 This is Mises weekends with your host Jeff Deist. All right, ladies and gentlemen welcome back once again to Mises weekends We are audio only this week But we're joined by our good friend many of you know and Michael Bolden from the 10th Amendment Center Michael and I both recently had the honor of speaking at an event in Dallas, Texas held by the Abbaville Institute on one of our favorite Topics which is the session decentralization breaking up Finding some sort of path to political Subsidiarity in this country because as we've seen the midterms did not exactly heal any divisions among us So Michael great to see you last weekend great to talk to you today Yeah, it was really fun and thank you for having me on to talk about this today, Jeff Well, I want to talk about the event itself first Just for the for the listeners. Let me give a quick rundown You know, I want to hand it to the Abbaville Institute the the participants were Ideologically varied Kirk Patrick sit Kirk Patrick sale was there many of you will know him as kind of an independent journalist He's been around a long time and he is very much a left environmentalist in terms of his focus and he talked about how Smaller Polities might actually help us with what he sees I don't necessarily agree but with what what he sees as an environmental calamity With regards to climate change The aforementioned Michael Bolden was there Alan Mendenhall was there many of you know him from Faulkner law He gave a great talk about Hayekian Decentralization and how centralized big governments can't have the knowledge they need to be efficient and Perhaps most importantly or most interestingly a gentleman that I've gotten to know named Marcus Ruiz Evans was there He is a Californian. He describes himself as a left progressive I think he's kind of on the moderate end of left progressivism at least as it stands today but nonetheless, you know, he makes a strong case for Cal exit is and he runs an organization called. Yes, California modeled after the yes people in Brexit and One of his arguments I don't necessarily share it is that because California is a net tax payer rather than tax consumer with respect to Uncle Sam That that surplus that were to remain in California could go a long way towards healing and paying for their Overburdened welfare state. I'm not sure Michael that I believe him because He doesn't address the issue of pensions and California has some unbelievable state County and local municipal pension liabilities in the future Which are going to get pretty ugly, but nonetheless You know give me your thoughts on the conference Well, I thought it was really interesting and like you said it was this kind of wide range of political viewpoints all Advocating for the same kind of solution. I particularly not just to because you're the host today, Jeff But I particularly liked your presentation this kind of thought experiment talking about how the Bay Area is basically the size of Switzerland and why would we want why would people a more free market more Liberty minded people want to force a Liberty solution of health care on that area if they want their socialism Let them do it because if you don't and I think the message you can take even further if you don't allow people to make their Own choices good or bad in their own area in the way that they believe is right Then eventually they're going to want to try to make the decision for everybody because then that becomes the only way They can accomplish their goals and I think Alan speech Speaks to this as well You don't learn what's good or bad when you have a one-size-fits-all kind of quasi solution That's similar to what the left or the right wants and you keep having this battle to control the entire pie Instead of allowing people to learn and experiment in their own communities Yeah, but then the midterms Demonstrated nothing and I think had there really been a big blue wave Don't they always I mean yeah from our perspective, but let's say the Dems had picked up 50 seats and and two or three Senate seats And we're angling to beat Trump in 2020 control all three so-called branches of government I think that they would be dropping a lot of the federalism talk a lot of the Secession talk a lot of the let's break up talk and there was a lot of it Let's not forget right after Trump won there were articles in places like the New Republic There was a an egg an article called blue exit Which was all about look These retrograde states full of deplorables can no longer be part of us and you know That's often the philosophy of the team that thinks it's losing the team that thinks it's winning is saying look Why should we give up any territory? We're going to control the the entirety of the United States So it's going to be interesting to see but I know you and I talked offline There's an unbelievable new article and we'll link to it in in this podcast and on our YouTube page In New York Mag The Intelligents are as many of you will be familiar with that. It's called divided. We stand it was written by a gentleman with whom I'm not familiar Name Sasha Eisenberg or Issenberg and he really wrote a thorough and in-depth article a sort of casting some scenarios Under which the the former US now called the federated blue and federated red states could actually Exist and and he goes into a lot of really interesting almost sci-fi examples of the future, you know, he talks about healthcare Right to work states. He talks about rail transportation things like tariffs among not only the two federated states But also foreign governments. He talks about our dealings with Mexico our dealings with the Federal Reserve He talks about the the idea of maybe a hurricane comes across that affects both Federated territories he talks about ag subsidies and tariffs and all kinds of things so he really put some thought into it and You know, I guess you've had a chance to read it Michael. This this is the kind of thing that is really Gonna shock people out of their doldrums. I think well It's it's interesting because it was right out of your speech But taken to its conclusion like where will this go in the future it reads like a very interesting story He's talking about the governors of former red and former blue states Basically what he was talking about are proposing were states that had similar Ideological