 Hello my friends, this is the 35th episode of Patterson in Pursuit. Today we're talking about drug legalization. I don't know if you guys saw in the recent headlines, but the Drug Enforcement Agency in the United States just classified CBD hemp oil as being a schedule one drug, which supposedly means it has no medical benefits And it's classified into the same category as drugs like heroin. This is utterly infuriating and Very topical for today's show. I'm speaking with Dr. Jeffrey Myron who teaches economics at Harvard University in Boston He's also the director of undergraduate studies at the Harvard Econ Department as well as being a senior fellow at the Cato Institute He's well known for being a supporter of the legalization of all drugs Not just marijuana, but all drugs heroin and meth Included so if you're unfamiliar with this type of argumentation I think you're going to get a lot of value out of this interview But together a very compelling case and if you are like me a fellow libertarian and do support the legalization of drugs You're still going to love it because he says a lot of things that I've been aware of this topic for many years And I've not heard them put in this particular way. I find it very compelling But before we start I want to give another round of shout-outs to the latest group of Patreon supporters we're up to almost 70 patrons on patreon.com Steve Patterson, I've just updated my patreon page with a bunch of new goals and tears and Rewards in addition to starting a new Facebook group where all the patrons can get together and share ideas in our own Intellectual community Which is awesome and just started up a few days ago And there's already been a bunch of threads going so if you're interested in supporting the show and you're interested in supporting the Creation of rational philosophy or if you just want a free copy of my book square one the foundations of knowledge And what's the big deal about Bitcoin? Then head over to patreon and you can support the show for as little as a dollar every time a new episode is released So my conversation this week with dr. Jeffrey Mayer and wasn't just about drug legalization We also had a really interesting conversation about social safety nets and what he views is that the appropriate or inappropriate role of government in providing a social safety net and as I said earlier Jeff teaches at Harvard University where He is a libertarian and I don't know if he's a solo libertarian voice on campus But certainly a near solo voice which gives him a really unique insight down to not just libertarian issues But also issues about the state of higher ed in general enjoy So first of all, thanks so much for sitting down and speaking with me today my pleasure. I Want to play devil's advocate with you because I am Unabashedly a biased libertarian, and I know you're also a libertarian. However, I don't think there are many libertarians out there that are in your Position so it's wonderful. I'm sure you get vigorous arguments all the time from students and Professors who radically disagree with you, but I want so I want to play that role for you one of the things that you focus on in your work is Drug prohibition you take a pretty hard line stance against drug prohibition. You think ultimately it causes more harm than good So in a nutshell, can you give your reason why you think? Drug prohibition is kind of universally a bad thing. Is it does it all come from economics? Is there any ethical considerations that come into play so in a nutshell? my view on drug prohibition is that on the one hand prohibition generates all sorts of Ancillary negatives it creates black markets that generates crime and corruption It tends to lead to infringements on civil liberties and racial profiling which exacerbates racial tensions It tends to breed corruption in other countries that are the source countries for drugs that the US purchases and consumes So there's all these negative effects of prohibition On the other hand the main motivation for prohibition is this desire to reduce Individual drug use and I don't think that's an appropriate goal for government policy I think the most government should be trying to do is interfere with those actions which have some non-trivial and tangible negative impact on innocent third parties So driving under the influence of drugs or alcohol is potentially something that society that government should try to stop because that clearly harms someone who didn't mean to take that risk But just stopping someone from consuming drugs even if that person might be doing something adverse to that person's health or whatever That's that person's business in addition many of the assertions about how negative drug use is for the individual who consumes drug Hmm are gross exaggerations, but even if they weren't I think that's each individual's choice should not be the government's choice so Does your perspective draw a lot then from your own political philosophy or is this the the the sounds like your Idea is that it's economics that you have these unintended consequences practical unintended consequences But also it's not the role of government So I just had an interview with Dr. Harvey Mansfield who has a vision of government that I think would incorporate Morals than than your idea of government What would you say to somebody who says look I think government should be involved in questions like this I mean it government needs to protect us even if it's protecting us from ourselves so I would say to people who Advocate interventions say to help people from themselves that in fact prohibition is a terrible way To protect people from themselves So let's set aside the general question of whether government should act paternalistically and focus it for the moment on this specific case Take is given that some people are naive some people are myopic some people make poor choices About whether to consume drugs about how much to save about whether to encourage their kids to do their homework about a billion things The question is does the intervention actually help such people? So in the case of drug prohibition I think that what happens is