Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 1/11/24 Keith Knight on the Reasons He Left Progressivism

Episode Date: January 17, 2024

Scott interviews Keith Knight about his new book Domestic Imperialism: Nine Reasons I Left Progressivism. They go through a number of insights, all cited in the book, that convinced Knight that those with compassion for the world’s poor ought to embrace nonaggression and free markets. Discussed on the show: Domestic Imperialism by Keith Knight Keith Knight is Managing Editor of the Libertarian Institute, host of the Don’t Tread on Anyone podcast, and the author of Domestic Imperialism: Nine Reasons I Left Progressivism and organizer of the Voluntaryist Handbook. Follow him on Twitter @an_capitalist This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: Moon Does Artisan Coffee; Roberts and Robers Brokerage Incorporated; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; Libertas Bella; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott. Get Scott’s interviews before anyone else! Subscribe to the Substack. Shop Libertarian Institute merch or donate to the show through Patreon, PayPal or Bitcoin: 1DZBZNJrxUhQhEzgDh7k8JXHXRjY Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

All right, y'all, welcome to the Scott Horton Show. I'm the director of the Libertarian Institute, editorial director of anti-war.com, author of the book, Fool's Aaron, Time to End the War in Afghanistan, and The Brand New, Enough Already, Time to End the War on Terrorism. And I've recorded more than 5,500 interviews since 2004. almost all on foreign policy and all available for you at scothorton.4 you can sign up the podcast feed there and the full interview archive is also available at youtube.com slash scott horton's show hey man you know one of the best things i ever did was i published a bunch of books last year and one of them was domestic imperialism nine reasons i left progressivism by the great keith knight welcome back to the show Keith, how are you doing, man?

I am doing fine, Scott. Thank you for having me. Oh, yeah. Thank you for being the managing editor of the Libertarian Institute and for writing this great book. And it's got the evil Woodrow Wilson and the evil FDR and the evil LBJ and the evil Bernie Sanders and the evil AOC right there on the front. And it's all black and red and commie looking font and everything. It's great. I love it.

Domestic imperialism. nine reasons I left progressivism I think the most fantastic, wonderful inspiring, intriguing, interesting title of a book I ever read.

Domestic imperialism How could any leftist get past never even mind the subtitle, right? Just any leftist look at the title and go, oh, you kind of got me there. You know what I mean?

Like, how could you deny it? I definitely noticed the second that I started telling progressives about the book because I wanted about, you know, 10 or 20 progressives that I know to read this and really give me the green light by saying, well, it's not that you totally change my mind, Mr. 27 year old. I'm not going to concede. I've been wrong for 30 years or so. But I will say some of the stuff I have not come across before. And I guess I'll have to look more into the sources. I didn't have time to read all the end notes. That is what I got from so many of them that I go, well, I can. can't imagine that they're just going to throw away everything. But if I'm able to invoke that response, I think I got something here. So this was an idea that I came across from a gentleman named Auburn Herbert, a member of parliament in Britain in the early 1900s. He's the one who coined the term popularized it, the term volunteerism. And he's making the justification for Irish independence. And he says, well, it's also important to know that just because these people are very close to us. It's also a principle that we should have for these South Africans that it's

unjust for some people to rule over others, not just because Britain is very, very far away from South Africa, but even our domestic citizenry. Say that it wasn't someone in Britain or who, you know, you're coercively imposing your will on and they're all the way in Australia. That seems very distant, seems very self-interested. What if it was your neighbor, the closest person to you, Would you still have the right to, say, impose taxes on them, impose commercial regulations on them? Would you have the right to conscript them to fight in a military against their will? Would you have the right to force them to chip in to declare war on Germany for invading France and Russia? You'd have to force them to fund those things?

Well, it's no different, whether it's someone far away, foreign imperialism, as it's usually called, or whether it's someone very close to you. So this really gets at the root of how I don't see any real significant difference between a different country, far away, coercibly imposing its will on Americans, or if it's Washington, D.C., doing the very same thing to us. You know, it reminds me of, I think it was Rothbard, who wrote about how liberals would often say about LBJ. Oh, his great society was great, but the Vietnam War ruined everything. that was like the two sides of LBJ. And Rothbard goes, no, it's the same thing, man. The exact same government that's going to remake American society at home to be perfect, according to the specifications of the technocrats,

it's the exact same ideology behind remaking Vietnam. Well, we'll just do this strategic Hamlet program and whatever else, implement it away, and it'll work, just like everything will work. Yeah, the domestic population is the group that the government's at war with, but has surrendered. That generally is it. Because, you know, if the Vietnamese would have just surrendered, according to Robert Caro, the famous LBJ historian, LBJ wanted a Tennessee Valley authority throughout Vietnam so they could be a kind, prosperous society and wouldn't, you know, have to be subject to the terrible whim of the Soviets. And while the Soviets are terrible,

these bombing campaigns of Operation Rolling Thunder in Vietnam, Operation Bayloro, which I believe was in Cambodia and portions of Laos. These mass murder campaigns are just completely unjustified. If they had only surrendered and did what the government told them, then they would have been fine. The point is, is that what they're objecting to is some people claiming the right to rule over others. That's what really gets to the heart of what it means to be a domestic imperialist.

