Episode 226 War, Taxation, Regulation, and the Political Means

Every revolution starts in the minds of the people.

Arm yourself for the war of ideas. Take back your life. Take back your liberty.

Tom Mullin talks freedom.

Hello everyone and welcome back to Tom Mullin talks freedom.

Today is Wednesday March 11th coming to you from Rainy Western New York

and been talking a lot about the Iran War and some of the nitty-gritty details,

how's it going, what is the administration saying, etc. And I want to pull back a little bit

and talk in a more general sense about the general discontent

with the establishment, the elites, whatever you want to call it, definitely with the government

and a lot of people of course who voted for Donald Trump are very

disappointed in the fact that he campaigned so hard on not quote unquote regime change wars,

getting us into regime change wars thousands of miles away, not getting into forever wars.

And I mentioned on the podcast yesterday that he actually used the words forever war as a

possibility for Iran. I think trying to make the point that the US was not going to run out of

missiles or be able to sustain the war if Iran did. But in any case, just the irony that he would

use those those words after campaigning directly against them, no more forever wars.

And you know, it's not just Trump, but it's been quite a long time where let's just say

President Obama, who campaigned sounding not quite as socialist as a lot of people

claim that he did, but certainly as a left of center Democrat and talked a lot about

income inequality, all of the things that socialists like to hear. And then when he

proposed his Obamacare, it turned out to be a big disappointment to the far left of his supporters

because it seemed like it was just a handout to big corporations, which of course it was.

And what it was designed to be, even when they were fiddling around with it, implemented it

in Massachusetts, basically the same plan. Back when they were debating basically the same plan

in the 1990s, Hillary Care was going to mandate employers instead of individuals. And then the

Republican answer to that, you know, being as big government a party as the Democrats was,

well, no, we'll just mandate individuals. That all was a Republican idea, which of course,

you know, goes against the way Republicans who used to campaign as libertarians back then.

And then when they got into office would rule like social Democrats. And that includes

Mr. Reagan, by the way. And I wanted to give you all a way of looking at these things,

a different perspective for looking at these things that makes a lot more sense than just either one

that the people we elect are incompetent, a lot of times they are, but and hypocritical.

And to give you a different lens through which to evaluate, you know, what elected people do,

what the government itself does, including the vast, unelected bureaucracy that really runs

the world at this point, along with their partners in the private sector who get protection,

get privileges, get handouts, get bailouts, etc. And to a lot of people, none of this makes sense,

either on the right or the left. And I say that with the context that libertarians are neither on

the right or the left. And I've talked a little a lot about that before, but you can read my book

where do conservatives and liberals come from to get an explanation of why I think that's true,

and why I think if you read that book, you would agree that's true. But why they're always

perplexed, why they elect these people that run on one thing, and then they kind of always get

the same result, and it's not what they voted for. And there's a great book that I think I've

mentioned from time to time that I'm going to try to summarize without taking half the day here,

enough to give you a way of thinking about these things, about what our elected officials and

bureaucracy do rather than what they say. And also why they say what they say,

and why they don't mean what they say, why they actually are logical if you look at it through

this lens. So the book I'm talking about is by an author called Franz Oppenheimer,

and it's called The State and its history and development viewed sociologically. A lot of

people just shorten it to the state. And Oppenheimer wasn't exactly a libertarian, and he had a

bigger role for government than most modern libertarians would have, arguably that the Jefferson

wing of the founders of the United States would have, certainly not the Hamiltonian wing.

And basically what he set out to do was to explain the state and how it came about. Now,

everyone knows I'm a big John Locke fan, and this book hasn't changed that,

but you'll remember that in previous discussions about the locky and theory of the society

and government that, you know, Locke proposed that the way a just society would come about

an adjust political system. So he's, Locke was talking about what should be, okay? And he said

something to the effect of when a group of people have a mind to combine for the mutual protection

of their lives, liberties, and possessions, or states, which I will call by the general name of

property, that this is the reason they put themselves under the power of a government,

and then he makes the statement that the chief end of political societies and government is

preservation of their property. And he's able to say that because he's defined property as

life, liberty, and you're justly acquired possessions. And that's the way it should be.

And what Oppenheimer has done is saying, I want to know how states really came to be.

