Welcome back, friends. Welcome back to the Corporate Report. It is February of 2024 and although it just seems like just a few weeks since the last time we were talking to Keith Knight about one of his new books. Well, Keith Knight has a new book, as you know, very frequent guest on the Corporate Report, Keith Knight, who I've talked to
many times in the past. You can of course search the Corporate Report archives for our previous conversations, but perhaps more importantly, you could be following his work via the Libertarian Institute or on his Don't Tread on Anyone podcast. At any rate, you should know Keith Knight by now and his books that we've talked to have talked about before. For example, The Voluntariest Handbook. Well, he has a new book.
It is called Domestic Imperialism 9 Reasons I Left Progressivism. This is a very, very interesting, very in some ways simple read and not a voluminous read, but one that I think is important for people to to probably read, even the people who may not think that this book is intended for them. But we'll get into that a little bit. First, let's welcome him on the program. Keith Knight, thank you for
joining us today. James Corbett, thank you so much for having me on the show and I love the new website everythinglooksgreat@corbettreport.com. Excellent. Thank you for that. OK, so let's get into this book Domestic Imperialism 9 Reasons I Left Progressivism. It is being published by the Libertarian Institute and I want to state right up front and off the bat like the voluntary
standbook. This book is of course available for purchase for people who want to actually support the work, and please do so if you do appreciate it. It is also available as a free PDF download and you can access it for free, for example on archive.org. All the links will be in the show notes for anyone who is curious about this, Anyone who wants to check it out, check it out and then buy it if you like. At any rate, I hope people will at the very least take a look through this book.
But let's talk about this domestic imperialism. 9 reasons I left progressives of them. Now now I I know vaguely about your background and the points of your biography and story. Keith and I think we probably come from broadly similar kind of background perspectives. Myself as a Canadian, I was brought up in the Canadian indoctrination system. So I was a leftist kind of by default, as most Canadians are.
The government loves you and it's there to help you, And sure, it makes mistakes, but overall it's a good thing and everyone loves government, right? Well, that was the way I was brought up, and that was kind of what I believed by default. Luckily, I got myself out of that indoctrination. And from what I understand, you too counted yourself on the progressive or left side of the spectrum at one point, but clearly are not there anymore, broken free of the spectrum as I have.
Let's talk about that. Talk about your background and and how you came to write this book. Originally I was introduced into politics by my grandparents in Sedona at a very young age, and it seemed like the world was such a bizarre place. Here we have a bunch of people who want you to be treated equally, and on top of it they want to give you stuff for free. And then there's a bunch of
people who oppose that thing. They want you to have to pay for it. That means some people aren't going to have access to products or services, and if you're against treating people equally, that means you want some people to be treated unequally. How could anyone advocate such a thing? Took a while for me to understand. Things like opportunity cost and the cost of increasing the money supplied simply doesn't make
anything free. Nor does the state first taxing you and then purchasing something on your behalf make it free. Also this concept of equality, well, we of course, are not equal to the state. They have a monopoly, right to issue taxes, conscript men into fighting wars, start wars and murder civilians by the thousands. Engaging compulsory education and a host of other things, constantly regulating voluntary interactions between consenting adults. A blatant crime if we saw anyone else do it.
So when I originally saw the world as needing more compassion or equality, more income mobility, I still held true to those. But I think libertarianism is a far better way to achieve those ends than any system that advocates for a system of supremacy where some people called the state have rights that no other organization does. You know, it's it's so funny to hear where you ended up from the point where, if I remember correctly, did you You voted for
Obama at one point. I was not old enough. But you would have voted certainly. Campaigned for him. I have a picture of me in Washington, DC holding up the newspaper Obama claims nomination. We got him it it. It was such a great victory for for so many of us. I mean, here we have a guy so wildly different than George W Bush, first black president. This is going to really be a milestone in our history closing down Guantanamo Bay. He wants an Affordable Care Act. None of those words are
dangerous at all. This has got to be a good thing. So yes, very excited about Obama at the time and that's why we supported him. All right. So as as you've already laid out there, there are a lot of reasons why you got off of that plantation, so to speak. And in fact, the entire political statist plantation, which is a whole other subject and which I think so people who encounter the title of this book might think, Oh well, I'm not a progressive, so, you know, whatever, I get it.
