 This is Mises Weekends with your host, Jeff Deist. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back. Once again, it's Mises Weekends. I'm thrilled to be joined by and visiting my good friend, Michael Bolden in Los Angeles. I'm out here visiting some family and I definitely wanted to take the time to catch up with Michael and talk about probably the single hottest topic of the year for the Mises Institute, which was decentralization, secession, nullification, localism, all as kind of a broad theme. And for those of you who aren't familiar with Michael, he runs the 10th Amendment Center here in Los Angeles. He is a longtime libertarian stalwart, someone we've known for many, many years, and someone whose organization does great work. I believe it's spelled out 10thamendmetsenter.org or com. Dot com. Dot com. If you're not familiar, check about his videos. They're excellent. Mike Mahari and some of the other people who write for him do really good work on constitutional issues. If you want to better understand judicial review, that sort of thing, you'll find some excellent, almost legal type arguments at that website. So, again, we're talking decentralization. It was the big theme of 2016 and even 17 in many ways. Trump's victory was not particularly expected. Brexit was not particularly expected to pass. So it seems like there's a new breakaway or nationalist fervor that's running out there in the populace in the West. And so I wanted to first just give us your thoughts from not from a philosophical or ideological perspective, but from a strategic and tactical perspective. What is your view? What is the 10th Amendment Center's view of how liberty-minded people ought to proceed in the current environment? Well, thanks, Jeff. First of all, I would actually give the exact same advice to people who believe in liberty and those who don't. Basically, if you want to achieve something, you're not going to achieve it by trying to force a one-size-fits-all solution of your political goals over a nation of 300-some-odd million people, 50-plus states, it just never works. You could even go back to people who want single-payer healthcare, what they ended up with was a form of a corporate bailout. They didn't get what they wanted either, whereas they could have maybe gotten something accomplished on a state or a local level. Whether you believe in liberty or you don't believe in liberty, I think strategically the effective way forward is to look inward, either in your state or your local community. But what's so interesting is nobody gets what they want in our so-called democracy. The left isn't happy, the right isn't happy, libertarians aren't happy, progressives aren't. I mean, nobody's getting what they want. Yeah, and Tom Woods, our friend, great friend, we can call him, right? He calls it a low-grade civil war every four years. So basically, you're trying to be on one side versus the other, beating each other over the head, trying to control the whole federal pie. And the end result is no one's happy. And instead, I think people are, well, I would like to hope that people are recognizing that that's a failed strategy and that the way forward is to try something more locally. And in fact, I think for those of us who believe in liberty, I think seeing these progressive moves, for example, here in California, there's a bill, I think it's SB 562 for single-payer healthcare. That I would pose on a philosophical ground. But in a way, I have kind of a gut feeling that I'd like to see it pass, because there's no better way to show the failures of these socialist programs than to put them into effect. And the least amount of damage they're gonna do to the largest amount of people is gonna happen when they happen in one area. Maybe Rhode Island would be a better place to show that happen. And I think this type of thing actually has to happen for some of the other people who will pose our ideas to come over to our side and say, oh, okay, these socialist programs are horrible. And until they actually see how poorly they play out, I don't think they're gonna recognize if there's another option. Well, there's the concept of the so-called laboratory of states. Yeah, of course. But there seems to be an impulse in the American psyche where we don't wanna let that happen. We don't wanna have competing governments. We almost see that as ugly if people are leaving a state, let's say a lot of people are leaving New York according to Larry Sharp, the LP gubernatorial candidate there over some of their owner's taxes. We don't like that for some reason. We have an impulse that things ought to be nationalized. Well, I think it's actually beautiful to not be nationalized because of course, I mean, if we're just talking, I think you could apply this to any kind of geographic region. But if we're talking about the United States of America as a country, for example, certainly the general philosophical view of many people here in California is far different from that of people in South Carolina. And the only way that you can have these hundreds of millions of people with different political, religious, economic viewpoints living together in peace is to allow them to have their own system in their own area without trying to control what they're doing. This is about giving up control of others. And I think allowing people to make their own decisions locally allows us to learn from them as well. It's again, like you said, it's the marketplace of ideas. It's almost as though there's a purposeful movement to divide us. There's a whole idea of two Americas and progressives versus Trumpians. You were talking earlier about an ACLU tweet that you saw today. And with Trump in power, some of our friends on the left are rediscovering federalism and localism. Yeah, well, a lot of people are talking about the 10th Amendment or you can like follow a hashtag 10th Amendment and you see all kinds of people from the left talking about it, especially in regards to Jeff Sessions and the war on marijuana, the federal prohibition there. But just this morning, the ACLU tweeted in the age of Trump, if we want, I think it was like police reform or something like that, we