the thing is exactly the same, the monitor, the Monarch is just elected, you know, for four years versus being hereditary. Terry, right. So the Monarch who is elected for four years. Let's say you could be real
elected for another four years. I don't know where I got that. But the that Monarch basically has high time preference because his incentive is to treat the country like a car that he's rented for four years. Whereas, to the Monarch and especially to the hereditary Monarch. The country is much more like this prized family. The heirloom that has been in the family for centuries and will be in this family for another Century. So, you know who is likely to plant a tree that's going to be
a beautiful tree in 50 years. Is it going to be the Monarch? Whose like, I might not live to see this, but I might know my kid, you know, probably well or is it going to be the guy who's only there for four years? And so that was a very, you know, seeing that kind of argument, you know, in Hapa really like it sort of transcended libertarianism for me. No in a number of ways, but as you see, it's built on this core, a Libertarian concept,
makes sense. Yes. Now if I am looking at the Monarch versus the president, at least, I a member of the proletariat class have some leverage against the president. He fears that I will vote him out or as the Monarch can just say, screw me. What is hop has General response to how public opinion can sort of change? The Of politicians, whether they be presidents. I'm sorry, owners or temporary caretaker. Well, you know, two things.
One thing is when you look at public opinion in that sense, you're looking at it as an independent variable and an independent variable is to say, this is an ultimate cause this is not caused by anything else. Now in a world where you know, you're sort of definition of public opinion may vary in.
Various ways in how that's sort of defined as an interesting question, but if we identify a force over, which there are levers, and there's sort of a clear path of control or the force changes in a predictable way. We can essentially say, well, you know, this is not an endogenous force. And one of the things that we see certainly in the 20th century is, we see that it's generally fairly easy for. Government by controlling or
not. Not just a government, but more broadly of force by controlling the press that gets into people's heads, can control their heads and does control their heads. And so the result is, if you're in a situation where public opinion is sort of no longer an ultimate cause then you're just like that's like saying the, you know, who's really in charge the Electoral College because they
allow Like the president. Well, we all know that the Electoral College is a bunch of doofuses and they have no discretion or whatever. They're just, you know, they're to like, you know, put it on their obituaries or something. Right? It's a completely meaningless role, you know, but technically, if you look at the process, yeah, they picked the president. The president is in charge of the military. There are four, you know, theoretically, they could get together and do a coup, right?
We could have, you know, the Electoral coo like, you know, kind of this kind of, you know, people are a lot of people are talking Koozies days. This is kind of a dark horse that comes out of nowhere, right, you know, the Electoral College strikes turns out they've been in cahoots all along, you know, like they have ties to everything right, you know, the rush Shields are in bed with the electoral college,
right? Um, yeah, I mean the thing is that to say that the public is in power, is not really meaningful unless it's sort of actually has that power in any clearer sense. Since and there are many, many indications that it's not only, does it not have that power for structural reasons. It has the structural reasons that it doesn't have that power exists because it doesn't really have enough energy to have power if that makes sense.
And so the thing is that, you know, once you say, well, this is not an once, public opinion is not an Ultimate Force, but you look at him it empirically. And you're basically like, here are the mechanisms by which Public opinion is guided informed out, you know, which is of course the standard perspective of the Press today. I mean, everybody reads Walter lippmann's public opinion from 1922 in journalism school,
right? You know, they know perfectly well, that there's a sort of neoplatonic kind of Guardian of the public thing that you know, is supposed to be carried on what we've seen that degrade into especially in the past few years or arguably even the past few weeks. Is, you know where the Guardians of the state now, and I'm really going to enjoy it watching, you know, this system, turn into any kind of negative cognitive comment about, you know, our president trying to Joe or his wife.
Dr. Jill. You know, it's gone into harassment, right? It will turn into hate speech, like if you say, dr. Jill or doctor Professor, you know, Frau Professor. Dr. Joe right, you know, and some kind of, I mean, that's like, I mean, I imagine if I did that about, Protected class, right? I mean with that same expression that would be horrifying, right? And so it's really easy to just sort of transfer that kind of protection from mockery sort of ultimately to nominal Government
powers. And at that point sort of it's very easy to see. Like the mask is very hard to put back on. So, you know, that's one of the reasons I'm so providing but you know to to get back to that. So you're basically saying, So, you know, okay, this President is accountable and that's kind of an empirical question that can be stated. Are they in any way accountable? You know, what you would say of the Monarch is, you know, how is, how is the absolute monarch accountable?
