The Last American Vagabond - IMA: How to Deal With Authorities – #SolutionsWatch

Episode Date: May 6, 2026

Today, the Independent Media Alliance (IMA) brings you a panel focused on solutions. A TLAV viewer reached out recently asking if we could set up such an IMA panel, and of course I thought of James Corbett and his outstanding #SolutionsWatch segment (we plan to make this overlap a regular occurrence). Today’s focus is guided by a question from oner of James’ viewers, who was asking when, if ever, do voluntaryists ask the state to solve problems created by the state, and we go on to discuss state-backed violence being utilized to solve non-violent, often trivial personal problems. Pertaining to this episode of Solutions Watch, James writes:“A listener writes in to ask when, if and how voluntaryists and the liberty minded should engage with representatives of the state. James recruits the Independent Media Alliance panel (and some special guests) to respond.”Source Links:https://corbettreport.com/how-to-deal-with-authorities/Bitcoin Donations Are Appreciated:www.thelastamericanvagabond.com/bitcoin-donation(3FSozj9gQ1UniHvEiRmkPnXzHSVMc68U9f)Thanks for reading The Last American Vagabond Substack! This post is public so feel free to share it. Get full access to The Last American Vagabond Substack at tlavagabond.substack.com/subscribe

We're going to be discussing the idea of the false binary. What an illusion of choice does establishes the baseline assumption, so nobody questions. This is part of the fifth generation warfare that we've talked about, voting for the lesser of two evils. Definitely an emotional, psychological trap that people are in. You're cheerleading for an insane ideology because you think you're winning. The role we have is media. How do we help everybody understand? This is theater, and you need to get back into the real world.

If you're opposed to the agenda, you should oppose it regardless of who's selling it to you. Welcome back, friends. Welcome back to another edition of Solutions Watch. I'm James Corb to Corporate Report.com. And today we have a very special edition of Solutions Watch. It is also simultaneously an addition of the Independent Media Alliance panel, the IMA panel. And some of my viewers will know what that is. Some of you might not.

So in order to get us up to speed on what the IMA panel is and why are we convening this special solutions-oriented edition of this with some extra members. Let me ask Ryan, Christian, of the Last American Vagabond. Ryan, what is the IMA panel? Why are we doing this? And why are we doing this particular edition? Well, the Independent Media Alliance was something that was created between Derek, Derek here with us, myself, and Whitney Webb and kind of the build-up to the recent selection we went through and kind of the feeling where this was going and wanted to gather a group of people that could see through the partisanship, the, you know, objectively report on these things.

And what we've done with it so far is just basically try to have, and, you know, so people know there's no financial mechanism. It's basically just a collection of people that see things, you know, in similar lives, but with varying opinions on all sorts of things, to come together to discuss these things in an, you know, educated, nonpartisan, objective way. Now, this panel was focused on solutions. And we had been discussing about this in the background,

and I thought, of course, who better to have this conversation than James Corbett? Anything else you want to add to that, Derek? So that's just kind of a joint creation in regard to the IMA. I'll just add that when me, Ryan and Whitney were putting this idea together, the initial criteria we started with was who didn't lose their minds during COVID, who hasn't fallen prey to the two-party lie every couple years, and who was willing to speak about what Israel was doing in Gaza. And for us, those were like three kind of foundational points

when it came to selecting other content creators, talking heads, independent journalists, et cetera, that we wanted to collaborate with. Awesome. All right. Let's start this panel. And I think we should introduce ourselves because whatever channel you're watching this on, I'm sure there will be faces here that may be unfamiliar. But I just watched a video that was like this conference type of thing with six or seven different panelists. And they spent literally the first like 10 minutes of the video just introducing themselves. I do not want to do that. That is very boring. So could I just ask your name and a website or

thing that you want to promote that people should take a look at. I am James Corbett of CorporateReport.com. Ryan. Ryan Christian, Last American Vagabond.com. Derek. Derek Bros. Theconsciousresistance.com. Kit. Kit Knightley ofguardian.org.

Larkin. Larkin Rose. The Rose Channel.com. Steve. Steve Boykin and AM Wakeup website just got our website is being messed with find me on rumble etienne etienne de la bouic squared art of liberty dot org ernie ernest hancock publisher freedoms phoenix dot com and hakeem this is going so efficiently james shout out to you.

Hakeem Anwar of Abovephone.com. You almost derailed it there, Hakeem. Awesome. Great. An incredible stellar lineup. So what are we talking about today? I was very interested to discuss a question that I received via the contact form on corporate board.com recently from a listener who says,

being a voluntarist, I was curious when you choose to involve the state in the things that the state has inserted itself into. For instance, if you get in a car accident, you need to call the police to file a report for the insurance claim. Last week, I was assaulted, and people around me can't get over the fact that I'm not calling the police and making a report. But in certain situations, like a serious car accident where my insurance is not going to pay out if there's no report, I have called the police. Even though I don't live in that world that I would prefer, it seems like when I can, living that way is the best way to slowly push the goal in the right direction, and even for completely selfish reasons,

I've been the victim in the past and had the police show up and victimize me further. All right, kind of a rambling question. There's a lot of different moving parts here, but I think we all understand. We've probably all heard this question in some variation at one time or another. Basically, when do you involve the authorities

in things that happen to you in the daily life? We live in this statist world where there are so-called would-be-present, authorities and there are bureaucratic procedures for the various things that we have to do. So when do you comply and go along with that? And when do you say, hell no, I'm not calling the police, et cetera. And why do you make that line in the sand decision? And actually, I'm particularly interested, oh, you know what? We have just had a late addition to this party, Jason Burmiss. Burmess, thank you for joining us. We'll get to you in a moment. But let's start this panel.

Actually, I'm particularly interested in Larkin. Larkin Rose. What is your take on this question? There's sort of two sides of it. First is if you're calling the cops because somebody scary is like harming somebody, like somebody scary without a badge. In that case, I literally view it like, oh, I know this violent, unstable, immoral thug, but he's big and dangerous. And if you do something bad enough, I wouldn't at all feel bad about sicking this violent psycho on you if I would be justified in.

doing that myself. Maybe at some point we'll get to the story where I called the local cops on the IRS to leave my parents alone many years ago. But basically, if you view that, if you just view them as unstable, kind of unpredictable people, yeah, most of the time you don't really want to add that to the equation of whatever it is. But the second part to me is when you have to do it basically to protect yourself, because if you don't, then they're going to come after you. Like if you handle someone breaking into your house,

you shoot them in the leg, you get them, you do whatever, and you don't tell the police, they will show up to arrest you. So the second is sort of self-defense. And the first to me is just sort of like a rabid dog. I have this rabid dog. And if you're bad enough that I would sick a rabid dog on you, then I might sick a cop on you too. And that's sort of the short version of how I approach it. All right. Interesting. Steve, what do you think? So typically law enforcement for me, it would be only out of last resort or under duress. And if it's, yes, of course, if we're involved in a situation on the freeway where we get sideswived by a semi-driver who may not technically have achieved.

all of the qualifications necessary to be behind the wheel of that vehicle, which is not an infrequent occurrence on American and Canadian freeways these days. So were that the case, law enforcement showing up anyway, you know what I mean, whether I want them there or not. There's enough witnesses, it's a big enough accident, law enforcement's showing up. that the bare minimum amount of compliance required to get me to drive away and back on whatever my business was is optimal to me. There's extreme circumstances that I think everybody can envision where involving some level of the state may be necessary, but those are extreme. And they should, my opinion, you should be utilized as rarely as you would, you know, any in kill us, go back to the rabbit dog, you know, any encounter with, you know, attack dog.

Same, yeah, exact same situation, some purposes. Could I, could I jump in here? Go forth. Yeah, so I will just give a little bit of a monologue and then I've got to be on to a medicine journey. but thanks James for inviting me. And I think this is a really, it's a really deep question, which I'm going to sum it up as,

when should we look outside of our own inner authority to an outer authority? And I think the short answer is, as you always know, what's best for yourself in any situation, you just need to be able to step out the fear, the apprehension of, oh, hey, I'm about to have a encounter with law enforcement. Oh, or I'm not going to get the money back

for this person who's totaled my car and try to step out of that fear and say, hey, is there a common good here? Do you believe in your own ability to figure things out for yourself, even in new and challenging situations? And is there a reality you can envision that's a win-win for everyone? Because at the end of the day, I don't think the police want to come out either and supervise this car accident or whatever, right? They have better things to do.

but I just want to point out that there are different solutions, but you have to be able to think creatively. And I'm not saying that this is going to work, but perhaps if you didn't want to get police involved, you would reach out directly to this person and say, hey, I did some research on insurance claims. And I found that if I have to go to the police and have to report this accident to my insurance company,

and they reach out to your insurance company, you're going to end up paying $200 to $300 more per month. And so here's how much my repair costs. Maybe you could just pay me directly instead of paying extra for insurance, literally for years and years. You would end up saving money. But that comes from a place of being concerned for the other, right, trying to find the best situation for both of you.

And as we move into an era where modern institutions are going to break down further, we have to realistically ask yourselves. I mean, like this problem we're talking about, I think a few years from now, it's not really going to be a problem. Or is there even going to be a police that you can call on and have them reliably show up? I'm not sure about that. Is there going to be an insurance that would pay out any claims? I'm not sure. For me, deep inside, I feel like we're not going to be able to rely on any external authority.

And we're only going to be able to co-create out of our inner authority. And it's the most important thing is to not be afraid, not to project the facts. fear we have over that we have of the police onto other people. Because at the end of the day, they're just people. They're men and women more than a police officer. And if you can engage with them on that level, you can find the best part of them. And you can bring the best part of you and find something that works in the middle. So whatever you feel inside, whether that's fear or anger, that is going to be brought

into the situation. So your inner state is such an important part of everything. interaction you have. And that's the only solution we really have in a world where external authority is becoming irrelevant. We have to figure things out on our own. I'll add a couple thoughts that, I can you? That's fun. By the way, sorry, can I just say interstatist? That's an interesting. Maybe I'll pronounce myself an interstatist. I like that. Sorry. Yeah, I just wanted to add a couple of thoughts to the general question and then kind of more broadly. So in terms of, you know, when When do you call the cops?

