A Radical Reset
Our Republic has been converted into a democracy which is just another name for mob rule. The mob is getting what it wants, to paraphrase H.L. Mencken, good and hard. One day soon, the entire edifice is going to collapse under its own weight and what takes its place historically will be tyranny. A Radical Reset is the alternative and the system is called Antipolitism. It calls for a new republic based upon merit and not ambition. No parties, no money in politics, no careers in politics, and only serving the public good.
A Radical Reset
Little League Glasses and Trillion Dollar Mistakes
Hey everybody, how's it going? It's your pal, herbie. It's another episode of a Radical Reset. It's been a, here in Phoenix, anyway, a hot week and I am in a cool room and let's have a discussion this week. I want to talk to you, or this episode.
Speaker 1:I want to talk to you a little bit about why capitalism, free market capitalism, cannot coexist long-term with altruism. Well, that's an intellectual subject for a podcast, isn't it? You know, everyone else is talking about the Epstein files and I'm talking about capitalism coexisting with altruism. Briefly, on the Epstein files, just while I'm on it, I have no idea and I don't care. You know, I am sure that there are people being protected and I am sure that there's all kinds of factors going in, and I'm just as sure I don't care. I know that there's a, you know, particularly among the younger people in the MAGA group, a feeling that they're not being, they're being a gas lit or whatever the case might be, I don't know, I don't know. To me it looks like I mean from a distance, from a person that barely cares. It looks like a case of one more case of the Trump administration over-promising and under-delivering, but, in this particular example, being hoisted on their own petard, because when you do that, you set up a trail. I don't know how people don't learn that If you make a promise to somebody that you either have no intention of keeping or don't know that you can keep in there and then find out that you cannot keep it, the inevitable result of that promise will be a feeling of betrayal and on the part of the person that you promised, and they in the end, will deeply resent you for it, and that's the kind of thing that really lasts. So my advice to the Trump administration is stop over promising under promise, under-promise and over-deliver. I don't know. Well, trump is the diametric opposite of that, but somehow the MAGA people don't seem to care. I'm not talking about Trump today. I'm going to talk about capitalism and altruism. It is not incumbent upon you to take care of everybody else. I don't know any other way to say this.
Speaker 1:Altruism is thought of as a good thing, and I personally think of it as an evil thing, because it's used by people to control other people by pressing on their guilt and their altruism buttons and then using this leverage to force them to do things that they otherwise would not do, in the name of the greater good, but in fact that results only in the control of those advocating the altruism. You know that was a really complicated statement, but it's really. That was another complicated way of saying that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. The reason that that is an old saying is that when we start out to do good, first of all it's doing good to others that they're not asking for is patronizing. Let's start with why it's a bad idea, why altruism is a bad idea. By singling out a group of people that you have to quote, unquote, help you're, you are starting with the, with the notion that they cannot help themselves, that for one reason or another they cannot help themselves. And you know you can disguise it like saying well, these people are the victims of racism. But by saying that, you're saying that somehow there's something wrong with their race, that they cannot compete, that there, that they cannot compete, that they're just unable to keep up in a world that's hard and competitive and has knocks and bruises. And you cannot protect people from themselves, my friends. And when you go to help a group of people, I'll tell you a true story when altruism really. This is on a much more personal level, but it definitely relates to what I'm saying.
Speaker 1:Years and years ago, I used to coach little league baseball for my youngest son, julian, and from the time he was playing T-ball so I guess that was maybe five or six years old until he graduated high school, I on and off coached either his teams or other teams as part of the little league organization. Let's say I really loved it. I loved coaching kids. I really enjoyed it. Anyway, where we lived in Tucson was in an historic area of older homes that had been restored and were large. This was back in the day when I was on top of my game financially. We lived in a very large house in a very wealthy neighborhood. We lived actually in a house that was in the National Historic Register and it was very beautiful and all that kind of stuff. But our neighborhood bordered on a much poorer neighborhood Because it was an historic area. Just to the south of us was a rundown area, let's just call it, and largely Latino, but not all. Okay and anyway, long story short, most of the kids that played on my team were poor children or children from poorer families.
