The Bob Zadek Show ran as an interview program, and most of its airtime belongs to guests. The passages below are the exceptions: stretches in which the host set out a principle at length in his own words, or made the argument by way of a joke. All are quoted verbatim from the episode transcripts; each is trimmed to its core, and nothing inside a quotation has been reworded. Housekeeping, guest introductions and mid-conversation asides are excluded except where the aside is itself the argument.
First principles
The two-pronged libertarian approach
Well, Charlie, libertarianism is not passivity. It’s not the total absence of guns, force, and power. It is simply—in libertarianism, guns and force and power are used only for protection, not for the purpose of imposing anything more than that. The two-pronged libertarian approach is, as I said earlier: don’t harm me and don’t take my stuff. And since I don’t choose to protect those freedoms myself by arming myself to the teeth and by killing anybody who crosses the line, I would much rather have the infinitely more civilized approach of having an institution be established, as the Declaration of Independence said, in order to protect those inherent rights that I have simply from my humanness. I have the right to be left alone and to have no one take my stuff. I have that right.
— How to Stay Sane in a Statist World, [37:30]
Procrustes and the goal of equality
A long time ago, I was an undergraduate at Syracuse University… In that course, there was a Greek god called Procrustes. A rather sinister fellow, Procrustes was. He was a mean-spirited blacksmith, and his role in mythology was he had this sinister bed, and he was determined to make sure everybody was exactly the same height. And if he captured you as you walked by… he would put you in his bed. And if you were too short, he would—forgive me—stretch you. And if you were too long, he would amputate part of your legs so that everybody was the same height at the end.
What in the world does that have to do with libertarian talk radio? Well, Procrustes’ goal was height equality—a rather absurd concept, but no more absurd than income equality or its converse, income inequality.
— Jonathan Rothwell on Market Egalitarianism, [00:17]
Everyone is greedy
And greed is, dictionary definition, “a selfish desire for food, money, or possessions,” now get this, “over and above one’s needs.” In other words, anybody, according to Merriam-Webster, anybody who wants to acquire anything above your needs—now needs to me means what you need to survive—everybody on the planet naturally seeks to acquire more than they “need.” … So if any of you out there ever have used the word greedy in a pejorative sense, you are indicting yourself.
— The Morality of Capitalism, [30:51]
What wealth actually means
Wealth means having drugs to make you better if you’re ill. Wealth means living in a way that you’re comfortable. You’re not too cold, you’re not too hot, you have food that is healthy and inexpensive and good for you. You have the goods and services that you need at a price generally you can afford and they always get better. So when we talk about increasing wealth, while people are free to do with their money as they wish, the concept itself, the economic concept, is not anything like ostentation or self-indulgence. It is simply wealth describes making the world a better place.
— Austrian Economics Triumphs, [50:19]
Harnessing capitalism destroys it
My own personal analogy is that people in Washington who haven’t spent a good deal of their life in the private sector see capitalism, indeed see the free markets, sort of the way we might look at atomic power. It is very powerful, almost uncontrollable, but it’s a power which, if controlled and harnessed in exactly the right way, can serve certain public good. And what they don’t understand is, while that may be true of atomic power—harness it and control it and channel it—to harness capitalism, to harness free markets, is to destroy it. And the vision I have is Nurse Ratched in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Once you do the capitalistic lobotomy, it’s done.
— A Libertarian Plan, [25:50]
There is no crime without a victim
And you know, this is a libertarian show, and an important principle in looking at these issues from a libertarian perspective is that, in general, there cannot be a crime if there isn’t any victim. That is to say, behavior that doesn’t hurt anybody cannot be or should not be a crime. And in the crime of prostitution, there is no victim. The only victim is when you criminalize it, making somebody engaged in activity that is not otherwise bad, making that a crime.
