26.2 Miles of Cardio, 6 Inches of Liberty

Todays feature is the Rocky Patel 30th Anniversary cigar.  I am smoking it while the Tribble and I are observing the runners go by during the Myrtle Beach Marathon.  While they run, I get a bit philosophical about  dark subject.  It is one that is on all of our minds, war.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:26

A folding chair positioned with the tactical precision of a Civil War artillery battery, except instead of cannonballs, there are joggers in neon shorts. This is the annual invasion known as the Myrtle Beach Marathon, and like clockwork, it converts your house into a tiny geopolitical island. The roads around you have been barricaded with the sort of logistical enthusiasm usually reserved for papal visits or alien landings. Welcome to Liberty on Nicotine. Well, I've got a Rocky Patel 30th Anniversary cigar, and it's beautiful, burning in my hand. Now that's a celebratory stick, if there ever was one. Rocky didn't just roll a cigar here, he built a monument to three decades of making smokers grin like kids sneaking cookies before dinner. The wrapper is Mexican San Andreas, dark, oily, and elegant. The binder is Nicaraguan. The fillers are a well-guarded blend from Nicaragua and Honduras. Translation for the uninitiated. Several countries cooperated peacefully to make something excellent without a single government summit or bureaucratic committee. A minor miracle. The cold draw before lighting had notes of cocoa and cedar. Once lit, the first puffs deliver earth, coffee, and just enough pepper to remind you that tobacco, like Liberty, is best when it bites just a little. Meanwhile, the runners stream by my house like a migratory herd of gazelles that got sponsorship deals from shoe companies. My strategically placed folding chair sits right near the northern turn in the route. It's prime spectator real estate. If folding chairs had zoning boards, mine would be classified as luxury waterfront property overlooking the sea of cardio. The roads around here are barricaded so thoroughly that trying to drive anywhere today would resemble a scene from the great escape. So I put it off. Which frankly suits me just fine. Beside me sits the Tribble. Now the Tribble's attitude toward Marathon falls into one of two possible categories. One, she does not understand what is happening, or two, she understands perfectly and finds it deeply ridiculous. Given the expression on her face, I'm leaning toward option two. She watches hundreds of humans voluntarily run twenty-six point two miles and seems to be silently asking the obvious question Is something chasing them? Because if not, this is suspicious behavior. In my other hand is a de-alcoholized malt beverage from some nondescript microbrewer. The label looks like it was designed by a philosophy major with a beard and a fondness for ironic typefaces. The drink is fine. It tastes vaguely like beer that once heard a rumor about barley. But it pairs surprisingly well with the cigar. Malty sweetness, toasted grain notes, a little carbonation to keep the palate awake. The Rocky Patel 30th anniversary delivers rich smoke, espresso, dark chocolate, leather, and the contrast really works. If cigars had orchestras, this one would have cellos. Now, here's the curious thing about sitting still and watching runners. Your brain starts wandering. Somewhere around the mile 10 of the passing crowd, my mind drifts into one of those philosophical neighborhoods where the street names are things like History Lane and Bad Government Boulevard. And today's thought, well, it's a heavy one. War. More specifically, the perennial argument used to justify war. You have to fight now because if you don't, it will be worse later. That line has been used by governments for centuries. You can practically hear the ghosts of policy advisors whispering it behind every conflict. The problem is the humans are extremely good at predicting disasters that are conveniently justify whatever they already wanted to do, which makes evaluating wars after the fact a fascinating exercise. Let's start with some raw numbers. Historians estimate that the 20th century alone saw about a hundred million deaths from war and state violence. Two world wars dominate Italy. World War One cost roughly 16 to 20 million lives. Then came the sequel Nobody Wanted, World War II, which cost somewhere between 70 and 85 million lives. And that doesn't include the economic destruction. Cities flattened, industries wiped out, entire populations displaced. When economists attempt to estimate the cost of a major war, the numbers get astronomical. For example, the United States involvement in World War II cost over four trillion dollars in today's monetary figuring. And that was one participant among many. War burns wealth faster than a teenager with their first credit card. Now, libertarians tend to approach war with a particular skepticism. Not pacifism necessarily, but skepticism. The core question is simple. Who decides when the cost is worth paying? Governments answer that question all the time. Citizens pay the bill. Which makes war the ultimate example of what economists called externalized costs. The people making the decision are often not the ones absorbing the consequences. That doesn't mean every war is unjustified. It really is messy. The world contains tyrants, invasions, and aggressive states. The rise of Adolf Hitler certainly makes the case that sometimes force becomes unavoidable. But here's the puzzle. Governments rarely frame wars as this is the least terrible option among several terrible options. Instead, they sell them as necessary inevitables. Fight now or face catastrophe later. Which brings us back to the