WEBVTT NOTE The Economy and Drugs 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 --> 00:05:52.320 me and I looked it up and I'm like, wow, he's on Mises.org. 54 00:05:52.320 --> 00:05:53.320 I'm like, great. 55 00:05:53.320 --> 00:05:54.320 There's that type. 56 00:05:54.320 --> 00:05:56.040 She gave me an email and now you're here. 57 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, 58 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 59 00:06:05.320 --> 00:06:09.840 know, from cocaine, heroin, marijuana, all that, it's a whole prohibition on it. 60 00:06:09.840 --> 00:06:17.360 and so you know it's been started since well you really they've been making all 61 00:06:17.360 --> 00:06:23.640 these departments since the 1914 is as much as I know they had like the Harrison 62 00:06:23.640 --> 00:06:27.840 narcotics tax and I would they just tax some stuff in the drugs that was like I 63 00:06:27.840 --> 00:06:32.040 think the start of it all but it's been going on for so many years so many years 64 00:06:32.040 --> 00:06:37.320 and it's been rampant in it just a few recent years they've been stepping up on 65 00:06:37.320 --> 00:06:38.320 on it. 66 00:06:38.320 --> 00:06:42.600 But for some reason, I'm looking in statistics and doesn't seem like anything changed. 67 00:06:42.600 --> 00:06:47.400 But let me before I jump into this as well, let me just to start off, if you can please 68 00:06:47.400 --> 00:06:52.840 share with the audience, you know, your background education, like what current projects you're 69 00:06:52.840 --> 00:06:57.880 you know, if you're doing if any and your profession if you would like to say it. 70 00:06:57.880 --> 00:07:03.440 Sure, my graduate students call me the best economist that nobody's ever heard of. 71 00:07:03.440 --> 00:07:11.320 And I work at the Ludwig von Mises Institute, M-I-S-E-S dot O-R-G. I'm a senior research 72 00:07:11.320 --> 00:07:16.920 fellow there. I got my undergraduate degree at St. Bonaventure University up in New York 73 00:07:16.920 --> 00:07:26.360 and I got my PhD in economics at Auburn University. I've taught at Auburn University at Montgomery 74 00:07:26.360 --> 00:07:32.760 and Trinity University in San Antonio and Columbus State University in Georgia and I'm 75 00:07:32.760 --> 00:07:39.760 I'm back in Auburn, I'm working at the Mises Institute and it's the world's premier free 76 00:07:39.760 --> 00:07:44.340 market think tank and education foundation. 77 00:07:44.340 --> 00:07:49.100 We have the largest economic web page in the world and one of the most trafficked economic 78 00:07:49.100 --> 00:07:59.040 web pages in the world and I'm just very happy to be very lucky to be the senior fellow at 79 00:07:59.040 --> 00:08:04.280 at the Mises Institute and actually, we're putting together, we have what's called the 80 00:08:04.280 --> 00:08:11.480 Mises Academy, the online courses in lots of free market stuff and I'm putting together 81 00:08:11.480 --> 00:08:18.320 a course on the drug war that students can take either auditing or for grades over the 82 00:08:18.320 --> 00:08:20.320 internet and that's going to be offered pretty soon. 83 00:08:20.320 --> 00:08:26.480 That'll be interesting, I was looking on that website and I know they have, they look like 84 00:08:26.480 --> 00:08:30.720 to have some summer courses there or whatever and I was looking at their 85 00:08:30.720 --> 00:08:35.320 online courses I was very interested into it so I never knew that you are one 86 00:08:35.320 --> 00:08:39.600 of the teachers there so I would love to get that course from there for the the 87 00:08:39.600 --> 00:08:42.960 war on drugs there if you're going to be offering it. Yeah I've been with the Mises 88 00:08:42.960 --> 00:08:47.240 Institute for a very long time and we started out as a very small organization 89 00:08:47.240 --> 00:08:52.640 and now it's like I said the world global leading free market think tank 90 00:08:52.640 --> 00:08:58.160 Bank, and we're really the most radical of all of the free market think tanks and it's 91 00:08:58.160 --> 00:09:05.160 an educational mission, not a political mission, but we have a renowned course, a week-long 92 00:09:05.160 --> 00:09:10.560 course at the institute called the Mises University, but it's already, it takes place in the last 93 00:09:10.560 --> 00:09:15.920 week of July, but it's already been sold out for a long time. 94 00:09:15.920 --> 00:09:22.280 When I say sold out, it's actually free to the students, but we had so many applications 95 00:09:22.280 --> 00:09:39.280 The Institute has other conferences around the world. We have one in Austria coming up. We have one in Indianapolis, Indiana coming up. We just had one in Chicago and Nashville. 96 00:09:39.280 --> 00:09:45.360 So if you go to our web page and look at the events, there's a lot of great free 97 00:09:45.360 --> 00:09:51.600 programs and the website itself is open of course 24-7, 365, there's no fees, 98 00:09:51.600 --> 00:09:56.680 there's no registration, everything's for free, you can download hundreds of books 99 00:09:56.680 --> 00:10:02.920 off the website so it's really a great resource whether 100 00:10:02.920 --> 00:10:07.600 you're you know worried about how to get your laundry clean, skateboarding issues, 101 00:10:07.600 --> 00:10:14.000 issues, tattoo issues and then of course inflation and taxes and the debt and business cycles. 102 00:10:14.000 --> 00:10:19.120 If you want to know about business cycles, our web page is really the only web page where 103 00:10:19.120 --> 00:10:25.560 you're going to find any reasonable information and accurate predictions about the future. 104 00:10:25.560 --> 00:10:30.760 Oh yeah, it is a very, very interactive site, I may say that and I really appreciate it. 105 00:10:30.760 --> 00:10:35.760 You got to have a donate, the facility that we can donate and how you pointed out they 106 00:10:35.760 --> 00:10:37.520 do give out the books there. 107 00:10:37.520 --> 00:10:39.800 You guys have to pay for these books, I bet. 108 00:10:39.800 --> 00:10:44.720 And so if you're down there and you're looking at those books, donate, I'm thinking of donating 109 00:10:44.720 --> 00:10:45.720 some more money. 110 00:10:45.720 --> 00:10:50.640 So I read some of the books there, read parts of it and listen, some parts I want to read, 111 00:10:50.640 --> 00:10:55.320 some parts I want to see it, it's better not to go to Barnes and Nobles and wait hours 112 00:10:55.320 --> 00:10:58.280 just to get to think because they don't have the book there which is unbelievable. 