For me, I guess the most basic way to answer to that is when you're dealing with a situation or persons who are unreasonable, I guess like Larkin was saying, the rabid dog situation, a person acting like a rabid dog, which I could just say briefly, I had to deal with recently. I did call the cops, but the cops did get involved. I don't know if I would have chose to call them ultimately, but just real short story, short story, real short. a gentleman who claimed to be a target individual, which I do believe is probably real, but also very difficult to distinguish if people are having voices zapped in their brain, as some people claim, or if they're just truly struggling with mental health illness, and I'm not equipped to handle that. All I know is that this gentleman started to show up around my local community,

and then actually came to our event The People's Reset and Mexico in January here in Morelia and showed up two times, one time smacked somebody in the head. So they're right off the bat, you know, that's a violation of, non-aggression principle and sort of violating somebody else's self-ownership. Then the second time he showed up, we were already sort of on alert. And for those who have met my partner, Miriam, he was like in a B-line straight towards Miriam. We don't know what he was trying to do, but he was headed towards her with a very angry look on her face.

And thankfully, before I got there, some other people sort of intervened, the local cop showed up and they escorted him. They didn't beat him. They didn't, as far as I know, they didn't arrest him or anything. But that's kind of those situations. Again, I was the one that called in that particular situation. And if I had been there directly, I probably would have physically gotten away and been like, you know, hey, you're not coming any closer. Maybe that would have escalated.

And, you know, our local group would, our local attendees and friends wouldn't have been able to handle it on our own. That's, of course, most ideal. And now that I think about it, a couple years ago, we had another potential incident of violence where somebody showed up and said he was going to punch me in the face and started to act aggressively. And I sort of just yelled out loudly like, hey, community, everybody, this guy's acting violent. and then a couple of friends showed up like, hey, what's going on? And we calmly but assertively escorted this dude off the premises and we didn't have to involve the cops. You know, that's an ideal situation. But I think it would be for me in those cases where you're dealing with somebody who's just clearly not reasonable and if you can't resolve it on your own.

Also, the other thought that came to mind is living in Mexico, which as you guys know, parts of Mexico are lawless, they like to say, or the Wild West, which is true to some degree. I mean, Mexico is also just like any other American city and some cities in Mexico, including the one I live in, are safer than several dozen American cities, right? So it's all relative. But they're absolutely parts of the country, and I've experienced this firsthand getting pulled over, armed gunmen. Not a fun situation. No cops around to ask for help, even if I thought they were going to help. And, you know, I had to go through that situation. My point being in places where there isn't a lot of trust of government and where cops are very,

week, it is true that some people will take advantage of that. That doesn't mean that anarchy always ends in, you know, roving gangs like people want us to believe, but there are, of course, people, the reality is people will take advantage of that. And in those situations when you're in a place like Mexico, where you know you really can't call the cops, somebody mentioned that getting into a wreck. We got into a wreck before here in Mexico. It was not our fault. The other party was clearly drinking, and they hit us and started to claim that it was our fault. So somebody called the cops. The cop showed up and just said, all right, you guys figured it out. He sat there and smoked a cigarette and just made sure we did kill each other.

Like that was his role. Like he didn't actually do anything. So my point being, there's some realities to navigate, especially for those of us who are trying to work towards a voluntary society, a stateless society, however you want to frame that, that it will be complicated. It won't necessarily always be easy. Like, yay, we abolished cops or government and everything is solved. It just means more personal responsibility on ourselves. So to the person's question, don't feel bad if you have to involve the cops. You know, I mean, maybe don't make that your first move. That's sort of way I operate, but also don't be worried about the anarchist peanut gallery saying,

oh, my God, you called the cops if you feel like that's your only solution in a bad situation. I'll go ahead and jump in on that next to speaking from somebody who, you know, like Etienne and Larkin and James and Derek, somebody, they've been on this path a lot longer than me in regard to the anarchism, you know, perspective, you know, ideological perspective. and I've been going through my journey of that over quite a while now. But speaking, you know, as I'm still kind of grappling with some of these exact kind of moments

where you're like, like Derek kind of points out, you feel like, oh no, am I like, am I compromising? Am I being a hypocrite by, you know, kind of, you know, even the small things in daily choices? And so from my perspective, my first thought is obviously my inclination will be as little as possible

and not even necessarily to adhere with some kind of mindset, but just because I don't feel comfortable in these situations around these people with the way that we know in my opinion that they operate. But I would argue there's probably a time where that would feel like the only option.

And so for me, it really comes down to a personal choice based on, you know, where you feel is necessary in those moments and do your best to adhere to what you think, you know, is in your best interest. But what I would say is it really applies to the current system or the current authority or whatever you want to call it,

like hypothetically, we're in a anarchistic society. And it would be like Derek would say, like a more of a community enforcement idea, well, you would still say like, hey, you know, this guy and direct, So it's really about the representation of that authority and the illusion or, you know, illegitimate nature of it. And so I'll reference an interesting point.

I had an interview I had with guy named Matthew Sands, who was simply arguing this idea of, you know, like the one main thing we should do is basically shift into one universal law, which is the non-aggression principle, and then argues that accept their situations where you can allow the community to enforce in an aggressive way, essentially, only in circumstances where people violate that principle. Now, clearly there's like any idea, there's, you know, criticisms and but it's like that comes down to the same idea is that so there's still as a moment where that might be necessary but when it's sort of a communal idea and so you know even that

becomes difficult to define now i just think of it like my point is i guess it comes down to what we're dressing as the authority figure in that situation and it's about the illegitimate nature of it versus just authority enforcing what you think should happen you know anyway that's my thought on it can i jump in here um first first of all i'm not an anarchist i missed the or or even non-aggression i'll probably the biggest statist on here, right? For me, I can say I've called the cops dozens of times. And, you know, I was, I'm glad I went after Ryan because I know that he's been in the bar business,

for instance. So I've been in the late night world, right? And I think that varies from my personal life. In fact, I can't remember even an emergency situation in my personal life where we have called the police or I have called the police. And I say that because I can remember an instance that was really wild. We were at a concert. We were coming back.

It was nighttime. And the car in front of us, there was a woman driving and her male counterpart just started duffing her in the face. I mean, hardcore punching her in the face. And obviously this takes us all by surprise. She gets out of the car. Other stuff ensues. I won't even get into it. But essentially, she wants a.

ride out of the concert to a certain place and we give it to it and that's the end of it right she doesn't want to call the police we just witnessed a totally violent incident we don't go that route but then in the case of running a bar or late night pizza place there's instances where i've got somebody just passed out in my establishment all of his friends if he had any have left them there you know what am i am i taking him home i mean obviously you have to assert yourself to some kind of authority figure i'll give you another example um Long-time customer arrested a bunch of times. Somebody who was probably on thin ice of being in the established in the first place passed. I think it was like $3 to $400 in fake 50s. And I had them on tape. And I knew who did it. Yeah, no, I'm calling the cops on that person. You know, I don't know that that person is going to, I mean, what am I going to do?

Have a long talk with him. Am I going to get my money back? I mean, let's be honest with ourselves. And often when we get into these arguments of how much authority you should turn over, to another individual or the state. I always bring it back, you know, to, you know, post-revolutionary times, but that, you know, Derek just said the Wild Wild West. Well, essentially, when communities were governing themselves, you had a sheriff and he had a posse.

And you would delegate a lot of the type of authoritarian law enforcement to those individuals. And I would say that that was kind of the burgeoning governance locally of what we see today. And even now, if I were to have to defer to law enforcement for something personal, and again, I can't think of a time I've ever done it, right? It would probably be my sheriff, right? Because that's the person that's elected. That's the person that's accountable. And even, you know, here in Iowa, where I moved during the COVID-1984 nightmare, by the way, Derek, can't wait to see it in July out here. you know, my sheriff came to a lot of these events that were anti-masking, anti-six-foot distance and all these other things,

and was having an open conversation with us all. So I guess that's where I would kind of step back and let other people discuss this. But I think, in essence, you know, just like Ryan said, you know, at some point you have to delegate authority to someone or a group. The question is, what is that? And, you know, again, I'm a big believer in personal accountability, actions have consequences, et cetera. But, you know, especially when it's not even my business, it's just my career and I'm not trying to do harm to another individual. There's just no other outlet. You're kind of forced into that situation, in my opinion.

So I agree with Jason 100%. In my work, I make the case that the government is best thought of as a technique of. intergenerational organized crime to, you know, rob and control populations. And they've, they've grasped the, the, a monopoly on what we, what you could call armed protective services, the police, they've, they've given themselves a monopoly on dispute resolution, which they call the courts. And so in violent encounters, there is no choice because they're the monopoly provider. And so there are cases where you should, you know, you may have to call the police because they have, you know, grasped the monopoly on armed protective services. I think the more

interesting case are the cases when you should never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever call the police because the, you know, the police and the courts and especially the family court system really is kind of an intergenerational organized crime system masquerading as a charity. And, you know, if you're using, if you're, if you're thinking about using the, the court system to, you know, to get, you know, custody of your child, you're calling essentially a private mafia and you're engaging a private mafia to get your way. And it's a very, it must be very, very tempting for, you know, for women especially who the state has a, you know, a track record of handing children over generally to the mother. to use that the violence of the state. And I know, I know, you know, self-proclaimed volunteerists and peaceful anarchists that have used that weapon when it came down to their kids. But, you know, it really is kind of the, you know, that's one of the issues you should never ever do. Also, you should never ever involve the police in a personal dispute with a neighbor.

You know, if you can't work it out with your neighbor, you don't really call. a gang of armed thugs to come and, you know, have them try and enforce your will on your neighbor or even worse, report your neighbor for selling raw milk or selling, you know, being engaged in commerce out of, out of their home or violating a zoning law or, you know, some of their, you know, aspect of, you know, of, you know, where you might be violating the, where the neighbor might be violating the state's, you know, victimless crime laws in a way that you could have them, you know, removed or in a worst case scenario, calling ICE on somebody that you know is illegal. Those are really where I think the cases where it really, you know, does, you know,

you become clear that people are using the government to get their will over other people in a case that would not be the if the government did not exist in many cases over things like victimless crimes. And so I think that that's an important, you know, something important to think about. I want to hear your bullion, incredible, undoubtedly boisterous opinion on this. But first, I actually, let's go international on this because everybody here, except me and Kit, is American. So, kid, I would like to hear your English perspective on this. Well, I was actually going to mention that. Yeah, I will be coming at this from a very different angle.