Yeah. All right. So the book is dedicated to Carrie Wedler. Who is that? She is a very popular YouTuber who sort of went viral. when she had burned her, I believe it was an Obama shirt or an Obama flag. And I remember thinking, well, that's funny. I got into progressivism because I thought Barack Obama was really sort of this outsider

coming in and taking the side of the masses as opposed to George Bush, taking the side of the establishment, the oil interests, et cetera. Now, Carrie Wedler's justification for why she advocates the principles of libertarianism as opposed to progressivism is, well, progressivism, can attract a lot of people by saying, well, you should be empowered. And the primary way that they will empower people is through the democratic process. Democracy is central to the empowerment of the citizenry. This way, they can elect representatives who act on their behalf and allow society to flourish through this representative sort of democracy. However, a point that she makes

through a number of her videos is that is one way to claim to represent people, giving them one vote between two politicians every two, four, and six years. A much better way to empower people is to give them economic freedom so they can engage in any capitalist act but with other consenting adults. So it's not very often that you are deciding the outcome of an election, if ever. However, you are constantly deciding who to trade with, what products and services to purchase, where you want to work, where you want to go to school, how you want to educate your kids. And in every aspect of that, we have progressives pushing occupational licensing, pushing taxes, which allocate scarce resources away from businesses being allowed to reinvest and grow

their business and give it to the state. In the 1950s, roughly 5% of professions required occupational licensing, now it's up to 22% according to the Cato Institute. That means if you want to get your foot in the door and get some on-the-job experience, you cannot do so. unless you get permission from another organization, or you could be put in jail and shot if you resist. That's how serious this is. This is not a recommendation. This is not a, well, we just want to make sure we have standards.

We constantly have standards in the free market. We have things like Yelp. We have Amazon reviews. We have a number of organizations. Even when you just Google a company, you're able to see other people who've interacted with them. So this is how people actually build reputations and build standards in the marketplace.

This is a much more empowering philosophy that gives people the ability to run their lives, much more so than they're being a state who everything they give to you, they can take away and they have very little incentive to protect you when it comes to, you know, making sure you're safe, all the things they claim to do. They have very little incentive to do so primarily because you don't have the legal means of opting out of funding them.

All right. book title is not nine reasons you shouldn't be a progressive it's nine reasons i'm not one anymore basically right you say nine reasons i left progressivism so tell us about you and what sort of a progressive were you and what was it that really got through to you well i was uh the sort of progressive who saw barraq obama as the real turning point in america uh history of slavery and jim crow the Real thing that would turn it around. And how old were you in 2008? I must have been 12 years old.

I remember because I would go to Sedona every weekend and see my grandparents and they would talk politics. And I thought, well, it's crystal clear. There's some people who want to give you stuff for free and they want to be nice. And then there's other people who disagree with that. How could you possibly disagree with it? So when I came across people like Ron Paul, this would have been an interview. view in 2012 that he was giving before a presidential debate, they had asked him a question, your philosophy is significantly different from the others on the stage. If there's one book

you would want people to be introduced to to get an idea of where you stand on the issues, what would it be? And he said, Frederick Bostiats, the law. Now, when I started reading Bosteat and the law, because I was intrigued by someone like Ron Paul, I came across the idea of economic costs that did not relate to money. So obviously you can see that, you know, the military isn't free even when the government pays for it. They allocate money away from the voluntary sector and give it to Raytheon Northrop Grumman, the soldiers, and the generals, or they print it and in that case makes all dollars in the economy worth less than they otherwise would be because there's a higher supply of dollars in circulation. However, I did think that somehow you could

make health care free or education free. I guess I had just never really put one in one together. I ended up coming across a story. This is one of them. I cited on page 27. It's titled, Jay Austin's Beautiful, Illegal Tiny House from Reason Magazine. It says, at a cost that ranges from $10,000 to $50,000, tiny homes like The Matchbox could help to ease the shortage of affordable housing in the capital city.

This is in Washington, D.C. Heating and cooling costs are negligible. Rainwater catchment systems help to make the home self-sustaining. They're an attractive option to the very sort of residents who the city attracts in abundance, single, young professionals, without a lot of stuff, who aren't ready to take on a large mortgage. But tiny homes come with one enormous catch. They're illegal in violation of several codes in Washington, D.C.'s zoning ordinance. Among the many requirements of the 34 chapters and 600 pages of the code are mandates

defining minimum lock size, room size, alley widths, and accessory dwelling units that prevent tiny houses from being anything more than a part-time resident. So this is where the rubber meets the road. You have something that I think is not great. I think you should have a bigger house. I think you should have more opportunities, whatever. You can agree to disagree. The difference is the progressive actually advocates regulations which forcibly stop someone

