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Libertarianism, Authoritarianism, and the New Right | Mike Brock
151 Plays5 months ago
In this episode, Project Liberal’s Joshua Eakle and Max Marty discuss the rise of the “New Right” and Silicon Valley’s growing influence with Mike Brock, former CEO of TBD and member of Block's leadership team. Mike sheds light on the ideological shifts happening in tech and politics, from Curtis Yarvin’s “Dark Enlightenment” to the role of property rights and his theory on how it leads libertarians to slip into authoritarian ideologies.
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Transcript
Introduction to the Podcast and Guests
00:00:02
Speaker
Welcome everyone to the latest episode of the Project Liberal podcast. My name is Josh Heckel. I'm the president of Project Liberal. I'm joined as usual today by Max Marty from our steering committee. Hello, Max. Hello, hello. Pleasure to see you. And today we're joined by a guest who I'm a huge fan of, who I think has a similar journey to many of the people involved in Project Liberal, ah Mike Brock. Mike is the former CEO of TBD. He was on the leadership team of Block, was formerly known as Square.
00:00:29
Speaker
He's spent a career ah in Silicon Valley in tech.
Brock's Ideological Journey and Silicon Valley Trends
00:00:32
Speaker
And today we wanted to bring him on to talk about not only his ideological journey, but also what's happening in Silicon Valley and dig into that story a bit. So Mike, thank you for taking the time to chat with us. Thanks for having me here, Joshua. um and And congratulations on launching this podcast and launching Project Liberal. I'm very excited about all the things you guys are doing and um happy to be part of this this very important conversation.
00:00:58
Speaker
Awesome. Yeah, we're looking forward to it. We're looking forward to it. So I wanted to kick off the conversation to give some context to our listeners on your background.
Critique of Libertarian Philosophy
00:01:06
Speaker
um I know that this is the story of a lot of people from our leadership team and a lot of people in our orbit. um I personally considered myself a libertarian for a long time. I've spent a lot of time in those circles. um Recently, the word libertarian is it doesn't, first of all, doesn't mean I think in the minds of the public what it meant to me when I kind of really embrace those values, say 10 or 15 years ago.
00:01:28
Speaker
it's ah it's being it's It's evolving. And then there are some good, reasonable critiques of this kind of this really ah purist version of libertarian philosophy. But um you've also spent a lot of time working in Silicon Valley, and you've got a journey to share there. So I just wanted to maybe open it off by asking if you could share a little bit about your background, not only your career, but your ideological journey that kind of brought you to that. Yeah, absolutely.
00:01:50
Speaker
Yeah, so um I've had a pretty interesting journey throughout my life. At a very young age, I found myself deeply involved in politics, actually. um I know that you are ah um previously of of of students for liberty. um when When I was younger, I had many, many run-ins with them um attending many of their events. and um In fact, some of my friends today still harken back from from those those days of of me being deeply enmeshed and in in the libertarian movement. um Before I found my way back into business, first as a consultant, then as ah a software engineer,
00:02:34
Speaker
I learned to program at a very young age, got into politics, went back into programming. ah Turned out I was quite successful at it, so kept going and found my way all the way up into the echelons of executive management at at what at Square, which became Block. Obviously, we were went public and became a publicly traded company. So um my trajectory was was interesting. um And my ideological journey, ah having started in in libertarianism much, I guess, like like your own, um found its way, I think, back to something that's like more akin to to to classical liberalism. um we mean and For me, I think the
00:03:19
Speaker
probably the breaking point um for me was was quite a long time ago actually. um I was writing for a Canadian libertarian a journal known as the Western Standard owned by a man by Ezra Levant who now runs something called the Rebel. out of Canada, a former
From Libertarianism to Classical Liberalism
00:03:40
Speaker
friend of mine as it turns out, um him and I don't really talk much anymore. um But i really I really broke from the libertarian movement during the Tea Party era. um I recognized that there was something deeply wrong ah with some of the people around me and and what was what was going on like during during the first
00:04:00
Speaker
term of the Obama administration, um it became very clear to me that people around me and in my circle in the libertarian movement um were not optimizing for the same goals that I was, which was some universal conception of liberty. and I realized that there was something far more pernicious going on, which was this this insistence on the primacy of property rights above all, which I then started to realize was the
00:04:33
Speaker
ah linchpin of a lot of white supremacy ah that was connect connecting itself into the libertarian movement, which actually culminated in a very interesting argument that I ended up having at an event in Canada. um ah By the way, i'm I'm a dual national, by the way, I'm a US-Canadian American canadian american or whatever you want to call me.
00:04:54
Speaker
um You have a place to think when the country falls apart. so Yeah, yeah. um and and And it was the first time I realized that that i was I was in the presence of of of of people who call themselves libertarians that had white supremacist views. and And I remember what I said to the person at the time, and it always stuck with me, and I've used this Turner phrase ah over and over again, which was like, i i I think that the main reason why you're so obsessed with property rights is you just want the right to put up a whites only sign in your in the front of your shop.
00:05:32
Speaker
And this led to a massive debate, ah much to my surprise. um the the The person in question, who I will not name, I'm not gonna call him out, um but he argued quite vociferously that I shouldn't see any problem with that as a libertarian, that I should keep my nose out of other people's business, that if people wanted to engage in racial exclusion,
00:05:56
Speaker
um on the back of their property rights, that was absolutely like you know ah something that any libertarian should should have no problem with. That was probably the moment connected with what was going on with like like birtherism and and and and Obama and the things I was hearing at that time. and I was just like, i don't I don't know that I'm in the right group of people.
00:06:19
Speaker
um i you know i was all you know I was someone who got very hooked on classical liberal philosophy growing up, you know you know utilitarian ah like utility utilitarian liberal liberal is liberal liberal philosophy and morality, Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill, um all all all of the ah the important ah texts that that one might read to to onboard themselves into these these ideas of of of English and Scottish liberty.
00:06:49
Speaker
um were were things that were near and dear to me, but I realized that um whatever branch of liberalism I had found myself in, um it it had taken some pretty dangerous turns. And so I so i started ah at the time writing essays on on the Western standard, much to the chagrin of the editor there um criticizing ah the fetishization of property rights by libertarians and how it it didn't connect to what I saw as a um
00:07:20
Speaker
necessary claim on the collective good, which for those people who've actually studied classical liberal philosophy pretty carefully recognized that that that all of the sort of the the the fathers of of liberal thought thought there was such a thing as a common good. I mean, John Locke, um who in many ways is the the the intellectual grandfather of of the Declaration of Independence, um and and certainly the most influential um thinker on ah Thomas Jefferson,
00:07:52
Speaker
uh certainly thought that there were concepts like the common good and the general welfare and um and and and the importance of uh of there being something bigger than yourself so i think that that was for me a breaking off point where i was like look i i i believe that there is something called a common good and i think that that there is a proper place for government to represent that common good because there are Market failures. There are ah perverse incentives. There are externalities that won't be captured by our own individual actions and and economic activity, um if not properly contained um in in some sort of envelope of of of of something that represents a common interest. And so that was my breaking off point. And so I've been kind of in this like, kind of, I know you could say like, you know, ah former libertarian mode now for over a decade,
00:08:50
Speaker
Um, and for the most part, I had kind of like forgotten about it. I kind of like left this sort of part of my ideological journey in the past. And I kind of just maybe had turned into something more akin to
Impact of Trump Era and Crypto Involvement
00:09:00
Speaker
like a boring political centrist. Um, Trump era comes obviously, um, for the first time in my life, I consider supporting a Democrat. Uh, so I support Hillary Clinton in 2016, which felt insane to me. Cause like, obviously, you know, like, like most people associated with sort of right of center politics that was sort of an anathema to me to have to to to think of supporting someone like Clinton. But I did, ah recognizing the threat that Donald Trump represented. um And then I found my way into Bitcoin and cryptocurrency. And this is where I would come face to face with yeah what I um had experienced over a decade earlier, this this
00:09:42
Speaker
malignant, um absolutely destructive idea that that property rights are ah are are are are are the prime sum and bonum of of ah all of our ethical system.
00:09:59
Speaker
and recognizing how how dangerous of an idea that actually is. and and and And the only reason why someone would want to believe that is is because they they think that they're going to win at the economic domination game and by extension, the political domination game. so that and and And I ah kind of like reawakened ah having realized that that this whole crypto and Bitcoin thing was reawakening a lot of this political thought and pushing it more into the mainstream, scarily into the mainstream.