that many people who might be tempted to make poor choices about using drugs Still decide to use drugs, but in a black market They are purchasing from people who we know are criminals who might be more likely to rip them off Who might be selling them drugs that are impure might be selling the drugs that are of an unknown Quality and dosage so the risk of consuming drugs are actually much higher in a black market Especially for people who aren't especially swift at evaluating the risks of different things Prohibition also harms people who are fully rational and really thoughtful about what their purchases and decisions are But not nearly as much because those people say I'm not gonna buy drugs in a black market unless I've purchased from this person before and I'm pretty sure this person's not gonna rip me off I'm not gonna purchase from someone that I don't know because I don't know what dosage I'm getting they'll tend to stick with their friends, you know as suppliers They'll tend to stick to alcohol rather than drugs. They will avoid getting arrested Prohibition is going to be especially bad for people who are naive myopic about their drug use other ways you might nudge people against myopic ill-advised decisions such as information campaigns or Syntaxes or minimum purchase ages. I have my suspicions about all of those kinds of interventions But they're probably not nearly as harmful to those people that the paternalists are trying to help so a short version is If you want to be paternalistic, I'm probably going to disagree with that instinct But especially because it usually hurts the people you're trying to help now What if somebody takes what you've just said and says look you've just made a case for More intervention the drug war. We just need more enforcement We need the reason that you have these black markets is because you still have suppliers of drugs So the if you have the paternalistic instinct This is just a demonstration that going at it kind of half soft is not the way to do it You got to go like Philippine style. We're gonna, you know kill people that are smuggling in drugs So I don't think that the escalate prohibition has much evidence to back it up You can cite a few cases where enforcement is allegedly much much tougher But those are relatively small special cases. We've had vigorous enforcement for existing drug prohibition laws and we had vigorous enforcement for alcohol and The negatives increased with the amount of enforcement the amount of violence generated is partially function of how often police are trying to break up Networks the difficulty of dealing with the regular supplier is increased if your supplier is getting locked up every month or two or three So I think that that approach heavy enforcement Empirically or both a priori and empirically is very unlikely to work and of course it's costly and societies at some level are Generally unwilling to say Selling drugs or using drugs is such an evil thing that we're willing to let the police shoot on site Anyone even suspected of being a drug user or a seller most people would sort of pale I know which would shrink back from such an aggressive stance even when you have extreme measures It's not clear that they're effective for example prisons Have all sorts of mechanisms for wanting to keep drugs out of the hands of the prisoners and yet There's lots and lots of drugs in prison So it's very very hard to stop it without unbelievably over-the-top enforcement so you think this is Essentially just impractical even in almost all circumstances in prisons a great example that you have Even if we lived in a circumstance where there was as much government intervention as there is in prison You're still gonna have violence gang warfare that is drug related. Yes. I'll see okay However, this is an argument that I've gotten many times from people What about the children? You can't in your in your society, right? So if you if you have the the less intervention with drugs you have more freedom of access to drugs wouldn't that result in more young people getting high and abusing drugs so I love the look that you just gave So legalization might lead to greater access Would likely lead to lower prices. So excuse me lower access for youth It probably will tend to lead to lower prices, which has some effect on whether youth get access But there are number of reasons that that should not be determinative at all so first of all, they're various surveys of High school and junior high school aged kids that ask them whether they find it easy to get to drugs now under current Prohibition and large fractions say that it's easy or very easy That sort of makes sense because black market suppliers are not in any way disciplined by Any kind of regulation of needing to maintain their license to sell drugs They're completely in the black market a legal seller of say marijuana May still sometimes sell to underage kids But faces some non-trivial penalty of being caught selling to underage kids can be shut down by a local control board or other Enforcement just as legal alcohol suppliers have at least some incentive not to sell to people underage I don't think we should take it as a given that all use By teenagers is necessarily bad Some of that use is going to be a substitute for use of alcohol in particular might be a substitute for use in conjunction with driving Available evidence suggests quite strongly that when you make marijuana more available relative to alcohol for example Traffic fatalities go down and precisely the group that's affected Why because some people substitute from alcohol to marijuana and although marijuana does impair one's driving ability It seems to do so less than alcohol does third. I think there are plenty of mechanisms that tend to discourage people from misusing Private mechanisms and those work better when you get the illegality and the forbidden fruit out of it Because then the kids are not quite so concerned about doing it in a hidden way They don't face these extreme punishments for being caught. They face milder punishments And I think the ability to create a culture that says don't drink and drive is easier if in