Okay, Yeah. But there's a lot of information in here. First of all, everyone, I think in their life knows someone like that on the leftist progressive side of the spectrum who has a lot of that indoctrination, who needs to be unindoctrinated. And there's a lot of very good points that you bring up in this book. But also I think there might be some things for self reflection of a lot of the statists that are in the crowd. But at any rate, let's go through.
I think that probably the best way to tackle this is let's go through these nine points and just sort of give the overview bird's eye view and then we can drill down into some of the areas that I think invite some more philosophical into introspection. Let's start with point #1, arbitrary divides. What is this about? So sometimes you will hear commentators say, well, people should not be divided. People should come together.
Well, this kind of implies that murderers, kidnappers, rapists, thieves, liars. We should just get along with them. Clearly there should be some divides in society. What the progressive focus is on, though, is not those principal divides that differentiates people based on actions they choose to voluntarily engage in. Especially we're dealing with consenting adults in in that case, when it comes to the modern progressives today. And Republicans of course do
this too. But I came from the progressive side, so I wrote a book on that. We constantly see progressives pushing fake divides. The biggest one recently was the vilification of people of Russian descent, constantly negatively generalizing Russians at every turn, knowing that this very well could provoke a war with a nuclear power.
We had the Democratic president candidates on stage, Hillary Clinton saying 17 intelligence agencies, both civilian and military, have confirmed that Russia is behind the hacking of my emails. That of course was fake. Joe Biden said that the the head of the Russian government, Vladimir Putin, had bounties on the heads of Americans in Afghanistan. This was completely fabricated.
And of course 50 intelligence officials came out saying that Hunter Biden's laptop was most likely Russian disinformation according to Politico. And that one was fake. So vilifying people based on this large geographical area, knowing that if there was a war between America and Russia for violating our democratic sovereignty, this really could lead to an exchange. Well, they know that someone like Putin is not going to get hurt. It would be the civilians. So that is the primary example
that I've come across. But we also see it differentiating people by gender. Joe Biden had a tweet the other day. Women make $0.84 on the dollar for every dollar a man makes. This does not count for the type of jobs women work, the number of hours they work, the value you create. If both Mila Kunis and I work the same job, she's gonna get paid a heck of a lot more than I will.
It also doesn't account for. And for good reason, by the way it. Also doesn't account for the the great disparities within demographics. If you look at black immigrants versus black Americans who were born in America, you see a 30% disparity, according to Nielsen research. I know there's a selection process, but this rules out the claim that it's just the result of employers being racist and bigoted.
And the only solution to this great injustice or this inequality is for the state to have more money and more power. That is the central scam that all of these problems that the progressive brings to the forefront. The solution is always give them more money and always give the state more power virtually every single time. Just imagine a friend in your life always telling you something terrible's about to happen, and the solution is give
me more money and power. That would be so convenient. We'd see this person as a fraudster. We should see the same thing with progressives and reject all arbitrary divides and judge people by their actions and the words they say as opposed to any arbitrary demographic. Very well said. All right, #2, The unavoidable contradiction. What is the unavoidable contradiction? So a lot of what I say applies
to most of progressives. What makes this contradiction unavoidable is every progressive by definition believes in it. So most of the time you'll hear progressives focus on something like monopolies being one of the primary reasons that we have a state. Teddy Roosevelt, a Republican, famously implemented antitrust laws, which limited the scope and size that firms could be within a certain industry.
The claim was if you have a company that's too big, you'll eventually get a monopoly or one seller. In a market, when there's only one seller, you have a huge power differential between the seller and the consumer. This leads to higher prices and lower quality products and services then you'd otherwise get under free market competition. So you need antitrust laws. The contradiction is that same progressives always advocates. The state has a monopoly on guns.
