Matter of Facts: What's One More Government Watch List

Welcome back to the Matter of Facts podcast on the Prepper Broadcasting Network. We talk prepping, guns, politics every week on iTunes, Ditcher, and Spotify. Go check out our content at mwfpodcast dot com, on Facebook or Instagram. You can support us be a Patreon or by checking out our affiliate partners. I'm your host, Phil Raveley Andrew Nicker on the other side of the mic, and here's your show. Welcome back to Matter of Facts podcast. I'm Phil, that's Nick and I have two questions I have to ask before we get to the admin work. Okay, first of all, did you buy your dog the bullproofest? I recommend it? No? And have you had a conversation recently with your local FBI handler about the fact that everything we say tonight is joking? Yes? Okay, Well, I had a conversation with the sheriff's deputy. Is that sheriff's deputy cool? I mean he's my uncle's best friend from high school. Oh? Not, the hell with it. You're related to the whole freaking county. I'm not related to this sheriff's deputy. His family moved in. Oh, so this is the one person within like one hundred and fifty mile radius that you are not related to, think you. I mean, he definitely married my fourth cousin. But on the other side of the family, God, damn German farming families. Man, dude, I'm telling you, man, there were three things to do at that point, and only one of them was farming. Was the other one drinking or fighting? Fighting and creating more German farmers apparently, just God, there's too many of the damn things. We even ended up shipping a few of them off to Chicago to like, well, you can't call it renting them out, but they basically rented them out to rich families and Chicago that didn't have kids to be their maids. Oof. Yeah, I mean, there are worse ways to make a living. Actually, Jeff, all of my armor is hard plates. I don't have any kevlar. Yeah, same, I should probably get some of that, just because why not. But my whole issue with getting soft armor is just that there's a the Venn diagram of phil where on this side you have like the situations that I would normally wear some kind of armor, and then this side is like the moments where you need level three plus. Yeah, and those those two things like overlap all like ninety nine percent. So like there's this tiny little sliver where I would like to have armor, but I don't think I need rifle rated plates. You know what I'm saying. I tend to not go places where I think I have a good chance of soft armor being important. This is exactly what I argue with someone about until carrying years ago. I was like, because they told me like, well, I'm on gonna carry if I think I need it, And I'm like, if i think I'm gonna need a gun, I'm just not gonna go there, right. I mean, like, look, bad situations happen to people all the time at random, but yep, having worn armor for full days, sometimes full weekends for Millsom events, it sucks. It's not enjoyable. I mean myself, I think talk to officers that work kevil are all the time. It still sucks. Well, I can tell you that for those of us who wore it in combat zones in the heat all day every day, wearing hard armor sucks, and I have an un good authority from friends of mine in law enforcement that soft armor isn't a lot better. Like it still sucks very badly. Mm hmm. Yeah, so, Rachel, tonight is the night that me and Nick are going to get liquored up and complain about the government, which usually means we find our way onto another government watch list, although I think we found them all already, so we'll see. It's not so much of the government, it's government in general, and it's horrible inevitability, yes, and why various forms of government are just destined to fail eventually, including ours. But yeah, there was one thing we need to get before we get any further off the beaten paths. Admin work. Gotta do the admin work. If you're not a patron already, you should consider becoming a patron. And I have a person in the chat who's screaming young about want to become patron without going through the authorized process. I have an alternative I'm going to offer you, and then maybe he'll be happy with that. Maybe he won't. We'll see. But the links in the show description, you too can encourage bad behavior and bad decisions. You can also buy merch for the vibes from the Southern that also encourages bad decisions, and it becomes a conversation piece. Depending on what shirt you wear in what mixed company it. My wife wearing that shirt to work has definitely sold a few of those extra shirts. Without any context. I will say that I wore I wore the choose your postcloup apocalyptic Warlord shirt. Yeah, I got lots of really strange looks. No one asked, but I got lots of strange loaks. Those are my favorite cut of looks. You know, they run the shirt. Yeah, it's kind of a thing. And last, but not least, prevent war crimes with Disaster Coffee code mof and checkout will save you five percent. This is not disaster coffee tonight though, because Disaster Coffee does not sell whiskey yet. Yeah, they sell a whiskey flavored coffee. Yes, uprising the bourbon barrel aged coffee. That is something special. It used to cost substantially more than the rest of the lineup because of the cost and ball and over the years, because I do the costing for the business, like everything else, has been escalating in price, like, you know, because the WF and the Davos crew can't stop screwing the rest of the world. But that's another episode. And oddly enough, that one coffee has not escalated in price at the same rate everything else has, so now the cost differential between uprising and everything else is much smaller than it used to be. Yeah, it's a good cup of coffee. It is a really good cup of coffee. It's a solid it's a solid medium roast. It's not really smokier, bitter, bitter anything. It It's got a bit more body than like. A breakfast roast. But it's good stuff. I like it. Yeah, I enjoyed it. Oh, let's see here, Kyle's saying, don't make the Trump list. But I'm fairly certain I'm on every list there already is. But if not, we'll find out. Yeah. I don't think he cares that much about individual people. I agree with Jeff. I'm nowhere near important enough to make that kind of list. Unfortunately, we do have dirt on the Cleons. Thanks Nick. I didn't want to live to thee old age anyway, that's all right. Being elderly looks aggressively hard. Yeah. I will say that my dad tells me on a regular basis that getting old is not. For the week. I would agree with that the week tend to die before they get there. I will also say that, you know the old adage of beware the old man in a profession where men die young. Found one found the list we wouldn't get on Epstein's That's I mean, that's fair. I like my women old enough to vote at Technico. I like my women that I'm married to. And that's it. But you know, because if I make an offhand comment about I like my women old enough to vote, and then I'm to have to answer the question as soon as they get off, like. What women fill just just one woman? Speaking of which, Happy Mother's Day to everybody, all the mamas that are out there current expecting Happy Mother's Day at all, y'all. We all appreciate existing because without existing, we couldn't have what is probably too much jen for an internet podcast. Yeah, and you know, I just have to take a moment and like point something out. This is, by the way, directed to young men out there who are thinking about one day marrying. Because this is the I had. I had gotten this conversation with my daughter really recently. We were having a conversation about like third wave feminism and where she and I both feel like that movement's kind of gone off the rails a little bit, and and I pointed out to her I'm like, you know, here's me in a nutshell. I think men and women are very different creatures of equal worth and importance. They do very different things naturally by the averages. I mean, sure, there's one man out there substantially physically weaker than a very strong woman, and so on and so forth. But like on the averages, we are built very differently, we are wired differently psychologically, sociologically, we're very different. And that's fine. But the one thing I pointed out is I'm like, in my opinion, like, the person you marry is the most important decision you make in life. Yes, because yes. Because that personally, that person is going to be a couple of things for you boys. That is, if you have children, that is going to be the person who impresses their morals, their intelligence, their ideas, their thought structure onto your children. So if you want to have idiot children who can't think critically and can't emotionally regulate, you marry yourself a lady that can't do any of those things. And that's what you're gonna wind up with because she's going to teach your kids in their first formative years. Oh absolutely. I mean, look, there are two people that really get to affect your children's abilities and temperament. It's you and whoever you have the kids with, So you're giving half of your kid's potential future into the hands of that person. Yeah, be diligent, Be diligent, and be very picky and choosy. But the other thing is that even for the men out there that are marrying that don't tend to have kids and nick like, you can tell me if I'm wrong. Here, but my way looking at it is like the lady you marry is going to have a very direct impact on the trajectory of your life. Oh my gosh. Like your ability to absolutely your ability to accomplish your goals that you would set before you two met, your ability to have happiness and peace in your home. There's so many things contingent upon the lady you choose to spend your life with. So my advice to young men is always be super super picky and marry what's between your ears, not what's below her gin. Well, you know I have said this to friends of mine a number of times, and I'll say it here that look, you'rew what's the