Episode 119: New Right vs Libertarianism w/Logan Chipkin

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Unofficial, reviewed transcript. It may still contain mistakes; check the podcast when wording matters.

Speakers are labeled by first name where identified. Unidentified-speaker labels may refer to different people. Bracketed question marks indicate uncertain wording.

Transcript

[00:00:00]  Unidentified speaker: Hello out there.

[00:00:01]  Peter: This week on the Theory of Anything podcast, we had the absolute pleasure of interviewing Logan Chipkin.

[00:00:09]  Unidentified speaker: Logan is, I think, first, a writer.

[00:00:13]  Unidentified speaker: He has co-written two books.

[00:00:15]  Peter: First, The Sovereign Child about raising children without coercion, and second, Lords of the Cosmos, which tells the story of progress through the lens of good philosophy. He is also the president of the Conjecture Institute, which is a brand new organization dedicated to promoting the worldview of Karl Popper and David Deutsch. Many, many cool people are involved in that. Here we discuss Libertarianism and consider, what is the core difference between liberalism, conservatism and libertarianism? Why are so many libertarians into conspiracy theories? And how are we to think about Popperian arguments against utopianism applied to libertarians? Does it make sense for an anarcho-capitalist to be hawkish on military intervention in places like Ukraine? And why have mainstream conservatives strayed so far from making intellectual arguments for their positions, as they may have in the days of Milton Friedman? I loved this conversation that delves into a fascinating intellectual tradition, and I hope someone else out there gets something out of it too.

[00:01:40]  Bruce: Welcome to The Theory of Anything podcast.

[00:01:41]  Unidentified speaker: Hey, Peter.

[00:01:43]  Unidentified speaker: Hello, Bruce.

[00:01:43]  Unidentified speaker: How are you today?

[00:01:45]  Unidentified speaker: Good.

[00:01:45]  Bruce: And Logan Chipkin. Hey, how are you doing, Logan?

[00:01:50]  Logan: Hey, Bruce and Peter.

[00:01:51]  Unidentified speaker: Thanks for having me.

[00:01:52]  Unidentified speaker: I'm doing well.

[00:01:53]  Unidentified speaker: All right.

[00:01:53]  Bruce: Well, we are, we're stoked to have Logan on today. So Logan's a long time friend of mine. We've been talking on and off for years now. And I love talking with Logan. He's just a really fun guy to talk with. So at one point I said, hey, we ought to have you on the show. And you and I will hold one of our conversations like on the show. And we'll talk about politics. We don't normally talk about politics, you know, maybe more economics.

[00:02:20]  Unidentified speaker: I don't know.

[00:02:21]  Bruce: We don't normally talk about that on this show. But I thought that might be a fun diversion for a little while. Logan is president of Conjecture Institute. And actually, Logan, what do you introduce yourself and tell us about Conjecture Institute?

[00:02:33]  Unidentified speaker: Yeah, thanks, Bruce.

[00:02:34]  Logan: Conjecture Institute is a non-profit institute that David Kedmey, Aaron Stupple and I co-founded officially basically January of 2025. I mean, legally a little bit earlier because we were setting up the infrastructure in the background. But we really came out publicly roughly January of 2025, which coincided with the release of our first product, which was The Sovereign Child, our first book as well. Primary author was Aaron Stupple and then junior author was me. And that did very well.

[00:03:07]  Unidentified speaker: And then we hit the ground running and we recruited fellows.

[00:03:10]  Logan: And we've released other books in the meantime, or at least one other book and other products as well and original research. And our mission is to spread and apply humanity's deepest ideas, most of which are those ideas espoused and developed by David Deutsch and Karl Popper. And it's been going great. Honestly, it's going better than I even would have expected. And you can think of Conjecture Institute in terms of what we do, you can think of it as three branches. And these are not explicit on the website. This is one of these 2026 projects we want to do, is make this explicit.

[00:03:45]  Unidentified speaker: We have Conjecture Press, so that's our book publishing arm.

[00:03:48]  Logan: I had already mentioned we published two books this year.

[00:03:50]  Unidentified speaker: We have Conjecture University, so this is original research and courses.

[00:03:55]  Logan: So the courses, I'm in the process of developing one now and then I'll have other fellows basically build out modules of their subject matter that they're passionate about. And also the original research of course, because many of our fellows are just physicists, mathematicians, that sort of thing.

[00:04:13]  Unidentified speaker: And they publish original research, which we're very proud of and we highlight when it comes out.

[00:04:18]  Logan: So that's Conjecture University. And then Conjecture Studios, again, this isn't obvious, but you could think of Arjun Khemani's documentary as part of Conjecture Studios, so his entire documentary can be found on his YouTube channel. We have another fellow, Dimitri Vallein, who so far has made two short animated science fiction type stories, but he has a lot of other things in the pipeline. He's written other scripts, longer scripts, and he's maybe making a video game. And also, part of Conjecture Studios will be animated physics explainer videos, and one of those we're in the process of creating right now to explain the BMV experiment, the Bose-Marletto-Vedral experiment, which is one way of testing whether or not gravity has quantum mechanical properties. So, that would be Conjecture Studios. And also, of course, our podcast, which is up until now 100% hosted by Brett Hall, who's our official ambassador, and he's been hosting our fellows. He hosted me for an intro episode, although funnily enough, it's kind of outdated by now. We recorded that several months ago. But anyway, and he also interviewed one of our first advisor, David Deutsch, of course, and either he or I will interview our other two advisors sometime down the line, Daniel Hannan, the historian and politician, and Judea Pearl, the scientist and philosopher. And there's a chance that next year he or I will start interviewing other people who just interesting thinkers for the podcast. But anyway, so that's all part of Conjecture Studios as well.

[00:05:55]  Unidentified speaker: So you can think of Conjecture Studios as our media arm, slash our, quote unquote, Disney arm of animated things.

[00:06:02]  Unidentified speaker: And so yeah, those are our three main branches.

[00:06:05]  Logan: And I gave you our mission statement.

[00:06:06]  Unidentified speaker: So if I left anything out, I probably did.

[00:06:08]  Unidentified speaker: But feel free to ask me anything else.

[00:06:11]  Peter: Well, I read The Sovereign Child, excellent. Lords of the Cosmos, I've got in my hand, I've been looking at it. But then I realized that there's the Netflix and chill version of it too. So it's like you've got a choice. You can watch the watch the documentary, very informative, well produced documentary or read the book.

[00:06:36]  Unidentified speaker: Do I have that right?

[00:06:37]  Peter: They're both kind of the same?

[00:06:38]  Logan: You have that most you have that mostly right. So the book has additional material that's not in the documentary. That additional material, by the way, I think you guys would find it very interesting. And frankly, that could be expanded into its own right as a book because we added, what would a history of the universe look like from a knowledge-centered perspective? And we kind of go through some of the bottlenecks from the Big Bang until now. So we do kind of the typical, so there's a whole field called Big History.

[00:07:07]  Unidentified speaker: Maybe you're familiar with it.

[00:07:08]  Logan: But I would venture to guess that most of them are not Popperians and don't really see the actual role of knowledge in the cosmic scheme of things. So we go through many of the traditional Big History, what I call bottlenecks, such as the Big Bang, the birth of the first stars and this sort of thing. And then of course you get abiogenesis and then multicellularity and sex and this sort of thing. But then also we got to hit, we got to humanity and we talk about the origins of money, the origins of private property, the origins of science, the origins of democracy, all these sort of things. So that's, and again, it's kind of, it doesn't make the book so much bigger than the documentary that you were describing, Peter. But it just kind of gives a taste of, oh, this is what a history lesson would look like if people took a knowledge-centered view of the history of the cosmos. And then we take it to the future. So what is, what are the future knowledge-centered bottlenecks that humanity will pass? So we go through taking children, you know, a world in which taking children seriously is pervasive, immortality, artificial general intelligence and anarcho-capitalism. And there might be one other that I'm not quite remembering. And also, I should say, just one other thing, when we go through the history, we do maybe not deep dive, but one notch less than a deep dive into the origins of kind of the origins of some of our pre-enlightenment ideas that the Greek philosophers had developed.

[00:08:32]  Logan: So if you're into that sort of thing, then you'll definitely enjoy that section of the book as well. And also the, the enlightenment. So we go through basically, what are the contributions, not just scientifically, but epistemologically, societally, from someone like Socrates, Aristotle, Plato, and then of course, in the Enlightenment, Galileo, Copernicus, and so forth. Oh, and I should say we also cut just a couple other bottlenecks.

[00:08:56]  Unidentified speaker: We talk about, we talk about the universal computer.

[00:08:58]  Unidentified speaker: We talk about the birth of thermodynamics.

[00:09:00]  Unidentified speaker: And then one of the future.

[00:09:03]  Logan: And also that one of the future bottlenecks is the universal constructor. Yeah, I knew I was forgetting one.

[00:09:07]  Unidentified speaker: Okay, I'll stop there.

[00:09:08]  Unidentified speaker: Well, that's so cool.

[00:09:09]  Peter: And I love that you mentioned big history, because, like I said, I watched the great course's lecture on that. I can't remember the guy's name who came up with the concept. You know, it's like history from the largest possible lens. And I kept thinking about a thousand times while I watched his course, that I wish this guy would read some David Deutsch.

[00:09:34]  Unidentified speaker: Geez, he really, really needs to get hip to David Deutsch.

[00:09:39]  Unidentified speaker: It's like, I guess that's kind of what you've done here.

[00:09:42]  Peter: It's taken the same kind of concept. Wow, very cool, Logan.

[00:09:47]  Unidentified speaker: Thank you.

[00:09:47]  Logan: And Peter, after you read the book, let me know what you think. And let me know if you think that it would be a good idea to zoom in on the big history, as it were, and big, I don't know, what would you call it?

[00:09:57]  Unidentified speaker: Big futureology or something.

[00:09:59]  Logan: Let me know if you think that would be worthwhile to expand into a book, because I'm keeping my eye open on future Conjecture Institute projects.

[00:10:05]  Unidentified speaker: Okay, I love it.

[00:10:08]  Bruce: Thank you for that introduction, Logan. Very cool stuff. Logan and I were talking on the phone, I don't know, a couple of weeks ago or something, and he was explaining all this to me. I'm like, whoa, this is like so real. I had no idea. And just the cool stuff that you guys are doing, it's just amazing. So congratulations on getting this started and getting it up to speed so quickly. By the way, Judea Pearl, he's huge. When I took my master's degree in artificial intelligence, like they're quoting him constantly. Like he's just huge in machine learning. So I would love to hear your interview with him when you get him on. So all right, let me go ahead and kind of ask some opening questions here. So Logan and I were talking and we were, actually, let me give a little bit of background here. So I was long time ago, years and years and years ago, I was introduced to libertarians. So I had a friend at work. He was very staunch libertarian. We would talk about politics all the time. He was like super into conspiracy theories, right? And a more or less normal guy, he was an MBA type and he would put him out there and he did great for trying to run projects and things like that. But he always was always kind of delving into these conspiracy theories and we would talk about those. And at the time, I really, this was a long time ago now. And I used to think to myself, wow, those Libertarians, they're kind of crazy. And I'm glad that we conservatives, I consider myself a conservative, that we're really sane by comparison.

[00:11:46]  Bruce: And over time, I've come to realize, I just don't feel that way anymore. Like just in terms of the way things have gone, I don't even know, I still identify as a Republican. I'm a Republican and I identify as a conservative. And when people ask, I say, I'm a conservative. But like, I wonder how many conservatives today would still consider me a conservative, even though I haven't changed any in terms of my stances or my beliefs. Just the, what conservative even means seems like it's changed significantly over time, especially in the last, I don't know, decade and a half or decade or whatever. And when I'm talking with Logan, who I think you at least identify as a Libertarian, Logan just seems so sane by comparison, right? Which is, so we, I call him up on the phone and we talk politics and economics and things like that, precisely because it's a moment of sanity where I can actually talk to somebody normal. And, and we can talk about stuff, we can disagree, we can agree, it's no big deal. And so I, that was why I finally said, Logan, we should just have you on the show. We should have one of our conversations.

[00:12:51]  Unidentified speaker: We should just talk about whatever we think is fun.

[00:12:54]  Bruce: So, Logan, maybe, before I ask you my first question, just wanted to give you a chance to react to anything I just said so far, even if you disagree with it.

[00:13:05]  Logan: Yes, I was thinking when you were saying, you said something like other conservatives might not consider you conservative anymore and I was thinking, yeah, probably if you and I explained our views on current political issues, they would call us boomer cons or cucks or Zionists, which is a slur, Rinos.

[00:13:26]  Unidentified speaker: Right.

[00:13:26]  Logan: So this is all, of course, none of these are arguments and this gets to one of the very interesting things, so from a memetic perspective, the New Right or the Dissident Right, whatever you want to call it.

[00:13:36]  Unidentified speaker: If you go on Twitter, it's pretty fascinating.

[00:13:39]  Unidentified speaker: They have an entire arsenal of basically strategies to avoid engaging with the argument.

[00:13:45]  Logan: It's kind of funny sometimes and it changes because they become stale and then they get called out on it and they switch. So the latest one, and I'm not quite addressing what you're saying, but this is just on my mind.

[00:13:56]  Unidentified speaker: This is fun stuff.

[00:13:57]  Unidentified speaker: Go for it.

[00:13:57]  Unidentified speaker: So they'll say something totally wild and insane from our perspective to be fair.

[00:14:02]  Logan: And then they say, this is the moderate position, as if that's an argument. Like, oh, okay, you're the moderate, so I guess we just have to do what you want because you've defined yourself as the moderate. And also, of course, whether something is moderate or extreme, this is theory-laden and is subject to, it's cultural dependent. My example I always say is, how many slaves should there be in the world? Everyone says, all Westerners say zero. Okay, zero is an extreme number. Not even one, that's an extremist position. But that's not a valid criticism.

[00:14:30]  Unidentified speaker: It doesn't make any sense.

[00:14:32]  Logan: Like assuming that moderation in all things is good, it's not supported by any sound explanation. Unless there's a particular case in which it is, and so be it. So that's one of their many strategies.

[00:14:43]  Unidentified speaker: But they have a lot of these.

[00:14:44]  Unidentified speaker: I can't think of another one off the top of my head.

[00:14:47]  Logan: Oh, so another one, for example, so to take kind of a current event, there was that Florida Young Republicans group chat.

[00:14:54]  Unidentified speaker: And by Young, they mean 30 to 40 years old.

[00:14:57]  Unidentified speaker: And people are saying, no, we shouldn't throw them under the bus because it's accepting the left's framing.

[00:15:04]  Logan: And I disagree that it's accepting the left's framing to advocate for decency.

[00:15:08]  Unidentified speaker: That's insane.

[00:15:09]  Logan: So I think some people have gotten themselves into a very tribal mindset.

[00:15:13]  Unidentified speaker: And by the way, I'm a fan of tribalism sometimes.

[00:15:16]  Unidentified speaker: It's fine.

[00:15:17]  Unidentified speaker: But to say, to blindly be anti-left, I think is a problem.

[00:15:23]  Logan: And then there's also the fact that their economics are totally, well, ironically, they've become economic leftists.

[00:15:29]  Unidentified speaker: Bruce, you and I have talked about this privately.

[00:15:30]  Unidentified speaker: And that's one of my main...

[00:15:31]  Logan: So in other words, they think our problem with them is that they are like what they would call the real right. And you and I are squishes or whatever.

[00:15:39]  Unidentified speaker: And I'm like, no, we are the...

[00:15:40]  Unidentified speaker: You and I, Bruce, we're the real right wingers, at least economically, domestically, as it were, the real conservatives, the real conservatarians, libertarians.

[00:15:48]  Logan: They're the ones who either don't care about economic issues, or they're like, yeah, fine, we should have socialized medicine and all this stuff, as long as we have fewer transgender five-year-olds and the borders are closed.

