WEBVTT NOTE The Debt Ceiling 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:06.000 Hello America and hello world. This is another episode of Insane Government. Thank you so much for listening. 2 00:00:06.000 --> 00:00:14.000 May 10th, Tuesday. I don't know if you guys think that's a good thing, but I don't like Mondays, I'll tell you that. 3 00:00:14.000 --> 00:00:20.000 Anyway, today's Tuesday, May 10th. Right now it's 8 o'clock. We're here from Monday to Friday, 8 to 10 p.m. Eastern Time. 4 00:00:20.000 --> 00:00:23.000 Thank you so much for tuning in to Insane Government. 5 00:00:23.000 --> 00:00:29.240 Now, today's episode is called Drugs and the Economy. We are going to have a guest. His 6 00:00:29.240 --> 00:00:36.520 name is Mark Thornton. He's a big renowned, well, I think he's renowned anyway, so Austrian 7 00:00:36.520 --> 00:00:42.020 economist, American economist. And so we're going to be talking about how we are spending 8 00:00:42.020 --> 00:00:47.200 billions of dollars on this war on drugs. Countless of people are being put in jail 9 00:00:47.200 --> 00:00:51.880 for something that should be treated as a medical condition, in my view, and it shouldn't 10 00:01:21.880 --> 00:01:43.880 Mark Lortzman, The Austrian School of Thought, The Few Experts on Drugs, and Mark Lortzman, 11 00:01:43.880 --> 00:01:49.160 And also I want to remind you all, go on my Facebook page, type in Insane Government, simple 12 00:01:49.160 --> 00:01:50.640 as that, and like the page. 13 00:01:50.640 --> 00:01:53.200 You can get a whole bunch of updates. 14 00:01:53.200 --> 00:01:56.160 Also we are going to get a new look, a new look. 15 00:01:56.160 --> 00:01:57.160 Everything's going to be switched. 16 00:01:57.160 --> 00:02:01.320 Not the name, not how we do stuff, but just the look, graphics and everything like that. 17 00:02:01.320 --> 00:02:05.000 My folks down here, the staff are working on it and the development is just unbelievable. 18 00:02:05.000 --> 00:02:08.060 I already witnessed some of it and it's like, whoa. 19 00:02:08.060 --> 00:02:11.600 And we're making the website a little bit better and you know, our URLs can be called 20 00:02:11.600 --> 00:02:12.600 InsaneGovernment.com. 21 00:02:12.600 --> 00:02:22.600 So, you all have to get ready for this. This is going to be great. And if you go all the way to the Insane Government page right now on VlogTalk Radio and click show extras, we do have a calendar. 22 00:02:22.600 --> 00:02:31.600 So, tomorrow we're going to have Jeffrey Miron on. On Thursday, we're going to have Harry Johnson. Yes, the one from the South Carolina debate. 23 00:02:31.600 --> 00:02:39.600 and for 2000 you'll be on as well. Then on Friday we'll have Walter Block on the show. 24 00:02:39.600 --> 00:02:48.600 I think May 18th we will have Pastor Terry Jones on. Then on May 19th we'll have Barry Goldwater Jr. 25 00:02:48.600 --> 00:02:53.600 and then May 20th we'll have Mike Gravel and then May 26th Curtis Harris. We have a whole bunch of people. 26 00:02:53.600 --> 00:02:57.600 We're filling it up even more and next month is definitely going to have more work on it. 27 00:02:57.600 --> 00:03:07.600 So stay tuned, this is the same government, this episode's title is Drugs and the Economy, we'll be back right after this intro. 28 00:03:27.600 --> 00:03:35.600 ...bigger than the Vatican. We're building 14 permanent basins. What would we say here if China was doing this in our country or in the Gulf of Mexico? 29 00:03:35.600 --> 00:03:41.600 Norman Thomas, six times candidate for president in the Socialist Party ticket, said the American people would never vote for socialism. 30 00:03:41.600 --> 00:03:46.600 But he said under the name of liberalism, the American people will adopt every president of the socialist program. 31 00:03:46.600 --> 00:03:55.600 Broadcasting live from the Garden State, I'm your talk show host, Victor Mikolovsky, and this is Insane Government. 32 00:03:55.600 --> 00:04:00.320 and this is in this is insane government that was just reading something right now 33 00:04:00.320 --> 00:04:04.440 but um guys thank you so much for listening to listen download the shows 34 00:04:04.440 --> 00:04:10.720 and listen to the shows so online we do have the economists here Mark Thornton 35 00:04:10.720 --> 00:04:14.860 I'm gonna let him on the show right now you guys can put your questions in the 36 00:04:14.860 --> 00:04:19.680 chat room if you have any you can send me an email as well you can send me a 37 00:04:19.680 --> 00:04:24.160 message on my account as well as awesome to do it if you want to ask questions as 38 00:04:24.160 --> 00:04:29.640 Well, so I'm gonna let him on right now. Mark are you there? I'm here Victor, it's 39 00:04:29.640 --> 00:04:34.520 great to be with you here tonight and with your audience. Thank you so much and 40 00:04:34.520 --> 00:04:38.560 I don't know if I'm pronouncing your last name right, is it sorting? Yes that's 41 00:04:38.560 --> 00:04:40.840 correct. Okay good because I'm saying and I'm 42 00:04:40.840 --> 00:04:46.160 like God I hope I'm saying it right you know like. Well everybody says it right 43 00:04:46.160 --> 00:04:51.600 but everybody spells it incorrectly. It's T-H-O-R-N-T-O-N. 44 00:04:51.600 --> 00:04:58.240 Well, there's the problem, huh? Because I had some people on before and their names are 45 00:04:58.240 --> 00:05:02.840 just unbelievably like, I had this one person named Anjum Chowdhury, you know, that was 46 00:05:02.840 --> 00:05:07.840 a handful at one point, so I'm like, God. But yeah, I went, I made it through that episode. 47 00:05:07.840 --> 00:05:09.840 You're the last name I'll do. 48 00:05:09.840 --> 00:05:15.080 Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Good luck to NF on there. Mikolovsky, there you go. A lot of people 49 00:05:15.080 --> 00:05:33.080 I got several awards in my time and I hate it when they say Victor Mikhailovsky. I'll get the award right now. I hate receptions like that when they say my last name. It's so hard to go through that. 50 00:05:33.080 --> 00:05:40.080 We're not going to be talking about today's last names, but what we're going to be talking about is first off a war on drugs. 51 00:05:40.080 --> 00:05:44.360 and you know, I've been researching all of it and been very into it for the past couple 52 00:05:44.360 --> 00:05:48.720 of years and just found some great interest into it and so my audience has recommended 53 00:05:48.720 --> 00:05:54.120 me and I looked it up and I'm like, wow, he's on Mises.org and I'm like, great, there's 54 00:05:54.120 --> 00:05:56.040 that type, she'll give you an email and now you're here. 55 00:05:56.040 --> 00:06:00.680 But you know, as you would know, if you're really into it, the war on drugs, the big, 56 00:06:00.680 --> 00:06:05.320 big campaign on this, you know, it's a big prohibition on this whole drugs things, you 57 00:06:05.320 --> 00:06:07.800 know, from cocaine, heroin, marijuana, all that. 58 00:06:07.800 --> 00:06:16.600 it's a whole prohibition on it and so you know it's been started since uh well you really they've 59 00:06:16.600 --> 00:06:23.000 been making all these departments since the uh uh 1914 is as much as i know they had like the 60 00:06:23.000 --> 00:06:27.960 harrison narcotics tax and i would they they just tax some stuff in the drugs that was like i think 61 00:06:27.960 --> 00:06:32.920 the start of it all but it's been going on for so many years so many years and it's been rampant 62 00:06:32.920 --> 00:06:38.720 in just a few recent years, they've been stepping up on it but for some reason I'm 63 00:06:38.720 --> 00:06:43.400 looking in statistics and doesn't seem like anything changed but let me before 64 00:06:43.400 --> 00:06:47.760 I jump into this as well let me just to start off if you can please share with 65 00:06:47.760 --> 00:06:52.660 the audience you know your background education like what current projects 66 00:06:52.660 --> 00:06:56.700 you're you know if you're doing if any and your profession if you if you would 67 00:06:56.700 --> 00:07:01.680 like to say it. Sure my graduate students call me the best economist that nobody's 68 00:07:01.680 --> 00:07:10.800 ever heard of. And I work at the Ludwig von Mises Institute, MISES.org. I'm a senior 69 00:07:10.800 --> 00:07:16.280 research fellow there. I got my undergraduate degree at St. Bonaventure University up in 70 00:07:16.280 --> 00:07:25.280 New York, and I got my PhD in economics at Auburn University. I've taught at Auburn University 71 00:07:25.280 --> 00:07:32.680 at Montgomery and Trinity University in San Antonio and Columbus State University in Georgia. 72 00:07:32.680 --> 00:07:39.740 And I'm back in Auburn working at the Mises Institute and it's the world's premier free 73 00:07:39.740 --> 00:07:44.320 market think tank and education foundation. 