The state has a monopoly on compulsory education. The state has a monopoly on commercial regulation. The state has a monopoly on taxation. If all these things are so virtuous and totally fine, well then certainly Amazon can issue taxes. The Koch brothers can tax your income. The Catholic Church can, you know, dictate commandments for you to live by and put you in jail if they catch you
disobeying them. So this inherent contradiction, I think it's so central to progressivism and all of them, by my definition, advocate a state, and it necessarily involves this. So that's why it's so vitally dangerous. The amazing thing is that the first opinion on monopoly, that they're very dangerous, they concentrate too much power. That view is held by almost all not just average progressives, the top scholars in these
fields. People like, you know, Sam Cedar or Jankuger if you're just talking about Youtubers. But every Democrat who I've ever heard speak, every academic people like Richard Wolf, are constantly saying this. Yet they advocate the same exact thing when it comes to the the the state. I I love that point, by the way, and I think it's such a simple one.
But yes, monopoly's bad. Unless we're talking about, you know, justice system, guns, police, military, compulsory schooling, money supply, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. That's all good monopoly. But you know the the other kind of monopoly we don't like, right? Anyway #3 Consent to the Governed and Gay Marriage.
So this is a concept where the progressive will say that what differentiates, you know, some government like a monarchy, one person ruling over all these others versus democracy is democracy is ruled by the consent of the governed. That's why autocracy is bad and democracy is good. So calling all of these government is, you know, you're combining things that are totally different.
Well, if we're talking about the importance of consent, what they usually justify it through is a term referred to as the social contract. Now, the word contract usually means James, I will give you $1.00 a month to be part of corbettreport.com and in exchange I get access to the great video, the newsletter and everything else you get because you're a member. Now if I don't pay you the dollar, I don't get access to those parts of the site.
If you stop giving me access to the site, I no longer have an obligation to give you the dollar. It's very clear this is a contract you get. I give yin and Yang kind of thing. The social contract that the state abides by does not appear to be anything like this. If you don't chip in, then yes, you have to go to jail and if you resist them they will shoot you. But the question is what happens if government doesn't keep you safe?
Say they expand NATO after James Baker more or less promised they wouldn't move one inch eastward, and say this provokes a war with a nuclear power and gets tons of people killed. Then did they not keep us safe then? Do they owe us reparations? Then? Do we have to stop paying taxes and abiding by their regulations? What if they kill a ton of
civilians in Gaza? What if they lie us into a war and we have people saying that Muammar Gaddafi has given Viagra to his troops and this leads to, you know, a travesty in Libya. If they don't hold up their end of this contract, not only does nothing happen, they usually increase the amount of power and money that they have access to. 911 Pearl Harbor are perfect examples of that. 2020 riots, of course that they didn't hold up their end of the social contract and nothing happens.
So if people really can care about the consent of the governed, what they would want is a private Law Society based on the concept of volunteerism, where people no longer have double standards for a group called government and they can peacefully disassociate from anyone who isn't meeting their standards. That's the ultimate check and balance that the free market provides, which the state does not. Yeah, yeah, exactly right. I didn't consent to nothing. I didn't vote for any of these
clowns. Don't blame me. I voted for Kodos. OK #4 Government failure. There is a gentleman by the name of Tom Hartman, pretty popular in progressive circles, who said there is one fatal flaw in the idea of volunteerism, libertarianism, anarchism, anything. And he says this is referred to as market failure. This involves when you have people you know, who are both very kind, virtuous and very smart, then they could engage in an exchange.
But the problem is, in markets you have a number of things, one of which is greed. One party could be very greedy and exploit the other. There could be information asymmetry. There could be power asymmetry where one party who produces the printer has a heck of a lot more knowledge knowledge about printers then the consumer. Therefore the state needs to coercively intervene and forcibly stop millions of people from making mutually beneficial
voluntary interactions. Now this is a genuinely true criticism, but it's true because it applies to all humans since the beginning of time, applies to all humans in every system today, and will apply to any system human beings engage in in the future. So the knowledge asymmetry aspect can clearly be seen. When you get pulled over by a police officer, there's huge knowledge asymmetry as to what you can and can't say in order for him to arrest you.