Speaker 1:Now I share this with you just for the context of the story. Kids are kids. You know they were all wonderful and I loved coaching them, and I'm only sharing the context of the story because it's important to understand what happened. So anyway, I had this kid. There are drafts in Little League. So you go out and the kids all do tryouts and all the coaches watch all the kids try out and then there's a draft day. This is at least how it worked in our Little League, where we all got together and picked the players we want and there was some trading and horse trading and it was fun stuff putting together our teams for the year to be competitive. And anyway, one of the kids that I selected for my kid was a little boy named Kenny. Kenny was not Latino, as you may tell by the name, but anyway Kenny was. His last name was Kenny Triplett. I'm going to use this because I doubt he's ever going to hear this story from this podcast, wherever he is, and at this point Kenny's in his 30s or 40s and he'll laugh. And if you hear this story, kenny, you'll know it's true. So anyway, his mother was not Mrs Triplett, his mother.
Speaker 1:After practice I used to drive a lot of kids home. You know that didn't have rides or whatever it might be and when I would drive Kenny home. Kenny's family lived in a travel trailer, essentially an old Airstream, and there were a number of kids, I want to say four or five kids. They all had different last names. There was no father present and the mother, so this was not an atypical. You know, there's a reason people are poor and it starts with having a lot of kids without a partner, but anyway. So but again, this wasn't about. This is not about judgment. This is just part of the story, so you understand it. So I understood Kenny's circumstances.
Speaker 1:Long story short, when Kenny tried out, he had glasses on, but when we started going having practices, um, he did not have glasses and I asked him where did his glasses go? And he said that they had broken. But his mother was getting a new pair and I said, okay, great, and. But kenny was a whole different player without glasses because, frankly, he couldn't see the ball very well. And guys, baseballs are hard. They call it hard ball for a reason and even a little league pitcher throwing a baseball, if it hits you in the side of the head and you don't duck or move or try to deflect it, it could easily break your jaw really easily. You know you can really get hurt by getting hit by pitchers. There are instances of people being killed being hit by pitchers not in the little league as far as I know, but still a lot of damage can be done. So I was very, very aware of this and I could tell that Kenny wasn't seeing the ball, he just wasn't seeing it.
Speaker 1:So I this went on for a period of weeks and I would ask Mrs Triplett, you know when is Kenny going to get his glasses? And she would always tell me and again, she wasn't Mrs Triplett, I'm just using that because I have no idea what her last name was. I just we were good so and she would tell me they're coming. You know, tomorrow, always. Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow. Well, you know, it became clear that they weren't coming tomorrow, you know after, and then games were starting and now we're going to start playing against competitive teams and balls are going to be coming much harder than the than I would lob them in for batting practice and so on and so forth. You know when Kenny would bat, trying not to hurt him, and you know he was going to get. Being hit by pitches is part of baseball, but most of the time you see it coming and you know, you turn away and you just take a little bruise on your tush and that's that. But I was really worried. Kenny was going to get hit so or really get hurt.
Speaker 1:So I said to I decided that what I would do is I would buy Kenny glasses. I was wealthy, I didn't make a big deal out of it, but I was wealthy. It meant nothing to me. So I went to Mrs Triplett and I said to Mrs Triplett Mrs Triplett, listen, if it's okay with you, what I'd like to do is, after practice today, I'd like to take Kenny over to the mall and I'd like to get him a pair of glasses. Kenny over to the mall and I'd like to get him a pair of glasses. And it was one of those exam get your glasses at the same time. And I told her I'd like to buy him two pairs of glasses. I'll buy him an athletic pair that won't break when he practices and a regular pair that he you know, whatever he picks out that he can wear to school. It'll be my treat, be my pleasure.