74 00:07:44.320 --> 00:07:49.100 We have the largest economic webpage in the world and one of the most trafficked economic 75 00:07:49.100 --> 00:07:57.500 Web pages in the world and I'm just very happy to be very lucky to be the senior 76 00:07:57.500 --> 00:08:03.300 fellow at the Mises Institute and actually we're putting together, we have 77 00:08:03.300 --> 00:08:08.900 what's called the Mises Academy, the online courses in lots of free market 78 00:08:08.900 --> 00:08:15.140 stuff. I'm putting together a course on the drug war that students can take 79 00:08:15.140 --> 00:08:19.440 either auditing or for grades over the internet and that's going to be offered 80 00:08:19.440 --> 00:08:24.540 pretty soon. Well that would be interesting because I was looking on that website and I 81 00:08:24.540 --> 00:08:28.960 know they have they look like they have some summer courses there or whatever 82 00:08:28.960 --> 00:08:33.860 and I was looking at their online courses I was very interested into it so 83 00:08:33.860 --> 00:08:37.900 I never knew that you are one of the teachers there so I would love to get 84 00:08:37.900 --> 00:08:40.820 that course from there for the the war on drugs there if you're going to be 85 00:08:40.820 --> 00:08:45.140 Offering. Yeah, I've been with the Mises Institute for a very long time and we 86 00:08:45.140 --> 00:08:48.820 started out as a very small organization and now it's, like I said, the world 87 00:08:48.820 --> 00:08:56.020 global leading free-market think tank and we're really the most radical of all 88 00:08:56.020 --> 00:09:00.040 of the free-market think tanks and it's an educational mission, not a political 89 00:09:00.040 --> 00:09:06.380 mission, but we have a renowned course, a weekly course at the Institute called 90 00:09:06.380 --> 00:09:12.820 of the Mises University, but it takes place in the last week of July, but it's already 91 00:09:12.820 --> 00:09:15.940 been sold out for a long time. 92 00:09:15.940 --> 00:09:22.300 When I say sold out, it's actually free to the students, but we had so many applications 93 00:09:22.300 --> 00:09:25.660 that we had to stop the application process. 94 00:09:25.660 --> 00:09:30.380 We have other conferences at the Institute and we have other conferences around the world. 95 00:09:30.380 --> 00:09:37.100 and we have one in Austria coming up, we have one in Indianapolis, Indiana coming up, we 96 00:09:37.100 --> 00:09:40.260 just had one in Chicago and Nashville. 97 00:09:40.260 --> 00:09:45.940 So if you go to our webpage and look at the events, there's a lot of great free programs 98 00:09:45.940 --> 00:09:54.060 and the website itself is open of course 24-7, 365, there's no fees, there's no registration, 99 00:09:54.060 --> 00:09:56.860 everything's for free, you can download hundreds of books. 100 00:09:56.860 --> 00:10:03.660 off the website so it's really a great resource whether you're 101 00:10:03.660 --> 00:10:08.100 worried about how to get your laundry clean, skateboarding issues, tattoo 102 00:10:08.100 --> 00:10:13.980 issues and then of course inflation and taxes and the debt and business cycles. If 103 00:10:13.980 --> 00:10:18.980 you want to know about business cycles, our web page is really the only web page 104 00:10:18.980 --> 00:10:24.140 where you're going to find any reasonable information and accurate 105 00:10:24.140 --> 00:10:25.860 Predictions about the Future. 106 00:10:25.860 --> 00:10:26.860 Oh yeah. 107 00:10:26.860 --> 00:10:30.820 It is a very, very interactive site, I may say that and I really appreciate it. 108 00:10:30.820 --> 00:10:35.780 Guys, they have a donate, the facility that we can donate and how you pointed out, they 109 00:10:35.780 --> 00:10:37.500 do give out the books there. 110 00:10:37.500 --> 00:10:41.780 You guys have to pay for these books I bet and so if you're down there and you're looking 111 00:10:41.780 --> 00:10:45.420 at those books, donate, I'm thinking of donating some more money. 112 00:10:45.420 --> 00:10:50.700 So I read some of the books there, read parts of it and listen, some parts I want to read, 113 00:10:50.700 --> 00:11:04.460 The books that we publish, we make available in PDF format. 114 00:11:04.460 --> 00:11:09.300 You can actually look at the product for free and read it for free. 115 00:11:09.300 --> 00:11:11.660 You can download it, you can print it. 116 00:11:11.660 --> 00:11:16.580 But what we find is that most people, once they see a book and they can determine whether 117 00:11:46.580 --> 00:11:51.780 I served on a lot of nations. I ordered them all at the same time. It was very insane how 118 00:11:51.780 --> 00:11:55.740 I got them all in one box. There was some crazy Keynesian person who opened it up and 119 00:11:55.740 --> 00:12:01.340 stole it. Nobody did that at that time. It was good. I love reading about it. It's the 120 00:12:01.340 --> 00:12:07.060 only economic theory that makes sense. I encourage everybody to go look into it. 121 00:12:07.060 --> 00:12:13.380 Yeah, a lot of these books are real classics. We've brought back some early libertarian 122 00:12:13.380 --> 00:12:19.900 and Classics from 100 years ago and a lot of the books that you mentioned, we're talking 123 00:12:19.900 --> 00:12:22.380 about New York Times bestselling books. 124 00:12:22.380 --> 00:12:29.340 Most of the prices of our books are less than $20 so that you can develop a whole library. 125 00:12:29.340 --> 00:12:34.020 As a matter of fact, a lot of people who get into the libertarian free market think tank 126 00:12:34.020 --> 00:12:39.940 situation, they like to come to our conferences, even our academic conferences and buy the 127 00:12:39.940 --> 00:12:44.860 the books on site and then have them signed by the authors and then you've got 128 00:12:44.860 --> 00:12:49.660 something that's really valuable to keepsake and it's a classic in the 129 00:12:49.660 --> 00:12:54.780 libertarian tradition. So you know go to the website, look at the events you know 130 00:12:54.780 --> 00:13:01.300 and say you know when and how can I get myself physically in contact with this 131 00:13:01.300 --> 00:13:05.020 stuff as well as over the internet. 132 00:13:05.020 --> 00:13:12.140 That's good you pointed it all out and I suggest you go into it and I gotta say man, you do 133 00:13:12.140 --> 00:13:17.020 have a great background and that's why I wanted you for this specific topic next week, first 134 00:13:17.020 --> 00:13:21.820 before the other people because I want to do this month a big topic on war on drugs 135 00:13:21.820 --> 00:13:22.820 and the economy. 136 00:13:22.820 --> 00:13:27.620 I was trying to figure out a good person to start it off and they're not to be used so 137 00:13:27.620 --> 00:13:30.420 I'd be very happy that the audience chose you to do it. 138 00:13:30.420 --> 00:13:34.740 But I don't know if that's going to be a good thing or a bad thing, we'll find out. 139 00:13:34.740 --> 00:13:42.340 Well, you know, in your guest tomorrow, Jeff Myron is a great researcher on prohibition. 140 00:13:42.340 --> 00:13:44.140 He does a lot of great technical stuff. 141 00:13:44.140 --> 00:13:49.980 He's a libertarian and he teaches at Harvard University, so let's see, he's going to be 142 00:13:49.980 --> 00:13:53.900 a real unique guest for your audience as well. 143 00:13:53.900 --> 00:13:54.900 Yep, yep, yep. 144 00:13:54.900 --> 00:14:00.060 I talked to him on the phone and he's like, wow, you know, talked about it briefly, but 145 00:14:00.060 --> 00:14:01.060 he does know his stuff. 146 00:14:01.060 --> 00:14:02.060 He made a couple of books. 147 00:14:02.060 --> 00:14:06.260 and Libertarianism from A to Z, but he's a pretty good person, pretty good author and 148 00:14:06.260 --> 00:14:07.260 everything like that. 149 00:14:07.260 --> 00:14:11.180 But now let's jump into this big war on drugs issue. 150 00:14:11.180 --> 00:14:16.420 You know, since we have clarified, you know, a good bracket on it, and you know, the war 151 00:14:16.420 --> 00:14:23.500 on drugs, you know, you can see a big resemblance with that and alcohol prohibition, right, 152 00:14:23.500 --> 00:14:28.940 with the crime and the drugs and the gangs, because guys, you have to recognize that alcohol 153 00:14:28.940 --> 00:14:32.900 alcohol is a drug and a lot of people don't, especially once they're not educated as well 154 00:14:32.900 --> 00:14:37.540 and they don't recognize alcohol as a drug and I don't know why because it's a drug. 155 00:14:37.540 --> 00:14:41.640 The crime, drugs and gangs, that was the thing in the prohibition, right? 156 00:14:41.640 --> 00:14:43.140 You know about it, right Mark? 157 00:14:43.140 --> 00:14:52.020 Yeah, I wrote my dissertation at Auburn University on the economics of prohibition and what I 158 00:14:52.020 --> 00:15:00.180 What I found was that prohibition of anything causes the same set of problems and so what 159 00:15:00.180 --> 00:15:06.380 I did in my dissertation is I looked at the theory behind what prohibition causes and 160 00:15:06.380 --> 00:15:12.500 then I applied it to both alcohol and to drugs but it would also apply to baby diapers or 161 00:15:12.500 --> 00:15:15.140 orange juice or whatever you want to look at. 162 00:15:15.140 --> 00:15:23.700 If you prohibit something, you get the same sort of effects, you get, of course, the legal 163 00:15:23.700 --> 00:15:29.580 market dries up and you get a black market in its place, you get a lot of crime, you get 164 00:15:29.580 --> 00:15:36.220 a lot of corruption, the product itself is being produced in an entirely different fashion 165 00:15:36.220 --> 00:15:40.420 and so you get an entirely different result. 