viewpoints and we know here on the coast that that's the way they are generally California, Oregon Washington state would form these compacts under the Constitution agreements to do various things interstate commerce and then plead to the National government to give approval to it now. I think they should do it whether or not they get approved I think people should make their choices But he talks about this future where you can have governors that would generally be opposed Politicians who would generally be opposed standing in front of the cameras shaking saying you know what we're not gonna try to force our Viewpoint on these people and they aren't gonna do the same for us and it is really You know, we're talking before we start recording here. It's it's it's kind of a hopeful story It's a hopeful story that instead of bad bashing everyone over the head every few years There's something in the future whether you believe in progressive views Which I think Jeff you and I we know that most of the listeners here probably do not or if we believe in more liberty There's a greater chance of having more liberty if we actually Encourage the progressives to make their decisions in smaller geographic areas And now this wasn't the only type of article that we've seen in the Trump era back just in Early last year. There was an article in Slate magazine talking about basically nullification of the federal fugitive slave act as a model for states in response today To Trump's immigration policies. So we see this more and more and I think clearly it is a partisan strategy But the more that they put out this type of strategy I think the more that it will catch on within the grassroots even if it's in small numbers And it's incumbent upon us to help encourage that to grow. I believe Well, you live in Los Angeles. What would you do if some scenario like this unfolded under Gavin Newsom and California implemented some deep blue wish list type things. What would you do? How would that affect your life? Well, I mean, I really like the food here and the weather is great. So I mean something about the lefties There's great food options. I mean if they start restricting that we might have a different thing going on But they're already talking about single-payer health care There was a bill introduced in the last session here in California SB 562 that would have done it But instead they decided to just study the cost But now Newsom is on record saying he supports this clearly. There's no way to afford it But I think they're gonna start pushing in that direction and even though I oppose Single-payer health care as an individual I want to see some state do it and I want to see it show everyone else What a colossal failure it is. This is gonna be better for the rest of the country in my view Yeah, well, they're talking about maybe $400 billion dollars. Yeah, I think that was a finance it and of course Gavin Newsom is now I think at the point where he has a two-thirds majority in both Political bodies in California So that's gonna be very interesting to see if he boldly goes forward with a single-payer system Whether he may be boldly goes forward at a tax prop 13 which a lot of our listeners will be familiar with it caps property tax Rates in California. So and frankly, I kind of hope he does if that's what if that's what in other words as Libertarians at what point do we start to say that universal political precepts are few and far between? It also goes back to Alan Mendenhall Mendenhall speech last week Saturday. This is about knowledge So how can we prove to people how bad these ideas are until they're put into practice? We can show them man economy and state till we're blue in the face But they're not gonna read it and they're not gonna believe it because they are really wedded to the idea that government Provided services, I guess we can call them are really the way to go So if they don't actually do it and they don't learn the bad results, then it's never gonna change So we should encourage this type of thing to happen now California could a California economic collapse could create ripple effects clearly But that's outside of my realm whether it's California or Vermont or someone else we want to see people redirect their political energy inward and Make their decisions more locally or on a state level at least for the time being And of course none of us whether there was an actual outright secession or just a greater degree of federalism granted to California Or taken by California none of us want to see California struggle that would affect all of us We have a highly interconnected Interdependent economy for example no matter what business you're in you're probably you're probably either selling or buying tangentially And certainly from the knowledge sector based in Silicon Valley There's this you know Michael There's this idea that that we have to be at odds and we're only at odds politically We're not at odds commercially as a matter of fact. We're codependent That's a yeah, that I mean think that sums it up because I think it was maybe Ron Paul who said a few years ago talking about The foreign policy belligerence towards Iran No one wakes up in the morning thinking about a Persian person worried about whether or not they have to kill that person Because they're just human beings Just like us Californians are just as human as you are down in Alabama, of course, too Well, you know in my talk I did Basically stress Baby steps ways we could all achieve what we would consider in our local areas greater degrees of political freedom without Outrights a session one of the points I made was that America's a graying country and it's it's set to have to to double the amount of people over 65 over the next 30 years so to me That that counsel is that we're probably not going to have a shooting war, which is a very happy Thing if that's true, and I certainly hope we don't have a shooting war But you know give me some of Michael Bolden thoughts What are some of the baby steps? What are some of the technical or pragmatic ways that a California could carve out what it wants or more of what it wants short of Secession well, I might be a one-trick wonder here But my speech and my presentation wherever I go it always goes back to one word and it's marijuana. We've seen California Start a trend where they carved