Joseph Solis-Mullen on China's attitude towards the U.S.: "American declinism is a very common theme"

While Xi Jinping, in particular, is very very concerned with reuniting Taiwan with the mainland, he does not want to accomplish that by military means, because he understands that the costs and risks associated with that would be many.  In Chinese strategic literature and in commentary - they have their own commentariat just like we do - American declinism is a very common theme.  They basically believe that "In 10-15 years the Americans probably won't even be around here.  They're going to be bankrupt and entrenched, at war with itself.  So we don't need to do anything right now."

So the only real thing that I think would prompt in the immediate future, 2025-2026, is if Taiwan were to declare independence - which they could feel more secure doing now that Joe Biden has said "don't worry, whatever happens, if China attacks you we'll step in."  The whole idea of strategic ambiguity was to leave Beijing guessing...

~ Joseph Solis-Mullen, "Ep. 2415 The Fake China Threat," The Tom Woods Show, November 8, 2023

2023

Daniel McAdams on the failure on interventionism in foreign policy

We should be rejoicing in a way, despite all the sadness and bloodshed, because this is our time.  This is the time when we can say "Look, everything has clearly failed.  Non-interventionism is the solution to our problems and here's why."

~ Daniel McAdams, "Ron Paul Institute Director on Best and Worst Middle East Scenarios," The Tom Woods Show, 42:25 mark, November 1, 2023

Tom Woods on right wing cancel culture regarding criticism of Israel

It's very hard to talk about this [Israel-Palestine conflict] because the names get thrown around.  The right wing, they hate cancel culture, right?  No they don't!  They love it.  And they love having their own racism.  They love antisemitism.  Everybody's an anti-Semite.  If you're three degrees north of Ben Shapiro, you're an anti-Semite.  I would assume people know what's going on there.  This is just an attempt to ruin and destroy people...

I guess it would be antisemitic to point this out, but I think it's unavoidable that if you're Isreal [with 9 million people] and they're surrounded by hundreds of millions of potential enemies, hundreds of millions of people who may not be inclined to their direction.  Now how that was supposed to work in the long run - and I know that the Zionists' side will say, "but we've been so conciliatory, look where it's gotten us" - how was this going to work without some kind of meeting of the minds here?  Was it just going to be that the U.S. was just going to keep bankrolling them forever?  Even the U.S. can't ultimately, in the long run, fix a problem in which 9 million people are surrounded my hundreds of millions who hate their guts.  Some other kind of approach had to be taken and it never was.  I don't see what's antisemitic about pointing that out.  That would seem to be the most common sense thing you have to say in this situation.

~ Tom Woods, "Ron Paul Institute Director on Best and Worst Middle East Scenarios," The Tom Woods Show, 11:30 mark, November 1, 2023

Jeremy Hammond on the Israel-Palestine conflict

I think it's important that we recognize Palestinians' legitimate grievances historically and right up to the present.  And only by looking at their legitimate grievances and acknowledging them can we possibly get our analysis correct.  I think it's unfortunate that so many people criticize and condemn, rightfully so, the crimes of one side or the other.  They unfortunately tend to then defend the crimes of the side that they favor.  We should be critical and condemn the crimes committed by both sides, but the case is we are dealing with a situation where you have an occupier and an occupied people.  And the crimes committed by Israel against Palestinians have occurred on incomparably greater scale, starting with the ethnic cleansing of Palestine by which the Jewish state of Israel came into existence.

