Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:00 Hello everyone. And welcome to the 81st episode of the Atlas society asks. My name is Jennifer Anji Grossman. My friends know me as JAG. I'm the CEO of the Atlas society, which is the leading non-profit introducing young people to the ideas of buying land in fun, creative ways. Today we are joined, I guess I could say rejoined by very good friend of mine. Uh, Jeffrey Tucker. I'm gonna introduce him. Most of you already know him, but I also want to remind you, we're going to really try to get to your questions. So watching us on zoom, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, just use the comment section and type them in. Please make them short and we'll get to as many of them as possible. So this man who needs no introduction, Jeffrey Tucker, he is the founder and president of the brownstone Institute, uh, which he founded in may of this year to promote reason science and enlightenment values in the face of the extraordinarily authoritarian, um, and destructive global response to the COVID pandemic, uh, together with these distinguished faculty, including J about a chariot and Martin colder. Jeffrey has tires, tirelessly, criticized, lockdowns and mandates while promoting focus protection for the vulnerable. He is the author of eight books. I believe in five languages. The most recent of which is this one Liberty or lockdowns, which explores the unprecedented economic devastation and civil Liberty violations resulting from the governmental response to the pandemic. Jeffery,
Speaker 1 00:01:54 Jennifer. It's so nice to see you and thanks so much for your tireless work. Am I going to say to you one episode, you said it's just incredible. Uh, you're just out there all the time. It's like my entire internet feed is just Jennifer Grossman. Now the society.
Speaker 0 00:02:08 Well, it was good. You know, we've got a good division of labor. You're right.
Speaker 1 00:02:12 Actually, Jennifer, let me say somebody else. Uh, because if, if you don't mind, um, when lockdowns happen, there is a real question and there shouldn't have been, uh, but the question was like, who's going to be against them. Who's going to be silent and who's going to be for them. Um, and I must say, you know, it didn't surprise me, but it gratified me enormously to see that you and the ad society were, were really on the forefront of fighting the biggest attacks on, on, on, uh, Liberty and our, and our lifetimes. Um, and you never flinched, you were, you were relentless and I'm sure you got criticism for it. You know, I'm, I'm feel sure it probably, even from your border donors, I don't know, but you took the right view. You've been out there and you've been, we've been relatively alone throughout this whole thing, but you were right.
Speaker 1 00:03:02 Then you were ferocious and, and Iran would have been, uh, absolutely proud of you because there's so much of the world in which we would choose saw emerging in which we live right now, that is straight out of Atlas front, you know, and, and, and you, you used your platform to fight for truth, uh, for principle and for, uh, human rights and for human liberties at a time when too many people stayed silent. So do you deserve congratulations for that and support and recognition, which you won't get, but, uh, nonetheless you took a principal position just like the great characters in that Listrak. So, uh, congratulations to you.
Speaker 0 00:03:44 Well, uh, you know, it's, it's really important to, as Iran would say to integrate your, your values with your emotions and with your behavior. And to me, uh, this was the position with integrity. I felt terrible. I felt it, I felt the brunt of it being here in, uh, California. Um, but I also took a lot of cues from you. And, uh, also from iron ranch, she was, she was pretty unequivocal when she said, you know, in terms of a government role for inoculation, she said, there should not be a government role. If the inoculation is practicable and desirable, those who want it will take it that go along will only be a danger to themselves because everybody else will be, um, will be inoculated.
Speaker 1 00:04:45 Well, there's also the strange thing that the lockdowns themselves reminded me so much of this who's that who's that bureaucrat and Alice shrug, who like one of the economy, just to go back to the way it was before, just do the same things that you were doing last year, you know, under the executive order or whatever, whatever. And, uh, it lockdowns were very much like that, right? It was like a straight, uh, straight out of fiction. They are bureaucrats who don't understand the interrelationship between economic functioning and human choice and human freedom. Right? Think of the economy, it's just a big machine that just kind of goes, and every, everybody should just acquiesce to this machine without seeing Rand's point that no economics is really about the things that we do and the things that we build and the things that we choose and the values that we have.
Speaker 1 00:05:40 And so when you have a government just shutting down human choice, you're going to shut down, not, not just, you know, economic productivity or prosperity, but civilization, right? So it's, it's a profound threat to everything we've worked to build over 500 years, I would say. And certainly, uh, it flies in the face of everything brands stood for, which was, you know, human choice and individualism and their right to, uh, to use the opportunities around you to build a good life. And you have the, you know, people like Anthony Fowchee or whatever, or Deborah Birx to say, no, you can't do that anymore. Uh, because we, we telling you can't, uh, but because we've, uh, judged this pathogen to be, uh, too dangerous, and we have a plan for you, your jobs is to submit to the collective will. All right. So, so to me, this is like, you know, ran, forecasted this like perfectly, and you channeled her, you know, uh, as you've done so much in your life, uh, to, to be the voice for her during a crisis of that, she didn't experience her lifetime, but she had prepared us for this.
Speaker 1 00:06:55 I think there's still, even though she prepared us for it, we need voices for the philosophy should represent, uh, to, to be active. And it makes a huge difference. I mean, the difference you've made as immense because, you know, um, the people like fat chambers and the rest of them want to believe that they're in charge of history. Uh, but it's not really true. I mean, the people who are in charge of history, who are, are those who are actively engaged in it and, and out there in the, in the battle of ideas, you know, um, history is nothing but the fulfillment of the things we believe. So, so you've been very active in helping people believe something different, which is like, it's wrong, my rights matter more than your, um, you know, or your fierce. Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 0 00:07:48 Um, w you had a wonderful quote, which we, uh, it was actually, I think it was a quote about when civilization is sweet. Could you cause
Speaker 1 00:08:00 Yeah, no, no. So this is actually very interesting because like, you have to think about in 1922. So he, he's, it's a very interesting time in his life because he was just a plain academic can say 10 years earlier, it's just a monetary theorist and a very mainstream sort of guy in a culturated Jew in Austria, uh, writing about monetary economics and nobody thought anything about it. But, uh, but the rise of socialists, you know, after, after world war one and the crisis of the Weimar inflation, everything started giving rise to extremism all over, uh, into our Europe. And, and, um, and the socialists were, um, you know, we're not talking about like socialists of the 1880s in Britain, you know, like Costco while drinking absent too, right. We're talking about like ferocious people who wanted to overthrow all freedoms and human rights and property rights and enterprises as we knew it.