When it comes to a lot of the lawyers in the legal system, the defendant and you know, the prosecutor, tons of information asymmetry. Even with the judge, When it comes to the average citizen and members of the FBICIANSA who have access to classified information, there's massive amounts of information, information asymmetry.
So the idea that a state is justified and coercively intervening because of things like information asymmetry or greed or potential short sightedness of people, those things exist and always will exist. The question is, since they'll always exist, what sort of system should we have? One where we could have competition among providers for a good or service and disassociate with bad actors who inevitably are greedy, are short sighted, engage in information asymmetry.
Or one where we must fund them against our will and be put in jail if we resist. So that is the concept of government failure. It takes the market failure criticism and say yes, it applies to the market. It also applies to the state, and much more so because the state doesn't face competition. College Four years of work for $0.00 an hour. This is my favorite title for one of your chapters. I like this one.
Thank you. I remember, you know, I sort of a lost interest in Barack Obama and said, well, I guess Mitt Romney is a good alternative and was watching these debates. And I remember Ron Paul saying that there shouldn't be a minimum wage in me saying, well, this guy's just absolutely insane. I don't know how he said that with a straight face. I don't know who's paying him what drugs he's on. But I later considered it and
eventually changed my mind. And I thought, what would I have to say to, you know, the old me in order to, you know, really give me a good idea of how to understand this issue reasonably? And I thought, well, are there any examples of people doing very large amounts of work and not just getting less than the federal minimum wage, getting $0.00 an hour, and in most cases having to pay tons of money in
order to perform the work? College, when I was there, I was working six hours a day at college, you know, listening to the teachers, taking notes, and then when I get home I do more work for $0.00 an hour. So I did all this work without getting directly compensated, and the question is, if you advocate the minimum wage, this has to be illegal.
This is one of the greatest crimes against the exploitation of the working masses that's ever existed and the massive extraction of their surplus value. So clearly by the minimum wage logic this should be illegal. My argument is that it should not be illegal because there are a great number of reasons why people would do such a thing.
They don't currently have many skills and want to acquire skills that they can use in the future to be more marketable on the job and get a higher income than they otherwise would. Two, they don't necessarily need a very big income. Three, they don't want to commit to much and they just want to
get their foot in the door. I want to look at business or philosophy or science or technology or engineering or one of those things, And giving them a lot of money to do so would disincentivize producers from bringing them on board. And it would stop you from getting your foot in the door if someone else had to constantly pay you or compensate you for this time when it's at a point in your life when you're not
providing much value. So what I tried to do was extract the principle by which the minimum wage is justified. All work is worth $15.00 an hour. I then found college to be something that almost all progressives constantly advocate, which is him implicitly saying that state education K through 12 is not
that impressive at all. And then even though we've seen a 280% increase in per student funding adjusted for inflation according to a Reason Foundation, still nothing to brag about after all this time, All that money, all those resources, all that opportunity cost and time, and this is what we get. So even though you can say something like, well, it's mutually beneficial if it's voluntary and it's between consenting adults.
That is a good theory, but you might think that people are going to be so exploited you have to have some minimum wage. We see a massive aspect of the economy college where people do tons and tons of work for $0.00 an hour and the vast majority drop out if they don't like it or say that you know what, it was worth it. And I'm glad I got that experience. So giving people that choice is
vitally important. You know, I'll just point people in the direction of my podcast episode on the dark history of the minimum wage, which makes the point that actually minimum wages were initially brought in to keep people out of the workforce. And what should give progressives some pause for thoughts, specifically black people and these other undesirables that we don't want jobs, give jobs, will make a minimum wage so they can't get
their foot in the door anyway. Yeah, the as usual, the reality is quite the opposite of what it's now received to be. But anyway, let's move on to number six, Equality and the Iron Law of Oligarchy. What is the Iron Law of Oligarchy? I want to get the exact wording right. This is a idea that I was introduced to by James Burnham in a book titled The Machiavellians. He's summarizing the work of a gentleman named Robert Mchell. Here's how he defines it.