113 00:10:58.280 --> 00:11:06.040 Yeah, the books that we publish, we make available in PDF format that you can actually look at 114 00:11:06.040 --> 00:11:11.680 the product for free and read it for free. You can download it, you can print it, but 115 00:11:11.680 --> 00:11:16.560 what we find is that most people, once they see a book and they can determine whether 116 00:11:16.560 --> 00:11:21.760 or not they want the book or not, and then they can purchase it online and the prices 117 00:11:21.760 --> 00:11:30.760 of our books are insanely cheap relative to what you'll find in a bookstore or in a park. 118 00:11:30.760 --> 00:11:36.720 Yeah, you know, I was looking at those prices. Well, I'm thinking of ordering a whole bunch 119 00:11:36.720 --> 00:11:42.480 of books because what I did one time was that I ordered economics in one lesson, what was 120 00:11:42.480 --> 00:11:49.960 it, meltdown, and the Fed wrote the serfdom, welcome to nations. I ordered them all at 121 00:11:49.960 --> 00:11:54.320 the same time. It was very insane how I got them all in one box and there was some crazy 122 00:11:54.320 --> 00:11:58.520 Keynesian person opened it up and stole it. Nobody did that at that time. So it was good, 123 00:11:58.520 --> 00:12:07.520 I love reading about it. It's the only economic theory that makes sense. I encourage everybody to go look into it. 124 00:12:07.520 --> 00:12:16.520 A lot of these books are real classics. We've brought back some early libertarian classics from 100 years ago. 125 00:12:16.520 --> 00:12:22.520 A lot of the books that you mentioned, we're talking about New York Times bestselling books. 126 00:12:22.520 --> 00:12:28.600 So and you know most of the prices of our books are less than $20 so that you can develop 127 00:12:28.600 --> 00:12:32.080 a whole library as a matter of fact a lot of people who get into the libertarian free 128 00:12:32.080 --> 00:12:38.800 market think tank you know situation they like to come to our conferences even our academic 129 00:12:38.800 --> 00:12:44.480 conferences and buy the books on site and then have them signed by the authors and then 130 00:12:44.480 --> 00:12:49.600 you've got something that's really valuable to keepsake and it's a classic in the in the 131 00:12:49.600 --> 00:12:56.520 and the Libertarian Tradition, so go to the website, look at the events and say when and 132 00:12:56.520 --> 00:13:03.640 how can I get myself physically in contact with this stuff as well as over the internet. 133 00:13:03.640 --> 00:13:04.640 Mm-hmm. 134 00:13:04.640 --> 00:13:05.640 Mm-hmm. 135 00:13:05.640 --> 00:13:10.080 And you know, okay, and it's good you pointed it all out and I guess I suggest you go into 136 00:13:10.080 --> 00:13:14.760 it and I gotta say, man, you do have a great background and that's why I wanted you for 137 00:13:14.760 --> 00:13:18.800 this specific topic and actually first before the other people because I want to do this 138 00:13:18.800 --> 00:13:24.520 This Month, a big topic on war and drugs and the economy and I was trying to figure out 139 00:13:24.520 --> 00:13:28.840 a good person to start it off and they're not to be used so we're very happy that the 140 00:13:28.840 --> 00:13:32.520 audience shows you to do it so, but I don't know if that's gonna be a good thing or a 141 00:13:32.520 --> 00:13:34.080 bad thing, we'll find out. 142 00:13:34.080 --> 00:13:41.440 Well, you know, in your guest tomorrow, Jeff Myron is a great researcher on prohibition, 143 00:13:41.440 --> 00:13:48.040 he does a lot of great technical stuff, he's a libertarian and he teaches at Harvard University 144 00:13:48.040 --> 00:13:54.040 So let's see, he's going to be a real unique guest for your audience as well. 145 00:13:54.040 --> 00:14:01.040 Yep, yep, yep. I talked to him on the phone and he's like, wow, you know, talked about it briefly, but he does know his stuff. 146 00:14:01.040 --> 00:14:07.040 He made a couple of books, I think Libertarianism from A to Z, but he's a pretty good person, pretty good author and everything like that. 147 00:14:07.040 --> 00:14:11.040 But now let's jump into this big war on drugs issue. 148 00:14:11.040 --> 00:14:16.120 You know, since we have clarified, you know, a good background in my head and, you know, 149 00:14:16.120 --> 00:14:23.160 the war on drugs, you know, you can see a big resemblance with that and alcohol prohibition, 150 00:14:23.160 --> 00:14:28.480 right, with the crime and the drugs and the gangs because, guys, you have to recognize 151 00:14:28.480 --> 00:14:32.520 that alcohol is a drug and a lot of people don't, especially once they're not educated 152 00:14:32.520 --> 00:14:35.600 that well and they don't recognize alcohol as a drug and I don't know why because it's 153 00:14:35.600 --> 00:14:36.600 a drug. 154 00:14:36.600 --> 00:14:43.600 The Crime, Drugs and Gangs, that was the thing in the prohibition, right? You know about it, right, Mark? 155 00:14:43.600 --> 00:14:58.600 Yeah, I wrote my dissertation at Auburn University on the economics of prohibition, and what I found was that prohibition of anything causes the same set of problems. 156 00:14:58.600 --> 00:15:06.120 and so what I did in my dissertation is I looked at the theory behind what prohibition causes 157 00:15:06.120 --> 00:15:12.920 and then I applied it to both alcohol and to drugs but it would also apply to baby diapers or orange 158 00:15:12.920 --> 00:15:17.880 juice or whatever you want to look at. If you prohibit something, you get the same sort of 159 00:15:17.880 --> 00:15:26.760 effects. Of course, the legal market dries up and you get a black market in its place, 160 00:15:26.760 --> 00:15:34.760 You get a lot of crime, you get a lot of corruption, the product itself is being produced in an 161 00:15:34.760 --> 00:15:40.440 entirely different fashion and so you get an entirely different result. 162 00:15:40.440 --> 00:15:47.080 So one of the things that economists have failed to realize is that we think of mainstream 163 00:15:47.080 --> 00:15:53.140 economists, they think in terms of prices and quantities and with prohibition it's different 164 00:15:53.140 --> 00:15:59.860 Because prohibition doesn't just change prices and quantities, it changes everything about 165 00:15:59.860 --> 00:16:00.860 the market. 166 00:16:00.860 --> 00:16:02.860 Everything is different. 167 00:16:02.860 --> 00:16:08.020 And so one of the things I found, and it's probably one of the most important things, 168 00:16:08.020 --> 00:16:14.540 is that prohibition causes the product that's prohibited, once it is produced in the black 169 00:16:14.540 --> 00:16:22.500 market, it becomes much more potent and it becomes much more dangerous because it's produced 170 00:16:22.500 --> 00:16:26.500 not by professionals but by an amateur essentially. 171 00:16:26.500 --> 00:16:32.860 And so even if Prohibition is successful in reducing the quantity and driving up the price 172 00:16:32.860 --> 00:16:40.220 somewhat, what they've ultimately caused is the product to become much, much more potent 173 00:16:40.220 --> 00:16:42.180 and much, much more dangerous. 174 00:16:42.180 --> 00:16:49.380 And so, for example, during alcohol prohibition, you know, basically Americans were beer drinkers 175 00:16:49.380 --> 00:16:55.700 before Prohibition and then with Prohibition when everything had to be secret and everything 176 00:16:55.700 --> 00:17:02.580 had to be condensed and concealed, what the illegal producers ended up bringing to market 177 00:17:02.580 --> 00:17:05.580 was high potency whiskey. 178 00:17:05.580 --> 00:17:11.420 So it wouldn't be surprising, for example, that whiskey of, it was typically maybe 80 179 00:17:11.420 --> 00:17:18.460 proof or 40% alcohol would be 160 proof or 80% alcohol. 180 00:17:18.460 --> 00:17:25.340 So it's much more potent, it's produced, they would call it bathtub gin because it was produced 181 00:17:25.340 --> 00:17:33.140 in small batches by amateurs and they would add in all sorts of adulterates like wood 182 00:17:33.140 --> 00:17:36.420 alcohol which is very harmful to your health. 