David Ansara: The only problem with Orania, is that there aren't more of them.

When the lights go out and the basics stop working, most people either rage at politics or retreat into cynicism. We chose a third option: talk honestly about what freedom requires when the state centralises power, fails at delivery, and still asks for more control. David Ansara from the Free Market Foundation joins us for a wide-ranging, South Africa grounded conversation on classical liberalism, individual rights, and why the rule of law is supposed to restrain whoever holds office.

We dig into decentralisation as more than a slogan. From the economic calculation problem to the simple “shoe test”, we explore why central planners cannot reliably allocate resources, and why decision-making closer to communities improves accountability. We compare models like Switzerland’s cantons, America’s drift towards bigger federal government and debt, and the way supranational bureaucracy can collide with local legal traditions. Then we go further into the messy reality of international law, sovereignty, and why enforcement often depends on power rather than principle.

Democracy also gets a hard look. We talk about majoritarian reflexes, constitutional limits, and the “skin in the game” problem, using South African flashpoints like National Health Insurance and expropriation without compensation to ask what counts as legitimate government action versus coerced taking. We close on the most practical thread of all: state-proofing. Bitcoin, permissionless innovation, and local problem-solving such as solar, boreholes, security, and skills training point to a way forward that does not wait for Pretoria to change.

If you got value from this, subscribe, share it with a friend, and leave a review so more South Africans can find the conversation.

https://x.com/DavidAnsara

https://freemarketfoundation.com/

Links:

www.bitcoinforbusiness.io

X: @gavingre

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Primal: GavinBGreen@primal.net

NOSTR: npub12qv07tpwk8x8fy2uuqczghpappap395npuxvsx8pgksh97pezv7s8r7qta

Transcript

State Proofing As A Starting Point

SPEAKER_01 0:00

And state proofing is about kind of building systems outside of the state, this idea of permissionless action, of localization as well, that your community, your immediate environment, that's where you can make the biggest difference and solve things, and then you can scale up from there. Um, so yeah, so I think South Africans, because of state failure, they've they've sort of understood this intrinsically. They people have solar panels on their roofs and boreholes in their gardens. Those are modular kind of solutions. Um I think what's really interesting in South Africa at the moment is how can we build scalable solutions to state failure.

Welcome And Why Freedom Matters

SPEAKER_00 0:43

Hey there everybody, welcome back to the show. This is the Straight Note Chaser Podcast where we talk about human freedom through money, technology, economics, and philosophy. Today's show we are talking to David Ansara from the Free Market Foundation. David and his guards at the Free Market Foundation are a policy think tank organization where they talk about the state of the economy, states of the markets, come up with recommendations, uh, talk to politicians, talk to industry leaders, and put forward ideas for markets to be more free, more fair, more open, and in that way, uh how we can benefit and get the most out of the economy that we have at the moment. Uh we talk about things like is democracy dead? Is the state run in an optimal way at the moment? Uh, what is the optimal version of a state? Is it more centralized? Is it decentralized? Uh let's look at examples from the two extremes to which ones seem to offer the best way forward. Uh fantastic chat, and as always, I know you guys will love it. Excellent. Uh David and Sara, my friend, nice to see you again. Um, welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_01 2:14

Gavin Green, it's an absolute pleasure to be with you again. And I can't remember when we spoke last, but I do remember it was a fantastic conversation. So I'm really looking forward to this one.

SPEAKER_00 2:24

I think it was sometime last year when we chatted, uh, last chatted on the podcast, but uh we obviously saw each other at Adopting Bitcoin down in Cape Town. Uh, that was my first visit over there. I remember you were a speaker. I enjoyed your uh your conversation. And actually, that was the first time we've met face to face. So uh nice to go to these events where you can actually see people that you normally just look at on the screen. Uh so that was really cool.

SPEAKER_01 2:49

Yeah, no, I think during COVID, people made the most of digital connectivity and Zoom and all those things, and podcasts like yours and the ones that I was doing at the time, they really took off. But there is no replacement for an in-person interaction, looking somebody in the whites of their eyes and and talking over a meal. And yeah, just shout out to the adopting bitcoin team. That was a really top-class event, and my it was my second event. I think it was your first time there. Uh, but yeah, really just an amazing platform for Bitcoin developers, entrepreneurs, and uh civil society also had quite a significant presence there. So it was great to represent the Free Market Foundation and talk about state proofing and Bitcoin and how that tool can actually help to advance freedom in South Africa and elsewhere.

SPEAKER_00 3:42

So, the Free Market Foundation, um, you head up that organization. Um, and if I had to describe it in one word, uh libertarian, maybe might be a word that comes to mind. Um, and but maybe I'm wrong. Uh, what is the Free Market Foundation? And is it a libertarian thing? And if so, what does libertarian actually mean? Or am I completely wrong?