Like, the state is sort of a much greater part of people's lives in the UK, generally speaking. Like, we all, the whole political spectrum shifts fastly over to the left. And I until, like Jason, I would not have to describe myself as an anarchist at all. I'm not sure I still would, but until 2019, I would have been a leftist and you guys all would have despised me. I mean, I was like pro-corbin and everything very much. And I'm also doing with different angle because I've never really had any interaction with law enforcement. I've never spoken to a policeman not since I was about 12. I've never been robbed.

I've never been attacked. Very sheltered life, obviously. And when the question, this is probably indicative of my experience, but when the question was asked, when would you involve the police, I suppose I didn't think of violent crime happening to or by me. I thought of situations in which I might need simple numbers. Like, for example, a missing family member, and I've got a large area to search.

Like, somebody couldn't search on my own. It's going to be search and rescue teams that are going to be available to do that. And, you know, you could argue these things shouldn't be aspects of the state, but right now they are. And I think I would avail myself of them in that situation. I think it would also be, also healthcare, of course.

Like, that's another aspect of the state that I would deal with, that you guys wouldn't is that every nurse and a doctor ever spoken to in this country was technically an employee of the state. But you also tend to forget that because a lot of governmental institutions are very much less than some of their parts and the individuals within them are trying their best to do what they can. So like Hakim said before, you can also work like, okay, I'm involving the police, but

I'm also talking to this person, I suppose, would be a way of handling it if you need to. You know, I just thought of something in almost the same regards where I threatened law enforcement and a personal, and it worked, by the way. So same exact situation where I'm running the bar, but I'm there drinking, okay? And the phone chargers are out by the entrance. They're pretty close. So my phone gets stolen one night, okay? I go to the cameras.

I watch the guy steal my phone. I know of him. I know some people that know him. so I immediately have them put in contact with me. I go, listen, you got 48 hours to give me my phone back. I'm going to take the video to the police and you're going to go to jail. He brought my phone back. I will say this.

He dumped my SIM card and my SD card beforehand, thinking that he was going to sell it or get rid of it. But at the end of the day, I got my phone back. Now, I didn't have to go to law enforcement. I didn't want to go in law enforcement. What was I going to do? Threaten to kick his, you know, at the time, guys, I'm probably like a 36, 37-year-old guy. And this is like a 20-something-year-old kid. Am I going to exude my own force?

He's already kind of gone against the non-aggression principle by stealing my property. So again, just another example where I don't think everything is black and white. Can I bargain because somebody said the A word, authority. To me, the distinction that matters. And the bartender is a perfect example because on a routine basis, you deal with belligerent drunk idiots, That's hopefully not too routine. But to me, the distinction is just would I have the right, like if there's some female bartender

and there's some big, loud, belligerent drunk dude, she has every moral right to say, you're not invited here, I'm taking you out, but she may not have the ability. So asking somebody else to do something that you have every right to do, but you may not have the ability to. You may not want to,

like hiring someone to mow your lawn or do plumbing or something. the time when it becomes a problem is when people call authority to do things that they wouldn't have the right to do themselves. So a lot of these examples, like if somebody steals your phone, I think you would have a right to confront him and go, I'm going to punch you in the fate, like whatever you think would be a justified response and say, hand it over, I'm going to do unpleasant things to you because I know you still wouldn't have the proof. And if you ask somebody else to do that for you, that's perfectly consistent. Even if not everybody would agree,

with what you would do. But if you at least agree with yourself, like I asked the guy with the badge to do something that would be justified if I did it. And that doesn't require authority. That's just, it's like hiring somebody to do something for you that maybe you don't want to. When it comes to law, when people say, well, I wouldn't have the right to like steal your money to fund something I want. But if it's in the form of taxes, then law enforcement should do it. So just that mindset answers the question. Yeah, there are gray areas and debatable areas of when people will or won't call them. But just the mindset of, I'm just a guy, and the guy with a badge is just a guy. We have the same rights. Morality applies the same to everybody. If there's something I would do, then it makes

sense to ask somebody else to do it for me, whether he has a badge or not. And based on that standard, 99% of state violence would never happen. Because the vast majority of time people call the cops is for things they wouldn't do on their own. It's not defensive. It's not inherently justified. They just want to call the big bag bully to beat up on somebody they don't particularly like, even when force isn't justified. If I get one quick thing, James, go ahead if you want to jump to the next part. Right after you, we're going to go straight to Ernie because I've never seen him sit quietly for so long. No, I was just going to add the point about the, no, go ahead. It's going to be a second. Go ahead. Jump to the next part.

I guess I can take it now. The reason I'm being so good, James. Because, you know, I was, I didn't hear anything about prevention. You know, you make a lot of, as I, you know, I'm older now, you know, a lot of the, I've had a restaurant, you know, where we've had, you know, you get burglarized or broken into or things are stolen or whatever. A lot of these are agreements that you make for being covered by insurance. You're required to get the benefit from the contract that you did. You file a police report. And a lot of of them here in Arizona, I remember like 20 years ago, they wouldn't even come out when your car was stolen. They just take a report. Here, file with your insurance. Let them deal with it. We don't care.

You know, so this, it's the promise that we get for having government or supporting or living in this country or wherever else is what is the deal that we have. Well, we're here to protect your life, your liberty, your property, and do that in a court system for it and everything. But you realize as time goes on, it doesn't really do that. You go all lark and rose on them, you know. But the thing is is that once you get a lifetime of experience, you know that you're going to act in what you perceive to be your best interest. As time goes on, you find a lot of the times, you know, it's a fender bed. It's a small thing.

Yeah, okay, well, you know, I should lock that up more. I should this. You even got videotape of them, you know, do I really want to go? It's a lot of times it's shunning. You just go to the community, you let them know the punishment is that you have evidence, or you're good to your word or people believe you over the word of someone else. So it's all about proactive, you know, are you taking care of your street? Should you go to that bar?

What kind of concert was it? Did it have a mosh pit? I mean, you know, what did you expect was going to happen? So I'm just like, you know, as time goes on, you put yourself in a circumstance to where you don't have to be in these kinds of, you know, dilemmas and whether you're calling for or a thought. But the big thing is, is that you're not only prepared to defend your rights and your property and so on. You have the skills. You have the tools. You have, you know, all this is forethought. You know, a lot of times. But then the other thing is that you're running to the

Karens, you know, like you're saying, like Larkin pointed out, you have somebody, you're not allowed to do it. You can't do it. But I started, I saw on TV that somebody called and they don't have a mask on. I mean, you know, this is, you don't want to be that person. So my solution to all these problems that people have had here is a lot of times you either have standards that is clear and people don't even want to go that are bad, that you have a community or friends or you're, You're not, you know, a lot of young white women want to go to the Middle East and prove how peaceful it is and they wind up dead, you know. So this is just forethought in preparing yourself to be able to defend it, to not have it happen to begin with, and what kind of contracts are you in that require police involvement, which is a lot of times like the gentleman from the UK, we have the option and the freedom for private insurance, you know, private clubs. private private. So that's my offering and hearing all of this is a lot of these

instances where you feel compelled or even required to call law enforcement, you can't make sure you're not. And that's where I put myself, you know, is to where, look, I don't want to be in this situation. And then sometimes you take the hit. You know, it's just my experience is that, you know, law enforcement, the court system is less than useless, so never freaking mind, I'll take the hit. Or when you need to, and you see it's in your self-interest, I don't have a problem calling the police, especially when you know you're in the right, you know, not that that matters all the time. But, so that is my situation on that. I am not averse or have a religion against calling police. I'm just through experience, try to be in position I

don't have to. And when I, I do, it's either because I'm required to, you know, or you, You don't get your contract filled on Fix My Freaking Car, or it's just a lot of times you see that it's best to have a very public record that you're adding to the record. This is a bad guy and that, you know, you're helping your neighbor that way. But I'm all about prevention, you know, like divorce or children, marry well. That's the first thing, you know. And so there's so many things that are in your responsibility that people take responsibility for. We're constantly, this is the main problem. I'll end on this.

We're always putting ourselves in a position to delegate our authority to someone else to take care of it for us. And when they don't do it right, you get pissed. I'm going, well, you know, there's your first problem. So that's kind of prevention. That's my most valuable contribution in this discussion I can think. So can I just speak to just a few of those points and then I've got to jump to my niece's choir. So let's talk about prevention. He gave the example of a bartender not being able to forcibly take somebody who's being vile, is physically intimidating out.

Again, prevention, our solution to that is there are no bartender women that are alone after 5 p.m. ever, okay, ever. There's always a man there. There's always some kind of security there. Now, he just spoke to, you know, building your reputation with the community. Totally agree with that, but it doesn't always work. So I'll give you that same example of when that guy stole all that money. So before I went to the tape and I knew who it was quickly, I went over and I talked to another bar owner. And I explained this, oh, he was in here telling me he had a new job.

And I'm like, no, man, he definitely just. rob me. And I've known that guy for literally 25 years. And then he saw that he passed the fake bills. Your reputation doesn't always get the job done. And speaking to Hamash pits and women getting duff to the face. I was just at a Lorna Shore show, Death Corps show, a great show on Saturday. Bunch a bunch of kids there. And no one's getting her big mosh pits. Everybody's picking each other up. kid crowd serves out to where security is. Security that's hired there that should not be inept, totally inept, drops him on his head. I watch this thing.

I'm wondering if this kid's getting back up. Kid gets back up on the back of his skull. I see the blood pouring out. Now, this is in Illinois. It's not just private security. You sell a certain amount of tickets. Law enforcement has to be there. I saw law enforcement on that like this.

had lights on the kid, helped him up, took him backstage. I was in the VIP area. They had an ambulance there for that kid within 10, 15 minutes. So again, you know, I think that that's what you want from your law enforcement to serve that purpose. You don't want to be somebody that isn't prepared. You don't want to be somebody that relies on it time and time again. But when it needs to be utilized, you hope it's utilized in the proper manner. All systems are corrupt.

especially run by humans, so you're going to have problems. Guys, I love you. I hope we are doing this every week. Good to see you all, and I'll see you all on the flip side. I have some thoughts real quick, James, unless anybody else wants to chime in. Regarding a couple of things mentioned, I'll just kind of refer it back to where I've been living the last six years in Mexico.