183 00:17:36.420 --> 00:17:42.240 And so when prohibitionists, they thought, well, we'll dry up the supply of alcohol 184 00:17:42.240 --> 00:17:48.300 so that people will be healthier and so that people won't be harmed by alcohol, but what 185 00:17:48.300 --> 00:17:55.980 actually happened is the whole thing backfired just on this one margin of potency and purity. 186 00:17:55.980 --> 00:18:02.500 We ended up producing a product that was much more dangerous, much more harmful and of course 187 00:18:02.500 --> 00:18:08.980 they were not able to completely dry up the supply of alcohol so that the total amount 188 00:18:08.980 --> 00:18:15.140 of alcohol consumed during prohibition was about the same but it was much more dangerous 189 00:18:15.140 --> 00:18:19.860 product both for the people producing it and for the people consuming it. 190 00:18:19.860 --> 00:18:24.140 Yeah and you brought up a good point of the gangs and you brought up a good point of the 191 00:18:24.140 --> 00:18:31.580 crime but how I look at it as well is that I'm just starting this in economics things 192 00:18:31.580 --> 00:18:37.700 but if you take out let's say some of the supply, it's going to drive up the demand 193 00:18:37.700 --> 00:18:44.340 obviously right and let's say if we take out the well nowadays for let's say the cartels 194 00:19:14.340 --> 00:19:20.540 You saw alcohol prohibition, that's what I think led to the rise of the mafia. 195 00:19:20.540 --> 00:19:24.900 When we finished the alcohol prohibition and got rid of it, they were falling apart but 196 00:19:24.900 --> 00:19:29.060 then they found this thing called gambling and then they went into that and then they 197 00:19:29.060 --> 00:19:32.220 found this thing called narcotics and they went into that and they stayed. 198 00:19:32.220 --> 00:19:36.500 Now you have the cartels and stuff like that who are just primarily with the narcotics, 199 00:19:36.500 --> 00:19:38.620 now they're going onto that. 200 00:19:38.620 --> 00:19:44.340 So you can agree with that and you can see some sort of relationship, am I right in that 201 00:19:44.340 --> 00:19:49.740 observation in saying that the prices are going to go up and this is partly the reason 202 00:19:49.740 --> 00:19:52.660 why the mafia and the cartels stayed around? 203 00:19:52.660 --> 00:19:59.220 Yeah, the law enforcement and the jail sentences and that sort of thing, they impose costs 204 00:19:59.220 --> 00:20:05.340 on these producers and so the producers, the price goes up and they're willing to pay more 205 00:20:05.340 --> 00:20:09.960 costs in order to bring that product to market. 206 00:20:09.960 --> 00:20:15.360 And so all sorts of new organizational forms, you mentioned the street gang. 207 00:20:15.360 --> 00:20:21.580 We have the street gang today, but the street gangs originally formed during the 1920s to 208 00:20:21.580 --> 00:20:30.220 distribute alcohol from the wholesale producers to the speakeasies, which were the secretive 209 00:20:30.220 --> 00:20:36.820 Bars during the 1920s where you had to have a password in order to get inside and that 210 00:20:36.820 --> 00:20:37.820 kind of stuff. 211 00:20:37.820 --> 00:20:42.940 So that was that new organizational form of the street gang where they got all the money 212 00:20:42.940 --> 00:20:47.260 but they also had that organization and then the mafia, of course the mafia and organized 213 00:20:47.260 --> 00:20:55.060 crime, what they would do is they would buy off the cops, they would buy off the prosecutors 214 00:20:55.060 --> 00:21:01.940 And they would buy off the politicians with bribes so that they could operate without 215 00:21:01.940 --> 00:21:04.820 fear of being apprehended. 216 00:21:04.820 --> 00:21:12.900 And so the organized crime or the mafia would pay bribes and they would turn in their competitors 217 00:21:12.900 --> 00:21:16.480 so that the police could say, oh, we're capturing people. 218 00:21:16.480 --> 00:21:22.060 What they're actually doing is, you know, they're creating a monopoly for the mafia. 219 00:21:22.060 --> 00:21:30.700 So that's an organizational business form that was adopted in order to get around the 220 00:21:30.700 --> 00:21:33.060 greater and greater enforcement. 221 00:21:33.060 --> 00:21:35.260 So it's a never-ending process. 222 00:21:35.260 --> 00:21:41.660 The more they try to enforce things, the higher they drive up the price and the more resources 223 00:21:41.660 --> 00:21:48.140 these illegal producers have at their disposal to buy bigger guns and to pay bigger bribes 224 00:21:48.140 --> 00:21:55.740 and to, you know, buy off politicians higher up the political scale and so however hard we push 225 00:21:56.780 --> 00:22:03.580 in trying to prohibit things with police officers and investigators, longer prison sentences, 226 00:22:05.660 --> 00:22:13.740 no matter what we do, it just gives the other side more money to avoid everything. So you just can't 227 00:22:13.740 --> 00:22:21.400 when this game it just it's it's no matter how far we push it no matter how 228 00:22:21.400 --> 00:22:27.100 far we degrade our Constitution to fight this battle ultimately it's a losing 229 00:22:27.100 --> 00:22:34.100 cause you know I'm looking at some of this and some of the history behind it 230 00:22:34.100 --> 00:22:41.060 we've been doing so many operations you know we we do so much domestically you 231 00:22:41.060 --> 00:22:47.280 You know, we arrest around what was in 2000, it said 1.5 million Americans arrested for 232 00:22:47.280 --> 00:22:48.280 drug offenses. 233 00:22:48.280 --> 00:22:52.060 You know, 500,000 were even more imprisoned from that. 234 00:22:52.060 --> 00:22:57.460 So our jail cells are being packed now and the room is not being left for the murderers 235 00:22:57.460 --> 00:22:58.460 and everything like that. 236 00:22:58.460 --> 00:23:03.240 The ones who, I think, need to be there, they're the ones that are threatening the rights of 237 00:23:03.240 --> 00:23:04.240 others. 238 00:23:04.240 --> 00:23:08.500 But let's say if anybody would be under the influence of whatever while it's arriving 239 00:23:08.500 --> 00:23:13.300 and then that's something different, you're bringing it to somebody else, so of course 240 00:23:13.300 --> 00:23:22.300 I didn't just do it in person, I put it in there and I told you to make a little performance, 241 00:23:22.300 --> 00:23:31.180 look at the performance, we had foreign policy, foreign drugs, President Nixon, he had something 242 00:23:31.180 --> 00:23:39.980 called Operation Intercept, I think that was the name, and it was, it had basically been 243 00:23:39.980 --> 00:23:49.420 launched on the border of New Mexico and he almost shut down according to people the cross 244 00:23:49.420 --> 00:23:54.300 border traffic because they're trying to check this stuff out but the only that effort only 245 00:23:54.300 --> 00:24:00.380 lasted an astonishing 20 days. I think he realized the level on what he's versing here 246 00:24:00.380 --> 00:24:09.500 and later you got the Just Cause operation in 89. So this was I think dealing with Panama 247 00:24:10.380 --> 00:24:17.020 and George H.W. Bush. He also directed this whole thing. So it's been going on for years and you 248 00:24:17.020 --> 00:24:23.180 got the Columbia thing, the most famous one. We've been trying to get them out and guess what? 249 00:24:23.180 --> 00:24:29.020 We killed Pablo Escobar and we burned and we got rid of most of their cocoa plants. 