Speaker 1:I thought she was going to say thank you. Okay, here's what really happened. She. Well, every other word started with the letter F, let's just say and who the F did I think I was, you rich effing bastard. And who the F do you think you are making it out like I can't afford glasses for my own effing kid? It was really, and I'm downplaying it a lot, and she was screaming it at me at the top of her lungs. Needless to say, I never saw Kenny again, sadly, and that was the end of that. To say I never saw Kenny again, sadly, and that was the end of that.
Speaker 1:However, it taught me an important lesson, which is you can't help people unless they want to be helped. And if you assume that they want to be helped as often as not, they'll take it as an insult. You know, like who are you, you patronizing prick, and I can kind of understand her point of view. At the time I didn't understand it because I didn't know that I deserved, especially in front of all those children, to have all those F-bombs flying. But in retrospect, and after going to prison, frankly, and being among those people, they aren't really asking for our help, they're just taking it. You know, like any good parasite, they'll be happy to take it, but they don't want to have to say thank you for it and they sure as shit don't want to show appreciation for it. And they sure as shit don't want to show appreciation for it and they sure as shit resent people for helping them.
Speaker 1:The reason poverty has been transformed by all the programs that we've done through altruism to help people. Can you think of a single one that actually works and all it really does is take money out of circulation and more productive places that could have gone to grow business and grow employment and then so these people can pull themselves out of poverty? Instead, this money gets redirected into these patronizing programs that the recipients themselves resent and hate. You can see it on their faces they don't say thank you when they get their welfare checks. They feel entitled to it, and if you ask them to say thank you, they'll get in your face and scream everything at you, whether it makes sense or not, because altruism does not produce results.
Speaker 1:Altruism is a wonderful concept, theoretically, I guess, and let me be very clear about this there's a difference between altruism and doing a nice thing. Everybody likes to do nice things for people they know, their family, their friends, even strangers. I know I'm not the least bit unusual that I have throughout the years of my life, from time to time when I've seen people, for example, in grocery store lines they're a little short or people that need help with whatever it might be, not just financial. You know lifting boxes, getting in and out of cars, older people, you know, I helped the other day I helped the blind lady find the correct door she was looking for. Anyway, long story short, people like I enjoy doing nice things for people, large and small. I'm sure you do too.
Speaker 1:But when it becomes altruism, it becomes enforced by the greater public and then it becomes a power structure and then it becomes patronizing and then it becomes a trap. Because all we've done, by all the social safety net programs we've put in place and all the welfare programs we've put in place and Social Security and all the rest, is we created an enormous body of parasitic takers who have no appreciation for those giving it to them in the first place. And no government program is run well or efficiently. There's not a single one, and most of them don't work. The most successful government program is Social Security, in a sense in that when Social Security was first invented, old people were the poorest part of society and now they're the wealthiest, but now it's become nothing but a gigantic transfer of wealth from the young to the old when the old. In other words, we're killing our future for our yesterday, and I'm part of the yesterday.
Speaker 1:I'm speaking against my own interest, but that's what enforced altruism does, and the recipients don't ever feel thankful. They feel entitled when it's altruism and not an act of kindness or charity. And there's an enormous difference. A private act of charity is not altruism. It's a private act of charity. It's you doing something that makes you feel good for your own reasons and no one is telling you to do it. And Americans are charitable people.
Speaker 1:Where we got into the enforcement of altruism is when we began to destroy everything and in particular the nuclear family, because all that social welfare has done and aid to family with dependent children and the rest is destroy the nuclear family, all in the name of altruism family with dependent children and the rest is destroy the nuclear family, all in the name of altruism and poverty, instead of becoming something that a family would fall into and then pull themselves out of together. You know the mom and the dad would go to work. Sometimes they'd take two jobs. The kids would, you know, do side hustles and, you know, deliver papers or whatever it might be, to raise money for the family. It was all about pulling out of poverty and they would pull out, and as a result of pulling out of poverty, a lot of important lessons would be learned and so it wouldn't be a repeated experience. But that was all taken away by altruism and state-enforced altruism.