166 00:15:40.420 --> 00:15:46.600 So one of the things that economists have failed to realize is that, you know, we think of 167 00:15:46.600 --> 00:15:52.000 mainstream economists, they think in terms of prices and quantities and with prohibition 168 00:15:52.000 --> 00:15:58.800 it's different because prohibition doesn't just change prices and quantities, it changes 169 00:15:58.800 --> 00:16:02.860 everything about the market, everything is different. 170 00:16:02.860 --> 00:16:07.820 And so one of the things I found and it's probably one of the most important things 171 00:16:07.820 --> 00:16:14.540 is that prohibition causes the product that's prohibited once it is produced in the black 172 00:16:14.540 --> 00:16:22.500 market, it becomes much more potent and it becomes much more dangerous because it's produced 173 00:16:22.500 --> 00:16:26.440 not by professionals but by an amateur essentially. 174 00:16:26.440 --> 00:16:32.840 And so even if prohibition is successful in reducing the quantity and driving up the price 175 00:16:32.840 --> 00:16:39.280 somewhat. What they ultimately caused is the product to become much, much more 176 00:16:39.280 --> 00:16:44.420 potent and much, much more dangerous. And so, for example, during alcohol 177 00:16:44.420 --> 00:16:49.760 prohibition, you know, basically Americans were beer drinkers before 178 00:16:49.760 --> 00:16:55.400 prohibition. And then with prohibition, when everything had to be secret and 179 00:16:55.400 --> 00:17:00.840 everything had to be condensed and concealed, what the illegal producers 180 00:17:00.840 --> 00:17:06.200 Ended Up Bringing to Market was high potency whiskey. So it wouldn't be 181 00:17:06.200 --> 00:17:12.400 surprising for example that whiskey of it was typically maybe 80 proof or 40 182 00:17:12.400 --> 00:17:19.600 percent alcohol would be 160 proof or 80 percent alcohol. So it's much more potent, 183 00:17:19.600 --> 00:17:25.440 it's produced you know they would call it bathtub gin because it was produced in 184 00:17:25.440 --> 00:17:32.880 small batches by amateurs and they would add in all sorts of adulterates like 185 00:17:32.880 --> 00:17:37.720 wood alcohol which is very harmful to your health and so you know when 186 00:17:37.720 --> 00:17:42.600 prohibitionists they thought well we'll dry up the supply of alcohol so that 187 00:17:42.600 --> 00:17:48.000 people will be healthier and so that people won't be harmed by alcohol but 188 00:17:48.000 --> 00:17:52.640 what actually happened is the whole thing backfired just on this one margin 189 00:17:52.640 --> 00:17:58.000 of Potency and Purity, we ended up producing a product that was much more 190 00:17:58.000 --> 00:18:04.160 dangerous, much more harmful and of course they were not able to completely 191 00:18:04.160 --> 00:18:10.640 dry up the supply of alcohol so that the total amount of alcohol consumed during 192 00:18:10.640 --> 00:18:16.320 prohibition was about the same but it was much more dangerous product for the 193 00:18:16.320 --> 00:18:21.440 people producing it and for the people consuming it. Yeah and you know and you 194 00:18:21.440 --> 00:18:25.480 So, you brought up a good point of the gangs and you brought up a good point of the crime. 195 00:18:25.480 --> 00:18:31.740 But how I look at this as well is that I'm just starting this in economics things. 196 00:18:31.740 --> 00:18:37.700 But if you take out let's say some of the supply, it is going to drive up the demand 197 00:18:37.700 --> 00:18:39.100 obviously right. 198 00:18:39.100 --> 00:18:44.420 And let's say if we take out the – well nowadays for, let's say, the cartels are 199 00:18:44.420 --> 00:18:47.420 driving like a couple of vans up and down the border, right? 200 00:18:47.420 --> 00:18:49.420 Let's say we take one of the vans out. 201 00:18:49.420 --> 00:18:53.740 Now they have to hire a couple of more people to guard that van. That costs money and the 202 00:18:53.740 --> 00:18:58.540 drugs, the cost of drugs will go up as well. Now let's say we start going down in their 203 00:18:58.540 --> 00:19:02.700 farms and start spraying pesticide on it. It's going to kill that thing. But really, 204 00:19:02.700 --> 00:19:06.740 you really think you're going to kill every single plant. That's just impossible. You're 205 00:19:06.740 --> 00:19:10.980 going to have that one plant that costs so much money. And so all the price of it is 206 00:19:10.980 --> 00:19:16.820 just going to be driven up, everything. And you saw like alcohol prohibition. That's what 207 00:19:16.820 --> 00:19:31.820 I think led to the rise of the mafia. When we finished the alcohol prohibition and got rid of it, they were falling apart, but then they found this thing called gambling, and then they went into that, and then they found this thing called narcotics, and they went into that and they stayed. 208 00:19:31.820 --> 00:19:42.820 Now you have the cartels and stuff like that who are just primarily with the narcotics, now they're going onto that. So you can agree with that and you can see some sort of relationship. 209 00:19:42.820 --> 00:19:48.620 Am I right in that observation and saying that the prices are going to go up and this 210 00:19:48.620 --> 00:19:52.540 is partly the reason why the mafia and the cartels stayed around? 211 00:19:52.540 --> 00:19:59.180 Yeah, the law enforcement and the jail sentences and that sort of thing, they impose costs 212 00:19:59.180 --> 00:20:05.300 on these producers and so the producers, the price goes up and they're willing to pay more 213 00:20:05.300 --> 00:20:09.940 costs in order to bring that product to market. 214 00:20:09.940 --> 00:20:15.320 And so all sorts of new organizational forms, you mentioned the street gang. 215 00:20:15.320 --> 00:20:21.540 We have the street gang today, but the street gangs originally formed during the 1920s to 216 00:20:21.540 --> 00:20:30.180 distribute alcohol from the wholesale producers to the speakeasies, which were the secretive 217 00:20:30.180 --> 00:20:36.840 bars during the 1920s where you had to have a password in order to get inside and that 218 00:20:36.840 --> 00:20:37.840 kind of stuff. 219 00:20:37.840 --> 00:20:43.260 ... that new organizational form of the street gang where they got all the money but they 220 00:20:43.260 --> 00:20:51.040 also had that organization and then the mafia, of course the mafia and organized crime, what 221 00:20:51.040 --> 00:20:55.320 they would do is they would buy off the cops, they would buy off the prosecutors and they 222 00:20:55.320 --> 00:21:02.960 would buy off the politicians with bribes so that they could operate without fear of 223 00:21:02.960 --> 00:21:10.760 being apprehended and so the organized crime or the mafia would pay bribes and they would 224 00:21:10.760 --> 00:21:16.440 turn in their competitors so that the police could say, oh, we're capturing people. 225 00:21:16.440 --> 00:21:22.040 What they're actually doing is, you know, they're creating a monopoly for the mafia. 226 00:21:22.040 --> 00:21:29.600 So it's a real, you know, that's an organizational business form that was adopted in order to 227 00:21:29.600 --> 00:21:33.040 get around the greater and greater enforcement. 228 00:21:33.040 --> 00:21:35.240 So it's a never-ending process. 229 00:21:35.240 --> 00:21:41.640 The more they try to enforce things, the higher they drive up the price and the more resources 230 00:21:41.640 --> 00:21:48.000 these illegal producers have at their disposal to buy bigger guns and to pay bigger bribes 231 00:21:48.000 --> 00:21:53.520 and to buy off politicians higher up the political scale. 232 00:21:53.520 --> 00:22:02.040 And so, however hard we push in trying to prohibit things with police officers and investigators, 233 00:22:02.040 --> 00:22:10.520 longer prison sentences, no matter what we do, it just gives the other side more money 234 00:22:10.520 --> 00:22:11.800 to avoid everything. 235 00:22:11.800 --> 00:22:17.840 So you just can't win this game. 236 00:22:17.840 --> 00:22:27.840 No matter how far we push it, no matter how far we degrade our Constitution to fight this battle, ultimately it's a losing cause. 237 00:22:27.840 --> 00:22:40.840 I'm looking at some of this and some of the history behind it. We've been doing so many operations. We do so much domestically. 