SPEAKER_01 4:08

Yeah, so I suppose you could classify the Free Market Foundation as libertarian, but it's part of, I would say, the broader liberal tradition or the classical liberal tradition. I think libertarian is a term that has emerged in the United States to differentiate people who have an orientation towards liberty from those who are which we would otherwise call progressives, who are actually more socialist in their inclinations. So, and so if you think of what differentiates uh a libertarian or classical liberal from, say, a conservative or a social democrat or a socialist or a Marxist is really a focus on the primacy of the individual. So individual rights, individual freedoms. And the thesis there is that enabling people to define their own identity, to pursue their own ends unhindered by government interference or any other form of coercion is the best way to order a complex society, and that applies to social relations, but also economic relations. So uh libertarians tend to have a free market perspective, uh, they want individuals in a market, whether that's people or firms, uh, to be able to decide who to trade with, on what terms they agree to that. There's a big debate in our circles around what is the appropriate role of the state, and often that is what these discussions come down to. And because the state is the entity with the greatest monopoly on organized violence, if you want to put it crudely, and and that is a a grave responsibility, but also a power that can be easily abused. So liberals, I think, have a very healthy skepticism towards state power. They see that power can corrupt and uh absolute power can corrupt absolutely, to paraphrase Lord Acton. And so the mechanisms, the design of governance often has these checks and balances, uh abilities to uh hold powerful people to account, uh, as opposed to say a monarchical system or an authoritarian system where there'd be an individual or a small group that would make decisions on behalf of others. So, really, a lot of it comes down to decision-making power. Are you a free agent? And also, do you have individual moral agency as well? So you have freedom, but you also have personal responsibility, and large, large part of that responsibility is is towards others. Um, and so a very important role for the state, and again, this is much debated in libertarian or classical liberal circles, um, is uh really a kind of minimal conception of the state where the state is there as a as a kind of a night watchman to adjudicate disputes between people because sometimes we fight with each other, we have disagreements, and you need uh a court system, a neutral, a body that can apply the law, the rule of law, uh impartially, independently. And so, yeah, so that's why constitutionalism and the rule of law is a big part of our worldview, um, and that the laws there are not just uh the discretionary decisions of a bunch of bureaucrats or politicians, uh, that the law actually sits independently. There's uh uh a principle of natural law, uh inherent rights that are inalienable, inviolable, um, and that apply to everyone universally. Um, so I think that's the the philosophy in a nutshell. Um, so that's why when we make policy recommendations as a think tank, that's what we do, um, they're not only about what's the most efficient or uh what uh is the most uh cost effective. It's actually going to rooted in a very long uh philosophical tradition that says that you should make decisions around economic relations or or or social interactions with a view to kind of protecting and upholding the rights of individuals. And that's often in contrast to to groups. So um I think uh when you think of particularly a plural society like South Africa, you would often have people making essentialist claims or arguments about uh you know one race group thinks this way, and uh this is how this ethnic group views the world, or uh this linguistic uh uh group of people, this is uh what what their um interests are. And so liberalism tries to cut through that and to say, well, actually, at the end of the day, we're all individuals. Um we might have different cultural practices, different uh preferences and ways of of seeing the world, but uh at the end of the day, there's a kind of a universal uh set of rights and and obligations that uh that that flows through all of us. Um so yeah, so that so that's the the kind of the philosophy in a nutshell.

South Africa’s Culture Of Liberty

SPEAKER_00 9:39

Cool. Well, thanks for that. Um so I mean liberty, uh you know, the Americans famously almost seem to have co-opted that term. You know, everything is you know, freedom, uh the right, freedom, liberty, and blah, blah, blah, the rest of whatever they say. Um, and it does seem to be a very red-blooded American, uh, you know, gunslinging uh sort of thing. Uh, and I know that the the US always likes to point back to, you know, they fought the Brits off and they fought the Spanish and they fought the French and you know, they got their country going. And uh so uh liberty seems to be something almost enshrined as an idea. Uh, I'm sure different parties have a different idea as to what that actually means, though. But you know, South Africa also comes from a background of uh immigrants, uh, you know, the French Huguenots and the 1820 settlers, and through the years there have been these like waves, uh, you know, the Dutch arriving in the Cape and all that sort of thing. So uh in some ways, South Africa does seem to be quite similar uh to the US, uh, a relatively new-edge country, uh, largely populated uh or uh populated a lot by Europeans. Um but do you think we have that same liberty culture here in South Africa that uh the American sort of flag waving, you know, gunslinging, sort of uh Statue of Liberty and all that, that whole culture that goes with it? Uh is that something that South Africans find important or identify with?