All complex organizations, regardless of how democratic they are when started, eventually develop into oligarchies. Since no sufficiently large and complex organization can function purely as a direct democracy, power within an organization will always get delegated to individuals within that group, elected or otherwise. So we could see this in almost every aspect of society. A very small portion of comedians are as successful as Brian Reagan and Jerry Seinfeld.
A very small percentage of singers can sell out Wembley Stadium or are as good as, you know, Adele. A very small percentage of NBA players sell the vast amount of NBA jerseys. So notice we're taking people within an industry they're already excelling in not just comparing, you know, LeBron James to the average person, but to his direct peers. We constantly see in this division of Labor, we see some people outperforming out shining could even or having a much greater say in outcomes than
other people. So you might think that there's inequality where there's huge power differentials and then there's systems of equality. Now looking at places like North Korea, South Korea, America, basically any, you know, social arrangement since the Egyptian empire, you constantly see a few people with a ton of power and the average person with not that
much institutional power. So immediately that's not to justify it, just to say that it exists, but it is to say that with all these systems, we see a very few people having a greater deal of sway and institutional power within their organization. It's worth noting that someone like Alexandria, Ocasio, Cortez, Ilhan, Omar, the main progressives today, Bernie Sanders, have more institutional power than 99.9% of their
constituents ever will. That's because by our very nature, the opportunity cost of getting everyone informed and then everyone having a say on how more or less everything goes is so costly that people just delegate to authorities who they trust. So knowing this iron law of oligarchy which so worked of social arrangement, should we have? Which makes it so the oligarchs can't get a second of our time or a penny out of our pocket unless we voluntarily give it to them.
And that, obviously, is a free market cause. A oligarchy that's attached to a state, of course, will abuse it. They will probably abuse any power and then later rationalize it. So so long as we have the freedom to disassociate with the inevitable oligarchies that will exist in any society, we're in a much better position than we than we otherwise would. The classic example that Mckel's uses is that of a labor union. So he says, well, you might say
I am so sick of the bourgeoisie. I've just had it. We are going to form a union. Well, the problem is not everyone wants to go to the union meeting after a long day of work. Even if they have the day off, they might not enjoy meetings and want to do other things. Not everyone's going to speak up at the meeting. Not everyone who speaks is going to have equally good ideas. Not everyone who speaks is going to be equally as good looking, as equally as persuasive as other people.
So you end up with Jimmy Hoffa and a few of his friends running the union for 10s of thousands of truckers who more or less don't have much of A say. So this gets to the heart of progressivism. That everyone should be involved and everyone should have an equal say is a complete fool's errand. It's not only undesirable, it's unachievable. We will make you have equality whether you want it or not. Go to the meeting. Yeah, exactly right. And and even at best, it's a
quality of outcome for you guys. But somebody has to manage that and make it happen. I guess we have to be this special class. Oligarchies always develop, don't they? Anyway #7 voter suppression versus economic suppression. So there was a story that I came across. I actually came across a number and I put him in the book. Here was one that really stood out to me. This is a story out of
Washington, DCA. Gentleman named Jay Austin saw the great deal of homelessness that exists in a wealthy country like America. And, you know, didn't just talk about it. He actually, you know, put the pedal to the metal and started making change. Here's a brief summary of what happened. At a cost that ranges from 10 to $50,000, tiny homes like Matchbox could help ease the housing shortage in the capital city. Heating and cooling costs are
negligible. Rainwater catchment systems help to make the home self-sustaining. They're an attractive option to the very sort of residents who the city attracts an abundance single, young professionals without a lot of stuff who aren't ready to take on the large mortgage. But tiny houses come with one enormous catch. They're illegal, in violation of several codes in Washington DCS zoning ordinance.
Among the many requirements in the 34 chapters and 600 pages of code are mandates defining minimum lot size, room sizes, alleyway widths, and accessory dwelling units that prevent tiny houses from being anything more than a part time residence. So here we have a huge problem. I am devastated when I drive around South Phoenix and see so many people without homes.