And he provides a lot of evidence for his theory. But before he gets into, he has a six-stage

process. And I'll summarize that briefly. But he first has a subsection at the beginning of his

treatise called the political and economic means. And I'll read this to you verbatim because it's

not that long. It says there are two fundamentally opposed means whereby man requiring sustenance

is an impelled to obtain the necessary means for satisfying his desires. These are work and robbery,

one's own labor, and the forcible appropriation of the labor of others.

Then it says robbery or excavation point, forcible appropriation. These words convey to us ideas

of crime and the penitentiary since we are the contemporaries of a developed civilization,

specifically based on the inviolability of property. So you could see that at the time Oppenheimer

was writing around the turn of the 20th century that to this idea of property being central to

civilization is still foremost. I mean nobody talks that way anymore. And that's the chief problem

with our political system is nobody thinks in terms of disputes should be settled on the basis

of who has a property right or who has been violated. So he goes on to say and this tang is not

lost when we are convinced that land and sea robbery is the primitive relation of life

just as the warrior's trade which also for a long time has only organized mass robbery

constitutes the most respected of occupations. And he's saying really the military life is rooted

in the plunderer, the robber, the armed robber, both because of this and also on account of the

need of having in the further development of this study, terse clear sharply opposing terms

for these very important contrasts. I propose the following discussion to call one's own labor

and the equivalent exchange of one's own labor for the labor of others, the economic means.

So anything you obtain by your own work or by peaceful trade with somebody else, nobody's forced,

those are the economic means for getting what you need and want.

And then back to Aminheimer, while the unrequited

appropriation of the labor of others will be called the political means.

So the political means is just defined as robbery. Okay, and I know this smacks of the modern

libertarian, you know, saying taxation is theft and of course that is in the same spirit here.

But he's going to put together kind of a historical and he provides you know,

reams of examples of the stages that he says that arises from which the state arises.

And he says the first stage in the development of a modern state is the robbery and killing

stage. And he just says that in primitive societies where agriculture was new, you had certain

types of people in very fertile land who discovered that they could lead a sedentary life

and that if they grew plants instead of hunting and gathering and heard it animals, raised animals

that they could have a higher standard of living of course. And from this comes leisure time.

And from this comes all art and science and all the things we think of civilization.

Most anthropologists agree that you know, the development of agriculture was the key stage

in developing civilization among human beings and getting us out of the hunter gather stage where

you're spending basically all your waking hours trying to find food or resting up so you could

try to find food. And he points to a particular pattern in history where these sedentary populations

grew up in the fertile lands that were bordered by deserts or plains where you had the more

nomadic groups like any calls on the herdsmen who didn't live in one place. They basically just

heard it animals. And the birth of the military lifestyle is in the herding nomadic community.

And there's lots of details here that I encourage you to read the book and I'll post a link to it

on the show notes page. Please use my link because I'll get a little commission from that. In fact,

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I'll talk more about that at the end. So you have these the situation where there's always a

hurting a population of nomadic herdsmen just outside the fertile areas where people are starting

to lead these sedentary lives. And the herdsmen soon discover that these people are ripe for the

plucking to just raid and pillage and plunder. And this is actually the first stage in the development

of the state you have the plunderers who live out in the plains and their lifestyle actually in

many ways contributes to them adopting this the political means the plundering. First of all he

talks about how they get a lot more protein they tend to be stronger because I'll you know they're

eating meat and they're always on the move they generally are carrying all their possessions with

them as they move. So there's no need for long supply lines or anything like that. I don't want to

get into every detail and get distracted but there are a lot of advantages as far as if you want

to be a plunderer for the herdsmen nomadic life. And there's a lot of disadvantages to resisting them

when you're in the sedentary farming life because you're not learning the military tactics,

even the movement from place to place. And all you know the herdsmen lifestyle contributes to the war

to be development of warriors and a warrior class. And the warrior class is not did not come out of

saving damsels in distress it came out of armed robbery that that is its roots. And this is of course

Oppenheimer's thesis and you can agree or disagree with it but he provides a lot of proof and I

recommend you read the book before you dismiss it. So the other he also talks about the two types of

primitive states and one is the feudal state and the other one out of which grows out of the herdsmen

invading the farmers. And the other one is the maritime state and this would be more like the