SPEAKER_01 11:13

Well, I think you've highlighted some parallels between South Africa and the United States. So uh I mean the United States was formed as a as a union in in 1776, that was the the independence, um, and uh, you know, the Dutch settlement started here in 1652. I mean, obviously, settlement occurred a lot earlier in in North America, but I guess you could say that both the United States and South Africa are part of the new world and also frontier societies. And I think uh a frontier mentality uh involves a certain undercurrent of uh uh a devotion and a love for freedom, right? Um and you know, you think of the kind of the vast open savannas uh that people had to travel through, often at great personal risk. Uh, you know, if you just think of the mythology of the the great trick and uh what that entailed. Uh and yeah, I've been reading Haman Chilemir's uh The Afrikaners, a biography of the people. And the the whole time I've been reading this book, I've been thinking, wow, this would make for a fantastic set of like Wild West movies, because uh the amount of uh kind of intricate stories not just of conflict but also of cooperation. And uh, you know, so I think uh and also if you think of the context of the Dutch, even the Dutch settlement, I mean, when Jan van Rubick arrived in 1652, he was there under the auspices of the Dutch East India Company. But it was only within about a decade or so that the free burgers uh started breaking off and and and uh abandoning the company and uh settling on their own, um, and often at odds with the interests of the Dutch East India Company, and there were a lot of fights between them, and and so that tension between the authority of the company and the and the settlers, I mean, you mentioned the the French Huguenots, they were fleeing persecution in France uh from the Catholics. And so, you know, they had a sense of, well, you know, this is their only shot, and they need to come and make it happen. So, and you know, that's the the kind of the Dutch settlement, but I mean if you look at at other communities, you know, uh in in South Africa, um, you know, with also also with kind of strong traditions, autonomous uh set of uh kind of rules and and and practices. I mean if you just think of the story of the establishment of the Zulu Empire under Shaka Zulu, which who really consolidated and and and built uh the Zulu Empire. Um and yeah, so you know, there's I think and if you zoom into to current day, and if you look at the the struggle for uh individual freedom and the resistance against apartheid, which was kind of an abrogation of people's personal liberties, you know, there was a sense of well, you know, that there is something fundamentally unjust about a system of forced segregation and denying people the rights of freedom of association, denying property rights. Um so yeah, South Africa is a kind of a mixed story because if you look at other African countries that don't necessarily have a tradition of private property rights. And private property rights, another important principle that we espouse here at the Free Market Foundation. And uh we actually, just as a sidebar discussion, have a fantastic project called the Khaya Lum Project where we uh assist low-income South Africans to obtain title deeds from municipalities at no cost to themselves. And uh often it's the uh former tenants of a council-owned property, the council no longer owns the property, they're the owners, these tenants, but they don't have the documentary evidence. So uh one of our initiatives is to basically assist with that transfer process. So we have a philosophical commitment to private property rights, but also a very practical commitment to it. Um, but yeah, so in some ways, South Africa is a bit of a unique case in the African context because a lot of other African countries lack this private property rights framework, which is so important. But in South Africa we we had this system, but it was unevenly applied. Um, and not everybody benefited from, you know, if you think of the Group Areas Act and the Native Lands Act, um, you know, that actually systematically deprived existing property owners of their property. And you know, there's a lot of archaeological history and evidence of you know, uh contracts that were signed between various communities, and uh, you know, so there there is this kind of emergent uh tradition. Um, so and I mean if you look at post-1994, I think South Africans have a kind of a healthy skepticism towards authority. Maybe it's they overdo it a bit too much because we also have uh quite a lot of violent criminality, and you know, we we you know also need to have a system that preserves uh people's rights and and freedoms, and that is an important role for for the government to play. Um, but yeah, you know, I think if you compare South Africa to say other industrialized countries during COVID, for example, there was a lot of non-compliance with actually quite onerous and coercive laws, like shutting down the whole economy and and so on. And so I think that that rebellious spirit, I think, was quite healthy in those circumstances. So, like, actually, we're not gonna uh necessarily abide by what we view as an unjust law. Uh, yeah, so but at the same time in South Africa, we also have our policy orientation is is very socialist as a country, you know, so there's a lot of tendencies to centralize and control. And so, you know, liberty is something uh to be contested over, and and uh if you value it, you need to fight for it. And and often politicians uh want to they have an interest in depriving you of your decision-making power, um, and especially if there's resources on the line. So, yeah, so that was a a bit of a um a high-level abstract answer to your question, but uh yeah, there's a kind of a spirit here which I think does appreciate freedom, but I think we need to make that more real for a lot more people.

SPEAKER_00 17:38

Well, I thought one of the nice ways to introduce the listeners that aren't familiar with the Free Market Foundation was to just chat about some of the articles and topics that uh you guys publish uh uh quite a lot of content on your website, uh, news pieces, opinion pieces, uh thought pieces, that sort of thing. And I thought it'd be great to just grab one or two of the headlines of those and just chat about it. Uh I'm hoping that everyone that listens, whichever side of the fence you lean on, whether you're more conservative or whether you're more liberal, uh whatever that means these days, I think those uh distinctions uh seem to change quite a bit. Uh, but something that everyone uh would uh be interested in listening to. So the one topic that came up was something uh, and I'm gonna just credit the author, Ayanda Zulu, wrote a piece on time to rethink the case for decentralization. Now, um uh obviously as a Bitcoiner, decentralization has a very strong um uh understanding. Uh I mean that's literally part of the protocol of Bitcoin, but in philosophical terms, uh governance terms, uh how do you see decentralization versus centralization? Um, I I think we spoke a little bit about it. Uh you mentioned bits of it um just now. But why is there a question? Should we decentralize more or should we centralize more?