00:10:28
Speaker
um even starting to like convert some people I considered friends and colleagues to these ideologies and I just started like tweeting and blogging and like starting to like try and provide people with like counter arguments to these, ah what i what I see is like like very dangerous ideas that are not really conducive to actually building ah a stable civilization, particularly in an era of ah of our of of of advanced science and and technology, where the stakes are
Common Good and Existential Risks
00:10:58
Speaker
very, very high. We have the capacity to kill ourselves. um I mean, the mean we we have to remind ourselves this week. We have nuclear weapons, ah the ability to now print genes, which we can insert into ah bacterium and create super, super bugs that could potentially kill us all. Like we are going into an era where
00:11:24
Speaker
the importance of there being a common good and someone to protect it, um that being, you know, I think a liberal polity within a you know democratic way, a democratic system of self-government and constitutional government. um And the preservation of that, which I i think we're very much on the same page about all that, um is is paramount. um We have to be able to to engage with this or like I think the the capacity for human survival is very much in question. and I know that that sounds like a very crazy thing to say out loud, but i mean if you just sit and think about it, you realize it's very much the case. so We didn't even mention AI and that's that's that's obviously very much but ah another existential problem that we need to think about. um yeah yeah I was just going to ask a quick sort of clarification, Mike. um When you
00:12:19
Speaker
talk about the common good or, uh, uh, some sort of social benefit that's writ large to society. Um, when I think of those terms, I think of one of two things, um, either in sort of an economics context, uh, when you graph things out and you recognize that there's a dead weight loss, right? And that dead weight loss is accruing to some number of people like, you know, if you have rent control, et cetera, et cetera, you get a dead weight loss, all those, all that.
00:12:48
Speaker
So that's one form that I would say okay that that makes sense to call that a common good. um The other one is like when you look at big aggregate numbers of. um So for example, if.
00:13:01
Speaker
um ah ah like overall health indicators or overall long life indicators are going up for a society. i would i would I would say that's the social good or the common good is being served within that society if we can point to some of those pieces of data.
00:13:20
Speaker
um Is there something that you mean different than that? Or are those? Yeah, I mean, definitely. So I yeah i would generally, you know, look, I'm, I am a, you know, I guess I am. I'm an armchair philosopher of sorts. um I think a lot about the nature, in fact, umm I'm starting to write a book on the nature of meaning and the crisis of meaning in our society. So I think a lot about what the common good means, which is obviously downstream um of what you know ah philosophers might ah refer to as the good life, ah which you know I think you know in in aggregate we might call human flourishing.
00:13:59
Speaker
um Look, i think that I don't think there is a... I'm actually quite skeptical of of of quantified versions of of of what that means. um I am...
00:14:14
Speaker
of the belief that if there is, if there is like a ah familiar with the term that some of them bone on the highest good, right? um in In terms of like thinking about like what that is. um For me, I think it's like a ah existence and where as much different, hope I don't want to use overly technical terms, but I'll say it and then I'll describe what it means. ah Normative possibilities um within a society um can exist, like which which is to say normative being um ah like things things that things that are not like objectively true but are subjectively true.
00:14:57
Speaker
um Like, for example, like the you like classical music and I like hard rock, right? like like there's There's nothing you can really do to quantify which one of those things is is good. You can sit here and make all these arguments about the sophistication of of composing classical music vis-a-vis like, you know, composing a rock arrangement, which is far more simpler and you can get all these arguments. But at the end of the day, you're talking about subjective preferences. And I am very much of the the the but thought process of
00:15:32
Speaker
David Hume, the the famous Scottish philosopher um who who famously ah ah form lot like p formed an argument known as Hume's guillotine, sometimes also known as the is-ought problem that basically says that you know no matter what's true about the world, you whatever whatever like facts or empirical observations you make about the world, there's nothing you can do with that that will tell you what you ought to do with the world.
00:15:59
Speaker
um And that is something that's kind of, I guess, at the core of of what I believe as ah as a classical liberal, which means that the that the subjective values ah that we all have are an important part of what make up that common good. And we have to negotiate that um through a healthy political polity within some envelope of of of limitations um on the power of the state to protect a
00:16:30
Speaker
ah the the individual's space in order to be able to self-actualize to a certain point, but also like realize that like we we all can't just like do whatever we want. I can't do things that harm you. um I can't do things that are are going to place the collective society at greater risk. There's all these things that are that that we have to negotiate.
00:16:53
Speaker
And the truth is there aren't really any clear answers to those. This is why we need democracy. This is why we need a deliberative democracy as we go because new technologies change and trends change, culture changes. We have to constantly renegotiate as
Economic Interpretations of Common Good
00:17:10
Speaker
all these these normative possibilities that we create for ourselves through our through our ah experimentation and our cultural shifts and our kids getting into weird and crazy new trends, we have to figure out how to integrate that into our society in a way that allows us to maximize those possibilities. Because like why why wouldn't why why wouldn't we want to let people try to experience the good life in as many different ways as they can?
00:17:38
Speaker
um that that's like that that that for me and and i know that doesn't but but That's just not something you can quantify. I think it's it's it's something that you can only constantly renegotiate. um Our values aren't the same today that they were 10 years ago, 20 years ago, 50 years ago, certainly not 100 years ago. we want film that that one That's how I view it.
00:17:58
Speaker
I want to push back just a little bit, Mike, and I appreciate you being a good sport about this, but I can just tell that there's going to be a lot of people out there who hear are the words common good and and and such, and and bristle a little bit. So I'm trying i'm trying to... devils out on their Yeah. um So as, again, thinking in an economics term, I would say there is a way to try to quantify this. So we were talking, you're saying, okay, what if I like classical music, you like rock?
00:18:22
Speaker
So in a world where there's more rock bands, maybe you're happier, um you know, Mike's personal good is is is doing better. And in a world where there's more symphonies, I'm i'm happier maybe. yeah my Max's personal good is doing better. So what I would say, there's there's two things I would respond here. One is we can try to arbitrate between these two things through willingness to pay, right? So through putting your money where your mouth is, which just means opportunity cost, right? I'm willing to give up more.
00:18:49
Speaker
in order to have a symphony, then you are to have more rock bands. Therefore, I care more about symphonies than you care about rock bands. And that's one way to potentially ah deal with this matter. Of course, the All L Sequel is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. right of you know We have different amounts of ability to pay and all this stuff, but setting that aside. i think that I think that is a pretty big... It's probably where I'm going to go with this at the ah the end. It's doing heavy lifting.
00:19:16
Speaker
The other one, of course, is to say, well, if we have both more both ah more symphonies and more rock bands, clearly there's some kind of aggregate good that's yeah's expanded. Right there, we I think nobody would would disagree. Yeah. um So again, i'm trying to I'm trying to see if we can get to a place where, you know, because i I have to admit, I bristle a little bit when I hear common good because I think, well, what that person across the street wants is not what I want. So yeah there are some things that we maybe have in common, at but not a lot, and not everything. So I'm trying to get to an agreement here.
00:19:45
Speaker
It's a good it's point, i mean but and and and this is going to be a very unsatisfying answer to the the stalwart libertarians among us. to so like and and Honestly, it's it's something that I have to accept, that there are a lot of things in this society that are very popular that I do not agree with, that are culturally popular, um that are politically popular,
00:20:09
Speaker
And as much of a classical liberal as I am and as much as, and by the way, like I'm pretty, like I'm a pretty free markets guy, generally speaking. i mean i' ah you know One of my also favorite bug bears is just literally attacking the left on their sort of local land use policies, which I think are actually probably the most destructive economic policies when it comes to affordability in this country. or sha and i And I definitely put that at the at the the feet of
00:20:47
Speaker
much of the left, but um that that that's ah that that's for another day. um I think that um the point that I would make is... Look, let me just back up for a second here. um I think from the perspective of defining what the common good is,
00:21:16
Speaker
We have to first accept that we live in a society with other people. We don't get to choose to not live in this society, in this country, on this planet. um We are on this earth competing for resources. Yes, like we use property rights in order to create a fair system and in order to also incentivize like you know economic production and all the only all these fun things. But at some level, I'm going to have to accept that part of being a civilized person is living in a society with people who I disagree with and sometimes having to accept that I have the minority view on some things. And it is a
00:22:08
Speaker
relatively immature stance to say, well, I didn't choose to be born into this world. I didn't choose this policy. Why am I paying for the these the the weapons that are going to Ukraine? I don't think we should be doing that. How dare you take my tax dollars? it's like this My only response to you is like, too fucking bad. like You live in a society and you have and and and this is this is part of the social contract, which libertarians will say, I didn't sign the social contract. It's like, I know you didn't.