You actually had someone creating homes at a much lower cost, which would drastically increase the supply of housing in Washington DC. It would give people with lower incomes access to a place to have a roof over their head. And the state actually confiscated the houses in in this case. I also provide an example in Los Angeles where they did the same thing. So what this is is economic suppression.
It is coercively stopping two people from engaging in a mutually beneficial voluntary exchange. The reason this is important is because Bernie Sanders, the one of the most popular progressives, came out after the last election and said, well, one of the tragedies we've seen is the great deal to which voter suppression has, you know, can
really affect an election. Now, the reality is, if a person's vote is put in the voting box or in the shredder, it's not going to make a difference in the actual outcome. Whether or not you have access to a house really, really has an effect on your life. Same with occupational licensing. They're constantly engaged in economic suppression.
When they coercively stop people from getting a job where they want to learn on the industry, maybe they want to go there two or three days just to see if they like it or not, just to get them on the job experience. Nope. Got to have a license from the state, as opposed to voluntary private certification agencies giving their stamp of approval saying these people are good, these people are bad. Yelp reviews. Amazon reviews.
Word of mouth, anything like that we could have instead of the economic suppression which they advocate. So the progressive simultaneously believes that it's vitally important that you get a one in 510,000,000 vote once every four years between two line psychopaths. But your ability to make decisions in your life that affect you every single day, well that's not that important and actually you could choose wrong.
So it's kind of important that we engage in imperialism just domestically and coercively stop you. You're welcome. That'll be 30% of your income. And if you don't like it, you have a one in 10 million chance of helping to sway the next selection between the next two lying psychopaths. Yeah, exactly. OK 8 Government provided does not mean universal.
There is a dichotomy among people such as Stephen Grumbine, the creator of real progressives, who will say things like instead of having this for profit system, what we should have is universal healthcare, universal education, universal housing. Now what the bait and switch is, is he's immediately changing from a goal to advocating a process to achieve a said goal. I want everyone to have all the things that he lists, assuming they want those things in the
first place. So he says we want a goal of everyone to have anything, therefore automatically implying the state should coercively fund the operation to achieve this goal. It's equally as ridiculous as saying I want peace in the Middle East. Therefore we should send Netanyahu a blank check. Just because you want some result doesn't necessarily mean the process you're advocating will achieve that result. Now, we don't have to get too theoretical about this.
All we have to do is look at cases which the state currently provides things for free by increasing the money supply or first taxing you, and see if they are universal. Well, the Progressive immediately sees that, well, the police not only aren't free, they cost a lot of money. And then the Progressive says we should, you know, abolish or defund the police. So immediately they see that the state at least costs something to run. There's always an opportunity cost.
Second, you can see that not everyone has equal treatment to police functions. It's well known that people with higher incomes are more likely to get, you know, lower sentences than someone who's poor, who's committed the same crime. Joe Biden committed murder a number of times, most famously August 29th of 2021 in Kabul, Afghanistan, Seven children dead as a cause of result of him. It wasn't even a question that universal free, guaranteed
justice would be performed. The question of the state providing education? Is everyone therefore equally educated since the state provides it and guarantees it for free? No, this of course is not the case. Is everyone protected and having their guaranteed rights protected because the state coercively funds and controls the police or military? Of course not. There is not free, universal, guaranteed justice because the state controls the court system.
So the concept that I want everyone to have something, it does not follow, therefore the state should be providing it.
This is really important because it really psychologically gets to the average person who opposes such a thing and says, well, if I'm not for universal, that means I only want some people having it. And they, the kind, virtuous progressive who, you know, gladly puts billions of obligations on total strangers without their consent, well, they want everyone to have it, and that makes them better. So it really tugs at your heartstrings.
And anytime you don't want to be, you know, shunned by the people in your society, you want to say, OK, yeah, I think we should have some sort of universal system. The goal and the process are two very different things. The state monopolizing the process does not guarantee results. In fact, it gives them every disincentive to create low cost, low cost, high quality goods. Yes, Disincentive. That's right. Yeah. OK, Yes, OK.