SPEAKER_01 19:06

Yeah, so I think there's a practical component to that, and then there's also more of a theoretical component. So I think on the theoretical side, like I was saying, if if you want to foster an environment which has a bias towards freedom, often in terms of the way in which politics operates and which government is structured, is there is a great tendency towards centralization and control. And the the apex or the the the most uh the highest form of this is a communist society, like if you think of this the Soviet Union uh from 1917 until 1989. Um literally there were no private property rights, so everybody was a ward of the state. So you were told where to live, where to go to school, where to work. Uh the state owned everything. Um, there was no private ownership, there was no private money. Um the in every good and service that you needed to sustain life, you had to rely on the state for. And that gave enormous power and control to politicians. And this resulted in the immiseration of hundreds of millions of people, if you include uh the People's Republic of China and other communist countries during the Cold War, uh, as well as the deaths of many people. Um, so if you read a book like The Gulag Archipelago, I mean you will see a catalogue of misery and suffering of many thousands of people who were deemed to be dissidents against the state, who were just rounded up and put into labor camps and basically in freezing conditions forced to uh work themselves often to death. Um, and economically, this was also very devastating because you would you wouldn't have a market mechanism for allocating scarce resources, um, and scarcity is a big part of economics and the reality of it, um, and no price mechanism. So uh there was no ability for producers to understand what demand was and how much to produce. So that task was left to these committees of often very clever people, like actuaries and statisticians and so on, who would get together every year and decide how many shoes are we going to produce for the whole of the USSR? And they would come up with a number, nine million pairs of shoes, or whatever the case might be. And they were always wrong. They either uh created a glut of supply, they produced too many shoes, andor they there was a scarcity. And if you look around you in any capitalist society, you'll see pretty much everybody's wearing shoes. And if you want to go and buy a pair of shoes. Right now, you can go down the street to the uh to the Tucky town or whatever the case might be, and you can have your choice of hundreds of different types of shoes. And they're just magically sitting there waiting for you to purchase them. And no central planner has has determined that. No one says, well, this year Gavin's gonna want to wear crocs because they're fashionable and comfortable. Um, it's just that is the the process of supply and demand. Um, so decentralization is also there's a kind of a cognitive or an epistemic humility to it that says that actually it's impossible for even the most enlightened and well-intentioned central planners to know what the multiple and varied interests and needs are of people in a highly plural society. And you know, just the vagaries of fashion, the weather, um, the different needs uh that people might have, just to return to this example of shoes. You know, there's so many different types of shoes. I like running, so my wife complains that I buy too many running shoes and they all scatter around the house. Some people need heavy-duty workmen's shoes, some people just want uh different kinds of shoes for aesthetic purposes, but in a centrally planned economy, you can't you can't really anticipate all of those different needs. Um, so how does this relate to decentralization? Well, uh Friedrich Hayek, who is uh an Austrian economist, who was he was born in 1899, I believe, and yeah, very active, he had a long life, and um he basically wrote about uh the the fallacy of of central planning and why it will always uh lead to uh miscalculations. Um and I think it was him, maybe it was von Mises who spoke about the economic calculation problem. I think it was von Mises, um, that the it's impossible for for you to really fully quantify an economy. And I think one of the perils of modern day contemporary economics is very dependent on modeling and econometrics, and it's obsessed with data, and I think data is important, and it's good to understand some of those trends, but you can never get the level of granularity and detail that you need. Uh, and even if you could, you you you still couldn't engage in central planning effectively enough. So that's kind of the theory around decentralized centralization, but yeah, there's also uh it uh applies not only to the the economic realm, but to the way in which governance is actually structured. Um and you know, by contrast to the USSR, you had like a system, for example, in Switzerland, where you have uh a federate, highly federated system of cantons, which are almost small municipalities, but which have a very high degree of decision-making power, even around things like taxation um and and other kind of regulations and and uh municipal rates and things like that. And so, yeah, so people in the Bitcoin community, like there's some cantons in Switzerland that are very pro-Bitcoin. Um, and what's always interesting, I think, is if you look at a country like Switzerland, Gavin, can you tell me who is the president of Switzerland?

SPEAKER_00 25:33

I have absolutely no idea.

SPEAKER_01 25:35

Well, that makes two of us, because I don't know either. Uh, but the reason we don't know is because it's a rotating system. So the presidency is actually not a particularly powerful office in Switzerland. Um, and there's almost like a federal council that that basically governs Switzerland. And Switzerland's very interesting because it's also a very multilingual, multi-ethnic society, right? You have French speaking, Swiss, German-speaking, Italian-speaking, you even have the Romance, the Roma people. Um, and so there I often point to Switzerland as a kind of a model example of a country which has a very healthy appreciation for freedom. Uh, you know, you mentioned the gun toting Americans, but the Swiss are also gun toters. Everybody has a firearm in their in their in their basement or their attic. Um, but it's also a very peaceful society and uh a place which has a very high degree of economic freedom as well, uh tendency towards lower taxation, uh less regulation, uh kind of freer banking system. Uh there's a big uh kind of gold tradition there as well, um, which I think speaks to some of your interests in sound money. Um, but yeah, the decentralization, I mean, there are many federal states like the United States, is another example where you actually have states competing on uh on tax policies. I mean, you may have heard about companies like these Silicon Valley companies, you know, like moving from California to Florida or or Tennessee. Um, and that I think fosters a very healthy degree of internal competition within a country. Um, but then there's this tension between the the states and the federal government, like you know, when you watch the the detective movies, and then you know, the detective is doing his work and then the feds have shown up, you know, now they're interfering in the case. You know, that's a kind of a classic tension between the states and the federal government. And unfortunately, what we have seen in the United States is a much greater acceleration of the growth of the federal government, and that's resulted in huge accumulation of deficits and debts on behalf of the federal government. Uh, there's a big government bureaucracy, a military uh that needs to be maintained and paid for. So you have a debt burden of I think the number is about 38 trillion US dollars at the moment, which I can't I can't even imagine how big that is. And there's there's something called the debt clock where you can go online and you can see the debts increasing in real time, and the numbers go. And um, yeah, so um I think what's interesting is technology and our modern world has actually created conditions for the potential for more decentralization, where you could have more city-states like charter cities or special economic zones that can establish and compete globally. But at the same time, you also have this greater tendency towards centralization as well, even in free societies, like if you think of something like the European Union, that is a supranational entity, uh, which I think originally was intended to foster free trade and and lower barriers to internal trade within the union and freedom of movement, but has now become this kind of super bureaucracy, which is also stifling trade and stifling innovation. Um, but we can maybe get into that a little bit later. So, so yeah, that's a long answer to why decentralization matters. I think you decision-making power is best when it is spread down and out, and it also creates a diffusion of power and accountability. Um, and I think that's very important for the preservation of individual rights is when you have an organization or an entity that has resources, it has decision-making authority, you can actually solve problems on the ground in your locality a lot better than a distant bureaucrat in Pretoria or Brussels or Washington, DC. And often when you have a highly centralized system, it creates these perverse incentives to basically capture the levers of the state, because that's the biggest and the only game in town. And so we obsess in South Africa rightly so about corruption. But corruption in a way is a feature of this highly concentrated system that we have. But we can unpack that a little bit more if you like.