00:22:39
Speaker
but like we did for you because you're part of this society and guess what? Like if you decide that you're just going to ignore the social contract, we are going to use um our laws and you know are the the the systems of order in our society um to protect that that that common good against your social relatively immature take that like because you didn't agree to this that you don't have to go on. Well, well you do. You have to go along in this and and we have to do this our entire lives. Like we have to go where our parents tell us we have to go when we're growing up, right? Like we're in we're not in a state where we can we can stand on our own two feet. um If ah there's there's bomb, there's bombers overhead and and we're in a war and
00:23:30
Speaker
ah people are telling you to turn off the lights so bombers can't can't can't target the city. And you're like, well, I don't care, I wanna keep my lights on. It's like, well, no, fuck you, right? like youre you like you we're gonna like we're we're like there's there's no the This isn't like this isn't like an interesting argument when you when you get down to like like brass tacks. You can really like basically get into these like metaphysical,
00:24:00
Speaker
debates with yourself around like what what you ought to have to do or what obligations you have to other people, which I think is at the core of a lot of pernicious libertarian thought.
Social Contract and Societal Constraints
00:24:11
Speaker
It's like, yeah, like you you don't you don't actually have to act.
00:24:15
Speaker
in in any particular way. You don't have to you don't have to to stand up for my rights. ah You don't even have to respect my rights. But it turns out that we're an organized society. And if you act or or fail to act in certain ways um that are deleterious to um what the rest of us um through our deliberative bodies, through our legislatures, through our courts,
00:24:42
Speaker
through all the things that we've created in order to to create a liberal polity, um doesn't, if if if you don't, if you if you're just gonna like basically force yourself against that grain, yeah, like we're, we're like bad things are gonna happen to you. And that's just, oh, it's just like, that's just, that's just locks, you know, John Locke social contract. And that's how,
00:25:08
Speaker
honest And honestly, most people, here's the other crazy thing too. which We talk about this and I know that we're, like i'm I'm like talking to a hypothetical libertarian right now who's sort of like falling out of their seat. But here's like the reality. What I just said to 90% of people sounds completely fucking reasonable.
00:25:26
Speaker
Like this this is the thing that I think that libertarians like sometimes like forget is like you're sitting around like the dinner table with like your your family or some random people and you and you just talk about these things in these terms. like And and i think a I think as a lot of libertarians get older and some of some people like move into sort of their into their former libertarian state, they come to like recognize this as like when you actually ask people like point blank like on like some of these on on some of these like topics like people are like yeah like i think you have a ah ah like a some obligation to society what are you talking about right like like that this is actually like a um trick that libertarians i think
00:26:10
Speaker
particularly when you know we're young in our 20s and we're stupid, play on our plan ourselves that that we think that like most people intuitively think in this in this sort of like libertarian way. That's actually not true. and i and And I think it's especially not true, I think, for Um, a lot of women, uh, that I've, that I've grown up, I don't know if people realize, have realized this, but I certainly realized this, but like the libertarian movement was very much a movement of young white men when I was, when I was growing up that seemed to have absolutely no, um, uh, serious, um, consideration for the fact that like, you know, like we,
00:26:51
Speaker
we're We're part of a liberal polity where like women have equal rights as well and they don't really seem to be part of any of these conversations, which is another example of of of where I think this um this philosophy ah is is terribly incomplete, if if only by looking at the of but by the people who it did not include in the conversation.
00:27:17
Speaker
i've I've had similar, I ah definitely don't have to, I'm not going to fight you on that. There's definitely had absolutely similar experiences. I speak when I join these conversations less as a philosopher and more of a tactician and an organizer because that's kind of what I've done. So I've had the exact same experience that you have where you know it seems like a self-apparent principle to me.
00:27:37
Speaker
you go to the public and it just doesn't click. It actually comes across as very selfish, and it comes across as yeah very myopic, or just very just doesn't doesn't really have the full picture. um and So when i look at the picture when I look at the situation, I say, ah from from ah from a from a just a broad-based perspective, what I'd like to see is a society that has more economic freedom, that has more individual freedom,
00:28:01
Speaker
And that protects political freedom, that you know we where we have the ability to have a voice in our government. We have the ability to say things. So libertarians get so fixed on these rigid philosophical arguments. And and this is this is part of the problem with Libertarian philosophy in this obsession on property rights has has brought these coalitions together in a libertarian movement that are fundamentally... He is actually a fascist. He is literally just a fascist. Yes, he is. But these people are sharing the same coalition.
00:28:33
Speaker
And so where I was going with this, from a political organizing perspective, I've spent a lot of time looking at the work of Steve Davies. And Steve Davies talked about this political realignment that's playing out across the Western world. And what he's basically articulated is there's two major forces at the two ends of this poll here that are basically forming right now. And it's the cosmopolitan liberals versus the populist authoritarians. And one of the main things that divide these two groups is ah basically an openness to the world versus being closed off to the world.
00:29:02
Speaker
In a pursuit of dynamism and ah innovation yeah stability in order yeah now when you take that and you put it and you map it on top of the libertarian Coalition that has existed for the last 50 years You could see why there would be some tension because I mean libertarian philosophy if we're just talking about broad property rights can bring two types of people to it you can have people like I gather you know everyone on this call for me the draw to libertarian philosophy was I want everyone to be free. i want i want to i i want to i want ever I believe in the universalism of liberty. I want people to you know have their rights protected and be able to innovate
Libertarian Movement Split
00:29:34
Speaker
and grow and build a future for themselves and not be coerced on. But at the same vein, it can bring these people on the other side. You don't pine for submission?
00:29:42
Speaker
No, absolutely. These other people came to the movement for a completely different reason. They said, I want to protect my property. I want to keep you off of it. It's it's a it's a it's a closed offness to things. It's a desire for stability. And fundamentally, we find ourselves in two different camps in this moment in history. And that's why the movement, I think, is schismed and fractured. And I think a lot of people like yourself found this out 10 years ago. ah For me, I was coming out of college during the Tea Party movement. So my journey was a little bit different.
00:30:11
Speaker
ah But that I think is why there's so much turmoil and why I think this coalition is fundamentally gonna look different going forward It's part of the reason why we started this project is I think We need to build a cosmopolitan liberal coalition with people that are kind of united by desire for openness freedom and dynamism Yeah, well, so I mean I I don't want to like get too into like the ah bore people to death and we get to like the technical sort of philosophy philosophy um of all this. but i But I do want to say, though, this this idea of individual liberty um and the way that we that we think about it, right which I think is a very distinct
00:30:51
Speaker
concept from like what we might think of as just sort of like absolute individual freedom. um I mean, what does freedom mean? I mean, freedom means like ah like the ability to um operate within sort of like degrees of freedom. Like what kind of degrees? I mean, we operate in obviously 3D space. i i I can freely move my hands through the air.
00:31:16
Speaker
I can't move them through the camera. um i'm I'm limited in that, obviously. ah we we have um This is obviously the most the reductionist form of freedom. um And then we obviously get into like arguments of like freedom of opportunity and and and freedom of and freedom of outcomes, or for ah all these these these arguments that the left and the right go back and forth on.
00:31:40
Speaker
um and it's not It's not quite clear, right? Like what, even from ah for me from a liberal perspective, like what what the the perfect universal definition of what what what freedom is. But what I will say this is that like we are more free living in, and this, I mean, it goes back to like Hobbes, right? I mean, I think Thomas Hobbes is the original liberal by the way, and I know that's a ah controversial take, but um ah but this this recognition that by coming together and in in a society and giving up a little bit of our freedom um to a government or a collective ah collective body that that represents us,
00:32:26
Speaker
we all get something in return. We don't have to watch our backs as much ah because we don't have to work. We're not part of what Hobbes called the state of nature, right? like We're not constantly being hunted. we're not that it it isn't It isn't just like every man for himself or every woman for herself. um It isn't just like a bunch of ah primitive tribes roving about, like like trying to like ah compete for grazing land.