Or how do they, how do they feel accountable? Number one? These were all religious motherfuckers, right? You know, they were fucking religious. And so they thought that God, like existed in was there. They believed in God and did they consider themselves accountable? God. Yes, absolutely. When you look at like the great, you know, dictators of the 20th century, you know, they Hitler's the Stalin's, the FDR's, they're all atheists and, and, you know, like, really.
I don't, you know, FDR that's debatable. Right? I'm not sure if he was an atheist, but, you know, the but I would like my looking into it. Like he would never come out and say that he was an atheist. But I think Frances Perkins as Secretary of Labor was like, yeah, Franklin base. Luckily only believed in himself as to Stalin and Hitler. There's no question about that. Right? And so, you know, that's a sort of accountability that, you know, if you feel accountable
you are incredible. It doesn't have to be like, you know, oh I'm doing this, you know, but it's not real. So God would strike wouldn't isn't going to strike me down with a bolt of lightning. So I'm going to do whatever I want. Feeling accountable is entirely enough, you know, the second, you know thing that of course, you know these monarchs Are is they're woven into this Social Web of accountability, which is very, very deep.
And so, you know, they feel accountable to their families in this kind of very deep futile, kind of way. Do I think that a hereditary monarchy? Is the absolutely best way to do this? No, I think that there are arguably better ways to do it. That are sort of shape more a little more, like, corporate governance, you know, but that's sort of tricky to transpose that to The Sovereign layer, but that's That's that's sort of
where you're sort of going. I think, in a 21st century, absolute monarchy, but, you know, of course, again, you know to, you know, and so the theory of public opinion, holding, you know, sort of the president responsible requires the president to actually be in charge of the government, which is very much, not the case. It requires public opinion to be and an ultimate cause which is very much, not the case.
So you have this thing, which is mainly a cardboard mechanism and that's why I don't really believe in it. There was a really interesting part where he says that democracy can actually increase the amount of power that the state has which at first just blew my mind, but now makes total sense. Of course, the explanation is owing to these restrictions regarding entrance into government and the exclusive status of the individual ruler and his family as king and Nobles private government.
I meant ownership monarchism stimulates, the development of a clear class Consciousness on the part of the Govern public and promotes opposition and resistance to any expansion of the government's power to tax. So, from that, I get the, he calls it, the elimination of the distinction between the rulers and the ruled that if you see the Monarch as a guy ruling, you, you're less likely to Grant him power. Whereas if he is an extension of you Bonaparte has Or something
like that. Well, then you're much more likely to let him get away with atrocities. Whereas you otherwise wouldn't am I reading that accurately. Well, I wrong. Yeah. Yeah, I would I would I would, I'm not sure I would agree necessarily with cops sense of causality there. You know, I think he pleat and who is a French, Victorian writer, you know, put a very well when he said that, you know, democracy issued every man with with, with a, with a, with
a ballot, a nap. Sack in a musket and you know, it it drafted them into armies as it. And so, you know, I would say that one of the causes of the expansion of the State under, you know, even even bonapartism which is a sort of interesting transitional form in a number of ways. Certainly, when you see as what another political scientist, Katana Muska called the political forum. You see, when you see democracy, what you're seeing is sort of not as a kind of political
mechanism. But as an ideology, what you're seeing in a democratic ideology is it says there's power flowing from you to the state. Right? And it's very easy to say. Well, this is actually I'm you know, once you have the sort of the theory that I am in power over the state, you're basically like you're like, oh yes, that is the purpose of this wire. This wire is for me to base. Basically, exercise power over the state.
Well, actually the current flows in an entirely different fucking direction, right, you know, and so, you're sort of sort of hooked by your sense of ownership over it, and that gives it a way to feel ownership over you. And, and so, you sort of have this deeper emotional engagement with it in some ways. And this is why you don't really notice that it's actually much more intrusive than, than you.