Speaker 1 00:09:01 And so he writes this book called socialism where he just tears apart, the whole fabric of the theoretical structure of it. At the end, he says something very interesting. He says, he says, when civilization, uh, uh, he says, when civilization is sweeping towards destruction, uh, there is no safe place for anyone. Uh, therefore it is the moral obligation of every citizen to throw himself into the intellectual battle, uh, to save, you know, that, which we love. And I remember when I first read that I was probably, you know, like a young man at that. It's like sometimes when you read 1984, when you're young, you think that'll never happen. This is overwrought, this is going away from work. And so I read that that 1922 quote from me is this, I thought, what this, he just really going too far, you know, just like, come on when a civilization really sweeping towards destruction.
Speaker 1 00:10:00 But look, you know, this is 1922, uh, uh, Austria, uh, uh, 10 years later, uh, you had the Nazi youth marching in the street calling for, you know, blaming the Jews for, for all existing problems and, and, and, and inventing problems to blame on the Jew. You know, so it was, you know, there, there was a sense of like social cooperation was collapsing. Uh, the money had collapsed. Uh, the culture of claps to cultural institutions had fallen apart. Uh, academia was being systematically purged. So in 1934, so 12 years after you wrote that quote about civilization sweeping towards destruction, he had to leave. And he found a safe space for himself in Geneva, where he really used his time very well. But, uh, but he was a kind of a prophet. And I have to tell you, Jennifer, I've been, I wonder if you would say the same thing.
Speaker 1 00:10:57 I think I've been naive most of my life, actually. I always thought that freedom was more robust that our institutions could withstand any kind of attacks that the woke crowd or the crazy people were just in academia and they didn't really matter. And, uh, and mostly what we're doing is engaging in parlor games and debates with our friends, but that we would never face like, like a crisis of civilization and then March, 2020 happened. And, um, and you suddenly realize that it can happen. Disaster is not that far away. It's like, like Lord actino always said about, about, um, about freedom that it's like some sort of like fragile a fragile thing, like a fragile ornament can easily be crushed. And, uh, I think, I think we've lived through that. We felt it Meeses lived through that. But the great thing about me is this was that he saw that the way to fight back was by, um, adhering to principle, uh, clinging to truth, having the moral courage to say what is right, even when everybody's against you, even when you're banned, even when you're censored, even when you're surrounded by colleagues who tell you, you're an idiot, you still have to have the, the moral intuition to say it, to see what's right.
Speaker 1 00:12:15 And the courage to say it at that, that critical time. Sometimes it's a tiny minority that does it. Right. And I think you felt that way, you know, in the early days, it's like, why am I so alone? But look at the difference you've made. Um, I didn't want to live in these times. You didn't want to live in this times, but for whatever reason, we've been presented this right now, and we have to use everything. We know everything we've learned, all of our experiences. We didn't read out the shrug for entertainment, right. It was entertaining, but we learned it to feed our souls, to give us spirituality of strength of courage to stand up when these times would come. We didn't want them to come, but they are here now is the time. So I went on too long. I apologize.
Speaker 0 00:13:10 No, no. Um, and, and you've been saying you started very vocally saying, um, like last summer as, as an intellectual, someone who places a premium on brilliant thinking, you know, you said right now, courage is the most important, it's more important than, than brilliant thinking. And, um, and just taking a stand setting, an example, courage, courage being infectious. Um, so yes. And so here we are. And over the years, Jeff, and you and I, uh, you've done many things, lots of crazy things, uh, together, going back to my days, uh, working adults, food company. But, you know, when I kind of came back into the, uh, the think tank world, we've done many different interviews, um, including some even where you dawned white tails to interview iron Rand. Uh, but the last interview that you and I did was, um, in July of 2020, again, that was our eighth interview in this weekly series.
Speaker 0 00:14:19 Uh, and since then you've been an Atlas of upholding actual science and enlightenment values against the irrationality and authoritarianism, uh, and brutality of lockdowns and mandates. Uh, you've written this book, um, you've authored countless other articles, uh, making your case, um, many of which have been be published and promoted with your gracious permission by the Atlas society. Um, and you founded the brownstone Institute. So now many of our viewers are familiar with the brown stone Institute, but it's still relatively new and some may not be, so we'd love it. If you would just tell us a bit about it, how together and why you as a Renaissance man, we were just joking before, in times past written about all kinds of things, manners and fashion. And
Speaker 1 00:15:18 Yeah, it's funny, we're reminiscing about that, uh, before the interview began about the old days, because
Speaker 0 00:15:26 Yeah, I mean, it was kind of seems frivolous. Um, but you know, there, the frivolous thing about it was that we are here on earth to enjoy our lives and to, to take care of what has been handed down to us, complish our objectives. So, but, you know, as, as somebody with more interests than anybody, I know you've chosen to focus all of your energies on this pivotal site. So tell us about the Brooklyn.
Speaker 1 00:15:55 I just, I felt like, you know, so it's really interesting. I'd love for quality. I'd rather be a silly person, you know, uh, I'd rather write about why men should wear t-shirts and, and drink absence and the whole doors for women and all the
Speaker 0 00:16:10 We're fighting to make the world safe for silliness.