00:32:54
Speaker
um we We get something out of giving up. quite a bit actually. um And that's that you know this is this is ah for those who are interested, this is covered in Thomas Hobbes' famous The Leviathan, which brought ah birth to social contract theory of which John Locke, who's associated with classical liberalism, developed it more into a liberal form ah formulation.
00:33:21
Speaker
um and and And I think that that to me is something that I think about a lot because if If all we were trying to do was optimize for the maximum amount of our own personal freedom, then wish I don't know if you guys have seen Tom Hanks' movie Cast Away from the 1990s when he got stranded on an island.
00:33:44
Speaker
I mean that that should be that that that should be just about like the the the the most utopian vision to you if like completely unmitigated personal freedom unmolested by anyone else not having to contend with the the the the potential disagreements or ah contending for the resources ah among any other humans and just like basically having complete dominion over the land and and and everything that you touch and eat and breathe, um that should be ah quite an exhilarating idea to you. but I don't think most people would want to be stranded alone on an island ah with no one to talk to and and no experiences, no no movies to see, no no ah songs to sing or or or to be heard. ah we live in a We live in a society and we gain so much from that society. We gain our language from that society. like i didn't I didn't invent my own language. I'm speaking the language. of my
00:34:42
Speaker
of of my family and my and my ancestors right now and speaking English, although I'm i'm half of my family's Polish and I have to um confess I do not speak Polish. um But um i think i think we I think there needs to be like a deep recognition, I think, in in any serious liberal that what we think of as freedom is kind of sitting atop of a bunch of freedoms that we have given up for very good reason. um So we can take we can move away from the the the politics of mere survival to something that philosophers sometimes call the politics of distribution.
00:35:28
Speaker
So I think that's where liberalism wants to be. It wants to be in the politics of distribution. It's like we all now agree that we all have certain rights. We all have like this this conception of of of liberty ah in in in in the liberal frame. And what we're really doing in our politics is really just figuring out how to organize our resources.
00:35:55
Speaker
are scarce resources. That's the politics of distribution. um I think like you, I think my answer for the the politics of distribution as it pertains to economic production is I think markets and, and you know, ah strong property rights, market well-regulated markets, markets, and generally the capitalist mode of production have proven themselves to be the thing that can raise people out of poverty. It has ah unleashed um, innovation that I think, you know, previous generations couldn't have even imagined. So that's, that's where I think that I am on that. I think there's debates to be had around, um, like what should we do with things like healthcare, for example, I think.
00:36:43
Speaker
um I used to be very much opposed to ah there being more ah government involvement in healthcare, care but even looking at it from a free market perspective and realizing that there is a serious market failure here. And I think the whole like Ron Paul argument that what we need to do is just add as so much competition that it becomes so cheap that it doesn't matter anyways.
00:37:07
Speaker
is not really a good argument when you actually like tear tease it apart. There does seem to be a problem there with like how risk gets pooled and and how um you get into these like like situations where certain people just through their upbringing, through their health circumstances, their genes are just gonna be fucked. They're just not gonna be economically viable and able to, like they they might there might be treatment for them ah that that would allow them to live a relatively healthy life, but it could be relatively expensive and it could exceed the amount of economic output that that person is ever going to have.
00:37:51
Speaker
So I know the argument might be that we should leave that to the church collection plate, but I think that, I i think there's an argument to to be made there that we should look at things like that and we say, look, look, like we're still, we're a capitalist society. We're still, like we still believe in property rights. We just, people can still become billionaires, but you know what we're gonna like,
00:38:13
Speaker
Take a little bit of income tax and we're going to make sure that, like, that person, because, like, we believe in fucking human dignity. um Is going to be able to.
00:38:24
Speaker
um live live live something like a dignified life, not and not just because of them, but because of the people that surround them, because of their mother and their brothers and their sisters and their friends that like gain like so much happiness from like the the the look the the jokes that they tell and the song this the the the experience that they have with that person.
00:38:46
Speaker
um that keeping that person alive because you know what we're a super rich society and we have some excess resources that we can actually do things like that. I don't know like I i understand that like we we libertarians think that that's like the path to totalitarian communism or something but like I think no I think I think in ah i think in a liberal polity like we can talk about the the politics of distribution like that a little bit. And we can and we and we can connect look at those things. Max, i want to ah briefly, I was going to say we do in our, even within our coalition, we have people, I think where I get off the train on that conversation is a state only option, right? Like I think the idea, like a Medicare for all. That's a terrible idea.
00:39:27
Speaker
Yeah, like a Medicare for all is only three countries. There's only three countries in the world that impose a state only option, by the way, on on health care. um And that is the United Kingdom, the NHS, which is a terrible actually I don't even know if that's completely true, but in Canada, and canada um under an act called the Canada Health Act, um which prohibits private insurance and private pay, um it's it's a very deleterious system. The other is Cuba and the other is North Korea.
00:39:59
Speaker
yeah um ah I definitely do not think that the United States should ever move into an area where the federal government or even a state government takes over the complete control and provision of health care. I think that would be a terrible idea. um what What I do think that that we should be doing is looking at things like the insurance industry and risk pooling,
00:40:23
Speaker
like i'm i'm like I honestly, I don't think that like a lot of the core ideas of Obamacare are even that bad. It's it's it's basically a a compromise with the insurance industry.
Healthcare and Market Failures
00:40:34
Speaker
They're just basically saying, look, like you guys can like run your insurance schemes and you can do your underwriting models, but sometimes someone's gonna show up to you at your door and they're gonna have cancer. And you're gonna look at them and you're gonna say, we're gonna lose a lot of money on this person if we take them on.
00:40:52
Speaker
So here's what we're going to do. We are going to give you taxpayers money to pay for that person so you can have them as part of your plan. You get some kind of a you get economy of scale benefits out of that. um You can manage the care and you can find ways to create efficiencies. But like we're going to like take that we're going to we're going to pay for a little bit of that risk for you.
00:41:14
Speaker
and think It's like actually a relatively reasonable, pretty like market-oriented approach that has like nothing to do with the the ah the the socialist or communistic ah formulations that I think a lot of... i mean I mean, look, the ACA is actually quite popular now. When you look at it in polls, it's like over 60% of people or something like like like like generally like agree with it.
00:41:37
Speaker
And by the way, it probably could be a lot cheaper. I mean, look, the the individual mandate, by the way, probably should have been kept. um It would have kept prices down. um if you if If we gave people a little bit of a penalty, a nominal penalty every year, people would be much more inclined to buy health insurance. And if they did that, it would put more money in the insurance pools and that would reduce premiums. I mean, like i mean like that that was actually like a really sane ah thing, but like we we we the Paul Ryan and and it zeroed it out. um and I don't think the Democrats look like they're they they want to reopen that can of worms, but that that that is actually something that would lower costs.
00:42:21
Speaker
by Um, but, that the but, but, but I, but I think generally speaking, I, I think that that, that's the kind of thing that I, I think is okay for us to be doing. And i like I want to drag us back a little bit kicking and screaming here to a point you made earlier. Um, so, and.
00:42:39
Speaker
and Again, I'll be persona nongrada in this conversation and, ah you know, defend the libertarians a little bit. Please, please, but please. You have a full on debate if you want. and I love that. Yes. um And by the way, i I used to call myself a libertarian. I don't anymore precisely because of what we're talking about. There's too many people out there who use that term that aren't what I mean by it. It's just a and I don't like it and I don't want to be associated with some of that stuff.