And I guess to represent the anarchist, volunteer's perspective that I know some of us here have, which is fine, others don't. Of course, that's really, it's not a problem. But for those of us who do feel that way, one of the reasons, and I think is because we recognize the police are the enforcers of the state, they're the ones who are ultimately going to enforce the agenda of the state,

one way or the other, especially when it comes to those order followers, which is all of them. I don't know if I've ever seen a cop not follow orders and tear off as bad and say, no, I won't do this. I'm going to stand on my principles or morals. They're going to follow what they're ordered to do by their superiors or ultimately by the government. So I don't think that that's important point for people to understand

those who are listening to this, are going to listen to this, who aren't voluntarist, why some of us would be averse to calling the cops, or at least make that a lower choice than being the first thing to do. And the other thing I think to remember is that it's not because we're against people picking up kids injured at concerts or helping old ladies across the street or other positive things that we could say, police officers or men or women have done at any point in history. But it's because it's being

funded through involuntary taxation. It's being imposed upon us. I think that's an important point to make because again here in Mexico, there are communities like Cedan, which this month, or actually just a week ago, just celebrated 15 years of their own uprising. I won't get into the whole story now, but 15 years ago, they pushed back against corrupt cops who were working with the cartels and working with corrupt government. They reclaimed their town. They banned all police. from their town. They banned all political parties. And they went back to their sort of pre-political ways of organizing that their parents and grandparents have been doing for maybe thousands of years. That involves, you could say, some form of direct democracy down to the neighborhood level.

This is a town of 20,000 people. So, of course, this isn't a, you know, a country of the size of the U.S. or anything like that. But the point being, they have their own security force. You could call it the cops, but these are, it's a rotating force that everybody in the community of a certain age volunteers to be a part of if they so choose. And it's, again, it's not, they don't have any power outside of their own community that voted them into that power. Now, of course, we could get into nuances of whether that voting, if everybody, if all 20,000 people agreed, I doubt, I mean, I'm sure there's differences of opinion within that 20,000, but the point being that they still believe in protection, they see the necessity of that. And so us volunteers or anarchists are not saying

there wouldn't be a need for somebody to play the role of community defense or protection. It's just that they wouldn't then have those various monopolies that Etienne touched on earlier, like the courts and others, things, and they definitely wouldn't have a monopoly on beating you over the head and violence, that sometimes a few of you have mentioned that when you call the cops, you actually end up inviting more violence and more trouble on yourself instead of getting the help you need. So just wanted to mention that, that for those of us who are averse or at least trying to not make that be our first move, It is because we see the violence inherent and the current institution of the police, as we know them today. But under a voluntarist world, there could still be community defense and community protection,

and hopefully they wouldn't be the kind to just beat you over the head. Or if it's the situation where they're private force, then obviously you're paying for them, then you could stop paying for them. Right. This is something that I wanted to bring up after Jason's drive by and he had to leave. But, you know, when he talked about, you know, the cops were right on it, they were there, they're on it. It's required oftentimes in a lot of these events that you have large events, concerts and so on. They require that you have law enforcement there. And he made a perfect example.

You had the private security. They didn't do anything, you know, or they made it worse or whatever. You know, officers are trained. You know, they have contact. They know who to call or getting the paramedics or whatever out there. But they're a lot more incentivized when they're hired. They're selected. they're paid. And I'm going, yeah, you know, a lot of events, certainly political events and gatherings and so on, you're required to have, if you want to get the insurance to cover the yada, yada, yada, to have law enforcement there. And it's not. And a lot of times the police unions, you know, they're incentivized up. Oh, yeah, yeah, the ordinances, you got to have a actual certified officer here and we get some overtime. And that's what's going on. So I think because

it was trained individuals that were hired privately, or at least could be asked not to come back, you know, you get better service. And you're dealing with human beings. You know, a lot of times, depending on if it's a date event or, you know, some, you know, gathering that the mayor and the council put on or something like that, the incentives are so much different. I think human beings want to help fellow human beings and looking for an opportunity to, as these officers probably did. So it's just, you know, to have just this idea that police are always there to protect your interest and rights as an individual, I don't know where Jason's been. I mean, you know, I think he knows better. But it's just a lot of times in these situations where people ask these questions

of James, you know, when do you, you know, it's always a strong man, you know, they're always But what about and what if and what when? It's an attitude. You know, it's like quit delegating authority to someone else to take care of stuff for you. It doesn't mean you don't need help. I mean, that's how the Wild West wasn't that wild. And what happens is you have the business owners, the cattle drive comes in, and, you know, the cowboys are in drinking with their guns and getting all ornery and so on.

Well, what happens? The town hires, you know, the businessmen, the people with interest, they got interested in not having their stuff broke and the windows busted, that they'll hire a sheriff. They'll get some ex-gunmen to come in and do it. And then here it comes. You know, you start getting more and more government. So it's just beyond, it's incumbent upon us, certainly as, you know, the protector of the species, the men. That doesn't mean women can't do it.

You know what? That's not my point. My point is, is that we are much more equipped as men to take responsibility. responsibility for this stuff, and we keep delegating that, my problem. Well, when is it your problem? You know, so I'm just, these are the questions that I think in the answers and the discussions that we should have on this is what responsibilities do we need to retain ourselves for our community, our family, ourselves. That's the real question. And it keeps getting converted. I think you point out the way forward because you put us in mind of that great Western flick Seven Samurai. And yeah, when the town is threatened, you band together, you hire some people to come take care of you, sure.

Open range, watch open range. So I have a combat shotgun as my home defense weapon. And the first two rounds in the combat shotgun are something called beanbag rounds. And I use the beanbag rounds, and I've got a list of reasons why I do that. Number one, I don't want to kill anybody, even though we have castle doctrine here in the United States. If you catch somebody in your house, you legally can kill them, but I have no, you know, desire to do that. Number two, I don't want to clean up the mess. Number three, I don't want to fill out the paperwork. And number four is, is if I catch you in my house, after I knock you

to the ground with the beanbag round, we're going to have a discussion about the choices that you made with your life and how you got into this situation and why you're going, I might not call the, you know, the police, especially if it's a kid, because I don't want to make the situation worse by taking a dumb kid and throwing him into one of the government's dungeons, which is going to produce, you know, an outcome. It's going to depend on his attitude. It's going to depend on a, you know, a variety of different things. But I am prepared to spend to myself without having to involve the police. And I think that, to Ernie's point, that needs to be your first, you know, line of defense. And then after that you make a decision about you know about like what is this person's attitude is is is the kid that made a done done mistake or is it a hardcore criminal that that is trying to get up off the ground and go for a gun or a knife or you know or something where you know after the first two you know beanbag rounds everything else is is combat buckshot so i love jason's example about the

in that concert because it demonstrates the point perfectly. The police, there were police there. Now, you know, the police could have looked at the security and gone, these in-ep morons are going to drop that kid and intervened, but they're not paid to intervene. They're paid to do something after the fact each and every time. It is only in the rarest of circumstances that you find an officer in the middle of something. and far too often, that goes the way of Johnny Hurley, rest in peace, as opposed to the right way.

So, in the example provided, the in-up security drops the poor kid. The police are absolutely 100% qualified to go, hey, we need an ambulance here. And the ambulance shows up. But that's an after-the-fact situation. And anybody else in the room could have called 911. one. Granted, it may not have shown up with the speed at which it does when law enforcement calls for it, but in the absence of road pirates that exist solely on taxation, in most cases, to show up after the fact and make things worse, you know, if you have a situation where you have ambulances that are either private or community supported,

those are going to show up at the same rate of speed as when law enforcement calls them. I think one of the biggest challenges is just that so many people are used to viewing government as the thing you call for these things, that they sort of can't think outside that box. Somebody here has to mention a threat management center up in Detroit that is the non-statist version of protection and de-escalation and security and all those things. But because most people haven't seen that, and all they think is, ah, there's somebody bring in my house. else the ones to call the 911, they haven't seen examples of non-authoritarian security and protection and stuff. So they just assume it's like the thing I often joke about. If you live in the Soviet Union and somebody says, maybe we shouldn't have a ruling class, if they're the ones you get your moldy crappy bread from, you may respond, well, then who will give us bread? Now, if you live

anywhere else, you realize don't let government control the food. But if that's where you're used to seeing it come from, the idea of none of that makes a lot of people assume, so just no security and no moreodes and none of everything. No, all of the good stuff we mere mortals can do. And the fact that people are used to calling a gang of thugs to do some of these legitimate things doesn't mean we actually need them to do that. And threat management center is an awesome example of non-government doing a way better job of all of that stuff. I do want to point out with the Detroit threat management. It's a private service.

And one of the things that libertarians and voluntarious get a lot of heat for is, well, what if you can't afford, you know, to hire a private service company like Detroit threat management? Well, I want to point out that Detroit, Detroit threat management helps non-customers in the areas that they serve, number one, because it's good for business. And number two, because taking criminals off of. the streets protects their other customers and, you know, good guys like to bust bad guys. And so even in a, in a voluntarious world where you have, you know, private armed protective services like Detroit threat management, that has a spillover effect that protects the streets for everybody

as a byproduct of having, you know, a private system. And then the final point I'm going to make is I live in Memphis, Tennessee, where we have the monopoly police. And every, I kid you not, every single shopping center, every single major business like a Target or, you know, any major big box retailer, every single one of them has private security because the government security is so poor that you end up having to, you know, pay for your private security. in addition to the government security and just think how much easier it would be if the businesses only had to pay for one set of security. But because the monopoly provider is so poor, they end up having to pay for the security that they don't use

and then the security that they do use. And so I just wanted to make that point on voluntarious solutions. Yeah, I wanted to give a good example. I know Larkin and Derek had been to the Jackaloke Freedom Festival we have in northeastern Arizona. I think at the end, you've been there too, haven't you? And what happened was it was a large freedom festival that would become very successful in northeast,

went 501C3. And they started, you know, getting organized and committee. And then I'm like, oh, man, this is way too many forms to fill out. You know, this is going down the dark side. So we wanted to see, could we have an anarchist festival? No one was in charge, so everybody was. And I was very adamant, you know, with the young woman that I was doing this with, that we not have any structure.