SPEAKER_00 30:40

Yeah, just a thought that came to mind when you were talking. I mean, uh you've just explained quite clearly why centrally planned economies don't work. And yet uh, you know, here we have governments that are trying to uh increase their control and their uh their reach throughout the entire country. And it's just so interesting to me that we have these history lessons where these systems don't work, uh, and yet governments seem to naturally tend in that direction all the time. Um now you also mentioned the US and the military, which I thought is kind of interesting because another one of the topics that uh a recent article on the uh Free Market Foundation website was one called How Dictators Break International Law and Why It Matters to Liberty. And this was Tandarae uh Mafumo, who is the author there. Just want to once again credit the author with that. Uh so you know, we spoke about the US, we spoke about the military. You have this article about dictators and international law. So, my question, a couple of questions. Um is there such a thing as international law? And if so, who enforces this?

SPEAKER_01 31:54

So, Gavin, before I answer that, I think just uh a note on our writers. So it's actually quite an interesting feature of the Free Market Foundation. We have a decentralized model ourselves. So we have a kind of a small inner uh executive, but then we engage writers who share our philosophy and our worldview, and they write interesting pieces, and uh we help to place these articles in them in the media. We have our own platform as well, the Rational Standard. Um, so yeah, I don't want to be seen to be speaking on behalf of Tundraye. Um, and I haven't read that article, but I'm sure it's very good and worth worth uh checking out. Uh, you can tell how many articles we produce because I just uh even uh though I lead the organization, I haven't read all of them, um, but I probably should. Um, but yeah, Tundra is one of one of those uh writers that we work with. But yeah, so just on the topic of international law, I mean I think that that's very interesting because in many respects, you know, like I was saying earlier, law is, and we are adherents of this idea of natural law, that like if you think of during apartheid, there were lots of laws, but they were fundamentally unjust, right? Like uh it was the Group Areas Act was the law, it was legislation that was passed by the people who were in power, um, or the Population Registration Act, or or whichever uh odious piece of legislation you want to point to. Um, but those laws were an assault on the fundamental dignity and agency and and uh individual freedoms of many black South Africans. Um so there's almost like a higher constitutional order, and that's not necessarily represented by the constitution with a capital C. Um, it's you know, maybe you could say there's a kind of spiritual dimension to that or a philosophical dimension, but it's like the you don't need the government to grant you those rights, is the point. Uh those rights are inherent to you as a human being. Like your right of ownership of property is not just a policy decision to be granted or withdrawn based on the whims of some politician. Uh, it's you know, if if I come and uh take something that belongs to you, if I seize your house, I violated your your rights. Um so when we think about international law, I mean our approach to international affairs is what maximizes the amount of liberty in in the world or in various societies. And liberty also needs to be enforced, right? You need for a legal system to be functional and credible, you need an enforcement mechanism. Um, and you know, there's a lot of discussion at the moment about South Africa's sovereignty and oh, the United States is bullying us. But in many respects, I think if we look at what's happening in South Africa, I wouldn't say that liberty is flourishing because of some of the policy decisions that have been made by politicians. So if you think of a proposal like expropriation without compensation, that's a like I was explaining, a direct assault on your right of ownership. That the government could expropriate your property and not pay you a market-related rate for that is unjust. And it doesn't matter if uh the parliament passes this law with a majority or even 100% of all legislators um you know approving the the law, it's still wrong. So when we look at international law, we also have to say, well, who who enforces that? And in many respects, like it or not, the United States, since the end of the Second World War has been the primary enforcer of the global trade system, of the international uh political order as well. And so many countries, when they are opposed to the conduct of the current administration, they you know they say, well, you're acting uh in direct conflict with international law. But you know, who has determined what those laws are? And uh, you know, there is a I think an issue there that underlines it of you know who are these authorities that supposedly proclaim to be the custodians of international law. And you might say the International Criminal Court or the International Court of Justice. So the ICC, I think, focuses on the conduct of individuals, the ICJ is on nation states. I think they're just a caveat, I'm not a lawyer. So some of the the kind of legal experts at the FMF would probably be better people to speak to on this topic. Um but yeah, so who has the authority? I mean, I mentioned the European Union earlier, and there's something called the the European Union uh the human rights, um, the cook human rights court. But often that court is is going against making rulings that contradict the kind of emergent legal traditions of many of the member states. And like if you think of when the United Kingdom was part of the EU, I mean, English common law is a tradition that developed over basically like a thousand years of iterations uh of various cases being and having uh judges, magistrates applying their mind to working out these ambiguities in the law and and establishing precedents around that. And then you have the uh Court of Human Rights in wherever it is in Strasbourg or wherever, I can't even remember, uh, you know, making proclamations about what the people in the United Kingdom uh should be doing uh based on a different legal tradition and set of codes. And I think that that created a lot of uh contradictions and tensions. So, yeah, so I'm actually a bit skeptical of the idea of of international law. I think like often uh it's unevenly applied, it's highly discretionary. I mean, you might remember uh when Omar Al-Bashir, uh the Sudanese dictator, visited South Africa, and basically the Rome statute, as far as I understood, compelled signatory states to uh to uh apprehend and and um uh and hold uh people who had been in violation of the international human rights law, and basically the South African government just said, well, no, we're just gonna let them go. And there was a big case here in South Africa about it, but they just openly defied that that court order or the international rules. So I think the international rules-based order is is kind of built on on sand rather than rock. I think it's it's it's really determined by the power of uh the the organizations or states that uh that back it. And so, yeah, I mean if you think of uh the situation in Venezuela, um here you had a socialist dictatorship, a once thriving middle class democracy in the form of Venezuela, the richest country in Latin America, that was essentially hijacked by a communist cabal, and eight million Venezuelans have fled into exile, the all of the oil revenues have been basically rediverted into the pockets of the Chavistas, uh, that term coming, of course, from Hugo Chavez, and then later Nicolas Maduro, his successor. And where was international law there? You know, there was international law coming to the defense of the people of Venezuela, and so when Maduro was arrested by the Americans in a kind of midnight uh special forces raid, there was a great hue and outcry about, oh, this is an infringement of the sovereignty of the Venezuelans and this is a violation of international law. But you know, ultimately Maduro was acting against American security and geostrategic interests, and so they were able to act. And I would say that I would argue that that was an action that was entirely justified under the framework of protecting and advancing liberty.