250 00:24:29.020 --> 00:24:59.000 So, since you're saying all this, do you think this is the right thing we're doing with foreign policy, with the war on drugs, do you think we should 251 00:24:59.000 --> 00:25:09.000 Do you think we should continue what we're 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? 252 00:25:09.000 --> 00:25:21.000 Absolutely not. And that's another promise of the prohibitionist is that if we eliminate alcohol, if we eliminate drugs of certain sorts, that will prevent crime. 253 00:25:21.000 --> 00:25:26.200 And so you'll get a bonus back by getting rid of the drugs or the alcohol or whatever 254 00:25:26.200 --> 00:25:31.600 it happens to be, we'll have fewer crimes and so society will profit from it. 255 00:25:31.600 --> 00:25:36.280 But of course, again, it backfires, it's the exact opposite. 256 00:25:36.280 --> 00:25:44.000 As you mentioned, we put people who are convicted of nonviolent drug offenses in prison and 257 00:25:44.000 --> 00:25:53.640 We have minimum mandatories for smoking pot, but that doesn't apply to rapists, murderers, 258 00:25:53.640 --> 00:25:57.920 arsonists, burglars and things like that. 259 00:25:57.920 --> 00:26:04.480 Once we fill up the prison with nonviolent drug offenders, they have to release early 260 00:26:04.480 --> 00:26:09.240 murderers, robbers and rapists. 261 00:26:09.240 --> 00:26:14.840 These people, the real criminals, know that the cost of crime for them is going down, 262 00:26:14.840 --> 00:26:18.760 while the cost of pot smokers is going up. 263 00:26:18.760 --> 00:26:26.400 And so we are the most imprisoned people in the world in all of history, and it hasn't 264 00:26:26.400 --> 00:26:32.200 stopped drugs, it hasn't reduced their price, it hasn't decreased their availability. 265 00:26:32.200 --> 00:26:37.380 It's only led to a much, much higher crime rate in the United States. 266 00:26:37.380 --> 00:26:43.220 During alcohol prohibition, for example, before alcohol prohibition, the murder rate in the 267 00:26:43.220 --> 00:26:49.520 United States was about five murders for every 100,000 people. 268 00:26:49.520 --> 00:26:55.140 During prohibition, it got as high as 10 murders per 100,000 population. 269 00:26:55.140 --> 00:27:01.980 And when they repealed prohibition, it fell back down to five murders per 100,000 people. 270 00:27:01.980 --> 00:27:05.780 We never got back to 10 until the modern war on drugs. 271 00:27:05.780 --> 00:27:12.680 and of course now we have lots of violence, lots of crime, much of which goes unreported 272 00:27:12.680 --> 00:27:18.220 and of course we've exported crime to places like the Mexican border which is basically 273 00:27:18.220 --> 00:27:25.620 a lawless area now where the cops are being mowed down by the drug gangs and so not only 274 00:27:25.620 --> 00:27:32.620 do we have tremendous amount of crime in the United States which the police can't control 275 00:27:32.620 --> 00:27:38.340 which individual citizens now have to control it for themselves but we've exported all this 276 00:27:38.340 --> 00:27:45.020 crime to other countries, we've exported all this drug corruption to these other countries 277 00:27:45.020 --> 00:27:52.480 and so the promise of the prohibitionists that will be healthier and things like that 278 00:27:52.480 --> 00:27:58.800 or that will have less crime, it turns out to be exactly the opposite. 279 00:27:58.800 --> 00:28:08.260 We have much, much more crime. We've clogged the court system. We've completely filled 280 00:28:08.260 --> 00:28:14.960 an ever-expanding prison system, all at taxpayer expense, of course. And so the taxpayers can't 281 00:28:14.960 --> 00:28:22.640 get justice anymore for the normal crimes, property crimes, violent crimes, things of 282 00:28:52.640 --> 00:29:22.640 completely decimated, neighborhoods have been completely decimated, public school systems have been completely decimated, people no longer feel safe, as I said the murder rate is outrageous, 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 prohibition 283 00:29:22.640 --> 00:29:29.880 with respect to crime, with respect to corruption, with respect to health and all the rest is 284 00:29:29.880 --> 00:29:32.680 just a complete lie in fact. 285 00:29:32.680 --> 00:29:40.320 And you know, you brought up a point there about some of the killings that would happen 286 00:29:40.320 --> 00:29:46.760 and stuff like that are happening right now, but I'm bringing up this topic. 287 00:29:46.760 --> 00:29:51.960 We had some topics in my English class, I'm 16 years old and everybody else is like, oh 288 00:29:51.960 --> 00:29:55.960 What's it going to bring up this time? But now they really admire what I'm saying. 289 00:29:55.960 --> 00:29:59.960 But today we were talking about war on drugs, and I said, let's lose all the drugs. 290 00:29:59.960 --> 00:30:06.960 And some of the kids were saying, Victor, if we do that, and I end prohibition, some of the kids, even the teacher was saying, 291 00:30:06.960 --> 00:30:13.960 you know, wouldn't the drug user want more drugs and then shoot me, you know, like Ford? 292 00:30:13.960 --> 00:30:19.960 But I'm like, what's your thing on that? If we would legalize all the drugs, 293 00:30:19.960 --> 00:30:25.640 and now it's in a high quantity, that's what they're worried about, that now all the streets 294 00:30:25.640 --> 00:30:30.760 would go into chaos and people would be doing drugs in the streets and the kids are gonna 295 00:30:30.760 --> 00:30:36.720 do it and they're gonna crash their cars and just basically go insane and the production 296 00:30:36.720 --> 00:30:40.400 would go lower because nobody would be working that efficiently. 297 00:30:40.400 --> 00:30:44.940 So they're worrying about the economy, the safety, the health of people. 298 00:30:44.940 --> 00:30:48.200 So what would your response would be to that? 299 00:30:48.200 --> 00:30:55.240 Well, it's a complete fallacy and it's not surprising. 300 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 301 00:31:01.480 --> 00:31:05.840 just get much, much more of the same thing. 302 00:31:05.840 --> 00:31:11.380 But what I've shown in my research, dozens of papers and articles and books, is that 303 00:31:11.380 --> 00:31:18.160 what would really happen is that the illegal marketplace would disappear in the legal marketplace 304 00:31:18.160 --> 00:31:23.800 Place would reappear, which is exactly what happened with alcohol prohibition. 305 00:31:23.800 --> 00:31:32.480 Okay, so if Walmart or Bayer Pharmaceutical Company started making marijuana cigarettes 306 00:31:32.480 --> 00:31:39.000 and selling marijuana cigarettes, what you'd find is that the product would be less potent, 307 00:31:39.000 --> 00:31:47.200 it would be much safer to consume, you know, Walmart would not be shooting people from target 308 00:31:47.200 --> 00:31:55.200 because they were also selling marijuana cigarettes and the companies who sold marijuana cigarettes 309 00:31:55.200 --> 00:32:01.640 would be competing not only on the basis of price but on the basis of quality and on the 310 00:32:01.640 --> 00:32:04.960 basis of safety. 