Why This Libertarian Loves Living in a Nuclear-Armed Superpower

I actually thought this one would be a little bit more divisive. You and I both agreed, and it looks like most of the audience agreed. I I think I maybe cheated a little bit on that one, because I just said necessitates payments, and I didn't say taxation, so maybe I maybe I could. Well, it was like the rights question. So yeah. Uh so I mean, I uh I uh and because we were you were talking about national defense, you know, just in your in your answer there, and it's like I at at this like nations are real, war is real, like this stuff is real, and uh, you know, if your nation is going to exist, it's gonna have to defend itself. And if we're talking about defending itself in modernity, that's not I that's not gonna be a bunch of people, uh a purely voluntary force where people are bringing their guns from home.

You know, I I can't I think I probably would have been disgusted with myself ten years ago if I could go back in time and then this that Austin would have heard what I'm about to say right now. But I love living in a nuclear armed superpower. And and I'll tell you why, because now that I've I've become more worldly, and as I've as I've built relationships with libertarians around the world, libertarians around the world are not like libertarians in the United States. And I think that I've I've realized what our problem is. We have first world problems. So a first world problem, a good example of that, or what some people call a luxury beliefs, right? When it comes to foreign policy, we have something of a luxury belief because we sleep under the cloak of nuclear protection and the American military, which can defend American citizens uh at almost anywhere in the globe.

Now, when I talk to my friends in Argentina, who are working with Javier Millet to spread his libertarian ideals, they remember the bombings of the 1990s, the AMIA bombings from uh that was from Iran's proxies. And the Argentine libertarians are celebrating Trump's attack on Iran because they look at it as a payback for the f the intervention that Iran and Hezbollah committed in the 1990s to attack their citizens' civilians. They don't have the they don't have the capability to fight back. The United States actually has the capability to fight back. It's better to live in a country that can defend you than in a country that can't. And Javier Malay understands this. This is why Javier Malay on foreign policy, if you look at his foreign policy, he would be a neocon by by the standards of American libertarians.

Because his foreign policy is pro-US, pro-Israel, pro-national defense. He's an anarcho-capitalist who's buying F 16s. He's not spending the money, though. You know, it's like it's a little he's he's right. He's playing Argentinian policy. Well, like okay. Maybe I but national defense is a public good. I like it. It does necessitate payments from residents. So and I don't know what form of taxation you think is the most legitimate. I think some taxes are better and worse than others. I I think I probably wouldn't be so vociferous and outspoken a libertarian if government only stole money from me for the things like roads or national defense. But instead they use it to indoctrinate our kids in schools, it get involved in social policy. And there if Milton Friedman believed that this was a public good.

The necessit I mean, was he a neocon? No, I think I think all libertarians actually tend to agree that national defense is a public good in the sense that I we can't exclude if I'm in the nation, I can't be excluded from receiving it. And so I can free ride if you're paying for national defense. Like the Amish. And I don't. The Amish are f the butt against free riders. But I I still think you know, they don't pay the income tax. Well, they're also the most successful anarchists. They are the most, and that's a wonderful thing. And that experiment of anarcho-capitalism could only exist in the United States. There's no Amish in Iran. Uh so look, I think your point about how uh look even with the US military, I would argue overspending to a substantial degree. It's you know, eight percent of federal spending currently, or ten percent of federal spending currently.

It's a contain, you know. So if imagine if we had um, you know, a defense that was half the size, and that was, you know, the majority of our tax money. Your tax bill would be, you know, one one twentieth of what apparently. Um and that that certainly seems pretty good to me. Uh I think we should I I you know, I don't I think libertarians, and maybe I'm gonna be the LOL bird on the stage here compared to you, and that's fine if that's the role I'm gonna play. But I, you know, I I think we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that it is better when we do things voluntarily. So you know, even if we're gonna bite the bullet and say, look, um, you know, we have like national defense is a public good, we can't exclude people from getting it, and so yeah, that we're gonna charge a head tax or some really small tax to and we bite that bullet, we you know, we should still be avoiding that.

That still comes with downsides. That still comes with this thing that can, you know, metastasize and grow and can you know waste our money and can we can have this you know misalignment between the military and the and the public and these kinds of things. So, you know, I think I think I will bite the bullet and agree with this one as I did in my answer, but I think that we do have to at the same time, like we don't we don't want to become too rah-rah about it. We want to keep it small, and we also want to, when possible, find ways to do it that are more voluntary. I think we're gonna come back to this one, but to me, it is better if people volunteer for the military than are coerced. It is better if the military is like we could Apple could like be on the side of the bombs. Like we could take like Amazon could sponsor.

No, no, I'm gonna I'm with you. But I mean, we do have that. I mean, Eric, I mean, Eric Prince, Blackwater, we have mercenaries, we have that. We have that's but that's funny. We don't we don't have voluntary warfare. Like we don't do we could we could say, oh, you oh, there's that many people that would, you know, wanna uh want to get involved in in these, you know, we crowded. Libertarians love to cite Eisenhower's speech, his final speech, his send-off, his warning about the military industrial complex. We all I know that by heart. But don't forget he said we are compelled to create this. We didn't have a choice, in other words, but then to create the military industrial complex. And what was what would be the other option? If you didn't create a public-private partnership, right? If you didn't create the RAN Corporation, Boeing, Lockheed, Grumman, then what's the alternative?

The government builds the planes, the bombs, the tanks? Or should private companies be the ones building the planes, the bombs, the tanks? We were forced to build the military industrial complex. The question is can we create a national security protocol that's like it's like having a dog? You ever see a woman and she's walking a pit bull and she obviously has no capability of controlling that animal. And you just think to yourself, if that dog wanted to kill anybody, she couldn't stop it. Right. I I sometimes think of our national defense as like the woman with the put the pit bull, right? Maybe you need to like have something that you can actually manage or control or have an ability to control, right? So we have to have a national defense that can kill anything that moves, but that we can actually control it and ensure that, like Eisenhower warned that it doesn't disrupt our democratic processes.

Alright.