Democracy Versus Liberty And Property

SPEAKER_00 41:11

No, that that's I'm glad you mentioned that because uh I've often heard it said that uh dictators and communists get put in by uh the ballot box, you vote them in, and the only way to get them out is you know through the end of a gun. Uh, you've got to like basically shoot them to get them out. Um so uh, you know, one of the things uh like I wanted to ask you a question about democracy. Um is is democracy dead? Uh, you know, if we look at take the case of Venezuela, um, I'm sure they were a democratic country and they had these elections and these people got into power, and then you can't get them out. Um, and I think there's been many cases of around the world where you have an oppressive government for whatever reason and the people just can't get them out. So, at what point does democracy no longer work? And is there any way for democracy to be uh upgraded to like a version 2.0 where you say, well, taxpayers get more votes, or landowners get more votes, or owners of companies get more votes, or uh something where people that have got skin in the game get more of a say than say someone who's not paying tax? Uh they're evading the system, they're they're kind of benefiting from the system, they get free stuff, but they're not actually taxpayers, and uh they'll just keep voting the current incumbents in and you can't get them out. And at what point does democracy really just just fail? Or is that a healthy part of the democratic process?

Executive Power And Dangerous Precedent

SPEAKER_01 42:52

Yeah, so look, um democracy is complicated. I think if you had asked me this question when I was a student, I would have said, well, of course, democracy is a good thing, it has no downside and uh it's only upside. But I think the reality is a bit more complicated. And I think the term that you use there, skin in the game, is really vital. And, you know, to an extent, we don't have a pure democracy like the origins of democracy in Athenian uh Greece, ancient Athens, uh, where you had direct democracy, uh, where basically everybody would vote on everything. Um I'm simplifying now, but that was the essence of it. And that was a small city-state with a kind of vibrant intellectual tradition that we enabled that to happen. Um, what we have is a representative democracy. And I would say that when we evaluate the performance or the health or vitality of government, we need to say and use this lens or this rubric of is liberty being. Or is it being eroded? So that's my lens. Like, government is there to defend life, liberty, and property. So I think a good example is something like national health insurance, which everybody says, oh, is a great thing. We need uh universal health care, and like just uh accept it. But what does it actually entail? It involves essentially nationalizing private healthcare savings. Um, so there's a kind of a utilitarian argument which says, oh, well, we'll look at all these private savings, these kind of pots of money that people have voluntarily through their own after-tax income, they've put this money towards their uh private healthcare scheme. And the government wants to just now take those pots of money and apply it to the public system in the name of equity and redress. But I would say that that is actually a fundamental, I mean, that's theft basically. It's a form of expropriation with without compensation, just like EWC and property. Um, and I think that's a very good example of actually if you had to probably poll most people in South Africa, like uh some poor guy in Limpopo might say, Well, yeah, I've got nothing to lose, of course. I'd love to have NHI, I'd love to have free healthcare. But that involves the coercive use of state power to, against someone's will, take from a productive person and give it to somebody else. And that is, I think, in violation of that that very cherished and fundamental principle of liberty. So it doesn't mean that we shouldn't try very hard to come up with ways of improving access to healthcare. But even then, like access is not really a problem that we have in South Africa. You could argue we even we have universal healthcare already, but it's just not very good. So you might suffer a traumatic brain injury in a car accident, and you'd be admitted to a public hospital, and they would give you a panado and say, Well, here you go, off on your way. You've gotten healthcare access, but it's completely and woefully inadequate for the problem that you have. So you need specialized care in that regard. Um, so so yeah, so I think the danger with democracy is a kind of majoritarian reflex where we say, Well, just because most people have voted for something or the majority party endorses something, that they are somehow the custodians of the will of the entire state uh or the entire country, and