[00:15:57]  Unidentified speaker: And to me, that's not enough.

[00:16:00]  Logan: And Richard Hanania is good on this. There is an anti-intellectualism that has evolved on the right, such that I feel bad for people like Ben Shapiro and Vivek Ramaswamy, who seem to know economics and right wingers just don't care.

[00:16:19]  Unidentified speaker: Like, they're vaguely anti-communist.

[00:16:22]  Unidentified speaker: Like, if you really push them, they would say, no, I'm not a communist.

[00:16:25]  Unidentified speaker: And then you ask them their positions and it's like, I don't think they could explain to you why socialism is bad.

[00:16:31]  Unidentified speaker: Right, right.

[00:16:32]  Bruce: Okay, thank you for saying all that. Let me actually kind of talk through that with you a bit. So, I'm older than you, Logan. So, I don't know that you were around or thinking about politics much back in say, the George HW.

[00:16:47]  Unidentified speaker: Bush era or something like that, right?

[00:16:49]  Bruce: And so, I'm thinking way back to that era where there was a fairly definitive set of ideas that conservatives stood for. And a lot of them were moral ideas, but a lot of them were economic ideas. And I can recall, so like during like the Clinton era, I had this attitude, which is embarrassing to me now, but I had this attitude where you had Bill Clinton, who, he was accused of a lot of really awful things. And there was like some, we won't get into any of that, because I don't want to get that political, but he was accused of quite a few things. And there was quite a bit of evidence that he had done some really pretty questionable things, morally speaking. And I remember thinking, man, I can't even imagine Republicans ever, and feminists would get behind him, even though he was doing some fairly sexist things, stuff like that, right? And I remember thinking, man, I can't even imagine Republicans acting like this, right? And I had a certain attitude towards the left. I was definitely more like today, I definitely have concerns with the left. We can talk about that if you want, Logan. But like a lot of times good stuff comes out of the left. And I have a very different attitude towards it today than I did back then. And I can't even conceive like the types of things that I thought conservatives stood for. I really thought this is what we as conservatives believe in. And this is what defines us as conservatives. And almost, I wouldn't say all of them, but almost all of them have been abandoned at this point.

[00:18:24]  Bruce: In a way, and so quickly, and in a way that just surprises me, like really kind of shocks me to my core. And maybe even causes an identity crisis for me, right? So help me out here, Logan. You know, how do, what do I do? You know, I asked Jonathan Rauch this on our, one of our previous episodes, and he gave me advice on this. But like, how do you try to engage people that are part of this New Right? And how do you try to bring some sense to the, and I really want to, like I really badly don't want to just name call and stuff like that. I hate the fact that, like, I have a family member who I think has Trump derangement syndrome, right? Like, he's going so far the other way that it's almost crazy, right?

[00:19:08]  Unidentified speaker: I don't want to do that.

[00:19:09]  Bruce: And I don't want to like, and I've got no problem with people on either side.

[00:19:14]  Unidentified speaker: I want to talk with them.

[00:19:14]  Bruce: I want to try to have sane conversations with them.

[00:19:17]  Unidentified speaker: And it seems so hard to me today.

[00:19:20]  Unidentified speaker: What do I do, Logan?

[00:19:20]  Unidentified speaker: Help me out here.

[00:19:22]  Unidentified speaker: Yeah.

[00:19:23]  Logan: So first of all, what you were saying about Bill Clinton and character and this sort of things, I will say, and this is probably a point of difference between us, I personally don't really care about any politician's character, unless it's so egregious that it's, you know, it could have, in other words, I care about policy, I care about institutions. I care about, insofar as someone's politician's character is lacking, it degrades our institutions and our norms, then sure, I care. But I don't really care, like, whether it's left or right, I don't care about salacious stories or this politician's a sleazeball or whatever, I don't really care. So that could just be a difference between us. As for what do we do, I think we do all that we can do, which is basically stay in the pocket and make as coherent of an argument as you can. I mean, I think that's always, I think in the face of both bad arguments and non-arguments, I think the key is to stay classy and make sound arguments. Because don't forget, you know, it's different when it's one-on-one. But whenever there's an audience, I think the audience notices this sort of thing. So if you're making an argument for, let's just say, free immigration, not totally open borders, let's say, but you're just making an argument that immigration is a good thing. And they're just going nuts on you. I think people notice that. And by the way, another thing is just to point out when reasoning is bad on its own terms. So what do I mean by this?

[00:20:43]  Logan: In particular, with immigration, for example, and I think we might have talked about this privately, when it comes to economics, any argument that relies only on one side of the ledger is necessarily flawed. For example, people will say, immigration suppresses native wages of workers because you increase the supply of labor, and so all else being equal, wages will go down. Okay, so that is true, but that's only one side of the equation. If labor costs go down for a company, that means their profits are increasing, which means they have more capital that they can deploy elsewhere and create more goods and services for the people. And also the goods and services they were providing in the first place, insofar as they have a higher profit margin, they can offer them to the rest of America at lower prices. So it's incomplete to say, immigration lowers the wages of workers, because you would also have to say, immigration lowers the wages of workers and lowers the price of goods and services that all other Americans consume. So it's not that simple. So that would just be an example of, again, deploying economic reasoning in the face of incomplete economic reasoning. So that's one thing you can do.

[00:21:52]  Unidentified speaker: Yeah, that makes sense.

[00:21:52]  Logan: And then in turn, yeah, so I think that's one thing. And again, and I think when it comes to these non-argumentative kind of memetic strategies that I'd mentioned earlier, I think exposing them is very important. And frankly, you don't see a lot of that, again, with the exception of there are a handful really, and I've begun to follow them on X, that are exposing why these are not arguments, I think, is very important. So to give a more philosophical example, you might have seen a lot of this, they say, classical liberalism brought us here, and here is, of course, an apocalyptic hellscape, this is another rhetorical device that they employ, they catastrophize everything.

[00:22:29]  Unidentified speaker: Because of course, what's the only thing that can save us from catastrophe?

[00:22:32]  Unidentified speaker: It's basically a strong man, a big government.

[00:22:35]  Logan: But again, economics tells us that that doesn't make any sense.

[00:22:38]  Unidentified speaker: But also, epistemologically, you're saying, classical liberalism brought us here, therefore, classical liberalism is bad.

[00:22:46]  Unidentified speaker: Okay, well, first of all, as you know, Bruce, our government hasn't been like classically liberal.

[00:22:52]  Logan: If by that, you include small government in a very long time, since the early 20th century.

[00:22:58]  Unidentified speaker: Also, I notice this a lot when people are basically, they have an agenda, they have certain policies they want to push.

[00:23:04]  Logan: And therefore, they will arbitrarily choose whatever historical starting point they want to criticize that. So I could just as well say, if monarchy brought us here, of what use was monarchy?

[00:23:14]  Unidentified speaker: You know what I mean?

[00:23:15]  Logan: So it's without a good explanation for why a particular political philosophy led to where we are. Without a good explanation for that, then you're just cherry picking to suit a narrative.

[00:23:23]  Unidentified speaker: Also, I'll just say one last thing and then I'll shut up.

[00:23:26]  Logan: This idea of catastrophizing, and this is where, this is another strategy, this used to be only a left-wing thing where you would show them graphs from humanprogress.org because they basically think the world hasn't improved in the last 300 years or whatever. I'm strawmanning, I understand.

[00:23:40]  Unidentified speaker: But it's the same thing now on the right.

[00:23:41]  Unidentified speaker: They're like, oh, our cities are falling apart, everyone's gay now.

[00:23:44]  Unidentified speaker: It's like, I don't know, man.

[00:23:45]  Logan: Just look up some charts of real wages and all these other stats that shows things really are improving. Once you accept that things are improving, then you can ask, okay, well, why are they improving?

[00:23:55]  Unidentified speaker: If improvement has slowed down, okay, let's think about that.

[00:23:58]  Logan: But it's totally arbitrary and again, it doesn't make any sense to say, okay, improvement has slowed down, so let's increase the amount of, in this case, political coercion in society.

[00:24:06]  Unidentified speaker: That doesn't make any sense.

[00:24:08]  Unidentified speaker: All right, I was just saying something so similar last night on Facebook.

[00:24:15]  Unidentified speaker: I just feel like my third eye is open on this.

[00:24:19]  Peter: The left and the right are just operating under almost like superficially different strains of doomerism here.

[00:24:28]  Unidentified speaker: I mean, these negative narratives about like, I just feel like I'm inundated with them on all sides whenever I delve into politics these days, which is rarely if I can help it.

[00:24:44]  Unidentified speaker: I'm less political at 48 than I've ever been.

[00:24:47]  Unidentified speaker: I just do not like engaging with this stuff very much if I can help it.

[00:24:54]  Peter: I just feel like it's psychologically unhealthy for me.

[00:24:58]  Unidentified speaker: But it's all about the world is getting worse and worse.

[00:25:05]  Unidentified speaker: But the reality, the white-pilled reality is that as I'm sure you agree with, I suspect you agree with Logan, is that across every dimension of human life, there's incremental progress all around us.

[00:25:24]  Unidentified speaker: And the evidence is so strong.

[00:25:30]  Peter: If you paid me a million dollars to go back, 10 or 20 years before podcasts and audiobooks and phones and all this stuff, I wouldn't take it, let alone 100 or 1000 years ago.

[00:25:43]  Logan: Well, I was just going to say, so first of all, Peter, you know, we've been criticizing a lot of the right, and I understand that's more or less what we're here to talk about. But let's not be, we should never slip into political relativism. I really don't like, first of all, it's not true. But second of all, I don't like it as a rhetorical strategy. And I'm not accusing you of this, but I think a lot of people do it. It's kind of cowardice. It's like, oh, everyone's equally bad. You know, just logically this is possible, but just, you know, be on the lookout for that. It might not necessarily be true.

[00:26:11]  Unidentified speaker: As for what you were saying, Peter, about everything falling apart, and then I'll stop talking.

[00:26:15]  Logan: Jack Posobiec, who's basically one of these New Right political pundits. I remember he tweeted, he's like, this is what they took from us. And it's a picture of a white picket fence family. Like, I don't know, they look all happy. It's the 50s or whatever.

[00:26:27]  Unidentified speaker: And then I remember it might have been David Harsanyi, who's really good, or someone like that.

[00:26:31]  Logan: Another, basically a right-winger who is pro-growth, kind of like a libertarian right-winger, just showed some stats of like, okay, this is how poor you would have been 50 years ago. And it's like, this is the issue.

[00:26:43]  Unidentified speaker: Yeah.

[00:26:44]  Unidentified speaker: I mean, this 50s conservatism thing, it's just a, it's basically just one sliver of time, maybe, where people lived like this.

[00:26:55]  Unidentified speaker: And it's, you know, it's a, I mean, that's why I, I mean, it's a noble goal, I think.

[00:27:00]  Unidentified speaker: I think there's some central truth that this is the key to psychological happiness and prosperity.

[00:27:10]  Unidentified speaker: You know, you get married, you have kids, you take care of your kids.

[00:27:14]  Peter: These are all good principles. But, you know, it's just, it's not, it's, it's such a simplistic view of how people have lived throughout history. I'm already talking way more than I thought I would.

[00:27:25]  Unidentified speaker: But, go for it.

[00:27:26]  Unidentified speaker: No, this is good.

[00:27:27]  Logan: And by the way, by the way, the, right, so as you say, there are kernels of truth in what they say. And if they want, for example, let's say they are lamenting the loss of the family tradition, the family culture in America. Okay, well, conservatives used to rightly say, in my view, that the welfare state crowds out private charity and raises the returns on being a single mother, effectively. And that's true, or at least I agree with that. But they don't really make economic arguments anymore. It's just, it's all very feels. And sometimes some New Right people basically say, we should co-opt the welfare state for our own means. We should subsidize people to having families. So basically, we're picking one pocket to pay the... This is what Mises would talk about when he talked about one socialist program begets another one. I would add the caveat that in the absence of economic knowledge, because basically, okay, you have a welfare state, it degrades the ability for Americans to form families, or it degrades Americans forming families. And so instead of saying, okay, well, let's privatize the welfare state, which by the way, Bill Clinton reformed the welfare state to a nice degree.

[00:28:36]  Unidentified speaker: He did.

[00:28:36]  Unidentified speaker: He was more of a...

[00:28:37]  Logan: Yeah, and George Bush with his compassionate conservatism, which I hate that framing, because it concedes the whole game, but I digress. So instead of saying, let's shrink the welfare state, they just say, oh, well, let's take it over and subsidize people instead of... Or subsidize the right way for people to form a family, rather than just getting rid of the whole thing entirely. There's a nice conversation where people had that argument. Patrick Deneen, I think, he's one of these...

[00:29:00]  Unidentified speaker: There are these like, I don't know what to call them.

[00:29:02]  Unidentified speaker: They're theocrats, but they're not really, and they're kind of larping, but they're these kind of the NatCon, big government Christians, and Chris Rufo was actually pushing back, and he basically said, he's like, look, you want to have a right wing welfare state, but I just don't think it works.

[00:29:17]  Unidentified speaker: So I respect Chris Rufo for saying that.

[00:29:18]  Logan: And by the way, I should say Chris Rufo has been heroic also on pushing against the conspiracism on the right and the anti-Semitism on the right, or what David Deutsch would call the pattern. So he's been great on that stuff. Others have been cowardly and silent.

[00:29:32]  Unidentified speaker: It's been very disappointing.

[00:29:33]  Bruce: Well, you're moving so fast. And there's so many things I want to ask you about. So I want to earmark several things you said and then come back to them. Can I first ask both of you, and actually, let's have Peter start. Why does catastrophizing and putting things in terms of emotional terms, what we've been talking about for the last little while here, why is it so effective? And why has it crowded out, at least for the moment, crowded out better arguments, at least to a degree that it makes me uncomfortable?

[00:30:04]  Unidentified speaker: Well, that's a great question.

[00:30:05]  Peter: I mean, in some, I guess that in some ways, it makes people feel good that they're living in momentous times. Maybe this has gone back to the Bible and Revelation or way before that. People have always felt like they live in a really important time when, when the earth is becoming inhospitable or we're on the verge of fascism. It kind of taps into also to valid, very valid concerns about our children.

[00:30:43]  Unidentified speaker: I mean, we're really worried.

[00:30:44]  Peter: So many of these, this catastrophizing involves, you know, our children's psychological health about, I'm thinking phones and social media and games would be the main one right now that seems to sort of unite the right and the left.

[00:31:05]  Unidentified speaker: They both seem to think that these things are terrible.

[00:31:10]  Peter: It's just like crazy Libertarian slash adjacent people like us who think that maybe it's not so bad and maybe even good.

[00:31:21]  Unidentified speaker: But I, anyway, that's my two cents.

[00:31:25]  Unidentified speaker: Let's hear Logan though.

[00:31:29]  Unidentified speaker: Yeah, it's a very interesting question because from my vantage point, catastrophizing is not as interesting as whatever the opposite of catastrophizing.

[00:31:39]  Unidentified speaker: Well, so catastrophizing is very homogenizing.

[00:31:41]  Logan: It's saying everything's falling apart and the solution generally is just coercion.

[00:31:47]  Unidentified speaker: So to me, that's super boring.

[00:31:49]  Unidentified speaker: It's the same thing when we talk about taking children seriously.

[00:31:51]  Logan: It's, here are all these potential catastrophic scenarios, so we need rules to impose on our children to guarantee safety. Now, one of the counterarguments is, and this goes to Libertarianism too, is that there never is a guarantee, there's no guarantee. So, when people argue for the welfare state, very often, the implication is that this can guarantee the alleviation of poverty. And when it comes to kids, we can guarantee that they won't, you know, I don't want to say it out loud, but like, so that something horrible will happen. But the uncomfortable truth is that there are no such guarantees in both cases. Even though we have an entire culture and laws around kids not doing drugs, kids still do drugs and overdose. Even though we've had a massive welfare state for decades, we still have poverty.