And finally, Chapter 9. It takes a little bit different form than the other chapters, which are argued more straightforwardly. This chapter. It contains quotations from the don't tread on anyone podcast, little less excerpts and snippets from that podcast. It is entitled How Could anyone be an Anarchist? Which it's a question that a lot of progressives would ask. What isn't it? So how do you answer that
question? So as I list you know, 8 chapters of me complaining about something the average person might say. Well, progressivism is the worst system. Except for all the others. All you do is complain about things. What are the alternatives? So what I try to briefly make the case is that the system of anarchism, while may not be, you know, widely accepted by the masses, there is still a its first, logically reasonable and economically sound, and 3rd it's
quite around. It's all around us in a number of ways. So in the case of even something like roads where they say this is the ultimate, you know, knockdown, turns out the 1st Rd. built in America, the Philadelphia Lancaster Turnpike was of course privately built. Today we have people like Vinci concessions constantly building roads on every continent that when you research Vinci, Vinci concessions, they're a great company providing transportation now. So immediately you see some
things being privatized. But you might say, well, not like really, really important things. Maybe some small things can be done. It turns out I got a job in the tech field some time ago and when a company experienced A ransomware attack, they called us the private company to save their most valuable information. This is all their work for 20 years was being held and it was totally encrypted and none of them. I did go to the office and spoke with people there.
None of them said quick call 911, quick call the FBI. Our, you know, our property rights are the most sacred thing we have around is has been stolen, is now encrypted and we don't have access to it, even though they could have. They just saw that it was so inefficient that they called the private IT company, got a hold of Paypal's security team, got a hold of the Dropbox security team, got a hold of Google Drive security. They cancelled their credit cards because of those information.
All of their banks had private security on the back end, not because, well, all these corporations are so good and they care about the masses. They're self interested just like anyone else. But because they want customers, they provide the security that everyone wants. So when everyone says, well, what about security? What about the roads? The fact that everyone wants those is a good indicator that they will be provided by
entrepreneurs in a marketplace. So the way I try to pique people's interest is I get these are all four professors, I believe, or at least well recognized authors in this field, and I just asked them. There are a lot of criticisms of the free market. Are there any unique criticisms of the free market that don't also apply to government? And they make the case that there are no unique criticisms of the free market. Of course you have terrible
things that could happen. However, that in no way justifies forcibly stopping billions of people from engaging in voluntary exchanges. So what I'm trying to do in that chapter is provide an alternative for the way people see the logic of anarchism. Also give some empirical examples and say that very well accredited people in their fields do recognize this as a very reasonable alternative compared to statism. Right. And isn't it funny how anarchists are called utopians?
Oh, you've got utopians think no, no, no, The statists are the real utopians who think, oh, don't worry, it's government funded, so it's taken care of. No, no, no, no, no, it's it's exactly the opposite of reality. All right. And after that point, you have some quotes from a wide number of individuals on a lot of different subjects and an
appendix and then afterward. But I I, I want to just look at a couple of quotes, one that I think is great because I think this is a genuinely handy little tool for people who are sick of hearing from progressives in their lives about the Swedish model. And can't we be more like the Scandinavian countries, etc. You have a quote from Johann Norberg from Lessons from Sweden.
The funny thing is that if the Sanders is and Ocasio Cortezes of the world made the US more like Sweden, what would really
happen? They haven't updated their perception of Sweden. And if the US became more like us, the United States would have to have more free markets, more free trade, pension reform with private accounts, a National School voucher system with freedom of choice and public funding going to private schools as well, low corporate taxes and no taxes on wealth, property and inheritance.
Be careful what you wish for, which is a good point, because yeah, I think people don't know what they're talking about. Yeah, we should be more like Sweden. What, you mean Sweden from the 1960s or something? What are you? What are you basing this on? But there's another quote in here that I think is a good launching point for perhaps a different exploration. Because, OK, again, these are all points that you could certainly use. Absolutely.