~ Jeremy R. Hammond, "Debate: Israel and Palestine," The Tom Woods Show, 56:50 mark, October 25, 2023

John Tamny on how the free market would have handled the coronavirus differently than government lockdowns

If there hadn't been any kind of lockdowns, I think it's a safe bet to say that Disney, a big American business, would've shut down its theme parks.  Now why could it have done that?  Because as a good business with a good track record of treating its shareholders well, it could've gone to investors and said, "we are going to step aside briefly to see where this virus is going; we don't want to risk our brand on becoming known as a super-spreader."  Ok, fine. Small businesses, let's assume they have less access to capital.  So they would've probably said, "we can't risk being shut down even for a day; our margins are so razor thin, we've got to be operating at 100% no matter what."  Well, good, you need both.  The small businesses became businesses in the first place by figuring out the needs of customers in some way.  They would've had to evolve.  They would've had to innovate to meet the needs of customers who perhaps had been changed or perhaps fearful, and in doing this they would've created crucial information for the Disneys of the world about how to evolve in a new kind of environment.  So you needed, as always, millions of different businesses trying millions of different things rather than forced one-size-fits-all for everyone simply because it robbed everyone of the information necessary about how to fight this, how to evolve. 

You have the cruise industry, this wildly prosperous industry, that's still trying to get permission to be back in operation.  Don't we want to know what they would've done if they'd been left alone?  The ships would be sailing by now and they would've figured out ways to meet the needs of a different customer base we never even learned.

[...]

Imagine companies that have billion dollar ships that are quite literally amusement parks/hotels/entertainment centers on the water.  They figured out how to grow to meet the customers' needs in staggeringly brilliant ways.  Imagine what they could've done if they'd been free to say, "hey, look, you love your customers; the last thing you want to do is create a scenario where your customers get sick or die.  Do what you have to do to stay in operation."  I wish we could've seen what they came up with, but of course we can't.  They're not allowed to operate to this day.

~ John Tamny, "The Economic Fallout of 2020," The Tom Woods Show, April 8, 2021

Kevin Duffy: Do politics and friendship mix?

The quantity and quality of friendships will be limited by scarcity: our time, resources and emotional energy.  E.g. narcissists are high maintenance and crowd out other friendships.  Friendships grow deeper and stronger, moving up the ladder, or weaker and more superficial, sometimes to the point of falling off the ladder completely and being displaced by new friendships. 

For an activist libertarian (as opposed to a retreatist), deep relationships require a strong philosophical bond.  At times like today, where society is hurtling towards authoritarianism and "friends" are joining the crowd and revealing their true colors, friendships are being put to the test and in much greater flux.

~ Kevin Duffy, comment on The Tom Woods Show, March 30, 2021

Kevin Duffy on the GameStop frenzy

There is a cyclical aspect of the the GameStop frenzy few are talking about.  Bob Murphy made an interesting point that this is flipping "The Big Short," which was written by Michael Lewis right after the GFC in early 2010, close to the stock market bottom.  Short sellers were held out as heroes.  A decade later, after stocks have quadrupled and short sellers practically wiped out, they're the bad guys.  And the greedy and reckless speculators dancing on their graves are the heroes! 

We've come full circle, i.e. we're probably at peak euphoria for the so-called "everything bubble." 

As for Robinhood temporarily closing the casino doors for a day, this likley had more to do with existing regulations and capital requirements which go up with increased volatility.  Robinhood apparently had to raise another $1 billion so they could fully open the casino for business on Friday (helping push GME stock up 68%). 

Btw, AOC, Ted Cruz and Donald Trump, Jr. all attacked Robinhood for the same reason.  If they're all on the same side of an issue, laissez faire types have to be suspicious.  This will end in tears for the Reddit crowd who, as Bob said, refuse to take their chips and leave the poker table because they're "mad." 

This is amateur hour at the casino, and some angry, young, ideologically-charged traders are about to learn a very expensive lesson.  Who will AOC & Co. then blame?  Will they bail these people out?  The plot sickens...