question I'm pondering while a man dressed as a banana jogs past my house. Is there any data that helps us answer the question? Historians and economists have tried. One approach is something called counterfactual history. Basically asking what might have happened if a war had not occurred. This is a tricky business because history doesn't provide control groups. Can't rerun 1939 without the invasion of Poland just to see what happens. Still, scholars examine patterns. For example, long periods of trade between nations correlate strongly with fewer wars. Commerce tends to make blowing up your customers a bad business strategy. Adam Smith would nod knowingly. Another factor is a political structure. Democratic countries historically fight fewer wars against each other, a concept known as the democratic peace theory. It doesn't mean democracies are peaceful, they absolutely fight wars, but they rarely fight each other, which suggests that political accountability and public resistance to casualties play a role. Put simply, voters get cranky when their sons come home in boxes. Now let's watch the runners pass by. Every one of them has decided to endure pain for a goal that they chose themselves. That's the key, a choice. Voluntary suffering is very different from suffering imposed by others. Cigars offer a tiny metaphor for that idea. Lighting a cigar is technically a bad health decision. No surgeon in general would really recommend it. But it's voluntary, which means the moral calculus changes. Liberty is fundamentally about allowing people to make decisions, even imperfect ones, about their own lives. Suddenly millions of people are compelled to sacrifice for decisions made far away in marble buildings. And that's why libertarians tend to ask a simple but uncomfortable question. Is this truly self-defense? Or is it politics wrapped in a flag? Meanwhile, the Rocky Patel 30th anniversary has entered its second third. This is where the blend really wakes up. The pepper calms down and the sweetness, it it really deepens. There's a caramel note now mixed with espresso and toasted oak. The smoke has become thick and creamy. The construction is absolutely flawless. Burn line straight as a surveyor's laser. Ash stacked like gray marble. This is a cigar that clearly spent a lot of time being engineered by people who care deeply about their craft. Which brings us back to the runners. Some of them are clearly thriving. Others look like they're negotiating with their internal organs. A few have that thousand-yard stare normally associated with astronauts returning from deep space. Running a marathon is one of those human rituals that reveals something odd about our species. We voluntarily recreate ancient survival scenarios. Our ancestors ran long distances because they had to hunt animals and escape predators. Modern humans run long distances because there's a medal or a t-shirt at the end. Civilization is weird. But there's also something admirable about it. A marathon is suffering chosen for a purpose. War is suffering imposed for a purpose someone else decided. And the historical record suggests something extremely uncomfortable. Many wars justified by it will be worse later did not produce better outcomes. The Vietnam War is a classic example. The US involvement cost more than 58,000 American lives and perhaps three million Vietnamese lives. The justification was preventing the spread of communism. Yet the long-term geographical outcome was communism in Vietnam. History sometimes delivers brutal punchlines. Another case, the Iraq War, beginning in 2003. The predicted threat of weapons of mass destruction turned out to be, well, non-existent. Meanwhile, the war cost trillions of dollars and destabilized an entire region. This doesn't prove that war isn't never justified. It does suggest governments are extremely bad at predicting the future. Which is ironic because predicting the future is usually how they sell wars. Another wave of runners shuffling past. One fellow is carrying a full-size American flag while ja jogging. That's that is dedication or a very clever way to generate wind resistance training. The turbo watches them go by and gives me a look that says, humans are confusing animals. She's not wrong. Still, watching this marathon reminds me of something hopeful. These runners are strangers, different backgrounds, different politics, different beliefs. Yet today they share the road peacefully. They compete without trying to destroy each other. They cooperate with volunteers handing out water. They pursue personal goals without coercing the entire population into their hobby. That's a pretty good metaphor for a free society. People running their own races. No one forcing anyone else to jog. And if there's a lesson in history that whispers through the smoke of this excellent cigar, it might be this. When individuals choose their own struggles, society tends to prosper. When governments choose to struggle for everyone else, things get expensive. The cigar is now in the final third. Flavors deepen again, dark chocolate, roasted coffee beans, and a little earthy spice. Strength ramps up slightly. It's the kind of finish that makes you lean back in the chair and appreciate the moment. The marathon continues, the tribble naps. My house remains a tiny island in a sea of runners, and the great questions of history drift through the smoke like philosophical chondrails at war. Liberty. And whether the guy dressed as a banana is going to make it to mile 20. Given the look on his face, I'm rooting for him. After all, everyone deserves to finish their race. Preferably without government deciding that they have to run it. And this has been another episode of Liberty on Nicotine.