like Jay Austin from making these houses at a price range of $10,000 to $50,000 and giving them to people who currently do not have homes or cannot afford their own home. So that is where I went from. Yes, I completely sympathize with the masses. I'm totally against discrimination based off race or gender, but I could still have those things in my philosophy and be a libertarian. What separates the progressive from the libertarian is the progressive doesn't stop at recommending. It doesn't stop at providing potential alternatives. They literally say we will have the state forcibly confiscate these houses from the people currently in them for their own good. And this was such a stark example. It makes sense. You see people like George Eastman who,

while he didn't invent the camera, he had a number of innovations which made it so you can have a camera that is very small that can fit into your pocket. And that's how he made a lot of money. He made a a lot of money by drastically decreasing the price of something as valuable as a camera. We see it in TVs. We see it in computers. We see it whenever there is more competition, whenever there's more volunteerism, when there's much more customer empowerment than if the state is involved. So it was really this moral economic cycle, which I got. And there's not just the economic incentive for producers to produce for the masses in the free market. It's also the only moral system because it actually respects people as ends in and of themselves. So you might say,

these houses were too tiny. People should only have big houses. The question is, what are you willing to do? Provide alternatives? Nothing wrong with that. Give them advice on how to get more skills so they can have more income and buy a bigger house. That's also fine. The progressive actually claims to own your body and all potential houses in the area of America and will forcibly stop you from doing something that you think makes your life better off because they know better than you. That's why I joined progressivism. That's an example of why I left. All right. Very interesting. Now, chapter one is called arbitrary divides. That's very interesting. What do you mean about that?

So there are a lot of divisions that we face in general. The primary ones that the media focuses on, America versus Russia, black versus white, men versus women. It certainly appears that they are constantly pitting these groups against each other. So one way to approach that is say that, well, people shouldn't be divided. But there are rapists, kidnappers, thieves, assaulters, jerks, liars, people advocating for terrible things who should have some divides. So my claim here is that the progressive divides are all arbitrary or based on either accidents, of birth or characteristics that shouldn't necessarily divide people who you really could live commonly with.

So the example that I use in the book is I cite the words of Barack Obama. This is after the Pulse Night Club murder of June 12th, 2016, Omar Mateen at the Pulse nightclub murdered, 49 people wounded 53, held the survivors hostage and was on the phone with 911 in an attempt to amplify his motives. So Barack Obama, our president, sitting president, came out to inform the public as to what happened. And Barack Obama said, this was an attack on the LGBT community. Americans were targeted because we're a country that has learned to welcome everyone,

no matter who you are or who you love. And hatred toward people because of sexual orientation, regardless of where it comes from is a betrayal of what's best in us. Now, I really do think that it is horrible to hate someone for a sexual preference, anything among adults, whether you agree or disagree to hate them to the point of using violence against them, I think is really terrible. So that was the divide that the sitting president thought was really important for people to understand. The lesson of this massacre is we should not treat homosexuals poorly. And, uh, I totally agree.

However, there's a way you can falsify this statement because you might say, well, the attack took place in Florida. Maybe the guy hated Florida. Maybe he hated young people because it was a nightclub. He was targeting the young with terrorism because the goal is to amplify a message or have a shortcut to fame, so to speak. You can actually look at the words they say to know what they are up against. Here is what Omar Mateen said in his call.

So I original, what I'm using here are the transcripts from the 911 operator, which were provided by Glenn Greenwald. Omar Mateen says, you have to tell America to stop bombing Syria and Iraq. They're killing a lot of innocent people. What am I to do here when my people are getting killed over there? You get what I'm saying? You need to stop the U.S. airstrikes. They need to stop the U.S. airstrikes, okay? They need to stop the U.S. airstrikes.

They are killing too many children. and they are killing too many women. I feel the pain of people getting killed in Syria and Iraq. They need to stop bombing Syria and Iraq. The U.S. is collaborating with Russia and they are killing innocent women and children. Okay? He goes on like that. This call, I believe, was 23 minutes or something.

So here was the divide that was given to us. There are straight people and a lot of them really hate gay people. The actual divide was there are peaceful people and there are murderers. And the murderers are Omar Mateen and the United States government in Syria and Iraq. I cite the Council on Foreign Relations that year 2016, more than 24,000 bombs were dropped on Syria and Iraq. So this is what we're up against when it comes to arbitrary divides. There are absolutely things we should be divided on. But when it comes to black versus white, man versus woman, heterosexual versus homosexual, those are completely fake and unpleasured.

principled. So the divide that I think people should have instead is one that relates to a dealing with supporting honest people as opposed to dishonest people, people who engage in voluntary trade as opposed to people who commit fraud, and people who use persuasion to achieve their ends in life as opposed to people who use violence or threats thereof. That's a true divide that is very in line with the Declaration of Independence, pursuing your happiness, respecting life and the liberty of other people. So I think that's a genuine divide, whereas progressives constantly push fake divides. So do Republicans and conservatives, but this was my tale of how I left progressivism. Right. Hey, y'all, Scott here. Let me tell you about Roberts and Roberts Brokerage, Inc.

