 Hey everyone, welcome to a very special Brexit edition of Patterson in Pursuit. I'm coming to you straight from ground zero itself, London, England. So just a couple of days ago history was made when Britain decided that they were going to leave the European Union and it's caused all kinds of uproar all across the world. People are losing their minds, people are jumping up and down in celebration. I have many things to say about Brexit coming from this event from a radical libertarian perspective and I think you guys might like my analysis. So I'm not going to be interviewing anybody today, I'm just going to be talking. So when evaluating really any political circumstance from a libertarian standpoint, we focus on individual freedom. What set of circumstances is going to maximize individual freedom? And specifically as it relates to Britain and the EU, there are two sides of the argument. On the one hand, it's true that parts of the European Union allow for more individual freedom by Britain's access to the common market and the free movement of peoples in Europe. Yes. However, on the other hand, it's those freedoms come with a lot of strings attached and in a sense those freedoms are managed freedoms. In other words, being part of the European Union isn't straightforward, you get more freedom. It's you're engaging in a kind of political union where you give up a lot of individual freedom in fact and you sign over a great deal of power to people who live in a completely different country than you who you've never met. So let me give you an analogy to kind of see the principle I'm talking about here. From a libertarian standpoint, what is a better circumstance where a country has let's say democracy and they have closed borders and they have some protection as tariffs? Or is it better that people live under an autocracy, complete, full-on dictatorship but it so happens that the dictator is a libertarian and he gives those people lots of freedom. He could take them away. He could abuse his power but he doesn't. He's a libertarian dictator. What's a better circumstance? Well, you have to be very careful because it is tempting to say, oh well it would be, look those individuals under the dictatorship, they have more freedom, yes but how does that freedom come about? Just because you have freedom on one level because it's given to you doesn't necessarily mean you're actually as free as if a group of people governed themselves. So when we're thinking about Britain, it could be the case that by leaving the European Union they have more protectionist tariffs, let's say, yes that could be the case. However they are in a sense making that decision for themselves and it's not being dictated to them from Brussels. Let me give you an interesting anecdote since Julia and I have been traveling in Europe. Many years ago I took a semester in Washington D.C. I had a program where I got to intern with Ron Paul which was cool but I was also taking a couple of classes at American University in D.C. and part of that class there was a lot of Europeans that were there, in fact the majority of people were European in that class and I met some people who I'm still loosely in contact with now but since we've been traveling I've actually got to hang out with one of them. He was a Norwegian, very, very, very much left compared to where I am, I mean I'm a radical libertarian anarchist so there's not too many people that share my ideas but he and I totally disagree. However when we were in Norway we got to sit down and have dinner with him and we naturally talked about politics because that's irresistible but he said, Steve, I think people didn't understand why so many Americans hated the American government and we thought it was kind of silly but now with all of the difficulties that are coming from the European Union and all the nonsense that's coming out of Brussels by the bureaucrats there, I think we get it more. So this is somebody who is very much left, very much wouldn't agree with my beliefs about virtually anything, can understand that this idea of seeding your power to Brussels in this circumstance isn't really a good thing. It's a recipe for disaster, it's the principle about who is going to come up with the laws that society follows. So with that analysis I have to say I am completely 100% for Brexit. Now what I worry might happen and a lot of people are worried might happen is that by gaining more freedom, by gaining more self-governance and taking more power into the hands of the British people, they're going to do bad things with that power, they will erect more trade barriers and so on. And listening to the news here, I was up until like five in the morning because I was so excited, I couldn't believe, honestly I couldn't believe the result that they decided to leave. But I was listening to some of the commentary of the news anchors and whenever they would interview people on the leave side they were talking about like, oh, there's so much anger, for example, that Chinese steel exporters flooded the British market with cheap steel and so the steel producers couldn't compete. And from a libertarian perspective I'm thinking, oh great, cheap steel, that's a win for the British people. But this is a very protectionist idea that they think that's a bad thing, that they got access to cheap steel, whereas libertarians think, oh, that'd be a good thing, that's a win for China and it's a win for Britain. So I think mixed with this populist sentiment is very much nationalism and confusion about why free markets are a good thing. And of course part of it is also xenophobia, there is certainly part of that here. But I must say my perspective as a libertarian on immigration has started to change just in the last, I don't know, six weeks since we've been traveling. I do see more of a argument for immigration control in the following way. There are some belief systems that are incompatible with each other. That is a true statement. If it's the case that you're going to have a government in the first place, which if you guys listened to my previous podcast about why I'm an anarchist you'll understand why I don't think we should have a government. But to the extent that you do have a government that has some kind of territorial control, it makes sense that there will be some filtering process that you're going to try to create a community of people that are peaceful and prosperous