00:43:04
Speaker
um But a lot of the libertarians that I used to know ah would, I think they would push back on this idea that the sumimbonum is to be um Tom Hanks you know on on the deserted island and sort of seeing that as the ultimate form of freedom. Maybe some libertarians think that's the ultimate form of freedom. The ones that I know wouldn't say that because they would say,
00:43:25
Speaker
um Being within groups and and acting with other humans isn't really important. yeah but that But it is a voluntary interaction. So right so when i um when you sign a marriage contract, it is limiting your freedoms. Very obviously, very no if it's not, you're doing it wrong. right so um And since your freedoms are being limited in that way, you're you're but you're trading those freedoms for something better, for so for for something beautiful, for something that you want. And so is the other person. And it's voluntary. And so I think the i think that a sort of new network, a string of a lot more volunteerism in life
00:44:06
Speaker
is what a libertarian would now some things you're right some things
Challenges of Volunteerism in Libertarianism
00:44:09
Speaker
may have to fall back on a social contract you know the usual monarchist arguments well yeah defense courts police fine you get all that everything else let's do it as voluntary as we can and then we can argue piecemeal about whether this or that has some negative externality we need to deal with in a social way but i think that's what many of the ones at least that i know would would would argue in favor of not the deserted island thing So do I don't know if you have some. Yeah, yeah. So, OK. I mean, it's fair. ah Look, ah ah I don't think that what you describe is like the volunteerism, which is it's a beautiful sounding idea, ah this idea that everything we do, like as long as everything we do has some sort of voluntary component. um I mean,
00:45:02
Speaker
I'll just start off by saying that I don't think this is a very cognitively stable idea. And boy, what I mean by that is um when you start playing out various scenarios that aren't even that hard to think of, you start recognizing that things don't intuitively seem like they're going in the right direction. So um let me let me let me let me like let me like tell like ah a little story like a little like fictional story um about a man named Bob.
00:45:30
Speaker
So Bob, um is he's a really like he's a really wealthy industrialist, ah very very libertarian thinker. um he's He's become one of the richest people in the world. And he he decides, you know what, like I can't really seem to, despite all the money I'm putting into super PACs in America and all this other stuff, I can't really seem to convince people um that we should build this sort of more, I mean, anarcho capitalistic Murray Rothbardian like type, or you know, Robert Nozickian like society, um where
00:46:14
Speaker
ah at the end of the day, like we're all just like engaging in voluntary relationships mediated by our property rights and contracts and and all this other stuff. So Bob sets out and he decides to try and buy an island. He's going to create his own little island nation. I don't, I just, it's a, who cares which one it is to say he manages to find a ah relatively suitable island somewhere on the planet.
00:46:42
Speaker
And he goes to whoever whoever the authorities are of that island and and and and through a perfectly reasonable and legal contract buys the island.
00:46:55
Speaker
Let's just, I mean, leaving any kind of like crazy claims on like the on whether or not the the that that that nation or person had a right to sell the island or not, just like, just assume it's all above board from ah from a sort of a libertarian ah philosophy perspective. And so he he buys this island and he sets about colonizing it himself so he like brings in experts to figure out like where where should he establish his cities on the island like where um where is he going to you know ah build his like administration buildings else there's and any any any he does this any any he advertises to libertarians or libertarian mad people all around the world who want to come and live on this island and buy some property
00:47:47
Speaker
um from him, ah which will be subject obviously to to his contracts. His allotment of property is probably gonna, is going to be under Bob's conception. Obviously you're gonna have to follow Bob's laws on that on that island, or he's gonna have some sort of contractual right to kick you out. um Seems pretty reasonable.
00:48:10
Speaker
And this all just like happens through all this like voluntary contracts and we build up this entire nation. It's beautiful. This is beautiful, like it's like a propertarianism come into reality and everything's going great. And we call it Roatan. And we call it Roatan. Right. And so,
00:48:36
Speaker
we're in this We're in this situation, and and this looks like a, I mean, this looks like a libertarian monarchy, right, basically. This sort of like, yarvinian sort of, ah ah like like like beautiful like society. But there's a problem, right? um it It relies on the benevolence um of its owner. And so Bob dies.
00:49:05
Speaker
and his ah really sadistic and overprivileged and power-hungry son, Max, um inherits the island from Bá.
00:49:21
Speaker
And it turns out that when we review all these contracts, I mean, it's, it's Max's Island. I mean, at the end of the day, like he, he, everyone agreed that they were going to have to like follow like Max's laws and regulations, but Max's is, you know, he,
00:49:37
Speaker
You know, he definitely like likes the fact that he owns his island and maybe he's like willing to respect these these contracts and stuff. But like he like but Max is like Max's different plans. um And he decides to start like, I don't know, like, ah I don't know, like, what let's just like, imagine like what could happen here, right? Like,
00:50:03
Speaker
ah Max decides that ah he doesn't he's not gonna ah he he doesn't want any any more ah babies to be born on the island. Maybe he's like worried that like ah if if people basically grow the population, they're going to like overthrow him or something. i with Whatever crazy psychotic thing that like Max thinks about. um And max like Max is the owner of the island.
Ethical Dilemmas in Libertarianism
00:50:31
Speaker
and ah we We have families and and entire communities who have grown up on this island. This island is all they know. Like there's literally nowhere else a lot of these people can go. Their whole life is on this island. um And then so a baby gets born.
00:50:48
Speaker
um which ah violates the the regulation which Max under the contracts that his father signed with everyone had a right to impose. um does Does Max now like have a right to basically say that you need to go and throw that baby in the ocean right now because that baby is a trespasser. That baby never had a right on my fucking property. um ah You knew that going into this before you had this baby.
00:51:17
Speaker
um What is it about this baby's life and your desire to keep it alive and my desire to get it off my fucking property right now? Because this is my fucking property and your parents signed a fucking contract with me. Where like where is it? like Where is the the the ah the the like and And by the way, like this this this scenario, by the way, that I'm that i'm a ah outlining for you is something that Nozick thought about and actually got into an argument with Murray Rothbard about.
00:51:54
Speaker
um and and actually you know And it was quite a disturbing problem for Robert Nozick, which is why I think if anybody who has read Anarchy State and Utopia very carefully can actually recognize the fact that Nozick is not completely convinced by his own arguments, he does have some worries about where I'm going with this.
00:52:15
Speaker
um because in in Because now you're in this like conundrum where there is no like appeal to sort of like ah common good. There really only is Max's control of that fucking contract right now. And there's no there's no court, there's no law system. like we just You just literally signed your kids' lives over to...
00:52:39
Speaker
hoping for the benevolence of a future of a future leader, of essentially a future monarch that was established through contracts and through like this voluntary exchange. um And yet intuitively, this this looks like a authoritarian dictatorship now. um and and you And you now have all these like families and and and it's not really reasonable. They're just gonna go fucking be refugees, like another part of the world, like, you know, that's easier said than done. Well, anyways, the way that Nozick came at Rothbard about this um in ah in ah in a relatively um famous argument that he had with him
00:53:24
Speaker
had to do with a ah baby as well. And and so Nozick said to Rothbard, he was like, look, so let's say um a mother with a newborn baby is in her house.
00:53:42
Speaker
And she decides that she no longer wants to be an indentured servant to the baby. She doesn't want to breastfeed the baby or feed the baby anymore. She wants to keep all of her food to herself. She doesn't have that much money and she doesn't want to care for the baby. And so the baby is like crying, is like crying out you know for food and is like literally like starving to death. And and ah and a next door neighbor,
00:54:08
Speaker
um basically hears the baby just constantly wailing, crying, wanting to be fed, want like by by this mother who has just basically decided to withdraw her motherly services from the baby. um And the neighbor is like, oh my God, like i like looks in through the window and just like sees that the the mother's like not caring for her and makes this decision to break into the house to save the baby, um to feed the baby.
00:54:34
Speaker
And so Nozick asks Rothbard, he says, okay, at this moment that the neighbor is breaking in, um does the mother have the right to shoot this person intruding um who's trying to save the baby's life? Rothbard says yes. Rothbard says this is a very unfortunate situation because under his voluntarist ethic,
00:55:04
Speaker
The mother can't be compelled to care for the child against her will in an involuntary way. um She has a right to protect her property rights. um And therefore, like the the person who wants to enter, which would require breaking through the door and damaging her property, which Rothbard says that she has a right to prevent with lethal force if necessary,
00:55:30
Speaker
um the baby is just essentially unfortunately left to die. Rothbard's kind of argument is like, I don't really think this is really going to happen. Like people have motherly instincts, but like, yeah, like that's nothing like unethical about that. It's sad. And Nozick was quite shocked by this. um And like, and and and so like that that that this, this that there is there it there does seem to be in this voluntarist ethic that seems so beautiful.
00:56:00
Speaker
the capacity to to to do things which seem pretty intuitively fucking evil, um I think, to like like most humans. and and and And the ethical system doesn't give you any answers to it. in fact the In fact, if you follow the ethical system to its T, the baby will starve to death.