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All right, well, but if you're talking to leftists here, then you need to talk about the most important divide, which is the wealthy and the workers, management, and labor. And they do have sometimes quite different interests just from the point of view obviously wages owners want to pay less workers want to make more and owners tend to be fewer but wealthier and more organized with PR people and lawyers and lobbyists to make things their way and I think I'm a libertarian I'm a bit divided in my thinkings and opinions on this but I think it's just true what Bernie Sanders and Pat Buchanan would both agree that big business, and I think this is going on right in front of our eyes right now, people don't understand what's going on. I think this is the key

to what's going on. Big business likes massive illegal immigration because it causes downward pressure on wages. And as you and I know, the government and the banks expanding the money supply and the supply of credit in the system is what causes price inflation and it's especially hourly workers and their cost of living increase is really the last thing you know they're the last people that get a cost of living increase they're the lowest people on the chain and the last people to be able to try to make up for the losses of price inflation and then what happens they take the rap and if you listen especially to the business press but this fill down even to like not just CNBC but regular NBC it's those damn wage earners and their

upward pressure on wages that's causing all this inflation Keith and so then how do they screw them the last people the lowest people on the ladder and the last people to get a cost of living increase well we'll import a bunch of immigrants from the global south to essentially frighten them to and they say this in the Wall Street Journal right to keep people afraid so that they don't want to ask their boss for race because they'll be afraid that they'll make him mad and get fired instead of knowing that it's time for a raise and he has no choice but to give me one now which is where the employee wants to be so that's a pretty massive divide and according to the leftists and unconquerable one until you nationalize

everything and put it all in the hands of the people well that's going all the way to the left But anyway, anyone on the left would say, we got a real problem here and democracy or somebody's got to solve it for us. So what do you say to all that? When it comes to business, big business elites are self-interested. We definitely have to recognize that that is true. The problem with this is it does apply universally. Employees are also self-interested. Consumers, when they come into your shop, they are self-interested as well.

So recognizing that self-interest is not just something that happens under capitalism since Adam Smith and only applies to the elites. Once you recognize that it applies universally, you say, well, under which system would we rather have self-interested people operate? One where they can't get a penny out of your pocket or a second of your time unless you voluntarily give it to them, or one in which they, the average person, is compelled to fund you whether or not they find value in you. your product or service. So the progressive way to look at this to attempt to rectify this inequality is to create one organization that has a monopoly on things like taxation and regulation and the right to declare war that if these self-interested people are out there, the state is the first institution they're going to go to. And even good people can get corrupted by this, by occupying a position like this. So the greatest protection against the exploitation

of employees is having a higher amount of potential employers. The way that we can actually verify this is we would assume that more or less something like 80, 90, maybe even 100% of workers would be earning the minimum wage if the progressive worldview were correct. That big business just pays the lowest amount. They legally have to. And the only way you come in, the only way that can change is if the state comes in and increases the wage. If not, you're just saying that there's nothing you can do. Well, it turns out

a very small percentage of employees currently who are working full time actually earn the minimum wage. This is the result of there being multiple employers, one. So employees have multiple options and them leaving the firm is the incentive for the employer to pay the employee what they're actually worth. The second thing, which raises wages, is the amount of capital, investment. So by having access to a computer, the employee is much more productive than they otherwise would be. I learned this on the job when I worked at Walmart and our entire computer system went down for one day and we did roughly 10% of, we were able to fill 10% of the orders we usually did. So we were 10% as productive as we were with access to all that capital investment

had to have cost tens of millions of dollars to get this set up. It was the online grocery pickup department at Walmart. So if we care about employees, the question is, which system or set of rules should we embrace, which gives the employees more choices and allows them to build skills which develop a higher wage? And I think the clear answer is a system which allows them to voluntarily associate and disassociate with employers and one that doesn't have so many crippling taxes and regulations. There are more employers to choose from. The thing I read earlier about the housing shortage as a causal result of government regulation, the same thing happens with business regulation.

The more hurdles you have to starting a business, the fewer businesses there are. In fact, that's why people like H. Lee Scott and Doug McMullen, the two former CEOs of Walmart, have come out in favor of increasing the federal minimum wage. It's not going to hurt Walmart by any reasonable metric. It would actually help them. What it would do is massively crush a great deal of competition. Progressives see this clear as day. If we said, well, we want to protect the voting population, so in order to vote, you have to have a license, a birth certificate, and you have to pass a test. Now, these are three pretty easy things.

We should all have access to a birth certificate and a license, and maybe a test or two probably wouldn't take more than 30, 45 minutes. The progressive immediately sees, well, who's this going to hurt? Not Jeff Bezos, not Warren Buffett, the people with the least amount of resources, and the least amount of opportunities to access an education to allow them to get a driver's license or pass some sort of test. And who knows who runs this test? It's going to be, you know, heavily skewed one way or another. Now, apparently, when they look at the commercial realm, they do not appreciate the fact

that needing dozens of licenses to start a business, taking years to file and get all these approvals, they don't see that that hurts people with the least amount of skills and the least amount of experience. This is why there's far fewer employers than their otherwise would be. Employees have far fewer options than they otherwise would. All consumers have much less access to products and services than they otherwise would. So when you have a lower supply of goods and services, that makes the price higher than it otherwise would be. So every time we see a shortcoming in the world to say that, well, these people are self-interested, does not get to the heart of really anything because under socialism, you still have self-interested people acting, you know, with primarily themselves in mind.