best way to phrase this? Marriage can either be the single greatest or most terrible thing to ever happen to you in your life. And I've seen people have both sides of that coin. For me, single best decision I've ever made, bar none, the best decision I've ever made. Man, I've seen how it's going for some of my buddies, And my god, did they fuck that one up. Not all of them, but a couple of them I can think of. They really screwed that one up. It and not so much just the first the person, like, not that they're a bad person that they married, but they're just not a compatible person. Yeah. Sometimes part of not being compatible means not being mature, and you know, will it will in a compromise or a variety of things. But anyway, if you have people at totally different stages in life, I mean, they're I can look back even at when I was like twenty three, twenty four, twenty five, I was an idiot. I was definitely. I'm sure I will say the same thing about now about myself now in ten years. But no, right, well we're good. All the guns are either on my hip or in that safe over there. Oh Jesus Christ, her gun is also in that safe over there. Both of you to assume Fretton Fraggle that she doesn't need a gun to be threatening. That's true. There are many power tools in this house that she is very proficient with. Oh, I was just thinking that the look, well, there is that, and there's the promise of consequences later. The consequences will always be a thing. But yeah, I just want to take a minute pointed out. By the time this comes out, like Mother's Day will be literally right around the corner. So happy Mother's Day at all the ladies. Yep. Now, Nick has a question for the listeners. I do I need crowd sourced knowledge? All right, some of you, especially with people in the signal chat. No, I talk myself into redoing our master bedroom. And what does every master bedroom need? Night vision A yes, also a built in safe for your home defense long gun. Now, I know there are a few out there. I have zero experience with these. I want something that I can while I am building the master bedroom closet, I want to build that bitch into the wall. Lag it into the joists, the ceiling, the wall, whatever I can get it get access to. I'm running lag bolts into it's going to be in a closet, so it doesn't need to be concealed, but it definitely needs to be lockable, relatively quick access and at the very least drunk friend proof. I trust myself to not go dicking around with firearms, so I'm drinking. I don't trust everybody else, So it'd be nice to be able to put my long gun in that safe when we're having company over. If anybody's got an ideas, send them out. And then I don't know if you want to discuss it on the but I gave you a completely different idea that would be you do talk about that well within your capabilities to build, because hell I could build it. So Phil Phil brought up the idea of doing a hide a gun in your bed. So replace the box spring with sort of a cabinet tree system almost but have it lift on either air or hydraulic assist tip up, and have the sheet goods on that be made of hard kevlar armor panels. So put some rifle rated panels underneath your mattress and down the side of your bed. So now your bedroom is a pill box. Not a bad idea, horribly expensive, I would imagine. I wouldn't think so I mean, what are those armor panels costs? I have no idea. I mean I've looked at them, but I've never preced. You mean you would actually buy like armor panels instead of doing it the redneck wing. Well, I mean I could just source some AAR five hundred plate, but I thought, hey, they make one inch thick like kevlar hard panels that function like plywood. I'd probably use. That'd be lighter. I was thinking like old phone books and oh, leftover tiles. No, if I'm gonna build an armored pill box out of my bed, I'm gonna use probably certified armor. What would a sheet of just quarter inch plate steel? Way, a lot four by four sheet? Well, let's well, let's size bed, let's back seventy. Do you even need quarter inch because it's gonna be ascessly on like a forty five degree angle, which means it's going to tend to glance. The rounds up five five six will occasionally penetrate a quarter inch sheet a plate stock at at at an angle. Okay, yeah, I put so. When back in the day, I built a target out of mild steel at my parents house, I know mild steel target bad. Essentially it was a bullet catch box, and it was set at a forty five degree angle half inch plate stock. If you shoot at that within fifty yards, it will dimple the back of that plate with a five to five six. Now, granted that's out of a twenty inch barrel ar shooting fifty five grain fmj's and maybe some some of the steel core ones. I know for a fact a thirty odd six FMJ will zip right through that because I had one do it, and I had to discontinue us to that bullet stop because of it. A lot of gang bangers breaking into homes with thirty odd six ap. Huh No, but five five six is not necessarily uncommon, especially with what's going on in Chicago right now. I mean, look at the videos we see coming out of the Chicago high schools where guys are flashing ar pistols in their backpacks that are highly illegal. But who am I wildly illegal? Not just like wildly illegal to bring into a school, wildly illegal in the state in general. Yes, anyway, I mean that's just kind of my thought process. It's like, you see an interesting idea, you ought to be able to build something to accomplish those needs. Although it might be overkilled unless you were wanting to move a substantial portion of your firearm's collection into it. I'm looking for one to two long guns. Yeah, say some extra ammunition, That's what I'm looking for. Well, place to put my there's place to put my pistol to if I if like we're going out to the distillery or something, I can tuck my pistol in there and then when I get home there but. There is nothing to say you have to fill the entire box spring with firearms. You could literally carve. Out a chunk. I know, I know, I know, I know, but that's where my heart goes. I know. But see, now we're into mission creep territory. Yes, I'm just thinking, like you know, that is an option. And then having the having the high to bed like pop up and having something to help arrest bullets flying through the air would give you a substantial entrenched position in your bedroom. You know, Given given the structure of our house currently, and given the way I have hardened the front the old what will be the only door when this is done? Given the crimes that we tend to see in our area, I don't think I will need a hardened, entrenched position to then fight from. I don't think so this is fair most likely with the most common crimes that occur in my area, as far as like being ease when you're home, say home invasion. Typically it's home invasion for robbery, and they're not they don't tend to be armed. If they do. If they are armed, it is typically a handgun or a knife. So you know, it comes back to doing your area study and just knowing about for stuff like this, the crimes that happen in your area. Smash and grab burglaries are one of the most common things we're going to see. Oh yeah, I don't know. It was a thought. It's a good thought. I mean, it's it's an interesting hypothetical because you could you could pretty easily end up with a like a level four bed frame, very easily. It would be expensive, I imagine. Yeah, anyway, but yeah, I will do some digging around there. I in my head, I remember there was this company and they sold something that would be just about perfect for you. It wasn't. It was designed to like stand up in a closet, not necessarily like sink into a wall. But you're smart enough to be able to figure that out out. We could, we could sink that bit into the wad. Wouldn't be a problem. I mean, even if it's built, even if it's meant to like go in between a couple of series of cabinets. Perfect Yeah my memory, I think this thing was meant to fit between two standard studs. Oh well, that would be ideal. But if not, I mean not not rocket surgery to make that work for you. Mm hm. Anyway, so the point of the episode today, what's one more government watch list? So last episode, Nick and I got to debating about governments a little bit. A little bit I think government. Nick disagrees a government is an industry in and of itself, and I argue that once it reaches a certain point, it starts to act like an industry. It's just kind of industry that produces anything that people want. So I I and maybe this is a definitional disagreement at its root. I almost certainly you can consider something an industry unless it has a tangible product that it's creating, whether that's movies, microwaves, washing machine, firearms. And I'm taking the definition of industrial very very liberally. Sure, I'm referring more to in terms of like scale and scope and size. Absolutely well in that case, you're not wrong in my opinion. I mean, what this country was originally set up to be was supposed to be like a very loose association of states, where the majority of power was held by the people, and then by the local governments, and then by the state governments. The end result was always supposed to be maximizing freedom for the people and minimizing government intrusion. You know, I can't remember which one are founding fathers, but they famously said that, like the intention was for the average person to live their entire life never having had an encounter with federal government, which sounds freaking hilarious to everybody these days, especially when we're not that far past tax season. But that was the original idea. Was like if we just leave people alone and we have like some basic rules, so like don't take each our stuff, don't try to don't try to molest people that don't like to be molested, don't try to take people's lives. Just be cool. Then everybody can pretty much manage their own affairs. Like everybody can decide for themselves whether they want to