fact is not so verboten so One might still advocate for say a minimum purchase age for alcohol or marijuana or other drugs But it's still possible even there to make them too strict the 21 year old drinking age Seems completely loony to me because if you spend time on any college campus You realize that every kid who wants access to alcohol has ready access And so all that minimum purchase age is doing is teaching them that laws are for suckers Hmm. You had a minimum purchase age for drugs and alcohol of 16 17 That's not gonna make a huge difference one way or the other But it sort of would nudge people to say this isn't an evil thing, but it's a grown-up thing Wait a little bit. It would allow No parents to feel that they could supervise it more it would put parents on notice that they need to pay attention to this They can't assume the law has taken care of it for them, which some parents unfortunately do especially because It's allegedly illegal and therefore not available, but of course it is still available So in your ideal circumstance, are you advocating that we have a Like legalized marijuana that's taxed and regulated and there's the local control board that says, you know under 18 You can act have access to it or are you in your ideal circumstance would there just be no intervention whatsoever? And you'd have markets decide who gets access to Drugs and alcohol if I were benevolent dictator who were changing policy I would certainly change the legal status so that is a marijuana other drugs or legal goods I would Certainly roll the minimum legal drinking age back to 16 17 18 would I go all the way of complete less a fair Instantly, no, I mean partly because that would seem a huge too big a step for large parts of the population and I don't think that those mild regulations of a modest minimum purchase age Time and place of use restrictions, etc. They're not doing great harm Even if I'm not convinced they're doing great good either so it's perfectly reasonable to go, you know Get rid of the worst things the prohibitions and then maybe gradually you can tinker around with those other features. Now. Do you think theoretically that? Having this being completely laissez-faire is something that wouldn't work or do you think that this is something that could work? I think that complete less a fair would work and I think it would probably work better than Something like the alcohol model where it's legal, but significantly regulated where sellers have to be licensed where they're all of these restrictions because I think that private behavior Decisions and Exhortations and rules from parents and coaches and schools and friends and things would still get people to behave reasonably most of the time It's hard to control the behavior of the people who aren't going to be reasonable They seem to you know find ways to mess up under any system And I think it would breed the right atmosphere that we all have to think about our decisions We all have to pay attention to what people around us are doing So I think it would be better and I would certainly Want to go in that direction, but I would also accept going there in steps not necessarily all at once So are you saying that you could see cultural social private regulations essentially? supplant the public ones So Does this also apply to heart of drugs because it's easy to talk about Marijuana especially if people have used it. They're like, okay, this isn't really a big deal. I don't know what the big fuss is about Well, what about when we get into all the heart of drugs talking about meth cocaine heroin? Do you have the same I have exactly the same view on all drugs? First while those drugs are potentially more harmful In hard to impossible as best we know to overdose on marijuana whereas absolutely one can overdose on heroin for example It also means that some of the risks of keeping illegal. I think are much worse for the harder drugs because The difference between getting in you know a 10% pure dose of heroin and a 90% pure dose is extreme in a way that getting a stronger versus weaker THC content in the marijuana you smoke is not nearly so extreme even if you get a more potent dose than you're expecting nothing too terrible happens most of the time and for some drugs this depends a bit on which drug we're talking about they are in scent there are incentives created by prohibition to Administer them in ways which are really dangerous that is injecting yourself with a needle that you've shared with someone else who might have HIV or hepatitis C or other blood-borne diseases in a legal market any of the incentives to share dirty needles is going to Diminish greatly if not disappear and so because the risks are much greater I actually think that makes it's better for it to be private rather than prohibited because You do need people to be paying a lot of attention. It's much easier for either private mechanisms or maybe mild regulation a Suggestive nudge type regulation to do a good job when it's above ground than when it's hit now Are there any empirical examples of? Harder drugs being legalized or decriminalized and chaos not breaking out or well first basically all drugs I think I take that back all drugs were legal in the US some minor exceptions happening to do with state level regulation or City level regulation which had no meaningful impact until 1914 Morphine was fully legal heroin was legal cocaine was legal and these things were consumed moderately often don't have perfect data But they were consumed probably often in over-the-counter medications and things you could buy mail order and and so on so yes We have that example second. We have a few countries that have moved substantially in the direction of Legalizing all drugs. Okay, although not technically fully legally. They've done it in a way which was Had to respect UN treaties so they decriminalize rather than saying they were legalizing but in practice They've come very close to legalizing Portugal is the best example certain cities have Allowed people to have heroin injection rooms and so on we have the example of alcohol. Okay, which is a Can be described usefully in some settings