— America, The Most Sexually Hypocritical Nation on Earth, [68:55]
Government does not earn its income
And by the way, I hate the phrase “income” when you talk about the government, because income is something praiseworthy, like you earned it. Well, the government doesn’t earn its income; it takes it at the barrel of a gun. So, but it’s called income nevertheless. So the deficit is when the income into the federal government is less than the outflow. Since the books have to, if you will, balance, the deficit—the difference between spending and income—is borrowed. In other words, future generations will pay for it. Now, that is kind of cool in the short run if you’re alive today. Let’s let the kids pay for my—the pleasures that government bestows upon me. But that cannot go on forever. Or can it?
— Is it too late to step back from the edge of fiscal insanity?, [02:55]
The one agency that takes from the innocent
It is the only federal agency that has its goal, taking property from people who did nothing wrong. It’s the only agency that does that. We are allocating huge amounts of our treasure to an agency whose sole purpose is to take away property lawfully obtained by citizens who broke no law. Of course, we have other agencies. We have law enforcement agencies who punish people and protect us from somebody else doing us harm or our property. But somebody else earning money is not a threat to me. And yet, we are giving money to the one agency that has as its purpose taking property from people who did nothing wrong.
— Beware, the tax man cometh, [35:00]
Taxing the activity of earning money
Because remember the core principle of taxation, the more you tax something, the less you have of it. Therefore, the more that you tax income, the less income that’s produced. Well, who suffers? Where does the money come to hire people? It comes out of earnings, comes out of income. Do we want a life without income and therefore without growth? The message of an income tax is, “Let’s tax the activity of earning money.” It’s like less tax breathing and make people cut their breathing in half and we’ll have more money. That’s the concept of income taxation.
— Beware, the tax man cometh, [35:00]
Truth in Taxation
I would propose a “Truth in Taxation” act just like we have “Truth in Lending” where lenders must disclose the full cost. … If there was Truth in Taxation, then Americans would know the federal government has cost me this amount of money, this percentage of my income. And there would be an outrage. Pitchforks and muskets out of the barn, storm the Bastille, because no American would feel they are getting equivalent value. So why can there be Truth in Lending? Why is that imposed upon lenders, but we have dishonesty in taxation? Because taxes are buried in so many other bills. We have a right to know how much our government has cost us. … Give me a bill, tell me how much I am paying, and I will decide if you get to be reelected.
— Best of: Changing the Face of History, [17:31]
Amazon, incentivized and then pilloried
So the government incentivizes Amazon to do research and development. And Amazon people respond to incentives, so Amazon responds in spades to the incentive and spends buckets of money on research and development, gets rewarded with accelerated deductions on those expenses, and then Amazon gets pilloried in the press for not paying any taxes. What all it did was respond to a sensible governmental stimulus. So what government really wishes they had done is compel Amazon to spend money on research and development and not take a deduction for it on top of it.
— Auditing the Corporate Income Tax, [35:37]
The litmus test of the peanut subsidy
… it is a litmus test for today’s politicians because it is fair to say that no matter what your political philosophical leanings are, you cannot—underline cannot—support farm subsidies lest you just have sold your vote to your buddies in Congress. … But the peanut farmers—remember Jimmy Carter—the peanut farmers in Georgia get huge subsidies. Of course, we all are desperate for cheap peanut butter, so this fills a desperate national need.
— Farming Subsidies, [26:30]
Food security and Bulgarian chicken
We have to maintain our domestic farming industry lest we be—and does this sound familiar—dependent upon foreign food. As if, if we didn’t have farm subsidies, I’d be lining up to buy some scroungy chicken that we imported from Bulgaria because we wouldn’t have a domestic chicken industry. But that’s so utterly hypocritical because there are only five crops that get most of the subsidy. Fruits and vegetables don’t get subsidized. Poultry, beef, pork doesn’t get subsidized. And somehow, I’m able to buy a piece of chicken if I want.