Speaker 1 00:16:14 I want to be that one. I wonder if, to discover that, that guy again, but, um, but at the same time, you know, uh, I, I felt like everything's prepared me for this, you know, everything, my whole life prepared me for this and that, that everything had happened to me before March, 2020 was a kind of, um, a preparation to do some something really important. And I know you held up that book and that book is kind of an interesting book because it's a lot of, is the history of epidemics and, um, and, uh, you know, a social theory of, of pathogens and, and how we integrate our, learned to integrate ourselves within the presence of, of, uh, biological threats, you know, over the last several hundred years in public health issues and all these things that it just frantically, uh, tried to learn and understand.
Speaker 1 00:17:02 Um, the reason I tried to understand them is because, you know, it's like, you, you know, you, you believe in freedom, uh, as a fundamental principle, that doesn't mean we understand every single aspect of what that implies, you know, but you're really sure that freedom is probably better than any other alternative, right? So you're not, you're not too inclined to say, oh, here's a new thing. That's come along. Maybe I'll just, we should put freedom on hold. Right. You know, but so I wanted to learn about the relationship between infectious disease and the idea of human rights. You know, I mean, how do they, how do they mix? And I was very pleased. I had no doubts about it, you know, to come out on the end of these studies, to realization that these things work together, you know, that in the presence of a pathogen, a new virus, as I say, uh, the best, the best possible approach you could have is, is, is to, is to grant human rights, to, to, um, to permit normal social functioning, to use science and intelligence, you know, to, to give good public health, uh, uh, reasons for why people who might be vulnerable to this virus, uh, should, should, uh, you know, temporarily, uh, lay low and forego the Justin Bieber concerts and so on.
Speaker 1 00:18:20 But this is what science would have told us, right? And this is what we did in 68, 69, 57, 58 throughout the century of public health. So I didn't understand why we were taking this other direction, maybe the case, I, I you're right. I did become obsessed with the topic. I think it's the most important topic. I think it's more important than business cycle forecasting or practically anything other, anything else. But I just realized there was a dearth of information about this out there. And I also saw, so brown brownstone then was founded for this purpose to, to be, uh, a source of information, to integrate the ideals of human rights and freedom with, uh, the, the urgent need for a public health priorities and how those fit together. But more than that, I think, I think the last two years have taught us something really important that we need sanctuaries, you know, that, that we need places of freedom of speech and for science to thrive, you know, uh, places to rescue in the times of political purges, the dissidents just like MES has benefited from, from Geneva's, uh, sanctuary.
Speaker 1 00:19:30 Uh, I saw that brownstone needed to be there as is the Atlas society for dissonant voices to give, to give them a platform, to give them basically, uh, freedom, uh, to, to speak and to research and to write. And that there weren't enough of those places in the world. So brownstone was, was founded with that idea in mind. You know, I would love to live in a world in which Liberty and freedom were permanently protected, you know, where every intellectual could speak his mind or her mind, you know, where human community and, and the reason was always prevailing. And fortunately, that's not the case, you know, uh, we always have to fight for these ideas and we need institutions that are there, protect them and guide them and guard them and preserve them even in times of great danger. So th that was, that was the idea of brownstone. And I have to say it's working very well.
Speaker 0 00:20:25 So, uh, as I mentioned, um, we had an interview it's been a year and a half, uh, it's held up remarkably well, we're going to put that link in the comment section. Uh, we excerpted a little video clips and scattered those around the, uh, the, the web. But again, I mean, a lot has, um, when you look back over the past year and a half, are you, um, have you been surprised by new developments, uh, have had your kind of initial instincts been confirmed and, um, and, and where, where do we, what have been the biggest things?
Speaker 1 00:21:07 Yeah, so I, so Jennifer, um, I, I'm not saying I'm going to say anything you disagree with because I, I feel sure that we've shared the same mental space throughout this whole pandemic, but
Speaker 0 00:21:20 Please do. And we welcome disagreement and defend the Atlas society.
Speaker 1 00:21:25 So what happened was when the lockdowns first happened, I figured that everybody would recognize the mistake. And within two weeks, we all go back to Roma. When that didn't happen. I thought after a month, we'd all recognize some mistake. We'd look at Sweden and say, everything was fine, right? We've discovered the science we'd read the science and New York times the broadcasts, the science, you know, uh, that there would be front page headlines about the demographics of the risk associated with this thing. We're about to, about the collateral damage lockdown. Look at all the Ms. Cancer screening. It's going to look at all the children lost learning for, for, for, for not being in school and so on. And that, that the human conscience, but at some point kick in and we'd re-embrace freedom, right. I thought for sure that was going to happen. And then for, for, for whatever reason, you know, the, the lockdown lockdowns really became a kind of a gambler's called pot commitment.
Speaker 1 00:22:20 You know, you gamble on something and that it just kind of keeps going on and, and it just kept not ending and kept not stopping. We went all the way to the election. And then people thought, well, after Biden gets in charge of sending the lockdowns, well, then it got worse and we got the mask mandates, and then the vaccines came along and it wasn't enough to have a vaccine choice, which I thought, would you calm, calm everybody down, you know, go back to normal. That didn't happen. Suddenly we had vaccine mandates, and then it turns out the vaccines don't talk transmission or, or, or, uh, infection, which, which is to say they don't contribute to the public benefit of herd immunity and the eventual achievement of the endemic equilibrium. So that became a, you know, it's, it's just gotten, like, I'd never expected it to just get worse and worse and worse.
Speaker 1 00:23:02 And then you have all these kind of Grifters who've used the pandemic to get, uh, to, to, to, to just like another shrug, right? There's always these, these unprincipled people who use the crisis to, uh, try to push their unprincipled, uh, despotic games on the, on the public. And that's exactly what we've we've had throughout. And then, and then you have the speech controls, right? So that's been, the other thing has been shocking. I just read through just today. I just finished an article when we, um, when we just got on this interview, I'm finishing up an article on the YouTubes new terms of service, you know, which, which basically take full possession of science. So what, you know, and banning actual science, um, really creepy stuff. So that has surprised me. It's, I'd never expected it to last this long. You know, I, I didn't imagine it would turn into a full-scale crisis of civilization, although probably like you, I had a sense that something had gone very wrong in March, 2020, and we didn't know what the future is going to look like. So, um, I'm just glad I pushed through it and making a contribution. Again, this is not a world in which I ever wanted to live. Uh, on the other hand, I think everything has prepared you and prepared me to, uh, to be voices in the struggle. And, and so many of our listeners for the same way. It's a, it sounds like Misa set aside obligation of everybody, like right now to throw yourself into the intellectual battle.