as a legal drug now the prohibitionists will say If we legalize other drugs will be have problems on the same magnitude as the problems we have with alcohol And of course we do have problems with alcohol. They're driving accidents There are people who are alcoholics or people who give themselves cirrhosis, but I think that's missing the point There is going to be Shifting of which drugs people consume most people will shift to those drugs that they can consume with the best ratio of Benefit to cost and so giving them the greatest possible choice and flexibility to do that Hey is what's going to reduce the amount of harm that people experience from drug use rather than increasing it Okay, so on a related note getting back a little bit more to political philosophy when we talk about drug prohibition it's all in the same general category as You could loosely call it the government protecting people you have government protecting people Through the police through national defense through these kind of regulations But another way that people argue that the government needs to be Actively involved in society to help people out is with social safety nets So things like welfare and to some extent even affirmative action Do you take the same laissez-faire approach? When you're dealing with social safety nets or something like laissez-faire like hey The market will handle it the interventions cause more harm than good or do you think okay? No, actually this is an appropriate area for government to get involved and make sure that some people are taking care of in society You know that that couldn't necessarily Pull their own weight in a market. What do you think about that? So I guess I am slightly torn about the question of whether government should operate a social safety net on the one hand I Certainly think we have lots of evidence lots of good reason to believe that in a world of laissez-faire of no social safety net at all Private mechanisms would help lots of the people who were unfortunate in various ways. Okay, why do I think that? Well, we have lots of private charity now even though we also have lots of government charity government social safety net so Presumably if the government bowed out that should encourage people to supply even more private charity And there's plenty of evidence suggesting that government charity is to some extent crying out Private charity so many examples churches that run soup kitchens the Red Cross doctors without borders All sorts of things like that now there's a standard economics argument that suggests that the amount of private charity will be insufficient in the sense that Everyone would like there to be more private charity fewer people to be suffering with very low incomes and poor health and so on But many people will free ride off the charitable actions of others in the equilibrium the outcome will be Not that many people are donating to the private charity. Mm-hmm. It's a perfectly possible It's a perfectly logical framework Let's less clear exactly how compelling it is in practice Given that we do see as much private charities we do many people seem to be Altruistic and be willing to donate even without concern of the fact that they're letting other people free ride on the on the warm glow from other people's donations so that sort of first thought second thought is that actual social safety nets are Mainly redistributing to the middle class and even the upper class So a huge fraction of what we spend in transferring money around is going to Medicare and Social Security, which is mainly not going to poor people if we cut our social Welfare spending to only those programs that are helping people who are poor it would be much much smaller. So Unfortunately in order to Redistribute to the poor the political equilibrium seems to be have to also redistribute to the middle class Otherwise the middle class won't vote in favor of the redistribution to the poor So that's unfortunate because it means we're levying way more in taxes and having the associated distortions And in sort of encouraging everyone to think of their lives as living off of The government instead of off their their fruits of their own labors So that sort of leaves me somewhat ill at ease and taking a really strong stand one way the other the practical considerations Certainly suggest they're huge Negatives of getting the government involved in doing providing a social safety net the distortions caused by government provision of health insurance Seemed to me to be enormous the disincentive effects Created by source security programs or potentially quite large and so on so how can one possibly Have some balance between these competing things the concern that the size of the safety net is way too large and not targeted at the appropriate people versus Maybe some concern that you need some that the private sector won't do quite Enough and I'm not sure that's I'm certainly not sure that's true I think the private sector might do plenty, but it's an understandable concern My answer is get the federal government out of the redistribution business The government not do any program that is about redistribution, which means no Medicare No, Social Security, no Medicaid, no unemployment insurance, no disability insurance few other miscellaneous things and simply stop collecting all that tax revenue and stop making all that expenditure Presumably phased in over some number of years ignore that and let the states decide whether to engage in social safety That's the usual complaint about that approach is We will then see a race to the bottom in which every state tries to have the cheapest possible Social safety net or no social safety net because it doesn't want to become a welfare magnet I don't think the evidence suggests that that's what we'll see Lots and lots of examples where states do more than required by the federal government Higher than federal minimum wages more aggressive than required Environmental policies more generous unemployment insurance and so on and so forth lots of states created state-level welfare policies and Social Security programs before the federal government got involved and I