— Farming Subsidies, [02:55]
Close the Department of Agriculture
This is a case where a famous American painting called American Gothic probably profoundly influenced our economic policy. It is so quaint and so American to see this couple in gingham and a pitchfork and a hoe, or whatever they’re holding, with their farmhouse in the background. That drives American agricultural policy. If we were to close down, just close it down, the Department of Agriculture, the immediate effect would be you go to the supermarket, everything is cheaper. The next day, everything is cheaper. Milk is cheaper, eggs are cheaper, everything is cheaper. How could you quarrel with closing down the Department of Agriculture?
— A Libertarian Plan, [39:41]
A federal agency for really bad lawyers
Today we dare to ask the question: why not create a federal agency whose sole purpose is to provide funding and grants to really crappy lawyers so these lawyers can practice their craft and produce really bad law for unhappy clients who would never pay for the service? That seems to be an idea whose time has come.
— Nick Gillespie – The Voice of Reason, [00:15]
Destroying a capital asset to stimulate the economy
But the car is a perfectly usable car, which is getting somebody from point A to point B. It is a useful asset. And we are taking a useful asset—maybe the person driving it would like a better car, but it is a totally useful asset—and we are taking that asset and rendering it useless, putting chemicals in the gas tank, chemicals in the crankcase, to make sure nobody, nobody ever has the very bad judgment to drive that car ever again. So, we are destroying a capital asset in the name of stimulating the economy.
— Cash For Clunkers is a Dud, [12:46]
A war that can never be won
Declaring war on poverty is political genius. Like declaring war on drugs and war on terror. That is political genius because there never can be victory. No one can ever say, “I’ve come to work this morning and realized we have just killed our last terrorist. So let’s close it up, guys, we won.” … So it is political genius because it assures the politicians they will always have an excuse or a rationalization to spend money.
— Close Enough to Socialism: Amity Shlaes on The Great Society, [09:43]
Regulation and the permission society
The presumption of regulation
And what I’ve experienced firsthand, anecdotally, is when legislatures and regulators are confronted with something new, the default rule is, “My goodness, these must be regulated somewhere. How did this slip by?” There’s a presumption of regulation that legislatures and regulators are caught off guard if they can’t really find somewhere that this activity has been regulated, and they look upon themselves as a failure. … And we walked into the conference room of a United States Senator who, on her way in—she was an important Senator—and she said, “Tell me again who regulates you?” And we had to say, “Well, really no one.” And she was aghast.
— Finding Freedom in the Permission Society, [10:31]
Begging permission to earn an honest living
I despise, I despise the word “license.” “License” suggests permission, governmental permission. “Oh government, may I please be permitted to braid hair? May I please be permitted to organize and to make a floral bouquet or to decorate somebody’s apartment?” This whole concept of licensing, that you need to, as a supplicant, beg permission to earn an honest living. I can’t even say the words without the veins bulging in my neck.
— Derek Khanna – What’s Stifling Innovation?, [18:57]
Nobody stormed the capitol demanding protection from bad florists
Do you imagine that the reason Louisiana has a licensing regime for florists is because there was at some time in Louisiana a public outcry and there were citizens storming the capital saying, “We demand protection from bad florists; I bought a dead rose and I want a licensing regime”? Well, no.
— New data shows that occupational licensing does nothing to increase quality, [16:22]
The competitor’s veto
But what Jessica has just explained is the competitor to the food truck, the restaurant, has a veto that where the restaurant can say, “No, we are uncomfortable with the competition, so we are enforcing our veto and we are in effect prohibiting a competitor from operating.” Can anybody listening to this show imagine something less, as is commonly said, less American than that? Prohibiting lawful competition simply so you, the holder of the veto, can make more money.
— Food Truck v. Farmville, [11:14]
Rent control, and who gets to price a commodity
So for the first time, we have government saying, even though a tenant is willing to pay more for an apartment and the landlord is willing to accept that increased rent, that contract two willing adults want to enter into it, the government said that is against the law. So Charlie, it’s simply, is it not, the government saying the market is not going to be allowed to demonstrate the value of a commodity, in this case rent, but we, the government, will determine the value and we will compel a landlord to rent for a lower price.