Speaker 0 00:24:39 Um, yeah. Well, it's, it's also, I mean, I know you were beside yourself, aside from the interview that we did, we had, you know, get together as on, on the, on zoom. And I was, I was sick to my stomach. I mean, I was not physically sick, but I felt like something really horrible that had taken hold that needed to be, but just in the same way that somebody who got sick and got immunity and now, you know, recovered, uh, maybe the fact that we went through that, we faced it, you know, we didn't evade it, we didn't minimize it. Um, and, uh, you know, we, without kind of, um, being Pollyannish just said, how are we gonna fix this? What needs to be done? What's first, who does what? And, um, and what are some of the good things, um, to me far in between, uh, and, and how do we multiply them? So one of the developments I did want to also talk about, because it was still three or four months out from our last conversation was the bait Barrington declaration, and that's been huge. So, yeah, so that, that had not happened yet. So maybe just talk a little bit about,
Speaker 1 00:26:05 Yeah, I hope I'm not betraying the confidences, but I, I just, uh, um, but I just had a conversation with Martin cooled off about this section this evening, in fact,
Speaker 0 00:26:19 Well, tell him he has to come back on. We've been trying to get in touch with him, not, not to, you know, right now, but
Speaker 1 00:26:26 Yeah. Anyway, so we don't, it's hard, it's hard to know how important things are, you know, in, in the sweep of history, like when they wrote, when we, you know, when the Magna Carta was drafted, did they know that we'd still be talking about it now? You know, uh, declaration of independence, you know, did they know for sure that it was the declaration and that sort of, they think was just a thing that's wrong is to the colonial Paris, get the hell out of our country, kind of thing. You know, we don't know. I think the Dr. Scott, Alice said this in his new book, he thinks that the most important thing that comes out of this pandemic is the great brands and decoration. And actually this pen, the pandemic policy responses that I would say the most important attack and freedom in our lifetimes.
Speaker 1 00:27:10 Uh, and is it possible? And I said this to Martin, you know, at the end of the 21st century, people are going to look back at the great brand to decoration as the great act of scientific, moral courage on behalf of reason and human freedom. You know, maybe I think it's very possible because it's, it's a brilliant, brilliant, very important document. It was put together. Um, yeah, it was put together on the weekend and a conference I organized with that began with just the idea of, uh, some epidemiologists getting together to teach journalists about virology and immunology, because the prevailing view at the time was that the reason the press is so bad is that, uh, there's porters didn't know anything. Uh, we, we just assumed that people were, gave them the facts, give them the facts, and then everything would be great. Uh, the conference happened, but, uh, I tried to call a bunch of journalists, you know, like Martin said, well, I'll call this guy, call this guy, call this guy.
Speaker 1 00:28:09 I called everybody and nobody would want her to show up. So in the end I only got three people, you know, uh, one was a guy who writes, really continues to write great articles for the Atlantic. Um, my mother was a journalist for the British medical journal and the other was John Tamny, whom I think, you know, from real clear markets. And those are the only three journalists who bothered to show up. So then it became a problem. It was like, this is a real crisis civilization. What can we do? And, uh, Martin really, um, was Sinatra and, and J about to try. I really thought that distracted the statement. And I remember sitting in the living room as the statements being read out loud and, you know, my contribution is minor, but like I would intervene at several points and go, I think you could phrase this slightly different.
Speaker 1 00:28:56 So I'm very proud of that. So I don't mind, you know, broadcasting that to your audience, like, you know, five minutes of fame there, but, um, yeah, well, the, the website came out practically overnight, you know, thanks to a great web developers name. I don't know if he wants it to be known that certainly should be now. Um, but, uh, yeah, yeah, it's, it was so strange to me because, um, they sent the scientists believe that they were making very plain statements of ninth grade style, cell biology combined with conventional wisdom concerning public health. That was, it, it wasn't complicated, wasn't anything radical. It was just when the pathogen comes along, you should treat the people who are sick, protect those people who could, uh, face severe consequences of it, but otherwise allow the immune system to scale up and create. And the Mid-City, I think I'm fairly. And otherwise, if you disabled markets and disabled society, you're going to create a greater harms. I think I'm properly characterized in the document. That's basically what it said. And yeah, then it was like, wait, heretics. Don't know.
Speaker 1 00:30:16 And it's so interesting because you know, something similar happened to Galileo when he wrote a very compelling defensive Copernicus, you know, um, and eventually the church called him a heretic and exiled him, you know, but what's interesting about that, about that experience is that it wasn't just the Pope urban the eighth and his college of Cardinals. It was the scientific establishment that was wedded to this total Mac, you know, view of the universe that really came after Galileo. They are, they're the ones that actually you could argue, like, did the S the science capture the church or the church capture science, I don't know which is which, but it was certainly the case, you know, in October, uh, 2021, the great brands, 10 declaration that it felt as if both the entire scientific establishment plus the entire government establishment, plus the medium, big tech and everything was against us, you know? Uh, so it was a ferocious fight and, uh, an unforgettable, uh, thing to have happened. Um, but I'm so proud of the scientists that they did it anyway.
