 it comes down to that Murray Rothbard piece that it's, do you hate the state? And yeah, and that when you, what people don't like, and I think a lot of them, what gets a lot of them worked up is that it's like, when you see the libertarians kind of being like taking this line that it's like, you know, well, they're just, they're a bunch of jokers who are really inefficient at how they govern us. And they've got these, you know, they don't understand these unintended consequences and these buffoons can't get it right. Whereas like this other crowd of libertarians are like, no, these people are monsters. These people are monsters who are destroying people's lives and they're enriching their friends to do it and they know what they're doing and they're doing it anyway. And there's this kind of like reaction against the people who take more of the unintended jokers. I honestly think that both sides do, in the extremes do a bad analysis on this, on looking at the motivations of why government actors are doing what they're doing. I think that saying that they're all a bunch of goofballs. Which is in my argument. Yeah, that's not the right way. But also saying that people in government are particularly nefarious or evil. I mean, I subscribe to just basic public choice theory where they're driven by the same incentives that the rest of us are. It's self-interest and self-image. And Fauci has bad incentives. That's why he does what he does, not because he's an evil person. I think it's frequently, so Fauci is it. We can talk about Fauci. I do think that what Zach is tapping into is true to how I look at it too. I think it's frequently a mixture of malice and incompetence. And I think sometimes it's sometimes a very case-by-case thing where sometimes it's more incompetence, other times it's more malice, as I would say with Fauci. I would probably say that that airs more toward the side of malice. But I think that either explanation as almost this, it's like a reflexive tick where it's like, oh, well, state actors are always malice and it's their evilness showing or the other reflexive tick of, well, they're never really corrupt or evil because they're always just incompetent buffoons. That shows that you're not actually looking at the facts of the case before you. And to me, that indicates a very dogmatic way of looking at the world that will lead you to bad conclusions. So I see it as frequently a mixture of things. So I certainly wouldn't say that it's like a 100% evil and that there is no just kind of buffoons there. I mean, obviously there are tons of buffoons in government. But to your point about like, hey, look, it's the same incentives that drive all of us, like there's some truth to that. But that's almost like if there's some young man out there who's like, he's incentivized to wanna get laid. So he like tries to charm a girl and take her out on a date. And then there's another 25 year old who rapes a girl because you know what I mean? Like they may have had the same incentives to some degree, but those are not like the same type of people or that. Listen, look, you can look at a lot of these examples but if you, by the way, have you ever heard Hillary Clinton on tape laughing about getting a child rapist off when she knew he was guilty? Like laughing about it. Like she just thinks it's hilarious. Are you on the Clinton kill list, do you think? I've done everything I can to get there. I don't think I'm close enough to him. But like these people and a lot of these people at the top level of government are horrifically evil people who will knowingly put in place a policy where innocent people will die, they'll lie through their teeth to sell the policy, their buddies will all get rich off of it. I mean, I don't think it's like, oh, those are just like kind of the same type of people as a guy who runs a bakery, like they want more power and he wants more power, you know? Like, yeah, they may all want things but what some of these people are willing to do to get it is like so like crazy vicious and I do think that at the top levels of our government, it is permeated with violent sociopaths who are very comfortable doing very evil things. And look, I mean, even just like you look at the, like when you step back and see some of this and this is true in media too. Like, you know, when there's like, was that woman from ABC who was caught on the hot mic talking about how she broke the Jeffree Epstein story but they pulled it from her, right? But one of the crazy things about that hot mic is that what she's upset about if you listen to her is not what you think any normal person should be upset about. Like- It's the lack of clout. It's that she didn't get the story. She's like, and I've heard it. Well, that's just- I had the story. That's just journalist's brain, right? Like, that's a huge problem, the entire, not maybe not the entire media cost but a significant, a hefty portion of the media class is obsessed with their own bloated and frequently wrong sense of moral superiority as well as this just astonishing self-importance that God made them journalists and they're God's gift to man and- But think about how evil that is. That evil it is that she didn't quit. You didn't quit and go break this story anyway. You just