238 00:22:40.840 --> 00:22:46.280 you know we we arrest around what was in 2000 it said 1.5 million Americans 239 00:22:46.280 --> 00:22:51.280 arrested for drug offenses you know 500 thousands were even more imprisoned from 240 00:22:51.280 --> 00:22:56.440 that so our jail cells are being packed now and and the room is not being left 241 00:22:56.440 --> 00:23:00.320 for the murderers and everything like the ones who I think need to be there 242 00:23:00.320 --> 00:23:05.240 there's the ones that are threatening the rights of others but let's say if 243 00:23:05.240 --> 00:23:08.800 anybody would be under the influence whatever while driving then that's 244 00:23:08.800 --> 00:23:15.600 something different, you're bringing in somebody else, so of course, it's still 245 00:23:15.600 --> 00:23:21.280 a little bit of a personal issue, but in today's talk, we need to make a little 246 00:23:21.280 --> 00:23:32.000 bit of a form, a form of policy for drugs. President Nixon had something called 247 00:23:32.000 --> 00:23:39.880 Operation Intercept, I think that was the name, and it was the goal. It had basically been 248 00:23:39.880 --> 00:23:49.760 to march on the border to Mexico. He almost shut down, according to people, the cross-border 249 00:23:49.760 --> 00:23:54.800 traffic because they were trying to check this stuff out, but that effort only lasted 250 00:23:54.800 --> 00:24:01.560 an astonishing 20 days. I think he realized the level on what he's versing here. And later, 251 00:24:01.560 --> 00:24:07.680 You got the Just Cause operation in 89. 252 00:24:07.680 --> 00:24:13.880 So this was, I think, dealing with Panama and George H.W. Bush, he also directed this 253 00:24:13.880 --> 00:24:14.880 whole thing. 254 00:24:14.880 --> 00:24:21.080 So it's been going on for years and you got the Columbia thing, the most famous one. 255 00:24:21.080 --> 00:24:23.360 We've been trying to get them out and guess what? 256 00:24:23.360 --> 00:24:30.080 We killed Pablo Escobar and we burned and we got rid of most of their cocoa plants but 257 00:24:30.080 --> 00:24:35.880 For some reason, cocaine still keeps on coming. They still come here with submarines and planes. 258 00:24:35.880 --> 00:24:43.320 So we're really not doing anything, something right here. And when Pablo Escobar died, people 259 00:24:43.320 --> 00:24:49.200 thought it was over and everyone knew like a week later it's not because after all that 260 00:24:49.200 --> 00:24:54.280 violence. So since you're saying all this, do you think this is the right thing we're 261 00:24:54.280 --> 00:24:59.760 doing with foreign policy, with the war on drugs? Do you think we should continue what 262 00:24:59.760 --> 00:25:08.760 for Doing. I know we're funding a little bit more of it to fight this office war on drugs, especially in Mexico and other countries. Do you think we should continue doing this, in your view? 263 00:25:08.760 --> 00:25:27.760 Absolutely not. And, you know, that's another promise of The Prohibitionist is that if we eliminate alcohol, if we eliminate drugs of certain sorts, that will prevent crime. And so you'll get a bonus back by getting rid of the drugs or the alcohol or whatever it happens to be. 264 00:25:27.760 --> 00:25:35.760 will have fewer crimes, and so society will profit from it. But of course, again, it backfires. It's the exact opposite. 265 00:25:35.760 --> 00:25:42.760 As you mentioned, we put people who are convicted of nonviolent drug offenses in prison, 266 00:25:42.760 --> 00:25:56.760 and we have minimum mandatories for smoking pot, but that doesn't apply to rapists, murderers, arsonists, burglars, and things like that. 267 00:25:56.760 --> 00:26:04.480 So, once we fill up the prison with non-violent drug offenders, they have to release early 268 00:26:04.480 --> 00:26:08.240 murderers, robbers and rapists. 269 00:26:08.240 --> 00:26:14.000 And so, these people, the real criminals, know that the cost of crime for them is going 270 00:26:14.000 --> 00:26:18.740 down while the cost of pot smokers is going up. 271 00:26:18.740 --> 00:26:26.360 And so, we are the most imprisoned people in the world, in all of history, and it hasn't 272 00:26:26.360 --> 00:26:32.200 Stop Drugs, it hasn't reduced their price, it hasn't decreased their availability, it's 273 00:26:32.200 --> 00:26:37.360 only led to a much, much higher crime rate in the United States. 274 00:26:37.360 --> 00:26:43.200 During alcohol prohibition, for example, before alcohol prohibition, the murder rate in the 275 00:26:43.200 --> 00:26:49.480 United States was about five murders for every 100,000 people. 276 00:26:49.480 --> 00:26:55.080 During prohibition, it got as high as 10 murders per 100,000 population. 277 00:26:55.080 --> 00:27:01.960 And when they repealed Prohibition, it fell back down to five murders per 100,000 people. 278 00:27:01.960 --> 00:27:05.720 We never got back to 10 until the modern war on drugs. 279 00:27:05.720 --> 00:27:12.920 And of course, now we have lots of violence, lots of crime, much of which goes unreported. 280 00:27:12.920 --> 00:27:18.220 And of course, we've exported crime to places like the Mexican border, which is basically 281 00:27:18.220 --> 00:27:24.400 a lawless area now, where the cops are being mowed down by the drug gangs. 282 00:27:24.400 --> 00:27:30.660 And so, not only do we have a tremendous amount of crime in the United States, which the police 283 00:27:30.660 --> 00:27:37.200 can't control, which individual citizens now have to control it for themselves, but we've 284 00:27:37.200 --> 00:27:41.140 exported all this crime to other countries. 285 00:27:41.140 --> 00:27:45.180 We've exported all this drug corruption to these other countries. 286 00:27:45.180 --> 00:27:52.060 And so, the promise of the prohibitionists that we'll be healthier, you know, and things 287 00:27:52.060 --> 00:27:58.820 Things like that, or that will have less crime, it turns out to be exactly the opposite. 288 00:27:58.820 --> 00:28:08.280 We have much, much more crime, we've clogged the court system, we've completely filled 289 00:28:08.280 --> 00:28:14.980 an ever-expanding prison system, all at taxpayer expense, of course, and so the taxpayers can't 290 00:28:14.980 --> 00:28:22.540 Justice anymore for the normal crimes, property crimes, violent crimes, things 291 00:28:22.540 --> 00:28:27.500 of that nature, because the whole criminal justice system is being dragged 292 00:28:27.500 --> 00:28:32.780 into this war on drugs and it's being completely clogged up and our legal 293 00:28:32.780 --> 00:28:41.620 process has been mutated because of efforts to enforce these laws and as a 294 00:28:41.620 --> 00:28:48.460 As a consequence, Americans no longer feel safe, and huge sections of the inner city 295 00:28:48.460 --> 00:28:55.140 where a lot of the drug war is fought has been completely decimated. 296 00:28:55.140 --> 00:28:58.700 Neighborhoods have been completely decimated, public school systems have been completely 297 00:28:58.700 --> 00:29:05.260 decimated, people no longer feel safe, and as I said, the murder rate is outrageous. 298 00:29:05.260 --> 00:29:33.260 Innocent bystanders are being killed in this war on drugs, drive-by shootings, gang violence and of course the gangs are all about the drug money and so basically what you have here is the promise of the prohibitionist with respect to crime, with respect to corruption, with respect to health and all the rest is just a complete lie in fact. 299 00:29:33.260 --> 00:29:39.740 and you know you brought up a point there but you know some of the killings that 300 00:29:39.740 --> 00:29:43.260 would happen and stuff like that are happening right now but you know I'm 301 00:29:43.260 --> 00:29:48.660 bringing up this topic you know in my what we had some topics in my English 302 00:29:48.660 --> 00:29:52.720 class I'm 16 years old and everybody else is like oh god right what what's 303 00:29:52.720 --> 00:29:56.940 going to bring up this time but now they really admire what I'm saying but today 304 00:29:56.940 --> 00:30:01.140 we were talking about war drugs and I said let's live on our own with drugs and some of the 305 00:30:31.140 --> 00:30:36.660 and they're going to crash their cars and just basically go insane and the production 306 00:30:36.660 --> 00:30:40.340 would go lower because nobody would be working that efficiently. 307 00:30:40.340 --> 00:30:44.900 So they're worrying about the economy, the safety, the health of people. 308 00:30:44.900 --> 00:30:48.340 So what would your response would be to that? 309 00:30:48.340 --> 00:30:52.580 Well, it's a complete fallacy. 310 00:30:52.580 --> 00:30:55.240 It's a complete fallacy and it's not surprising. 311 00:30:55.240 --> 00:31:01.480 People see the illegal drug business and then they think, well, if we legalize that, we'll 312 00:31:01.480 --> 00:31:05.840 just get much, much more of the same thing. 313 00:31:05.840 --> 00:31:11.360 But what I've shown in my research, dozens of papers and articles and books, is that 314 00:31:11.360 --> 00:31:17.680 what would really happen is that the illegal marketplace would disappear and the legal 315 00:31:17.680 --> 00:31:24.520 marketplace would reappear, which is exactly what happened with alcohol prohibition. 