Speaker 0 00:31:21 Well, you brought it together. Would you have predicted that we would now be on the verge of talking about, uh, an and moving towards new, new lockdowns and various parts of, of the world? I mean,
Speaker 1 00:31:37 No, it's unbelievable. Does it just
Speaker 0 00:31:38 Doesn't seem like there's any acknowledgement of the destruction, you know, that they've caused
Speaker 1 00:31:45 All the great brands and decoration ridiculous, and that's just awful. And so that was supposed to be the end of it. Um, but no, it keeps, it keeps going on. And they've got concentration camps now in Australia where they're dragging people out through track and trace, anybody's been exposed to the virus, gets thrown into the concentration camps and the policing them now, and, and pleasing them for runaways and escapees. They put them in a Paddy wagon, some drag them back and beat them. And Austria is now fully locked down again with very high cases, very high vaccination rates. And they're finding people and, uh, threatening criminal penalties for people who don't get the vaccine, even though the vaccine is not stopping transmission or infection. So it's just so strange, Jennifer, it's like, there's something really, really off about the entire policy response here. It's like masks, you know, or the vaccine mandates that people just want.
Speaker 1 00:32:44 Some, they believe that there's some magic trick to, to making the pathogen go away, you know, and that there's some policy level. You can push some amount of human compulsion and coercion that can, that can, that can cause, uh, the infectious disease to just, just to leave us all alone, you know, and that's just not true. Uh, it's, it's just not the case. We're going to have to deal with, uh, our natural immunities we're going to have to do with intimacy city and the demand for, we have to deal with the presence of pathogens in the world and start to normalize our experience with the infectious disease. Uh, uh, something's gone very wrong, I would say. Yeah.
Speaker 0 00:33:28 If people sneeze or if they have a cold, it's just, it's like, uh, the end of the world.
Speaker 1 00:33:35 Yeah. There's something drains has happened. Have you, uh, let me ask you a question. Did you ever read Schumpeter's book, uh, from, I think 1946 called capitalism, socialism and democracy? Um, I've read it maybe twice, but it's been too long. And I don't know if it's, um, if you're the kind of reader I am as, as sometimes, like when I read a book in the past, I only read it from the framework that I was in at the time, but then I need to reread it in light of the new information so I can get information. But one of the things he said in that book was that the capitalism has a tendency to eat itself because it creates such prosperity comfort in such leisure, uh, and such safety, um, that people began to take it all for granted and then lose track of like what caused it, what brought it about.
Speaker 1 00:34:23 So we began to sort of play with fire, I guess you could say, like, we began to toy with the idea that we can just shut down the economy, shut shutdown society, and we can still preserve all the things, uh, that from which we benefit, something like that seems to have happened over the last couple of years, you know, um, where this one-third of workers who could work for home just said to hell with the other two thirds, let them let them deal with the pathogen. We're going to say, stay home, stay safe. And we're going to shut down supply chains who cares, shut down, shipping, you know, forget, uh, reserve the hospitals only for the COVID patients, you know, cares about cancer screenings, whatever we became, like, like tremendously irresponsible, I would say. And our, and our sort of conception of how society works.
Speaker 1 00:35:12 Like it requires everyone working together complicated. Like they have to be preserved. You, you can't just shut down schools. You can't just shut down, uh, synagogues and the churches. I mean, this is not the way where you can't shut down the AA, uh, sessions. You know, you just, you can't, you can't do these things and expect life to just go on as normal. Thanks is not normal. We had a hundred thousand deaths from drug drug overdoses over the last 12 months. You know, I mean, this is, this is grim huge gasoline costs to these lockdowns. And there's mandates, there's millions of people now faced with the possibility of losing their jobs. Hilarious, not hilarious that none of the stuff's hilarious, but I don't know if you looked at the data about vaccination rates among, uh, food inspectors. So like a hundred years ago, we decided the federal government should be in charge of food inspection.
Speaker 1 00:36:06 Right. Which I think it was a mistake. I mean, private enterprise doesn't want to tell you poisoned food. We never needed these dumb laws in the first place, but we've got them. We've had them for a hundred years where the meat inspectors and the poultry inspectors are typically rural people that live in the communities where the meat is processed and agricultural communities and places that you and I have never been like Idaho, Iowa in the, I don't even know how to pronounce these places, but real places over there. Um, and so that's where all the inspectors, well, you know, somebody like 75 or 80% of them are unvaccinated. Why? Because, because most of them have natural immunities, right? They're exposed to pathogens all the time. They work in livestock. They, you know, it's like the legend of the milkmaids. Why were their faces so clear?
Speaker 1 00:36:56 They never got smallpox, but they were exposed to cowpox. Right. You know that, um, so these food inspectors are, are, are, uh, believers, the national media, do they understand? They don't believe, uh Falchi. They, they understand that, you know, we evolved to coexist with these viruses. So, so they're on vaccine. Well, if the vaccine mandates go through, they're all gonna lose their jobs because they got better things to do. Then go inspect meat. If that happens in the meat inspector, stop showing up, they can't ship that they kept packaged and shipped me the youngest. You're going to go to the grocery store and not get chicken. Now you get beef. You're not gonna get pork. What happens on the meat's not on the shelves. So these things are all connected. You can't just mandate something and expect there to be no consequences to it. It's this crazy stuff. We've got people in charge of our lives, who don't understand anything about the interconnectedness of, of, of, of social structures and market structures. That's very, very dangerous.
Speaker 0 00:37:55 Uh, and I'm going to get to some questions now because I'm going to get mad at me and we've got about 20 minutes left. And I, there's so many things that are
Speaker 1 00:38:05 No, not at all
Speaker 0 00:38:09 Wrong answers for us to excerpt time code and post out there. So, um, I'm pleased with that. But, uh, one of the things on the positive side is, is these, these worldwide protests. Now it seems like there's been a near a universal blackout of coverage, but I'm, I'm not a big kind of Sur of, uh, I'm not watching a lot of these news programs. Um, but why the disinterests, uh, first of all, am I right about it? Um, or is that just paranoid? And, uh, what are, what are their significance in terms of rolling back the tide of some of these irrational, not authoritarian?
Speaker 1 00:38:50 So, so did you say why the disinterest on the right?