Vikings you know just coming and plundering murdering stealing and carrying off everything they

could goods women whatever and then they leave and they consume their plunder and then they do it

again and that's the first stage in the development of the state. But the second stage is when

the plundering class the warriors whether they're maritime or feudal or herdsmen

discover that you know it would be a lot better you know if we keep plundering the same people

pretty soon you know they either die off or run off or you know they're not as they're not producing

enough to allow us to just keep stealing everything they've got and so he calls the second stage the

beekeeper stage where the plunderers figure out that it's advantageous to them to leave enough honey

so that the bees can make it through the winter and to expand on that farther that leave them

enough of their own stuff so that they can produce more and we can raid them again and you know

this you know this is a economically through the political means more efficient right because

you're not killing the host so to speak and then he talks about the third stage which is the

tribute stage where the herdsmen or the maritime plunderers decide that the it's kind of like the

beekeeper stage but instead of just coming in and robbing everything they're going to exact tribute

and we don't need to come in and kill anybody we don't even need to hit anyone over the head

as long as you agree that you give us x amount of your stuff of your produce

and we still don't have really a government here because it's really just give us your stuff

and we won't kill you or rob it you know we won't he'll just give it to us now of course this

is not voluntary the people giving up the tribute are only doing it so that they don't get

speared right but again it's less dangerous for the plunderers I mean some of the plunderers get

killed when the peasants try to defend themselves so if we can get them to just give it up and not

have to go and kill them then that's even better for us and it reminds me of if you were a fan of

the walking dead either the comic book series or graphic novel I guess when you're an adult you

call them graphic novels I used to read them I loved them but where the saviors you know they

kill two of the the Alexandrians and then they say we're not going to kill the rest of you we're

just going to take half your stuff so every month or I can't remember how often it was the saviors

would show up you know in the first time they show up you remember that megan has got his baseball

bet with the bar wire and he's banging on the gate we're here to collect all right so that's the

tribute stage now the fourth stage is where we're starting to see the emergence of a political

society and it's important to mention I didn't mention this before that the herdsmen or the

maritime raiders are foreigners I mean we don't have countries at this point but we do have

you know the people who live in the fertile area and these other people who may be ethnically

different or maybe not but they're definitely a different tribe they're not they don't consider

themselves the same community but in the fourth stage a union forms between the plunders and the

plundered and a lot of reasons there could be a lot of reasons for this one of them chiefly would be

that there's another group now that wants to plunder the peasants okay so there's a third group you

had the plundered and the plunderers and now we have a group plunderers two completely different

group and of course the the first group of plunderers don't doesn't want somebody else

horning in on their action think about the mafia I will protect you you pay me tribute and I

will protect you from these other guys the corleonis will protect you from the budzinis right or

the italias so they're over time becomes a union where the plunders and the plundered begin to think

of themselves as the same community and it's the warrior class the robber class's job to protect the

peasants from this external group and this is the beginning of when they start to think of themselves

all as one society with two classes and the two classes are not the rich and the poor the two

classes are the plunders and the plundered okay and the nobility what will later call the nobility

is really just the descendants of this plunderer robber class so what happens in the fifth stage the

fifth stage is when the plunderer class begins to realize that you know the peasants as they've

been allowed to become a little more wealthy have disputes among themselves and it behooves the

plunderers to settle those disputes you don't want your producers fighting with each other and

producing less so the idea that the it's also the robber's job to not only protect the peasants

from external enemies but also to settle disputes between the plundered class okay and the

idea of courts arises so you can see how again if you read Oppenheimer's book he provides evidence

for all these just this isn't just a theory it is a theory but it's backed up by a lot of evidence

and and I'm thinking when I got to this point in the book what I was thinking of was in

history of England and his account of the Normans conquering England and you know the first thing

they did was you know exact tribute so they're farther along on this this is one state

invading another so it's farther along on this development but you know all the elements are

still there and then you had at that time the organic Anglo-Saxon courts and the feudal lords

and after a while the king realized that you know the feudal lords would be a problem even the his

fellow Norman feudal lords and that he established the king's courts where if a peasant a

surf didn't think he was being treated fairly by the lord could go to the king's court and almost

like an appellate court okay but this is all just to make the king just making sure that he gets

what he's supposed to out of the feudal lords who get it from the peasants so that's