[00:32:34]  Unidentified speaker: In fact, the reduction in poverty has slowed down since the welfare state, but that's another story.

[00:32:39]  Logan: So I think, so people think that the truth is less interesting, but I think that's only because they discount the role of reasons and knowledge and uncertainty and unknowability. Once you grok that those things are real and play an indelible role in the events of society, things are actually much more exciting. You know, it's much more exciting to talk about, okay, there's a problem here. What if we marketize that as in like turn it over to the free market? And now there's all sorts of possibilities because entrepreneurs can come in and try to solve the problem.

[00:33:11]  Unidentified speaker: And then the statists will say, well, either catastrophize or say that'll never happen.

[00:33:17]  Unidentified speaker: Or like if I described Uber to you before Uber was invented.

[00:33:20]  Logan: Okay, so here's what's going to happen. Get on your phone, which is already a black rectangle that you use your fingerprints to open and you press a few buttons and a black car is going to show up and the windows won't even, well, the windows might, I don't remember, but whatever, a stranger in a black car is going to show up to your front door in like 10 minutes and you're going to get in and not only will he or she drive you to your destination, but they will often have a free water bottle, which is itself not poisoned. That's the excitement of and the unknowability of what the free market produces. But no, but instead they'll say, no, but we already have taxis and they work and it's fine.

[00:33:56]  Unidentified speaker: So this applies everywhere.

[00:33:58]  Unidentified speaker: This applies to environmental catastrophe, environmentalist catastrophizing as well.

[00:34:02]  Unidentified speaker: No, I 100% agree.

[00:34:04]  Unidentified speaker: Optimism is just, it's so much more interesting and realistic.

[00:34:09]  Peter: If I can just say one more thing about that before you go, Bruce, is that I am, I know this makes me a bad guy to probably many of our listeners. I'm a teacher.

[00:34:21]  Unidentified speaker: I see hundreds of geometry students, hundreds or a hundred, more than a hundred geometry students every day.

[00:34:32]  Peter: And I just want to say, these kids are nice.

[00:34:36]  Unidentified speaker: There's no issue here.

[00:34:39]  Peter: They're, if anything, they're nicer and friendlier and enjoying their lives more. And they read books.

[00:34:47]  Unidentified speaker: And yeah, they look at their phones a little bit too much, like all of us do.

[00:34:51]  Unidentified speaker: But it's like,

[00:34:52]  Unidentified speaker: Disagree, but okay.

[00:34:53]  Unidentified speaker: Okay.

[00:34:54]  Unidentified speaker: No, no, I can, I can take it.

[00:34:56]  Unidentified speaker: I can take it.

[00:34:58]  Unidentified speaker: I mean, I'm open to this idea that phones are actually good for us as well.

[00:35:05]  Unidentified speaker: But I, I assume that's what you were disagreeing about.

[00:35:10]  Unidentified speaker: But yeah, the kids are fine.

[00:35:12]  Bruce: He disagrees that kids are nice.

[00:35:13]  Unidentified speaker: That's what he was disagreeing about.

[00:35:14]  Unidentified speaker: The kids are not as nice.

[00:35:15]  Unidentified speaker: He's not.

[00:35:16]  Bruce: He's telling you they're mean. They're mean, Peter.

[00:35:19]  Unidentified speaker: Okay.

[00:35:20]  Unidentified speaker: Okay.

[00:35:20]  Unidentified speaker: Anyway, my two cents there, Bruce.

[00:35:23]  Unidentified speaker: Well, okay.

[00:35:24]  Bruce: So both of you gave kind of a similar answer here. But let me, let me push a little bit further with you.

[00:35:29]  Unidentified speaker: Okay.

[00:35:30]  Bruce: So yes, I agree that optimism is, is both more realistic and more interesting than catastrophizing. And so we say, oh, you know, people, but, but why, why do people prefer catastrophizing when optimism is both more realistic and more interesting?

[00:35:49]  Unidentified speaker: Like, like, you haven't really answered the question, right?

[00:35:52]  Logan: I, it's because I think it's just a matter of they don't, how do I say this without sounding arrogant? It's just an error.

[00:35:59]  Unidentified speaker: They think it's, they think catastrophism is true and optimism is false.

[00:36:04]  Peter: Yeah, it seems more sophisticated.

[00:36:06]  Bruce: So, how does that error happen then, right? Like, I know this is a funny question, right? But like, why is it that so many people have this idea that things are getting worse?

[00:36:17]  Unidentified speaker: And that things are terrible.

[00:36:18]  Unidentified speaker: Okay, so this is good.

[00:36:19]  Unidentified speaker: This is good.

[00:36:20]  Unidentified speaker: Yes.

[00:36:20]  Logan: So first of all, as you both well know, error is the standard state, not knowledge.

[00:36:26]  Unidentified speaker: So that's first of all.

[00:36:27]  Unidentified speaker: But secondly, I think to your point, there are, I think, institutions in society that, for example, the news, right?

[00:36:37]  Logan: I think Steven Pinker probably makes, I think he's the one who's made this argument. A lot of, it so happens that a lot of the good news in society is not a discrete event. So, you know, no news outlet is saying, oh, poverty has diminished by 100,000, 100,000 people have been lifted out of absolute poverty today. Worldwide news. But a plane crash or a political riot or a murder, or like that murder of that woman on the bus in Maryland, was it, or the train, you know, that gets a lot of attention. Whereas in reality, you need to step back and just ask, you have to be more statistically minded about these things. But even, so in other words, the absence of crime is not a news story, but crime is a news story.

[00:37:15]  Unidentified speaker: So that's an unfortunate asymmetry.

[00:37:18]  Unidentified speaker: Again, this is cultural.

[00:37:18]  Logan: I mean, this could change.

[00:37:19]  Unidentified speaker: It could literally be the case that when people, I don't know what people watch for news, like what's the average thing that people watch for news?

[00:37:25]  Unidentified speaker: CNN, whatever.

[00:37:26]  Logan: It could be that one day, they do report on the charts that humanprogress.org puts out and they get more viewers. Don't forget, the news, customer is king in the market, as I hope we all agree on. And so, they're catering, they say if it bleeds, it leads.

[00:37:40]  Unidentified speaker: But if they're saying that, that's because consumers are, the consumers are saying that.

[00:37:44]  Logan: So we have to change the, basically, the short answer to your question, Bruce, is we have to change the culture for people to be more excited by good news than bad news and then teach them like these little, I don't know if they're logical fallacies or just kind of errors in thinking of, for example, as I said, a trend versus a discrete event.

[00:38:02]  Unidentified speaker: Both are historically significant with respect to society, but only one sort of captures the attention of the mind right now, but that can change.

[00:38:11]  Peter: It's a good side to catastrophizing too, though, because on the podcast, we've kind of talked about maybe there's some advantages to dogmatism even though it has a negative connotation. Maybe it's kind of the same with catastrophizing. I mean, is it a good thing that people catastrophize about, say, the fentanyl crisis or crime or something?

[00:38:32]  Unidentified speaker: I mean, there must be a good side to this as well, wouldn't you say?

[00:38:35]  Unidentified speaker: Good question.

[00:38:36]  Unidentified speaker: Good question.

[00:38:37]  Unidentified speaker: Logan, if [unclear]—

[00:38:38]  Logan: This might be a terminological thing. I mean, if something really is a crisis, then treating it as such, I don't think is catastrophizing. So, for example, with the fentanyl issue, it definitely seems to be a real issue. I don't know how severe it is. In other words, I'm not arguing for blindly saying nothing is a severe issue. I'm basically arguing for sobriety, no pun intended. By the way, with the fentanyl thing, this is a nice example of a difference between Libertarians and Conservatives, because, you know, MAGA is celebrating Trump.

[00:39:10]  Unidentified speaker: I think he bombed fentanyl suppliers or whatever.

[00:39:14]  Unidentified speaker: But to me, you can't bomb your way out of a demand problem.

[00:39:17]  Logan: I'd rather see a legalized market in drugs, and then everything's above board. And if some, just like with alcohol now versus alcohol during the Prohibition era, transporting alcohol is much safer now, as is consuming it, because you don't have to do it in a black market way, although not for children. And maybe that's why they overdose more than adults, because they have to rush it.

[00:39:37]  Unidentified speaker: Anyway, no, I think from my vantage point, catastrophizing, that is to say, uncritically hyperbolizing, I think, is always bad.

[00:39:46]  Logan: Why would that ever be good?

[00:39:47]  Bruce: Okay, so, um, I'm going to actually argue differently than, than Logan. This is probably another example of how we differ because he's more libertarian and I'm more conservative.

[00:39:56]  Bruce: By the way, just for the record,

[00:39:58]  Unidentified speaker: you're a socialist.

[00:39:59]  Bruce: Yeah, for the record, Logan, people, most people consider me a libertarian. So I don't self identify that way, but I don't like reject the label either.

[00:40:08]  Unidentified speaker: Bruce, are you familiar with the term conservatarian?

[00:40:11]  Unidentified speaker: No.

[00:40:12]  Unidentified speaker: What's a conservatarian?

[00:40:14]  Unidentified speaker: Conservatarian are basically, those are my people.

[00:40:17]  Logan: They're conservatives, they vote Republicans, they're like Reaganites. They like small government.

[00:40:20]  Unidentified speaker: They're serious about small government.

[00:40:21]  Bruce: I'm a Reagan Republican, yeah.

[00:40:23]  Unidentified speaker: Yeah.

[00:40:24]  Unidentified speaker: Absolutely.

[00:40:25]  Unidentified speaker: Yeah.

[00:40:26]  Bruce: So I'm going to answer that differently than Logan did though. So yes, I think there must be some value in catastrophizing. So I think that there are two senses in which it could be, and I do mean that in the bad way, right? Like I do mean making a bigger deal out of it than it actually is.

[00:40:44]  Unidentified speaker: Okay.

[00:40:44]  Bruce: Because if it's just making a deal out of it to exactly what it is, then I agree, maybe we shouldn't be calling it catastrophizing. I think there's two things. One is we've talked on this show about how people will run ahead of the critical discussion. They have beliefs that run ahead of the critical discussion, for better or for worse, right?

[00:41:02]  Unidentified speaker: Often for worse.

[00:41:04]  Bruce: In an open society, there is an advantage to letting some people do that, right? Where they raise an alarm, you get a bunch of alarms that maybe weren't correct alarms. But like some of them turn out to be correct. Turns out that they were seeing something that was going to become a bigger problem down the road. So there is actually some advantage to the fact that we allow people to catastrophize and that some people do run ahead of where the critical discussion is, make a big deal and then get us maybe ready for a problem that wasn't seen yet or that was coming. And then the ones that are kind of bad, they all kind of filter out through, they don't make it through the Popperian filter, they kind of disappear. That would be part of my answer. That would be the better part of the answer. I think the not as good maybe part of the answer is that I think that the reason why people do this is because there is some sort of emotional something they get out of it.

[00:42:01]  Unidentified speaker: Right?

[00:42:02]  Bruce: I've called this meaning memes in the past. And you know, people do need to find ways to find meaning in their life. Of course, I wish that they would find better ways and do it more like Logan and then try to get excited about progress, things like that.

[00:42:15]  Unidentified speaker: But like, not everybody's going to do that, right?

[00:42:18]  Bruce: And so you are going to have some people who are going to be catastrophizing, oh no, the end of the world because of X or whatever. And there's this element of their choosing to do that because that is the way they find meaning in their life, right? And if we have a function, I'm going to argue that if we have a functioning open society, which we do, right, at least in America, as long as that continues to function, that the bad side of that tends to not make it too far through the Popperian filter, whereas the good side tends to make it through, right? They bring up issues. I've kind of joked about this, but it's the idea that you've got people on the left.

[00:43:00]  Unidentified speaker: We haven't talked about the left yet, so maybe we can talk about that.

[00:43:02]  Bruce: We've got people on the left, and they're almost always catastrophizing something, right? And, oh, no, this, oh, no, that. And I used to really have a problem with that as a conservative. And as I've become more Popperian, I've kind of chilled out on that quite a bit as I've started to realize that a lot of the good stuff that has come as progress came from that same group on the left that was constantly sounding alarms. And a lot of their alarms didn't make it through the filter. Some of them were just good enough that conservatives picked it up. And they'd say, you know what, that's kind of a legitimate issue. Let's work on solving that issue, right? And then ultimately the issue gets solved by some sort of alliance between the left and the right, right? This is the way open society is supposed to work anyhow. And it gets implemented in a way that works for both sides.

[00:43:50]  Unidentified speaker: And I do think that is the way the open society works.

[00:43:52]  Bruce: And because of that, there is, I can't say there's no value in catastrophizing. This still goes back to the fact that I wish it didn't happen the way it did. Like I wish we could learn to bring these issues up without like turning it into such a, oh my gosh, end of the world. And just being so dishonest, intellectually dishonest about it, right? But like, I do feel like the open society is this error correction mechanism that does make it so it never really becomes as bad as it first appears as the catastrophizing takes place.

[00:44:26]  Unidentified speaker: And most of the good gets through.

[00:44:27]  Unidentified speaker: Okay, that would be my answer.

[00:44:29]  Peter: I'm reminded of Roger Scruton's definition of conservatism, where he says it's basically liberalism with brakes.

[00:44:37]  Unidentified speaker: Do you agree with that, Bruce?

[00:44:38]  Unidentified speaker: Yes, I do.

[00:44:39]  Unidentified speaker: Okay.

[00:44:41]  Logan: I don't agree with that and I don't agree with either of Bruce's reasons for why catastrophism might be good.

[00:44:46]  Unidentified speaker: Yay, disagreement.

[00:44:48]  Unidentified speaker: Yes, absolutely.

[00:44:51]  Logan: Yeah, so to the Roger Scruton point, I think it just doesn't make sense when you look at the various policy positions. Again, you have to kind of forget about the fact that the right wing is labeled conservative. You have to not mix that political label up with the generic meaning of the word conservative.

[00:45:07]  Unidentified speaker: Sometimes there's overlap, sometimes there's not.

[00:45:10]  Logan: And then same thing with progressive. So just because someone calls themselves progressive politically as a label, does not mean that all of their positions cause society to make progress. So this is just kind of conflating. It's like a linguistic sophistry. Okay, so that's one thing.

[00:45:26]  Unidentified speaker: I agree with you.

[00:45:27]  Logan: So I think you were saying catastrophists, they often, even though they're wild and they're manic and they say a bunch of stuff, sometimes they hit on something that's correct and therefore that's valuable. And in an open society, we should allow for this sort of thing. Of course we should allow for it.

[00:45:42]  Unidentified speaker: But I think you're basically crediting diversity of thought.

[00:45:46]  Logan: You're crediting catastrophism rather than what you should be crediting, which is simply diversity of thought. So catastrophism is just white noise added to the mix.

[00:45:55]  Unidentified speaker: So I agree with you.

[00:45:56]  Logan: People who are constantly pointing out various problems in society, that's very useful. But to add the catastrophism just makes it more difficult to discover the real error because then still someone has to creatively and soberly come and realize, okay, well, let's say climate change.

[00:46:11]  Unidentified speaker: That's actually not a catastrophe.

[00:46:13]  Logan: But here are solutions to mitigate climate change or increase climate mastery, as Alex Epstein describes it.

[00:46:18]  Unidentified speaker: So I just think you're crediting the wrong element of what's happening there.

[00:46:23]  Logan: And then your first reason as to why it's good, I don't remember what your first reason was, but I remember I disagreed with it.

[00:46:29]  Unidentified speaker: That some people do find meaning from it.