think if there is some Competition across states some concerned by each state to not be overly generous That's probably a good thing. It will help keep social programs modest Not expansive and maybe that's a pretty reasonable compromise between the competing concerns Now it makes me think if your argument is that we should have no federal welfare programs and that you Take that responsibility To a lower level of government couldn't the same argument be made for state government versus local government So say well get the state government involved. Let's just make this a local community thing wouldn't that is not the same argument Yes, it's the same argument and if states wanted to make that some states might make that argument on that would one be Great for economists who could run some regressions trying to figure out the differential effects of the different policies, but more importantly We might see some Examples and we'd learn something from that and of course that should make libertarians even happier because if you go from state to city Then the degree to which one is coercing anyone to accept a particular social safety net program is even less And if each city kind of then devolves it down to precincts and precestive down to devolve it down to households Well, then of course you're at you know purely private charity, right? So The same argument apply. I don't know if we'd see that or not, but There's nothing wrong with thinking about extending it now. I've had some of these conversations What people will say is that sounds great except what will happen is you'll have some states where maybe you have more Conservatives that don't want the these welfare programs and that's going to leave some people out that yes Maybe it's more economically efficient. Maybe it's more ethical. There's less coercion. Okay, but there are some people at the bottom Who are let's say in rural, Mississippi that whose lives they're not gonna be able to make it. What is your response to that? My response is there is that risk. You will have people who live in states that will be less generous Maybe substantially less generous. I don't think the evidence to suggest we'll see very many states that do absolutely nothing There's also migration even if not for an individual particular household, but for their children There's lots of potential for mobility welfare migration. You're saying partially maybe migration of people who don't like the fact that there's not a sufficient Safety net because they think it's not compassionate and that puts pressure on a given state to be a little bit more generous What about this but also migration of people who? Don't like the low level okay of spending and they will may some of them may try to migrate to a more generous state And that then puts pressure on the other states not to be overly generous So many again many people assume the outcome of all that will be utterly stingery completely unacceptable Level of social safety net. I think that's probably not gonna happen. I think it will be less than now But my judgment is less than now is appropriate and maybe also very differently structured I mean an awful lot of it now goes to the middle class not to People who are poor if you add up all of the spending on the seven or eight federal programs I mentioned Medicaid Medicare Social Security 445 others you get two point two five trillion dollars a year if you divided that by the number of People in the bottom ten percent of the distribution bite by ten percent of the population you get approximately $70,000 of redistribution per person Not per household per person Wow, so obviously that's not all going to poor people Hey, that's going to Middle-income people who retired and getting so secured Medicare and even really rich people who are Eligible for Social Security and Medicare But it says that we're redistributing so much that we could Provide a very generous safety net for the poor Okay, without doing nearly as much redistribution and really the tough thing is how do you get societies to really focus their government efforts on People who are low-income who for whom there's a really? strong case that they ended up that way because of bad luck as opposed to choices to be you know I have a few hours of work per week Therefore less income per week But who could have had a higher income if they wanted to work higher so when the rubber meets the road for you and there are some individuals let's say and Rural poor states who can't afford to leave who can't afford to migrate Ultimately, you're okay with saying look that's part of the costs. I mean that if if the option is keep the current system and have those people at least on some sustenance level of welfare and Go to a more sensible Economic rational system that results in maybe even more people getting access to welfare that really needed if it's targeted to the poor Those that group you're just willing to say hey, this is inevitable I'm willing to take the risk that a small number of people will have serious difficulty getting access to a reason to a social government social safety net in order to design a Better social safety net overall. I don't think very many of those people will receive no charity I think a lot of those people will receive some private charity, but yes, there's a risk that some people fall through literally fall through the cracks I think that's a cost. We have to accept after all the government charity system doesn't catch everybody right either and The government charity system in my view comes with huge other costs now This is a natural segue It's the last thing I want to talk to you about because I agree with what you say, but it comes across cold That that that's not a very good marketing Right thing though. It is I think what you say is true. It's sensible. It's for the greater good Doesn't sound nice. So when you are At a place like Harvard, which is less free market than a lot of places Do you find that when you talk have conversations like this people are very receptive and say, okay? I see where you're coming from. Yes, you're right. This makes economic sense Or are you do you see like the campuses