that whatever they say goes. So, I mean, we have a constitutional system which has checks and power, checks and balances on those powers, and that is very important. So I don't think democracy in and of itself is necessarily a good thing, and you have many so-called democracies where there's regular elections. I mean, just north of our border of the Limpopa River is Zimbabwe, and they're very diligent about their elections, and uh they're not particularly free and fair elections, and once in power the the politicians uh abuse their citizens tremendously. Um, so so yeah, so I think what you need is this idea of a kind of this higher constitutional order, and really that that basic philosophy of does the system protect life, liberty, and property? And are you free to uh determine your own your own way of life, where you live, where you send your children to school, uh, how you engage in business, and the state is there to ensure that people don't violate the rights of others or commit fraud or or or theft against one another, and that's an important role. But other than that, it shouldn't be making determinations about what economic sectors to support, or uh you know, it shouldn't be overly taxing people to uh you know fund some kind of uh scheme or uh or project that it isn't really adding any value. So I think yeah, it's a very simple framework just to say, well, are you protecting life, liberty, and property as a government? And if not, uh you need to justify your your actions and your existence. So yeah, so democracy I think is complicated. Um, and it's not a it's not a panacea. Just because you can have democratic institutions doesn't mean that you're gonna solve some of these thorny and and and tricky issues.

SPEAKER_00 48:45

Yeah, uh so you know we spoke a bit about the US earlier, and I mean the US is a famous democracy, and yet uh Donald Trump seems to be invading uh you know Iran at the moment, and that is something that hasn't gone through Congress. It's basically an act of war. As far as I understand, Congress has to like approve any sort of military action. So there we have a famous democracy that is now almost looks like you know Donald Trump is acting like a dictator in this particular instance, uh, invading foreign countries, or they haven't got boots on the ground. Maybe you can't call it an invasion, but certainly military strikes against a foreign country. Uh, is that a dictator? You know, does that look like a dictator? Is that just an isolated case? Uh does it show how democracies don't always plan out as they plan or as you imagine them to? So don't question at you later in the interview.

Bitcoin And Building Parallel Systems

SPEAKER_01 49:43

Look, I would say that the United States is a rep, you know, it has representative government, and that's maybe distinct from democracy. Look, I mean, I think the the feature of growing executive power is something that is not exclusive to Donald Trump, it's part of the a broader trend. I mean, Barack Obama famously said, like, with my with my mobile phone and my pen, I will uh run this country, you know, and kind of openly defying uh Congress. Um, and yeah, I mean that goes back to George Bush, Bill Clinton, uh, etc. So um so I think that is part of a broader trend. And yeah, I think that was probably one of my uh reservations or criticisms about the war. I think I was broadly in support of the war because I think Iran has been a very bad global actor. Um, but you know, I think Donald Trump could have gotten some kind of in in principle approval from Congress, even if not, you know, his argument was, well, this would have uh revealed the and destroyed the element of surprise that was very much needed. But I think he could have gotten a broad mandate uh from legislators which who are there to represent the interests of different states. But um, yeah, so I think you've got to be mindful about also just because you might favor a politician, um, it's very tempting to say, well, you know, this time is different, and our politician is a good guy, and uh, you know, he's gonna use that power responsibly and judiciously, but you don't want to set a kind of a precedent, and you need to imagine that if your worst enemy were to come into power tomorrow, how would you want the system of rules and and uh and authority to be ordered? And so I think that's a generally a good way of approaching these kind of governance things. Imagine that that your worst enemy is in power.

SPEAKER_00 51:42

Yeah, um, I think that's a great way to wrap it up, David. I know uh we've uh running up on time at the moment. I actually had one more article I wanted to chat to you about, and in fact, it was one that you've authored, but maybe we'll save that for another day. I want to be respectful of your time. Uh, in terms of closing thoughts, any last comments from your side?