I think, I mean, you know, for example, there's a great, you know, if you want to, if we can diverging to history over theory for a moment, you know, for all you Americans out there, who believe in the Declaration of Independence, lovely document, of course, but you know, there's a great American historian and Statesman whose work is absolutely worth reading, whose name is Thomas. Hutchinson. He he actually had his house burned by a leftist mob in the
1770s a believes 70s or 60s. He was one of the last Royal Governor's, Massachusetts, and he wrote this interesting piece, which is his responses to the Declaration of Independence. And so, basically, the Declaration of Independence if you've read it, it's a very high tone document. It's very, it's very gassy, you know, it's full of very large bubbles of very, very hot and Powerful wind, right?
You And, and what Hutchinson does, which is very clever, is he basically takes these kind of bubbles of wind and he's like, in this letter to a friend of his back in England.
He's like, let me explain to you what these people actually mean by this stuff, because I'll bet you're baffled and so as essentially he goes through each of these, you know, examples of purported tyranny, you know, and where the Declaration is like, you know, he is obstructed, useful schemes to, you know, You know, improve the Commerce of our nation or of our Colony or whatever because all Massachusetts stuff, you know, he's like, yeah, you know when I got here they had this paper
money thing that they were doing total scam. I shut it all down or, you know, he's like, you know, he's like, swarms of officers here. And he's like, well, you know, like I know of since I'm sure the referring to this is, you know, as you may know. Actually started enforcing the anti-smuggling laws. So we needed like 20 guys. So we have like, yeah, we have like 20 guys for like three million people, right? You know, and like this is like
a swarm, right? So so it's really like, you know, it's actually like he knows that what he's doing is humorous, um, and and he intends to exploit that, you know, but you know, as sort of a true, a true American a true conservative your You look at this conflict and you're like, wait a second. I must I'm supposed to be on the other side of this conflict. And then you're like, wait a second, which of these sides of this conflict is left in, which one is right? Where am I in the left?
What am I doing over here on the left? Like what? Like, you know, I'm with like the mob violence. I mean, like, you're reading this guy. He's a gentleman. He's wonderful. He's a, he's erudite, he, you know, he's very civilized and, you know, he had his house burned down by a black lives matter mob essentially or this 18th century equivalent, right, you know, I said, are you on here? Um, so, you know, I would I would put that out there for all the flag wavers.
I love the flag, of course, but now Hapa talks about this is interesting when it comes to BLM or antifa Hopper talks about the need for Democratic politicians to appeal to the ignorant to appeal to the envious and short-sighted voters. This almost changes the character of the nation because Was the leaders who seek to be on top need to appeal to these sorts of things. They also appeal to pressure groups, and interest groups who have concentrated benefits.
It really matters if Raytheon gets that next contract, but for URI, I don't want them to, but how much time am I going to spend? You know, when it's going to cost me probably four dollars over the next year and it's going to get them, you know, ten billion dollars. So talks about. I agree with all these, all these happy. Critiques, you know, the thing that in a way I've learned since I was first exposed to these is that Hapa is really, you know, hop as a theorist, right?
And he's absolutely right here, but he's critiquing his system which everyone thinks use everyone thinks exists which only used to exist. And so what he's critiquing is essentially, you know, how in France, they have the number of the Republic's, this is really great whenever they have a regime change, they go from Like the third Republic to the Fourth Republic. Yeah, it's so cool.
Right, you know and then they like skip Vichy because that's not a republic at all or something there really should be on number 6. But they like instead they were just so pissed off that. They put a gap in the number, right, you know, which he/she was a mulligan? Yeah. I know. It was a mulligan, right? I feel totally legitimate. Right. But you know what you guys, your French, whatever you could do it, right?
So in any case, you know, essentially when you read Hoppus critique as a critique of the Can system. What is critiquing is the third Republic? And not the Fourth Republic because he's critiquing the pre FDR Republic rather than New Deal America. So one of the things that you'll find is you'll find that, you know, essentially for a, you know, just a quick preview of my version of post-revolutionary American History is that you basically have three American presidents who are pretty close
to being absolute monarchs. You have Washington, Lincoln and FDR. And each each of those regimes, which is originally, essentially a personal regime where the Duke can just do whatever the fuck you want sort of ossifies into this very process oriented bureaucracy.
So, for example, kind of their America's real constitution in the post-war era, is something you may have heard of as a Libertarian called the administrative procedure Act of 1946. The APA essentially dictates kind of how All the government runs and takes it out of the hands of sort of the despised politicians. You might have noticed, you know, one thing I always point out to people just that you just can't explain without going off.