— The Rent Control Bomb, [05:29]
Antitrust as rent-seeking
So it is the biblical David versus Goliath that drives antitrust legislation, not the fear that Goliath was a cruel person. He was just bigger than David. He didn’t do anything wrong; he was just bigger. … So much of this legislation is what economists call “rent-seeking,” using the government to give a competitor a market advantage. And that is the ugly underbelly of antitrust legislation.
— Antitrust 101 with Ryan Young, [44:16]
Marriage without a box to check
… just imagine an American society where there was no such box to check anywhere that says “married,” “single,” “divorced,” “engaged,” “going steady.” You didn’t have to check any box, and there was no distinction at law for whether you were married or not. Think of the effect upon tax policy, social security, health insurance, gay marriage—so many very artificial results of being, quote, “married” disappear. And all you have is human beings interacting with each other, and whether or not they are married or not is nobody’s business unless they care to share it. But it is never, ever, ever the government’s business.
— Getting the Government (Back) Out of Marriage, [09:05]
Declare your commitment to your cat
If we had no marriage license, the issue of gay marriage, which tore the country apart for a while and resulted in much litigation, goes away because it’s private and nobody is asking for permission. You just—gay marriage goes away, polygamy goes away. Indeed, if you want to announce your profound love and loyalty and commitment to your cat, have at it. Nobody’s going to care all that much.
— Getting the Government (Back) Out of Marriage, [19:00]
Immigration
Which part do you oppose
I will ask them, “Okay, you oppose illegal immigrants. Which part of that do you oppose: the ‘illegal’ or the ‘immigrant’?” And they quickly say, “Well, I oppose the ‘illegal’ part.” And then I ask them, “Well, what if a law was passed by Congress which made immigration legal? Everybody is allowed in. … So now we have just legislated away the ‘illegal.’ … Now, Mr. Opposer of Illegal Immigration, are you content?” … And then I end the conversation by saying, “Aha! So it’s the ‘immigrant’ part you oppose, not the ‘illegal’ part.” And then the conversation gets unpleasant and we go our merry ways.
— Immigrants – The Ultimate Entrepreneurs, [05:24]
Kiosks at the border
As I said, I—and I know I speak for Alex, but Alex doesn’t need somebody to speak for him—favor generally totally open borders. My view of immigration policy would be have a whole lot of kiosks at our borders handing out Starbucks cards, Social Security cards, and access to Craigslist so they can go find work. That would be my immigration policy, but I don’t think that view is shared by the majority of Americans, although it is shared by many.
— Let Them All In, [18:46]
Both parties found something to love in restriction
The progressive Democrats favor immigration restrictions to the extent that those restrictions protect union jobs. The right wing of the Republican Party favors immigration restrictions to the extent that it brings “them” in—those people who play loud music, have fuzzy dice hanging from the visors of their car, and celebrate—by the way, today is Cinco de Mayo, congratulations to all of my Hispanic friends out there—so that each party has found something to love in immigration restriction, but none of those reasons for restricting immigration have anything to do with the country as a whole.
— Let Them All In, [18:46]
No one owns a job
And by the way, that policy is that same policy of protecting—and I hate this phrase—“our job.” Oh my, no one owns a job. People are only entitled to a job if they do the best job for the lowest money. That’s the only thing that makes you entitled to a job. Erase the phrase “my job” as if you own the job from your vocabulary. But it’s only when Americans felt “their job” being threatened that they, in a form of crony capitalism, they run to the government and they say, “Protect us from somebody who will do our job for less money.” It is shameful.