Speaker 1:So now we feel that we have programs that people are entitled to the word entitlement definitely denotes that and they expect to get the money. They have absolutely no gratitude for it in the first place. And since they expect to get it and have no gratitude for it, they learn nothing. And since they learn nothing, they become trapped endlessly. And on top of all of that, because our programs are designed to pay women who have children without husbands, it's an enormous incentive to have more children. So the only healthy demographic, so to speak, in the sense that there are plenty of young people, are the worst part of society. They're breeding like bunny rabbits. Okay, that's the one part of society, because they have no responsibility for anything that they do.
Speaker 1:Out of altruism, we have, as a society, decided that these poor people who weren't saying that they needed our help, we just said we had to help them. I'll give you another really good example, and let's talk about a group that's perennially paraded before us, us being all of us who work for a living regardless of race, but that's poor black people. You know, poor black people are poor because racism was the line, except that between the end of the Second World War in 1960, black poverty at the end of the Second World War was awful, it was 80%, but by 1960, it was 40%. It had been cut by half during Jim Crow, during the worst parts of racism. Okay, then you know, we passed the Civil Rights Act. All we had to do was nothing.
Speaker 1:Once racism became illegal across the board and jim crow was destroyed, black people had already demonstrated plenty of resilience. All we had to do and we as a culture, as a country, both successful, white, black, asian, latino, all the successful people to all the poor people, regardless of race if we would have just gotten out of the way and not tried to help them, poor people regardless of race, if we would have just gotten out of the way and not tried to help them, poor people won't stay poor very long because consequence is the real teacher In life. Think of everything that you've ever done in your life. Think of everything in your life that has any value at all. Think of all the lessons that you've learned, and I promise you, when you really reflect on it, you will find out that you learn nothing from your successes. And everything in your life worth knowing you've learned from your failures. And by trying to protect people from their own bad decisions and failures, we've created a permanent seething underclass of resentment, from which all of this nonsense and tribalism and racial profiling that, in reverse, that is destroying our culture all of it is bubbling up from the seething underclass that we constantly continue to support. You know, and anything that you subsidize, we're essentially subsidizing poverty. And when you subsidize something, all you're going to do is get more of it. Okay, that's just like a law of gravity Anything you subsidize, you get more of, good or bad. We must stop subsidizing poverty Now.
Speaker 1:As a libertarian and as an anti-political libertarian, my attitude is very, very simple Leave it to the states. There should be no federal welfare programs whatsoever, none at all. Okay, I'll speak to Social Security in just a minute, but there should be no social welfare programs at all. Look, if a state wants to experiment with social engineering and they think they can come up with a better idea. Look, I'm not speaking. I'm not saying it's impossible to design a social welfare program that might actually do somebody some good. I'm saying it doesn't work at the federal level.
Speaker 1:And a one-size-fits-all, particularly in a country of 340 or 50 million people, depending on how you count them, and not to mention the ones that are not here legally. Let's not even go down that road today, my friends, but in a country this size, a one-size-fits-all and as diverse culturally as we are, it just doesn't work. You know, the reason that you can set up a fairly decent welfare state in Denmark is because Denmark has 5 million people and they're all Danes, you know. And the reason they're having big problems today is they let in some people that weren't Danes, and the minute they let in the people that weren't Danes, they had problems. And the same thing with the Swedes and the Dutch and the rest. You can have working social safety programs within racially homogeneous populations because everybody basically thinks the same way. So you can set up rules and regulations designed to fit the culture, the people that you're governing. But when you do it for a country like ours, where you have every flavor of person known to mankind you try to impose.