The map. Is you have this interesting situation where you have these two words politics and democracy and one of them is super good in the other one is super bad, but they mean the same thing. So, you know, if you said you were going to democratize u.s. Foreign policy, that would be good. But if you were going to politicize it that would be very bad, right? So, But how do you have democracy without politics? That's like something. Fuck Kim Jang.
Hoon would come up with. Yes, you know, of course, we are no politics here, but we're completely where the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, right? You know, they put the name in three times, right? Just to make sure the and the fourth is just is just geography, right. So they're Democratic Democratic Democratic, but there doesn't seem to be any politics. So that's an interesting 20th century pattern.
Is that, you know, and then we noticed that You know, wow, it doesn't, you know, either Donald Trump actually didn't have any power over the Deep state or, you know, he had power, but didn't use it. That's really weird, you know, and so sort of by a number of factors you realize that essentially the same critiques of democracy that hop-up uttered were uttered by Leading Progressive intellectuals. In the early 20th century. You can find your find them Woodrow Wilson, you can find them.
And Walter Lippmann, you can find them in basically, you know, Henry Adams, you know, Charles Francis Adams, you can find them. Basically, going back all the way to the Liberal Republicans of the late 19th century. Right? So, you know, this critique of democracy is actually extremely old and when you discover it in the present day, it's like you're robbing a tomb that's already been robbed. Right?
Because essentially What was decided the reason we have this Between, you know, this kind of deep spiritual thing, which is democracy, which is the people rule man to like the mechanism, by which the people rule politics is actually broken in stupid and nobody believes in it. And it's not really in charge of anything.
The way we got there is through sort of the way that the New Deal was built up and the way FDR's kind of personal regime of the New Deal turns into the bureaucratic oligarchy that you know, survive. Ives after FDR's death it which is, which is what we have now and this bureaucratic oligarchy does essentially everything possible to separate itself from well, democracy, in the literal sense of the word, but certainly
politics. Like, you know, let's look at, you know, the classic Progressive Era agency, the Federal Reserve. It's an independent agency. What does that even mean? Where is that in the Constitution? Right? And, and you know, what is independent mean? Independent means it should be a separate. Any kind of political accountability as possible and that is good. Right. And and and because you basically have a government that's entirely built on the principle, that democracy is
bad. I mean, that politics is bad, you know, the whole system of the executive branch in the whole way. The New Deal's is built up is essentially built as this massive buffer against democracy because it's built as a buffer against politics, right? And this is why, you know, When you know things like the what was it, the credit trying to remember the name the the Elizabeth Warren Bureau was created the credit Protection
Bureau or whatever. They're basically like we're going to give it its own source of revenue from the agencies from the company's it regulates so that there's absolutely no way to pull any strings, you know, over this and so basically Consumer Finance Financial Protection Bureau, right cfpb, and so they The cfpb. And they're basically, like, we have to make this this organization as much like George the third as possible, right? So you've come full fucking
Circle, right? Instead of one, George the third, you have this massive oligarchy of tiny George III's. Not the George, the third was ever actually an absolute monarch, but that's a different conversation. But, you know, you sort of you vastly magnified, the problem, in all in many different ways. You know, the other thing, you know, Hopper talks about its long time since I've read this book, but hop, it talks about the somewhere.
I'm sure which is that the incentive of all these Petty Kings even if their power adds up to the power of one big king, their incentive is very different because they have no ownership at all. It's not even they didn't rent the car, right, you know, like, there's zero accountability for these people by Design, because the only way to give them accountability is to sort of return.
To third Republic, kind of Gilded, Age Robber, Baron kleptocracy, you know, which everyone hates and so and yellow journalism, yellow, journalism and Robber, Baron kleptocracy. That's the third Republic for you this into a real.
And so instead we sort of need this platonic Guardian class, which, which forms public opinion rather than that, bad social media with all its misinformation, you know, but the misinformation huge problem and the And and like so, you know, this is our sort of real Republic. So hop, is hop is critiques of sort of the old abstraction are interesting, but those critiques in a way have already been acted on and they were acted on in a way that created this thing.
That is sort of pretends to be the third Republic and is actually kind of a little bit more like the Soviet Union and if you go to Europe, you see kind of the next stage of it really which is that the European commission is just accountable to No, MM, European Parliament is a joke and a clown show and like, you know, it becomes like a California election, essentially, where politics just disappears.