Speaker 0 00:38:54 No. On the disinterest, on the part of the mainstream media, you know, that w we're seeing them, but I, I don't think, uh, that there's any near the amount of coverage of them. Um, is it just because don't, you know, the same media that's been telling us, uh, that, you know, you're going to die and, um, these, these policies are for your own good. Don't want to acknowledge that there's a reaction, or
Speaker 1 00:39:22 I don't, you know, I don't, I don't, I don't entirely know. I know individual reporters just kind of go along with what the, whatever their editors say and the editors go along with whatever the publishers say and the publishers go along with whatever the advertisers want. And I don't really understand it. I mean, I ran an article about two weeks ago. That was nothing but about 30, uh, videos of protests all over the world. Uh, and yes, that article went viral because people were really happy to see people protesting Zurek and about Towanna and, you know, uh, Spain and, you know, uh, Paris and Rome, London. So on. It's very interesting to watch, but I mean, I asked myself the question when I posted that article, is this the largest global protest movement? Um, in my lifetime, or maybe in history, I mean, it might, it might be. And yet the New York times mentioned nothing about it.
Speaker 0 00:40:17 Right. That's what I'm getting at,
Speaker 1 00:40:19 You know? And so, I don't know, I I'm, I'm, I'm a little confused by it. I don't understand why an article on brownstone would suddenly get, you know, 250,000 views because we're just doing nothing but reposting, Twitter, videos of protests. And I see that Twitter has come out with new terms of Hughes in which you cannot post a video of people without their permission. Okay. So, so under the new Twitter terms of use, none of those videos can, can even, uh, re remain. So you can't even stick an iPhone at your window and show to the street, that's going to be banned by Twitter. So
Speaker 0 00:40:57 Taking photos of an arrest or, you know, police brutality or something like that. That's really bizarre.
Speaker 1 00:41:06 We're coming to some very scary times. I think starting in January, we're going to see social media just basically almost shut down and apparently, uh, mainstream social media. Yeah.
Speaker 0 00:41:18 Okay. I'm going to jump over to some of these questions and, um, Jeffrey's Twitter handle is Jeffrey, a Tucker on, on Twitter. So, um, he does dip in there. So it's a wonderful, uh, feed to follow. But, um, if I get to all of the questions, if you can't answer all of them And I'll try and get ones that are better, we haven't covered and that are pretty straight forward. So P page on Instagram asks, uh, are Mr. Tucker's books available in flinch
Speaker 1 00:41:49 And franchise? I've got, I think I've got a couple of books in French. I'm getting by my book on right-wing collectivism. It was available in French and probably bourbon for breakfast. I don't know what the French title is, but you should check it out. I don't know,
Speaker 0 00:42:00 70 or lockdown been translated
Speaker 1 00:42:02 Yet. Yeah. Liberty lockdown is in Portuguese, uh, Portuguese and not Chinese, but Portuguese. There's some Portuguese now maybe, and maybe there's a German.
Speaker 0 00:42:15 Well, you, you know what I'm going to say? My vote is I'm waiting for the audio version.
Speaker 1 00:42:21 Oh, you know, I worked on that so hard. Have you ever done an audio book, Jennifer?
Speaker 0 00:42:24 We do them all the time. You know, that was the first thing. When I came to the Atlas society, as I looked at their library, I'm like, oh my God, I'm never going to get through all of this. I know we have a new project. We're going to put all of our Atlas society, publications on audible. So yeah,
Speaker 1 00:42:40 Maybe Brownson will just contract with, you could do all my audio books
Speaker 0 00:42:45 And we'll contract with you for of your articles.
Speaker 1 00:42:48 But I tried to do an audio book of Liberty lockdown, uh, uh, but it took so much time and I only got halfway through the book. It's exhausting. It's exhausting.
Speaker 0 00:42:58 Yeah. Well, let's talk offline on that because you can just, um, the best thing to do is to use the system to, uh, to, to get an, a narrator. They have wonderful narrators. You can choose all kinds of ages, huh?
Speaker 1 00:43:13 Oh really? Okay. Well, let's, let's talk offline. I should work with you on this. Yeah, I agree. Cause we, you know, we have a book, man, go get this book real quick, hold up.
Speaker 0 00:43:24 Just uncontrollable.
Speaker 1 00:43:28 So this is, this is a book. So when I got this book, this is the great COVID panic kind of, you know, uh, when I got this book, so they first lied about the work. Then the workers would say, stay away from the jobs. Anyway, just as often as government mandates required, all they had to do now. So you just haven't read it in the book, but this is a great book
Speaker 0 00:43:51 By brownstone Institute.
Speaker 1 00:43:53 Yeah. So what happened was I was considering founding the basswood Institute and I thought we really need a publisher to put out great work on this topic. That's not a commercial publisher or an academic publisher. As commercial publishers, turn everything into politics. Academic publishers turned everything into TDM. So that's the reason a nonprofit publisher exists. So I got this book on email and I read it. I stayed up the entire night, right? Like reading the books. I thought it was so brilliant. Uh, the authors were brutal with me. They gave me only six weeks to get it into print, but this book has sold so many copies and it's been so wonderful. And I'm so thrilled by it. I still think it's overall the best on the topic.
Speaker 0 00:44:33 Audible.
Speaker 1 00:44:34 It is not right, Jennifer. You're going to help me.
Speaker 0 00:44:39 I am going to definitely help you, but I have a price, so I'm going to trade and I'm going to give you something. So, uh, but anyway, uh, let's, we'll get that link to that book also up, um, in the chats, uh, our senior scholar, professor Richard Salzman asks, um, agree, or maybe he is just agreeing the great Barrington declaration declaration will prove crucial. And in time, if we retain some semblance of Liberty in the
Speaker 1 00:45:16 Yeah, well, Salzman is a great man. And, uh, he's a scholar with you.
Speaker 0 00:45:24 Yes, yes. He's our, he's our senior scholar. He does our morals and markets. He does a Instagram takeover.