311 00:32:04.960 --> 00:32:11.520 And so there would be the crime, all the crime element in drugs would disappear. 312 00:32:11.520 --> 00:32:18.880 The safety element would be greatly enhanced because companies don't want to kill off their 313 00:32:18.880 --> 00:32:25.520 customers whereas heroin dealers don't really give a damn. 314 00:32:25.520 --> 00:32:31.600 Companies would produce safer products just like you see low tar cigarettes and light beer 315 00:32:31.600 --> 00:32:39.460 and decaffeinated coffee, there's safer, less addictive alternatives that are being offered 316 00:32:39.460 --> 00:32:47.660 In the marketplace, when safety improvements are added into an industry, everybody adopts 317 00:32:47.660 --> 00:32:49.300 them because they can advertise. 318 00:32:49.300 --> 00:32:54.780 In the illegal marketplace, nobody advertises because the cops would bust you. 319 00:32:54.780 --> 00:32:59.880 So like Henry Ford, everybody's heard of Henry Ford, well he introduced the safety 320 00:32:59.880 --> 00:33:06.020 glass windows that if they got hit by a rock or you were in an accident, the glass wouldn't 321 00:33:06.020 --> 00:33:13.820 And once he started putting those into his automobiles and advertising, hey, we've got 322 00:33:13.820 --> 00:33:17.780 safety glass in our automobiles, guess what? 323 00:33:17.780 --> 00:33:23.740 Everybody adopted safety glass, windshielded, so we would expect the same sorts of things 324 00:33:23.740 --> 00:33:29.500 in a legal market for drugs is that the products would be much safer, that there would be a 325 00:33:29.500 --> 00:33:33.380 tendency towards safety and information. 326 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. 327 00:33:41.740 --> 00:33:50.460 The majority of them were actually for legal prescription-grade drugs, but things like 328 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 329 00:33:57.140 --> 00:34:04.500 you is taking too much heroin while simultaneously drinking too much alcohol, but that's something 330 00:34:04.500 --> 00:34:10.660 that nobody tells anybody, whereas if it was a legal marketplace, everybody would be compelled 331 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 332 00:34:16.540 --> 00:34:20.060 or it's going to slow your heart down and cause an overdose. 333 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. 334 00:34:26.540 --> 00:34:33.820 So I mean problems like that would virtually disappear overnight. 335 00:34:33.820 --> 00:34:41.460 And speaking of disappearing, when we did repeal alcohol prohibition, it was FDR, Franklin 336 00:34:41.460 --> 00:34:44.460 Delano Roosevelt, who repealed it. 337 00:34:44.460 --> 00:34:50.700 And he got the nomination for president because he switched his position from prohibitionist 338 00:34:50.700 --> 00:34:53.020 to a repeal candidate. 339 00:34:53.020 --> 00:34:56.100 He made it his number one campaign promise. 340 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 341 00:35:02.740 --> 00:35:08.940 beer, he tells Congress, you know, get together a constitutional amendment, the 21st amendment 342 00:35:08.940 --> 00:35:18.380 to repeal prohibition, and the country was overwhelmed in a period of days, basically. 343 00:35:18.380 --> 00:35:24.740 Everybody was rejoicing in the streets, crime came, you know, screeching down, corruption 344 00:35:24.740 --> 00:35:33.100 was greatly diminished, all of a sudden wineries reopened, breweries reopened, distilleries 345 00:35:33.100 --> 00:35:38.460 reopened, new jobs were available, you know, the unemployment rate on election day was 346 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 347 00:35:45.580 --> 00:35:53.980 for their products, barrel makers, bottle makers were back in business, bars and taverns 348 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 349 00:36:02.540 --> 00:36:14.420 throughout the economy. It was a magical transformation that legalization brought about. And it did 350 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 351 00:36:21.020 --> 00:36:26.820 really reduced a lot of these problems and so, you know, legalization, you can't think 352 00:36:26.820 --> 00:36:34.420 of it in terms of just lowering the price of a black market illicit good. 353 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 354 00:36:40.980 --> 00:36:47.140 corruption and degradation that goes on and just normalize it. 355 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 356 00:36:54.540 --> 00:36:55.540 anything like that. 357 00:36:55.540 --> 00:37:02.980 I mean there's no ill effects or very few ill effects associated with those products. 358 00:37:02.980 --> 00:37:06.100 So that's what legalization holds a promise to. 359 00:37:06.100 --> 00:37:13.980 In incident, when they legalized alcohol in 1933, of course the government was running 360 00:37:13.980 --> 00:37:19.740 being short of money, public school systems were failing, firemen and police officers 361 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, 362 00:37:26.140 --> 00:37:33.020 they reinstituted federal taxes on alcohol, state taxes on alcohol, and local licensing 363 00:37:33.020 --> 00:37:42.140 fees for bars and taverns, local taxes on alcohol so that government started to get 364 00:37:42.140 --> 00:37:50.460 more revenue and we were able to hire back school teachers, firemen and police officers, 365 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 366 00:37:57.020 --> 00:38:02.060 because people were losing their houses, they were losing their farms because they couldn't 367 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, 368 00:38:11.140 --> 00:38:19.700 State, Federal budgets back in line, even though, of course, the price of alcohol for 369 00:38:19.700 --> 00:38:22.580 the consumer was falling dramatically. 370 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 371 00:38:29.620 --> 00:38:34.020 a beer and two cents of that was going to taxes. 372 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 373 00:38:39.900 --> 00:38:42.700 and their alcohol purchases. 374 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 375 00:38:50.100 --> 00:38:53.060 is one of our most popular presidents. 376 00:38:53.060 --> 00:38:59.100 A lot of people think, especially the big government liberal types, think that FDR was 377 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 378 00:39:08.100 --> 00:39:09.100 of the Great Depression. 379 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 380 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. 381 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 382 00:39:29.300 --> 00:39:30.300 now. 383 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 384 00:39:38.120 --> 00:39:46.580 by legalizing alcohol made him the most popular president or one of the most popular presidents 385 00:39:46.580 --> 00:39:47.580 in US history. 386 00:39:47.580 --> 00:39:53.420 Now, here's another thing that it's going through. 387 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 388 00:39:57.700 --> 00:39:59.960 the economy, but here's the nice thing. 