And then even if they could think of all the millions of people, they don't know what's in the best interest of themselves, let alone their neighbors or millions of other people who they happen to share a country with. So recognizing the self-interest that's inherent in everyone, especially in big business, the best thing we want to do is have a free market where they can't get a penny out of our pocket or a second out of our time unless we, choose to associate with them and if we want to disassociate we can and it actually works in the real world uh i cite in here the fortune 500 um i compare the number of companies uh in the fortune 500 i don't remember those statistics but if you look at the Dow Jones industrial average the 30 companies with the largest market capitalization available a very small portion of those companies are still in there in 1960 and in the year 2000. And I noticed that some of the companies that are still in there are Raytheon, Northrop Grumman,

there as a cause of result of the state, you know, allocating funds to them coercively, as opposed to people just choosing to be their customer. So we constantly see this turnover. Companies like Kodak, Sears, Blockbuster, even the really, really big wigs can go out of business if consumers say, I don't like this anymore. We recently saw this with Bud Light. people said, I don't like who the current spokesperson is. We're going to allocate our dollars away.

And you can do that immediately. You don't have to wait for an election every four years or so. So true empowerment of the employee comes from a free market where they have more options and the freedom to disassociate with the bad actors that will exist inevitably in any society. I think a lot of times people think libertarians really are just spinning for big business rather than for a process of profit and loss in the market for some good reason. I'm glad you mentioned Kodak there because I read a great article about how their new CEO ran their company into the damn ground. And even though they had invented digital photography, of course, way out ahead of the industry, freaking Kodak,

they absolutely refused to invest in developing the technology. and mastering it and leading the market in digital cameras and digital cameras when they came out is it was so much easier for everyone even when the quality was so much lower than 35 millimeter he was just thought it was so much less hassle than going and getting your pictures developed and all that like in the old fashion days or whatever and so Kodak just completely took a beating on that and then at the same time the guy was doing all these stock buybacks and extra dividends and taking on all this debt and you could almost call it sabotage, right? You just ran the company into the ground and they went bankrupt. And then actually the last thing I heard about them was they were trying to get a government contract to do something. I forgot some inflated government contract to do something. I didn't even have anything to do with photography.

They're going to take over some project. They're going to give us the UFO cameras that can really let us zone in and get a clear photo. I see I've been waiting for one of those. Finally will have proof, you know. I remember MySpace. The idea that MySpace would not be the single source of social media. I remember thinking MySpace is the future because if you're not on MySpace, there's no point even going to school anymore.

I was in middle school when it came out. And it was the only thing. There was no other option, let alone, Facebook, Twitter, Minesodicy.com, Rumble, things like this. So we're constantly getting competitors in this market. And I would much rather have it to where. if people don't like something, well, they can try to run someone for office and then when that person gets elected, convince other members of Congress to vote on their legislation. It's a much lower cost way to have there be as many competitors as humanly possible. And in the case of

Odyssey or library, Jeremy Kaufman's organization, the SEC completely ran library out of business. So again, even when we have these alternatives come up, it's not because, well, people are great. people are always greedy. The problem is the greedy people have access to something called the Security and Exchange Commission where they could forcibly stop you from giving your product to all the people who want it. This creates many more monopolies and oligopolis than would exist in a system of voluntary exchanges. Yeah, ma'am. All right. So again, the book is domestic imperialism. You guys should already read it already, but I hope you buy it and read it now and give it to your left-wing and liberal friends, college students in your life. Talk to me about college. Chapter 5,

four years of work for $0 an hour. I bet you have a point here. I was at Arizona State University in a class called Justice Studies, and there was a discussion on whether or not the minimum wage federally should be increased, decreased, or if it should stay the same. And the general principle for all the pro-minimum wage advocates was very similar to what progressives say in general, which is that if anyone is working or performing labor, they should be compensated. And because they should be compensated, it means the state should coerce other people to compensate them, in this case, employers. So that was the general justification for the minimum wage. It occurred to me as we were having this conversation. I said, well, I've been doing a lot of work here in college

and no one's ever compensated me. In fact, I actually had to pay to go to college. Thousands of hours of homework and class work. I worked very hard and no one ever compensated me. So this completely violates the minimum wage principle. So that means that any work that I did is more or less criminal and someone's either got to start paying me or college should be outlawed. Now think of the effects of outlawing something like college, which if the minimum wage principle pay everyone $15 for every hour they work, colleges just have to just go out of business completely. What would the effects of something like this be? Well, that would mean that a lot of people who wanted access to the knowledge that they get at colleges would not have access to that knowledge. They'd have to go