You want it, you bring it other than that piece out, you know, everybody's in charge. We were able to do that for 10 years. After 10 years, I figured the experiment's over. I'm good. I'm satisfied, you know, rene aloneism. But then it starts getting, oh, wow, we just want to have numbers. We don't care who comes. We just want everybody to come.

big raves and have this and that, whatever, and the problem start. There was a young man that stole his mom's van from like Alabama, drove there to go to the rave and, you know, had mental issues, didn't have his medication, did too many shrews. Why, I mean, it became a thing, okay? So people there took responsibility to restrain them and chain them to a tree. Okay? And we were concerned that I'm going, look, man, this guy has a urinated,

defecated or ate for like 36 hours there's something wrong with him you know stuff is going to happen so somebody has to take responsibility we had a medical professional and a doctor there and myself we're all friends all right we're going to bite the bullet and uh you know we literally had to wrap them up and a blanket put them in the back of my montaro take him to the the fire station we called earlier and said all right we're bringing a guy in found in the forest needs help we got dump them off and said you know peace out, you know? So it, of course, they go, well, what's your name? My name? Well, I got your license. Yeah, but I'm not helping. I mean, you know, whatever. So this is a good example. And my good friend, Bobby goes, you know, this is why you can't have nice things. I mean,

you know, it's always you got to have somebody in charge in a government and, you know, that kind of stuff. And he's as libertarian as you can get. The thing is, is that you're always going to have these circumstances, but a lot of times we create them. We allow for them. And as time goes on and you get older, you start to understand the circumstances that you create. Yeah, but I want to rave. I want a mosh pit. I want to you. Okay. Well, you get what you get. You know? So this is why I'm very satisfied because I have had all these questions throughout my entire adult life. I started this in the late 80s, I wake up and become an activist when I was like 28. So it's not like I don't know.

I don't think I know. I know I've been through this stuff. We create these problems. But that doesn't mean you don't have the bad guys and the galloping hordes over the hill coming after you. And then what do you do? Well, you know, that was the promise of government. We're going to have this government as a protect. Jeffrey Griffin always goes, he doesn't call it a government.

He calls it a protectorate. And if it's not there to protect you, then you're its livestock. So it's other questions we need to be, you know, asking. When someone goes, well, what happens when? Well, I don't know. Did you set yourself up to prevent that? I mean, you know, I'm just wondering, are you prepared to handle that kind of thing? So this is where my mind goes.

And that's why I was wanting to listen to everyone. I'm going, where's the prevention? where is the risk analysis that you're doing before you go there or do something or out with? So this is, you know, where my mind's at because I'm older. You know, Ernie, you make a really good point about incentivization and how that plays into all of this. But I know Ryan has been sitting there patiently for a long time. I know you want to get down on this. But just before you do, Ernie, I kind of want to not correct, but inform something that you were saying there.

because I know, I know exactly how the statist members of my audience will interpret what you said. Because you said, I wanted to have an anarchist conference. Nobody's in charge, so everybody's in charge, and that's how it's going to run. That's one way of running an anarchist festival. But if I'm running an anarchist festival, it's going to be my rules. I'm going to set the ground rules ahead of time. I'm going to run it. I'm going to decide what the security is and how it works. I'm going to enforce that. And your, everyone else will be able to voluntarily change. choose to come to my anarchist festival or not. That is the anarchy. And I want people to understand, anarchism does not mean that there cannot be an authority figure who owns something and decides what happens on that. In fact, that is exactly what anarchy is. And if you are

the anarchist leader that says, this is the anarchist festival where nobody's in charge and anybody can do anything, that's fine. That's the way you are running your anarchist festival. But there is a choice to be made and you get to choose how to enforce that. And I want to understand that. I did I need to add to that so that it answers that very question. Because it was in the National Forest, you couldn't claim ownership. And that was part of the problem. One of the guys that did the first big rave was Native American. And the guys, we had to have a town hall meeting.

They come to Ernie. Well, you, they go, hey, man, I didn't get elected sheriff. You ain't paying me. I don't know what the hell you're talking about. So we had, you know, a community meeting and so on. And it was interesting. And I go, well, he's Native American. He's got more right to this than you do.

Shut up. You know what, boy, you know? So this is like, but what happened was they have the Mid-Continent Freedom Festival, Mid-Fest, which is done by Mike Swatech. He was very inspired by coming to Jackalope. And he goes, wow, you can just do this? Well, he saw the exact same thing that you brought up, James. And he goes, you know, we need to have it at a private campground. Somebody's ultimately the owner and in charge.

Well, it's Copperhead in Stavanov, Oklahoma, in the middle of the country. So ultimately, you have someone in charge, but they also have the agreement. You come here, this is how we're going to deal with it. These are the, you know, anarchy doesn't mean, you know, no rulers. I mean, no rules. It just means no rulers. You know, and I love that shirt that Larkin have. I had a couple of them.

You know, it's like anarchy state with rulers on it, you know, the no symbol. So I'm just, I'm with you, brother. That was exactly what the solution was. It had to be on private property, and you had to have the agreement to go. So if I had anything out on our 18 acres out in the middle of the desert, it's on mine, mine, mine, mine property with mine, mine, mine rules. And we, my, my, my rules that we agree to. So you're absolutely right. Thank you for bringing that us.

Eric, you got something to say before you pop off? Thank you for that, James. Thanks, everybody, for contributing thoughts. I just wanted to share one thing was in relation to Ernie's previous comment about Jackalove. I wasn't at that years, but the word did travel about how dare they chain this guy and, you know, subdue him. This guy was acting crazy, but, you know, there was all this debate about it. But what it brought up for me is.

I was a shock. I heard about that. Yeah, what brought it for me in the situation I shared earlier with the guy who was allegedly targeted individual. Either way, was acting potentially, well, did act violent towards one lady and was seeing can act to violent towards Miriam, that I think those are things that those of us, again, who do believe in volunteerism, or at least as an ideal that we're holding up high, that we believe that humanity can one day, you know, live up to and trying to build societies or communities

or an entire world based around this. Those are questions we have to tackle, and I don't think they're easy to answer, specifically relating to mental health issues. That is, I think, a big kind of conversation relating to like, well, what would you do in the anarchist world? you know, we're building an intentional community, for example. We've said from the beginning, like, hey, we are not going to be a place where people, even as a former addict that I talked with you, James, recently about my own struggles with that. I know what that entails. We're not in a position, nor do we want to be in a position to become the place where all the addicts come to dry out in.

Because it's like, oh, this is an anarchist community, freedom, love, right? We can come here and be crazy and do what we want. That's how some people interpret it. But if you're trying to answer those difficult to answer questions about, well, how would you handle this? And how would you handle this? mental health struggles are real. And from everything from schizophrenia is just somebody, depression off the meds or whatever,

or taking too many shrooms or whatever it may be, and how we navigate those things without running straight to the police or if the police weren't around, how would we handle those things? I think that's, you know, there's books and ideas and talks out there. I'm sure Larkins probably crossed that bridge at one point in his presentations or his videos. But it's just an area that I think definitely needs more discussion around. because it's not an easy fix. There are some people who truly...

You know, when we decided to take him to the fire department because he needed help, and by that time, it was obvious that, you know, he had issues. A lot of the people left. You involved the man were gone. You know, I understand. You know, that was one thing they go, here comes the man.

And since then, it's kind of been... The man's been involved. And the solution is what James pointed out. Midfast Freedom Festival. private property, rules without rulers kind of thing. And that's what I learned from it. One last thing, Ernie,

thank you for the advice, which I think was so prescient and simple. If you don't want to get divorced, just marry well. I love that. All right, guys, I'll see you all later. Well, I'll add to just, you know, and the thought that I was, can, you know,

tooling around is just larger kind of back to the original question, is what's interesting to me is that it seems that everybody, even with different perspectives, seems to acknowledge that at some level, it seems not, you know, maybe not likely, but it's common that you may end up doing that anyway, like because of necessity or whatever.

And so it's interesting to think about that overlap with the human point, which I like, you know, these are real people. I mean, we talk about this in the context of, like, transition or revolution. It's always the enforcement arm that changes. That's usually rather the kind of switch that guides, you know, the breaking point, rather.

And so if we see it that way, back to the original question, which was kind of really, you know, the state using this, like, you know, going to the state to solve the problem the state created. And so it's interesting to think about that, that it seems that there are examples where you do so. But like, so the question is back to the point Larkin made that the cop, you know,

well, it's a person, right? So if he's wearing the badgernaut seems to be the difference in that conversation, right? So we, if you just go to a guy stand next to you and say, hey, help me with this guy's being violent. But if the guy happens to be a cop, that that suddenly changes the calculus there. Like, is this an authority figure? It's an interesting way to think about it. Because, like, hypothetically, if I see he's a cop,

but instead I'm just like, I'm not asking you because you're a cop. I'm just saying, help me as a person. Does that then mean you're still petitioning authority to help you? You know, it's an interesting thing there because, you know, I guess my, I'm just reiterating my larger thought before is that it's kind of a personal line. It's a personal decision. But, you know, it seems that everyone's gravitating towards the idea that these things are causing more problems, at least in this conversation, than not, you know,

and so it's about that human line. And I just want to go back to the point about the revolution, you know, it's like if the idea is that we, you know, need some kind of, like, even if it is a, a, revolution towards anarchy. It would seem you would need that enforcement arm to sort of at least align with your thought or recognize that and stop enforcing for the state, which would necessitate some level of engagement

with that authority. Anyway, it's just interesting in this conversation because as I said before, I am still learning in this journey about this and trying to, because it's not about like trying to adhere to what I think is important, but rather finding out that these things have sort of always aligned with what I feel makes sense.

You know, and then, you know, learning for people like Larkin that is a journey, right? But I think, just think about that, the human side of it, you know, and back to the original question, you know, involving the state to solve the state problems and how that is even functionally going to lead to anything that will change something, you know? It's funny because, like, people are people.

I don't care if you have a badge and if it's your job to be a thug for politicians. But a thing that we do need to keep in mind when calling the cops is I think he's just a guy. He thinks he's this magic, agent of this mythical thing called the law. So I'm more like, like, you're going to call a crackhead? Well, yeah, crackheads are above cops on my list of who I would call.

But because of the fact that they're likely to be abusive, power, happy psychos, that's the main reason I wouldn't call them in a case where somebody actually like needs to be stopped. Somebody's violent or somebody needs help, just knowing you are, you guy with a badge are more of a danger to the average human being precisely because you don't think you're just a human being. You think you have special rights and you're trained to take control of the situation the moment you show up,

which usually makes you a belligerent jerk. And like what a few people here have talked about, the fact that often the person who called them ends up getting victimized or abused or arrested or shot. So even though I view them as a person, I'm sort of extra cautious because they don't view themselves as just a human being bound by the same morality as everybody else, which makes them a dangerous rabid dog, basically.