~ Kevin Duffy, comment about "Ep. 1825: The Reddit/GameStop Phenomenon," The Tom Woods Show, January 30, 2021

Tom Woods on the beauty of economics

[Economics] really is something beautiful.  It reveals to you an order that can be hidden or obscured by your own eyes.  I think Mises or Rothbard put it this way in theory and history...  If you were just to look at Grand Central Terminal in New York and not think it through, all you would see is just a bunch of people running hither and yon, and that would be the end of it.  But when you think through what's actually going on, you realize that each one of those people has a goal and is pursuing that goal, and that that's not chaos, but it's actually order that you're observing.  Well likewise for the entire economy, to a Marxist it looks like "There's duplication of production," "It's not the way I would run it if I had a bullhorn."  But the more you understand it, the more you perceive the hidden order beneath it all.  And once you perceive that, you do want other people to understand it.  In my case not just because they'll derive intellectual pleasure from understanding it, but because they'll stop wrecking it 24 hours a day!

~ Tom Woods, "Ep. 1806 From Left to Libertarian: How He Did It," The Tom Woods Show, January 5, 2021

Jeff Deist on the dropping of seasonal flu cases

You know that basically now there's no flu cases?  Pharmacies across the country in the United States are reporting basically no prescribing of tamaflu?  Tamaflu is the cheap generic go-to for most doctors come November-December through the winter for flu.  And the idea that there's no flu in America, flu has been eradicated - no, flu has not been eradicated.  What's happening is that... COVID is sort of a layering diagnosis which is going on in all kinds of things.  So you're seeing people with flu plus COVID or obesity plus COVID or whatever kind of co-morbidity is all being dragged into a big bucket of COVID diagnosis that we can juice these numbers and create perception.

~ Jeff Deist, "Ep. 1802 Jeff Deist on the 2020 Fiasco, and Whether There’s a Case for Hope," The Tom Woods Show, December 24, 2020

Kevin Duffy on the cyclical nature of the libertarian movement

Before getting too down on the libertarian movement, it helps to look at where we are in the cycle.  Ron Paul's popularity peaked around 2008-10 alongside the Great Financial Crisis.  12 years of bull markets and the greatest financial bubble in history later, it's incredible the movement even has a pulse. 

The crowd is completely detached from reality.  Signs in the financial markets include Tesla exceeding Berkshire Hathaway in market cap, Robinhood, day trading, option buying, SPACs, and the hottest IPO market since 2000.  The Fed can do no wrong.  No surprise, a parallel mania is taking place with Covid and worship of the medical authorities.  There is no way 2020 madness happens in a bear market.  These bubbles will burst as they always do.  Our job is to poke fun at them, not to convince people.  Sure, you might be able to convince a few, but the vast majority are in la la land.  Only when the bubble bursts will people be desperate for answers and ready to consider the non-interventionist point of view. 

For promoters of liberty, today's famine is tomorrow's feast.

~ Kevin Duffy, comment on The Tom Woods Show podcast, December 20, 2020

Jay Bhattacharya on the uneven distribution of Covid costs

The harms of COVID are very unevenly distributed.  If you're over 70, the survival rate is something like 95%. If you're under 70, it's something like 99.95%.  That means that the lockdown is going to harm, on net, people that are young.  Because there's no benefit for them for it.  Just on net it's harm.  It may protect older people - I actually have some doubts about that as well, but that's at its best case.  So you end up saying, "Let's harm young people or non-vulnerable people for four more months."  So when I hear that, that's what I hear, until we get a vaccine.  No.  That's a mistake.

~ Jay Bhattacharya, "Stanford's Jay Bhattacharya on the Lockdown Fiasco," The Tom Woods Show, December 7, 2020

Gad Saad on joining the battle of ideas

There are many crosses that we bear in speaking out and we all have to do our part.  All I'm saying is get engaged.  Sure, modulate the amount of risk that you're willing to bear, but simply don't subcontract your voice to the few courageous folks who are willing to put everything on the line.  You have a say in it.  Get engaged.  If we all speak out - the silent majority hates these idea pathogens [postmodernism/political correctness].  If we all speak out, we will get rid of this nonsense by next Tuesday.  If we don't speak out, it'll be a long train ride to hell.