these things just ran through my mind as I was reading the book and the sixth stage is really

like the full-on state and I'm going to read this part verbatim because it's a little

murkier the the difference between the fifth and the sixth states because you would think that once

you know the warrior class was charged with not only defending the serfs from

external enemies but also settling disputes amongst the serfs that at that point you have a

government but let me read what Oppenheimer says about the sixth stage

so he says the necessity of keeping the subjects in order and at the same time of maintaining them

at their full capacity for labor leads step by step from the fifth to the sixth stage in which the

state by acquiring full intra-nationality and by the evolution of nationality and quotes and he

capitalizes it is developed in every sense the need becomes more and more frequent to interfere

to relay difficulties to punish or to coercal obedience and thus develop the habit of rule

and the usages of government the two groups separated to begin with and then united on one territory

are at first merely laid alongside one another then are scattered through one another like a

mechanical mixture as the term is used in chemistry until gradually they become more and more of a

chemical combination they intermingle unite a malgate to unity in customs and habits and speech

and worship soon the bonds of relationship unite the upper and the lower strata

in nearly all cases the master class picks the handsome as virgins from the subject races for

its concubines a race of bastards thus develops sometimes taken into the ruling class sometimes

rejected and then because of the blood of the masters in their veins become the born leaders of

the subject race inform and in content the primitive state is completed so he's saying that's the

way this that states actually through history have come about and again he provides all these

examples and he goes on from the primitive state to the development of the feudal state the

development of the constitutional state and the tendency of the development of the state you know

there's more to it but that's kind of enough for our purposes today for you to look at the elites

and the people who are in government and you'll notice that you know when people take a look at

the democraticly elected government that it turns out that a ridiculously high percentage of these

people are somewhat related and that's a whole rabbit hole we could go down another day but

there's definitely a class of people now we talk about the working the poor the working class the

middle class the upper class the elites the 1% and you can use economic measurements to separate

those but I would suggest to you that just as when Oppenheimer wrote this and just as at the

beginning of historical civilization that there's two classes there's the class that uses the

political means to obtain their wants and desire their needs and wants and the economic class the one

who produces everything for the political class to plunder and you don't have to be an elected

official or be in the government to be part to be using the political means so

let me use three examples I'll use war taxation in general and regulation so of course Oppenheimer

is focusing especially in the parts of the book that I summarized for you purely on taxation it's

just we're going to collect a certain amount of money from you we're just going to you know keep

it for ourselves you know it's a much more honest form of of the political means than the one we

have today where they have to convince you that this is all for some mythical common good which

doesn't exist and that's the origin of taxation it starts with plunder and over time it becomes a

custom but it's still taken by force just as it is today and again you know it's today it's put

through this filter of sales talk that this is all for some common good but in reality of all of

this all text money flows into the state and almost all of it is for the benefit of some private

individuals who may at the at that point be working for the government or not or be shareholders

in a corporation or whatever for their own personal benefit okay and I know this is this kind of

rhymes with public choice theory but it's not exactly the same as that and maybe we'll talk about

that on a different podcast but I would suggest to you when you look at what is taxed from let's

we'll just stick with the United States and I think I did something on this in an earlier podcast

and I can't remember what year it was it could have been 2023 because that was the most recent year

we had all the numbers in but when you take all of the taxation and I'm talking

all the sales taxes all the income taxes all of the user fees those fees on your hotel bill the

fees on your cell phone bill everything put it all together it came to like 11 trillion dollars

okay and out of that 11 trillion six trillion were direct transfer payments okay so they were

taken from one person and just paid to another they didn't build a bridge they didn't build a road

they didn't pay police officers they didn't all the things that they tell you your taxes are going

to make it sound legitimate like protecting your life and property the six trillion to that