They also have qualified immunity in very many communities where they are above the law. And so they can't be prosecuted. Somebody brought up Johnny Hurley. You know, the police officer that responded to the Johnny Hurley incident shot and killed him, and there were no charges filed against him, even though he acted irresponsibly. he didn't understand what the situation was, and he shot and killed somebody, and absolutely nothing is going to happen

to the murderer of Johnny Hurley. You know, if I bring this into an interesting point, and James, feel free to direct this away from it, you know, more, like, it's interesting to overlap it with like a contentious political point, which is the ICE and Ray Good and, and Red, and, was it ready? I'm blanking on his last name. The interesting point, though, is that from this conversation, it's completely about, you know, stateism and authority,

and that, but what's interesting is there were people that I are, I see that are in some ways leaning towards or identifying as anarchist or libertarian who suddenly cited with the state in that situation. And I just want to point out it's interesting to see where principles and integrity will suddenly waver when it comes to like a team or a choice. And it's kind of the same problem. It is exactly the same problem. It's, but it's a different way they view it. And so if you want to go further, and I just think it's an interesting overlap. Okay. Well, yes.

anyone who wants to respond to that, go ahead. I will just, before we start wrapping things up, I want to take a different tack on this question and this approach, because one of the things that we're talking about here today is, I think there is a broad consensus here. And thank you to everyone who's participating here and sort of playing this all out, because I am starting to realize for the first time, I am a bit pragmatic when it comes to questions like this,

which is funny because I always get accused of being some starry-eyed idealist, Oh, you and your purest to anarchist ideals. No, actually, I can be quite pragmatic on situations like this precisely because we exist in the world of the presumed authority of the authorities and in the creation of the monopolization of these various services by these groups who are armed thugs, who will then take out the aggression on you if you don't go through their system. And as an example, yeah, have I ever called the cops? Yes, in one situation I had to. It was about a decade ago. My lovely darling wife somehow managed to hit a car in a parking lot here in Japan. And the owner was nowhere to be found and no way to directly communicate with them.

Leave a note and go away. Cameras everywhere. In Japan, absolutely, you cannot just drive away from the scene of an accident like that. you will get in trouble with the law if you do that. So we had to, unfortunately, involve a police officer in order to communicate that, facilitate that communication. Luckily, that was about it, and then we exchanged insurance details and blah, blah, blah, and it was all fine. But, yeah, there are situations where, yeah, it would be great if we could not involve the state in this, but then I'm going to get thrown in a cage or get questioned or whatever because of my lack of

compliance to this system that exists around us. And I think that applies to so many of the status things that we live in. It would be great if nobody ever paid taxes. But I understand when people decide that they're going to comply with the extortion that they're being put under at the threat of the implied threat of the gun, right, which is always there in the room with us and always threatening to take us away into the cage if we don't comply. So I understand. I'm not saying that everybody has to be the purists floating on the clouds. So the question... The Larkin made sure we understood what happens without paying taxes. So, Thank you.

Yeah. You know, the one thing I wanted to emphasize, you know, at the end said, you know, because you're in Japan. You know, Derek's living in Mexico. We have a gentleman from the UK. We're in America. But I don't know if these other places, I'm sure they may, but here in the U.S., at the end, brought up sovereign immunity.

You know, we're not liable. We don't care. We can do whatever. We can shoot and kill you. I mean, it's kind of that is. a core problem. There has to be responsibility of something for somebody. And that was one thing, one of the first things that you learn is that you've come up with the idea that law enforcement is not there to protect your rights. They're better to protect society in some way. I mean,

that's been adjudicated. We're here to protect the piece of the crown or something. I mean, you know, this is, it's really gotten as far away and still have a threat of, they're going to protect us in some way. And I remember, I'm old enough to remember every officer had on his car to protect and serve. They stripped that off, you know. So we're living in a totally different paradigm. And I'm glad that at the end brought that up. I'm sorry.

Well, I wanted to, I wanted to switch the conversation to the, what I presume to be the sort of the spirit and the heart of this question is, okay, yes, voluntarious or. you know, anarchist leaning as people might be. We live in the statist world in which these structures exist. So we have to interact with them in some way. But if we do want to move the goalposts, if we do want to actually move us towards every society, we have to start creating the structures to replace these statist institutions. Otherwise, what are we doing? Yeah, the incentive really is to, okay, just be careless with your goods and when they get stolen and call the cops, because we know that exists, right? So what do we, what are we actively doing? building in terms of community structures that can then replace that, like the Detroit

threat management center, but maybe not even as thoroughgoing as that. And I will recall off the top of my head that I interviewed someone probably about a decade ago. They were building an app that was sort of a community outreach app where when you were in trouble, whatever that trouble might be, I have a flat tire, I'm stuck on the road, or somebody's trying to break into my house, or whatever, you would be able to call people on that app. You'd be able to put out an emergency message and people would respond to that. Peacemaker. Yeah. Sorry. What was the name?

I think it was peacemaker. It was one you're talking about. I think, you know, I think it was a different. Anyway, it doesn't matter because it's a great idea and I think everyone should be doing that. But things like that, how do we start building the community structures that could hopefully one day replace this state monopoly on law enforcement? Well, one example that's out there is Prospera. So, you know, my fiance and I, we spent a month in Prospera last year. And, you know, the fact that they're offering, you know, governance as a service. And so they have a sort kind of, they've negotiated a sovereignty from the government of Honduras where the laws of Honduras don't, you know, don't apply.

They have their own private security. And so I think it's an example of, hey, you can have governance without having government. they're offering governance as a service, they're demonstrating that you don't have to have a state to have peace and security. All right. Now it serves some fireworks because, Ryan,

you might have something to say about Prospera and Peter Thiel. I'm not going to get into the whole thing unless we want to get into it, but I'll simply add that I find it hard to think that that's the way that went when this entire thing started with an illegal coup that the U.S. created in Honduras to justify that change.

That's all in the record. So even if that's the way it goes, and I really hope so. I really hope, and as we briefly discussed in another conversation, there are plenty of people that are in these locations, and I could definitely wrong, in my opinion, first of all, that are doing what we would argue is the right, you know, the doing this, taking this path correctly within all of this. But my worry is that this is a sort of a trap. You know, the idea of recognizing we want this and that society's drifting this direction and then sort of like the,

hey, we'll end the Fed and here's your CBDC kind of a play. But all that aside, I just think it's worth noting that this was an illegal coup, that the U.S. government conducted in Honduras. And all of the people connected, all the government entities that have allowed this, including the manipulation of the Supreme Court, including all the different law changes that were done illegally, were people that were tied directly to, you know,

the illegal regime change and, of course, to the larger technocratic discussion that we could have. You know, but I hope that this goes in the right direction, and I do think that we should be striving for something like that. I just think my personal opinion is Prospera and the Pronomal's Capital sort of like technocratic, you know, pretending to be a libertarian push is a trap. That's just my opinion, though. So I'm looking at it as a laboratory of liberty. And so Chiron is a laboratory of liberty.

Prospera is a laboratory of liberty. It's having alternatives to the state and proving that you can have peace and prosperity without having a government, whether it's Prospera doing it in a kind of a narco-capitalist way or whether. whether it's Chiran doing it in a kind of, you know, communitarianism, you know, way, the more laboratory of liberties that we have that prove the case that you don't need to have government to have governance, I think the more of those that are out there, the better. You know, we had just this case in Texas to where they're building a Muslim city, and I'm sure they're probably going to put enforced Sharia law or whatever they're going to do. and they tried to ban it. And then you had the court come out and say,

nope, they can do it whatever they want. And without knowing anything about it, really, isn't that what we want? I mean, I want to be able to, they keep having this prosperity zone threat that they keep doing here in Arizona, where it is you get a square mile out there and peace out. You don't do tax.

You don't out in the middle of the freeze desert, you know? And you're doing, well, then I got another, one, it's called Belmont, which is Bill Gates thing, 35 miles east to me. You know, they're, you know, super matrix, get your vaccine plug in the back of the head matrix town. You know, I'm like, hey, you want to go there and I can self out. So I'm much more inclined for these experiments. And I remember in the 90s, you know, a gentleman that I knew at a supper club that we'd go to, economic thing. And he advocated for this. He's going, what, the future is going to be all about autonomy, well, this one-size-fit-all freaking United States of everything.

Each state was supposed to be its own thing. So, you know, there's going to be communities with a super-duper or HOA sheriff or something. I mean, I, you know, so I'm leaning towards that freedom to experiment. But what a lot of things happen when you come across a lot of socialist or communal living or whatever. And I'm going, I don't care. I remember we were, I was covering Tampa County. Casey during the Bush administration when, you know, I was a Cindy Sheehan.

There they had Camp Casey in protesting President Bush and Iraq war and what noble cause of my son died for, that kind of thing. And there was a lot of socialists there that were, you know, gathered in opposition too. And it was just to move on Pelosi, both sides of the pyramid. We're going to have war as what was going on. But, you know, you talk to these people and they find I'm libertarians. And my show, you know, and producer for Air America, you know, Communist, radio, where they're token libertarians, well, what happens is they go, you're a libertarian,

they go off on me. Well, you know, you can't have that. I go, look, I don't have a problem when you have your socialist enclave. You know, you want to do your own thing as long as I don't have to pay for it. And, you know, and if I, people that are there, they can leave. Well, then it won't work. Might drop. I mean, okay, well, then, you know, thank you. I mean, so it's, it's, we're going to find through the competition of ideas and actual experiences and with the communication that we have now with the internet and other, you know, alternative internet's going to be coming online, I'm sure that we're going to be able to pick from what we want. And I remember a science fiction book, I won't go into it, but when I was a kid that was about that. You know, you have all of

these different communities. I've been to northern, it's called the Northern Strip, north of the Grand Canyon, still in Arizona, where you have a polygamous Mormon community. community. You know, and the big problem was covering it was because the women were pissed off because the church wouldn't allow their husband to have a third wife so they could qualify for their own planet.