into the workforce and by going to college you're increasing in you know in some cases especially in science technology engineering and mathematics you're going to college to increase your human capital skills so you can demand a higher wage at a later point in your life so you're choosing to work for zero dollars an hour because you maybe you just want to learn maybe you just want a party maybe you want to build skills so you can become uh wealthier in the future because you have skills that employers are demanding. Absolutely, people should have the right to do this. Now, the question I was pondering was whether or not there's a principal difference between working at college and not getting paid or working at McDonald's, at a law firm. I worked at a

credit union for some time, was not compensated, but gained great on the job experience. So my point here is that there are many examples throughout life where we perform labor. and are not very well compensated because we don't have a lot of skills, we don't have a lot of experience, and we're trying to get our foot in the door so we can hopefully eventually get more money and demand a higher wage when we've been in the workforce for much longer. But the minimum wage principle stops people from getting their foot in the door, from getting this on-the-job experience, which makes them more valuable in the long run. So for the same reason, things like college should be legal, reading a book is working and trying to improve your skills.

For that same reason, we should not have a minimum wage, which forcibly says only you can work at this place if the employer is going to pay you X amount of dollars an hour. Because if I had said, well, studies show that at $5 an hour, it doesn't totally hurt people and they can still gain on the job experience, that that's just not enough. So what I wanted to focus on is, are there examples in the economy of where people do tons of work and get $0 an hour and there is? And that's what college is. So for the same reason, college should be legal. Internships should be legal. Investing in yourself, being an entrepreneur, doing tons of unpaid work should be legal. We should not have a minimum wage that stops the people with the least amount of skills and the least amount of experience from getting their foot in the door. Talk about another thing that creates wealth disparities, And only very wealthy people can afford to employ people, then you have those businesses who are the only ones who can afford to hire anyone. You don't have people in their younger years able to get a job when they don't have much experience and they're probably still living with parents so they don't need a ton of money at the time.

So this minimum wage law that certainly creates oligopolis and stops people from becoming wealthier in the future. So one of the things that people like Paul Krugman and Thomas Pickety say is that, well, wages for this group have stagnated, and that's why we need to raise the minimum wage. Well, what they do is they look at demographics by income. So they'll say the bottom 20 percent in 1980 has not moved in the last 40 years. This is the equivalent of saying in 1980, the average college freshman at Arizona State was 18 years old. And in the year 2023, they're still 18 years old. So that means people aren't aging at this university. Well, the shortcoming is that, yes, the average freshman is 18, but those are not the same people.

In other words, you have people going in and out of age groups, just as you have people going in and out of income brackets. Turns out, there is a disparity between the average income of the average 18 year old in America and the average 40 year old and the average 60 year old. This is because as you get older, you gain on the job skills. Minimum wages and regulations stop people from gaining on the job skills and making themselves a more valuable employee. Another method of progressives completely destroying the very people they're trying to help. Yeah. Hey guys, I've had a lot of great webmasters over the years, but the team at expanddesigns.com have by far been the most competent and reliable.

Harley Abbott and his team have made great sites for the show and the Institute, and they keep them running well, suggesting and making improvements all along. Make a deal with Expanddesigns.com for your new business or news site. They will take care of you. Use the promo code Scott and save $500. That's expanddesigns.com. Man, I wish I was in school so I could drop out and sign up for Tom Woods' Liberty Classroom instead. Tom has done such a great job on putting together a classical curriculum for everyone from junior high schoolers

on up through the postgraduate level and it's all very reasonably priced just make sure you click through from the link in the right margin at Scott Horton.org Tom Woodses' Liberty Classroom Real history, real economics, real education.

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Well, Moondos Artisan Coffee does taste good. They get the best beans from all around the world, and they don't burn them. Support the show and support your brain at moondoseartisan coffee.com. Just click the link at the right margin at Scott Horton.org. Well, and you have people a lot of times who are poor because they, Maybe you're not that smart or they're not that capable or they just have, you know, health problems or, you know, whatever kinds of things like that. And when, if they just cannot produce enough at a job to earn above that artificial limit, then that's essentially on a margin there. You're creating an entire group of people who can only be employed illegally, which means mostly they're going to commit.

crimes are going to be forced into black markets selling drugs or prostitution or running numbers or some kind of thing and then of course once you got a felony now you're basically stuck in a black market of labor too that's another whole category but yeah stephen dunbar uh the author of freakonomics wrote a great book titled when to rob a bank and uh him and his colleague actually interviewed a number of drug dealers and And he said, so what is it that is the biggest threat to your business? And you're expecting, well, he'll say something like the police or something like that. And this drug dealer, according to Stephen Dunbar, very popular author, said, this guy's response was,

the problem is, is when these guys go and get jobs, it's hard to keep anyone in the gang anymore when all these guys are getting jobs. He uses some foul language. I should have a quote. That's a great one. But the point is, is this guy said the biggest threat to his drug business was people getting jobs because they're looking for stability. Very few of them say, all right, here are all my options. What I want to do is gang bang. However, a lot of them are nudged into it.