be have guns or they want to live in a big house or they want to live in the middle of nowhere. Like people can decide all that. We don't have to do all that for them. Yeah, you know, while it does start that way, Phil, you brought up a term mission creep, earlier scope, creep, mission creep, scope, create, mission creep, whatever you want to call it. The trouble is that once you have people doing a job, they are going to be self interested, as the nature of all of us are self interested creatures in making sure that they have a job next week, next month, next year, ten years from now. Ideally tell retirement now you and I, well, maybe you can. I can not guarantee that the company I work at is going to continue to exist or continue to need my employment much beyond the end of the week. Really, I mean, it could come down the pipeline all of our jobs are canceled. Heke, go home, You're done. Government is where you can, though you can create a system of bureaucracy in that government and in some large corporations which start to function more like a government. In my opinion, I was going to say, like, let's let's give the devil their due, But any any corporation beyond a certain scope becomes very bureaucratic very quickly. It does. I think that's why large mega corps are so common in sci fi fiction, because you can essentially write them as a government. Take it as evil as possible. Yeah, everything that survived into Blade Runner, even though all those companies ended up going under oddly enough, thank god they were not ideal candidates anyway. But no, I mean that that that is right on the nose, Like you're in this weird situation where like large corporations become very bureaucratic, and groups of people and bosses become more concerned with how to insulate their job from layoffs than how to like the. They become more concerned with my little piece of the pie than they are with like the total health, the total alignment of the organization in the market. Yes, Jeff Jack, all restaurants are Taco Bell. All restaurants or Taco Bell. And wasn't it also that way in Idiocracy? Was it Taco Bell? No, it was like Sam's Club, no Costco. It was Costco. Welcome to Costco. I love you. Oh a slight sidebar, but do you know the story behind crocs and idiocracy? So they wanted to find the stupidest shoe that nobody would ever wear, and then as a result of videocracy, they became ubiquitous. Look, my guy, well done, excellent marketing campaign. I gotta say you have failed successfully. Task failed successfully. So for the listeners that don't know, like when they were getting ready to make Idiocracy, and if you haven't seen Idiocracy, you need to go watch it and then come back and talk to me about it because that is my litinumus test for whether or not we can be friends. Yeah, but they were literally like trying to find like the footwear that because that's the whole idea behind Idiocracy is that there's only a couple of things that are you know, around anymore because the one company bought up all the other ones. So like everybody wears Crocs yep. But they were thinking in this cell, I was like, we had to find the shoe that's like so stupid, nobody will ever wear it, and that's what everybody's gonna wear in this movie. Well, lo and behold, everyone started wearing them. After Idocracy. They exploded in popular. Look, man, I get why they did, and I understand why a lot of outdoorsy guys keep them around for camp shoes. I get it. You really can't ruin them by getting them wet, getting them money, get them dirty. I get it. They're a good camp shoe, they're lightweight, they're packable, but they suck. I'm gonna tell you right now. I owned a pair in the past, I haven't warned them, and Christ knows how many years I will never own another pair. They're the goofiest nonsense on Earth. No, Stewart, we are not starting over. Not. The whole reason for. Doing this show on YouTube and on Rumble and on Facebook and having it on our audio feed on all the podcast platforms, and the reason for it being on the Prepper Podcast Network, thanks for that little plug opportunity is so that when you are twenty seven minutes and fifteen seconds late, you can still catch. The whole show. M It is a benefit. See this is why I know me and Rabbacam be friends because he said this is one of the few movies in existence that's physically painful for him to watch. But here's here's the problem. If you come away from Idiocracy and think to yourself, it was a stupid movie or it was entertaining, We're not gonna be friends if you come away terrified because it is literally happening in front of your eyes, You and I. You and I should hang out together because you understand where I'm at. I would argue you can be both amused and terrified by it. I mean President Camacho was a hilarious take, okay on what is now a reality TV President. Did you not see the meme I poe that I made and posted right after Trump? It was a picture President Camacho and Donald Trump, and I was like the. Well and the sawm okay, but how hard would it be for the commander in chief to get a saw to one arm fired into the ceiling? I'd be impressed. I mean they're not that they're heavy, but they're not that heavy. Bruh. Have you ever heard a cyclic rate? Yeah? I didn't say he'd do it? Well? Have you ever won armist that he could definitely rip some rounds up into the ceiling. Have you ever won armed a saw? No? But I did one arm and RpK as about say, I have two armed saw and it's it's a fair bit spicier than you would think of five five six would be probably very very high cycling. I mean, the RpK wasn't a problem for me to free handstanding. Yeah, anyway, But what were we talking about before CrOx and Stewart got us totally off subject? I don't Oh. We were talking about how governments and large corporations both become bureaucratic at a certain points. So here's here's where I think our current system of government started going off the rails. Two things, well, three things. And by the way, one of these things is not unique to republic This is kind of like a flaw of all governments in my opinion. So one number one is that eventually they get big enough and they have enough power masks that they attract the kind of asshole who likes having power over other people. And that's not a point. That's and I don't know if you call that a feature or a flaw, but it is not unique to republics. That is republics that is democracy, direct democracies that is that is dictatorships, communist socialists, fascists, that is every government on earth. If they if they get big enough, they started attracting the kind of person to them that likes to have power over others. It's a future of hierarchies in general. Yes, now that's one. Two is once they once our republic became large enough to become bureaucratic, then it became filled with people whose primary concern was how do I keep my job? Not how do I keep the country on the rails, how do I keep the wheels on the bus? How do I have like do I not have a fiduciary responsibility to the taxpayer to officially use their dollars in the pursuit of my assigned duties. You get to a situation where people are more concerned about how do I get my agency a bigger budget next year? How do I get my department a bigger budget next year? The goal eventually if you have unscrupulous people, and bureaucracies tend to attract unscrupulous people, in my opinion, they. Tend to reward them too. Yes, which is the kind of the one of the worst parts. But you get to a point very quickly where like people's primary concern is how does this benefit me? Not from a standpoint of like self service or selflessness, like how can I serve my fellow man? How can I serve my fellow citizen? But how do I serve myself. And again that is not a unique criticism of our government or for republics in general. That you're gonna hear that rape retold a couple of times. And this again very much a part of hierarchies in general. And here's the third and you're gonna hear this quite a few times too. Have you heard Thomas Jefferson the Thomas Jefferson quote and TJ is my boy, that the death of the republic occurs when people realize they can vote themselves largest from the treasury. Yep. The minute people realize I can vote for a person, that person will give me free stuff funded by taxes taken by gunpoint from other people. That is the beginning of the death of the republic. Well, I don't know how many of y'all have a history book, Candy, but that shit happen what a century ago? Well, let's see, when was the New Deal mid nineteen thirties. Yeah, yeah, we're coming up on one hundred years. So as long as I pull the lever for the years. And by the way, this is not a criticism of the Democratic Party, even though they tend to be huge fans of the welfare system, because the Republicans are just as fucking guilty of Yank and the freaking lever for the corporate welfare system. Don't believe me, Go and look call me how might bs if you think I'm wrong? All right, Rachel, how do we explain the level of incompetence? Easily? Very easily? Most people are incompetent number one, at least in some manner of their existence. No one's going to be a perfect expert in everything. And number two. Getting elected to high office in government largely comes down to two things. One being not offensive to a plurality of people, a plurality of your voters. No, No, no plurality in general, because if you get enough of the people offended that are not your voters, they're going to make more of a stink and cause less people to vote for you. Joe Biden is the kind of milk toast waffly fence sitter that most people could ignore, at least when he got elected to president. Back in the day, when he was elected to the to what was it Congress, the House or was it the Senate? I can't remember. Senate. I wasn't alive during that. During a lot of that fucking hell. When he got elected to the Senate, he was very bigoted against African Americans, which was okay for a lot of people back then. How