[00:46:32]  Unidentified speaker: Oh, yes.

[00:46:34]  Unidentified speaker: I think that's, yeah, I think that's infantilizing.

[00:46:37]  Logan: I think people find meaning from strapping bombs on their chest and blowing up gay nightclubs and churches and synagogues and this sort of thing. But I don't care.

[00:46:45]  Unidentified speaker: It's wrong.

[00:46:47]  Unidentified speaker: All right.

[00:46:47]  Unidentified speaker: Fair enough.

[00:46:50]  Bruce: So, let me ask you about immigration since you already brought that up. And I don't want to lose it here. Isn't there some truth to the right's concern with immigration?

[00:47:03]  Logan: So, we already talked about the economics of it. So, there, I think, there's not truth unless you're willing to say, all native-born Americans are entitled to, A, a job, because this also connects to the whole tariff discussion, because they're saying like job loss and stuff. Okay, so if you want to shield America from the world in terms of labor competition and just company competition with respect to foreign companies, if that's really your position, then it makes sense. But you would have to implement such a, I don't want to say totalitarian, but such a massive, and also all of our standards of living would drop dramatically if we completely shielded America from the rest of the world.

[00:47:40]  Bruce: So never mind completely shield America, or never mind like,

[00:47:43]  Unidentified speaker: Sure, sure, sure.

[00:47:44]  Bruce: But surely there's some concerns with, let's say that you just simply said, you know what, we're not going to enforce borders at all.

[00:47:52]  Unidentified speaker: Taking the extreme other version.

[00:47:54]  Unidentified speaker: Open borders.

[00:47:55]  Unidentified speaker: Yeah.

[00:47:56]  Logan: Yes, there are libertarians who advocate for that.

[00:47:58]  Unidentified speaker: That you wouldn't be one of them?

[00:48:00]  Unidentified speaker: Or do you, what do you think there?

[00:48:02]  Unidentified speaker: No, I would adopt a gradualist position.

[00:48:05]  Logan: I would say in favor of more immigration, but still subject to check for criminality and what do they call it?

[00:48:15]  Unidentified speaker: Diseases and that sort of thing.

[00:48:16]  Logan: But certainly, I'd be for a more liberalized immigration system than what we have now. And then, yeah, I agree that there could be. So the cultural angle is the one I'm most sympathetic to. But even there, again, I go back to Mises' One Socialist Policy Begets Another. First I would totally drop the any anti-freedom of association laws. I would totally abolish overnight. Well, subject to the political process, of course. Because in other words, if native-born Americans are saying they're losing their culture, okay, but other people within your culture disagree and would welcome the immigrants. So better if we could basically have a bunch of subcultural experiments in which some people let immigrants in, some people don't, and then there's of course every variant in between those two extremes. But you're not allowed to discriminate now on many grounds.

[00:49:05]  Unidentified speaker: And so I would legalize all forms of discrimination.

[00:49:08]  Logan: But having said that, I would not open the borders entirely today, but I would liberalize a little bit more, a little bit more, a little bit more. And if there are any severe issues, then okay, maybe we address that. But I don't think, I think the idea that we, I think America does a pretty good job, especially it seems like relative to Europe, of integrating people.

[00:49:26]  Unidentified speaker: And I should say, the cultural taboo against immigration is very, very bad.

[00:49:31]  Unidentified speaker: I listened to Noam Dworman's podcast, it's called Live, either from the comedy cellar or at the comedy cellar.

[00:49:38]  Unidentified speaker: You guys would really like it.

[00:49:40]  Logan: And he does talk about how there seems to be, he works with a lot of, I don't know if they're illegal immigrants or whatever, or just legal immigrants from other countries.

[00:49:47]  Unidentified speaker: And he does talk about how they don't seem as patriotic about America as the immigrants of 30, 50 years ago.

[00:49:54]  Unidentified speaker: And that's an issue, but there I don't think the issue, I mean, in a sense, it's not the immigrants' fault, it's the rest of Americans' fault for not standing up with a spine and being right wing, what's the word?

[00:50:07]  Logan: Anyway, right wing kind of patriots about America. Like, no, this is America, these are our values. America is awesome, the West is awesome.

[00:50:13]  Unidentified speaker: Private property, free speech, the scientific method, institutions, these things are wonderful.

[00:50:20]  Logan: But they come here and I'm generalizing, but, you know, leftists are, I think, terrified of basically saying, like, no, your culture is inferior. That's why you came here in the first place.

[00:50:31]  Unidentified speaker: So that's an issue, but that's a domestic issue.

[00:50:33]  Unidentified speaker: And I think one of the issues with the New Right is, there does seem to be an unwillingness.

[00:50:39]  Unidentified speaker: Like, you can't really say anything bad about America or Americans without them kind of freaking out.

[00:50:45]  Logan: Which, in a way, I understand as a defense mechanism against, you know, the left, like the left wing historians are atrocious, for the most part. I mean, just constantly highlighting the evils of America. That does take you to a dark place, especially because, as Thomas Sowell would tell it, like, you always have to compare, okay, America to this, America to that.

[00:51:02]  Unidentified speaker: But what about compared to the rest of the world?

[00:51:05]  Logan: So yeah, I think the long and short of it is, legalize discrimination, liberalize immigration gradually, and work to change the domestic culture such that integration is very important and valuable and that shielding yourself off from integration is a bad thing.

[00:51:20]  Unidentified speaker: I love what what David Deutsch said on our podcast.

[00:51:24]  Peter: He said in relation to immigration, he was making a larger point about humans, I think. But he said, two hands, one mouth. So the idea is that most people in a free society are create more prosperity than they use up or whatever, whatever the opposite is.

[00:51:49]  Unidentified speaker: And, you know, I think about that when I go to Home Depot.

[00:51:53]  Peter: I'm a crazy person who goes to Home Depot at 630 in the morning sometimes. And even in Seattle, which is like less than 5 or 10 percent Hispanic, I think, you see, you see almost all people who seem to be immigrants there.

[00:52:10]  Unidentified speaker: What does that tell you?

[00:52:11]  Unidentified speaker: They're at Home Depot at 630 in the morning.

[00:52:13]  Unidentified speaker: They're working hard.

[00:52:15]  Peter: They're probably creating way more prosperity than they're using up. So, you know, I don't think that we should everything you just said resonates with me as true.

[00:52:27]  Unidentified speaker: I think that that immigration is by far a net positive from an economic perspective.

[00:52:35]  Peter: Of course, like I think you also recognized there are potential downsides culturally or related to, you know, terrorism or crime or disease or whatever.

[00:52:47]  Bruce: That seems to be the main one that I've seen David Deutsch tweet about is that immigration by itself is good, but there is the problem of multiculturalism, culturalism, which he doesn't always define. But like I gather that what he's trying to say is that if you just open the borders and you let every single jihadist in or whatever, you would be creating a problem for yourself culturally and there is when we talk about culture. I mean, I'm sure for the New Right, that might be Christian nationalism or something.

[00:53:16]  Unidentified speaker: But classical liberalism is culture.

[00:53:19]  Bruce: You don't want to lose classical liberalism to immigration. You would want to be careful to not have immigration take place in a way where you actually lost the institutions and the beliefs that allowed for the open society to work in the first place. That's what I gather David Deutsch is saying.

[00:53:37]  Unidentified speaker: Maybe I'm misunderstanding.

[00:53:39]  Unidentified speaker: It's so different in Europe too, it seems to me.

[00:53:43]  Unidentified speaker: Maybe respond to that, Logan.

[00:53:44]  Bruce: I mean, I kind of gathered that was what you were saying a moment ago, but like maybe clarify if I've got that wrong.

[00:53:52]  Logan: Well, I certainly don't speak for David Deutsch or anyone else, but yeah, I would say the cultural element is important, but again, it's kind of amazing. America is an amazing story of integrating all these different waves of immigrants. And by the way, American Muslims, I think, for the most part, are Western. Ditto Hispanics are already largely Western, and they come to America and they largely become more Western. But again, if we're talking about incremental sociopolitical solutions that can ameliorate these issues, again, like in terms of changing laws and policies, let people discriminate freely. And also another thing is people get worried about ghettos forming. I think this is more in Europe, but even in America, ghettos of immigrants and this sort of thing. And sometimes that's not a problem, sometimes it is. But often, they form these ghettos because of, let's say, subsidized. In other words, a lot of it comes down to just public policy, like subsidized housing and welfare. Like you'll hear a lot of criticisms of immigrants. They say, oh, they're taking up public resources like roads and schools and housing. And it's like, yeah, these are all government programs. So I'd be fine with privatizing that and letting the owners choose to let the immigrants trade for them or not. Yeah, so and don't forget to, again, I go back to statistics.

[00:55:04]  Unidentified speaker: America has 350 million people.

[00:55:06]  Logan: So if you're, if you're, unfortunately, centrally planning immigration, which is what a federal government has to do. Yeah, letting in 10,000, 100,000, 500,000 Muslims, let's say. Ideally, again, you screen each individual.

[00:55:21]  Unidentified speaker: But even that, if your culture is confident, that will not rock the boat at all.

[00:55:26]  Unidentified speaker: And even if it's not that confident, people still, this is the amazing thing about the West.

[00:55:30]  Logan: Even, despite the fact that millions of Westerners hate their own society, even if they don't admit it by implication of what they say they do, people still come to the West and everyone adopts our institutions.

[00:55:41]  Unidentified speaker: It's amazing.

[00:55:43]  Unidentified speaker: All right.

[00:55:43]  Unidentified speaker: So it's like there's a discrepancy between what they say and how they act.

[00:55:48]  Unidentified speaker: And, Yes, I sometimes, well, never mind, I won't say that.

[00:55:51]  Logan: But yes, there's often a discrepancy between what people say and how they act. By the way, this actually, this has come up with immigration because I think they've either done questionnaires or this has happened in practice where people say, yeah, I don't want illegal immigration or I don't want immigration, they're competing with jobs. And then ICE agents come to the town and they want to kick out these immigrants. And either the people are up in arms because it's like, no, this is Javier.

[00:56:11]  Unidentified speaker: This is my friend.

[00:56:12]  Logan: He's fine. Or the companies are like, listen, if you get rid of our labor, our prices will go up. So in other words, when the costs are privatized, people are much more reluctant to let a public policy be implemented.

[00:56:25]  Unidentified speaker: And this generalizes.

[00:56:27]  Bruce: Okay, let's talk about tariffs. We kind of brought it up and I actually want to make sure that we covered tariffs. So right now, the right is really pushing tariffs at the moment. That's something that I've not seen happen before. It's kind of a new thing for me. I should probably mention here that I was friends with a lot of anarcho-capitalist Libertarians that were LDS and they were actually pro-tariffs back then, back in the day, which kind of surprised me. So there may be a diversity of opinions even amongst anarcho-capitalists on this, but maybe share your opinions on tariffs.

[00:57:11]  Logan: Yes, in general, I oppose tariffs because they reduce free trade and free trade is a mutually beneficial interaction between people.

[00:57:19]  Unidentified speaker: I would be in favor of targeted tariffs for national security purposes, but even then, before we implement the tariff, I would really want to look at our domestic policy.

[00:57:30]  Logan: So for example, let's say right now we're dependent on China to produce something and we're only dependent on China and we recognize that that's dangerous because China is a geopolitical enemy. By the way, large swaths of Libertarians deny the fact that there are enemies of the West elsewhere, but I digress.

[00:57:49]  Unidentified speaker: No, no, don't digress.

[00:57:50]  Bruce: Talk about that for a second because it does seem like it's relevant to what we're talking about here.

[00:57:55]  Unidentified speaker: Yeah.

[00:57:56]  Logan: Well, it's relevant for other aspects of foreign policy as well. But yeah, basically, there are Libertarians who take as axiomatic that foreign intervention is not only wrong, but literally the worst things governments do. So they work their way back.

[00:58:14]  Unidentified speaker: They take that axiom as a fixed moral principle of reality.

[00:58:17]  Logan: And then they basically spin whatever narrative they want with whatever facts they want. And this gets to what we were talking about earlier about good explanations of history. So you can always arbitrarily pick it because there's an infinite number of factoids. So you can take whatever factoids you want and make it look like a narrative that justifies non-intervention and as a rhetorical flourish, it overwhelms your opponent because it's like, oh, you know all these factoids, you must be right. But we're not really after factoids, we're after good explanations. So they've done this with China, they've done this with Israel-Gaza, they've done this with Ukraine-Russia. So but then because they take this as an axiom, they end up endorsing moral relativism or they imply that some people have agency and some people don't. Or they have double standards when it comes to, well this is the same as what I just said, they have double standards. So for example, they'll say Putin was provoked by NATO. And they say this because they take as axiomatic that NATO shouldn't exist, that America shouldn't be involved in NATO. So Putin was provoked, but then when it comes to Israel-Gaza, Israel was not provoked on October 7th. There, that was just, Understandable backlash to being oppressed. So they just pick and choose to whatever fits the axiom of non-intervention.

[00:59:38]  Unidentified speaker: Right.

[00:59:39]  Logan: And also because they judge, They judge the morality of an action by how much violence and private property violations are caused. They tend to side with the weaker side, even if the weaker side is totally more evil.

[00:59:55]  Unidentified speaker: So because Israel killed more people than Hamas did, then Israel is the bad guy.

[01:00:02]  Unidentified speaker: For example.

[01:00:03]  Bruce: Okay, so applying this back to tariffs, then, all right. You were saying, understandably, then, you might be in favor of targeted tariffs against an actual geopolitical enemy like China. But in general, you were saying you're against tariffs.

[01:00:18]  Unidentified speaker: In general, I'm against them.

[01:00:19]  Logan: And even in the case of China, I would first want to look at, okay, if we're so dependent on China to acquire whatever, are we imposing burdensome regulations domestically that makes it difficult, that raises the barrier to entry for entrepreneurs to create them domestically? If so, then okay, have some tariffs, but in parallel, get rid of those regulations to liberalize entrepreneurs, to lower the cost of entrepreneurs to create those goods and services. So in other words, even then, I would look for, are there ways of shrinking government to free up entrepreneurs to do what they do best? But no, in general, as a matter of principle, I'm definitely in favor of free trade. And again, this is one of these New Right talking points where they are explicitly against free trade. And again, it's for the reasons Peter and I, we were discussing. Again, they'll talk about outsourcing and this is bad because these are jobs for Americans. But as we know, as pro growth optimists, there's an infinite number of jobs.

[01:01:12]  Unidentified speaker: And if you don't get that, you will take a lot of these basically fixed pie positions.

[01:01:17]  Unidentified speaker: Oh no, there's a fixed number of jobs and they belong to Americans.

[01:01:20]  Logan: So it's very, now that I think about it, it's more interconnected or the tariff position of the New Right is more, is downstream for many of the same bad ideas as the immigration position is.

[01:01:30]  Unidentified speaker: Yes.

[01:01:31]  Logan: And again, when you argue against them, you know, very often they'll just kind of insult you and you're not American, you don't care about America.

[01:01:38]  Unidentified speaker: In my case, they'll call me a Jew, which is always fun.

[01:01:41]  Unidentified speaker: Yeah.

[01:01:44]  Bruce: So the tariff thing caught me a little off guard that, I mean, I guess, I guess it's been known for a while that that like President Trump believed in tariffs and that he did see those as a positive thing. Let me try to play the other side, though, just for a second. What about the fact that other countries in the world were applying tariffs to us? This is one of the arguments that you hear from The New Right, that other countries were applying tariffs to us. We weren't applying tariffs to them, so we were at a disadvantage to them. And at a minimum, it makes sense to apply tariffs equivalent to what they're doing for us, maybe for the sake of even trying to get them to pull their tariffs down.

[01:02:25]  Unidentified speaker: Respond to that argument.

[01:02:27]  Unidentified speaker: Yes.