And when they don't have those easy options available, those easy foots in the door, they're much more likely to go to commit crimes. Yep. Well, and you see it, you know, as Boots Riley says, the crime rise consistent with the poverty rate. so we see it with the boom bust all the time it's the same reason just instinctually when they locked down the country three years ago people ran out and bought guns and it wasn't to fight the national guard enforcing the lockdown it was because they were imagining that in a certain number of weeks or months there's going to be marauding gangs of poor people desperate and hungry and looting things you know which in fact is what happened although they didn't call it hunger they called it and anti-police rioting and all that. But, you know, a friend of mine's mom is a psychiatrist pointed out that all those Black Lives Matter rallies. I mean, the phrase we know comes from Eric Garner, the poor guy that was suffocated to death in Staten Island by a cop for selling loose cigarettes, said, I can't breathe. And that became a thing. But then here we are like,

what, three months into the lockdown and got all these massive protests of these people who've been locked in their homes for three months. And they're all even outside. They're wearing all these masks and they're literally chanting. I can't breathe. I can't breathe under these masks and under their, you know, recent absolute severe oppression. And, you know, we're talking about people who by and large are the lowest margin of, or, you know, on the economic ladder, they call it, of economic success in the country, right? And so if the ghetto is actually doing pretty good during bubble times but then you have the governors come and lock everything down and force a depression like that force an end to economic activity like that and who could possibly be surprised that the

crime rate has gone up and you know what that's not like commie's sociology clap trap either because any criminal can be absolutely responsible for his own behavior and also be a character acting within circumstances created by powers much greater than himself, such as we're putting half the city out of business, which is what they did. I mean, it's millions of statistics. It's probably Robert Kennedy Jr.'s, you know, greatest redeeming quality is when he lists the number of people who are forced out of business and out of their lives during the lockdown period bankrupted as all that money was transferred from working people to the already made it. Yeah. The lockdowns were absolutely devastating. I think it's hard to appreciate if you're not in the business realm. I would always ask people, because I had access to some of the numbers at Walmart. I said, what do you think our markup is on the average item? And they'd say, well, business, super greedy, Walmart, extra greedy, something like 300%. And they were shocked when I said, it's actually about 2%. That's why the other Walmart across the street actually went out of business. And we had to.

relocate to a neighborhood, which was a neighborhood market, which is a much smaller version. So one is that people just don't have an understanding. So they assume, well, we could lock down and you could not have an income for a, heaven knows how long until Fauci comes out and changes his mind for the fifth time and says, well, now I guess it's okay, depending on, you know, what type of business you have. Or if you're sitting down, you can wear a mask. But if you're getting up and walking, well, then you have to put it on. Just these absolutely bizarre things. So the question is, should people be safe and make sure they're not getting sick? Absolutely. But the progressive question that is important is, who should decide? If we both want, we absolutely both want

safety and the well-being for the masses. So the question is, who gets to decide? Is it a group of people in Washington, D.C., who don't even know, who know nothing about me, who couldn't care less if they tried, or should people be able to decide for themselves individually? I know people who decided to stay home for a very significant amount of time and take shots and take hydroxychloroquine and whatever because they thought that that was best for them. And they went by what their doctors told them. That's totally reasonable. But the assumption is if we have a goal, high wages, the question is not, should they exist? Of course they should.

The question is, who should decide? And in the libertarian worldview, the deciders should be the people themselves based on a process of social cooperation. Now, this is much different than everyone doing everything by themselves. If you look at this conversation we're having right now, we could say in one way, well, we're just doing this by ourselves. The reality is I have CenturyLink Internet giving me this access to Skype. We have Skype, another company. we have Macintosh who made this computer. We have the MV7 Shore Company.

We have millions of people cooperating in order to make this conversation happen. That is the result of social cooperation. So there's nothing in libertarianism. That's every man for himself. Everyone is Robinson Caruso. So once we embrace this concept of the market is social cooperation, then we can say, well, everyone's always interacting. The question is, should decisions be made by people on a voluntary basis?

Or should some people within that group have the right to coerce others a political concept, which is what the state necessarily has a monopoly on? So whether there's dangers out there like COVID or Vladimir Putin or low wages, in all these cases, the threats may be real, they may be fabricated, they may be exaggerated. The ultimate question comes down to who ends up getting to decide. The imperialist says the state has the knowledge and the incentive to decide on your behalf as a surrogate, decision maker without your consent the libertarian says people have a right to life liberty and to pursue their happiness any of their ends they'd like to achieve peacefully they have a right to a much more empowering message than progressivism that's what i'm saying too listen you guys are going to love this book so much and we just barely scratch the surface we could keep going but i don't want to ruin it

for you spoil the thing i just love this cover i love the cover as much as i love the rest of the book and I really love the rest of the book. But this cover is just beautiful. I love having this in my background, you know, behind me. I have all my books that the Institute has published by me and everybody else on my bookshelf behind me. So for whenever people are interviewing me, and this is such a great prop. I don't know if they can read the title. It's a little small, but maybe I need to redo my studio, so I'm closer to my bookshelf.

Everybody can see it. But I just love it. I just think it's great. And I love the evil demon darkness around FDR's eyes, the great dictator, Franklin Roosevelt. And anyway, it's just great. I'm so proud of you. I think this is great. And I'm proud of the Institute.