big of it was he nick He called them super predators on CBS and on c SPAN and on the floor of the Senate House. And the Black community rallied around him like he was black Jesus. They did quite impantain me to watch, I might add, in our system, the way incompetent people getting get elected is by number one existing in the government structure long enough. If you say, work in small local government or you're in a small local town, long enough, I could probably get elected to my local county board. It would not be that difficult. Most of the people in this county know my faith, if not know me personally, just because of my family's well known ability to spread themselves throughout the county and never leave. And I've seen pictures of you and your family at a wedding. If you've met one of the emerg Sin's, you've met them all because. They all look alike. We do. We look phenomenally alike. Now, could I get elected the county board? Absolutely? Do? I want to not really, No, I have other things that I'm working on. But if you manage to get elected to a small local position and you do a halfway passable job, Phil, have you ever heard of being promoted beyond your competency? I've heard it phrase slightly different, And that's what I was going to sneak in when you ran out of gas? Was the so within within Okay, bearing in mind that I went. I went to school for business, and I understand it's kind of a fruit food agree in SiO with minds. But I spent a lot of time studying like organizational psychology and things of that nature. Like business is like half the numbers and half psychology, very much so. And there's a theory in there called promoted to your level of incompetency. In other words, like if you're really good at an entry level job, then you get promoted, and if you're really good at that job, you get promoted again, and you keep getting promoted until you suck. But here's the thing. In organizations that are super competitive have lots of competition, have lots of outside pressure on that organization to I don't want to say encourage, but demand high efficiency. If you suck at your job, you go back down the ladder. But that doesn't apply to large corporations. It doesn't apply to organizations that are of a sufficient size to absorb a poor performer here or there in the organization. It doesn't. Our government is sizable, yeah, oh are for. The federal workforce is like not including Congress, the executive branch, not including like the military. I think just Seville. If that's like one point four million people, if I recall correctly. Which I hate to be, then the guy to point out the obvious thing in the room. But like, there's three hundred and thirty something million people in the country, and why to think only like two hundred and sixty two hundred and seventy million of them are of like working age, like between twenty two and sixty five, so like or might even be less than that, but like, so one point four million is a hell of a lot of people. It is a hell of a lot of people. Now, to be fair, this is an enormous land mass we have. Then the government does a lot of things. I don't think they should do most of them, but that's regardless. They do do a lot of things. It does take a lot of people to do those things. So the problem is is that you were promoted up to your level of incompetency, and then that is where you stay because culturally, in certain organizations, in certain industries, it is culturally incompatible to have a poor performer stay in stay in the organization at that level, you get moved back down or or there's an extremely thorough vetting process to make sure you don't promote up in that positions you're not going to be successful in. Again, this is a cultural thing. It's not an HR policy, it's not a rule, it's a cultural thing. It's kind of like, but how do we evaluate promotions in our current government? Bigger problem that whole thing about Culturally you make sure you pick the best person for the job. That completely obfuscates favoritism and nepotism, which happens rampantly in large organizations, including government. Do y'all not remember Hillary Clinton? It's her turn to be president? Yep. DNC quite literally said it is Hillary's turn to be president. And then they sandbag Bernie. Now, I'm not a fan of Bernie. I hate communists. I think communists are inherently evil. If you're a communist, you're an evil person. Don't listen to me. I actually felt really bad for Bernie Sanders because he got screwed over so hard up to the moment he shut up, kissed the ring and bought another mansion. At that point I was like, oh, fuck this guy. Oh yeah, he definitely did knuckle under for the book. Toe he didn't knuckle under. He put his hands on his knees and freaking spread his cheeks forr You ever watch watch Bernie Sanders net worth curve and his millionaires and billionaire's speech is turning into just billionaires speeches because suddenly he's a multimillionaire. Yeah, funny how that works. Oh darn, I guess the the bourgeoisie can't be that mad anymore. Yeah, it's always interesting to listen to a multi millionaire spout off commedye gibberish like he's part of the hard working, you know, working class proletariat, and then he has the gull Well you could have wrote a book too and had the DNC force itself to buy it. Okay, Right, So, like I said, all those are criticisms of like what I think is our system of government. And before we move on to the next one, I think our system of government is probably about the best one there is, Like all of the piles of suck that are all the world's governments, I think this one's the least screwed up of the whole bunch, in spite of how much I bitch and yell about it. I mean, look at the UK right now, they are trying to get through their parliamentary system that you, without trial can be jailed for up to two years on a single magistrate's decision. Dude, you can be you can be more right to trial. You can be jailed for Facebook for non violent Facebook posts because they offend people. Correct the memes. The United People jailed for multiple years for memes. I'm just going to say that, like anyone that lives in a place that at one point was a colony of England. You should god your rebell. You should laugh at those bastards because they have fallen so far from the the empire that the sun never set on. To the cucks they are now, they deserve all the pain that they're going to experience. Everybody with balls left England and came over here, pretty much. I mean, look, that's that's that's large of what happened. All of the brave people in Europe, died in World War one, World War two, or left during colonial times. Well, but but then there's the French that just said, you know, all all of our near dwells and prostitutes, let's shift them to Louisiana. Look, near dwells and prostitutes are a key cornerstone of an economy. I mean, it worked out well for down here. Although I was telling someone recently like I was, actually I was talking to you recently about how my the Rabbli family has been in Louisiana since seventeen thirty two, and we literally woke up one morning like. Oh fuck, we're Americans. Like and especially think about think about the time period. Okay, we're talking about the Louisiana purchase. Louisiana is still the frontier at this point. I don't very much. I don't think the Rabbleys realized that Spain owned the land they were living on at the time, because it was only for a little period of time before the United States bought it. And I wonder how long these people were actually Americans before somebody clued them in, because this was a very backwoods part of Louisiana. I mean, they didn't be willing to bet the first time they were pulled before a magistrate for some kind of street brawl or bar fight, that's when they realized that they were in a different country. I don't think there were bars there, dude. I mean it was nothing but farms. You'd be shocked at how many farming have bars that that that that's fair. But you know what, you know many, you know, many farms. How many barns I have been in that have a wet bar in the corner? All the good ones, all the best ones. Yeah. Anyway, uh So, yeah, with with everything I've said, I've said to like deride my own form of government? Up? What sign down the next? And if I get more whiskey in me, there'll be more bitching to occur, because, like, I have major gripes with with what this country does in terms of political leadership and everything else. But I still think we're hell off, lot, fregaking better off than most of the air forms of government. Like look, democracy, it's I forget who said it. Democracy is the worst form of government except for all the others. Uh and represent Okay, since you queued it up, let's talk about direct democracy. Is there anywhere in the world that uses direct democracy as a form of government, and not that I'm not talking about the country that, like the Democrats think the United States is because we don't have a democracy. We have a republic. True, but like you hear this, you hear these two terms conflated all the time, like republic and democracy, and that the United States is democracy. And I can't think of any nation on Earth now or ever that has had direct democracy where literally everyone votes, it's a one to one vote and everything is just done that way. I can't think of any any nation that's done that, but I can tell you. How it would end. I am fairly certain Athens, at least if you were not a slave, was technically a direct democracy. Hmmm, I would have to dig in. I wasn't out back there. My brain wants to say yes, but it didn't work out great for them if memory serves. Yeah, But let's take about let's think about this for ever so brief of a moment. What is our greatest gripe about communism? Are the people starving? The inherent disincentive to production or productive enterprise. Okay, maybe I should have started from another angle. So my greatest gripe with direct democracy, tyranny is always