00:56:21
Speaker
like the The libertarian volunteerist ethic does not have an answer. that that doesn't involve the baby starving to death. And I'm like, like what the fuck kind of like complete philosophy, ah ethical philosophy is this? I i think though, Mike, um so the the way I think ah somebody in this camp would respond, and by the way, you're talking to somebody who started a seasteading company. So you can go ahead and put me in some box there, you know. But but by the way, this this is an inter-libertarian, this is Nozick arguing on- Oh no, I know, yeah. Yeah, for sure. Like this was Nozick arguing against Rothbard on this. this wasn't This wasn't some like statist arguing against him. This was like, this was an internal libertarian debate of like, this is like a serious fucking problem with your, and with your, with with your volunteerist ethic. And I'm no fan of Rothbard, right? I couldn't, I couldn't stand reading the valuable. Can I swear on this podcast by the way? i know i swear Yeah, it, yeah. Not regulated. Yeah, go for it. um
00:57:19
Speaker
So but I think what what what what I would say, what a lot of people I know in this camp would say is, sure, if you go 100% and you try to go for some kind of um pure, pure Rothbardian anarchist ah world, you're going to have these weird scenarios that nobody wants. Like like nobody would would press the button to make that kind of stuff happen.
00:57:43
Speaker
um But it's not like we don't have these kinds of horrible scenarios in in today's world, right? Look at you nor look at north korea, right? It's not there's nothing capitalist about that place. Um, but kim jong-un or the the kims or whichever kim it is now Treats it like his own personal property like the whole state, right? Yeah, there everybody's his first every individual is his personal slave and every piece of land is his personal property and all the rest um, happy and so so Sorry, keep go yeah, no, so I think uh, I think i think I think one answer to that to your to the question that you're creating is, well, there's no reason to go to that extreme. right you can You can have a world with 95% more volunteerism. But once you do that, once you even grant the 5%,
00:58:28
Speaker
Like like yourre you're letting in this thing that youre you're you're going to let in some involuntary component. It's OK. It's OK to be a little bit impure, right? It's OK to be very you know very minimalist, but still keep these things like, you know in this situation, no, the the rest of people who are outside of that property have um the moral responsibility, in fact, to go and stop something that happens to be going on in that property.
00:58:57
Speaker
Or if a baby is born on this island, um you know you don't have the right to just take the baby and toss it over the the cliffside because you don't like the way it looks or something, right? there's so there's true enforces Who enforces that?
00:59:09
Speaker
in these societies? who's right so i Who's the enforcer of of these of these like higher higher laws, it's hard if if we are to call them that? It's hard. Look at look at look at foreign relations, right? who's who it who enforces um but who Who is out there trying to police the world to to stop these kinds of horrible humanitarian disasters that we see going on all over the place? Yeah. Is it us? Is it US? Maybe. Sometimes it is. The anarchy the anarchy of of ah of the world between nations, i think is a i would say is a incredible I would say supports my argument here, not the libertarian's argument, that um that the imposition
00:59:53
Speaker
of of of law and order um ultimately can lead to a net increase in freedom for everybody. Because in the world where it is just like lie, cheat, and steal, and piracy, and ah and and everyone out for them themselves,
01:00:14
Speaker
um it you you you fight yeah, I mean, In fact, and i think i think I think some people in foreign policy realize, I mean, I don't consider myself a foreign policy realist, I'm a little bit of an idealist, but like, do actually talk about ah Hobbes' state of nature at a nation level. yeah and and i think and i and i think And I think that that's a a valid analogy here. And and I think libertarians of of my ilk, or what I was or whatever, would say the ultimate god the ultimate safeguard here should be the ability to leave.
01:00:49
Speaker
Right, so and of course it so so the problem right of egress. Yeah, the right of egress is a really I think is a really important part of the liberal liberal, but I but i think that ah but by the way i I believe that as a classical liberal, I believe the right of egress ah is a, and in fact, I'm It doesn't exist in the US Constitution, but I'm very happy that the 1981 Canadian Constitution, by the way, the the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, actually does have an explicit constitutional right of egress. That's on US to some extent.
01:01:24
Speaker
It doesn't in the sense I lived in California for 10 years. And now I'm in Texas here in Austin. No, it's recognized. It's recognized, but it's not explicitly called out as a it's in Canada, it's actually an enumerated right um under its constitution, the right to, it says that Canadian citizens have a right to enter, remain in or leave Canada is a is an explicitly enumerated right. And it's, it's equivalent to the Bill of Rights.
01:01:51
Speaker
Okay, so we've got a half hour left. We've spent a good hour really digging into the
Dark Enlightenment and Silicon Valley
01:01:56
Speaker
nuance here. I want to try to map this to what's happening, not only in Silicon Valley, but in society at large. So the first question that I wanted to ask was to tie back to some of the conversations we had around property rights, around the you know the Rothbardian kind of...
01:02:13
Speaker
Are there influences within this kind of dark enlightenment and new right? That call back to some of those things that we've we've we've criticized in the libertarian party Is this an entirely or the libertarian movement or is this an entirely new kind of? Brand because I mean my understanding of yarvan. He's got some association with this, right? I mean, like, this is this these ideas are kind of all in the same soup, so to speak. um Can you speak a little bit to that, Mike? And maybe we could start talking a bit about how these things are materializing in Silicon Valley and on the the broader right in the United States. Yeah, um I first. I first like came across ah Curtis Yarban's writings.
01:02:56
Speaker
um ah probably like six or seven years ago um somebody in my social circles was reading his his blog um and wanted me to like check it out Um, I, I started actually kind of just passively reading him. Um, I mean, he's an amazing, I want to say you like, I might give him a little bit of credit, like his capacity for the way he, uh, does what I would say, like engages in what I would say is normative storytelling.
01:03:33
Speaker
um, is very powerful. He's a very, very powerful communicator of his ideas and he's very good at like sort of framing it in this very kind of emotionally resonant narrative that like gets you to sort of feel, um, uh,
01:03:51
Speaker
and mean that To the extent that we have this sort of sense of like justice or injustice in us that kind of can like really ground us and like motivate us to um refocus like um our our our sense of like like like what who who and what we should be supporting in society. He's very he's very strong and in that sense of of of really kind of captivating you and pulling you in, um particularly people who have, I think, ah come from like a libertarian persuasion,
01:04:23
Speaker
um ah this sort of this and i and i and i And I think that a lot of people in Silicon Valley come from a libertarian-ish persuasion, if not outright libertarian. like Some people will say like there's this kind of there is this techno-libertarian thing um that exists in Silicon Valley. And there's something about the things that he says that really speaks to people in Silicon Valley. And so I saw like over over the years, um you know the people talking, especially like during the the Trump years, um where um the
01:05:00
Speaker
i I would actually agree ah with a lot of critics on the right. I think like left wing excess as it pertained to a lot of cultural issues was um running completely out of control um in in a farcical way in this like and in this like overreaction to the Trump era. And in that world, I think you got a lot of people in Silicon Valley that they they could not help but notice how illogical, international a lot of these like far left progressives around them in their offices and their HR departments um at their company town halls ah were were being. And it created really fertile ground for like a lot of really smart people that really start thinking about like, okay, like maybe this whole sort of like democracy thing ah is not,
01:06:01
Speaker
it like maybe what we need is like but this like Curtis Jarvan guy is selling right like um uh a responsible absolute monarchy who protects like the capitalist system and uh and and individual rights and this this started to make a lot of sense to these people because they saw what was happening they saw um the I guess in their, I don't know, i don't I don't want to speak for people, but I think in their views, like the dumb masses um don't know what's good for them. yeah and And I think that that that really has led to
01:06:43
Speaker
I mean, and and I think, and by the way, I think there's a lot of stuff going on in the psychology, these Silicon Valley people who kind of gone in this dark direction to a really, I think a really important thing to frame for the, for for this as well, which I think really.
01:06:58
Speaker
also pumped their ability to um start going down these dark paths was the fact that just 10 years earlier, they'd been kind of the heroes of America. Silicon Valley were the hero, like, you know, in the Obama years, right? Like the the rise of of of of all the social media companies like Mark Zuckerberg, ah you know, Jack Dorsey, um you know, Elon Musk, these kind of heroes, here e cultural heroes.