389 00:39:59.960 --> 00:40:02.360 and the right dealing with it. 390 00:40:02.360 --> 00:40:09.600 I personally think if we would just talk about this whole issue, if you want to do drugs 391 00:40:09.600 --> 00:40:12.200 in your house, go ahead. 392 00:40:12.200 --> 00:40:14.920 If you want to do it in your backyard, go ahead. 393 00:40:14.920 --> 00:40:18.720 If you want to shoot yourself up until you die, go ahead. 394 00:40:18.720 --> 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 395 00:40:23.480 --> 00:40:26.880 you're intoxicated with that stuff. 396 00:40:26.880 --> 00:40:29.440 Don't come by me or try to inject that stuff with me. 397 00:40:29.440 --> 00:40:36.440 The Theory of Money and Credit The Theory of Money and Credit 398 00:41:29.440 --> 00:41:34.440 and Stay Off the Most Craziest People in Society, and if they do it, they do it. 399 00:41:34.440 --> 00:41:37.440 If they drive a car, they're going to be charged with that. 400 00:41:37.440 --> 00:41:38.440 What do you think? 401 00:41:38.440 --> 00:41:42.440 What do you think about the rights and the individual and the drug use, Mark? 402 00:41:42.440 --> 00:41:44.440 What do you think about that? 403 00:41:44.440 --> 00:41:54.440 First of all, Victor, it's actually the case that prohibition actually draws certain people, 404 00:41:54.440 --> 00:41:56.440 a certain class of people towards it. 405 00:41:56.440 --> 00:41:58.440 It actually encourages them to do it. 406 00:41:58.440 --> 00:42:03.600 there's for whatever reason I'm not a psychologist or an anthropologist but 407 00:42:03.600 --> 00:42:16.040 it's well known that young male adults say 16 or 15 to 30 young 30s are drawn 408 00:42:16.040 --> 00:42:22.640 to risky behaviors and so by making something illegal by making it on the 409 00:42:22.640 --> 00:42:29.800 in the underground economy, it tends to attract risk-taking people who tend to be dominated 410 00:42:29.800 --> 00:42:31.980 by young adult males. 411 00:42:31.980 --> 00:42:39.520 And so it actually increases the demand for those most dangerous drugs and by legalizing 412 00:42:39.520 --> 00:42:48.040 it and making it more normal, people are more likely to ignore those products altogether. 413 00:42:48.040 --> 00:42:58.240 And then also, you're absolutely right about the legality of something and its use in society. 414 00:42:58.240 --> 00:43:07.580 For example, private prohibitions work very well in contrast to government prohibitions. 415 00:43:07.580 --> 00:43:14.920 Private prohibitions are things like airline companies, trucking companies forbidding the 416 00:43:14.920 --> 00:43:22.780 pilots and the drivers consuming alcohol or drugs prior to or during their work schedule. 417 00:43:22.780 --> 00:43:30.400 So any kind of heavy machinery, any kind of dangerous job, employers mandate and very 418 00:43:30.400 --> 00:43:38.440 often use drug testing so that their employees are not operating these dangerous machines 419 00:43:38.440 --> 00:43:44.840 while under the effect of drugs and alcohol, primarily as they have a legal liability. 420 00:43:44.840 --> 00:43:51.240 If their employees do something that's harmful to others, whether it's legal or illegal 421 00:43:51.240 --> 00:43:57.060 drugs and other people are hurt, the employers take the liability. 422 00:43:57.060 --> 00:44:02.440 And so those type of private prohibitions are very well enforced, you know, and churches 423 00:44:02.440 --> 00:44:07.440 can prevent their members from smoking pot during services. 424 00:44:07.440 --> 00:44:15.560 The convenience store operators can put out a sign that says no shoes, no shirt, no service, 425 00:44:15.560 --> 00:44:16.560 which makes a lot of sense. 426 00:44:16.560 --> 00:44:21.040 I mean, you don't want people walking around barefoot in a convenience store where there 427 00:44:21.040 --> 00:44:24.280 very often are broken glass bottles. 428 00:44:24.280 --> 00:44:36.360 And so those type of private prohibitions will segregate drug consumption away from 429 00:44:36.360 --> 00:44:45.120 The Public. Just as restaurants started offering no smoking sections, long before the government 430 00:44:45.120 --> 00:44:51.840 came up with any idea about restricting tobacco use, they wanted their customers to be able 431 00:44:51.840 --> 00:44:58.040 to be segregated away from tobacco smoke, which some people find offensive. So the market 432 00:44:58.040 --> 00:45:07.560 came up with that idea. It worked extremely well and airlines did similar things long before 433 00:45:07.560 --> 00:45:15.520 the government ever came in with the prohibition. Private sector has... Go ahead. 434 00:45:15.520 --> 00:45:21.280 Talking about that and you bring up a good point there. Here in New Jersey, some places 435 00:45:21.280 --> 00:45:27.200 ban smoking, the private institution ban smoking in the restaurant. I have no problem with 436 00:45:27.200 --> 00:45:32.640 But what the government has done is they banned smoking in all restaurants, I don't care what 437 00:45:32.640 --> 00:45:33.640 you say. 438 00:45:33.640 --> 00:45:35.440 Now, what do you think about that? 439 00:45:35.440 --> 00:45:39.320 Do you think that's right that the government says that like we're looking out for the people 440 00:45:39.320 --> 00:45:43.560 there or do you think it's more of a private institution's choice there? 441 00:45:43.560 --> 00:45:46.320 Oh, it's certainly, it's the private sector. 442 00:45:46.320 --> 00:45:49.100 I mean, the private sector comes up with these ideas. 443 00:45:49.100 --> 00:45:54.440 They find out where they're useful and where they're not useful, where they're beneficial, 444 00:45:54.440 --> 00:45:55.440 where they're not beneficial. 445 00:45:55.440 --> 00:46:03.440 The government, they'll come up with a bright idea about banning smoking in a cigar club. 446 00:46:03.440 --> 00:46:07.520 They come up with all sorts of crazy things. 447 00:46:07.520 --> 00:46:13.960 They take a good idea from the marketplace and then they take it to the ridiculous extremes. 448 00:46:13.960 --> 00:46:21.480 For example, they wanted to ban, a long time ago, they wanted to ban smoking in public 449 00:46:21.480 --> 00:46:29.000 Public Buildings entirely because of the possibility there would be fire and other people would 450 00:46:29.000 --> 00:46:30.000 be hurt. 451 00:46:30.000 --> 00:46:35.360 Well, it turns out, upon empirical investigation, what I found is that there were almost no 452 00:46:35.360 --> 00:46:39.880 fires in public buildings started by cigarettes. 453 00:46:39.880 --> 00:46:47.080 All the fires started by cigarettes were in private residences, which the ordinances that 454 00:46:47.080 --> 00:46:50.880 the government were trying to put into place had no effect. 455 00:46:50.880 --> 00:46:53.280 And so they didn't even bother to check the facts. 456 00:46:53.280 --> 00:47:03.440 They just went ahead with the regulations and rules and laws to impose their will on 457 00:47:03.440 --> 00:47:13.220 society, again, having no practical effect, essentially, and basically just making everything 458 00:47:13.220 --> 00:47:19.600 much more difficult for people so that now instead of employee having to smoke in their 459 00:47:19.600 --> 00:47:26.280 In their office, they have to go downstairs and go outside in the cold and the rain, losing 460 00:47:26.280 --> 00:47:34.040 valuable work time, even though they're smoking in their own personal office or maybe employee 461 00:47:34.040 --> 00:47:41.600 lounge would have no negative effect on productivity. 