out something for an issue that the people of this state wanted to do Even though all the branches of federal government has been against them and even the Supreme Court in 2005 in a case called Gonzales versus Reich held that a state marijuana law Really didn't matter because federal law is always supreme and the controlled substances act Says that the federal law Bands marijuana, but today we now have 33 states and the most recent ones are West Virginia Utah, Oklahoma and Missouri that are defying One-size-fits-all Dictats from Washington DC on a plant. Well, why not put that same? That same blueprint into effect for something else I think as long as people start legalizing what the federal government Prohibits whether it's a plant or a gun or something else or a policy that the federal government doesn't want Then when you have enough people doing that there's not much that they can really do to force their one-size-fits-all solution on them But why is there still so much progressive hostility to the idea of nullification which has been used against slavery laws It's now being used against immigration laws at the federal level against marijuana laws at the federal level I mean this think-progress guy, which we regardless of your politics is a really loathsome Activist hacktivist type publication think-progress guy shows up at the Abbeville Institute's conference and of course immediately Basically mislabels Michael Bolden Yeah, you know and I've had dealings with think-progress for many years and they basically do the exact same thing Mind you if I talk to someone at the New York Times even if they're ideologically opposed to me They'll walk up to me hand me a business card say I'm so-and-so. I'm with the New York Times I'd like to ask you some questions. They tell me who they are who they're reporting for think-progress It doesn't matter who the reporter has been they use the same tactic. They walk up to you They don't tell you their full name. They say their first name They say they're just a blog or they're reporting on things and you have to ask them Repeatedly over and over and over before they actually tell you who they're writing for because they're obfuscating They're trying to hide they're trying to lead you into an answer for a question He was trying to get me to say something in support of the new Acting Attorney General Whitaker. I don't know anything about him I'm assuming that with the track record of appointing a guy like Jeff Sessions or considering a guy like Chris Christie The current person probably can't be all that good either So what they do is they try to lead you into something they hide who they're writing for and when they tell you who they're Writing for and you call them out on it. They never quote you on anything So I gave a speech that had many things that were appealing to people and from a conservative Kind of end of the spectrum and also from the progressive. I talked about weed for like 20 minutes. I talked about ending surveillance I talked about the warfare state. I mentioned Hillary Clinton and Rosa Parks But the think-progress people aren't interested in presenting information or quotes from someone that might appeal to their readers They only want to keep people in partisan boxes and it's really their slime balls. I mean for for lack of a better phrase But is this something that we can actively push or move towards or is this something? It just has to unfold It's kind of like libertarianism itself Stefan Kinsella often says look libertarianism is going to happen if it does because of technology and because of inexorable changes Not because of our sort of fulminating about it and agitating for it Do you feel like a the same way about a potential political subdivision in America? Well, I believe Decentralization can actually happen with a push. It's already happening and Ron Paul during his campaign the 20 the second one I think he was talking about we should expect a speech in Phoenix, Arizona We should expect a basically a de facto nullification in that sense They can't continue doing what they're doing in every aspect of their life forever and sooner or later People are gonna start making decisions on various issues in their own states in their own communities Well, no matter what Washington DC has to say we try to give that a nice little push And so when articles come out in the intelligence or or in slate We like like to work with people who are open to the idea of Advancing their own Ideology in their own area and then we do all kinds of legislative activity on a state and a local level We do an annual report that's about 80 pages long that talks about our successes and the challenges on issues like asset forfeiture surveillance gun control health care freedom Marijuana prohibition hemp farming All across the political spectrum where things are actually moving forward or I guess we could say moving inward in a more Decentralized way and so with a little bit push it can happen I'm not talking about just like debating people on Facebook because I don't think that really has much of an effect People are kind of locked into their own land, but actually going out and doing things I love agorists to be honest with you people who are doing things and when you can actually create businesses that Government says that you shouldn't do or you shouldn't do without their permission And then the world doesn't come to an end maybe someone who interacts with that business starts thinking You know what that isn't a bad thing for this person to have a hot dog cart in Los Angeles without a government permission And we actually saw that play out here in LA where there's hundreds of people mostly Run by immigrants many of them are quote illegal I would assume and there's all kinds of people earning a living for a small living I guess selling hot dogs without a government health inspection license and the city tried to shut them down and After this has been entrenched in the culture here this the people of this city Totally rejected the idea and the government hasn't been able to stop them That's a small example But I think the more that people start doing things without getting permission from government first the more that other people will learn That we don't necessarily need government all these parts of our lives Well, where can people find your