01:07:28
Speaker
um and And then less than 10 short years later, we're all now being blamed for the polarization of our politics, um for monopolistic practices and the app store. and and And suddenly Silicon Valley felt like they had a whole bunch of guns to their heads. And so they they had this sort of cultural fall from grace. They now have these employees and And this is real, like I lived through this. like I'm not gonna
Cultural Shifts in Silicon Valley
01:08:00
Speaker
deny this. like the The extreme left-wing identity politics that seized the inner workings of Silicon Valley companies got fucking crazy. like It got crazy. like like to the point like By the way, like i think that if you had like I think if everybody at the time, if you were able to give like an anonymous survey,
01:08:25
Speaker
at the time where everyone real everyone was confident that the answers to their survey questions would not get out and wouldn't like result in them losing their career or being canceled. I actually think you'd probably get like 80 to 90% of like people in Silicon Valley who would have agreed that it was fucking crazy that you had this like 10% of people who were screaming really, really loud and had all this cultural resonance and it was, and people were too afraid to talk out against it because it,
01:08:54
Speaker
could be playing into MAGA or Donald Trump, led to this like really crazy ah like coming together of of of of factors that provided, I think, fertile ground for what you then would see happen after 2020, which was the the sudden migration of a lot of these these figures um from being, you know, relatively centrist democratic party supporting figures into people who are, I don't know, meeting with Curtis Yarvan in the Santa Clara Valley um once a month um and and and suddenly being taken by ah really far right ideas and visions of
01:09:45
Speaker
J.D. Vance getting into the White House and and using the 25th Amendment to remove Donald Trump and then and then imposing like a new reactionary government which which by the way like some of these people. Talk about like amongst themselves like this is not like like this is like this is like an actual thing that is happening.
01:10:05
Speaker
um And there's been some reporting on this, right? I know that je ah Jessica Lesson at The Information, she did like a piece on this like recently. um for those who For those of you listening to this and hearing this for the first time, um there's actually some pretty good like reporting and in and places like ah ah um ah Vanity Fair and there's there's there's been there's been some, I think, i think No, i i I shouldn't say that yet, but um um I may have given ah ah ah some perspectives to a journalist recently, um but I would say this is this is this is something that that has brought me great deal of alarm ah in in recent years because these people are
01:11:01
Speaker
relatively powerful. these are some I mean, Elon Musk, I think, is one of the most powerful human beings that has ever lived um in terms of ah the amount of influence he has. He far exceeds that of most countries on this planet. um In fact, his influence is is is so vast at this point that he is, in some ways, is just like operating under his own rules.
01:11:31
Speaker
um He has to have security clearance ah to be a um executive at a defense contractor, which SpaceX is.
01:11:46
Speaker
um And by the way, like even civilian rocket launches are are are regulated essentially as as ah as as military um under US arms export.
01:11:58
Speaker
regulations, um he has to have he has to have security clearance. I don't think that if Elon Musk was wasn't the um founder and CEO of SpaceX, which the United States is completely reliant reliant upon for access to low Earth orbit, um its ability to continue the ah the International Space Station program. um ah NASA, mean ah we we saw the the farce that has happened with the Boeing Starliner. There's currently like no other option.
01:12:34
Speaker
um There's no way that Elon Musk would be able to retain his security clearance based on the things he said publicly joking about ah potential assassination attempts against Kamala Harris. There's no way that you could say something like that publicly and not lose your security like like like like the fact that like he i mean even even Even his like direct like personal relations like with Xi Jinping of the Chinese Communist Party, um which are highly, highly like worrisome. um like Has he ever said anything bad about the Chinese Communist Party? I mean, I don't know. But anyways,
01:13:13
Speaker
like ah this this This dark turn, um I think most exemplified by Elon Musk, and I don't know how much he personally buys into Yarvan's philosophy. I don't really think he does from what I can tell, um but I think like i think so I think a lot of the people around him do. I mean i think maybe Peter Thiel does. he very He very much does. um I think others around him ah in in in that circle um very much do buy into this philosophy. And it's it's hard to call it anything but seditious.
01:13:54
Speaker
Counter revolutionary to the American Revolution. ah These people are literally talking about like, bringing an end. um To self government and replacing it with absolute monarchy.
01:14:10
Speaker
um like this is this is this this this is ah this is a stream of thought. um and By the way, I don't think it's like a large percentage of of Silicon Valley. In fact, I think 80 to 90% of the workers in Silicon Valley are still liberals that that support the Democratic Party. What's really Concerning here, though, is it's the it's the owners of that capital. It's the it's these these venture capitalists. it's It's some of these executives that that command this power, they command the attention, and they command the money, um have have started like taking,
01:14:54
Speaker
i I would argue, like like taking ah seditious steps um And I think JD Vance and and his connection to some of these people is ah um is a very, very dangerous example of that. Because I do believe that JD Vance is a Yarvanite. I do believe that a lot of his friends in Silicon Valley are Yarvanites. And I do believe that it does occur. I i mean, i mean i I actually don't, I think JD Vance is, by the way, his whole MAGA thing is an act.
01:15:26
Speaker
yeah I think it's an act to ah keep Trump from ah questioning his true agenda. um i think and And the reason I think this is just like, look at look at the past JD Vance. read it go Go read his book. Go read Hillbilly Elegy. like Go look at all his interviews. This is a very intelligent Ivy League educated man. He knows exactly what he's doing. And he he's counting on the fact that Donald Trump will not survive his second term.
01:15:55
Speaker
Yes, and it's- And the people around him are counting on that too. That is exactly that is exactly what Elon Musk is counting on. I uh so yeah I mean just just for the record I mean yeah JD Vance I think not only is the the proof that these ideas are broken in the mainstream JD Vance has praised as you said Curtis Jarvan multiple times he said he's a friend with him he identifies with his writings and to your point Curtis Jarvan is not even
01:16:25
Speaker
quiet about his call. I mean, he's called for a humane alternative to genocide. He's literally called for dictatorship. He said in a quote, Americans think about their dictator phobia. So it's it's out in the open. That's what he stands for. One of the things that's interesting to me and Max, you might have these people, these people, these people go to discussion salons with Curtis Yarvan in the South Bay. And so just so you know, like some of these some of these figures, um it's
01:16:54
Speaker
It's fucking crazy. It's horrifying. And the thing that really blows me away is, and I think you probably had a similar experience, Mike, is when I was coming out of college, Peter Thiel, for example, was at the same types of events that I was going to. I mean, he was at SFL conferences 10 years ago, right? He considered himself classical liberal, libertarian. And now I think he just came out and had an interview about a year ago where he said liberalism has failed and we know he's part of this new, this entirely new wing.
01:17:23
Speaker
um You've touched on a lot of the questions that I was going to ask, ah but do you think that the reason, so I guess the the thing I wanted to end cap on here and then and maybe hand it to Max was, do we think that this was caused by, I mean, woke-ism was a component, it was caused by, you know, when I say woke-ism, I mean kind of that far left capture of those institutions in Silicon Valley. um it Do you think there's anything else?
01:17:49
Speaker
that really made these people just give up on liberalism? um Like, do you do you have any other thoughts on maybe their... Yeah, I mean mean, it's their own ego, right? Like, there's this the sense um that I think was always there in Silicon Valley in the early days, right? Like, if you worked at Google, you thought you were saving the world. You thought you were essentially building the new world. You were building this this new online egalitarian, hyper-connected,
01:18:16
Speaker
like world and you essentially were were designing utopia. that's that's how That's how I think a lot of these these tech entrepreneurs and and and founders who got immensely rich are essentially just like selling advertising. Google's an advertising company. That's what it is. ah um and um and they and And they still, I think, haven't fully contended with that the very ah degenerate aspects of human nature that that advertising engagement economy um has actually tapped into,
Tech Industry's Societal Impact and Self-Reflection
01:18:59
Speaker
right? like just cheap but With humans just chasing dopamine hits, um sometimes to very destructive ends,
01:19:06
Speaker
um you know I think you know we our we're we're now limiting our so kids' screen time. like If you're a parent today, like like every parent is like trying to figure out how to minimize the the time that kids spend on screens. And we're doing this because we recognize there's something seriously fucking wrong. yeah Right with this like with this like online world. um And these people um are unable to contend, I think, in their own minds within their own cognitive dissonance.