462 00:47:41.600 --> 00:47:47.600 But the government bans it without understanding or even investigating the effects. 463 00:47:47.600 --> 00:47:53.680 So it's a matter of taking away liberties and getting no practical benefit from it all 464 00:47:53.680 --> 00:47:56.120 and actually hurting productivity. 465 00:47:56.120 --> 00:48:09.080 So it's just once again, the government do-gooders, the nanny state of these bureaucrats and politicians 466 00:48:09.080 --> 00:48:18.360 and do-gooders, progressives, socialists, whatever it happens to be, of grabbing a good 467 00:48:18.360 --> 00:48:25.000 thing that's been developed in the market economy and wanting to take it to an extreme, 468 00:48:25.000 --> 00:48:31.240 exaggerate it, enforce their will upon everybody in society for no practical benefit. 469 00:48:31.240 --> 00:48:37.000 You know, and we were talking about war on drugs before and you all bring up good points 470 00:48:37.000 --> 00:48:40.960 here. I really appreciate you coming on again. I want to say that. You're really bringing 471 00:48:40.960 --> 00:48:47.000 out good knowledge that I never knew before. But we always can criticize, criticize, criticize. 472 00:48:47.000 --> 00:48:50.720 And I came on the show before and I gave out my solutions for this war on drugs and how 473 00:48:50.720 --> 00:48:55.440 to bring crime down and everything like that. So I think maybe we touched upon it, but just 474 00:48:55.440 --> 00:49:03.240 to make it clear, what would be your solution in short to this big crime rate in drugs and 475 00:49:03.240 --> 00:49:04.240 and Big Drug Use. 476 00:49:04.240 --> 00:49:05.240 What would be your solution? 477 00:49:05.240 --> 00:49:11.100 Would it be increase police or maybe not making it that combative, maybe make it like stand 478 00:49:11.100 --> 00:49:13.840 back a little bit, legalization? 479 00:49:13.840 --> 00:49:16.840 What's your solution to all of this? 480 00:49:16.840 --> 00:49:22.960 I've got a lot of work on Mises.org in academic publications and I like to call it perfect 481 00:49:22.960 --> 00:49:29.440 legalization and that's where you legalize all of the drugs and you treat them essentially 482 00:49:29.440 --> 00:49:36.220 like you would any other commercial product with no other regulations, no other taxations 483 00:49:36.220 --> 00:49:42.540 other than those that exist on other existing goods in the economy, create a level playing 484 00:49:42.540 --> 00:49:50.600 field, release all the non-violent drug offenders from prisons and jails, turn the attention 485 00:49:50.600 --> 00:49:54.140 of police towards property and personal crime. 486 00:49:54.140 --> 00:50:01.940 And I would also, in order to make this work, in order to really chop down on drug abuse 487 00:50:01.940 --> 00:50:08.140 and irresponsible behavior is that I would also dismantle a lot of the social safety 488 00:50:08.140 --> 00:50:14.780 net so that individuals can't just go about drinking themselves into oblivion and smoking 489 00:50:14.780 --> 00:50:23.300 pot until they're numbed beyond belief or taking dangerous drugs like cocaine and heroin 490 00:50:23.300 --> 00:50:32.840 and Methamphetamine and then crashing up their car, burning down their house and then they 491 00:50:32.840 --> 00:50:41.540 get to use the taxpayer services of ambulance, hospitals and unemployment benefits and welfare 492 00:50:41.540 --> 00:50:45.940 and public housing and all these other elements of the social safety net. 493 00:50:45.940 --> 00:51:04.940 No, we've got to take that social safety net away and make people rely on their networks of friends, of family, of social institutions like their church, and the Salvation Army, insurance companies and things of that nature, 494 00:51:04.940 --> 00:51:30.940 So that there is no free social safety net that you have to be personally responsible to create your own personal safety net of friends, family, church, civic organizations and so forth that you have contributed to positively so that they're willing to help you out if and when you do get into trouble of some sort or another. 495 00:51:30.940 --> 00:51:36.980 If that kind of situation existed in society, we would have much less irresponsible behavior. 496 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. 497 00:51:43.340 --> 00:51:49.440 And so if you have that kind of onus on each and every individual citizen in society and 498 00:51:49.440 --> 00:51:56.100 you have the police redirecting their attention towards protecting homeowners and children, 499 00:51:56.100 --> 00:52:04.540 protecting property, investigating rapes and murders and robberies and burglaries and of 500 00:52:04.540 --> 00:52:10.140 arresting all sorts of people who are doing real harm to others, then society is going 501 00:52:10.140 --> 00:52:17.500 to be much more prosperous, much more peaceful, and much more along the ideals of the American 502 00:52:17.500 --> 00:52:18.500 Revolution. 503 00:52:18.500 --> 00:52:24.460 You put it in a great, great way there, when you put more solutions in there, oh, they're 504 00:52:24.460 --> 00:52:28.460 It's perfect legalization. 505 00:52:54.460 --> 00:52:59.540 7 minutes left and you said you only could stay up until 9 o'clock here. 506 00:52:59.540 --> 00:53:03.740 I got several emails and several even comments at school and everything like that. 507 00:53:03.740 --> 00:53:09.540 They've been asking me, Victor, you're getting all these economists on the show. 508 00:53:09.540 --> 00:53:11.700 Can you ask them a couple of questions? 509 00:53:11.700 --> 00:53:16.220 One of the questions is basically hyperinflation. 510 00:53:16.220 --> 00:53:21.180 I study Austrian economists a little bit and economics about it. 511 00:53:21.180 --> 00:53:25.340 What do you think is the possibility of hyperinflation? 512 00:53:25.340 --> 00:53:29.700 Do you think it's very possible in the next year or so? 513 00:53:29.700 --> 00:53:33.500 That's what some people are saying they're predicting, like some faculty in my school, 514 00:53:33.500 --> 00:53:38.860 the ones who buy all silver and gold, they're saying it's very possible in a year or so. 515 00:53:38.860 --> 00:53:39.860 Is this fake? 516 00:53:39.860 --> 00:53:40.860 Is it possible? 517 00:53:40.860 --> 00:53:43.860 And what do you think? 518 00:53:43.860 --> 00:53:45.380 It's certainly possible, Victor. 519 00:53:45.380 --> 00:53:48.500 We are on the road towards hyperinflation. 520 00:53:48.500 --> 00:53:58.420 We are doing the things that are the preconditions for hyperinflation, which is essentially building 521 00:53:58.420 --> 00:54:06.740 up a huge government deficit and also the Federal Reserve is basically going along with 522 00:54:06.740 --> 00:54:13.980 this deficit spending and this burgeoning national debt and it's creating more and more money, 523 00:54:13.980 --> 00:54:21.100 is buying up more and more government bonds and that essentially is the formula for hyperinflation 524 00:54:21.100 --> 00:54:23.780 to break out. 525 00:54:23.780 --> 00:54:27.540 We are the world's reserve currency as of right now. 526 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 527 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, 528 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 529 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 530 00:54:56.740 --> 00:55:03.020 the value of the dollar falling, the price of gasoline rising, the price of all commodity 531 00:55:03.020 --> 00:55:10.500 based products rising very rapidly, going beyond our ability to consume them. 532 00:55:10.500 --> 00:55:17.180 Hyperinflation is when prices are rising by more than double-digit figures every month. 