~ Gad Saad, "How Bad Ideas Are Killing Common Sense and Rational Debate," The Tom Woods Show, November 10, 2020

Tom Woods on politics

I stopped following politics in 1996 because Bob Doll vs. Bill Clinton was just too much even for me to take.  And I dropped out of it and I thought it was pointless.  But I do think things have changed...  I think it's silly these days to say, "Oh, the two parties are just the same."  They're not.  That might've made sense in 1996; it does not make sense today.  They're not.

~ Tom Woods, "Maybe Libertarians Have to Be Political After All," The Tom Woods Show, November 11, 2020

Sheldon Richman on competition and cooperation being two sides of the free trade coin

Competition is merely part of my being free to decide with whom I wish to cooperate. It really is that simple. The alternative would be some sort of compulsory cooperation, but that doesn't sound so warm and fuzzy anymore, does it?

~ Sheldon Richman, "Libertarianism: A Necessary Review of the Foundations," The Tom Woods Show, September 8, 2020

Tom Woods on racism in America

The United States is one of the least racist countries on earth.  That's not even debatable.

~ Tom Woods, "Welcome to Leftist America," Tom Woods Show, July 1, 2020

Eric July on the George Flynn riots

It's one thing to go head on with the aggressor.  It's another to take out the innocent.

~ Eric July, The Tom Woods Show interview, June 2, 2020

Woman and her husband in Rochester, NY trying to protect
their business, which has been in the community since 1943

Thaddeus Russell: "The pandemic is the health of the state"

Randolph Bourne said "War is the health of the state..."  Well, it turns out the pandemic is the health of the state.

~ Thaddeus Russell, "Why Does the Left Favor Lockdowns?," The Tom Woods Show, May 19, 2020

Thaddeus Russell on the difference between the shutdowners and the reopeners

All I can say is, for people who want the lockdown to continue, is that these are the people who value security over freedom.  That's it.  That's one of the main dividers between people.  There are people... who primarily value security, safety, you could say a static life.  They don't want time to move.  They don't want change necessarily.  And those of us who value dynamism and change and liberty and individualism and all that.  And individual creativity.  And that's the divide.

~ Thaddeus Russell, "Why Does the Left Favor Lockdowns?," The Tom Woods Show, May 19, 2020

Alex Epstein on the "living death" of Covid-19 panic

Some people with [the coronavirus] are afraid of death.  I'm afraid of living death.  I'm afraid of a decade or more where we lose because we're just in this state of panic and we no longer produce value and we're no longer free to interact with one another and we're just perpetually terrified of this virus.  That's what I'm afraid of most of all.

~ Alex Epstein, podcast host of Power Hour, "Lockdowns vs. Human Flourishing: Is There Another Approach?," The Tom Woods Show, April 6, 2020

Peter Klein on a future world of "pandemic theater"

Actions by the Fed, by the Treasury, by Congress, by the President, that are really striking and distressing to people in extraordinary times can quickly become the new normal.  And I worry that, in a future age which might be constituted by all kinds of crises - real or imagined - the notion that bold, decisive action by the state is necessary to protect us and keep us safe is just going to become more and more part of peoples' expectations.

You know how we use the term "security theater" to describe all of these policies since 911, you know no liquids, more than 3 ounces, taking our shoes off and going through the corn house scanners and so forth.  Young people today have grown up in that environment and don't know what it was like to travel before 911.

I wonder what kind of pandemic theater we'll have to live through after this is all over.  Will you have to have your temperature taken by some TSA-equivalent worker every time you enter a public building?  Will there be random health checks?  I just worry that socially, culturally people are becoming more acclimated to a world in which the state controls the movements of persons and goods and the division of labor is retarded and so forth because it's just too dangerous to allow for a global division of labor.  And maybe I'm overly pessimistic on that score, but I think we need to be especially vigilant, those of us who care about liberty, and try to push back on those things in the months and years to come.

~ Peter Klein, "The Economics of the Shutdown," The Tom Woods Show, March 26, 2020