316 00:31:24.520 --> 00:31:32.920 So if Walmart or Bayer Pharmaceutical Company started making marijuana cigarettes and selling 317 00:31:32.920 --> 00:31:39.140 marijuana cigarettes, what you'd find is that the product would be less potent, it would 318 00:31:39.140 --> 00:31:47.560 be much safer to consume, you know, Walmart would not be shooting people from Target because 319 00:31:47.560 --> 00:31:54.160 they were also selling marijuana cigarettes and the companies who sold 320 00:31:54.160 --> 00:32:00.000 marijuana cigarettes would be competing not only on the basis of price but on the 321 00:32:00.000 --> 00:32:05.800 basis of quality and on the basis of safety you know and so there would be 322 00:32:05.800 --> 00:32:13.400 the crime all the crime element in drugs would disappear the safety element would 323 00:32:13.400 --> 00:32:20.400 be greatly enhanced because companies don't want to kill off their customers whereas heroin 324 00:32:20.400 --> 00:32:29.000 dealers don't really give a damn and companies would produce safer products just like you 325 00:32:29.000 --> 00:32:34.480 see low tar cigarettes and light beer and decaffeinated coffee. 326 00:32:34.480 --> 00:32:41.480 There's safer, less addictive alternatives that are being offered in the marketplace and 327 00:32:41.480 --> 00:32:47.240 So, you know, in the marketplace, when safety improvements are added into an industry, everybody 328 00:32:47.240 --> 00:32:49.200 adopts them because they can advertise. 329 00:32:49.200 --> 00:32:54.840 In the illegal marketplace, nobody advertises because the cops would bust you. 330 00:32:54.840 --> 00:32:57.720 So, like Henry Ford, everybody's heard of Henry Ford. 331 00:32:57.720 --> 00:33:04.080 Well, he introduced the safety glass windows that if they got hit by a rock or you were 332 00:33:04.080 --> 00:33:09.260 in an accident, the glass wouldn't shatter and cut everybody to pieces. 333 00:33:09.260 --> 00:33:13.740 And once he started putting those into his automobiles and advertising, hey, we've got 334 00:33:13.740 --> 00:33:17.780 safety glass in our automobiles, guess what? 335 00:33:17.780 --> 00:33:23.720 Everybody adopted safety glass windshield, and so we would expect the same sorts of things 336 00:33:23.720 --> 00:33:29.500 in a legal market for drugs is that the products would be much safer, that there would be a 337 00:33:29.500 --> 00:33:33.380 tendency towards safety and information. 338 00:33:33.380 --> 00:33:41.740 For example, in today's marketplace, we've got last year 27,000 people died of an overdose. 339 00:33:41.740 --> 00:33:50.460 The majority of them were actually for legal prescription-grade drugs, but things like 340 00:33:50.460 --> 00:33:57.140 barbiturates and heroin, things of that nature, yes, they're not good for you, but what kills 341 00:33:57.140 --> 00:34:04.500 you is taking too much heroin while simultaneously drinking too much alcohol, but that's something 342 00:34:04.500 --> 00:34:10.660 that nobody tells anybody, whereas if it was a legal marketplace, everybody would be compelled 343 00:34:10.660 --> 00:34:16.540 to tell all their customers, hey, if you take this drug, make sure you don't drink any alcohol 344 00:34:16.540 --> 00:34:20.060 or it's going to slow your heart down and cause an overdose. 345 00:34:20.060 --> 00:34:26.540 Even I didn't know that for years as somebody who was doing research on illegal drugs. 346 00:34:26.540 --> 00:34:33.820 So I mean problems like that would virtually disappear overnight. 347 00:34:33.820 --> 00:34:41.460 And speaking of disappearing, when we did repeal alcohol prohibition, it was FDR, Franklin 348 00:34:41.460 --> 00:34:44.460 Delano Roosevelt, who repealed it. 349 00:34:44.460 --> 00:34:50.700 And he got the nomination for president because he switched his position from prohibitionist 350 00:34:50.700 --> 00:34:53.020 to a repeal candidate. 351 00:34:53.020 --> 00:34:56.100 He made it his number one campaign promise. 352 00:34:56.100 --> 00:35:02.740 He made it his number one priority in office, and so as soon as he goes into office he legalizes 353 00:35:02.740 --> 00:35:08.940 beer, he tells Congress, you know, get together a constitutional amendment, the 21st amendment 354 00:35:08.940 --> 00:35:18.380 to repeal prohibition, and the country was overwhelmed in a period of days, basically. 355 00:35:18.380 --> 00:35:24.740 Everybody was rejoicing in the streets, crime came, you know, screeching down, corruption 356 00:35:24.740 --> 00:35:33.100 was greatly diminished, all of a sudden wineries reopened, breweries reopened, distilleries 357 00:35:33.100 --> 00:35:38.460 reopened, new jobs were available, you know, the unemployment rate on election day was 358 00:35:38.460 --> 00:35:45.580 25% and all of a sudden new jobs were available all across the country, farmers had new markets 359 00:35:45.580 --> 00:35:53.980 for their products, barrel makers, bottle makers were back in business, bars and taverns 360 00:35:53.980 --> 00:36:02.540 opened up all across the country. FDR's theme song, Happy Days Are Here Again, rang out 361 00:36:02.540 --> 00:36:14.420 throughout the economy. It was a magical transformation that legalization brought about. And it did 362 00:36:14.420 --> 00:36:21.020 lead to more people dying or anything like that. It did lead to more alcoholism. It actually 363 00:36:21.020 --> 00:36:26.820 really reduced a lot of these problems and so, you know, legalization, you can't think 364 00:36:26.820 --> 00:36:34.420 of it in terms of just lowering the price of a black market illicit good. 365 00:36:34.420 --> 00:36:40.980 You have to look at it as eliminating an entire black market economy and all the crime and 366 00:36:40.980 --> 00:36:47.140 corruption and degradation that goes on and just normalize it. 367 00:36:47.140 --> 00:36:54.540 So it's just a normal product like prescription drug or cigarettes or alcohol or aspirin or 368 00:36:54.540 --> 00:36:55.540 anything like that. 369 00:36:55.540 --> 00:37:02.980 I mean there's no ill effects or very few ill effects associated with those products. 370 00:37:02.980 --> 00:37:06.100 So that's what legalization holds a promise to. 371 00:37:06.100 --> 00:37:13.980 In incident, when they legalized alcohol in 1933, of course the government was running 372 00:37:13.980 --> 00:37:19.740 being short of money, public school systems were failing, firemen and police officers 373 00:37:19.740 --> 00:37:26.140 had to be laid off because there was no taxes coming in, and when they legalized alcohol, 374 00:37:26.140 --> 00:37:33.020 they reinstituted federal taxes on alcohol, state taxes on alcohol, and local licensing 375 00:37:33.020 --> 00:37:42.140 fees for bars and taverns, local taxes on alcohol so that government started to get 376 00:37:42.140 --> 00:37:50.460 more revenue and we were able to hire back school teachers, firemen and police officers, 377 00:37:50.460 --> 00:37:57.020 things of that nature, there was actually a big time tax revolt going on across the country 378 00:37:57.020 --> 00:38:02.060 because people were losing their houses, they were losing their farms because they couldn't 379 00:38:02.060 --> 00:38:11.140 pay their taxes and so the FDR with legalization, he ended the tax revolts, he got city, county, 380 00:38:11.140 --> 00:38:19.700 State, Federal budgets back in line, even though, of course, the price of alcohol for 381 00:38:19.700 --> 00:38:22.580 the consumer was falling dramatically. 382 00:38:22.580 --> 00:38:29.620 In other words, instead of paying a dollar for a beer, you were paying ten cents for 383 00:38:29.620 --> 00:38:34.020 a beer and two cents of that was going to taxes. 384 00:38:34.020 --> 00:38:39.900 So the government was making more money and consumers were getting a 90% tax cut on their 385 00:38:39.900 --> 00:38:42.700 and their alcohol purchases. 386 00:38:42.700 --> 00:38:50.100 And so it was a win-win-win-win-win proposition for the American people and that's why FDR 387 00:38:50.100 --> 00:38:53.060 is one of our most popular presidents. 388 00:38:53.060 --> 00:38:59.100 A lot of people think, especially the big government liberal types, think that FDR was 389 00:38:59.100 --> 00:39:08.100 popular because of his New Deal and because of World War II and because he got us out 390 00:39:08.100 --> 00:39:09.100 of the Great Depression. 391 00:39:09.100 --> 00:39:14.500 Well, the simple fact of the matter is, is that the New Deal had very little impact on 392 00:39:14.500 --> 00:39:22.140 the daily lives of Americans and, of course, he never really got us out of the Great Depression. 393 00:39:22.140 --> 00:39:29.300 We had 15% unemployment throughout the 1930s, which is almost twice as bad as it is right 394 00:39:29.300 --> 00:39:30.300 now. 395 00:39:30.300 --> 00:39:38.120 So things were bad, but the fact that he came into office and made things so much better 396 00:39:38.120 --> 00:39:46.580 by legalizing alcohol made him the most popular president or one of the most popular presidents 397 00:39:46.580 --> 00:39:47.580 in US history. 398 00:39:47.580 --> 00:39:53.420 Now, here's another thing that it's going through. 399 00:39:53.420 --> 00:39:57.700 It's dealing with, before we hop onto the solutions a little bit and a little bit about 400 00:39:57.700 --> 00:39:59.960 the economy, but here's the nice thing. 