— Let Them All In, [13:13]
If parents cannot be trusted to pick a school
And if society concludes—and now I’ve got myself all worked up, Corey, I’ve got to apologize to the audience—but if society concludes that low-income parents lack the competence or the interest in selecting the right school for their children, then why are they allowed to have children? We should require only middle-class people can have children, and if you have children and you’re lower-middle-class, they can be put into foster care because you are per se incompetent. Why do we allow low-income people to make decisions about what to eat and where to live and what healthcare to seek and every other life decision? Why do we empower low-income people to make every other decision about life but disempower them to make decisions about how to educate their child? It makes no sense and it makes the whole claim so facile and so suspect.
— Students, Not Systems, [08:31]
Lee Harvey Oswald and the federal role in education
The person who had the most profound effect upon education in America today and the federal takeover was Lee Harvey Oswald. Had he not killed JFK—JFK was, of course, a moderate. He would have been a Republican by today’s political standards. … Kennedy’s death, which is the only way that Johnson got to be president, created the 1965 legislation, the first real meaningful federal foray into education. And Lyndon Johnson said in 1965, quote, “This is a new day of greatness in the American society.” He said that when the bill, the first federal bill involving education, was signed. Well, we are still waiting for this American greatness.
— End the Unconstitutional Federal Involvement in Education, [32:38]
The alleyway gun
Well, any school who gets that is going to say, “Whoa, we better behave in accordance with this ‘Dear Colleague’ letter or else we’re not going to have any more funds or our funding is going to be cut off.” So it’s the implied threat. It’s sort of like alleyway gun pointed at your head: “Your money or your life.” Not really a choice. … But the author of the letter doesn’t have any statutory authority to share what they think if it’s at variance from the statute itself.
— Title IX’s Transformation: R. Shep Melnick on the New Civil Rights Debate, [37:15]
Freedom of conscience
If one thing was sacred during the founding era, it was freedom of conscience, which means freedom to believe whatever you choose to believe. And if the founders were clear about one principle, it was people are free to believe and to think whatever they want, and it is not the business of government to affect what people think, even if it’s wrongheaded. … But as you have explained twice in one sentence, the transformation is into something akin to thought police, which gives me shivers.
— Title IX’s Transformation: R. Shep Melnick on the New Civil Rights Debate, [13:00]
Police, courts and civil liberties
Civil asset forfeiture as a transaction
They have their tools like police dogs, notoriously inaccurate, who will alert for drugs. So, they get a treat and the police dog alerted that now there’s reasonable cause to search the entire car, and lo and behold, they find a joint and they also find $1,000. $1,000 is seized. The individual driving the car has just paid $1,000 out of his pocket and that individual has to go to court to get it back. Sometimes, that individual is just driving through town, and doesn’t even live there. Who’s going to come back to get $1,000? You just end up saying, “Okay, keep $1,000 and I hate police.” That’s the transaction. So, that’s civil asset forfeiture as a concept.
— Pleading the Fourth: The Institute for Justice’s Fight Against Policing-for-Profit, [05:45]
Because it is constitutional, and because we need the money
And it would be scary to me that any elected official would defend that as saying, “We have the power to take your car if you speed more than five miles per hour over the limit. We can take your car. Why? A) because it is constitutional, and B) because we need the money.” Can you imagine that public official trying to get re-elected on that position? And yet that was the position of the Indiana Attorney General speaking for his client, the state of Indiana.
— Awaiting the Verdict in Timbs v. Indiana, [45:56]
The prison guards tell it all
Well, the prison guards spent $100,000 to support the Three Strikes Law because it was more customers for the prisons. … Then California enacted something called Prop 5, which was going to reduce sentencing and provide more funds for drug treatment rather than incarceration for drug violations. The prison guards spent a million dollars to defeat that. … They do all this because they don’t want to reduce the business. … Talk about regulatory capture or cronyism, this is it. Our entire criminal justice system is owned by the prison guards, and that’s a microcosm.