Speaker 1:In an anti-political world and in a libertarian world we would simply devolve all of this to the states Of some states like, for example, wyoming that I think has less than a million people. I might be wrong about that, wyoming, but I think you're the least populous state and I think there's something like 900,000 people in Wyoming. I could be wrong, but if I'm wrong it won't be by much. Anyway, I know I'm right that they're the least populous state state. They may decide not to have a social welfare program at all because they don't really have any poverty. So the people of Wyoming get to be spared those taxes and the state of Wyoming doesn't have to mess with it. I'm pretending I live in Wyoming. Maybe Wyoming will want to do one, but if they do one, they'll do one for the very small, restrictive group of poor people that live in Wyoming.
Speaker 1:Okay, but California's program is not going to look like Wyoming's. You know what I'm saying when you have a huge populous state and then you have a small. Now I personally don't think California, because of its diversity, can design a program that'll work, but maybe it can't. It's going to be a lot more. The thing of it is that when a state or a local government tries to do social engineering, even if it screws it up, it's not as bad as it is at the federal level, because they don't have a printing press. That's what gets us into trouble. At the federal level, we can just print up the money we need, no matter how stupid we are and no matter how long. Again, I challenge you no government social program works, not one. You can't name one, not one.
Speaker 1:Yet we have them all and we've increased their funding and we've spent trillions and trillions and trillions and trillions and trillions and trillions of dollars on programs that don't work. And we continue to do so as if they're somehow going to make sense, as if this insanity makes sense, when we would all be better off if we drop the altruism. We stop trying to mix altruism with a free market. Let the free market do what it will on a national level, unhindered by government interference, as much as humanly possible, with some small exceptions. And then, if the states want to experiment, let them experiment, because then let's say that I'm wrong and that someone can come up with a social safety program that's better. Okay, I have no pride of authorship on a statement. That's great. Then the other states can copy it.
Speaker 1:So what we'll basically have is 50 laboratories all trying different things at different times and places with different populations, and, who knows, they might come up with something that's really great, god knows. And people would support that voluntarily. Okay, no one would have to be coerced if we knew that the money we were spending was being spent well. But none of us think the government spends our money well. And it's so funny to me as a libertarian, how people think voting for a libertarian is a wasted vote when they keep voting for the same two parties that have done nothing but fail.
Speaker 1:And I assure you that all of these Trumpian programs are going to fail the same way. Okay, the tariffs, that all of these Trumpian programs are going to fail the same way. Okay, the tariffs are going to be a disaster when it's all said and done. I'm sorry but it's true. Okay, we're not going to round up 20 million people. Trump is a chronic over-promiser. Not going to happen.
Speaker 1:Okay, we're going to have to have an intelligent, grown-up discussion about immigration at some point. You know we're not going to bully things in the way we want them to be by sheer will. Okay, a lot of the things he's doing are very, very good, and I've said so on past podcasts. But, guys, we have to stop blindly. First of all, good and evil. Throw that concept out, along with altruism, and look at things as they are and think critically. Think, my friends, it's not illegal yet. And that's going to be my last thought for today. Listen, it's not illegal yet, and that's going to be my last thought for today, listen. Thank you so much for listening to me as I rant on.
Speaker 1:Have a beautiful weekend, enjoy yourself, enjoy this gorgeous. Well, wherever you are, I hope the weather is gorgeous. I'm talking about Phoenix, gorgeous. Our temperature has dropped from 116 to 104. It's like it's a cold snap. We're having a great day, you know. So, wherever you live, I just hope you're having a great time with your family. God bless you, god bless your family and God bless America. Oh, and don't forget I forgot to do the big deal. Don't forget to go to Amazon, pick up a copy of A Radical Reset on Kindle, paperback or hardcover. Read the Manifesto of Antipolitism. Learn what it's all about. You will be, I think, impressed, regardless of whether you are or you aren't. Thank you for joining me today, as I said, and please share this with friends, and all that, and yada, yada, yada. You know the rest and, once again, god bless you. No-transcript.