401 00:39:59.960 --> 00:40:02.460 The Right dealing with it. 402 00:40:02.460 --> 00:40:09.620 I personally think if we would just talk about this whole issue, if you want to do drugs 403 00:40:09.620 --> 00:40:12.220 in your house, go ahead. 404 00:40:12.220 --> 00:40:14.880 If you want to do it in your backyard, go ahead. 405 00:40:14.880 --> 00:40:18.740 If you want to shoot yourself up until you die, go ahead. 406 00:40:18.740 --> 00:40:23.480 Just don't go in the car and drive by my house or anything like that or drive by me while 407 00:40:23.480 --> 00:40:26.860 you're on intoxicated with that stuff. 408 00:40:26.860 --> 00:40:29.460 Don't come by me or try to inject that stuff with me. 409 00:40:29.460 --> 00:40:34.380 and I think you have a right to do it. 410 00:40:34.380 --> 00:40:38.060 And the big thing is, is like we were discussing before, it's like, okay, if we would legalize 411 00:40:38.060 --> 00:40:40.180 everyone, it'd be crazy. 412 00:40:40.180 --> 00:40:44.540 I asked that question again in the English class today, I said, listen, raise your hand, 413 00:40:44.540 --> 00:40:48.680 if we would legalize heroin right now, if we would legalize it right now, who would 414 00:40:48.680 --> 00:40:49.940 do it? 415 00:40:49.940 --> 00:40:51.420 Nobody raised their hand, you know? 416 00:40:51.420 --> 00:40:55.900 So am I, who would do it, even if it was illegal right now, nobody raised their hand. 417 00:40:55.900 --> 00:40:59.300 So I'm like, is the term going to cause somebody to do it? 418 00:40:59.300 --> 00:41:14.300 I don't know. It's themselves. I think making it illegal maybe makes them more curious. I don't know. But I don't think the term is not the factor that's pushing these people to do it. 419 00:41:14.300 --> 00:41:23.300 And all these people are worried about it. Don't worry about it if you're not going to be the one affected by it. Supposedly, the whole country is against the whole drug, so nobody should be worrying about it right now. 420 00:41:23.300 --> 00:41:28.260 is not a lot of people use heroin, not a lot of people use cocaine. So these most 421 00:41:28.260 --> 00:41:32.660 dangerous drugs are going to stay with the most craziest people in society, okay? 422 00:41:32.660 --> 00:41:36.820 And if they do it, they do it. If they drive a car, they're going to be charged 423 00:41:36.820 --> 00:41:40.100 with that. But what do you think? What do you think about the rights and the 424 00:41:40.100 --> 00:41:45.260 individual and the drug use? Mark, what do you think about that? Yeah, well first of 425 00:41:45.260 --> 00:41:55.380 Well Victor, it's actually the case that prohibition actually draws certain people, a certain class 426 00:41:55.380 --> 00:41:56.900 of people towards it. 427 00:41:56.900 --> 00:41:59.740 It actually encourages them to do it. 428 00:41:59.740 --> 00:42:04.980 For whatever reason, I'm not a psychologist or an anthropologist, but it's well known 429 00:42:04.980 --> 00:42:18.740 that young male adults, say 16 or 15 to 30, young 30s are drawn to risky behaviors. 430 00:42:18.740 --> 00:42:25.320 And so by making something illegal, by making it on the underground economy, it tends to 431 00:42:25.320 --> 00:42:31.940 attract risk-taking people who tend to be dominated by young adult males. 432 00:42:31.940 --> 00:42:39.460 And so it actually increases the demand for those most dangerous drugs and by legalizing 433 00:42:39.460 --> 00:42:47.980 it and making it more normal, people are more likely to ignore those products altogether. 434 00:42:47.980 --> 00:42:55.780 And so, you know, and then also you're absolutely right about, you know, the legality of something 435 00:42:55.780 --> 00:42:58.180 and its use in society. 436 00:42:58.180 --> 00:43:07.540 For example, private prohibitions work very well in contrast to government prohibitions. 437 00:43:07.540 --> 00:43:14.860 Private prohibitions are things like airline companies, trucking companies forbidding the 438 00:43:14.860 --> 00:43:22.740 pilots and the drivers consuming alcohol or drugs prior to or during their work schedule. 439 00:43:22.740 --> 00:43:30.380 So any kind of heavy machinery, any kind of dangerous job, employers mandate and very 440 00:43:30.380 --> 00:43:38.400 often use drug testing so that their employees are not operating these dangerous machines 441 00:43:38.400 --> 00:43:44.800 while under the effect of drugs and alcohol, primarily because they have a legal liability. 442 00:43:44.800 --> 00:43:52.380 If their employees do something that's harmful to others, whether it's legal or illegal drugs 443 00:43:52.380 --> 00:43:58.540 and other people are hurt. The employers take the liability. And so those type of private 444 00:43:58.540 --> 00:44:03.780 prohibitions are very well enforced, you know, and churches can prevent their members from 445 00:44:03.780 --> 00:44:12.060 smoking pot during services. Convenience store operators can put out a sign that says, no 446 00:44:12.060 --> 00:44:17.380 shoes, no shirt, no service, which makes a lot of sense. I mean, you don't want people 447 00:44:17.380 --> 00:44:22.700 People walking around barefoot in a convenience store where there very often are broken glass 448 00:44:22.700 --> 00:44:36.340 bottles and so those type of private prohibitions will segregate drug consumption away from 449 00:44:36.340 --> 00:44:38.420 the public. 450 00:44:38.420 --> 00:44:45.500 Just as restaurants started offering no smoking sections long before the government came up 451 00:44:45.500 --> 00:44:51.980 with any idea about restricting tobacco use. They wanted their customers to be able to 452 00:44:51.980 --> 00:44:58.060 be segregated away from tobacco smoke which some people find offensive and so the market 453 00:44:58.060 --> 00:45:07.220 came up with that idea. It worked extremely well and airlines did similar things long 454 00:45:07.220 --> 00:45:14.660 before the government ever came in with the Prohibition. So private sector has... Go ahead. 455 00:45:14.660 --> 00:45:20.020 I'm talking about that and you bring up a good point there. Here in New Jersey, you know, some 456 00:45:20.020 --> 00:45:26.740 places banned smoking, the private institution banned smoking in the restaurant. I have no problem 457 00:45:26.740 --> 00:45:32.260 with that. But what the government has done is they banned smoking in all restaurants. I don't 458 00:45:32.260 --> 00:45:36.900 care what you say. Now, what do you think about that? Do you think that's right that the government 459 00:45:36.900 --> 00:45:41.060 says that like we're looking out for the people there or do you think it's more 460 00:45:41.060 --> 00:45:46.420 of a private institutions choice there? Oh it's certainly it's the private sector 461 00:45:46.420 --> 00:45:50.700 I mean the private sector comes up with these ideas they find out where they're 462 00:45:50.700 --> 00:45:54.600 useful and where they're not useful where they're beneficial where they're 463 00:45:54.600 --> 00:45:58.020 not beneficial I mean the government you know they'll come up with a bright idea 464 00:45:58.020 --> 00:46:03.700 about banning smoking in a smoker in a cigar club you know so there's they come 465 00:46:03.700 --> 00:46:13.700 They come up with all sorts of crazy things. They take a good idea from the marketplace and then they take it to the ridiculous extremes. 466 00:46:13.700 --> 00:46:29.700 For example, they wanted to ban, a long time ago, they wanted to ban smoking in public buildings entirely because of the possibility there would be fire and other people would be hurt. 467 00:46:29.700 --> 00:46:35.140 Well, it turns out, upon empirical investigation, what I found is that there were almost no 468 00:46:35.140 --> 00:46:39.900 fires in public buildings started by cigarettes. 469 00:46:39.900 --> 00:46:47.060 All the fires started by cigarettes were in private residences, which the ordinances that 470 00:46:47.060 --> 00:46:50.900 the government were trying to put into place had no effect. 471 00:46:50.900 --> 00:46:53.300 And so they didn't even bother to check the facts. 472 00:46:53.300 --> 00:47:05.220 They just went ahead with regulations and rules and laws to impose their will on society, 473 00:47:05.220 --> 00:47:13.460 again having no practical effect essentially and basically just making everything much 474 00:47:13.460 --> 00:47:21.420 more difficult for people so that now instead of employee having to smoke in their office, 475 00:47:21.420 --> 00:47:26.720 They have to go downstairs and go outside in the cold and the rain, losing valuable 476 00:47:26.720 --> 00:47:33.980 work time, even though they're smoking in their own personal office or maybe employee 477 00:47:33.980 --> 00:47:41.580 lounge would have no negative effect on productivity. 478 00:47:41.580 --> 00:47:47.580 But the government bans it without understanding or even investigating the effects. 479 00:47:47.580 --> 00:47:53.780 So it's a matter of taking away liberties and getting no practical benefit from it all 480 00:47:53.780 --> 00:47:56.100 and actually hurting productivity. 