stayed there, what? Cause the paycheck's good. So you're telling me you had a story about a child rapist ring with the most powerful people in the country implicated in this story and your bosses went, now we're not gonna, it'll mess up our relationship with the royal family. That's what she says in the hot mic. And her response to that wasn't to quit and just tell the story anyway. Like, that's insane. And so listen, am I judging her personally? Am I saying like, she's an evil? I'm not saying she goes home and kicks her dog in the face every day. But I'm saying what she is participating in in her professional life is something morally repugnant. And like, that's how I feel about the highest levels of government and media. There's just this mass compli- Now, and by the way, there's also, I'm not trying to get like all Alex Jones on you here, but like there is- What do you think about the atrazine and the water supply? Have they terminated you? I don't know any of that stuff. But I have read, I think he was not completely wrong about the frogs but whatever. That's a whole different thing. How gay are they really? Look, bohemian grove is real, okay? They do weird things there. So I don't know exactly what's going on with these people and I don't like to do the conspiracy- Don't they do a burning of some sort of empathy? Yes. And I don't like to jump down conspiracies that I can't prove. But it is totally reasonable to look at like the Epstein thing, to look at bohemian grove, to look at these things and go, yeah, there's something going on here that's pretty weird. Okay, but my point, Dave, is that if you are looking at it as if this is because we're all ruled by some satanic cabal. And I know that's not exactly what you're saying, but you're kind of saying like, bohemian grove, they get together. You're winking in that direction. It's the problem with that if it's wrong, which I think that it kind of is, is that it supposes that the solution is to clear out this corrupt class and replace them. What am I wrong about? In what I just said, like what's wrong about what I just said? What I'm saying is it's structural. It's not, it's primarily structural. And where I think you're right is that sometimes the, you know, Hayek even had an essay about this, why the worst gets the top. And it's like because the incentives of power do tend to draw certain personalities. So you might even be right that there's a disproportionate amount of sociopaths or psychopaths, just like there are in corporate America, apparently. It's why there's so many pedophiles who are baseball coaches or literally coaches. That's why there's so many, you know, like abusive people who are cops because these positions draw in those type of people, right? I mean, that's part of the natural cycle of it. Where I think it gets, where the populists muddle this message is like we have this, you know, shadowy class of rulers that once we defeat them and clear them out, it's all gonna be okay. But the reality is that it's the power structure itself. That is the problem that needs to be. And I think that- But both can be true at the same time, right? So like I think both of those things are true. I think, yes, it's like power corrupts. This is, you know what I mean? And that's a big part of it. And just like you said, it's like this whole thing. So I'm not like one of these. See, this is what I think is so stupid about the kind of like, I don't know, like the kind of, I'm not alt-right, but like whatever that whole bigger right wing world is and their critique of libertarians is basically like, no, no, no, we just got this bad group in right now. If we get them out, then we can have the government, you know, run for Christians or whatever their plan is. No, this is stupid because it is, like you said, it's inherent in the structure. It's not only stupid, it's dangerous. It's democracy, the mix of democracy and big government. Look at it, obviously, what does it draw out of every politician to say the most dumb-down slogan, to play to the most uninformed voter, to just say the, this is why Donald Trump did so well. Because Donald Trump was like, I'll do you one better. I'll talk like a kindergartner. And just say this, I'll just say everything's terrific or stupid. But really, it's not as if any of the others are much better than that. There was one speech that I was writing about where he was talking about how you have to flush the toilet 10 to 15 times nowadays. So Lofo toilets, he was talking about how you have to run your dishwasher like 15 times. And at the end of this whole rant, he said, housewives vote for me. And I just love that I agreed to, which like so many other politicians, it would be this like, that would be implicit and Donald Trump is smart enough to just make it a fucking explicit call to action. Housewives vote for me. I critiqued the toilets. Like he's run his own dishwasher in 16 years. But it's also like, it's totally exaggeration. Also, I get where he's talking about with like the dumb environmentalist restrictions, just make everyday life a little bit worse in so many ways. And that's kind of what a lot of the progressive left wants. I'm sorry, but like I chafe every single time I get like a paper bag in the grocery store versus a