and have a harmonious society. And it may be the case that there are people out there who do not, who share radically different belief systems than you, somewhat can be violent and can be incompatible with your own. So I'm sure lots of people will take that statement and say, oh, Steve, you're just a racist and a xenophobe. But no, prior to this experience in Europe and prior seeing some of the culture clash that's happening here in Europe, I would have been ignorantly completely on board with the idea of universal multiculturalism. But my belief is actually changing on this. I'm sure I'll have a lot more to say in about six months from now. But I'm still working through the ideas myself. Also from a libertarian perspective, the existence of the EU is a bit spooky based on the history of it, right? If you learn about the history of the EU, it was sold to people in Europe as just a common market. It was just going to be a way that people could more freely trade with one another, but that's not what it's turned into. I think you've had pretty explicit nefarious goals that people have had of creating this massive super state where it's not just access to a new market. It's also seeding control to Brussels bureaucrats. And I know the EU wants to create their own army. They want to centralize power in Brussels. I think this is a terrible and a spooky idea. So kind of on its face, the more decentralization of power, the better. All right, so I also want to talk about something that I've seen at people's reaction to Brexit just absolutely blows my mind. How much people, the snobbishness of the, a lot of the people in the remain world just absolutely drives me crazy. These people that think all the Brexiteers are knuckle dragging backwards morons who just hate people of a different color. And they have no idea what's good for them. And oh man, the sky is falling because they got their way. Look, people, especially on the left, historically speaking, say that, oh, they are the common, they love the common man, right? They're the poor person's best friend. Well, this is a circumstance where you have, you know, non upper class people who largely got together, you know, middle class, lower class people, and they've made this political decision in the most democratic way possible, like a referendum. And the leftists are losing their mind. Oh my gosh, these, these boobuses can't take care of themselves. I find it so nauseatingly hypocritical. There is this idea really in all sincerity that people on the left have that, that views like poor people or lower class people as they can't take care of themselves and therefore the liberal elites need to take care of them for their own good. It's like taking away the sharp knives from the little kids so they don't hurt themselves. Which of course is the exact opposite of their explicit political philosophy, which is democracy, democracy, democracy. I've written a bunch about democracy and I've done some, already done some podcasts and voiceovers about democracy. I'm not a fan of democracy and this is a good, actually a great example of it. I don't want democracy so that the elites can rule the common folk. I don't want democracy so the common folks can rule the elites. Libertarians really have the only satisfactory position here. We can look at both sides of these, the elites versus the common folk and say, look, neither of you should govern one another. This sensible solution is some kind of a secession. Both sides despise each other. Why would we want to throw the common folk and the elites, lump them together under one political system? It just doesn't make sense. And I speak from personal experience growing up in upstate New York. So for those of you that don't know, like if you travel around even in the United States but certainly around the world and you say you're from New York, everybody assumes you're from New York City. Well, I'm here to say that New York City and upstate New York, the rest of New York, are two completely, completely, completely different places. I mean like the difference between Wichita, Kansas and like Mexico City, like just completely different. Totally different belief systems, totally different desires, totally different goals and worldviews of the two camps. And it's outrageous to think that the sensible political solution is to have one government that rules both groups of people. Like New York City folk hate upstate New Yorkers. Upstate New Yorkers hate New York City folk, right? So why in the world would we think the sensible thing is to lump them together and have one rule the other? It seems like our default perspective should be something like self-government or self-rule where two radically different groups of people who have different ideas about how the world works, they want different political structures should be able to get together and form the government of their choice. But instead, there's this weird romantic idea of oh, we have to keep the union together, the sky will fall if we have too much self-government. That seems silly. Just let different communities of people rule themselves. This is where I think a lot of libertarians get in trouble because they look at some of the very, very, very, very few actions that the federal government does to improve people's freedom in the world. And they say, oh, therefore we need like a central government to enforce freedom. I don't think that's a healthy conception of freedom. I don't think managed freedom is actual freedom. I don't think coercive freedom is actual freedom. And I view it in a similar way to the relationship between the Middle East and the US. You have a lot of well-intentioned, especially left people and some people on the right who think that for the sake of the poor backwards people in the Middle East, we, freedom fighters in the West, need to go over and liberate the people in the Middle East. We need to give them democracy and give them Western values and they'll see that that's good for them. And what happens is when those theoretical, nice-sounding ideas meet up with the real world, it gets ugly because, frankly, people in the Middle East don't have the same values of the people in the United States. And I think a lot of liberals and conservatives don't understand this. They really think that, gosh, we're doing them a favor when we can liberate them from their backwards worldview. The same is true domestically. I