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