— California Dreamin’ – About Sane Government, [15:03]
The arguments for the drug war prove its failure
“Of course it’s working. We have arrested lots of really bad people, mostly minorities, of course, as we know. So that’s working. We have substantially increased the price of a commodity that ought to be dirt cheap because it is so prevalent. So we have made the habit very expensive.” So by those perverse standards, to them, it is working. Of course, without looking at the fact that incarceration means it’s not working, and raising the price simply creates crime because people who want to buy the narcotic have to accumulate more money and they do so by creating crimes. So the very arguments that the supporters of the war on drugs use to show it is working are, of course, proof of its utter failure.
— Lucy Steigerwald on The Drug War and Private Prisons, [04:27]
Self-censorship in the TSA line
And yet I find myself, I’m waiting in TSA line and I find myself monitoring my own speech and I find myself afraid that if I allow my annoying personality to creep out and make a wise crack … I could be asked to step out of the line. And what is there about society in America that makes me and millions like me being afraid of my own government for merely speaking? It is astonishing, and yet our country accepts that. … And how we are so accepting of it is scary to me, at how quick we are to with a deep sigh give up core American values.
— Seeing Through TSA’s Security Theater With Jim Bovard, [21:35]
One tiny freedom at a time
TSA is always fighting yesterday’s war. What they look for is they look for the methods that failed. Here’s what they do: they look at a terrorist attack or an attack, they pick one that failed, and they say, “Let’s protect against it.” And that’s what they do with underwear and shoes and liquids. … I urge the people of this country not to accept life today as normal. When we do that, they—whoever “they” is—have won, and we have surrendered our freedoms. Madison warned us that we will lose our freedom—and I’m simply paraphrasing—one tiny loss of freedom at a time. And we look back and we say, “Where did it go?” Well, it went one tiny freedom at a time.
— War – A Rationale For Extra-Constitutional Power?, [40:21]
Glitter as a federal crime
There was a couple of months ago, there was a protester who disrupted the Santorum—a Santorum political rally by sprinkling glitter on Rick Santorum. We hardly think of that as being a federal crime. But Santorum, being a credible presidential candidate, has Secret Service protection. Sprinkling glitter on Rick Santorum will now be a federal crime. Do we need yet another federal crime?
— Occupy Movement – What Does It Tell Us About America?, [17:28]
Beware of “fair”
“Fair” is, in general, a scary word—a word by which those in holding political power hide. “Fair” is a safe place for politicians to hide and to bury the most unfair of laws, the most unfair of policies. If you can somehow dress it up in “fair,” you can sneak it by us, the unwitting public.
— The Radio Right and The Fairness Doctrine, [00:17]
“Public interest” is a license to prohibit
And one can ask rhetorically, well, which segment of the public? And the answer is government’s answer is, well, we’ll get back to you on that. And public interest always means the interest of the human being then in power. So public interest is the opposite of public. … And to my friends out there, as you learn to fear the word “fair,” also “public interest” is, to borrow from a James Bond movie, is a license to prohibit. It’s the power to destroy, power to control.
— The Radio Right and The Fairness Doctrine, [17:59]
Government by decree
The death of representative government
I guess I must have missed it. It might have been in the news and I just wasn’t reading the news or listening to the news that day, but I didn’t realize that our country decided we have had enough of representative government; that the legislature was just a big waste of money, which it may very well be, was a big waste of time, kind of silly, maybe archaic, and we no longer have our behavior in society regulated by the legislature. We have decided that we will do much better if we cede all legislative power, or most of it, or the important legislative powers, to just one powerful, autocratic, tin-horn, if you will, chief executive and let him or her or it decide how we ought to organize our lives.