481 00:47:56.100 --> 00:48:09.060 So it's just once again, the government do-gooders, the nanny state of these bureaucrats and politicians 482 00:48:09.060 --> 00:48:18.340 and do-gooders, progressives, socialists, whatever it happens to be, of grabbing a good 483 00:48:18.340 --> 00:48:24.980 thing that's been developed in the market economy and wanting to take it to an extreme, 484 00:48:24.980 --> 00:48:31.300 exaggerate it, enforce their will upon everybody in society for no practical benefit. 485 00:48:31.300 --> 00:48:36.980 You know, and we were talking about war on drugs before, and you all bring up good points 486 00:48:36.980 --> 00:48:42.980 I really appreciate you coming on again. I want to say that. You're really bringing out good knowledge that I never knew before. 487 00:48:42.980 --> 00:48:52.980 But we always can criticize, criticize, criticize. And I came on the show before and I gave out my solutions for this war on drugs and how to bring crime down and everything like that. 488 00:48:52.980 --> 00:49:03.980 So I think maybe we touched upon it, but just to make it clear, what would be your solution in short to this big crime rate in drugs and big drug use? 489 00:49:03.980 --> 00:49:10.020 What would your solution be? Increase police or maybe not making it that combative? Maybe 490 00:49:10.020 --> 00:49:16.860 make it like stand back a little bit? Legalization? What's your solution to all of this? 491 00:49:16.860 --> 00:49:22.980 I've got a lot of work on Mises.org in academic publications and I like to call it perfect 492 00:49:22.980 --> 00:49:29.460 legalization and that's where you legalize all of the drugs and you treat them essentially 493 00:49:29.460 --> 00:49:36.260 like you would any other commercial product with no other regulations, no other taxations 494 00:49:36.260 --> 00:49:42.580 other than those that exist on other existing goods in the economy, create a level playing 495 00:49:42.580 --> 00:49:50.640 field, release all the non-violent drug offenders from prisons and jails, turn the attention 496 00:49:50.640 --> 00:49:56.320 of police towards property and personal crime and I would also, in order to make this work, 497 00:49:56.320 --> 00:50:05.400 in order to really chop down on drug abuse and irresponsible behavior is that I would 498 00:50:05.400 --> 00:50:11.880 also dismantle a lot of the social safety net so that individuals can't just go about 499 00:50:11.880 --> 00:50:19.480 drinking themselves into oblivion and smoking pot until they're numbed beyond belief or 500 00:50:19.480 --> 00:50:28.400 Taking dangerous drugs like cocaine and heroin and methamphetamine and then, you know, crashing 501 00:50:28.400 --> 00:50:36.160 up their car, burning down their house and then they get to use the taxpayer services 502 00:50:36.160 --> 00:50:43.620 of ambulance hospitals and unemployment benefits and welfare and public housing and all these 503 00:50:43.620 --> 00:50:50.540 and other elements of the social safety net. No, we've got to take that social safety 504 00:50:50.540 --> 00:50:58.340 net away and make people rely on their networks of friends, of family, of social institutions 505 00:50:58.340 --> 00:51:05.260 like their church and the Salvation Army, insurance companies and things of that nature 506 00:51:05.260 --> 00:51:12.020 so that there is no free social safety net that you have to be personally responsible 507 00:51:12.020 --> 00:51:19.740 to create your own personal safety net of friends, family, church, civic organizations 508 00:51:19.740 --> 00:51:25.380 and so forth that you have contributed to positively so that they're willing to help 509 00:51:25.380 --> 00:51:31.060 you out if and when you do get into trouble of some sort or another. 510 00:51:31.060 --> 00:51:36.980 If that kind of situation existed in society, we would have much less irresponsible behavior. 511 00:51:36.980 --> 00:51:43.340 And that's not just drinking, that's not just drugs, it's any kind of irresponsible behavior. 512 00:51:43.340 --> 00:51:49.420 And so if you have that kind of onus on each and every individual citizen in society and 513 00:51:49.420 --> 00:51:56.500 you have the police redirecting their attention towards protecting homeowners and children, 514 00:51:56.500 --> 00:52:04.540 protecting property, investigating rapes and murders and robberies and burglaries and of 515 00:52:04.540 --> 00:52:10.140 of Arresting all sorts of people who are doing real harm to others, then society is going 516 00:52:10.140 --> 00:52:17.460 to be much more prosperous, much more peaceful, and much more along the ideals of the American 517 00:52:17.460 --> 00:52:18.460 Revolution. 518 00:52:18.460 --> 00:52:24.420 Well, put it in a great, great way there, when you put the more solutions in there, 519 00:52:24.420 --> 00:52:25.420 everyone heard that. 520 00:52:25.420 --> 00:52:26.420 It's perfect legalization. 521 00:52:26.420 --> 00:52:27.420 Yeah, perfect legalization. 522 00:52:27.420 --> 00:52:28.420 That's a good term, too. 523 00:52:28.420 --> 00:52:31.420 Yeah, perfect legalization, that's a good term too. 524 00:52:31.420 --> 00:52:35.420 So I'm going to use that in the next class because I'm writing an essay on it. 525 00:52:35.420 --> 00:52:38.020 Just twice an essay we're going to be working on all week. 526 00:52:38.020 --> 00:52:41.920 And a whole bunch of topics to choose from, so it's war on drugs, you know. 527 00:52:41.920 --> 00:52:43.420 So now I'm going to put that in my essay. 528 00:52:43.420 --> 00:52:47.420 I spoke to Mark Thornton and we talked about perfect legalization. 529 00:52:47.420 --> 00:52:53.220 So, you know, so you can't wait to put that one in there. 530 00:52:53.220 --> 00:52:59.540 But we have seven minutes left and you said you only could stay up until 9 o'clock here. 531 00:52:59.540 --> 00:53:03.820 I got several emails and several even comments at school and everything like that. 532 00:53:03.820 --> 00:53:09.580 They've been asking me, Victor, you're getting all these economists on the show. 533 00:53:09.580 --> 00:53:11.700 Can you ask them a couple of questions? 534 00:53:11.700 --> 00:53:16.220 One of the questions is basically hyperinflation. 535 00:53:16.220 --> 00:53:21.220 I study Austrian economists a little bit and economics about it. 536 00:53:21.220 --> 00:53:25.380 What do you think is the possibility of hyperinflation? 537 00:53:25.380 --> 00:53:29.700 Do you think it's very possible in the next year or so? 538 00:53:29.700 --> 00:53:33.460 That's what some people are saying they're predicting, like some faculty in my school, 539 00:53:33.460 --> 00:53:38.860 the ones who buy all silver and gold, they're saying it's very possible in a year or so. 540 00:53:38.860 --> 00:53:39.860 Is this fake? 541 00:53:39.860 --> 00:53:40.860 Is it possible? 542 00:53:40.860 --> 00:53:43.860 And what do you think? 543 00:53:43.860 --> 00:53:45.380 It's certainly possible, Victor. 544 00:53:45.380 --> 00:53:48.500 We are on the road towards hyperinflation. 545 00:53:48.500 --> 00:53:58.420 We are doing the things that are the preconditions for hyperinflation, which is essentially building 546 00:53:58.420 --> 00:54:06.740 up a huge government deficit and also the Federal Reserve is basically going along with 547 00:54:06.740 --> 00:54:13.980 this deficit spending and this burgeoning national debt and it's creating more and more money, 548 00:54:13.980 --> 00:54:21.100 is buying up more and more government bonds and that essentially is the formula for hyperinflation 549 00:54:21.100 --> 00:54:23.780 to break out. 550 00:54:23.780 --> 00:54:27.540 We are the world's reserve currency as of right now. 551 00:54:27.540 --> 00:54:33.340 If we are dropped as the world's reserve currency and we're in the process of being dropped 552 00:54:33.340 --> 00:54:40.860 as the world's reserve currency, then inflation is going to pick up at a much higher rate, 553 00:54:40.860 --> 00:54:49.860 something that you and your friends have never ever even seen or conceived of and it's going 554 00:54:49.860 --> 00:54:56.740 to be an entirely different world and all sorts of things are, the price is rising and 555 00:54:56.740 --> 00:55:03.020 the value of the dollar falling, the price of gasoline rising, the price of all commodity 556 00:55:03.020 --> 00:55:10.500 based products rising very rapidly, going beyond our ability to consume them. 557 00:55:10.500 --> 00:55:17.180 Hyperinflation is when prices are rising by more than double-digit figures every month. 558 00:55:17.180 --> 00:55:20.340 But basically, it gets completely out of hand. 559 00:55:20.340 --> 00:55:29.860 In Zimbabwe, which is the most recent hyperinflation, they were issuing trillion-dollar bills so 560 00:55:29.860 --> 00:55:36.700 that the average guy had tons of trillion-dollar bills in their wallet. 561 00:55:36.700 --> 00:55:44.260 A trillion dollars Zimbabwe note would buy you a cup of coffee and then eventually it 562 00:55:44.260 --> 00:55:45.940 was worth nothing. 