don't think the idea, for example, of gay marriage being legal at the federal level, enforced by the federal government in all 50 states, now I don't think that's actually the way towards freedom. I think this should be something like a state issue. I mean the ideal libertarian solution and anarchist solution is crystal clear, right? The problem with the entire controversy surrounding marriage has to do with government getting involved in marriage in the first place. So if governments weren't involved in marriage, it wouldn't be an issue. But to the extent that they are involved in marriage, it should be a state issue. It should be a community issue, how they deal with the specifics of who can and cannot get married. This idea that we have the enlightened elites in Washington DC that are gonna save the poor bumpkins in Kansas from themselves, I just don't think that's true freedom. It's gotta be freedom by choice, freedom by voluntary agreement and not freedom by force. All right, so one other funny part on this topic, I was seeing in some of the news, some of the people online who are very strong remainders, there was a big contingency of people in London specifically that wanted to remain in the EU, people outside of London generally didn't, at least in England. And so there's a lot of people reacting saying, what London needs to do is secede from England so that they can join the EU. London needs to get together with Scotland and with other civilized folk and join the EU and leave these backwoods Englanders to themselves. Well, I actually think this is an awesome idea. This is the principle of secession and self-government in practice. On the one hand, yes, it's political because people bulk at the idea of secession until they don't get their way, until democracy runs afoul of their own ideas, then they're all supporting of secession. But actually, I think it's a really reasonable way to solve political controversy. Why should it be that Londoners are governed by little Englanders? Why should it be that little Englanders are governed by Londoners? It just doesn't make sense. They're two radically different world views and therefore they should govern themselves. And I feel this exact same way about people in the United States, the incredible snobbery that comes from people in the left who often a lot of cities in the United States lean farther left and they disparage and look on the little Englanders of the United States. It just doesn't make sense that we should be in the same political system. Look, if you want to have a strong central government, you want to have lots of welfare and social programs that are funded by taxes, great, good for you. Just don't force everybody into your political system. Allow it to be voluntary. You're gonna have right-wing voluntary governance systems. You're gonna have left-wing governance systems. And the peaceful solution is secession. So I completely support the idea of London succeeding from England. I think that's a great idea. The same is true with Texas. Texas and the United States, they've always, people like to talk about secession at Texas, it's like a ha-ha political topic. But honestly, guys, I wish this were a dead serious political discussion. The individuals living in Texas have their own worldview. They have their own belief system. They have their own problems that are very, very different from those living in Boston, Massachusetts. Both groups of people, the Bostoners and the Texans, don't like each other. They don't share the similar cultural values. Now, relatively, they do. Yes, they both still live in the West. They have, you know, they're still going to be inescapably influenced by Judeo-Christian ideas just because they live in America. Yes, okay, that's true. But in terms of how they want their government to manage their lives, they're completely different. Wouldn't it be a wonderful and peaceful idea to say, hey, people who are radically unhappy in Texas, why don't you guys come up with your own political system and govern yourselves? And we'll say the same thing to the people in New York and Boston. Look, why don't you guys come up with your own political system and just govern yourselves? This seems like such an obvious solution to political disagreements. It really should be the baseline idea that we have when we're thinking about governments. That if you're going to have a system of governance, let it be closest to the individuals who want that system of governance. And if they don't want the system of governments, let them opt out. Let them form their own system. What's not peaceful about that? Why do we think we need to have political unity with people that don't want to live the same way as each other? It's this idea of we have to preserve a political union even at the expense of people's personal satisfaction and freedom. I don't get it. And just from my own conversations, I think specifically, again, on the left, I think it comes from this idea of a confusion of government and society. So people think it's more social or something to be stuffed together in the same political system that if you want out of a political system that you're anti-social or something like that. This, of course, is silly. You and I can be friends. We can hang out and want different systems of governance. And this is obviously the case between groups of people like U.S. citizens and Canadians. Do they share similar belief systems? Relatively speaking, yeah, of course. They are Western civilized countries. Well, do they want to govern themselves in a different way? Yeah. Can Canadians be friends with Texans? And can Canadians be friends with people from Boston? Yeah. Can we trade with them? Yeah. So does it follow? Oh my gosh, we have to be in the same political system as they do. No, no, of course not. In Canada, I don't know if you guys know this, but they have voting rights for Moose. There's so many Mooses up there. And Moose happened to be very libertarian just by their own disposition. So I mean, I totally would move up to Canada just because I could probably get elected by appealing to the Moose vote, but I guess that's not on topic. All right, so what is in the future, right? What's gonna happen? What's the future of the European Union if the principle of secession is established? Well, I have two minds of this. I think on the one hand, it's not the case that the UK has seceded just yet. There are a