I mean, look at how badass we are, that we keep publishing Keith Knight Books. This is the second one. And I don't know what the third one will be, but I'm certain that there will be. And, yeah, thank you for making me and my Institute look good. Keith, you're doing great, man. Absolutely. I appreciate you having me on. People can purchase the book. If you go to Libertarian Institute.org, you'll see the book section right at the top. You can find the book there. Money is tight for some people, and a lot of times I want to make sure people

have access to this information for free. So they can get a free PDF at the Libertarian Institute right when you're looking at the book section. Domestic imperialism, nine reasons I left progressiveism. You can also purchase it on Amazon. or Barnes & Noble. Man, that's pretty cool of you, that you give the PDF away free like that. Yeah, I had heard progressives for so long say, we believe in free education. And by that we mean we're going to confiscate your money through property taxes and threaten you to chip in for the education.

Okay, well, on what planet is that free? You have to pay for it. And it's, do the teachers not get paid? Are they all volunteers? Yeah. And I said, why don't I lead by example and show the progressives with providing a real free education looks like so people can check this out i want uh you know look theater rehearsal's book is out there for free on pdf carl marks book is out there for free on pdf i got to be on their

level competing with them so uh that's why the uh pdf of both of the books is for you hell yeah you're great i know you already know this but everybody i got a donation in the mailbox the other day for the institute and the guy had this whole thing going on and on about how great keith is and how what a great institute i got because of the likes of keith night And I got to say I agree. So hell yeah, good for you. And congratulations on your second book. Of course, the first is the voluntariest reader, which.

The voluntarist handbook. Handbook. Look, it's behind me. I can't see it from here. The voluntarious handbook, you know, some guy, malice, something or other, wrote a book full of all anarcho-communists, or published a book full of all anarcho-communists that nobody wants to read, a bunch of proud Han and whatever crap, who cares about that? Keith's book is all full of anarcho-capitalist, libertarian, individualist, anarchist,

voluntarist, sort of agorist kind of types, whatever the hell you call us, folk. And I'm in it, too. It's really great. Of course, individualism versus war. Yeah. Excellent foreign policy analysis there. And, you know, I was mad that you picked my article that includes writing about Chris Hedges. But then I decided that I like him again. Not really personally, but for Akami, he's really good on foreign policy. And so I've decided that I'm over my old grudge against him. So now I'm, I don't mind that my article that's in your book has Chris Hedges in it.

Yeah, that is what I see as probably our best way forward as such a minority movement where we have to find things where we agree with people on and try to extract that. that principle as to why. So, for example, I had Jank Yugar on my show. He is the host of the young Turks, and he's declared that he's running for president. So I asked him, all right, we both opposed the drug war, correct? He goes absolutely. And from there, him and I spoke about what our reasons were for supporting it. So with almost anyone, you're dealing with a well-intended person. All right, Lindsay Graham, not well-intended, I'll concede it. The average person when you're talking to them is very well intended and is attempting to make the world a better place and join a tribe more or less through the political process, which they see as improving the

world. So if we say, well, aren't you such an idiot for believing A, B, and C, I think it's much better if we say, where do we agree and what is your reasoning for such a thing? So when it's mentioned to me by a number of progressives, well, we disagree with the drug war because it disproportionately affects certain demographics, said, well, shouldn't we instead increase government spending on the drug war to make sure that the genders and the races and ages are arrested at a proportional rate? And they almost never say, well, yeah, then I'd support it. So it's always much deeper. These are much more shallow justifications for state aggression. Once you really get down to the nitty gritty, it's do you have a right to cage someone for engaging in an action

which is not necessarily a threat to the life or well-being of another human being. And when you really pin them down on that, then they see, you know what, that is a far better justification than, you know, arrest rates are disproportional. I think like 95% of those killed by police are men I found in my book. Well, that doesn't necessarily mean that men are being discriminated against. It could be as a result of their actions. So just looking at outcomes is not enough. You have to get to the core principle that, well, if we could fix the outcomes and make it proportional, would you still have the right to put someone in a cage and shoot them if they resist, if they purchase a house, which hasn't been built with, built according to the DC zoning

laws that I mentioned earlier. People should not be using drugs. The question is, should they be put in a cage and shot if they resist if they're caught using them? Once we agree with people, find the proper framing and really narrow down on the reasoning between our differences as to what our justifications are for things we already agree on, I think that is really the only way we as a minority movement are going to move forward. So I'm glad you came around a little on Chris Hedges. Yeah. Well, and look, I agree with you in theory, but I got a chip on my shoulder, so I bring a lot of negativity to our whole business. So you help balance me out a little bit here with all your optimism and positivity, Keith. So I appreciate that too. But listen, everybody run out and

get this great book, Domestic Imperialism. Nine reasons I left progressivism. As the man says, you can find it right there at Libertarian Institute.org slash books. Thanks, Keith. Thank you, Scott. The Scott Horton Show, Anti-War Radio, can be heard on KPFK, 90.7 FM in L.A. APSRadio.com, anti-war.com, Scotthorton.org, and libertarian institute.org.