And, and so, you know, because it has just no power at all over the real government and it stops being able to pretend and what and its last spasms, turn into these sort of weird clown shows that aren't really connected to reality at all, which I think are very, you know, very interesting and informative. And I'm looking forward to a very different kind of clown show. For the next four years. I think that every I mean, you can't have a variety show with a
variety, right? And what is the presidency now? So this is going to be fun. This is going to be cool. This is gonna be interesting. I'm psyched. All right. Next question. If that answered your last one. Yeah. So let's just close out on Democracy. The God That Failed. Is there any main thing that I missed or main point? You got from the book that you
wanted to endure anything? I think what blew my mind about that book is that previously I had seen nations in this, very kind of lockean, anglo-american sense, and I hadn't really understood the world of, you know, the kind of classical or, you know, classical international law or the natural law of Nations. Best best, you know, best understood and you can just go and read but tells law of Nations. The textbook, the founders used.
It's the classic 18th century textbook, really simple and well-written and I sort of had no knowledge of this world or this whole like all of 20th century international law is completely fake. Basically, it's fake and lame and when you go back and read, you know what Hapa shows you is this world where you're like, hey, I actually when I look at these monarchies, I can identify them as Essentially very much,
like competing corporations. There happened to be family owned corporations and they're competing in a world in which ideally, in the old sort of world. There's nothing above them international law. Basically, before the 20th century wasn't well over a nation. It was basically the set of rules for by which nations themselves decided, how to
behave. But the idea of Nations being governed by a higher power, which is, as you know, the international Ready, which is essentially sort of Anglo American Empire was a completely like it's a contradiction of sort of the whole all the principles of the old system, right? You know, and and so and of course, you know, I mean, you know, that's pretty hard to miss these days, right? The effects of that but it's a sort of an effect at a deep level of principle.
And so this idea that essentially a country could be owned that it could be understood as a piece of property was Essentially new to me, moreover, you know, the thing that you realize, you know, if the king owns the country and therefore uses his low time preference to sort of, you know, nurture and defend it as a king, should then, in a sense. He's owning not just the land,
he's owning the people, right? And so, those people are essentially assets on his books, whether you like it or not, which is very different from the sort of traditional classical liberal sense that we're all familiar with. As Libertarians, you're suddenly like. Wow, it's not that, it's the purpose of the government to
help the people. Do, you know, to help the people enjoy themselves, the government actually owns the people, which makes the people assets of the government, which means that one of the purposes of the government is to, you know, watch not just the land. Flourish, not just the geographical territory, but actually the population should flourish as well. I don't know if you've driven
around, you know, mmm. America today and like looked out the window, you know, but I think unless outside of a few very affluent areas would be very hard to make the case. That what you're looking at here is a flourishing country.
Right? And so, you know, you're basically like, you know, from the perspective of, you know, a Frederick the great or someone, you know, the government of the United States, gets a very poor grade from the perspective of Premiere G. Or, you know, the The government gets a very poor grade from the perspective of Singapore or the government's very gets a very poor grade.
Right? And so you're basically seeing you're looking at this thing and you're like this is getting a poor grade and I think that one of the things Libertarians should, you know, remember is they're looking at this system. And, you know, when you judge like when Libertarians think about government, they should remand power and the use of
power. What they should remember is that they're seeing these things that they're worse because they're seeing these mechanisms, for example, say tariffs, you know, when you think about tariffs you think about them being used by a basically, corrupt government in a basically corrupt way for basically, corrupt reasons.
And so when you see a lot of this and anyone who's like looked at like say the use of tariffs and say Latin America in the post war, you know 20th century, anyone sort of familiar with that history is going to be like, well, this is basically a very Very disgusting instrument because I only see it being used for disgusting things in disgusting ways.
And my answer to those people would be, you know, the only problem with what you're doing here is you're looking your sample is not well distributed because you're looking at a very narrow piece of history that has the same problem for very narrow reasons. And what you should think about is not how this tool was used by Brazil in the 1970s.
But by how it was used by Elizabeth the first in the 1580s, You know, because those people are real too, you know, and and they're just as real as been as the, you know, the 1980s man, you know, and and that's something that I think a lot of Libertarians forget they sort of privileged the present and the near present above all of history. And that's another habit that, you know, Professor help a help break me up. So thank you. Professor help out because that was really a that was very
reading that book. I've asked for a lot of people was very formative for me.