lot of political strings that can be pulled before that actually takes place. I don't know if you guys are aware of this, but there's something called, I think it's Article 50 that is the formal way to withdraw from the European Union. And though this referendum has taken place, Article 50 has not been enacted. So it may be several months before Article 50 gets enacted, which if you know anything about politics, means that several months for a lot of mischief to take place. So I wouldn't be surprised at all if Britain doesn't actually end up here, he leaving the European Union just because of the way politics operates and they have some kind of excuse or some kind of renegotiated contract whereby Britain stays in the EU. However, if it's the case that you establish the legitimate principle of secession in the European Union and Brexit happens, then I think it's just a matter of time before you start seeing other dominoes fall. The reason that other countries are going to leave the European Union is for economic reasons. I mean, anybody who understands economics and understands the play that's happening in Europe can predict it's just a matter of time before the thing crumbles. The reason is precisely because, ultimately, of socialist ideas. So you have different countries in the EU that always run deficits like Italy and Greece and Spain. These countries always run deficits because they're controlled by leftist governments, which means they spend more than they take in. It's practically a universal principle. And those countries benefit much more from being in the political union than bigger, more fiscally responsible countries like Britain or like Germany. What happens is, in effect, the Germans and the British end up paying the bills of the Spanish and the Greece and the Italian. Now, this is really only a matter of time before things break apart. An analogy is something like a parasite to its host. So you have a lot of economic parasites in the EU that are sucking out resources from the host. The producers of economic wealth, like Germany, for example, have lots of parasites that are sucking resources out of Germany. And as long as they're not absolutely bounded together in some unfortunate political union, it's just a matter of time before the host flicks off the parasite and says, look, the less people supporting more and more parasites, it's just a matter of time before the thing collapses. And this is especially true with the Euro, where you have producing countries that are fiscally responsible. They have their economic house and order. And they are locked into the same currency as other countries which are not as fiscally responsible because they have worse ideas. This is just really the inherent nature of socialism. You have the producers and you have the people who are eating the production and not producing themselves. And I think it's just a time before the whole thing unravels. Now, this is a little scary because what emerges from a Europe without a European Union and what the different type of European Union, I don't know. I hope that there's gonna be some kind of political system or economic system that enables free trade among the nations, allows free movement among the nations. But I think it's kind of inevitable that in one of the countries or some of the countries, you're gonna have new barriers erected. And I think you're gonna have more economic isolation by some of the countries which I don't think is a good thing. I mean, Europe, frankly, does not have a very strong historical track record of being a peaceful place among the countries. So I think it's at least conceivable, though it wasn't maybe 10, 15 years ago, I think it's at least conceivable that you could see the beginnings of some serious political tension in the European Union. One other option is that the EU grows. As so, for example, if we have some kind of an international financial crisis or economic crash, which I do think is ultimately inevitable at this point, but another thing could happen, which is the further centralization of power. So instead of people like the British saying, hey, screw it, wore out, there's too much centralization, we're gonna do our own thing, you could have people which have the opposite conclusion, which is, oh man, things are real bad, Brussels do something about it, right? And I think that's also a possibility, a terrifying possibility and a tragic possibility, but I don't see why that couldn't happen either. So in summary, yes, I totally support the Brexit, I support the Texas exit, the exit, I support the Grexit and the Dexit and the Frexit, I support the entire dissolution of the super state of the European Union. I support free trade and free immigration, yes, totally. I think that's wonderful. I think it brings people together. It makes the world a more peaceful place. And if part of the unfortunate consequence of the Brexit is some protectionist tariffs, I think the trade-off is worth it. Now, what we need to do is more strongly establish and champion this idea of the legitimacy of secession. When Scotland, for example, held their referendum when it was last year or two years ago, I was totally in support of it. Now, the people that were arguing for the secession, a lot of them were very strong lefties who wanted more welfare programs and wanted stronger central government. I don't support that, but the principle of self-governance, I do support. And I think if socialists want to voluntarily have a socialist government, more power to them. If libertarians want to have their private market-based governance, I think they should be allowed to have that. If people who are more moderate and want to mix want their own voluntary governance system with a Department of Education, but less government regulation, great. I think they should have that. I think the way that we get to that kind of peaceful society is through secession. All right, so that's my analysis coming to you from the great old country of England. I got some awesome things that are coming up in the future. I'm going to be doing some interviews at Oxford, which I'm looking forward to. And potentially some really big changes that are gonna be coming up. My wife and I are working out some things. So maybe next week or the week after that, I'll tell you maybe what's going on and what to expect in the future. All right, guys, hope you enjoyed it and have another fantastic day.