563 00:55:45.940 --> 00:55:53.460 They had to put signs in public restrooms that said, please don't use Zimbabwe dollars 564 00:55:53.460 --> 00:55:54.460 as toilet paper. 565 00:55:54.460 --> 00:56:03.260 They were clogging the pipes, okay, and the entire economy breaks down and the social 566 00:56:03.260 --> 00:56:09.920 The real fabric of society breaks down when you have a hyperinflation and there's a history 567 00:56:09.920 --> 00:56:17.100 of these hyperinflations that have occurred around the world and even in the United States. 568 00:56:17.100 --> 00:56:22.860 During the American Revolution we had a hyperinflation, there was a hyperinflation in the Confederacy 569 00:56:22.860 --> 00:56:29.080 during the Civil War and it's all related to big government debt and so there's no 570 00:56:29.080 --> 00:56:35.080 There are no signs in Washington D.C. that they have any intention of dealing with deficits, 571 00:56:35.080 --> 00:56:41.400 or the national debt, or the entitlement programs like Social Security, or the future unfunded 572 00:56:41.400 --> 00:56:44.000 liability of the federal government. 573 00:56:44.000 --> 00:56:50.160 And basically we've seen estimates by professional academic economists and even by government 574 00:56:50.160 --> 00:56:58.900 economists that estimated that our future unfunded liability, which is basically all of our expenditures 575 00:56:58.900 --> 00:57:06.820 into the future that we don't have revenues to cover. It's $200 trillion. That's the highest estimate. 576 00:57:08.820 --> 00:57:14.980 But with that as a precondition and as Washington showing no signs, 577 00:57:15.780 --> 00:57:21.860 I mean that recent budget cut amounted to something along the lines of $300 million. 578 00:57:22.820 --> 00:57:27.460 That's not even a drop in the bucket. That's not even the 579 00:57:27.460 --> 00:57:34.900 Humidity in the bucket. That's embarrassing. It's truly embarrassing and so hyperinflation 580 00:57:35.860 --> 00:57:42.820 is currently a projection. In other words, that's what we're headed towards and unless we 581 00:57:46.100 --> 00:57:52.340 make some changes, adopt the Austrian School of Economics point of view, 582 00:57:53.220 --> 00:57:57.140 the government's budget should be balanced, the government should be a small part of the 583 00:57:57.140 --> 00:58:06.180 of the Economy, the taxes should be small or non-existent, replaced with fees. 584 00:58:06.180 --> 00:58:13.520 We make Governor Christie look like a wimp, basically, but all the things he's doing 585 00:58:13.520 --> 00:58:20.860 in terms of trying to rationalize expenditures, cut budgets and balance the budget, we would 586 00:58:20.860 --> 00:58:27.380 I'd like to do on steroids for the federal government, but they're not even turning their 587 00:58:27.380 --> 00:58:29.700 head and looking over their shoulder. 588 00:58:29.700 --> 00:58:40.420 They're pushing full steam ahead with ever-increasing budgets and no tax cuts under consideration, 589 00:58:40.420 --> 00:58:43.340 no budget cuts under consideration. 590 00:58:43.340 --> 00:58:50.220 Another thing that FDR did when he first went into office, he cut all federal employee pay 591 00:58:50.220 --> 00:58:58.700 by 25%. That's another reason he was so popular because everybody knew that government employees 592 00:58:58.700 --> 00:59:04.580 were making twice or more in what private sector employees were making, and that's 593 00:59:04.580 --> 00:59:10.080 even worse here in the United States today. Government employees for similar jobs and 594 00:59:10.080 --> 00:59:19.800 experience make twice the wages and benefits, including days off from work, a similar private 595 00:59:19.800 --> 00:59:26.040 Sector Worker is getting. But we're not doing any of that. None of the candidates are even 596 00:59:26.040 --> 00:59:33.120 suggesting any of that. So hyperinflation is something that your listeners need to equate 597 00:59:33.120 --> 00:59:41.400 themselves with and need to be prepared to deal with financially, emotionally, psychologically 598 00:59:41.400 --> 00:59:49.680 because it's like an earthquake going through society, but it's not vibrating the surface 599 00:59:49.680 --> 00:59:56.800 of the Earth. It's shaking the very foundations of the market economy that they have come 600 00:59:56.800 --> 01:00:08.280 to basically live on. And as a consequence, we can stop it, we can change it, we can reverse 601 01:00:08.280 --> 01:00:12.240 it, but we've got to get to working on it very soon. 602 01:00:12.240 --> 01:00:17.920 Yeah, yeah. And before I let you go here, for my own little conscience and my other 603 01:00:17.920 --> 01:00:26.920 I don't know how well you can give advice on this, but I just bought 10 ounces of silver when it was $31 per ounce. 604 01:00:26.920 --> 01:00:30.920 I didn't get it on spot, but I got it for $32 an ounce. 605 01:00:30.920 --> 01:00:39.920 I'm trying to stock up on silver, then sell it, and then buy a whole bunch more again and save it just in case if hyperinflation is going to happen. 606 01:00:39.920 --> 01:00:47.760 Do you think keeping silver at home and saving it all up for hyperinflation is going to be 607 01:00:47.760 --> 01:00:52.760 some sort of deterrent, a little hedge against the hyperinflation or is it just minuscule 608 01:00:52.760 --> 01:00:55.480 and not going to do anything? 609 01:00:55.480 --> 01:00:59.680 Having, you know, owning silver and yeah, you can own it in your house. 610 01:00:59.680 --> 01:01:06.120 I, as a public advocate of gold and silver ownership, I have to keep mine in the bank 611 01:01:06.120 --> 01:01:15.120 But it's an insurance policy. It's not an investment. It's an insurance policy. It's just like owning a fire extinguisher. 612 01:01:15.120 --> 01:01:23.120 You have it in your house. It's off in the corner. Nobody really pays any attention to it. You don't ever want to use it. 613 01:01:23.120 --> 01:01:31.120 But if there's a problem, it's there. So that's the way you want to view owning gold and silver 614 01:01:31.120 --> 01:01:53.120 is an insurance policy against things like inflation and hyperinflation or even war or other types of disasters that other Asian people and African people hold gold against all sorts of catastrophes but certainly inflation and hyperinflation are the two most important. 615 01:01:53.120 --> 01:02:00.120 I'm just wondering, I don't know if I was stupid to buy all that, but everyone is saying it's like, Victor, you bought how much? 616 01:02:00.120 --> 01:02:10.120 And I'm like, I just wanted to get it, you know, and I have it stocked up right now and I just took a couple of coins here, silver dollars here, I love them, you know, they're nice pretty coins, but... 617 01:02:10.120 --> 01:02:22.120 I went to Subway on St. Patrick's Day and ordered a turkey sub and gave them the money and I got back the change and in the change was a quarter, it was a silver quarter. 618 01:02:22.120 --> 01:02:28.160 I went back to my office and I looked it up on the internet and that quarter was worth 619 01:02:28.160 --> 01:02:32.480 more than my entire lunch cost. 620 01:02:32.480 --> 01:02:41.560 Now fast forward a couple weeks later, it was worth over 10 bucks and it's still basically 621 01:02:41.560 --> 01:02:47.200 worth the price of a Subway sandwich and a Coke. 622 01:02:47.200 --> 01:02:54.400 That gives you some idea about how much inflation we've experienced since 1964 and of course 623 01:02:54.400 --> 01:03:01.340 the massive movement in silver recently is hopefully not a sign of the future but it 624 01:03:01.340 --> 01:03:07.400 certainly looks that way and then of course we saw the collapse in the price of silver 625 01:03:07.400 --> 01:03:16.960 due largely to the fact that the brokers in silver were requiring larger margins on speculators 626 01:03:16.960 --> 01:03:23.520 and so the market fell apart. So the government can rig these markets and so that's why you 627 01:03:23.520 --> 01:03:33.920 have to view owning gold and silver as an insurance policy for the long haul, not necessarily 628 01:03:33.920 --> 01:03:37.120 as a short-term investment. 629 01:03:37.120 --> 01:03:44.920 Well, you know, yeah, yeah, largely on the part there. But again, I'm going to keep on 630 01:03:44.920 --> 01:03:50.760 Investing into it. But again, thank you so much for calling in. I think I have to let you go here but 631 01:03:51.400 --> 01:03:56.520 thank you so much for calling in, receiving my emails and responding to them. I do get a lot 632 01:03:56.520 --> 01:04:00.920 of response from other people but again, I want to thank you again for coming on the show, taking 633 01:04:00.920 --> 01:04:05.880 your time. I'm going to email you in the URL and stuff so maybe you can give it to other people if 634 01:04:05.880 --> 01:04:12.520 they want to hear you from here. Thank you very much. I greatly enjoyed the show and good luck 635 01:04:12.520 --> 01:04:18.520 Thank you so much and have a great night or afternoon wherever you're at. 636 01:04:18.520 --> 01:04:19.520 Good night. 637 01:04:19.520 --> 01:04:20.520 Yeah, good night. 638 01:04:20.520 --> 01:04:20.540 Bye-bye.