— Emperor Newsom’s New Clothes, [00:17]
The eviction moratorium, reasoned as doctors
… it’s a moratorium which is an economic measure imposed by a bunch of doctors who couldn’t make it in private practice so they went to work for the government. … And CDC said, “Since we can take all steps, comma, including blah blah blah, ‘all steps’ is unlimited. Therefore, let us reason as doctors, let us reason that if people are evicted, well, they’re going to be in the street and they got to find a place to live. And everybody who’s evicted in New York might very well move to New Jersey; it’s only a train ride. And therefore, they’re going to take their COVID-infested bodies that they just got evicted and they’re going to bring the COVID to New Jersey. That works,” say the doctors.
— Carol Roth on the War on Small Business, [37:01]
“Gee, while we’re at it”
But of course, the commission, once formed and once given a budget, says the words that we have to fear in private life or in government, those words are, “Gee, while we’re at it.” … the commission ended up producing, if you can believe it, and this is a quote from the commission, 164—164, that’s not a typo—recommendations.
— Conscription Gets a Face Lift, [10:45]
The National Infrastructure Apprenticeship Program
How about this, my friends: a National Infrastructure Apprenticeship Program. Oh my god, it makes you teary-eyed, how wonderful that sounds. You know what it means? Cleaning up parks and cleaning up federal buildings, janitorial services in effect.
— Conscription Gets a Face Lift, [46:00]
Selling insulated windows from the White House
… when you were selecting a president and a vice president, I wonder if you knew you were voting for an insulated window salesman. I bet you thought the president had a real important job to do and he probably wouldn’t spend much time selling insulated windows. If you thought that, you would have been wrong. And the case of Serious Materials is the classic example of crony capitalism at work.
— Obama Nationalizes General Electric, [10:30]
Can a corporation be depressed?
Now, Mike, one interesting side note: people on the left ridicule and don’t miss an opportunity to discuss the fact that, chuckle, chuckle, “corporations are not people, don’t be absurd,” which of course is a false narrative. Nobody says that they are. But yet those same people on the left will always talk about “greedy corporations.” And if corporations aren’t people, how could a corporation be greedy collectively? And if a corporation can be greedy, I wonder, can it also be depressed, maladjusted, insecure? Does it also have other emotions or just greed?
— Who Wants to Buy a Politician? With Mike Munger, [14:15]
Districts with no place in them
But rather, you take the state, you decide how many voters are to be in each district—and let’s say it’s 400,000 in California. … You then randomly throughout the state take every voter scattered throughout the state and randomly assign them to a district. So in effect, there is no place. … The only way to run for office is to say who you are, what you stand for, and hope 50.1% of the people in your district like it. And that would bring all elections into the middle. … Therefore, you just present yourself stark naked: “This is who I am, please elect me.”
— Who’s Electing Whom? Politicians or the Voters?, [35:50]
Too much democracy
And lest I seem like I’m favoring some form of tyranny, I would remind Americans that Americans are totally comfortable outsourcing many decisions. We vote for representatives in the House because we don’t want to decide every single issue, so we hire people to do it; they’re representatives. … So the Electoral College is simply another outsourcing. … I don’t oppose democracy; I oppose too much democracy. Democracy is important as a key check on government. It is a check on government; it is not the be-all and the end-all of government.
— Randall G. Holcombe on Liberty in Peril, [07:35]
The amendments that did not amend
And what’s interesting is they’re called amendments, but most of them aren’t amendments. They don’t amend anything, they state principles. But because they are somewhat of an afterthought, the appropriate noun is amendment. But an interesting sidelight is the first 10 amendments basically didn’t amend very much, they reminded us of stuff.
— Local Leviathan: Clint Bolick on Grassroots Tyranny, [09:05]
Trade, housing and the nanny state
A country-wide sale
And number two, when China manipulates their currency downward vis-a-vis the dollar, imagine how we smile when we walk into the mall and we see a sign: “Storewide Sale! Every product 10% off.” This is a country-wide sale. It’s like China saying, “We are having a sale on everything made in China. Every product 10% off.” It’s a country-wide sale. We should be yelling “Whoopee! Let’s run to the store and buy Chinese goods before they change their mind.”