01:19:37
Speaker
um not that they and By the way, like I think these people have good intentions. I really do. like I know a lot of these people, and I and i i worked with them, and some of them are my dear friends, and and they continue to be my dear friends. Some of them like you know are on different aspects of the spectrum than others when it comes of ah comes to like recognizing ah the ah effects that that these things have had on people.
01:20:02
Speaker
But yeah, it's like really it's really hard to to think to yourself, I became a multi-billionaire on a really, really successful business venture that doesn't isn't necessarily, ah I think, a positive for humanity. That's a very hard thing for something. You could imagine, if you follow that if you follow that path down, that is that could be a very, very hard psychic space for a human to inhabit in terms of like the amount of like guilt and and and and and sense of of of of of injustice that you represent being. And I think that's a very, very hard thing to accept. And so I think we we know what humans do. We know what we all do. We rationalize things. And they are as convinced as ever that they have all the answers. And in fact, it it's it's
01:21:01
Speaker
the other people who are wrong, that if if we just had our way, if it wasn't for these overrock government regulations, if it wasn't for Lena Khan at the Federal Trade Commission, um this is you know like like like things would be better. like Look, it's self-delusion. That's what it ultimately comes down to. we all We all want to be heroes in our own story, and we all tend to, um myself included, ah definitely myself included, ah overestimate our own abilities.
01:21:35
Speaker
um I wanted to ask a quick one here, Mike. I was i was enmeshed in all this stuff ah in the in the early 2010s as well in the seasteading world and and Curtis Jarvan made the rounds and I read his stuff. Everybody else I knew was reading his stuff.
01:21:53
Speaker
um But a lot of the people that I know didn't end up going down this dark enlightenment path, myself included. I read it, and I'm like, yeah. It's some interesting stuff, but I don't agree with a lot of other things. And so I didn't go down that path. What do you think kind of, why is it that some people read that stuff coming from a similar, I think, background? And I also had a very,
01:22:21
Speaker
kind of starry-eyed idea of of of Peter Thiel when I was working at the C-Setting Institute and then I started a C-Setting company. Anyway, he was like this is this pinnacle of like oh classical liberal cosmopolitanism, techno-optimism, which i'm ah I still think of myself as a techno-optimist, and I still think of myself as trying to to make the world better in that way. But I didn't i didn't happen to go down that path. So what do what do you think it is that that made the difference between the people who ended up going in that direction?
01:22:49
Speaker
like the JD Vanses or whatever, and and the people who were in a similar starting point but didn't end up going that way. Yeah, I think there's like three broad categories of people, I think, that I've sort of like coded in my brain to kind of explain the divergence here.
01:23:03
Speaker
um
01:23:05
Speaker
I think, I mean, what i mean it I think a lot of people who come at this from a deontological place, right, um or sort of a natural law place, people who have this sort of like really like ah fixated on this idea um of like, ah you know, our are are are our rights and our dignity, like kind of precede law in society, that kind of like thought process.
01:23:35
Speaker
that that That tended to be, I think, the that the kinds of people who are more likely to go down the dark path. Another group of people which I think Teal codes into is what I would call the the scientism path. um this This very ah like mechanical mechanical reductionist um ah philosophy of the world um that you know sometimes also gets ah associated with the new atheist movement, um sometimes fairly, sometimes unfairly. I think sometimes maybe fairly and in the case of say like Richard Dawkins, maybe less fairly in the case of say someone like Sam Harris,
01:24:20
Speaker
Um, but like, I think that that kind of like. Thought process as well, um, can can be very, uh. um I see those those kinds of people um and you and you like this this sort of hyper-rational world that just want that just views everything as like an optimization function at some level um can find itself drawn towards this kind of thinking.
01:24:53
Speaker
And then I think there's another group of people, um myself included, I sometimes refer to as sort of like the the romantics. um we we We don't tend to um ah attach ourselves to deontological ethics. We're usually more associated with you with utilitarian thought, right? Like like Jeremy Bentham. I mean, most people don't recognize this, but basically every single classical liberal philosopher all the way up, and and including, by the way, ah Mises, including by the way Hayek, counted themselves as moral utilitarians um of that, ah of of that band. I mean, liberal liberalism in many ways was a, what was a, I think a lot of conservative thought in the 20th century gets really confused about this and thinks that like,
01:25:39
Speaker
Yeah, like ah that utilitarianism is just like associated with like Marx and Marxism and socialism. This is completely not true. In fact, both both both socialist, Marxist and liberal thought were all kind of contained within the the predominant moral utilitarianism of the time. And they all lived inside that world um with just different epistemic conclusions around like around around what the actual utility function was. Right. With like Adam Smith, for example, thought that the invisible hand right was the was was was a way of thinking of the utility function um of the economy. But like but but but he was a utilitarian he was a moral utilitarian. um So um i think i think I think those people, were way more like myself included, were way more resistant to this. We recognize that that things are a lot more complicated.
Defense of Liberalism's Contributions
01:26:31
Speaker
there's There's interdependent relationships between us and other people.
01:26:35
Speaker
and government and and the common good, and it's not just so simple. You don't just solve these problems by teasing these things apart. If we just bring in a monarch or a dictator, um like we know how we know how this goes. um we we we know We know what happens next. We've seen this before. um i think i think that's I think those are like the broad like distinctions. um and recognize that we're short on time and probably can't get too deep into them. But those are kind of like the three ones that I've sort of like, as I've sat and pondered and tried to like look at all my friends over the years and seeing where they've like moved. I think those are the kind of the core character traits that I saw as sort of being predictive of like which way, which direction people move.
01:27:24
Speaker
I think that sounds right. i think I think a lot of people that I knew that would call themselves Hayekians, for example, didn't go down that path, yeah myself included. I think of myself and as a Hayekian from at least Austrian wise. yeah um And I think yeah the the ontological side, um the mixture there with kind of the religious aspects as well, like there's a lot of that crossover that I think maybe lends itself more to what you're describing.
01:27:48
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I would say that like what what you and I are describing is is part of the liberal tradition, like properly, not this weird offshoot but um that happened in the in the the Cold War period.
01:28:05
Speaker
Well, what you holy crap, Mike, we need to come back and have another conversation when we have more time. This was absolutely a very interesting conversation, probably one of the more interesting conversations I think we've had in ah in a while on this show. So i in the interest of time, I know we've got a hard stop. I wanted to maybe ask you in 30 seconds or more, at least to our audience, why in a moment,
01:28:27
Speaker
Like now, where everyone's doubting liberal philosophy, where post-liberal and anti-liberal and illiberal ideas are on the rise, why do you feel like people should embrace liberal philosophy in this moment while so many others are walking away from it? Because think of think of where we started and think of where we are. um you know Five hundred years ago, most human beings were in bondage.
01:28:52
Speaker
in some form or another, most were serfs living in some part of the, like the idea, 500 years ago, the idea of individual ambition, of thinking that you could be more than whatever your role was in society was such a foreign idea, it was such a foreign concept. And the fact that we sit here today And you know i just left I just left my job. um And I don't know what's gonna happen for me next. There's just the idea that I could like do that, like i that i have that I have options um that that that I can pursue you know um different life paths
01:29:43
Speaker
is is something that liberalism gave us. mean that like this like like like Fundamentally, this this idea that the the the the liberal idea has infused our culture to the point that like we don't even recognize that we're breathing it like air. And yet we are questioning its institutions that have held up this this this this substrate upon which like i am I am able to be.
01:30:11
Speaker
this free thinking, free agent um in our society. It turns out right now, obviously, like ah trying to convince people that that that they should be very aware of this um because they're breathing liberal air right now. That's what they're doing. um And they need to be very, very careful about messing around with the oxygen supply.
01:30:41
Speaker
Well said, where can people go to maybe read more of your work or learn more about your takes? I just started a new sub stack, uh, mikebrock mikerock dot substack dot.com, uh, where I'm going to be writing regularly and you can follow me on Twitter at Brock M or X. i It's Twitter. It's always Twitter. It's always Twitter.
01:30:59
Speaker
Thank you again, Mike. And thank you, Max, for taking time today out of your schedule. ah Project Liberal is a cross-partisan coalition of people committed to the defense of a free and open society against authoritarians who are trying to undermine it. You can join the coalition, become a member at projectliberal dot.org, or set up a membership at projectliberal.org slash member. We appreciate your time, everyone. Have a wonderful day.