Speaker 1 00:45:31 Uh he's, he's absolutely brilliant and a great, uh, uh, anti-lock Tanner, but not only that, but monetary economist and has been warning about the inflation that's coming. Uh, I admire him so much. I mean, he's just a great man and I appreciate his comments very much.
Speaker 0 00:45:50 So Mary T on Instagram says thoughts on the federal judge blocking the vaccine mandate for health workers and maybe, you know, kind of expanding.
Speaker 1 00:45:59 I will tell you that that was all these court decisions that are coming out. And many of them are, are, are serious. I interviewed the plaintiff, the plaintiff for, uh, the Missouri decision the other day that like wiped out the whole, I don't know if you saw this decision, but it wiped out the whole of COVID restrictions. So they're like this violate the separation of powers and the equal protection of the law is a great decision. I said, you can't have health bureaucrats telling people what to do. This is dumb. So it was a brilliant decision to apply the whole Missouri and at very important decisions. Even the secretary of state of Missouri said, okay, we're going to acquiesce to this decision. I interviewed the plaintiff on that, just a regular mom. Who's like, you know, just, you should please watch that interview because it's just so powerful.
Speaker 1 00:46:43 And it's very, it shows how regular people make a difference, but here's the hell of it, Jennifer. And what obsessed me with so much, do you know that the New York times never even reported on that court decision never wrote a single article about even one, even though it's this very important decisive mandate that affects like, you know, St. Louis and, you know, it's, it's like, it's a huge didn't to this day, the New York times not reported that. So there's another court decision that came out today, I think had a Louisiana, then the fifth circuit court, you know, about, uh, the vaccine mandates they're coming in by the day. But here's the question. If the New York times says report, it, does it happen? I mean, like, it's, it's weird. We've got the courts basically on our side, but after that fifth circuit decision came out about the vaccine mandates that, that Jen Sakhi, whatever that lady who's the regime, right. Uh, said, no, you should continue to do this, do these things anyway. And you're probably in the same situation I'm in, I'm getting a lot of invitation to Christmas parties, right. And everybody's like, oh, only fully vaccinated people allowed. Okay. So the courts are striking down, uh, these kinds of exclusionary, segregationist, uh, things, but people are ignoring it. So I don't know if the courts are finally starting to work, but then they're not yet having an, uh, an effect, but I think eventually they will.
Speaker 0 00:48:13 Okay. Uh, Roger, the cell asks considering how many people died because of these policies, uh, who wouldn't have otherwise have died, uh, like delayed treatment for operations, spare suicides, et cetera, in order to save some lives from COVID, would it be appropriate to call this a redistribution of death or is that a too inflammatory way to describe these policies?
Speaker 1 00:48:41 Um, there's no question that there's a class element here, the ruling class. Um, and I'm sorry for my language here, but the ruling class definitely decided to preserve, protect itself and put the, the working classes were in the way of the virus, which is what they used to do in the ancient world. You know, where did the clean people let the dirty people get the pathogen? And that is definitely a redistribution of death. I mean, that was an attempt to, uh, I'm going to preserve my life at your expense. I don't, I don't think it actually works. I don't think the liked lockdowns have done any good for anybody. There's a really, uh, powerful story. And you're, you're a big ed ground Profan I think, but there's a powerful story of a prince Prospero who decided to go into the castle and protect himself against the pathogen that was outside eventually holds this big masked ball because he thought like New Zealand, they had gotten rid of it. Uh, but in the middle of the ball, a scary kind of figure in a cloak, you know, shows up. And it turns out to be the virus who attacks, you know, everybody at the ball and prince prosper and they all die. So I don't think that this kind of ruling class, uh, efforts to protect yourself from the pathogen really ultimately, uh, work, especially when you do it at other people's expense, iron ran said, um, you should never, should only live for yourself. And, but, and doing the
Speaker 0 00:50:02 Sacrifice yourself to others,
Speaker 1 00:50:06 Other people sacrifice themselves for you. So it goes both ways. And that's what we've done here. We've there a certain class of people have asked other people to sacrifice their lives and their safety, so they can be safe. This is, this is cruel. And, uh, it's, it's, it's contrary to ethics as, as Rand understood, uh, that term.
Speaker 0 00:50:28 So we have a couple of questions coming in here. Uh, Carl Carlson and others asking about inflation, uh, Carl asking with the reserve, federal reserve, bankrolling levels of, uh, irresponsible spending, has that impacted messaging for small government advocates? Uh, I think also questions about, um, inflation and the argument of certain people who say, well, buying's up two people are buying a lot of things and doesn't that mean that, you know, they're buying it despite government installation. I think he's argued that it might be because of government inflation and, uh, the possibility of moving forward towards what means is called.
Speaker 1 00:51:15 Yeah. So, uh, uh, there's complicated topics it's like most supply and demand models are based on a kind of a, what's called a chatter, Reese Petteri Boosie model where everything else stays the same, but inflation expectations can change that, right? So, uh, your velocity will tend to collapse velocity of money, which the pace at which the transactions take place during a crisis because people get risk averse. But once they realize their dollar is worth less than the future, they tend to go out and spend them regardless of the high prices. In fact, if you believe the price is going to get higher and higher, you have an incentive to really go out there and spend as much money as possible. Now, before the dollars are worth less than take on more debt. So we're, we're right in this in-between point, because if you look at the velocity statistics, it's historically, uh, low, uh, reflecting the crisis mentality.
Speaker 1 00:52:05 But if you, but if you look at, um, uh, the, the, the change in consumer behavior right now, we're seeing a gradual increases in people spending more and a lot of inflation expectations. My point is this can get out of control really fast by out of control. I mean, to say that the fed cannot control it. I mean, so right now, like if you look at the equation of exchange, there are four pieces to it. The one piece the fed cannot control is the V or the velocity of money. That's the one that's heavily dependent upon consumer behavior and expectations. That's the variable that's going to change us from being, you know, tolerable levels of high inflation to like impossible levels of catastrophic inflation. The fed cannot control that. And this is what gives us, you know, memories of Weimar at this point. Uh, so it's actually quite scary.