There's a lot of good ammunition in here to for your arguments with status and progressive progressives specifically, but also for status in general. And there's a great, great quote here from Michael Malice that I think makes a point that comes up all the time. I'm sure you've heard it a million times, He says. If the government didn't have a monopoly on security, only rich people would be able to have
security. Just like when the government got out of other businesses, the only cars produced were limousines, the only clothes produced were tuxedos. And the only food produced was foie gras. Yeah, exactly Right. Yeah. No one would ever try to provide any sort of service to anyone except the billionaires, right? Oh, wait, that's not how it works in reality. No, there's actually. Yes, businesses are catered to all sorts.
And there are people who to the lowest rung of the economic pyramid and the highest rung as well, and they can all exist. Why not both? Yeah, it's such a simple point, but it does speak to, I think, what could be another. And correct me if I'm wrong, I don't know what your intention
was in writing this book. But I think this this book might also be useful for status who are not progressives and don't consider themselves on the left side of the spectrum at all, but who still have a lot of status conditioning to maybe question some of their own assumptions and some of the things they think about, what government provided, security and other sorts of things might be necessary.
Tell us about your intention for who you think that this book might be beneficial for, what audience you're writing for? So I definitely wanted to catch people's attention with the title and the provocative cover where I have my sort of Mount Rushmore of terrible progressives from Woodrow Wilson to Ocasio Cortez. Not that she's as powerful, but she is certainly making the ideas of statism so popular and so widely respected among people, especially in my
generation. So the original audience actually was progressives. That's why I kept it so short and sweet. And even the chapters themselves. Elves can be read individually. That's why I might round off with the same point a number of times throughout. That's why the last section is just miscellaneous. Quotes don't even have to read them in order, can sort of go randomly. So it was sort of to provoke interest by progressives
originally. But also, I knew that there were a lot of people who do not like progressivism who wanted a summary of why someone who was a progressive left those ideas behind and wanted it in a very concise form.
My last book. Was 318 pages and quite a few people said, yeah, I really enjoyed it, but gosh, so many other books to read, so many other things to do that I'm like, OK, I gotta make something so short that even each chapter is going to make a point that's at least going to provoke some thoughts in the mind of a progressive. Not because I think they're going to say, well, thank you, 27 year old for writing this book. I've been wrong forever, but just to sort of create some
insecurity in this position. So the goal is to plant seeds in the minds of progressives, and I tried to use enough variety so anyone can learn something new, or at least find a productive way to think about a position that they. Currently hold it's certainly you've definitely accomplished
that. This is certainly readable in bite sized little chunks and even for people who aren't good readers or or fast readers, they can certainly just put this on a coffee table or what have you and just get through it pretty easily and pretty quickly. It is not a difficult read, and in fact if you're a fast reader, we have spent more time talking about it now than it would have taken you to read this. So at any rate, here we are. I don't know what else to say.
This is an important book to have as ammunition in your info arsenal, especially especially if you are inclined to argue with a a progressivist, I think even for statists who haven't quite broken their conditioning. At any rate, tell people again where they can get the book. They can get the book at libertarianinstitute.org, right? When you go on the website, you'll see it. The book collection.
We got a ton of variety of books there, from people like Tom Woods and Laurie Calhoun Getting into the issues with the COVID hysteria. We have people like Sheldon Richmond providing insights into the Israeli Palestinian issue going back to 1897. I believe his book starts and we have people like Joe Salas. Mullins published a short book titled The Fake China Threat. We Really try to provide Variety at libertarianinstitute.org. Excellent.
Well, of course the link will be in the show notes, as people already know. So if you didn't find it at libertarianinstitute.org, you can go to the show notes to find it and to find links to Keith's other outlets and work. Keith, you always do good work and a lot of food for thought here. So and I once again, I just want to say I appreciate the fact that you put this book out as a
free resource as well. I certainly hope people will support the book and buy a physical copy for to have physical media and to support the person who's making it. But also it's there as a free resource for people to use in their information dissemination efforts. So we'll leave it there for today. Keith Knight, thank you so much for your time. James, thanks so much for having me.