have to focus on the states. Well, I think they're one recognizing the effectiveness of doing this, but at the same time, they're admitting that they don't see it as a long-term strategy. And I think that will be their failure. And the great Harry Brown, who was an inspiration for me in my earlier days, switching from Marxism to whatever I am today, he taught me and I think many others that every time you grant politicians power to do something you like, you're granting them the power to do the absolute opposite. So ACLU doesn't see this for some reason. They're okay with taking a more decentralized approach today, but soon as someone from their team gets in power, they're going to grant their opposition the power to do the opposite sometime in the future. I don't know if that's too convoluted, but. Well, if Oprah becomes president in 2020, or Joe Biden or Kamala Harris, it seems like historically, they'll change their tune. Well, certainly, and that's what they've always done. I think the idea of decentralization, or at least for our work, 10th amendment. So if we're just talking states, now I know a lot of libertarians don't want to see states have rights or powers, but it's really not about that because it's the people of each state and under each state, it could be the people of each community. So the goal, of course, at least in my work, is to advance individual liberty. And we believe that the best way to do that is to take hands away from the centralized power sources, especially in Washington, D.C. So they always change their tune. So whether it's the left on marijuana, also in their 10th years, wanting to see states do it, Bernie Sanders even tweeted about how states should have the right to make a decision about marijuana. And this is absurd from this guy. I mean, I welcome it from wherever it comes from because the more people who are saying, oh, Washington, D.C., you may have this, quote unquote, law on the books, but we're willing to support people who defy it without overturning it, I think that's better. And it would be even better if people on the right took the same approach and applied it on things like guns or healthcare or so many other things, environment that are important to them. Well, speaking as someone who, while your admission comes from a left viewpoint in your earlier years, you know how the left thinks about secession. They'll say, look, Michael Bolton, this is great. We're gonna have our paradise in Minnesota and New Jersey and some left-leaning states. But we're the saviors and we have a savior complex and we care about this. Poor black people and minorities in Alabama and they're going, you know, if we have your system in place, minorities, gays are going to be run rough shot over in places like Alabama, abortion's gonna be banned. You know, what's your response to that? Well, it's the same thing on the other side of the spectrum. The Rick Santorum, Jeff Sessions' view from the right is, oh, if we have your view, then people are gonna be dying from weed in California or New York. So it comes from both ends. There are control freaks on both sides of the spectrum. How do you die from weed? I think you just sort of fall asleep on a couch. Well, I mean, even that, I don't know. What Sessions seems to think. You might eat too many Doritos. These guys seem to think that all kinds of people, and let's say they're right. I mean, people believe in them and people support these guys. They're not, the market has basically enabled them to be in power. So there are a lot of people who disagree with you and I and those of us listening on the value of liberty. So millions and millions of people opposes then they come from different directions. And I think there are control freaks on both sides. But in the end, I think the way to advance things, strategically, you're gonna be more effective when you can prove your way is right. And how are you gonna prove your way is right other than by implementing it? How are you gonna implement it? It's never gonna happen in Washington, D.C. No one ever gets what they want. It's always a half measure or a compromise. Whereas it's much easier to control a local area. You can talk about the Free State Project working towards that New Hampshire. You can talk about the socialists here in California. It's much easier to take a smaller political unit, take control over it, implement what you want, and then show to the world how right you are, or in many cases, how wrong you are. Now, what's your response to the idea of holdouts? We may see this in Catalonia as well. If a much larger degree of localism was permitted, let's say your state of California, there would be some conservative and libertarian folks in California who would feel that they were made worse off. Yeah. It's easier for them to leave California than to leave a country. Yeah. But what is your, how do you answer that question about what holdouts, and the political minority? Can I make a joke? Yeah. Because I like my tyranny warm. Yeah. It's very comfortable here in California. And certainly I'm a holdout. I mean, there are many ways where business regulations are much worse, taxation is much worse here. I could pick a much better place to go. But there's a pro and con to everything. So there are some social choices that I make just for my lifestyle that I prefer to be here. But I also recognize that at least at this phase of the game, anywhere I go in the United States is pretty awful when it comes to liberty. So either someone is going to try to control me for owning a plant or owning a firearm. I mean, it's one side or the other, and I'm not really going to escape that. Now, if the equation were different and there were some place where it was like a Rothbardian private property culture society, would I consider moving? I can't deny that I would. I guess it would depend on the weather, of course. But certainly there isn't a place like that that exists yet. And I would like to see those. And if we talk, like we've talked in the past about Hoppe's 97th speech, what must be done, he's talking about a thousand different city states. If we were to see a situation like that, you'd have a lot of choice. And