533 00:55:17.180 --> 00:55:20.340 But basically, it gets completely out of hand. 534 00:55:20.340 --> 00:55:29.860 In Zimbabwe, which is the most recent hyperinflation, they were issuing trillion-dollar bills so 535 00:55:29.860 --> 00:55:36.700 that the average guy had tons of trillion-dollar bills in their wallet. 536 00:55:36.700 --> 00:55:44.260 A trillion dollars Zimbabwe note would buy you a cup of coffee and then eventually it 537 00:55:44.260 --> 00:55:45.940 was worth nothing. 538 00:55:45.940 --> 00:55:53.460 They had to put signs in public restrooms that said, please don't use Zimbabwe dollars 539 00:55:53.460 --> 00:55:54.460 as toilet paper. 540 00:55:54.460 --> 00:56:03.260 They were clogging the pipes, okay, and the entire economy breaks down and the social 541 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 542 00:56:09.920 --> 00:56:17.100 of these hyperinflations that have occurred around the world and even in the United States. 543 00:56:17.100 --> 00:56:22.860 During the American Revolution we had a hyperinflation, there was a hyperinflation in the Confederacy 544 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 545 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, 546 00:56:35.080 --> 00:56:41.400 or the national debt, or the entitlement programs like Social Security, or the future unfunded 547 00:56:41.400 --> 00:56:44.000 liability of the federal government. 548 00:56:44.000 --> 00:56:50.160 And basically we've seen estimates by professional academic economists and even by government 549 00:56:50.160 --> 00:56:58.900 economists that estimated that our future unfunded liability, which is basically all of our expenditures 550 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. 551 00:57:08.820 --> 00:57:14.980 But with that as a precondition and as Washington showing no signs, 552 00:57:15.780 --> 00:57:21.860 I mean that recent budget cut amounted to something along the lines of $300 million. 553 00:57:22.820 --> 00:57:27.460 That's not even a drop in the bucket. That's not even the 554 00:57:27.460 --> 00:57:34.900 Humidity in the bucket. That's embarrassing. It's truly embarrassing and so hyperinflation 555 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 556 00:57:46.100 --> 00:57:52.340 make some changes, adopt the Austrian School of Economics point of view, 557 00:57:53.220 --> 00:57:57.140 the government's budget should be balanced, the government should be a small part of the 558 00:57:57.140 --> 00:58:06.180 of the Economy, the taxes should be small or non-existent, replaced with fees. 559 00:58:06.180 --> 00:58:13.520 We make Governor Christie look like a wimp, basically, but all the things he's doing 560 00:58:13.520 --> 00:58:20.860 in terms of trying to rationalize expenditures, cut budgets and balance the budget, we would 561 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 562 00:58:27.380 --> 00:58:29.700 head and looking over their shoulder. 563 00:58:29.700 --> 00:58:40.420 They're pushing full steam ahead with ever-increasing budgets and no tax cuts under consideration, 564 00:58:40.420 --> 00:58:43.340 no budget cuts under consideration. 565 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 566 00:58:50.220 --> 00:58:58.700 by 25%. That's another reason he was so popular because everybody knew that government employees 567 00:58:58.700 --> 00:59:04.580 were making twice or more in what private sector employees were making, and that's 568 00:59:04.580 --> 00:59:10.080 even worse here in the United States today. Government employees for similar jobs and 569 00:59:10.080 --> 00:59:19.800 experience make twice the wages and benefits, including days off from work, a similar private 570 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 571 00:59:26.040 --> 00:59:33.120 suggesting any of that. So hyperinflation is something that your listeners need to equate 572 00:59:33.120 --> 00:59:41.400 themselves with and need to be prepared to deal with financially, emotionally, psychologically 573 00:59:41.400 --> 00:59:49.680 because it's like an earthquake going through society, but it's not vibrating the surface 574 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 575 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 576 01:00:08.280 --> 01:00:12.240 it, but we've got to get to working on it very soon. 577 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 578 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. 579 01:00:26.920 --> 01:00:30.920 I didn't get it on spot, but I got it for $32 an ounce. 580 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. 581 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 582 01:00:47.760 --> 01:00:52.760 some sort of deterrent, a little hedge against the hyperinflation or is it just minuscule 583 01:00:52.760 --> 01:00:55.480 and not going to do anything? 584 01:00:55.480 --> 01:00:59.680 Having, you know, owning silver and yeah, you can own it in your house. 585 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 586 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. 587 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. 588 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 589 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. 590 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? 591 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... 592 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. 593 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 594 01:02:28.160 --> 01:02:32.480 more than my entire lunch cost. 595 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 596 01:02:41.560 --> 01:02:47.200 worth the price of a Subway sandwich and a Coke. 597 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 598 01:02:54.400 --> 01:03:01.340 the massive movement in silver recently is hopefully not a sign of the future but it 599 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 600 01:03:07.400 --> 01:03:16.960 due largely to the fact that the brokers in silver were requiring larger margins on speculators 601 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 602 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 603 01:03:33.920 --> 01:03:37.120 as a short-term investment. 604 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 605 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 606 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 607 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 608 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 609 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 610 01:04:12.520 --> 01:04:18.520 Thank you so much and have a great night or afternoon wherever you're at. 611 01:04:18.520 --> 01:04:19.520 Good night. 612 01:04:19.520 --> 01:04:20.520 Yeah, good night. 613 01:04:20.520 --> 01:04:20.540 Bye-bye.