going to be the most forms of government are a tyranny of the manure, the pedim power ran over everyone else. Sure, direct democracy is the opposite. It's tiarity of the majority, where the majority of people are idiots. Where if fifty one point one percent of the populace says we get to take shit from the other forty nine point nine percent. That shit's legal. Like and you can argue to the day, you. Know, till the day is long about how oligarchy and all this other bull craft, but like, that is how direct democracies work. And since no one can point at one and reason recent history to tell me no, it worked out great, here, I'm going to stand on my point that if we have a direct democracy, that's what it's ultimately going to devolve into, is the majority ruling over the minority. And let's take any one particular issue and just dissect it that way, Like, Nick, what do you think if you had to put percentages on it? What portion if we put the Second Amendment on the ballot? Direct democracy everybody votes three hundred and thirty million or two hundred and seventy million voters, do you think fifty zero point one percent of people would vote to keep guns and the air forty nine point nine would say no, and then that that's it. The a's carry the day. Or do you think could go the other direction? I think that the vast majority of people voting on it wouldn't actually know what they were voting for to begin with, but they would still vote. They would still vote yeah, and they would vote based on whatever sign was the most catchy and stuck in their head the most. We see this this really interesting thing with say, tax levies. I had an interesting conversation with one of my coworkers several years ago. Jeff just said, it's a government by the people for the people, but the people are retarded. Why do you think they're not actually fixing the school problem? But he was saying to me, He's saying, well, you know, the money's for the fire department. It is. It was to basically double the size of the fire department's budget, which they were spending wildly inefficiently, according to the fire chief, but he was not allowed to reallocate the funds in a more constructive manner because it was set by the city council. Funny how that works out. So the city Council's decided, no, we just need to double the amount of money for the fire department and then that'll solve the budget issue instead of just spending the money appropriately as the people in the fire department said it should be spent. But that doesn't double the revenue, which was the no. Essentially, what they did was they doubled the taxes for the fire department. They then took some of that money that was supposed to go to the fire department and then diverted it into city tourism, as you do. The fire department didn't really see much of a budget increase because a lot of that other money disappeared into a few other different places, So the taxes went up. The fire Department's budget is still in the shitter, and they haven't fixed the inefficiencies either. That's because fixing the efficiencies wasn't the goal. The goal was to create a slush fund for pet project. Yes, yes it was, but he voted yes because it's for the fire department and the fire department is important, which I agree with. But the money never went to the fire department, and bigger and Shit fire department didn't want it, and bigger and Shit if we had direct democracy airbyb DO throwing their votes for the children. I mean, look at how the ballot was structured in Virginia regarding their redistricting. Are you in favor of fair voting distribution? I believe was the phrasing never a more loaded catchphrase to use? Home? Yeah, I you know, I'd like to see the person that formatted that sentence jailed for fraud, for voter fraud. But they're defrauding the voters one of the two. It won't happen, no, never anyway. So the Republic falls apart when people make it do things it was never supposed to do. And I think that's what we're watching, is we're watching the Republic been doing that for a very long time. Really really on the struggle bus. Direct democracy is destined to fail because you're just letting fifty point one percent of people tell their forty nine point nine percent how to live their lives. And that's going to end in a civil war almost immediately. Well, yeah, and to be realistic, look, there's we were talking about this in the signal chat. No one can know, no one can be an expert in everything, So there is some benefit to theoretically electing people that that's whole job will be to become an expert in policy, representive adeocracy. But that's the idea, and then they represent the constituent's best interests through their expertise in the policy or through discussing it with experts in the policies. They don't do that. But in fact, they don't do any of those things. They just vote on things according to the special interest groups. Of course, hey them. So with those two in the bag, do we do socialism communism together? Because I've never found enough of enough of a difference between the two to like separate them. Possibly that could be because socialism inevitably gives way to communism eventually, but you know, they kind of seem to go hand in hand. Well, I think that the problem is the purpose of socialism is to inevitably get to communism. You slowly introduce more and more and more and more state programs until eventually the state is controlling everything. The issue with that is you have the same problem as massive corporations. Top down control is very inefficient for complex systems. It's very bad at dealing with highly complex systems. Now, if your purpose is I make two by fours. Top down control works pretty well for I make two by fours. If it's I monitor all of the economy so that we can maximize the number of two by fours. Great, you've maximized the amount of two by fours. There's no longer grain or carrots or gasoline. You've collapsed the entire system to maximize two by fours. I don't know. Top down control of complex systems never really seems to work very well. And the issue with communism and socialism to an extent is has always been to me, the disincentive towards self interest. And maybe I'm phrasing that poorly. I have had a lot of gin I don't think it's that. No, it is not. It disincentives, It disincentivizes you to be productive. Yes, because you no longer are gaining the benefits of your productive enterprise. Yes. The minutes you remove personal ownership and property and individual property, you remove all incentive for a person to strive to do better. Like communist. My biggest scripe about communism is that philosophically, you basically try to convert everyone into a cog in this grand machine that the state, the governing body controls and designs and puts everybody where they need to be. So like, you're a really smart guy, you're going to be a doctor, and you're a really hard worker, you're going to be a farmer. And then everyone just just like cogs in a machine. I can put them in wherever. In reality, it's no, your dad bribed your way into medical school. You are now a doctor, whether or not you're good at it. Yeah. Leeches and cocaine will carry the day. But and we killed all the farmers because they owned the So now all you people that work to the farms that don't understand how to manage the farms, you're now farmers. Or we can do it like Mao's Maw did in China where they just killed off all the edge well, killed all the educated people, killed everyone with glasses, Yes, because another good one. Yeah, turns out eyesight kind of useful. Yeah. So, like I said, I mean my gripes of communism are like it is destined to explode from the work. You cannot you cannot, Yeah, direct democracy, but like he just takes a little longer with direct democracy or representative democracies. Yeah. And the thing of it is that I think director. I think that representative democracy could work. I think the problem with don't beat me to the punchline. I'm gonna make a note and we'll talk about it at the end. Go for it, Jeff, electing an expert aka nobility with extra steps. Yeah, but at least you're not dealing with, say, what happened with the what was it the shoot? What was the name of that noble family Habsburg's. You're not dealing with the Habsburgs keeping it all in the bloodline and slowly getting more and more crazy, retarded and genetically inbred, and I mean retarded in the medical term. Dude. You can look at pictures of the Habsburgs over the generations and like, it's wild. Those chins get really really weak, really really quick. And they are probably the more flattering version of how they look, given that they were hand painted. And if you're painting the king, you're probably not gonna paint him looking like an idiot or ugly. One would think, okay, and what else? What else? What else? Communism, socialism, direct democracy, representative I mean, we could chuck fascism in here, but my criticism of fascism is very similar to my criticism of monarchy, which have a lot of similarities. Well, fascism and communism are really there. There are two wings of the same bird, fascism and monarchy. You're still talking about centralized power, top down control of not just the people, but also of industry. Yeah, so it's not, it's not. Commucism is really closer to communism than it is to monarchy, in my opinion, depends on your perspective. Communism communism requires fascism in order for communism to work the way Marks described. But with communism, the state owns the industry. With fascism, the state controls the industry. It seems like a kind of a small thing. But like think about like during World War Two, like Portion and Volkswagen and all those companies, they weren't owned by the state, but they were told by the state, thou shalt produce what we want you to produce. Well, seems like a kind of a perfunction. It seems like I'm splitting hairs, But I mean it is a narrow difference. So what it was It wasn't just