And I'm like, wow. I mean, you know, this stuff. So yes, that's a long story, Janet, I'll tell you later. But the thing is, is that this competing idea And I know, Ryan, your opposition to a coup in Honduras, you know, I can see that. But, you know, my main thing is, is that there's going to be competition, just like Midfest, with Mike Swatech's setup improved upon Jack Loeb and we improved upon others.

Allow for the improvement. But you have to be responsible. And if you're going to delegate authority, know what the hell you're doing. And don't be so quick to do it. jump in real quick just to follow up. I think it's important to clarify, you know, my issue is not about that it's there. Like, I completely agree with the word and you just said 100%. It's, you know, that it has to be like, you know, whether communism or whatever else, like that's the whole point, but it's that people I argue just need to be aware of what I think it is. Like that's my point.

It's not that it shouldn't be happening, but rather to understand that I just don't think it's what they're representing it as, just to make sure that was clear. Because Ernie's point is exactly what I think should be. That's why I find it interesting, this kind of, you know, you'll find the same point I was kind of making before, the hypocrisy comes in when they're making these arguments that then it's like, but communism or vice versa. And it's like, well, you know, I get the gripes about government entirely, but that shows that you don't really feel that way when it comes down to it.

You know, it's important. Also, I want to point out, I've seen zero evidence that Peter Thiel is involved in that at all. And so, like, I know that that's an internet rumor, but if anybody's got any evidence, I want to see it, because as far as I know, he is not involved at all. It's human. You can't, he's literally, I mean, Pranomus capital is a funding arm of the entire thing.

He's tied to those. No, they're not. They've got less than 1% of the invested capital. It's like, it's almost like a two-year investment. It's not, you know, I mean, I don't, I don't think that that is indicative of Peter Thiel has an investment in Pronomis. They have an investment in Prospera. That is not a logical leap that he is involved in Prosper. He's never said the word prosper ever.

We don't need to get into this for this conversation, respectively, but perspective. you know, but either way, the point is that there is provable connections. Feel free to look into it, guys. You know, and it's, just to be clear, if you just said one percent, well, then there is connection right there. But it's more than that, just to be honest, and I've covered this extensively. And it's very, I mean, Ian Davis just did an entire focus on it. His book outlines it.

I mean, you guys, this is not a secret. There's very, and they publicly align their names with all of these projects. So, I mean, I don't know why that's debatable. But the point is not about whether Peter, that's not the focal point. Peter Thiel being connected is a totally different thing. My point was, this is not by what the people leading it are doing and the way that it started by definition libertarian. Now, there are people within it who may lead it that way, and I support that. In fact, like Ernie was pointing out, I support the idea that any of these things have the air to exist,

but I think it's worth knowing that it is, in my opinion, a manipulation, that you have the centralized thing going on. I mean, if you understand the way these things are going, Prasper in particular, coming from the same people involved, like Shurney Bassan and the books written about this, They call it tech Zionism, by the way. The point is that they talk about, you know, the sort of you own nothing and you'll be happy dynamic, but with like some kind of digital keys situation. That's their own discussion. And so it effectively becomes the lie that you have control of things when it's sort of

a coin base, you know, you own the access to it, but we own, and this is all written. Everything becomes digital. No, no, I understand exactly what you're saying. And the one thing, I equate that to the founding of the United States of America. I mean, you know, it's like the Declaration of Independence, Pinky swear, promise what the deal is. And then decade later, they do the Constitution and the influences the thing. It goes off the rails.

I mean, you know, it's just, so I encourage the experiment, the American experiment, did it fail? When did it fail? Did it start to fail right after the, before the ink was dry on the Constitution? I mean, you know, so we can have these arguments. But these arguments have been had over freaking millennia. I mean, you know, this is what it's come down to. And we're getting the reason they come.

call it revolution because it comes around. Well, it's coming around faster, which is good. You know, we need to have this awareness, this understanding, and not in the past, you know, two generations ago it happened. We're starting to experience it in our lifetime as I have, God, a few times. And you said, okay, I get it. I get it, I get it, I get it. Read Larkin's book.

I think that, like, yeah, absolutely. We need a bunch of competing ideas and competing. solutions, including the ones I think will fail drastically, just, yeah, like Ernie said, do it over there and don't force me to be involved. But I think the, I realize I'm a broken record because I always say this, but to me, it's so much a numbers game, because if you have three people competing over who has the best solution, it's not going to be as good as if you have $8 billion. So, and that's why my focus is get as many people out of stadium as possible. But the example of like protection, I did literally the most primitive caveman version of that, which is when I knew my neighbors, the ones I knew and the ones I liked, I say, if somebody's breaking into your house in the middle of the night, call me, I will get their way before the cops do. I'm heavily armed. I won't shoot you or your dog. The fact that the most primitive, oversimplified solution is already better than the government version of protection.

And then you can look at something like threat management center, which is way more organized and they're trained and de-escalation and all that awesome stuff. But it's pretty funny that even our worst solution, like literally just call me. I'm right here. I have a gun. If someone's kicking down your door, call me. Like that is no preparation end of time and no training. That is literally better than the government version. But to get people even looking in that direction, they have to get their brain out of the assumption.

that will government and you have to call the authorities, like we were all raised. If there's a problem, if there's a fight in the classroom, you don't handle it yourself. You call the authorities. And until enough people are out of that, we're going to have a smaller list of competing ideas.

And when everybody's out of that, we have an infinite number and like none of us have to care because other people will come up with way better solutions. But so many of the solutions are kind of patently obvious. as like even the most simple are still better than the most advanced government solutions. And it's just that people aren't used to looking elsewhere to solve anything, helping the board, protecting them.

James, you know, the gentleman from the United Kingdom has been patient, listening to all this, and being from the UK, I am very interested in this deluxe dem Americans, you know, of what your thought process has been on hearing this discussion. I wouldn't say patient. I was listening intently. It was very interesting. Because, you know, this is a whole area that we simply don't explore it. We don't have the space to carve out our own little communes. We don't have the law enforcement traditions of carrying guns even.

So the whole idea of police officers as being violent towards us is very rare comparatively. It's safe for like civil unrest ideas. People don't get killed by the police in this country. I suppose one thing I have been thinking about is that we're talking like interpersonal, very local, specific people. What should you do if you can't call the police? But if, for example, society as it is established, this authority collapsed tomorrow, and it was just like a free-for-all in that sense, what mechanisms could possibly evolve in place to stop a monopoly on force

that is not state-backed but private. I mean, and that's a sincere question. I genuinely asking, like, the corruption and tyranny are not simply the territory of the state, and they could easily be, you know, if the US government collapse tomorrow, Bill Gates could start his own private security force with the change he finds under his sofa,

and suddenly you've got Gatesville, and he makes all the rules, and there's nothing you can do about it, even less than you can do about it now, technically. So what would the solution to that be? You know I was tempted. The thing that everybody leaves out when they ask that, which is a very common and reasonable question, is if the one with the big gang is not perceived as authority, none of the games work. Especially in a country where 100 million of us are armed.

If Bill Gates, anybody else says, oh, well, I'm not authority, I'm not government, I just have a big army. Who just killed half my army? the 100 million armed Americans who don't recognize your right to rule them, but most of whom did think that government had the right. So the amount of power that government gets not from its armed thugs, but from the indoctrination of its people who imagine obedience to the law to be a virtue. And they imagine paying your taxes to be a virtue. They feel good about obeying that. nobody's going to feel good about just obeying a gang of thugs who just says, we're just going to violently dominate you because we can. And at least in country, in this country, there are a hell

of a lot of heavily armed people, especially here in Arizona. If you want to chuckle, look up the big sandy shoot sometime. It's where a bunch of people with private anti-aircraft guns and tanks go and blow up the side of the mountain for a while for fun. But without the belief that it's legitimate. You cannot dominate an armed populace, and I don't care how big your army is, because your army doesn't want to get killed either. Like, you can find some completely immoral mercenaries, but when people find out you did that and nobody recognizes your right to do that, gets really dangerous, which is why even the private criminal thugs and, like, organized crime, they all work off of government-created black markets of drugs and processes.

and gambling, because if you just said, we're just going to rob you because we can, in this country, you freaking die unless you have a giant government imagined to have the right to rule, which either implements it or creates a black market. Like the drug cartels exist because of the U.S. war on drugs. If not, Walmart would put all the cartels out of business. So the mentality of the people thinking they're obligated to obey, because that's what authority means, the thing that has the right to rule and that we have the obligation to obey. If a hundred million gun owners don't feel an obligation to obey, good luck controlling them

by force. Steve, you've been quiet for a long time. Well, I mean, there's so many great minds here that have said stuff that, you know, we've all been saying similarly for a number of years. But I think that for people listening who are trying to apply all of the things that we've been talking about, if you just kind of shift your focus on what kind of skills can I develop that are going to eliminate the need for me to call

in additional resources that would involve the state. What are those? What could they be, you know, what could my family do? Do I know anybody that is, you know, a nurse or a doctor or anything like that? One of the things that I love about Maj Torre is that in addition to firearms, he also had people get in and become certified phlebotomists. It just things like that are immensely huge. So if I'm thinking about multiple different ways to limit my interactions with the state,

becoming as multifaceted as possible, at least at the same rate that I am a mechanic. Like, I'm a poverty mechanic. So there's a lot of stuff I can do on a vehicle as long as it doesn't require an engine puller or a machine shop. You know, and I feel like first aid is the same way. Like, if it requires surgery, it's already out. You've got to take it into the shop.

Body's got to go into the mechanic at that point. But, you know, I'll do. And so I think that's something that people should start thinking about as it gets significantly weirder. Okay. I think it's time to start wrapping things up. So I want to get a concluding thought from each of you. But I will leave on this concluding thought, something of a contrarian sort of idea here for many of us. I think, you know, God bless the state and the statist law enforcement goons for being so corrupt and so useless and so violent and so. obviously on their face terrible that most people at least have the thought, do I want to involve the police in this? Because imagine if we lived in a world where the statist monopoly

security goons were actually really good at what they did and really helped people out more often than not. Could you imagine such a world? Because then we would be genuinely incentivized to just, oh, okay, there's a problem. I'll just call my local friendly neighborhood cop. He'll take care of it. But no, at least I think most people listening to this, at least understand why we're having this discussion. It's because these violent goons are so terrible. So if there is any bright spot in all of this, I would say it's that. And I would say that to my mind, the real question is how do we further incentivize people

going forward to start thinking about how to create that community of shared help that will be the thing that get us through the emergency situations more so than the status enforcer enforcement officers. That's going to be my concluding thoughts, but let's go around the table and see what everyone else has to say, and let's start with that, Jen. So, you know, we recently did an analysis where we calculated the cost of government and the cost of the banking system. And for a single earner, it was making $60,000 a year, over a 40-year career and a 20-year retirement. They're going to pay about $2.7 million in tax. or they're going to lose that equivalent in purchasing power.