11 trillion was just taken from you and given to somebody else and those people weren't necessarily

poor by the way you know that's the first thing you do when or someone says when you start

talking transfer payments or you must hate the poor well I got news for you a small percentage

of that went to the poor who are not like this monolithic group you know the people in the lowest

income ranges most of them don't stay there but that's again a subject for another day so more than

half of it was a direct transfer payment and then when you put in public schooling and things like

the health care programs like Medicare Medicaid then it gets up to be like 80 percent like almost

all the money is just taken you know from one person and paid out to another now not all of it goes

to like Ginghis Khan the ruling class for their personal luxury but some of it does but it certainly

is not necessary to maintain civilization law and order et cetera roads and bridges even though

that should be privatized as well and at one time was in the United States almost none of what's

your tax goes for that it's almost all to buy something for somebody else or just to cut them a

check get big part is just to cut them a check so okay so taxation is one way whereby people can

obtain what they need through the political means regulation is the other chief way that they

can do that and again you know just like taxation is sold is like oh you can't have civilization

without it you know I guess I won't see you driving on the roads if you object to taxation where

it's like the roads are not even a rounding error in the amount of money the government spends

but anyway regulation is sold similarly that it's either going to make

life safer or fairer one of the two some lofty thing but what regulation really does and really

there is no disputing this it limits competition so without regulation people could sell anything

they want and they could buy anything they want and people say oh my god you'll get tainted

and polluted medications right but there really is no there's no right of one person

to prevent somebody else from either buying or selling something that they think is unsafe

okay and if no individual has this right they certainly can't delegate it to a government

all right so how did regulation really come about and I'm going to take less time on this because

I've done work on this before the progressive era really came about where the richest

of the robber barons competing with each other didn't you know wanted less competition and I always

used the meat packing thing because it's such a great example where you know the big meat packing

companies had this huge trust and they did in fact do what the progressive myth says that they

tried to do which is we're going to you know corner the market and raise our prices and charge

you know it wouldn't be technically monopoly prices unless there was only one company but they

often call it monopoly prices but every time they tried to do that millions of independent farmers

would say I got beef and I could sell it a lot cheaper than that and they would flood the market

and these companies when we're on the verge of bankruptcy whenever they tried to charge above

the market price that's what actually happened and then they passed the the bill in 1906 the pure

food and drug act I believe I'm going on memory here and that made it illegal for most of those small

competitors now the small competitors were selling tainted meat the meat was fine nobody was dropping

dead from food poisoning or even getting sick okay I'm sure you could there were newspaper articles

where they found one batch of tainted meats and oh my god look at this we need regulation and of

course that's how it's sold right it's sold to the public that we need this because you're in great

danger okay think of how the wars are sold think about how climate change is sold

but at the end of the day what's the result of all this let's forget what the intentions are the

result is you have far less products at your disposal and the people who lobbied for the regulation

now are the only ones you're allowed to buy from and their products are a lot more expensive

and if it weren't for the regulation you'd be able to buy something just as good just as useful to you

a lot cheaper and that's really what it's all about it's a racket it always has been the very first

regulations that's what they were okay and they're sold with this and now people have a false history

that they think that the raw that they really should be called robber barons but not for the reason

that people say people the progressive sell the myth that the robber barons through the free market

were able to become so big and destroy all their competitors and raise prices and we need a

regulation to protect the consumers from that but that's not what happened that never happened

never the opposite happened the free market was protecting the consumers from the robber barons

trying to do that and the robber barons then lobbied the government for decades actually

for regulation to get rid of those competitors so they could charge the higher prices and in every

case where an unregulated industry became regulated the prices were higher much higher than they were

before and that includes like when they broke up standard oil it was the same thing okay so it's a

racket taxation is a racket it's sold with you know the idea that it's going to make the public

safer and often you know by instituting a false panic like the one that rose up about the meat

that all the meat was tainted and it needed to be regulated regulated when that was never true

and I should say that along with the along with the people who are benefiting most from this

who lobby who make all this possible you do have hordes of true believers use

felidates if you will and that's why I always say the socialists and the progressive movement

are the use felidates they're the ones who really believe that the regulation is needed

and that the free market doesn't work and that this is going to make things better or fairer

and all it does is make the richest richer and I don't mind them getting rich and free and open

competition to get rich as you want but the richest of the rich are as rich as they are and the

disparities are what they are because on top of any talent that they have and on top of

what they are able to accumulate fairly by having great products or great innovations

they have the second layer of wealth that they extract from the public through the political

means so this is kind of the modern especially in the United States which is ostensibly capitalist

but I mean it's got this huge layer of regulation on top of a somewhat market economy

and all that does is protect the biggest companies from competition from smaller ones

and it does stifle innovation now there's still great innovation happening

but you're not going to see the ripe brothers again you know inventing the airplane