[01:02:27]  Logan: So if that's the strategy, in other words, that strategy implies that free trade is better than not free trade, of frictionized trade. So I'm sympathetic to that, if it's a negotiating tactic. But again, the problem with The New Right, and I recommend listening to Batya Ungar-Sargon, she's representative of The New Right. She's basically a socialist. I mean, she literally said she's a MAGA lefty. It doesn't make any sense. So if that's the argument, fine. But if also the argument is, we need to bring jobs back to America, so we need the tariffs.

[01:02:57]  Unidentified speaker: These are contradictory.

[01:02:59]  Unidentified speaker: So it becomes like you're hitting a moving target.

[01:03:02]  Unidentified speaker: All right.

[01:03:03]  Logan: So what you just said, Bruce, implies that the goal is free trade.

[01:03:08]  Bruce: So yes, I mean, that's what tariffs might be okay as retaliatory tactic is you're saying.

[01:03:16]  Logan: I'm fine with negotiations.

[01:03:17]  Unidentified speaker: Sure.

[01:03:18]  Bruce: This isn't actually the answer I expected you to give. Let me actually tell you what I was kind of wondering about. So obviously, the way I put that was kind of somewhat of a tactic. I don't really believe the New Right believes the argument I just gave.

[01:03:33]  Unidentified speaker: That may be the argument for you.

[01:03:34]  Logan: Well, I think they believe whatever argument suits their conclusion, but go ahead.

[01:03:36]  Unidentified speaker: Sorry.

[01:03:36]  Unidentified speaker: Right.

[01:03:37]  Bruce: So I'm trying to put the best argument I can forward from what they say. But at some level, let's say you had like Trump mentioned as examples, oh, such, such country, they had a 20% tariff on us and we had no tariff on them. So now we're going to raise our tariff to match theirs.

[01:03:57]  Unidentified speaker: That's only fair.

[01:03:58]  Unidentified speaker: Okay.

[01:03:59]  Logan: That doesn't make any sense.

[01:04:00]  Unidentified speaker: Okay.

[01:04:00]  Unidentified speaker: That's what I want you to respond to there.

[01:04:02]  Unidentified speaker: Yeah.

[01:04:03]  Unidentified speaker: No, no.

[01:04:03]  Unidentified speaker: So more tariffs reduces the growth of wealth relative to the universe in which there were fewer tariffs.

[01:04:11]  Unidentified speaker: So tariffs are, they're a drag on economic growth.

[01:04:14]  Logan: No matter what, there's no getting around that.

[01:04:16]  Unidentified speaker: Okay.

[01:04:18]  Logan: So yes, like I'd also, in other words, if instead of negotiating, if instead of deploying tariffs as a negotiating tool, Trump instead said, yeah, all these countries are raising tariffs on us, but we still like trade and we want growth. So we're going to lower all of our tariffs everywhere. Again, maybe accepting China and other adversaries. I'd probably, I'd be definitely be happier with that than using them as a negotiating tactic for sure. Yes, shooting, just because another country is shooting itself on the foot doesn't mean we should shoot ourselves in the foot to make things fair.

[01:04:47]  Unidentified speaker: That doesn't make any sense.

[01:04:48]  Bruce: Okay, let's talk about conspiratarianism.

[01:04:51]  Unidentified speaker: All right.

[01:04:52]  Bruce: So I used to think of the Libertarians as they're the conspiracy theory type people, right? There's a huge, huge element of conspiracy theory on both, to be fair, on both left and right. And again, that's something that's new, that I don't know if it's completely new. There's probably always been there, but you just never heard about it, would probably be more accurate statement. But, you know, maybe talk with me about that. What's going on with the sudden rise of all sorts of conspiracy theories just all over the place?

[01:05:29]  Logan: Yes, I think this is connected with what we were talking about with catastrophism. It's very similar, and I think many of the arguments are basically the same. There is something anti-creative about adopting a conspiratorial world view. You know, Karl Popper wrote about the conspiracy theory of ignorance, which is basically, I'll just say it in my own words. And Tucker Carlson is very guilty of this. If you ever look at his timestamps on his episodes on Twitter, basically it comes down to okay, anytime there's a problem, that problem is unnatural and was caused by a cabal of whether it's Big Pharma or AIPAC or he doesn't really criticize maybe leftist or RINOs or neocons. It's always a cabal and if we just got rid of the cabal, then the error would go away. Now this is a recipe for total political stasis or worse, because that's not in fact the truth. The truth is we live in an open society where millions of people have different views on how we can make progress, on how we can solve problems. And to get what you want, you have to persuade them. So one of the New Right's phrases is the only way out is through, which for them basically means like, I don't know, we have to be tough and have big government. Like, oh, you really got the left with that one, boys. You're just going to be socialist to own the left? Like, come on. But no, the only way out is through. I agree with the slogan.

[01:06:46]  Unidentified speaker: But to me, the only way out is through means there's no way of getting around the fact that you have to persuade people.

[01:06:52]  Logan: Now, I agree with you that conspiracism is not primarily a right wing issue.

[01:06:58]  Unidentified speaker: It permeates the leftism in general.

[01:07:02]  Logan: I mean, Marxism, for sure, when you talk about... So they'll say, you see this, if you ever watch The Young Turks, they're steeped in conspiracism in the sense that they think, and they might not word it this way, but this is the implication. If only we got money out of politics, if only the donors we don't like stop donating to politicians, if only the rich capitalist networks stop brainwashing the people, then they'd all side with us because our policies are so obvious, they're so obviously better for the working man, that sort of thing.

[01:07:29]  Unidentified speaker: I guess the truth is manifest.

[01:07:31]  Unidentified speaker: I mean, of course.

[01:07:33]  Logan: Yes, they think the truth is manifest, exactly.

[01:07:35]  Unidentified speaker: These are just very, very popular conspiracy theories in a sense.

[01:07:39]  Unidentified speaker: They're so popular that they're barely even noticed.

[01:07:42]  Logan: You can say this anywhere in America and no one would blink. People are just, yeah, sure, that's true, of course.

[01:07:49]  Unidentified speaker: There are exceptions.

[01:07:49]  Unidentified speaker: Ben Shapiro has been very good on this.

[01:07:52]  Logan: I can't think of many others, but in libertarian circles, so this is connected with what we were talking about with foreign policy. This could be an entire episode unto itself by the way, Conspiracism, but they have to adopt a conspiratorial world view when it comes to foreign policy to again justify their axiom. They'll say things like every war is based on a lie. Again, the reason this is anti, it discounts human creativity because in reality, various parties, and I mean parties in a little-p sense, have reasons for going to war.

[01:08:24]  Unidentified speaker: They interpret every error as a lie basically.

[01:08:28]  Logan: Of course, I'm not saying governments never lie.

[01:08:31]  Unidentified speaker: Gosh, then I really wouldn't be a libertarian, would I?

[01:08:33]  Unidentified speaker: But they implement this conspiratorial world view.

[01:08:36]  Unidentified speaker: The implication is again, if only we got these evil politicians out of the way, there would never be war.

[01:08:41]  Unidentified speaker: Then on the right, again, Tucker Carlson is a prime example.

[01:08:48]  Logan: They say things like, okay, so on the right wing, they say things like the government hates you. They say this very often. The government hates you.

[01:08:53]  Unidentified speaker: The left hates you.

[01:08:55]  Unidentified speaker: This sort of thing.

[01:08:56]  Unidentified speaker: And that the only reason politicians implement their policies is because they hate you.

[01:09:00]  Logan: They hate white Americans.

[01:09:01]  Unidentified speaker: They hate Christians.

[01:09:02]  Logan: And they just want to like torture them with policies.

[01:09:04]  Unidentified speaker: Whereas in reality, again, they're discounting the reasons.

[01:09:07]  Logan: The vast majority of politicians think that they're doing the right thing when they implement a policy.

[01:09:11]  Unidentified speaker: Again, am I saying there are no back deals and there are no guilty politicians?

[01:09:14]  Unidentified speaker: Of course not.

[01:09:15]  Logan: But people implement the minimum wage because they think it helps people. People advocate for the welfare state because they think it helps people.

[01:09:22]  Unidentified speaker: People advocate for anti-discrimination laws because they think it helps people.

[01:09:26]  Logan: It's not because they hate you and they want to see your livelihood destroyed or your way of life destroyed. And this is a problem because again, if you want to resuscitate 1950s America, okay, there are, and again, like the select parts of that, of whatever family values, we've already talked about this. There are select, it's not a matter of getting rid of the politicians who hate you and putting in the ones who love you.

[01:09:47]  Unidentified speaker: You can't love your way to better policies.

[01:09:51]  Unidentified speaker: It's all a matter of creativity.

[01:09:52]  Unidentified speaker: So basically, conspiracism discounts the role of creativity.

[01:09:56]  Logan: And it also implies that other people are super creative. Yeah, I think I'm missing a few things, but I'll just stop there and let you respond.

[01:10:03]  Unidentified speaker: Okay.

[01:10:04]  Bruce: Well, let me ask you about, so are you familiar with the term horseshoe theory?

[01:10:11]  Unidentified speaker: Of course.

[01:10:12]  Bruce: So it seems like, I mean, like, if I were to take my younger self from, I don't know, back in the 90s or something, maybe even the 2000s, and I were to show myself the Republican Party today, I'm not sure I would have seen that much difference between it and what I called leftism at the time.

[01:10:37]  Unidentified speaker: Can you maybe comment on that?

[01:10:40]  Logan: Yes, and by the way, I remember what I forgot to say about conspiracism.

[01:10:43]  Unidentified speaker: It has to do with, and I think, Bruce, you'll like this.

[01:10:46]  Logan: It has to do with the fact that we have a coherent suite of explanations that explain how our culture works, how institutions work, how property works, how the growth of wealth and knowledge work.

[01:10:57]  Unidentified speaker: And so conspiracies, conspiracy theories, they think they can just throw an alternative explanation in the air like that.

[01:11:06]  Logan: Whereas in reality, it spoils all of our other good explanations. So it's a lot like, yeah, so that's a whole, we can talk about more about that.

[01:11:12]  Unidentified speaker: But to get to your question, yes.

[01:11:16]  Logan: So in many ways, look, in many ways, Trump is a 90s Democrat.

[01:11:18]  Unidentified speaker: So again, economically, they're totally left wing.

[01:11:21]  Unidentified speaker: Absolutely.

[01:11:22]  Bruce: In terms of, wasn't he a Democrat in the 90s?

[01:11:27]  Logan: I think he probably was.

[01:11:28]  Unidentified speaker: Yeah, okay.

[01:11:29]  Unidentified speaker: Go on.

[01:11:30]  Logan: Look, I was talking to a friend of mine during the early days of Doge.

[01:11:34]  Unidentified speaker: He was so excited and I said, yeah, I'm not that excited.

[01:11:38]  Logan: They already promised they weren't going to touch the entitlement state, the welfare state, social security, all that stuff.

[01:11:44]  Unidentified speaker: If you're not touching that, then you're not really shrinking government.

[01:11:49]  Logan: So yeah, Trump is basically a 90s Democrat.

[01:11:52]  Unidentified speaker: I will say he is better.

[01:11:54]  Logan: And again, we have to distinguish between Trump and the MAGA movement. And this will really, this distinction will really matter when Trump is out of power, because that's going to be fascinating.

[01:12:02]  Unidentified speaker: And by the way, things can turn around quickly, and you could get someone who's pretty good.

[01:12:07]  Unidentified speaker: You can get basically a Reaganite.

[01:12:09]  Unidentified speaker: I could totally see that happening coming out after the Trump movement.

[01:12:12]  Unidentified speaker: Earmarked.

[01:12:13]  Bruce: I'm going to ask you about that in a second.

[01:12:15]  Unidentified speaker: But go on.

[01:12:15]  Unidentified speaker: Yes.

[01:12:16]  Unidentified speaker: So what was I saying?

[01:12:17]  Unidentified speaker: Right.

[01:12:18]  Unidentified speaker: So Trump is, he's totally better than Kamala Harris on, let's say, deregulating on energy, on artificial intelligence.

[01:12:26]  Unidentified speaker: Although I forget the details, but didn't the Trump administration pass a law forbidding any state from itself regulating artificial intelligence?

[01:12:35]  Logan: So there, I don't know how I feel, because I'm a big states rights guy. But anyway, he's better on that stuff. And he's also better, at least on Israel-Gaza. And it seems like he's coming around on Russia, Ukraine, we'll see. So I don't know if 90s Democrats were in favor of deregulation. You do have the abundance Democrats now.

[01:12:50]  Unidentified speaker: They're an interesting lot.

[01:12:51]  Logan: And I don't know what's going to happen with that. But that could be very interesting on the left side. And I think Trump is definitely not sympathetic to communism. And then I know leftists will say, no, but Kamala Harris isn't either.

[01:13:04]  Unidentified speaker: Yeah, I probably agree.

[01:13:06]  Logan: But I don't know if she had the testicular fortitude, I think to quote Gad Saad, to reject the socialists on her left. Whereas Trump, like, again, this is the important difference. Trump has no time for the Nazis or the pretend Nazis on the right.

[01:13:24]  Unidentified speaker: He has no interest in that stuff.

[01:13:27]  Unidentified speaker: So yeah, I think he's basically like a centrist Democrat who is pro-growth in certain important areas.

[01:13:34]  Logan: Like, energy is one of the most important areas economically, because economically speaking, it's a capital good. It's a universal capital good. That is to say, it's a required prerequisite in any process that transforms raw materials into any consumer good or service.

[01:13:48]  Unidentified speaker: So that's very important, and Kamala Harris, I think, would have been bad on energy.

[01:13:51]  Unidentified speaker: So that alone makes Trump preferable.

[01:13:54]  Logan: But yeah, he won't touch the entitlement state, and he loves it. And I think he loves price controls, too.

[01:13:59]  Unidentified speaker: He's pulling on Nixon.

[01:14:00]  Unidentified speaker: Didn't he do price controls on drugs?

[01:14:02]  Logan: So he's horrible on that stuff.

[01:14:04]  Unidentified speaker: So yeah, it's a mixed bag, and things could be worse, but things could be a lot better.

[01:14:08]  Bruce: You mentioned Ukraine.

[01:14:09]  Unidentified speaker: Talk about Ukraine.

[01:14:12]  Unidentified speaker: Oh, yeah.

[01:14:12]  Unidentified speaker: Well, this is...

[01:14:13]  Logan: So the isolationism, again... By the way, isolationism, non-interventionism, to me, they're synonymous.

[01:14:18]  Unidentified speaker: People might disagree.

[01:14:20]  Logan: But this is the argument that NATO caused Putin to invade Ukraine.

[01:14:27]  Unidentified speaker: NATO provoked him.

[01:14:29]  Unidentified speaker: And it's a lot of...

[01:14:31]  Logan: It's interesting how you can paint the narrative without being explicit, so again, which is very cowardly.

[01:14:36]  Unidentified speaker: So I'm sure if you go through Trump's...

[01:14:38]  Logan: I mean, Tucker's show and his tweets and stuff, he'll criticize Zelensky left and right. He called him a rat one time. He said he was rat-like, which I don't know is anti-Semitic or not.

[01:14:46]  Unidentified speaker: I'm not totally sure.

[01:14:47]  Unidentified speaker: Whatever.

[01:14:48]  Logan: So he has all this criticism in the world for Zelensky, which again, all these individual criticisms might be true. It might be true that Ukraine is corrupt. You know, all these other things, like they did shut down elections. Although I recently learned that like, it's part of their constitution or whatever it is that, yeah, during war, they don't hold elections, which is seems reasonable to me.

[01:15:07]  Unidentified speaker: But anyway, but then, but then when it comes to Putin, softball interview, he loves the grocery stores in Russia.