that you shall produce this. It was you will only get materials if you produce this. Yes, that was That was a lot of it, and like, what was it? Was it Ralph Lauren that that created the all the uniforms I think the SS uniforms if I remember right, Yeah, I mean, bang up, job, it's a really great looking uniform. Could you have done it for somebody else so we could still use that color ballet? Yeah? That thing. I so it's no offense, great looking uniform. Fashion designer did do a hell of a job. He just did a hell of a job for the worst possible government at the time, except for maybe the Communists who killed just as many, if not more people. M M. But yeah, like my my grad sup. My criticism fascism is that a lot of the same criticism I have communism, socialism. The minutes you have top down. Control of all the industries, you're removing all the incentive for people to work harder, to be more efficient. You're removing all the incentive for these companies to experiment, to color outside the lines, to try to innovate. You're you are, you are willfully suppressing human nature m hm. And every time government does that, it ends poorly. It does, Yeah, which is also the reason why I tend to think, well, one of the reasons I think monarchy ends poorly, but like monarchy has a place in a time and technology level and a societal sophistication level. I disagree, but go ahead. So Phil, you're familiar with the zone of control theory of historical governance, essentially for the people that aren't familiar with it, as far as as you can communicate within a certain time frame, kind of set the size of your countries for a very long time, barring geographical hard lines, mountain ranges, rivers, coastlines, impassable areas like deserts, stuff like that. So, for instance, Chicago. Let's take Chicago, for example, how far can a man on a horse travel in one day? There's a number for that reliable for a while, they're technologically speaking, until they devent until people developed the team messenger rides and stuff like that. You could really only control an area about the size of a radius of the distance a man could ride on a horse reliably within a day or within a couple of days. The further you got out from that, the harder it got to control, because you really couldn't exercise your will there. Oh, thank you, regulars, Hugo Boss. My apologies to Ralph Lauren Hugo Bosses on the Nazi uniforms. Excellent done. Why couldn't you have done it for somebody? Cool? But the reason why monarchy works in that time period, and especially hereditary monarchy and like the feudal dynasty system where you have layers of control built down below, is you have say, your individual knight who runs or how whatever the title is. He runs his small little geographic area, and everybody in that area knows that guy. They come to that guy for his decisions. He's responsible for keeping the peace and defending that limited area. So you got a whole bunch of those guys and they all agree to follow the other guy. I mean, it's it's sort of trickled down communications of authority once you get to a time period or a technology level where like telegraphs or relay communications, feudalism and monarchy, Jeff, they're largely intered in are interchangeable. The ven diagram has a lot of overlap. It does. You can have feudalism without monarchy, but well no, I don't think you can. You have to have monarchy to have feudalism, or you have to have yeah, one of the two. But whose idea wasn't having this discussion yours and mine. It's fine, Yeah, it was the long day at work. Without the technology for communications at distance, such as like the printing press and things like that, the ability to control countries was very finite, and you could expand that through your vassals controlling other areas. In that I was gonna say, there is a kind of a parallel here with the size of military units and the size and the size of a war front. You can see throughout the throughout the centuries, the size of a military unit continued to expand as the communications became more and more whiscated to be able to control a large group people spread out across a longer distance. Exactly. For a large long period of time, you could really only control a battlefront about as far as you could shout yeah. And then it was flags, horns, radios, smoke signals. So there's all kinds of things like that. And now we're using you know, smartphones and attag and stuff exactly. So now you can control battlefronts that encompass continents from across the world. Yeah, which, okay, So I would say that monarchy has a use in a certain technology level society feudalism has a use in a certain technology level society because you can't have, in my opinion, you're not going to have a large scale representative democracy. You might be able to make it work if you did it in a feudal ish sense, where you have say, your your feudal fiefdoms instead are electing representatives are then going to another place. That's why you kind of see that transition period in the Renaissance era. It's where you have representative councils for the monarch. A lot of those were elected or elected. So I think monarchy's only work into limited circumstances. Am a draw comparison to a family unit, like within this castle, I am the king, Missus Rabelais is the queen, and our daughter is the princess. The king and the queen have all the stuff, make all the rules. We kind of lay down the law like we give. We are willing to hear the opinion of our progeny, but at the end of the day. We still make the decision. I think monarchy's only work in two narrow facets. First of all, is that the populace has to believe, rightly or wrongly, that the monarch is acting in their best interest, not their own self interest, but in the best interests of the people. Sure, because if the people believe. That, they're very willing to seed to their authority and to work for them and do all the things they're supposed to do and not you know, fight against the law of the land and so on and so forth. But they have to believe, rightly or wrong, that the monarch is acting in their best interest. And the other thing that has to happen is they have to have faith in the strength of that monarch to protect them. Yeah, and when those two things fall apart, like what you tend to get with nepotism and with what's the word I'm looking for here, it's a monarchy that transitions from father to son, father's son. There's a term for it, Nick, you said it le no, not terrible hereditary monarchy. Yeah. The problem you get is that sooner or later, usually within two generations, one of the sons is born that's got like a gap in his teeth, and he's kind of hunchbacked, and like no one respects him, no one believes that he's competent. He might have every family has the idiot. Sometimes the idiot's the only male air well the Habsburgs case in point, or they just constantly marry their sisters and second cousins. So once you get to that point, there becomes an immediate sense of unrest. Now normally you can you can like enlist a strong man to kind of tamp down the resistance for a while, but sooner or later that whole thing comes apart. And it comes apart exactly like a family comes apart. If the mother and father are not keeping the bills paid and the lights on, if there's not food in the fridge, if the children start to believe that mom and dad are just being jerks for no reason, like they're not looking out for my best interests, they're all about themselves. Sooner or later those. Children start to get ideas in their head about how this is not working. These people are not looking out for my best interests. They're not able to protect me, they're not able to provide, and they lose the legitimacy of their office. And that is exactly the same time that both parent parental units and monarchs break down. It's also the point where our government is starting to break down in my opinion too, because the especially with the Epstein scandal. Is as much as people like to meeme on that, as much as people are rightly very upset about that, it is taking away the vague legitimacy that the government is supposed to have. But with one difference. Though in a monarchy, you don't get to vote for your king. True, technically, well some some monarchies you did. Technically, we are supposed to be able to vote for our representatives, even though I believe, and I respect you believe that that system is heavily rigged. Yeah, I'm not. I'm not certain are you? Are you that a vote is even relevant anymore? I mean, it's perfectly relevant to give you the illusion of choice. I think on a local level, your vote definitely matters. Oh, that's how you give you the illusion of choice. Well, that's how they that's how they have the legitimate of the legitimacy of the system since about the nineteen thirties. Yeah, So back to that point that I was going to make towards the end of the show, Representative democracy only works with limited federal government and lots of local power. And now here's the reason I always say that, because it's not the first time I made this charge. The reason why. If you are the mayor of a town you don't want to do anything wildly unpopular is because you live in that town. Right, you're gonna go grocery shop in the town, You're gonna get. Your You're probably gonna suffer the consequences of your. Own You are going to have to face down angry voters literally fucking everywhere. You're gonna face them down. Leaving church, you're gonna face them down, going to buy groceries. You're gonna face them down constantly. You are going to be subject to the bitching and the screaming of your constituents constantly, because they don't have to book a plane ticket halfway across the country to go and scream ate your office. They can literally five minutes across town and yell at you if they want to. And better, it doesn't even have to be your like it elected official decisions that cause that either Yeah, it doesn't, But that's my