Speaker 1 00:52:58 The other thing to remember it, I'm going to stop about this topic because we could make this a whole podcast in itself, but inflation doesn't occur like, like sea levels. It's not just CPI or PPI. There's, there's huge inflation in some areas and less, less than others. But the point is that every single sector, even the sectors that were deflationary for the last 25 years are now growing up in price by which I mean, software, hardware, uh, computers, uh, component parts and that sort of thing. So, and, and, and to say nothing of prices of cardboard, which are up 75% year over year, you know, it's really getting scary, Jennifer.
Speaker 0 00:53:39 Well, uh, we are coming up on the end of this hour. Um, we've got maybe five more minutes. I'm detecting looking back at our previous interview. I am detecting some of the, the old Jeffery, the bullying, the mischief, uh, and maybe some, uh, some of some optimism a little bit more than when we spoke back in July of 20, 20,
Speaker 1 00:54:05 Awful back then. I don't remember that, but I think,
Speaker 0 00:54:08 Oh yeah, you were so awful. We're just like completely, you know, spreading your memes all over the place. No, you were, we were milking it for every ounce of insight, but, um, I, you know, you have a long struggle, a hard struggle, uh, ahead of us, but is there a sense in which you're, you know, more optimistic now that we can and we will win?
Speaker 1 00:54:32 Well, I will tell you, I'm very grateful to you, um, for being persistent, being determined to, for using your intuition and to you're looking deep within yourself and going, what do I believe in? And you, you did that, you said, I believe in freedom. I believe in free. I don't have it. I don't understand all the ins and outs of, you know, immunology and epidemiology, but I think freedom is right and it's true. And you stuck your neck out. And the out of the society said unpopular things, uh, things that were radical,
Speaker 0 00:55:05 We lost some
Speaker 1 00:55:07 Donors, we lost some donors and some audience, you know, but the thing is, you, you, you stuck to what was right and true. And I think you're, you're vindicated as a result of it. And to me, the kind of courage that you, uh, that you acted upon and that you steered at the society to, to speak for is, is exactly what's going to get us out of this crisis. You know, um, moral courage is very powerful. It's much more powerful than like guns or health bureaucrats or politicians. Those people just come and go, but, but, but, but courage is, is a spiritual thing. And, uh, it's, it's, uh, indefatigable and it can't be overcome, you know, once you decide to be courageous and to believe in something and stick to it, no matter what, um, the world, the powers that be are become afraid. And, and they eventually acquiesce.
Speaker 1 00:56:07 They eventually given not right away, not, not today, not next week, not next month, but eventually moral courage is very, very powerful, much more powerful than all of their guns, all of the press and even all of their social media platforms, uh, that the power of truth cannot be underestimated. See, here's the thing, it's all we have. And it's also what works best. So we've got all the advantages, but it requires people like you, and it requires that the society to stick up and say, what's true, regardless of the consequences. So, you know, God bless you forget the phrase, but I think you've done the right thing. And
Speaker 0 00:56:52 I would, I would approve, uh, I know in the, in the darkest days when I went up to help take care of my parents to San Francisco, and it was just mad Morris, you know, um, I, uh, uh, the one thought that saw me through is, well, reality does exist. There is a reality, there is a reality and, you know, eventually one way or another, it will, you know, you have your free to ignore reality, but not the consequences.
Speaker 1 00:57:22 You're an implausible reincarnation of, of, um, of Cicero, uh, and Agustine, and, uh, several other, uh, uh, uh, big figures in history. But I think, I think you're, you're aware it's very powerful and your, your presence and, and, and the internet, um, and your presence, and without society has been, uh, essential to this fight. So I think you're doing great work and that's a pleasure to be involved in the struggle, but as you,
Speaker 0 00:57:51 It does make it a lot more fun. And I want to also, all of you, I know we've gotten a lot of donors who are watching and people who've supported our work. I would invite you to please go and visit, uh, the brownstone institute.org. Yeah,
Speaker 1 00:58:07 No, actually I paid a lot of money for this domain, brownstone.org,
Speaker 0 00:58:12 Browse, stow case, brownstone.org, put it, we're going to put it in the comments section, uh, sign up for their newsletter, um, follow them on social media. And, uh, and you know, he, he is the leader. He has been the leader, and I'll never forget back in the day. I don't remember who it was, but clearly there were a lot of libertarian groups that were, were not, uh, coming out in, in, in strongly, in favor of, uh, of individual rights and against lockdowns. And as they started to kind of say, you know, move closer to your direction, somebody I think said, well, don't go all Jeffrey Tucker on me.
Speaker 1 00:58:57 I know I was definitely held up as the black beast of the anti.
Speaker 0 00:59:02 I don't mean to go a little different soccer. We do mean to go all Jeffrey talker. So, um, thank you, Jeffrey, for all of them.
Speaker 1 00:59:11 Let me just echo that. I think, I think investing in that as tightly as a great expenditure of money is way more important than the dinners, the vacations and everything else. We need to use our resources to back to back principal positions. Cause because civilization is at stake and I, you know, we, we sometimes says that in the past. No, it really is like, if this is it, this is our moment. This is the time. This is it. This is 500 years. It's progress are, are hanging in the balance.
Speaker 0 00:59:44 And another reason to invest in the Atlas society is because you get a lot of bang for your buck. As a matter of fact, in 30 minutes from now, I am going to be on clubhouse with another senior scholar. Uh, Steven Hicks, we're going to be talking about is capitalism good or bad for the environment. And, uh, and then next week, uh, on Tuesday, again, with our senior fellow, um, Rob, Sinski talking about, uh, robotic technology and whether or not it's going to wipe out white collar jobs. And another interview that I'm very excited about a week from today is with Eric Prince. Who's the founder of Blackwater and a untold I'm Rand fan. So a lot of good stuff coming up.
Speaker 1 01:00:34 Thank you, Jennifer. Thanks.