[01:15:15]  Logan: And again, it's like, okay, I'm sure there's a, in other words, all of these things might be true in isolation, but together they paint the narrative.

[01:15:22]  Unidentified speaker: And I think, so this again gets the kind of the, I think I said this earlier, there's a lack of intellectualism or there's a loss of intellectualism on the New Right.

[01:15:31]  Logan: You know, Gone are the days of Milton Friedman.

[01:15:33]  Unidentified speaker: Totally agree.

[01:15:34]  Logan: But when it comes to Putin, it's like Putin's playing him for a fiddle because Putin will get up there and say stuff like, oh yeah, I'm a Christian, we need a Christian empire and we don't like gay people and stuff.

[01:15:43]  Unidentified speaker: And then the New Right's like, yeah, that's based whatever.

[01:15:46]  Unidentified speaker: It's like, yeah, I don't know.

[01:15:47]  Unidentified speaker: That's very superficial, artificial.

[01:15:50]  Unidentified speaker: He's playing you like a fiddle.

[01:15:51]  Logan: Just like, by the way, the Soviet Union used to play the left like a fiddle because didn’t one of the Soviet Union leaders, he would talk about the plight of black people in mid-20th century in America.

[01:16:00]  Unidentified speaker: It's like, yeah, okay, that's true, brother, but look at your, this is obviously a manipulation game.

[01:16:06]  Logan: And so, yeah, a lot of the right, and look, to be fair, sort of to the right, I think there's a weariness of getting involved with foreign nations after what happened during the Bush and Obama years.

[01:16:20]  Unidentified speaker: So I get that.

[01:16:21]  Unidentified speaker: But again, when people talk about foreign aid and this sort of thing, and when you look at the budget, it's really not that much.

[01:16:29]  Unidentified speaker: Like I was talking to someone recently, and he was like, look, I'm a libertarian.

[01:16:33]  Logan: I just want, he kept talking about, he doesn't want his tax dollars going overseas.

[01:16:36]  Unidentified speaker: And I was like, look, pound for pound, like you're not, it's not that much money.

[01:16:40]  Unidentified speaker: It's really not.

[01:16:41]  Unidentified speaker: Like I understand wanting to shrink the budget and shrink the government, but again, you need to go after the entitlements, not foreign aid.

[01:16:49]  Logan: And I think one argument that I've heard that I agree with is, it's cheaper to basically raise the cost of Putin's aggression now than it would be later.

[01:16:58]  Unidentified speaker: Just, yeah.

[01:16:59]  Logan: And then people who say, so then some Libertarians, they'll say, Putin wouldn't, again, they work their way backwards from their axiom. They say Putin will stop at Ukraine.

[01:17:09]  Unidentified speaker: Like, so I'm just supposed to take your word for it.

[01:17:11]  Unidentified speaker: This is, but it's not naivety.

[01:17:14]  Unidentified speaker: It's not naivety.

[01:17:14]  Logan: It's something else. It's working your way backwards from a conclusion. Now, it is weird that the left, basically things have changed now, but the left was pro-Ukraine, anti-Israel, broadly speaking, and the right was pro-Israel, anti-Ukraine. And yeah, I don't really have anything, I think, novel to say about that.

[01:17:34]  Bruce: Well, I'm kind of surprised that's even the case, right? Like, being a conservative this entire time and Republican, you know, we were very concerned about Russia as a geopolitical power. I mean, there's the whole thing where Romney mentioned, mentioned Russia as a geopolitical enemy. And Obama said that the 90s are calling, they want their foreign foreign policy back or something like that.

[01:17:59]  Unidentified speaker: Yes.

[01:18:00]  Bruce: I mean, like, there's always been this concern on the right, up until recently, there's always been this concern on the right about Russia. I mean, people have asked me, what do you think of the whole Russia, Ukraine thing? I'm like, I don't even follow politics.

[01:18:13]  Unidentified speaker: I don't know.

[01:18:14]  Bruce: But whatever's going on with Russia, I'm against them on principle.

[01:18:17]  Unidentified speaker: So I'm okay with any war with Russia, you know, or something like that.

[01:18:20]  Bruce: I'm joking around. But it's surprising to me that the right has had, at least for a while there, we had such a big shift. You're right that it's starting to shift back the other way, but such a big shift, you know, pro Russia and against Ukraine.

[01:18:35]  Logan: By the way, if I can just say one other thing, I would, I'm fine with a political argument of whether or not to send Russia, a foreign aid, whether or not Ukraine is worth defending from America. Like, okay, I, you know, those are fine arguments. But again, when you, when your conclusion is axiomatized, and you saw this with JD Vance, you end up relativizing, saying like there's killing on, I don't want to quote exactly, because it's been a while and I might misremember, but you end up relativizing, like, in other words, at the very least, I would like our politicians to have moral clarity, as the saying goes, and say, you know, Russia is the bad guy, and Ukraine is not the bad guy in this, in this particular conflict. And I think, if I'm remembering correctly, JD Vance wasn't really willing to do that.

[01:19:16]  Unidentified speaker: Like, for example, and then, for example, I remember JD Vance yelled at...

[01:19:20]  Bruce: Yeah, he said, I've got no interest in what's going on in Ukraine.

[01:19:22]  Unidentified speaker: That is true.

[01:19:24]  Unidentified speaker: Right.

[01:19:24]  Logan: And then he yelled at Zelensky when Zelensky was in the Oval. Again, things have evolved since then. But I think that is an excellent case of how, when you hold this axiom of, like, no intervention or whatever, you end up kind of relativizing between two sides in a conflict. And that is extremely dangerous. This goes back to what I said to Peter, maybe slightly too harshly about, don't even relativize between right and left in America. I just think, yeah, so I'll stop there.

[01:19:47]  Unidentified speaker: Okay.

[01:19:48]  Peter: I do have a question that it might be changing this channel too much. Bruce, do you want to keep going with this foreign policy stuff?

[01:19:56]  Unidentified speaker: No, no, go for it.

[01:19:58]  Unidentified speaker: Okay.

[01:20:00]  Unidentified speaker: I'm curious about this.

[01:20:02]  Peter: I get the feeling, Logan, you're pretty influenced by Austrian economics and Mises and Hayek, is that fair to say?

[01:20:10]  Unidentified speaker: Yes, yes.

[01:20:12]  Unidentified speaker: Okay.

[01:20:12]  Unidentified speaker: One of the things I get from their ideas is that economics and maybe politics, by extension, should be more based on philosophical principles rather than like, oh, this study says this, and if you have to look at this meta-study or whatever.

[01:20:33]  Unidentified speaker: I kind of asked David Deutsch a similar question related to coercion and children.

[01:20:40]  Unidentified speaker: And he seemed to emphatically agree that he's talking about philosophical principles, not meta-studies.

[01:20:51]  Unidentified speaker: And so I think that probably that same kind of thing applies to economics through the lens of Austrian economics.

[01:21:04]  Peter: But I'm also curious about how this Popperian idea of incrementalism relates to this form of Libertarianism. Like I have no problem believing something like a Misesian society.

[01:21:23]  Unidentified speaker: I don't know if that makes sense.

[01:21:25]  Unidentified speaker: But something like that would be something that society is moving to in a future knowledge state.

[01:21:33]  Peter: But, you know, if we went back to a tribal society and said, okay, we're going to we're going to implement free speech and democracy or whatever in this this tribal state, it's not really that clear to me that people wouldn't just like start killing each other or something.

[01:21:52]  Unidentified speaker: I don't know.

[01:21:53]  Unidentified speaker: Maybe I'm wrong.

[01:21:54]  Peter: But I, you know, what makes sense to me is something more like incrementalist Libertarianism in line with this Popperian ideal.

[01:22:10]  Unidentified speaker: What do you think about that?

[01:22:11]  Unidentified speaker: Would you call yourself an incrementalist?

[01:22:13]  Unidentified speaker: And how do you rectify that with Austrian economics?

[01:22:18]  Unidentified speaker: Yeah.

[01:22:18]  Logan: So economics, just like physics, is not a moral theory. So it doesn't make sense, for example, if I explain thermodynamics to you and you say, are you saying we should revolutionarily build a car overnight or a spaceship, like don't we have to build the parts first and all this stuff?

[01:22:34]  Unidentified speaker: It's the same thing.

[01:22:34]  Logan: So it's important not to conflate economics with politics.

[01:22:37]  Unidentified speaker: I will say as for Libertarianism, so yeah, there are a lot of revolutionary Libertarians.

[01:22:45]  Unidentified speaker: So Libertarians, there's a whole...

[01:22:49]  Bruce: Talk about the different kinds of Libertarians a little bit here.

[01:22:52]  Unidentified speaker: Yeah.

[01:22:53]  Unidentified speaker: Let's do it.

[01:22:53]  Logan: Wait, it's bothering me though.

[01:22:54]  Unidentified speaker: I'm forgetting the word for when you outline the various types of a thing.

[01:22:58]  Logan: It's not lexicography.

[01:22:59]  Unidentified speaker: That's something else.

[01:23:00]  Logan: It's not genealogy because that's chronological.

[01:23:03]  Unidentified speaker: But what's the word when you delineate a genie...

[01:23:06]  Unidentified speaker: No.

[01:23:07]  Unidentified speaker: Anyway, whatever.

[01:23:08]  Logan: It'll come back to me after the podcast, I'm sure. So you have revolutionary Libertarians who want to abolish the government as soon as possible. So the famous question that Murray Rothbard, who's one of the founders of American Libertarianism and maybe Libertarianism worldwide, he wrote an essay called Do You Hate the State?

[01:23:27]  Unidentified speaker: in which he criticizes David Friedman, actually, for not hating the state.

[01:23:30]  Logan: And then he has a question. He says, if there was a button that you could press tomorrow that would abolish, disappear the government, would you press it? And I think Murray Rothbard said, yes, I would.

[01:23:40]  Unidentified speaker: So that's the revolutionary Libertarian.

[01:23:43]  Logan: There's also, very relatedly, would be the non-aggression principle Libertarians, which say that this gets back to the foreign policy with Israel versus Hamas. They say it's always immoral to violate private property rights. And you could maybe generalize that to say it's always immoral to coerce. So that's another flavor.

[01:24:02]  Unidentified speaker: Then you have the left-right divide between Libertarians.

[01:24:05]  Logan: And this is very interesting because this gets to what I was talking about with Tucker Carlson, of how I can agree with you on A, B, and C, but you are expressing them in a uniquely, in a creative way.

[01:24:20]  Unidentified speaker: I'm not absorbing what you're saying mechanically.

[01:24:21]  Unidentified speaker: You're saying it in a creative way such that you're painting a certain narrative that I don't agree with.

[01:24:26]  Logan: So for example, one way to think of the left-right distinction on libertarians is simply, what issues do you emphasize? And this, by the way, gets to the fact that even if I agree with 100% of anyone's policy positions, but there's an order of importance to political problems. There are better and worse ways to order political problems, in other words. There are some left libertarians who, okay, you find them on Twitter, you talk to them, you're like, oh, this is great, you're a libertarian, I'm a libertarian. And then you talk to them and they're like, yeah, I'm for abortion and prostitution and open borders and drug legalization. And they never talk about price controls or private money or foreign policy, or if they do talk about foreign policy, they're anti-war hippies.

[01:25:12]  Unidentified speaker: So that would be one strand of left libertarianism.

[01:25:15]  Logan: And I totally am not about that at all. Both aesthetically and even politically, it doesn't, like, yes, I'm also for drug legalization and legalization of prostitution.

[01:25:27]  Unidentified speaker: But I think making school optional, for example, is way more important.

[01:25:31]  Logan: And privatizing the money, although that's a very hairy thing, and that should not be done overnight, is way more important, for example.

[01:25:38]  Unidentified speaker: And they would either disagree, or they would say they agree, but they never talk about those things.

[01:25:42]  Logan: So that would be a left libertarian.

[01:25:43]  Unidentified speaker: And then you have one strand of right libertarians.

[01:25:46]  Unidentified speaker: That's kind of the flip side of that.

[01:25:47]  Logan: And you could say these are the acolytes of Hans-Hermann Hoppe, and a lot of the people who are in the orbit of the Mises Institute. They are basically paleo-libertarians, they're called.

[01:25:57]  Unidentified speaker: And I'm not a paleo-libertarian, because they're conspiratorial often, and they're isolationists on foreign policy.

[01:26:04]  Logan: But in other ways, I agree with them.

[01:26:06]  Unidentified speaker: And they're also hawkish on immigration, which I am not.

[01:26:09]  Unidentified speaker: But they are culturally right-wing, they value hierarchy.

[01:26:14]  Unidentified speaker: They're fine with, they hate forced integration laws, they hate the welfare state.

[01:26:20]  Unidentified speaker: They emphasize sort of the cultural decay as caused by public programs.

[01:26:27]  Unidentified speaker: Yes, what else?

[01:26:29]  Logan: And then, so then they're also anarcho-syndicalists, which Noam Chomsky I think is one. Basically, they're people who, in my view, they just can't swallow the fact that when you leave people alone, they'll have private property.

[01:26:40]  Unidentified speaker: But they're basically anarcho-communists.

[01:26:43]  Logan: So they want a communist society, but without a government, which I don't really understand. And then you have anarcho-capitalists like me, who emphasize that private property society is a free society, and it has various advantages over a [statist?] society. And when I say [statist?] society, I just mean one in which there's at least one institution that acquires its revenue coercively.

[01:27:07]  Unidentified speaker: And I think logically, it must be the case that that institution must be the one producing the laws.

[01:27:14]  Unidentified speaker: And I think there's at least one other...

[01:27:16]  Unidentified speaker: Oh, so then you have what are called...

[01:27:19]  Unidentified speaker: By the way, so probably everyone on this call is basically a classical liberal.

[01:27:22]  Unidentified speaker: So a lot of libertarians will say, okay, classical liberalism and minarchism, minarchism just means you want what's called a night watchman state.

[01:27:31]  Logan: So you want the government to implement laws, produce the laws and enforce the laws.

[01:27:35]  Unidentified speaker: And that's basically it, maybe border enforcement.

[01:27:39]  Unidentified speaker: And then you have anarchists like me.

[01:27:41]  Unidentified speaker: And then you have classical liberals who might be okay with a little bit more.

[01:27:45]  Unidentified speaker: And then you have people.

[01:27:46]  Unidentified speaker: So yeah, I think that's, that is everything.

[01:27:50]  Unidentified speaker: I think I'm forgetting a few, but that, oh, so then you have bordertarians who basically are libertarian on most things, but hawkish on immigration.

[01:27:58]  Unidentified speaker: And then you have ordertarians, which in a way I'm an ordertarian, but not in the way that they are.

[01:28:02]  Unidentified speaker: So ordertarians say, yes, I'm a libertarian.

[01:28:05]  Logan: I want a stateless society, but we have to abolish the government in a certain order that is better than other orders. So going back to what I was saying earlier, I agree with that, but where they would say I'm not a libertarian at all is that I don't think the answer everyone always is to reduce the size of government.

[01:28:21]  Unidentified speaker: For example, let's just say, let's say a municipality implemented the abolish the police policy or something like that.

[01:28:30]  Logan: Now, one option I would love to, in fact, I was saying at the time, like, okay, you hate the police, but what about private security guards?

[01:28:35]  Unidentified speaker: How does that sound?

[01:28:36]  Unidentified speaker: But okay, let's say that's not a, because politics is the art of the possible.

[01:28:40]  Unidentified speaker: So let's say, and also, you know, it takes time to implement new institutions.

[01:28:43]  Unidentified speaker: So let's say instead we could just re-implement cops or something.

[01:28:48]  Unidentified speaker: I'd be for that.

[01:28:49]  Logan: Again, depending on the context, but I could see myself being for that. And some libertarians would say, I'm absolutely not a libertarian because I'm advocating for the growth of government.