of the students on campus? Do you think that they are Rejecting this more free market more economically rational approach. Are you optimistic about the the future? Students so I certainly find that lots of students are interested in talking about the libertarian perspective Many of them have not been exposed to it to any significant degree if they have been it's only been partial or limited And a lot of them find it interesting But relatively few who weren't already leaning at direction are actually persuaded by it but the ones who Take my class who listened to the libertarian arguments about Drug prohibition and about gay marriage and why should be legal and about immigration and about why we shouldn't be invading other people's Countries all the time and about the often hard-hearted sounding Economic policies vis-a-vis health care and redistribution. I obviously don't have a complete sample But I think a lot of them come away thinking he's wrong But he's not a complete jerk. He's not doing this because he doesn't care He generally believes that this would be a better system for everybody including indeed especially for the less fortunate overall Even though they still disagree that I'm right on my overall assessment. So There's lots of interest and lots of tolerance to talk about it persuading people is a much higher bar So when when I say though, are you optimistic? It's good that people are tolerant But in terms of the prospects it from my perspective is doesn't it looks fairly bleak and I wonder What your perspective is bleak is way too strong. I think that the libertarian view is a bit of a hard sell As you said it comes across as seeming pretty tough and uncaring Mostly I believe if you think about it thoughtfully It's actually much more caring than the liberal and conservative and other perspectives Because a lot of big government is actually hurting precisely the people that Other perspectives claim they're they're helping them. So it's a hard sell. So that would leave me less than fully optimistic But I don't think libertarians have to convince everyone to be libertarians To have made some progress I think they need to be able to be in the conversation to maybe remind people that the standard liberal perspective has some inconsistencies and some Fiscal irresponsibilities embedded in it, you know refusal to accept the laws of arithmetic when Bernie Sanders says he's gonna promise College and everything else to everyone and it's gonna cost 18 trillion and he'll easily be able to pay for that by Raising taxes on the rich. I mean, it's just it doesn't add up. No matter what you think about the goals The same thing with perspectives on the right that have fundamental inconsistencies in them So as long as we can be in the conversation as long as we can point out these weaknesses I think we can nudge things from being really bad so it's easy for Libertarians to get themselves all wound up and think that the US is just going down this terrible path That it's an awful place that libertarianism is not making enough progress, but In the US and many countries around the world again compared to the sweep of history a huge fraction of people can Live in the country they want to or the part of the country they want to choose their occupation Choose whether to get a lot or a little education marry whom they want practice the religion whom they want Mary whom they want start businesses keep Most of the fruits of their labors even if they pay more taxes than they'd ideally so It really ain't so bad you can paint it as a fairly big success from a libertarian perspective Which doesn't mean we can stop being vigilant There are certainly forces trying to make government bigger and take away freedoms and liberties and efficiencies and so on But I think I would overall be Modely optimistic as long as we can stay in the conversation. So you'd say that perhaps the influence of At least sound economics not even libertarianism, but the influence of sound economics is something that is Almost implicitly accepted in the in the mainstream debate that it really could be so much worse and libertarians to say hey look It's not ideal, but it actually is not bad That would be my view setting aside say Donald Trump who doesn't seem to want to let Reason or sound economics anywhere near any of its positions But when most politicians on the left or the right talk about say immigration or trade Hardly any of them are talking about Building a wall and banning all future immigration hardly any of them are talking about slapping enormous tariffs on China they're talking about tinkering around the edges and maybe Changing the number of people who can immigrate to the US or the terms of trade a little bit Should we be in or out one or two particular free trade agreements? I think that reasonable people should be on particular sides of those issues But they're not talking about going back to some horrible, you know ultra controlled Soviet Union or communist China type economy. They're talking about small changes, which we might not like But nevertheless basically allow capitalism and sensible economics to operate Well on that positive note. I want to thank you. Thank you so much for talking to me today. My pleasure lots of fun All right, that was my interview with dr. Jeffrey Myron. I hope you guys enjoyed it Do leave your thoughts these ideas. I know are very challenging for people Maybe if you've never heard them my own background comes from political conservatism where if I had heard these ideas out of the blue I would just be completely aghast But when you actually work through the logic of the argument not just the economics but also also the ethics I think Jeff and libertarians in general make a very compelling case So if you want to support the creation of more content like this head over to patreon.com Slash Steve Patterson and you can pick up a digital version of the brand new book I've just released called square one the foundations of knowledge, which is my first book on philosophy It lays the groundwork for our rational world view So I've got a lot more to say on the topic in the future and I'll see you guys next week