other their bicycle shop in a situation where you know you're not allowed to do that that you have

to follow all these regulations and being a small business owner myself with a brick and mortar

business I mean in New York it's the epitome of this and on top of like the very high minimum wages

you have like the family medical leave act like employers pay that in New York state where do you

think the money comes from so even though you know none of your employees might ever use it

you're paying percentage of all the wages you pay into this fund so that they can then pay people

to take six months off when they have a baby or whatever so and then of course that goes into

the price I mean I have to I you know like any other business owner I have to take my cost of

doing business all right so that my labor costs are artificially inflated and then the multiplier

on top in some states it's only 1.075 because all they have to do is take out their half of the

phica money that they pay the employee pays the other seven and a half percent but in New York it's

more like 1.1 because you've got family medical leave act you've got this huge workers comp

benefit that's extremely generous and disability and all these different things that you have to pay

and all these regulations you have to follow that make the cost of business

higher and so that fixed cost just to be operating is one cost then you have your cost of good

sold right so in any case and in a lot of cases your cost of good sold is higher because those people

are complying with all these regulations so it and it eventually just drives up the price

for the consumer so that's why prices are so much higher and even in Western New York here we're not

New York City then maybe when my previous where I lived in Tampa before that and then not that Florida

isn't also terrible on this but they're not as nearly as bad as New York so

in every single case where you can't understand why politicians do what they do think about it in

these terms so they may not be taxing the money and like putting it right in their own bank account

but they're put into office by people who want to use the political means

they want some advantageous regulation that gives them a leg up on their competitors

they love to eliminate competition so what's the whole climate change thing about

you're not going to be allowed to drive gasoline power cars you're only going to be able to buy

these more expensive electric cars and why to save the planet all right so this is the pattern right

we give you this crisis and I'm a soul over the top and when you get to be my age when you've

heard it for like 40 years next year at the end of the 10 more years that's it and at this point

in my life 170 years into the industrial age which just happens to coincide with the end of the

little ice age we're up one degree okay so if the climate alarmists are correct then the only

safe temperature for humanity would be the temperatures we had during the little ice age

now I know that's argued that was more regional than global but certainly had an effect on global

temperatures whether you know that was just a regional phenomenon so they're saying that nothing

you know even one degree higher than the little ice age is unsafe for humanity which of course

is ridiculous right you know the humanity was born and at the equator in Africa supposedly in

Africa I know people are disputing that now but we'll go with the conventional theory right now

under much warmer conditions so take that for what it is and again and you can go from one thing

to another everything every argument you hear in the political sphere notice one thing it's always

about it's always about more money and less freedom for you and it's always you've got to pay more

you've got a sacrifice Barack Obama shared sacrifice now the Trump administrations saying the

same thing because of this Iran war you're going to have to pay higher prices for a while but in the

long term it'll be better short term pain long term gain that somebody did a montage maybe I'll

link to it on the show notes page it's another one of these things were obviously the talking point

went out and every surrogate on every channel is saying the same exact words like so you know it's

a scam that's the sales talk all right what it's the sales talk to sell you the Iran war all right

and the last thing I'll talk about war has traditionally been the chief avenue for the political

means and you could say well what what about you know a defensive war there rarely is a purely

defensive war I'd say the American revolution is the only one in the United States history

which was purely defensive but but you know yes the military you know if you believe that any kind

of a state is required at all you need some kind of a military and I would say even in an anarcho

capitalist society you would need some kind of military establishment even if it was private to

be able to defend you from you know plunderers too right so but if you look at the numbers on

even like let's say the war on terror so 25 years ago when George W. Bush started the war on terror

he increased military spending dramatically even before 9-11 that was already on the table

and contrary you know the Congress has the purse strings kind of but the president writes up what

he wants and then he sends it to Congress and they rubber stamp it that's how it really works

and and if you dissent if you're a congress member who dissents it says no we're spending too

much see Thomas Massey okay play ball and let the president dictate what we spend or that's what

happens to you so anyway Bush increased the military spending to something like 300 billion I know

that sounds quaint now but and he's and then after 9-11 the war on terror began and started with

Afghanistan and then it eventually you know he started the war in Iraq which completely unjustifiable