SPEAKER_01 52:03

Yeah, we didn't even get to talk about Bitcoin, Gavin. You know, like that's uh the the medium of freedom. Um, yeah, look, I think for Bitcoiners in the in your audience, um, I think there is a lot that Bitcoiners can learn from the kind of libertarian ethos, but I think also vice versa. I think this idea of permissionless innovation, of decentralization. Um I I like the the phrase that we heard at the Bitcoin conference that Bitcoin is a system of rules without rulers. And I think there is a really admirable and praiseworthy form of emergent order to that. Obviously, there was the white paper and Satoshi um who kind of set that in motion, but and but it's it's kind of hardwired into the code, and but there's a whole environment of innovation and human opportunity and human flourishing that has emerged from this. Um, and that's different to say the fiat system that we find ourselves in, where central banks have a lot of power, their interests are very much intertwined with the interests of politicians, um, and where the temptation to print money to finance large ongoing deficits is just so great. The political incentives are just hardwired. And um, yeah, Lynn Alden, the macroeconomist who's quite a bitcoiner who authored uh Broken Money, she says her phrase is this nothing stops this train, uh, which I think is is very pertinent. You know, what stops it, I guess, is is some kind of breakdown in the system. Um, but yeah, so I think what Bitcoiners have done and the spirit with which they've done it is really admirable in that they've built parallel systems. You don't have to necessarily operate within the prevailing paradigm, right? You can just build your alternative, and when you build it, people will see that and and be drawn to it. So I think that that's a really powerful, powerful lesson there. And yeah, you know, I think uh just reflecting on my paper that I presented at the Bitcoin conference was this idea of state proofing that the state doesn't necessarily always have your best interests at heart, and the state is not a neutral thing, it's populated by human beings who have all of the failings of human nature. They have limited knowledge, but also often incentives to abuse their power and authority. So, and state proofing is about kind of building systems outside of the state, this idea of permissionless action, of localization as well, that your community, your immediate environment, that's where you can make the biggest difference and solve things, and then you can scale up from there. Um so yeah, so I think South Africans, because of state failure, they've they've sort of understood this intrinsically. They people have solar panels on their roofs and boreholes in their gardens, but those are modular kind of solutions. Um, and I think what's really interesting in South Africa at the moment is how can we build scalable solutions to state failure, where you now have independent power production or uh security solutions and initiatives that can start to supplant some of these uh failing state entities. And I think there's so much opportunity in South Africa to do that, and and that's how we're gonna get out of some of these uh problems that we're in. I mean, and just before I came to this podcast recording, I was in downtown Joburg at the uh Maharishi Invincibility Institute, and this very entrepreneurial guy, Teddy Bletcher, he's got has a passion for youth development and skills development, and he's occupying the old Anglo-American building, and he's developed this incredible youth uh skills development and training center, and a lot of young people coming through there. There's a lot of innovation and real kind of energy in that building, and he's kind of doing it without a cent of government funding, and he's solving problems, they're solving security problems in that immediate vicinity, they're training security guards, and you know, they've I think have a working relationship with the government, and it's fairly healthy, but they're not waiting around for government to fix problems because if you wait around like that, you're gonna you're gonna be here a very long time and the problems are gonna be worse. And the people who created the problems aren't gonna be the ones that necessarily solve the problems. So I think there's what we're trying to encourage at the Free Market Foundation is a real spirit of uh self-actualization, uh intrinsic motivation, and actually a lot of these problems are solvable through human action and through um yeah, a bit of uh chutzpah and a bit of that uh love of freedom that we spoke about earlier.

SPEAKER_00 57:17

I think that's a great way to wrap it up. We started talking about freedom or liberty, and we're ending off on the topic of freedom. And I really enjoyed what you said about you can, and I'm probably paraphrasing a bit, but you can either waste your time fighting the system or you can just go ahead and build uh your own system or another system and put your energy there. Um, so that's certainly food for thought. I think we've got examples in South Africa of that, uh, as you mentioned, individual houses taking care of some things. We even have some uh, you know, uh areas like Irania. Uh, think of that as what you want, but that was a group of people at one point that just decided we're going to take care of ourselves. We're not going to rely on anybody to have to look after us. Uh, I kind of respect what they've decided to do there. Um uh in terms of just taking action, uh whatever you think about the state of Irania. But you know, just an example of people doing that.

SPEAKER_01 58:10

Um my only problem with Irania is that we don't have more of them. I think we should have a hundred different kinds of Iranias all around South Africa where communities take responsibility for their own affairs and they can determine how they run things, you know. And I think that also gives you a lot more pride and skin in the game to use that phrase that you used earlier. Um, and there's more local accountability and so on. And yeah, that can manifest in different ways, and there can be different cultural contexts to that, uh, different languages spoken. Um, and that's I think the mistake that a lot of people make is they kind of see that as a kind of uh reactionary thing, or um, but I think it's actually it's the opposite. It's about radical responsibility, it's about taking responsibility for for your own problems, your own affairs, and that radiates outwards. And that's actually how the kind of civilizational order is built in the first place. You know, the the country that we live in that we take for granted was built by our our ancestors, you know, and uh all of the things that we benefit from and enjoy now. So I think that's that's the flip side of freedom is is the responsibility that you have towards others. And that doesn't mean that you must just uh kind of slip into a kind of collectivism. You can still have a very strong sense of individualism uh in that, uh, but it's a voluntary association rather than a kind of a forced thing. And I think that that's quite an important distinction.

SPEAKER_00 59:43

Fantastic, David. Thank you so much for your time. I appreciate it. Um, and giving me a few extra minutes as well. Uh I want to make sure you get uh in time for your next appointment. So thank you so much. It's been great having a conversation. Uh have a great day further.

SPEAKER_01 59:58

Yeah, it is lovely chatting to you, Gavin, and yeah, thanks to your audience for tuning in as well. And they're more than welcome to get in touch with us via freemarketfoundation.com or on all of our the social media platforms as well, where we're active.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:12

I'll put all your links in the show notes as well so people can just uh make it easy for them to click on that and get hold of you guys. So thank you again. Have a great day.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:20

Perfect. Thanks.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:22

Cheers.