point. That's why I've always had a mayor that got that got voted out of office because he would routinely poorly tip service staff. But here's my thing. When I believe that the local and not only that, but like the statistics make it pretty plain that, like local politics are decided by very few votes. Oh yeah, So if you're gonna run for hundreds, if you're gonna run for office, you have like a grassroots door to door campaign. At the federal level is laughable. Yes, but at the local level, it's actually pretty plausible in most places, Like you can. Go around, shake some babies and kiss some hands and you might actually get elected if you just get a little bit of name recognition. I if memory serves my the last time my county board had an election for the two seats that were open, there was a combined total of four thousand votes cast. One town in my county is thirty thousand people. Four thousand votes were cast. You can visit and talk to four thousand people during a campaign season. Yep, very very easily. Look, I'm gonna tell you that the last person we voted for school board, he didn't win, unfortunately, but he was a local pastor and he was literally parking his car at the end of streets and then walking the streets, knocking on doors, talking to people. Spent ten minutes out in the front yard with me and Gilly and talking about the things we were concerned about, the things that were that mattered to us. And I told Gilly and I'm like, I will vote for him one hundred percent because he gave me ten minutes of his time and that is something that no one else on that ballot did. Yep, and that matters to people. I mean, he didn't, he didn't win, but it wasn't like an enormous chasm between him. And I think he came in third, and it wasn't by much. Yeah. Normally, normally a city council or a school board vote or something like that is decided by sub fifty votes. Yeah, a lot of that time. Yeah, but this guy came out of relative anonymity, no name recognition. I don't think he's ever run before, and he was not. He was pretty high at the ballot for his first go. He'll probably run again. My guess is he would then get elected just because of the added name recognition. I would hope so. But like I said, like that, that's kind of my thing. I think when you push I think when you take the power away from the federal government, and by the power house, I mean the money, you disband the bureaucracies, you slim down the things they do. You push all of that further down to the states and to the local governments. I would rather see welfare programs run at the state level, not at the federal level, not with this huge week in bureaucracy, but the state level, because the closer to the voters you push that activity, the more oversight there is, the more liable those people are to think twice about doing something wildly unpopular because the people in their community they have to live with. There are no there are no like gated communities which just the politicians live. I understand most of them do live in gated communities, but the point do But my point is is that sooner or later, you're gonna bump into the You're gonna bump into the same people you're voting for, and your face is known. Your face, your name, probably your address. I think if we do that, if we if we rip these bureaucracies apart and scatter them into all the states, or scatter them into localities where things are done in smaller pockets, it does two things. I think it makes the I think it makes the government more accountable to the people by virtual proximity. But the other thing I think it would accomplish. This is fun. I think it turns every single little pocket into its own tide pool for bad ideas. So that if sure like the reason why I continue to say over and over and over like, the only part of California Young control that scares the crap out of me is that suitably are those ideas propagates to the federal level and then they try to sweep across the whole board. But if we locked if we locked that power down in the state and said no, no, no, federal government cannot touch gun rights, period and discussion. It has to be done to the state level, periods and discussion. We turn California into its own tide pool, and then you can do whatever you want in California with regards to gun rights, even though I think it's stupid and illogical. You do whatever you want, and then we're gonna sit back and watch what happens. And we're gonna compare that to another state that has much more lacks gun laws, so we're gonna see what happens over there. It turns every one of these areas into its own testing ground for ideas, and we can compare contrast to the other forty United States and the other forty nine versions of how this thing should be run, and we're gonna know really quickly. Do you want to know why I'm watching New York with such rapt attention right now? Because I am just waiting to see how fast New York City turns into a fucking Third World. Because I can see, because I have a history book on my shelf, that that is a complete and total just cock up waiting to happen. It was destined for k chaos from the work go. It was never going to work, no, But I am happy to watch New York City try it way way far away from me, and y'all let me know how it works out. And I hope it hurts as bad as I hope it does, because I want the voters to remember how bad it sucks. It's not going to change the voting patter, it's not going to change the voting pattern, but you know what it's going to do. It might change the voting pattern of every city around New York City because they're going to look on the air side of the border and directly compare, like, Okay, we're all in the same state. We all have the same governor. We all have lots in common politically, but over there they have crazy, crazy socialist guy, and over here we have a less crazy socialist guy thinks over here a lot better than over there. So maybe we don't do what that those people are doing. We do we're doing over here because it works better. And that plays out over and over and over. What is the reason I keep telling you I love you and Rachel. I would never move to Illinois ever for any reason. Yep. Your state laws drive me. It's hard fucking crazy, and it's it's only giving worse. Why would I? Why look at what Pritzkirt's doing to try and keep the Bears here. Oh, he's making the entire state pay for it with their homeowners tax. Why do you think I recently wrote off Virginia as a potential state's moved to. In a few years, that state has gone friggin crazy. I don't want anything to do with the state laws there. It's when NBC overflow voters. But when every state is allowed to do things their own way, and we take those decisions away from the federal government, we push them down to the state. It now means that people can relocate much more reasonable distances to go to the place that more closely lines with their ideals. If I don't like something the federal government does, I have two options. One is to be a felon and one is to leave the country of my birth. Whereas if I don't like something Louisiana does, I could literally move thirty miles. I wouldn't even have to change I wouldn't even have change jobs. My commute would be shorter, That's true. But I can move thirty miles Intossissippi and bing bang boom, I'm in a totally different state, totally different set of laws. Yep, raggle. The problem with that plan is that so many of the big cities are pushing anti American sentiment, and when it fails, they leave for other states. They do, they do, at least the people that are most economically mobile leave. Yeah, look at Detroit. Detroit's a perfect example. I do have to say that has been one of the interesting parts of COVID is that with the rise of remote work, you've seen more and more left leaning people evacuating the cities that their own votes demolished, and they're moving to the suburbs where the rest of us are like voting exactly the same, and the rest of us that we're already here like that's bullshit, knock that off. I mean, look at the housing prices in the collar areas around Metro, around large metropolitan areas where it sucks to live and it's way too expensive. I mean, hell, there was a very interesting phenomenon when the remote work started out by me. You were seeing about six months after I bought my house, you saw the price of houses almost double in my area, almost doubled. And do you know where all that money came from? People were selling their flats and their townhomes and stuff in Cook County, in the city out here because they only had to commute by a train once a month. M we're on the train line right to Chicago. But they were bidding cash offers one hundred, one hundred and fifty thousand dollars over asking price on houses to guarantee they got that house because they were going to sell house. It was already four times that they were walking away with cash after the fact. Interesting and what happened when remote work stopped Funny about that they still own those houses. I do have to admit I live in them. Anymore. I do have to admit. As a slight sidebar, this has been one of the reasons why I have sat back kind of mirthfully and looked at the interwebs in the places where federal employees mostly congregate, because I have to admit Orangeman done some okay things, done, some stupid things. As every president does. True, but forcing all the federal employees to abandon remote work and telework and come back to the office one hundred percent has been pretty universally met with direct derision amongst the federal workplace, considering that. Because a lot of them weren't doing their job to begin. With, and a lot of them were literally one hundred percent remote working or at least eighty percent remote working, like four days a week. But my point is that the thing I saw that that makes me makes me cock my head. It's not the ones that are like, damn it, I gotta go back to the office. I understand, that's frustrating. We pull your pants