fucking plastic bag, because it's just a matter of like, why is it that there's a huge contingent that's just trying to make everyday life a little bit worse? And Donald Trump, I think very successfully tapped into that. Yeah, 100%. But I love the explicitness of it. So you're gonna have this whole dynamic of like power. Look, by definition almost, politics is going to attract people who want to rule over other people. So that's already, that's what the magnet is there. And then of course, it's the problem, it's this mix of big government and democracy, which are very related, right? So you have to appeal to a population who by again, by definition, are only a very small percentage of them are gonna know much about politics. Cause that's true about everything. Like that's true about anything, like that's true. Only a small percentage of people have expertise in any field, right? So then you have that. And then because the government's so big, there is so much power being wielded that it's inevitably completely corrupted. I mean, what is our federal government gonna spend this year? I think over $6 trillion. If you're spending $6 trillion, somebody is going to be like actively lobbying to get that power. But Dave, so this is the danger that I see in the populist strategy is that this right wing that you mentioned, that it does exist, the Nat cons or whatever we wanna call them, that they just want to install their version of a virtuous leader to impose their vision of the world. And that's their analysis, is that we have these corrupt degenerates degenerates running the government and we need good virtuous Caesars or whatever running the government. And I worry sometimes that the populist strategy and libertarianism is trying to cultivate that and it's strengthening it. And this is like a pattern you see throughout history is the socialists wreck things and then the right wing fascists or whatever form they take then comes in and imposes right wing dictatorship or whatever. And that unless, you know, Malay is a kind of interesting example because he's coming in to fix what the socialists have done and the Peronists have done, but he's extremely explicit about who the enemy is. Yeah, I mean, we'll see, again, like by the way, we'll see how he does. Yeah, we don't know if he's the real dealer or anything. Exactly. He said this stuff and he won on that. So that in itself is interesting. So I basically, I think you're almost exactly right there, right? Like that kind of tends to be like this pattern that's played out over and over again, which is like, and you could see this like where there'd be these awful right wing movements as a response to communism, like all throughout the world in the 20th century. And look, man, like I think almost to me, that's why you need this libertarian populism even more because that's one of the most important components to put out this right wing fire because there is something really dangerous there too. Like, I mean, I think about, I remember saying this on a Rogan's podcast, A Few Appearances Back, where I was like, I almost like, you know when you'll see these things, like the craziest of the woke, whatever the craziest woke thing is, you know, they're just like, there we've, we're gonna convince this three-year-old boy, he's a girl or like there's like some, you know, like drag queen giving a lap dance to like a seven-year-old or something. The lady rabbi on TV talking about the, you know, glory of Hamas, but she had like a beard. Yeah, like there's whatever. But you see it and it's almost like, it's like my first thought is like, whoa, that's really insane and awful. And then like your immediate second thought is like, oh my God, we're gonna live into a right wing dictator. Cause my God, like what the backlash to this is going to be. And it's usually not gonna be some right winger who's like gonna be like, well, listen, you have your right to be a transgender person, just believe me, we shouldn't push this on kids. It's gonna be someone being like, no, you don't have a right to do this. And you know, and so the libertarian thing there is like, you gotta kind of like try to, to harness that populist energy, but in an explicitly libertarian way, talking about that, it's like, no, like the only answer here. And this is kind of to me the great libertarian insight, right? Cause like fundamentally we're kind of like a compromise. That's kind of like what libertarianism is. It's almost like, no, call a truce. Like that's it. Like you don't get to impose your view on them and they don't get to impose their view on you, but you both get to do what you want to do, right? Like with your own lives. But that's kind of the thing that the insight is that it's like, that's actually also better for you. Like in the long run, you attempting to impose your view on other people is gonna end up in them trying to do the same thing to you and everybody loses. Hey, thanks for watching that clip from our new show, Just Asking Questions. You can watch another clip here or the full episode here. New episodes drop every week, so subscribe to Reason TV's YouTube channel to get notified when that happens or to the Just Asking Questions podcast on Apple, Spotify or any other podcatcher. See you next week.