It's a $2.7 million, you know, hit to a guy making $60K a year over this 40K, this 40 years of work and 20 years of retirement. If the government wasn't stealing that money through the monetary system and through the confiscatory taxation and through the underpayment of Social Security because they're lying about what the inflation rate is, there would be more than enough wine, cheese, and bread on the table for everybody. Everybody could afford the security that they wanted. Everybody could afford the school they wanted. Everybody could afford it. It would be a dramatically different world if the government wasn't stealing $2.7 million from the average person,

millions and millions and millions more from the average earner. And that's the world. I think most people can't wrap their mind around because that money is stolen through, inflation, they never ever see it. It's, you know, it's, it's, it's the money they don't even know is being stolen from them. So they can't imagine a world without government. They can't imagine how they'd be able to, you know, afford private security. They can't imagine how they'd be able to afford private education. That's the thing I wanted to leave the audience with. Okay, let's go larkin. Now, James, are you suggesting that the Hollywood depiction of law enforcement as brave, heroic, efficient, and competent is inaccurate.

Yes, I very much agree. I see two benefits to government enforcement being so brutal and sadistic and inefficient, and they show up and draw a chalk outline around you and shoot your dog. One is more and more people are already, like you said, starting to think in terms of, maybe we need something better than this, like neighbors to call, again, even starting with most primitive things. but two is they're all the way starting to think maybe that is the problem it isn't just they're not doing a great job right now maybe we should start thinking like grownups and weirdly

that's the best thing that that self-ownership and freedom could ever have as a bunch of normal people looking at that and my sort of non-answer answer answered to close this is of all the ideas I have in suggestions and predictions and stuff I think at the end of the day, nobody even needs my freaking input. If people give up the idea that we need masters, put in the situation of, well, then what are we going to do about? The average person who's never thought about it before will already do a better job than government. And then the people who have thought about it, like some of us here and stuff, you know, we may have a head start on them. But just people adopting individual responsibility and go, maybe it's on us to like take care of each other and protect each other.

just getting them into that mindset, I don't want to be in charge of them and give them my master plan. They're going to figure it out whether I say another word about it or not. So yeah, I like the fact that the state is making more enemies of the state than anybody else possibly could.

All right, Ernie, what are you got to say? You know, like I say, when you're old, you experience law stuff. Throughout the 90s, when we were very active, libertarian activism and so on, There was a guy named Jack McLean here in Phoenix that was a Phoenix police officer. And because he refused to cooperate with, you know, holding people's hands while the IRS or FBI went and abused rights or whatever, you know, they didn't like him too much.

And what he did is he wrote a newsletter called Police and Military Against a New World Order in the 90s. and you may have heard the vampire vampire killer 2000 or something you know that was a popular you know thing for all the conspirators a lot of the new guys probably never heard of that but it was his warning that the military and the police are going to be the tip of the sphere of what's coming and he saw it he explained it and they wanted his database because before the internet he was doing this newsletter that would go to all of these soldiers and officers and military and other police and so he had this big database, and they wanted that database, big time. Well, they fired him because he wouldn't give it up. Well, he goes to the union and he goes, eh, he gets rehired. He got fired and rehired, I think, five times. It was ridiculous. And long story with that, but it was, he became known as officer friendly.

And the reason was because he wouldn't cooperate, so they gave him without a partner, no backup, no motorcycle, no vehicle, and you're patrolling South Phoenix in the hood, buddy, and we're not coming to help you. His response was, he was officer-friendly. He made friends with all the local businesses. He made friends of the local inhabitants. All the gang members and everybody knew who he was. He was fair. He was kind.

He was helpful. Well, he became known as officer-friendly nationally. And this just pissed them off. So the thing is, it's not that people can't be good cops, the police officers and law enforcement for whom? You know, it's the system that's the problem. This idea that we could somehow fix the system, it's having the system is what the problem is. So I keep going back to, you want to have good cops, let them be good. And all the ones that were good, they were replaced.

I saw it happen in the 90s. Police and firemen that were Iraq veterans, got preferential treatment, and put into these positions of authority and power. And they had a lobby. They called it guns and hoses. And I'm like, wow, you know, they're just out front about it. Well, the guns and hos people, they were there for the system.

They knew how it worked. They've been following orders before. They know how to abuse and do it. Zieg Hild or whoever paid them to do whatever. And anyone, we had a confrontation prevention squad, which was like community service thing. And we had worked with them so we didn't get shot at protests and so on. This is where I called the police. I go, hey, we're going to ask permission.

We're going here. We're doing this. This is going to happen. Peace out. Keep your Iraq veteran with PTSD off of our ass. And they would come to protect us from them. well then occupy you know wall street

and occupy phoenix and occupy all that was going on over a decade ago when that was happening they were peaceful they let everybody do their thing but they them those didn't like it so they got rid of all those guys put in their guys and the guy they put in charge of it that replaced the guy we were working with

was their VIP sniper and I go wow They've never got their sociopaths in there now, and I had a meeting with them, you know, later that's a long story. But the bottom line is they select the worst type people for government. The sociopaths are attracted to these positions, and then the people in the positions of decision and a 40 over their, you know, minion cops or whatever, who do they pick? The worst short. Why? Because that's what serves their interest.

So you just can't get away from sociopaths that want a sociopath. This is the way to it. All right. Thank you. Ryan. Well, first, James, thanks for having this. I think this is hopefully, like Steve said, we can keep doing this. I do think this is important.

You know, I'll just end with, you know, the idea that, you know, the general point, what we're all talking about is I think that we could all continue down this journey. And I think it really is something that is becoming more, whatever you want to call it, mainstream, like, just in my experience, and I brought this up a while back when I interviewed your Lark and just about, like, do you sense a change? Like, you know, you've been doing this for so long, and I asked you if you sensed that there was more awareness or people who were starting to ask these questions, and you said yes. And I really do think even more now, there are people that are, like, in my experience, just say, like, questioning the two-party illusion. And I've

never seen this much interest in that idea. So I think we have momentum here. But I, you know, maybe it's ebden float over the years and there's been moments where we had it and there's then tamp back down with different. agendas. And I think that's always part of this, you know. And so I think we just need to lean into this more and consider this. And to the point we kind of went over there at the end, consider other people's ideas, even if they seem like the opposite of what you want, or you even have been trained to see it as dangerous. Consider it. Think about it. And if you think it's dangerous, then consider it dangerous, but acknowledge that people have the right to make their

own choices. How, you know, as long as it's not forced on you or anybody else. And last, I'll just simply say that, you know, with all that in mind, and I know, I think we all kind of sense what's happening with these weird, like I said, with this administration, but it's not just left or right. It's been ongoing sort of like the bait and switch of all that's happening right now. And I just think that a lot of that's happening. So as in any of these conversations, we start to see more momentum and people start to be more aware and things are changing in some ways, at least mentally in a positive way, the system that is hell-bent on maintaining the status quo will find ways to get you convinced one that you either already got what you need to get or that what they

give you, which is not that, is what you want. And so just be on guard, guys, because I think a lot of that is happening right now. And I think we need more conversations just like this. So thank you, everybody, for being here. Okay, Steve. Yeah, and apologies. I got to run. I got another show to get to in about 10 minutes.

But, no, I usually tell people all the time that, you know, two best pieces of advice I can give anyone is grow food and make bullets. I think we're about there. It's interesting to see. people wake up very gradually and then kind of all at once. And the reality that the state is not coming to save them is starting to really sink in. And this is a very, very, very opportunistic moment for all of us because the vast majority of the Western population has been pre-programmed to sink into despair, when they would realize something as, you know, earth-shattering is, oh, the government is actually a violent criminal mafia and they're not here to protect me.

But that gives us a giant opportunity to do what most of us have been doing the entire time, which is leading by example, showing people how to operate without the machinations of the state. And I think that the next 18 months or so are going to be absolutely pivotal in terms of rally. people that finally can't run away from reality anymore. And it's going to be a very interesting, but I do believe a very, very

fruicious time. All right. And Kit? Well, I respect going last. That's nice. Give me the final word. I suppose there'd be a few bits of advice. like on taxation, I find it's just, you know, very cleverly make sure you never make enough money

that your taxes are worth chase if that's what's always worked for me. On the police live a life that's rather dull and make sure you never have to encounter them if you don't really have to. As I said, the preparation and prevention is the best cure for anything. And on the long-term success, I think the strength of the anti-state position and anti-authority position is that it's the natural position. I know that's probably a thought that's been expressed by a lot of people over a lot of years,

but if people are allowed to simply rationally think for themselves, it's where they naturally turn. And like, we don't need to convince people. Oppression will convince people, and it will simply push us, push more and more people. I think the best reason of that is COVID, where people saw what the government was willing to do to them. and simply flopped the other way. I mean, the vaccine uptake was never as high as they said it was. Even now, it's lower than they said. They've admitted since.

And that is the best and the biggest, most recent example. If they squeeze, people simply slip to their fingers. And then we are free to make different decisions away from that system. Well said. All right. Thank you, absolutely everyone for participating in this. There's a lot of stuff to think about here. and I hope we have adequately answered your question, Michael.

If you have any follow-up questions, please let me know. But no, this is a great discussion and one that, as Ryan was saying, I think needs to happen more frequently. So, yes, let's do this. A Solutions Watch slash IMA panel mashup where we can discuss meaty issues like this with some of the greatest minds in the independent media. I've enjoyed this discussion. I hope you did too.

And just as a note for anyone who has made it to the end and is still confused about who is who, at least if you're watching this on Corby Report channels, I will put the link to everybody in the description so you can find out who everyone is and start following all of their respective channels and websites. But I think we're going to leave it there for today, James CorbettcorporReport.com. On behalf of everyone here at the IMA panel and some extra special guests, thank you very much for investing your wide mind time in this conversation. I'll talk to again in the near future.