— Trump’s War on Trade, [50:01]
It is bad for business to kill your customers
As a business person, I observe, because I have such great insight into American business, that it is bad for business to kill your customers. It’s not a way to build market share. So it has been observed that when you trade with a country, they are less likely to want to kill you because you’re too good a customer. You’re better off alive with a checkbook than you are as a corpse.
— Rethinking Industrial Policy, [42:11]
Valley Forge and the American Dream
The American Dream is the dream to live free of government interference, to raise your children to be better than you are, to be better educated than you, to have political freedom. That is the American Dream. Men didn’t die at Valley Forge so somebody in Levittown, Long Island, could mow their lawn. What a lot of nonsense.
— The Credit Crunch, [10:25]
Why not reimburse a stock loss?
Let’s assume you bought common stock … and the market went into the toilet, and you lost a ton of money in your stock portfolio. Why doesn’t the government reimburse us for our stock losses? … So if you’re going to reimburse somebody for the loss in value of their home, why not reimburse somebody for the loss in value of their stock portfolio or for the loss in value of their car? You see where I’m going. How can anybody intellectually justify protecting homeowners from one type of capital loss and not protecting families from other types of capital loss?
— The Credit Crunch, [16:18]
The soda tax as a punishment
So the theory is, let’s raise the tax to make it more painful, and these inner-city people, who not only are they lower income, but they are also, in government’s opinion, incredibly stupid and can’t manage their own lives. So let’s tax the heck out of them and punish them by a tax because they are too stupid to know better anyway. And these sugar taxes are just a wealth transfer.
— Baylen Linnekin on the Front Lines of the Fight for Food Freedom, [19:20]
The warmth of a DMV office
What could be more American than a light bulb? What could be more personal than how you light your house? But starting in 2012, our government will tell you how to light your house. They will mandate that your cozy living room have all of the warmth of a DMV office.
— The Age of Unenlightment, [00:00]
Congress is coming into our homes
I would like to think—I have a couple of degrees and I went to law school—I’d like to think that Congress would say I am competent enough to decide what kind of a light bulb to have in my house. But I’m not given that choice. And of course, once Congress legislates light bulbs, you know what’s going to be next. It’s going to be toilet paper. It’s going to be how many pieces of toilet paper you can use, how much soap you can use. Already we’re down to regulating washers and dryers. So Congress is coming into our homes, folks. Open up the door.
— The Age of Unenlightment, [11:10]
Not six miles off the Kennedy compound
And of course, all the environmentalists who live in Cape Cod and Nantucket were up in arms, including Robert F. Kennedy, whose resume says he’s a noted environmental attorney. And he generally likes wind farms, just not six miles off the Kennedy petting zoo—I mean the Kennedy compound, sorry.
— The Age of Unenlightment, [15:30]
Live in a cave
That was like the theoretical goal, as if you are shaming Earth by leaving a mark. Well, that means don’t build anything. Do not touch anything. Live in a cave, because anything you build is converting something from a natural form to a man-made form, which violates environmentalism or the principles. And that’s it at its core.
— The ‘Broken Window Fallacy’ is Back, [21:11]
The Maryland rain tax
Maryland just enacted a rain tax. In Maryland, you pay a tax on the rainfall on your property. … So compliments of the EPA, you now pay a tax in Maryland on the rain. And the tax is so high that some shopping centers fear they might have to close up because they got an awful lot of roofs. So if you are building a shopping center in Maryland, a suggestion from The Bob Zadek Show: you better use a thatched roof, one that leaks, and you’ll avoid the tax.
— We Are All Libertarians, [80:32]
Shortening the yellow light
Well, the vendors will teach the government, “Okay, here’s what you do, government. You put in this red light camera and then you shorten by only one second the range of the yellow light. And if the yellow light clicks to red real fast and then the camera takes a picture, boom, you make a bucket of money.” And the cities are eating this up.
— We Are All Libertarians, [74:36]