choice, more that the market provides choice, the more that we'll see how people respond to it. I wonder if this approach couldn't, by example, ameliorate the horrific tension that we feel in this country. In other words, both parties are so hell bent on centralizing and vanquishing the other side politically. Abortion rules have to, you know, abortion has to be banned throughout the country or abortion, late term abortion even has to be completely permissible throughout the country. And depending on which side you're on, you have to be vanquished in your view. You could apply that to gun rights. You could apply that to drug policy. The Jeff Sessions rules want to vanquish the other side. And Ludwig von Mises had a quote in liberalism where he said, you know, being vanquished politically is not all that different than being vanquished militarily. You still have to live under some rules with which you disagree. But how do we get past this fetish for centralization? Which of course the Supreme Court has made worse in spades. Well, Ron Paul talked about it and I forget what campaign it was of whether it was 08 or 12. He was in a speech in Arizona and he said basically sooner or later we're gonna see a de facto nullification whether it's like an active secession because the more that the central government gets involved in more stuff, it runs out of the resources to carry those programs out. So we can see this on marijuana, for example. Seeing this is a pretty hot topic with Jeff Sessions in the past week or so. The federal government simply does not have the resources, manpower or budget to enforce its marijuana laws. At least the way we ran the numbers, it would take, and as of today, and it's hard to say it's kind of a gray area, there's somewhere between 1300 and 1700 marijuana dispensaries here in the Los Angeles area alone. That's more than Starbucks and 7-Eleven combined. Now I don't know how much that's changed since January 1st, but these are the numbers that people are talking about pretty commonly. There's no way that they could do this. The numbers, we came up with the DEA budget for the average cost of investigating, raiding and prosecuting. It would take about 40% of the DEA's annual budget just to deal with Los Angeles. And when I've talked to people who've run some of these businesses, they basically have told me, and it's kind of shifted over the years. So during the Clinton and Bush years, if you got raided and shut down, you would be closed for a week and maybe a few days down to a day or two. And nowadays, at least under Obama during their last push for raids in his first term, I had someone tell me, look, if you get shut down, they come in, they take cash out of your register just like Al Capone. This is mafia, and within about six hours these businesses are back open. Because once they do one big raid, they've basically exhausted their budget, their line items for what they can do over a certain amount of time. And the more that people recognize, the more they're gonna be willing to divide Washington DC on these things. And then on top of it, we've been supporting a bill, and I'm just using weed as an example, we could apply this to anything. There's a bill here in California, AB 1578 that already passed the assembly that would ban the state from using personnel or resources to help enforce federal marijuana prohibition. With local governments doing somewhere between 90 and 95% of the bulk of the enforcement actions, that would mean even though marijuana prohibitions on the books in Washington, it's not in practical effect. And I'd like to see that applied to just about everything. Well, I'd also like to see the state start to shrug and push back on what are basically unfunded mandates when it comes to putting people in jail. Yeah, I mean, that's really what it gets down to. I mean, even environmental protection agency, mostly EPA enforcement action is done by state environmental agencies, Department of Environment or state EPA. You could literally just say, we're not gonna participate. And we hear from people all the time like, well, then the feds are just gonna roll in. And that's what they told us on weed for so many years. The feds will just roll in and do what they want. And certainly they will make example of people. They're like a caged animal and they're gonna harm people. But over time, they don't have the numbers. So it's really important, not necessarily even to just to push back, but just to say, hands off, don't participate. In 2013, the National Governors Association put out a press release talking about the so-called federal shutdown that went through the fake shutdown thing. And they specifically said they were concerned about it because quote, states are partners with the federal government on most federal programs. So if most federal programs are implemented with the help of states, then when half the partnership pulls out, those programs aren't gonna last. Well, you were talking earlier about what might be feasible in the long term versus the short term. And we look some of the short term complexities, things like federal land, social security and Medicare. This was an issue in the Scottish secession vote because a lot of the Scots who might otherwise be favorably disposed were older and worried about their pensions from London. Things like Medicare. But let's explore the idea that secession could almost, and decentralization could almost be a spectrum from very little things to all the way up to an actual political and geographic split up of a nation. There's a spectrum. Mind you, I think that spectrum is already happening. So you could look at San Francisco as a sanctuary city on immigration since, I don't know, I think it's some time in the 80s, San Francisco's had multiple ordinances. And a lot of people think this whole immigration sanctuary city thing is a response to Trump. That's nonsense. Because their last amendments to those laws in San Francisco were under Barack Obama. So when Obama was in office, they actually strengthened them, basically saying that the city of San Francisco is not gonna participate in helping out federal immigration enforcement. So in a way, this