[01:28:57]  Unidentified speaker: So I think that's the landscape as far as I can see it.

[01:29:00]  Unidentified speaker: I'm sure I forgot some groups, but there you go.

[01:29:02]  Peter: Do you think some libertarians are utopianists too?

[01:29:06]  Unidentified speaker: Yes.

[01:29:06]  Unidentified speaker: Is that pretty common?

[01:29:08]  Unidentified speaker: Very common.

[01:29:10]  Unidentified speaker: It's hard to say how common.

[01:29:11]  Unidentified speaker: You know, again, I don't know how much Twitter reflects real life.

[01:29:16]  Unidentified speaker: I think a lot of people...

[01:29:17]  Unidentified speaker: So for example, like the National Review crowd, the dispatch crowd, the commentary crowd, they are sort of...

[01:29:23]  Unidentified speaker: They float between conservative and libertarian, but none of them are utopian.

[01:29:27]  Unidentified speaker: They are all institutionalists, they are all incrementalists.

[01:29:30]  Logan: They take institutions seriously. So for example, there are libertarians who say like laws are not legitimate and stuff like that. And so they kind of take themselves out of any conversation about debates, let's say, between originalism and what's the opposite of originalism, judicial activism, this sort of thing.

[01:29:48]  Unidentified speaker: But there are a lot of utopians, for sure, and that's very bad.

[01:29:51]  Logan: And the hope is that basically they don't get into power. But I think the problem is, what I find fascinating is, and this is another amazing thing about the West, is that even utopians find themselves conforming to our institutions when push comes to shove because they know that it's a total deal breaker for much of the rest of the country if they don't. So for example, there are Libertarians who would argue, and by the way, so okay, Peter, you're definitely going to like the new stuff in Lords of the Cosmos.

[01:30:21]  Unidentified speaker: That's not in the documentary because we talk about a lot of this.

[01:30:24]  Logan: There are Libertarians who would say, who would prefer, oh, if we could get a Libertarian president or entire government filled with Libertarians and then never have them voted out of office, that would be amazing. But they would never actually follow through with that because they know it would be a disaster. And the reason it's a disaster is because we have so much, not only institutional knowledge, but respect for the institutions in America.

[01:30:48]  Unidentified speaker: And this is despite all the manic conspiracism.

[01:30:51]  Logan: So in other words, in a way, it's amazing that America has made the progress it has politically. I hope I answered your question.

[01:30:57]  Unidentified speaker: There was something, oh, there was one other, by the way, there are woke Libertarians, FYI.

[01:31:01]  Logan: And there are another strand of left Libertarianism is basically adopting the cultural left's entire value structure and just saying like, oh, yeah, but if we adopt, if we implement Libertarianism, we'll get all that. So and it's almost comical, like there are websites that I won't name because I might get them wrong and I don't want to slander someone, but they'll say like, yeah, we're Libertarians and we love gay people and we love Muslims. And, you know, we're for the oppressed, like they talk like you would think they're leftists. And then they're just like, no, but we want mutual trade. They're called mutualists sometimes and that sort of thing. So that's funny. So you might see that in the wild. So I hope you're less confused now, now that I said that, than you would have been otherwise.

[01:31:41]  Bruce: What is the connection between Libertarianism and Conspiracism? Obviously, we just talked about how that there's a big connection with the right wing at this point between that. But back in the day, it seemed like a very large percentage of the Libertarians, self-proclaimed Libertarians I came across were conspiracy theorists. Like what is going on there and why does that happen?

[01:32:05]  Unidentified speaker: Yes.

[01:32:06]  Unidentified speaker: Yes.

[01:32:06]  Logan: So in one sense, this is not a fundamental phenomenon and it's more of a sociological phenomenon.

[01:32:11]  Unidentified speaker: That is to say, anyone can subscribe to any set of policy positions and not be a conspiracy theorist.

[01:32:17]  Unidentified speaker: Now, having said that, I think what happens with...

[01:32:19]  Logan: So first of all, so I think there are two things. One is the foreign policy angle that we already discussed.

[01:32:23]  Unidentified speaker: Namely, to keep their axiom of non-intervention secure, they have to become conspiracy theorists.

[01:32:31]  Logan: In other words, like, you know, Israel can't possibly be actually defending itself. It must be evil, whatever.

[01:32:36]  Unidentified speaker: And NATO can't possibly be a defensive pact.

[01:32:38]  Logan: The government must be lying us into war, this sort of thing.

[01:32:40]  Unidentified speaker: The other thing is, again, it goes to people's reasons.

[01:32:44]  Unidentified speaker: You know, you become a libertarian, and I think some people, and you learn economics, and you see problems that are partially government caused or problems that are frozen in place because of the government, and you see them everywhere, and you get yourself, and then the ideas become, as you were saying earlier, you know, they become manifest to you after a while, after you've internalized them, and you forget that not everyone shares your worldview, and you just come to think all of these problems are caused by power hungry politicians intentionally.

[01:33:10]  Unidentified speaker: And so that's how, that's how I think conspiracism slips into the bloodstream of libertarian thought.

[01:33:16]  Logan: And then of course you find yourself, and this is a whole strategy discussion, but you find yourself hating the government and basically allying with anyone who hates the government, but that is not a viable path.

[01:33:28]  Unidentified speaker: Again the only way out is through, you have to explain these ideas.

[01:33:30]  Unidentified speaker: You can't just say the government is evil and corrupt, because if you haven't explained why, let's say socialism can't work or this sort of thing, then the people who are listening to you are just going to switch on a dime again.

[01:33:39]  Unidentified speaker: You saw this with Andrew Schulz, the comedian.

[01:33:41]  Logan: So he had Dave Smith, the Libertarian, on and they're talking about why Trump is, whatever they were talking about.

[01:33:46]  Unidentified speaker: I don't quite remember.

[01:33:46]  Unidentified speaker: It was Libertarian stuff.

[01:33:48]  Unidentified speaker: But Dave Smith, he's a conspiratorial Libertarian.

[01:33:50]  Logan: So he's not actually explaining like why price controls cause shortages, why tariffs are economically inefficient, all these sorts of things. Why welfare crowds out, private charity. No, he's just saying like politicians are corrupt and everyone is a liar, blah, blah, blah. Okay, and Andrew Schulz is maybe sympathetic.

[01:34:04]  Unidentified speaker: And then a couple months ago, Andrew Schulz is like, oh, this Mamdani guy in New York is the only one to talk in America first because he hasn't learned anything.

[01:34:10]  Unidentified speaker: This is one of the problems is conspiracism.

[01:34:13]  Logan: And it's funny because people get a moral, a moralistic sense of righteousness by talking about conspiracy theories, because they're like, no, I see the truth and everyone else doesn't whatever.

[01:34:23]  Unidentified speaker: But ironically, they're leaving people impotent at best, at best you're impotent because it's not true and you haven't learned anything about how our institutions work and how they might be improved.

[01:34:31]  Bruce: That was a good answer for what it's worth. The thing that I found strange, like one of my first Libertarian friends, where he strongly identified as Libertarian and he would espouse it to anyone who was willing to listen. For example, he was convinced that 9-11 had actually been perpetuated by the US government and that the evidence that came forward with that Bin Laden had in fact been behind it. He said that was obviously green screened. I mean, like we're not talking small conspiracy theories, right? Like we're talking out there, conspiracy theories. From a guy who's, you know, an MBA type, business type, intelligent guy, normal seeming in any other way. It was a very strange thing and people got used to him. They would say, tell us the conspiracy theories and he'd get up there and he'd draw them on the board for us.

[01:35:24]  Unidentified speaker: He was very proud of them.

[01:35:25]  Bruce: And I also noticed that his conspiracy theories, he tended to contradict himself a lot. He was kind of just enamored with whatever the conspiracy theory of the day was. And he might have a totally different one that's in contradiction to the original one a couple of days later.

[01:35:39]  Unidentified speaker: Right?

[01:35:39]  Peter: I almost forgot about this, but now that you mention it, going back 20 years ago, practically every libertarian that I personally knew was also a 9-11 conspiracy type.

[01:35:53]  Unidentified speaker: Oh yeah.

[01:35:53]  Unidentified speaker: Oh yeah.

[01:35:54]  Bruce: It was huge back in the day. Logan might have been the first conspira-

[01:35:59]  Unidentified speaker: that's not true.

[01:36:01]  Bruce: Some of my Mormon libertarian friends are very sane. But Logan was one of the few that I came across, that I started to talk with them, and I'd say, you know what, I can actually get along with this version of libertarianism.

[01:36:13]  Unidentified speaker: Right?

[01:36:13]  Bruce: I don't agree with everything that he says, obviously. But, and I still identify as a conservative, but it just doesn't seem so crazy sounding as the original versions that I encountered over and over and over again, back in the day.

[01:36:27]  Logan: Well, so this is a nice example. So think about what the world is like if that conspiracy that Osama bin Laden was not behind 9-11, but instead our government was. Well, that's rather convenient for the libertarian who thinks the US government is the greatest enemy to human freedom in his own life, isn't it? So it's rather convenient. By the way, so this connects to my last point about conspiracism that I had originally forgotten is again, and this is very Deutschian, I think is okay, but for that to be true, then so many of our other explanations about individual politicians, about our institutions, about how the West works, about how Islamic societies work or Islamofascist societies, then all of these explanations, you've rendered them all problematic. And it's not enough to just do that in a vacuum.

[01:37:13]  Unidentified speaker: You now have to say, okay, even though all those explanations are problematic, I can actually explain those as well in light of this new conspiracy theory that I've adopted.

[01:37:23]  Unidentified speaker: So the burden of proof is on them to solve all those problems.

[01:37:25]  Unidentified speaker: I mean, this is true also when it comes to history.

[01:37:29]  Unidentified speaker: There's a kind of, well, I won't say that, but yeah.

[01:37:32]  Logan: So when you conjecture a new theory of history, it has to cohere or it should cohere with the rest of what's become background knowledge of how, again, how historical cultures and institutions and all those things have worked.

[01:37:45]  Unidentified speaker: So you can't just conjecture a conspiracy theory out of the blue, just like in science.

[01:37:50]  Unidentified speaker: You can't just say, okay, evolution applies to everything except mammals or whatever.

[01:37:55]  Unidentified speaker: It's like, okay, well, first of all, that's easy to vary.

[01:37:57]  Unidentified speaker: But also like this, this causes problems with the rest of our knowledge that the burden is on you to solve.

[01:38:03]  Unidentified speaker: Agree.

[01:38:04]  Bruce: I'd call that burden of explanation, by the way.

[01:38:06]  Unidentified speaker: Nice.

[01:38:06]  Unidentified speaker: Nice.

[01:38:07]  Bruce: So, okay, let me try to summarize then the reason why at least back in the day, so many and maybe even still today, so many Libertarians kind of got drawn to conspiracy theories was because there was a certain convenience in the fact that it then aligned. They weren't maybe so worried about finding good explanations. None of them were Deutschian crit-rats or something like that. It's really just a matter of, hey, it's very convenient. If I can say that 9-11 was actually caused by our government, wow, that really aligns with my idea that governments are bad.

[01:38:45]  Unidentified speaker: Something along those lines.

[01:38:45]  Bruce: Is that kind of the argument that you're making here?

[01:38:50]  Logan: A little bit more precise, it would say, wow, we don't have to go to war. But also, let me be a little fair because mind reading is never the best.

[01:38:59]  Unidentified speaker: I think the real reason why they're conspiracy theorists, like the more fundamental reason is that they forget the fact that people sincerely disagree with them.

[01:39:09]  Logan: I think that's what it would be, that they sincerely disagree with them. And in other words, no libertarian thinks if I was in government, I wouldn't be evil, I wouldn't be power hungry, I'm a libertarian.

[01:39:18]  Unidentified speaker: I would help free the people.

[01:39:19]  Unidentified speaker: But the thing is, other politicians with different world views and other constituents think the same thing about them.

[01:39:25]  Logan: They think they're doing what's best for the West and the world or whatever.

[01:39:28]  Unidentified speaker: So that's the fundamental thing is like they think the people who disagree with them are secretly evil and just pretending to be to have the public's best interest in mind.

[01:39:36]  Bruce: So actually, a form of the truth is manifest error is what you're saying.

[01:39:40]  Peter: I want to be respectful of Logan's time.

[01:39:42]  Unidentified speaker: Absolutely.

[01:39:43]  Unidentified speaker: He's the president of Conjecture Institute.

[01:39:46]  Unidentified speaker: We've got to let him.

[01:39:48]  Bruce: I mean, think about this last two hours. We've probably slowed the Conjecture Institute down considerably and have made the world a worse place. So, you know, only so much we can do.

[01:40:01]  Peter: No, Logan, I've loved listening to what you say.

[01:40:06]  Unidentified speaker: I don't remember if this was during the podcast or before, but we talked about the 75% rule, how that kind of makes a good conversation when you're like, that's like a happy place where you kind of agree with most of what someone says, but then there's interesting areas of non-agreement.

[01:40:29]  Peter: And I feel like we're, I think you might have bumped me up to 80% now.

[01:40:35]  Unidentified speaker: So I think I might be with the 80%.

[01:40:38]  Unidentified speaker: So I've really enjoyed your perspective.

[01:40:42]  Logan: I appreciate that. It's been a pleasure speaking to you both.

[01:40:45]  Unidentified speaker: Peter, it's been good meeting you.

[01:40:46]  Logan: I gotta say, you guys are my favorite communists that I've ever spoken to.

[01:40:49]  Unidentified speaker: No doubt.

[01:40:51]  Unidentified speaker: Okay.

[01:40:53]  Unidentified speaker: Now that's funny.

[01:40:55]  Unidentified speaker: Yeah, I'm a communist who's read 20 Thomas Sowell books.

[01:41:00]  Bruce: And Logan, you are by far my favorite utopian. Just saying.

[01:41:05]  Unidentified speaker: Touché, touché, all out.

[01:41:07]  Unidentified speaker: That's fair.

[01:41:07]  Unidentified speaker: That's totally fair.

[01:41:09]  Unidentified speaker: Yeah, no, I appreciate it.

[01:41:10]  Unidentified speaker: Yeah, Peter, let's keep talking.

[01:41:12]  Logan: I know you said you're not on Twitter or something like that, but I'm on Facebook. I don't really use Facebook publicly or anything, but yeah, let me know.

[01:41:19]  Unidentified speaker: And I'll send you guys, I don't know if you guys want, I don't know how you guys do the links and stuff, but for people who are interested in any of the things we've been talking about, at least in terms of people who are kind of looking for a quote unquote sane outlet of right wing thought, I'd be more than happy to share links with you guys.

[01:41:36]  Unidentified speaker: Absolutely. The Dispatch, Commentary. Yeah, Commentary. Okay, cool.

[01:41:39]  Unidentified speaker: Sounds good.

[01:41:39]  Unidentified speaker: Bruce, just text me.

[01:41:40]  Bruce: You know what, list a few right here and then that will give me a good excuse to put all of them into the show notes. So just listen to some of the ones that you think are good right wing sort. By the way, I love the dispatch. It's the only news source I'll listen to because so much of the news is insane.

[01:41:53]  Unidentified speaker: Yeah, that's Bruce's tribe right there.

[01:41:55]  Unidentified speaker: Commentary and dispatch and all that.

[01:41:57]  Unidentified speaker: Commentary and dispatch are amazing.

[01:41:59]  Unidentified speaker: By the way, I think we might disagree, Bruce, about David French, who seems like a nice guy.

[01:42:04]  Logan: I don't, I actually, so we didn't talk about this, but in the Never Trump world, there are people who I think opportunistically became Never Trump, just like there are people who opportunistically became new writers, new right wingers, like the New Right. And then there are people who just became Democrats, which makes no, if you really understand like economics, I don't know, that makes no sense to me. And then there are like the Jonah Goldberg types, who I think are very honorable and the commentary people who are willing to call balls and strikes. Anyway, we didn't even talk about that.