up and get over it. It's the ones that are like, well, four years ago, I moved like one hundred miles away, and now I gotta Now I'm gonna lose my job or this that and the other. I can't remote work anymore. And it's like. If before the pandemic in air quotes, you were going in the office five days a week, and then because of you know, big scary things, we all started working from home. What made you believe that selling your house and moving one hundred miles further away was a long term decision to make when it seemed like sooner or later we were probably gonna have to go back to the office because the pandemic was going to end eventually. Most people don't think or plan long term. Most people are fucking dumb. Nick. Yeah, I mean, well, look a what do you mean? Yeah, I mean look at this. Look at the results of any standardized tests on the Chicago school district. Single digit percentages of graduating students can read. It varies depending on who you who you talk to, but it's it's not even half, it's not even a quarter are considered literate. Good job. These are These are the people that are voting and working with you, because it's not just people in Chicago. I need a co host that doesn't like kick me in the nuts at the end of an episode. You're welcome, Bud, I'm here to disappoint. I wouldn't say disappointed, more frustrated, because you're not wrong, but I wish I was. Yeah, I wish it was. So is there any form of government we missed? We started with our own. We went to direct democracy, which is just tieranny and the majority. We went to communism, social and which is tyranny of the minority, and then fascism, which is kind of like socialism where it's tyranny of the minority. If you're oh, oligarchy, we totally missed that one. Oh yeah, well that's anarchy, the absence of government the whole start. I know, just stick with me on this. So oligarchy is going to end up just like all the other forms of tyranny because a small a small group people gets all the power and they wield it for themselves and that ends. Yeah. But well, but what started this episode in the first place was a discussion about anarchy. And I have really upset my anarchist friends in the past, and I'm gonna upset them again. So anarchy, I argue, I think successfully is literally impossible in a group of three people. Or more correct, because I would argue even with two people, it's impossible I mean, you're gonna have somebody that is the more dominant personality that is going to take charge and make more decisions than the non strongman dictatorship. In other words, yeah, and it only takes it takes five minutes in a room full of people to figure out who's the person that's making the decision. But yeah, that is where I always like kick my anarchist friends in the nuts. Is I'm like, because they're. Always like, yeah, we shouldn't have government, and I'm like, yeah, it's not possible. I'm like looking impossible. Look, the idea is to have the absolute minimum amount of government possible to maintain a functional society. Well, but it's human nature and a form of a government, and I can prove it is by the fact that every society has formed a government. But I argue, it's not even it's not even society, it's not even people. It's freaking complex mammals. Yes, even non mammalian complex creatures do it. But yeah, Philip, let's let's think about this a pride of lions, because I wouldn't say tigers. Tigers are much more solitary, but even they basically self segregate according to like this is my territory, that's your territory. You stay out of it. But the only way that those liones get upheld is because of constant like border check violence. Yeah, and like, but a pride of lions, you have all you have one that's in charge and then he kind of like rules the roost. And even then the females are you really the ones that are in charge because they have all the breeding rights. And if you think you're gonna if you think you're gonna, fortunately breathe with an angry lioness, but you need to watch some national geographic I mean you you you are not going to like how that ends. You're gonna get bitten places you wish you didn't. Works that way for angry human females as well. Anyway, different discussion. But so like lions, schools of fish, freaking schools of dolphins, any any any animal that has large groups of communal living, they ends up being some kind of hierarchy system, you know. And what is a hierarchy, it's primitive form of government, form of government. So my argument to the anarchists that always say like, well, we just shouldn't have any government, as I'm like, well, in a in a vacuum is a theoretical exercise that falls on its face, because even a bunch of monkeys will make a form of government if you leave them alone. There's usually a dominant creature whenever, whatever one it happens to be, will buy whatever criteria you judge. There's usually one that's in charge, and everything else either cooperates or gets removed as an obstacle. Yes, yeah, so you know. That's the longest short of it. It to me. I blame Nick for this episode entirely, because that's fine. It started off with just an argument about government, and somehow we got here. Here was fun. Here was fun. I don't know when we're gonna do it. I was thinking the other day about doing like an ask Me anything, but we would have to get lots of listener participation. Otherwise that would just end up with the two of us being drunken morons for an hour. Well we've done that before, I know. But a drunken moron with a topic that works and a drunken moron just sitting around waiting for Bee able to ask the questions is not entertaining, and I try to be entertaining. We could start crowdsourcing it, and then when we felt we had enough questions, do the thing. I'm not in we might have to do it that way, but I'm not in favor of that, just because I get it. If we know the questions in advance, it's not as much like it's not off the cuff. And that's really what I'm atter. You can wait, Collid the question. No, no, no, no no. I think I might have just figured it out. It is do it at summer camp. Wait, no, we don't today Right now? Is May the seventh. Okay, the twentieth anniversary of this show is coming up in the twentieth twentieth you mean tenth tenth, yes, tenth whoops, tenth anniversary. I don't know exactly when, but it's August the Something, August the something I will. I mean, I've got the records. I'm just I've been I've been basing my brain and bringing whisky for an hour. I'm not I can't recall that out of nowhere. But we should just the something. But we should. We should do that. We should plan it out in advance. Let everybody know the tenth anniversary of the show. It'sn't ask me anything. We do it live, and it'll be in August, which will be after summer. Absolutely breat Andrew into getting on. Well, that was the air thing, and I'm thank you for reminding me. So I talked to Andrew literally yesterday. Oh good, he's doing First of all, he's doing well. He need to hear it, and he mentioned he was he want he. Needed to check his schedule at work because he's gonna start He's going to start like putting kind of pins on the calendar as far as what days he can come back to the show without putting all his business down the street like a couple of busy boy. Well, and when right about the time, it was about a few months before we brought you onto the show, his work schedule went to eleven And when that happened, like that, that normal time block we had nice consistent where we would get on every week and do the show like you and I do that went away. So then we started having to like flex the day around a bunch. And that was also right about the time we started doing live streaming. And it's really hard to build a live bodience and no one ever knows when to show up to it truth and it just got harder and harder and harder to work our schedules together. And that was when we brought you Nick on and that was fun and awesome. But Andrews said he wants to come back to the show, and like I told him last time, I'm like I I literally have like admin credentials for all three of us absolutely, so he can come back literally whenever he wants. But he might know us booze and cigars. Yes, bribery is effective. The toll must be must be paid. It's true, all right, anything you want to slip in here before we go out the door. Government sucks. Our former government sucks less than everybody else's, but not by much. I think if we have to do it again, I mean do government again, Well, I think if we have to do this form of government again, I was about to say something very spicy. We need to beat people with wet noodles anytime they try to expand the federal government. Yeah, well you know we could, yeah constitutional amendment about clumsy bludgeonings for anyone that tries to expand the duties of government. I mean, we have constitutional amendments saying that the government can't fuck around everybody's gun rights, and that doesn't seem to have worked very well. So, I mean, it didn't work very well for the Indians, the Blacks, or the Irish for a minute there, didn't work well for the Japanese when they were all shoving off to carmon camps. Didn't work well for some Germans too well. Fuck yeah, I love I love watching the uh my my state. DA argue that Native America rules back from colonial times about selling guns to Native Americans and slaves is a basis for restricting gun rights today from citizens. Hooray, the DNC arguing racism. Yeah, and I argue that the rooftop Koreans gave us the most perfect example of why everyone needs to have guns, because a bunch of you and a bunch of your neighbors smoking people off of rooftops with They didn't even shoot anybody, they just threatened to shoot people. Well, there's always next time. There's always next time. All right, let's pack it up, go out the door. Matter of Facts podcast is heading out. Happy Mother's Day to all you ladies, and we'll talk to y'all another week. By everybody today h