is a secession from nationalized immigration enforcement in San Francisco. So you could see the same thing happen. For example, there's a bill under consideration in Tennessee to do the same thing on federal gun control measures. I don't know if that's gonna go anywhere there, but certainly people are starting to think this way. And the more they think this way, the more we talk about it, the more we provide examples of how it actually works in practice, whether we like the issue or not, I think the more that people actually start running with the ball and just doing it. Well, people are voting with their feet more and more. There was people are leaving California. Yeah, of course. People are leaving New Jersey. It does happen. I wanna talk about our libertarian friends. A lot of them are very universalist and globalist in outlook. They say individual liberty is a human need across the board and that self-ownership and property rights are universal concepts. And hence we need universal political arrangements, probably some form of a soft social democracy, at least for now, across the world. And that libertarians ought not to talk about states' rights and secession, but rather they ought to talk about universalism and globalism, which are in fact, in the viewpoint of many libertarians, liberalizing forces. I obviously disagree with that very strongly, but I'd like to hear what you think. You mean like a libertarian dictator, right? Like, we're gonna force you to be free, even though a vast majority of your neighbors don't agree with the freedom that you may agree. I think that's really what we're talking about here because man, living here in LA, there are not too many people that I run into that would agree with me that government should have no say over what you use for money, what you use for self-defense, what you use for medication. There's almost no one. If you talk about the big picture of millions of people. So the only way to have that happen is advocating for a dictatorship that in essence forces us on people. And that's what I think people have been living under for so long. Okay, one doesn't like segregation. So instead of showing people how having no segregation is a benefit, force it to end. And the result has been absolutely awful. I think people are just fighting with each other more and more, they're ending up in different camps one side or the other and it's not a good result. Well, the other thing I wanted to mention was the digital revolution makes so many communities possible that weren't possible before. We can know people around the world. It seems to me, and I like your thoughts, it also ameliorates the need for some sort of physical separation. In other words, why can't people in the same area like Los Angeles using technology? Why can't some of them opt into social security and some of them opt out just like you might have a different internet service provider than your neighbor down the street? The technology is available to allow us to not only break up, perhaps in non-byte ways, but also form new associations and non-byte ways that didn't necessarily exist when we think of a horrific event like the US of war. I mean, I guess in a way you can talk about Uber as being something like this. Well, this is a company that's basically defied local regulations. They've been threatened so many times by different local governments and they operate anyways. Sooner or later someone is going to recognize and I think for Uber it was a financial incentive. Like they recognize we're gonna make a ton of money if we do this and maybe we put a little money aside to kind of pitch back to the political coffers, but there might be at some point somebody who does it for a philosophical reason. We need to defy government regulations on issue A, issue B, issue C in whatever location and that doesn't mean that every single thing, so if we're talking about like a physical separation then that would mean this one geographic area all agrees on the same thing. Well, here in California you could have people in one part of the state that maybe are in favor of more of the right to keep and bear arms, another part of the state, it's weed, another part of the area, it's socialized healthcare or not socialized healthcare, so it doesn't necessarily, it could even be in the same neighborhood. So as long as people have more options and I think the sharing economy, the digital options actually help us actually achieve that. Well, I wanna leave you with this. To win a presidential election in the United States now requires nearly 70 million votes. As liberty minded people, that feels like an uphill battle. Give us your closing thoughts on basically giving up on this unicorn. Well, I gave a speech at Port Fest. I was a backup for Lou Rockwell of all things. It was very hard shoes to fill a few years ago and my advice to the crowd there was forget that the 202 area code even exists. Don't call it, don't lobby politicians, don't vote for these people, don't spend money on them. I mean, maybe voting defensively, I mean, I've heard Walter Block's arguments on this, that can make sense to me at some point. But in general, I would spend no significant time, money or any other resources on Washington because it's just not going to change in ways that you or I could possibly change something far more locally. Even if it's as local as my own neighborhood, I would have a far better chance of doing that than in Washington. Michael, we are out of time. Ladies and gentlemen, every other aspect of human life is becoming decentralized. Only governance is moving in the wrong direction. Please follow Michael Bolden. Go to tentamemmentcenter.com, follow them on Twitter. And I will add that the Mises Institute is going to produce a book this year on this very topic and undoubtedly we will include some existing or future essays from Michael or someone else at the 10th Amendment Center in that volume. So we look forward to this continuing to be a big topic as Trump continues to heat things up. So that said, Michael, thank you so much for your time, ladies and gentlemen, have a great weekend. 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