[01:42:31]  Unidentified speaker: That's for another conversation.

[01:42:32]  Unidentified speaker: Those are all great examples.

[01:42:33]  Unidentified speaker: Yeah.

[01:42:35]  Unidentified speaker: Yeah.

[01:42:35]  Unidentified speaker: Yeah.

[01:42:35]  Unidentified speaker: Yeah.

[01:42:35]  Bruce: So we probably disagree somewhat over David French. I actually do like David French. In general, I think I've liked everybody on the Dispatch. Jonah Goldberg is awesome.

[01:42:44]  Unidentified speaker: I would totally agree that Jonah Goldberg is the best.

[01:42:47]  Unidentified speaker: Yeah.

[01:42:47]  Unidentified speaker: So I would say the Dispatch podcast, commentary magazine podcast, national review.

[01:42:52]  Unidentified speaker: I think the podcast is called the editors because I think they might have multiple podcasts, but the editors is really good.

[01:42:58]  Logan: And I don't really listen to the Ben Shapiro show that often anymore, but I would definitely recommend that.

[01:43:04]  Unidentified speaker: Yeah.

[01:43:04]  Unidentified speaker: Whenever something bubbles up in Israel, that's when I tune into Ben Shapiro personally.

[01:43:10]  Unidentified speaker: He's good on that.

[01:43:12]  Unidentified speaker: He's good.

[01:43:12]  Logan: Yaron Brook is good. So Yaron Brook will give you, he's very good. His podcast is good. He's more, he's obviously an objectivist, so he's not quite the same as a Reaganite conservative, but he's really good.

[01:43:25]  Unidentified speaker: In terms of, if you want to learn about the history of the right wing over the last hundred years, I really would recommend a book called The Right by Matthew Continetti.

[01:43:33]  Unidentified speaker: And he is on the commentary podcast a lot, actually.

[01:43:36]  Unidentified speaker: And he's actually, when he talks, he strikes me as slightly more Trump-sympathetic than the rest, but he's good.

[01:43:42]  Unidentified speaker: And then other American political history books.

[01:43:46]  Logan: Well, I should say Daniel Hannan, who's actually Conjecture Institute's third advisor. His book, I always forget the title because I think there's a British title and an American title, but it's something like How the West Invented Freedom or How We Invented Freedom.

[01:43:57]  Unidentified speaker: That's a really good book.

[01:43:58]  Unidentified speaker: It's very, if you want to understand institutions.

[01:44:00]  Unidentified speaker: Peter, you'd already mentioned Thomas Sowell, so I won't do that.

[01:44:02]  Unidentified speaker: And I won't mention economics books because then we'd be here all day.

[01:44:05]  Unidentified speaker: But also Tom Woods' book, The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History.

[01:44:10]  Unidentified speaker: Now he's more of a Rothbardian libertarian, so you want to watch out for some of that, but that's a very good book.

[01:44:15]  Unidentified speaker: And then Joseph Ellis, he's a historian.

[01:44:18]  Logan: He has really good books on like the founding era of America.

[01:44:22]  Unidentified speaker: And I always forget that because there's founding brothers, and then there's another book with another title.

[01:44:26]  Unidentified speaker: And I think if I recall, they're both good, but one of them was so weird because it came out maybe not during the first Trump administration.

[01:44:34]  Unidentified speaker: And at the end of each chapter, he would just have these weird, like Trump Derangement Syndrome passages.

[01:44:39]  Unidentified speaker: And I just found it unprofessional.

[01:44:40]  Unidentified speaker: Like, dude, I love your stuff.

[01:44:41]  Unidentified speaker: You're good on history.

[01:44:42]  Unidentified speaker: Why are you like, I don't like that.

[01:44:44]  Unidentified speaker: But that's, that would be like American history type stuff that I would recommend and the podcast on from sane conservatives that I'd recommend.

[01:44:51]  Unidentified speaker: And if people want other resources on other topics, I'm happy to, you know, reach out to me.

[01:44:56]  Unidentified speaker: I'm on Twitter, my email, all that stuff.

[01:44:59]  Unidentified speaker: And Peter actually, in Lords of the Cosmos, you'll see we have a bunch of reading recommendations as well.

[01:45:05]  Unidentified speaker: Speaking of books, I'm so curious.

[01:45:06]  Peter: Have you read that book, The White Pill by Michael Malice?

[01:45:11]  Unidentified speaker: I have not.

[01:45:12]  Logan: I was just talking to a friend about that book. I have not read it because from what I've seen on interviews about it, I don't know how much I would.

[01:45:19]  Unidentified speaker: I struggle with books that go into super crucial detail on historical events.

[01:45:25]  Logan: I like to kind of learn like the broad strokes and what was happening during that time, not like stories of people being tortured by communists and stuff. But it seems good.

[01:45:34]  Peter: He also goes into this whole Rothbard history of libertarianism.

[01:45:41]  Unidentified speaker: And then, you know, he talks about Ayn Rand.

[01:45:43]  Unidentified speaker: And, I mean, it was a whole history of this intellectual tradition that I was really ignorant of.

[01:45:52]  Peter: I mean, he's kind of a weird guy.

[01:45:53]  Unidentified speaker: Don't get me wrong.

[01:45:54]  Unidentified speaker: He's a self-proclaimed anarchist and all that.

[01:45:56]  Unidentified speaker: I'm not sure actually how much I agree with him on some things, but he's extremely good writer, too.

[01:46:04]  Unidentified speaker: I think you'd find it very entertaining.

[01:46:06]  Unidentified speaker: And, you know, the white pill is optimism.

[01:46:09]  Unidentified speaker: The Optimism Pill, too, which I'm, I think we're probably all in favor of that, too.

[01:46:16]  Unidentified speaker: And let me remind you.

[01:46:17]  Logan: Thank you for saying that, Peter, because you reminded me of a book that I can't believe I didn't recommend. Another history book, Radicals for Capitalism by Brian Doherty. That is basically a history, if I recall correctly, of American libertarianism. It's a very interesting. It's a very interesting, interesting history.

[01:46:32]  Bruce: Do you like Friedman's Machinery of Freedom?

[01:46:36]  Unidentified speaker: Love it.

[01:46:36]  Unidentified speaker: Love it.

[01:46:37]  Unidentified speaker: Oh, good.

[01:46:38]  Unidentified speaker: I love that book, too.

[01:46:40]  Unidentified speaker: We're talking about David Friedman, right?

[01:46:41]  Unidentified speaker: Yes, yes.

[01:46:44]  Bruce: Sam Kuypers told me to read Law's Order, which was also very excellent.

[01:46:48]  Logan: I have not read that one yet.

[01:46:50]  Unidentified speaker: I still need to.

[01:46:52]  Unidentified speaker: Yes.

[01:46:54]  Logan: Honestly, it makes me so sad to even talk about David Friedman or Milton Friedman.

[01:46:57]  Unidentified speaker: Because again, it reminds me of how far the right wing has fallen.

[01:47:00]  Logan: They're not interested in even those arguments. It's wild.

[01:47:03]  Bruce: I was on the Increments podcast and they had me on as a conservative and there's just nobody. It's really hard for me to find anybody who's like me anymore. It's strange because there used to be tons of people like me around me. Maybe there still are, but they just don't speak up anymore.

[01:47:28]  Unidentified speaker: It's very weird.

[01:47:29]  Bruce: I live in Utah, which is obviously a red state.

[01:47:32]  Unidentified speaker: It went for Trump.

[01:47:33]  Unidentified speaker: No surprise there.

[01:47:34]  Bruce: It's probably one of the most anti-Trump states that's a red state that there is. There's a great deal of sanity in Utah compared to a lot of places.

[01:47:43]  Unidentified speaker: Even here, it's weird.

[01:47:44]  Unidentified speaker: It's just strange.

[01:47:46]  Bruce: That was the thing I was going to ask you about. Maybe this is a final question for you, Logan. You brought up the fact that it could change.

[01:47:55]  Unidentified speaker: You know what?

[01:47:55]  Unidentified speaker: I agree with you.

[01:47:56]  Bruce: I feel like that's probably where we should end on is just a discussion about change. One of the things, so we had Jonathan Rauch on the show. And I admitted that I was very concerned about Trump. I feel like he does have some authoritarian impulses. I think the institutions will keep him from being able to do anything much with those. He's going to try as much as he can. It bothers me that he even tries.

[01:48:21]  Unidentified speaker: Like to me, that's very, very bad.

[01:48:24]  Bruce: But then when I asked about how scared should I be, Jonathan Rauch basically told me I'm not scared enough, right? And there's a part of me that I could be wrong. Let me admit that Jonathan Rauch maybe studies this better than I do, more than I do, who knows, right? But when it comes right down to it, it seems to me that we have this moment in time where there's a great deal of insanity with the right. But I don't see it as, it's not like there's some clear-cut momentum in a single direction. The only thing that's really holding, this is just me, feel free to disagree. The only thing that's really holding it together at the moment, the coalition together at the moment, is Trump himself. And basically people have kind of aligned themselves around Trump.

[01:49:10]  Unidentified speaker: He's not going to be there forever.

[01:49:11]  Unidentified speaker: He's not.

[01:49:12]  Unidentified speaker: Right?

[01:49:13]  Bruce: I mean, once he's gone, there's going to need to be, I don't see how the right, and again, I could be wrong. And if I am, then we'll see. But it's really hard for me to believe that the right is going to stay insane forever. And I'm still expecting that there'll eventually be a re-emergence of more conservatives like me.

[01:49:34]  Unidentified speaker: Am I right?

[01:49:34]  Unidentified speaker: Am I wrong?

[01:49:35]  Unidentified speaker: How scared should I be Logan?

[01:49:38]  Logan: Well, I don't want to tell you how scared you should be. I will say I'm not scared at all. I'm irritated. And that this might just be a dispositional difference between us. And this connects to, we didn't talk about the culture and ecosystem of podcasts, but this is very important. And there's an interesting epistemological lesson here, which is basically, podcasts are, you know, their shtick is, you know, we're not like the old legacy media, we won't lie to you. But meanwhile, they could have learned a thing or two from, let's say, the tradition of fact checking and gatekeeping in a good way, of like, let's say, just quality control that the old media, the legacy media implements. And there's none of that in the podcast sphere.

[01:50:20]  Unidentified speaker: And I think it's melting people's brains.

[01:50:24]  Unidentified speaker: Look, I think things can change.

[01:50:25]  Logan: I think, it's not, I don't think it's a given that JD Vance is going to take the mantle.

[01:50:31]  Unidentified speaker: I agree.

[01:50:33]  Unidentified speaker: Yeah, and I think there's been a, there was a recent controversy.

[01:50:35]  Logan: I don't know when this podcast goes goes live, but about, oh, we talked about this a little earlier, but the point is, so for the right-wingers saying they're not going to throw the Republicans under the bus who are saying a bunch of stuff, and whatever, they were joking, but it was still like stupid.

[01:50:50]  Unidentified speaker: Yeah, I understand that.

[01:50:51]  Logan: And they think like to win, we have to not, no enemies to the right, as the phrase goes, but you're ignoring the fact that there are millions of swing voters.

[01:50:59]  Unidentified speaker: And so it's not a given that you are adding more than you're subtracting by kind of acting like vile lunatics.

[01:51:05]  Unidentified speaker: And I could totally see, look, political winds shift very quickly.

[01:51:10]  Unidentified speaker: Look how quickly we went from Obama to Trump.

[01:51:12]  Unidentified speaker: No one saw Trump coming.

[01:51:14]  Unidentified speaker: And I could see an articulate Reaganite coming to the fold and taking up the mantle.

[01:51:20]  Unidentified speaker: I mean, we'll see.

[01:51:21]  Unidentified speaker: So, yeah, I'm, it's totally plausible.

[01:51:23]  Logan: Look, the good news is you still have Republicans who are basically Reaganites.

[01:51:29]  Unidentified speaker: They're just, often they're either quiet or on the local level, they really are Reaganites.

[01:51:33]  Logan: And Richard Hanania talks about this how, you know, red states are, they still have smaller governments than blue states, despite everything that's happening at the national level.

[01:51:40]  Unidentified speaker: And it's because, look, they're still part of the Republican Party that is for small government, even though it's more distant than it used to be.

[01:51:47]  Logan: You know, Republicanism was always a, I mean, during the Cold War, is a three legged stool.

[01:51:52]  Unidentified speaker: The Libertarians were only one third of the stool.

[01:51:54]  Unidentified speaker: And right now we're on the outs.

[01:51:56]  Unidentified speaker: And you kind of have these basically national conservatives on the rise.

[01:52:01]  Unidentified speaker: But things could definitely change.

[01:52:02]  Unidentified speaker: I think fundamentally, and this goes back to the very beginning, what we need is someone making the arguments like Milton Friedman used to do.

[01:52:10]  Unidentified speaker: No one's making the arguments.

[01:52:13]  Bruce: Yeah, it's weird that nobody's making the arguments. It's very strange. I come from that conservative intellectual tradition, where you really tried to explain things, right? And I just don't see it anymore. I feel so isolated so much of the time. And I appreciate what you're saying, Logan, that I really, and I haven't given up hope, but I really shouldn't give up hope. It could very easily shift back towards the kind of conservatism that I believe in.

[01:52:42]  Unidentified speaker: Lucky we've got Logan here.

[01:52:44]  Unidentified speaker: And, Logan, would you accept the term Anarcho-Reaganite?

[01:52:50]  Unidentified speaker: That's funny.

[01:52:51]  Unidentified speaker: Yeah, I mean, I can't, I don't see myself disagreeing with that term.

[01:52:55]  Logan: I mean, that definitely applies.

[01:52:57]  Unidentified speaker: Okay.

[01:52:58]  Unidentified speaker: Well, sounds like a title for that episode.

[01:53:00]  Bruce: Logan, I really appreciate the conversations I've had with you. Like I've said, I feel like I'm having sane conversations when I'm talking with Logan, which is, you know, hard to come by these days, which is why I really felt like I needed to have him on the show and just have a conversation. And again, I feel like we've had just really interesting things for us to discuss that you've said here. And I appreciate a lot of those sources you just listed. I'm going to like go look a lot of those up and maybe add them to my media diet. So I appreciate you very much, Logan.

[01:53:27]  Unidentified speaker: Thanks.

[01:53:29]  Unidentified speaker: Thanks, Bruce.

[01:53:29]  Logan: I appreciate that a lot.

[01:53:30]  Unidentified speaker: Yeah, it's always fun talking to you.

[01:53:32]  Unidentified speaker: Peter, it was good meeting you.

[01:53:32]  Logan: And Bruce, as you know, you know, if you ever want other resources, just text me anytime and I'll let you know.

[01:53:37]  Unidentified speaker: All right.

[01:53:38]  Unidentified speaker: Awesome.

[01:53:39]  Peter: Thank you, Bruce.

[01:53:40]  Unidentified speaker: Thank you, Logan.

[01:53:48]  Unidentified speaker: Hello again.

[01:53:49]  Peter: If you've made it this far, please consider giving us a nice rating on whatever platform you use, or even making a financial contribution through the link provided in the show notes. As you probably know, we are a podcast loosely tied together by the Popper Deutsch Theory of Knowledge. We believe David Deutsch's Four Strands tie everything together. So we discuss science, knowledge, computation, politics, art, and especially the search for artificial general intelligence.

[01:54:18]  Unidentified speaker: Also, please consider connecting with Bruce on X at BNielson01.

[01:54:25]  Peter: Also, please consider joining the Facebook group, The Many Worlds of David Deutsch, where Bruce and I first started connecting.

[01:54:32]  Unidentified speaker: Thank you.