annual report your 80 page report? It's 10th amendment center comm slash report It's updated through the end of 2017. We're in the process of finalizing the latest version Which will be out at the probably the end of the month you know another thing I mentioned during my talk was the late the turn of the century journalist Garrett Garrett lived from about the 1850s and into the 1900s He was a huge critic of FDR and the New Deal and he didn't coin the phrase But he used the phrase and the and the idea of a revolution within form and within the form in other words FDR was Basically overturning the government in America But he was doing it using the Supreme Court and constitutional niceties and and using some of the same terminology So that people accepted it, you know one of the things about your work is we can have a revolution With just the mechanisms we already have within the form itself for the 9th and 10th amendment The the principles of federalism laid out in the Constitution whether you're a big fan of the Constitution or not In other words, we could have more of what Michael Boldner or what I might want here and now without any kind of Real technical revolution in law Yeah, I mean in all honesty It doesn't matter whether or not they change the law on a lot of these things in practice For example, we know again that Washington DC considers the marijuana plant illegal in every situation You can't have it for commercial purposes yet here in Los Angeles alone There are 700 businesses where you can go and purchase this illegal product So the law hasn't been changed at least in Washington Certainly, we know that having laws changed on a state or a local level helps things It gets people who are on the margins who are afraid to challenge the status quo It gives them the political cover to actually step out and do something But on top of that there are hundreds of more of those same businesses that aren't even registered on a state or a local level So it encourages more people to expand that gray market that true free market beyond what's even authorized on the local level So the more that this happens, we have to worry less and less about this far-off beast that is Washington Whether or not they have their laws on the books we can keep advancing freedom Well, I agree. There are laws. There are Supreme Court decisions though that do create a sense of form amongst people Here's the pain. Here's the rub and it applies to everybody Everybody has to accept the pain for example Brian McClanahan will tell you the second amendment a second amendment doesn't apply to states No one who signed the Constitution would have thought it did which means Gun lovers like myself. Hey, California can have its own gun control It also means that we don't have to have a one-size-fits-all Abortion rule, which is an issue. We're never gonna solve We're never gonna get 320 million people to come to agreement on whether a fetus is a human and whether it has the same rights as As a as a born baby and and all this and that So there's there's there's pain. There's give and take to making this work. And that's that's the rub Well, I believe and I think that it's the great Menken quote I believe in liberty but not enough to force it on anyone and certainly there are Millions upon millions of people who don't believe that we have a natural right And I don't like the term constitutional right or second amendment right because that implies that we get these rights From a piece of paper, which is absurd, of course But we they believe that we don't have a natural right to defend ourselves our property our family Etc. And if we don't allow them to do what they want to do in their own area They're going to force their views on everyone again. I think the the process The understanding the learning that Mendenhall talked about it all applies on every issue So let's say California has 100% gun control, but Nevada has none Well, maybe people in Nevada will be able to be seen as safer than those in California I mean, I believe that's how it'll play out But the Californians who live down the street for me or right across them the hall for me In my apartment building. They wouldn't believe that today They need to see it play out in practice and I want to encourage that to happen in as many places as possible Yeah, the interesting thing there would be what is California do when when its own residents or citizens drive to Nevada by? AR 15s and then transport them back in the California Exactly what happened. That's what happens on illegal cigarettes between Kentucky and Tennessee today. Yeah. Yeah, that is exactly what happens Well, Michael Tell us just real briefly how people can follow you in 10th Amendment Center online and and keep abreast with us And I'm gonna preface this with please go to our site or excuse me Go to the link that we're gonna provide and read this article in the intelligence or magazine because it's really gonna blow you away And also we're gonna post over the weekend Alan Mendenhall's great talk at the Abbeville conference called Decentralization and the problem of knowing it's really quite a poignant and and lengthy talk that he gave as well worth your time So I'm gonna say both those articles are well with your time But also well with your time is following Michael in the 10th Amendment Center So tell us how the best place to go is 10th Amendment Center comm slash report that way people can learn about our philosophical underpinnings We have in this entire Project that we release annually and then they can see this successes And of course there's social media links if people want to follow us on social as well or get our email newsletter Etc. But that's the starting point. Well, I'm a big fan of your organization It's one of the few that I follow closely and I wish you all the best success I wish people like Marcus Ruiz Evans all the best success because the last thing I think any of us want is for things to get any uglier politically in this country And that is of course the nature of the state and the nature of politics Which is nothing more than a turf battle over who gets to control the apparatus of that state So that said Michael Bolden. Thank you so much ladies gentlemen. Have a great weekend Subscribe to Mises weekends via iTunes U, Stitcher and SoundCloud or listen on Mises.org and YouTube