I mean Afghanistan was unjustifiable but it was a little more plausible that it was some have

been lawden was supposedly in the country and I think he was I think if you read your Scott Horton

then at one point he was actually there eventually found him in Pakistan but if you believe

that story but I remember that five years into the war on terror there was this big headline we've

spent 400 billion on the war on terror well but I thought we were spending 300 billion per year on

military spending well it turns out that it's only it the wars don't really cost all that much

I mean it's money that the government doesn't have so you know it's too much but it was something

like after five years it was 400 billion in other words it was only costing about 80 billion

for the war out of the 320 billion in military spending and this has been the case all along

so when the Afghanistan war ended in late 2021 when Joe Biden led the troops out

in a spectacular fashion there I took a look to see okay and this is before the

crane war started is military spending going to go down we just stopped a war no it went up

so the vast majority of military spending is not even devoted to fighting a war it's just to

maintain this huge monolith of warehousing troops all over the world 200,000 of them overseas

and then all the ones that are you know housed here and you know it's mostly a ripoff and also to pay

all of these defense contractors for stuff that doesn't work for fighter jets that take decades

to finish and still malfunctioning all over the place I mean that's all just money that is sucked

out of your pocket and blown okay but people benefit from it they benefit by using the political

means and a huge part of the military now there was a time again in the United States

with this brief period where you know a much less larceness government existed and it used to be

that yes military is always the biggest part of the government but it was much smaller the whole

government was only spending 3% of GDP today it spends 30% well I mean if you take it all state

local federal I would argue that since you have I mean since it's only 27 billion is the total

and 6 billion are transfer payments you should really subtract that out because all that comes from

the 27 billion so it's like 11 billion out of 21 billion something like that is it's

spending half of everything that's produced but in any case I think the federal government is up

near 30% and then you got the states and the local governments spending a lower amount but on top

of that so you know the vast majority of the military budget is just a ripoff so it used to be what

I was the point I was getting to is that when there was a war they would it was spending would go

way up you know they'd have to we're going to spend a lot more money we're fighting a war

that's not really the case anymore you look at military spending and war years and what we call

peacetime years and it's not that different because most of the money is just maintaining the empire

this vast bloated larceness structure called the military I mean when you have social programs going

we want the women to go into combat we want trans people to be admirals or whatever I mean

that's where you know that like you don't need any of this like your safety is not dependent

they're just throwing money around like so anyway that's a way to look at this so think about

what Trump has said about both funding the Gaza thing for Israel and the Iran war talked about

we're going to blow the whole place up to smithereens and then we're going to rebuild it

remember when Gaza was going to be like a Trump you know resort or something you know when that

idea was floating through his head well where's all that money coming from it's coming from you

and it's going to private people who get those contracts and a big motivation for a lot of the

wars that were in is just that like all the people who are going to benefit lobby the hardest

and then when you start to see like oh this this legislator this congresswoman or congressman

is actually married to the CEO of this defense contractor you follow me so start looking at everything

through that lens and it makes a lot more sense the political means the Iran war is the political means

for sucking of an even vaster amount of money even though again you know you'll look at this and

you'll say well the military is a trillion a year and you know even the big wars we fought like

Afghanistan and Iraq were costing a hundred billion or so and the rest of it's just maintaining

this useless edifice called the military maybe we'll leave it there I just wanted to first of all

recommend this book it's really great I think I said turn of the century it might have been a

little earlier than that it's right in there it's in the progressive era where Oppenheimer wrote

this and to me it makes the unclear clear what's really going on here why do they only want electric

cars because they're way more expensive higher margins no competition from cheaper functional

alternatives why do they do cash for clunkers get rid of cheaper alternatives it was an investment

in making you pay more and everything the government does makes prices higher and of course

that includes the federal reserve and maybe we'll do an episode about the federal reserve as the

political means because the central banks throughout history have always been the same thing and

that's why the same people have always told you're not safe without them it's a scam you're the

victim and stop listening to these politicians talk about you know principles and philosophical

reasoning for the positions they take are public good or being fair or keeping us safe and

start thinking in terms of the political means and you'll know what to do again thanks for watching

please do like comment subscribe comment on the show notes page or on the in the comments section

on my youtube channel for this episode and if you want to get on my email list and get some more

free content at least a few times a week go to it's the fedstupid.com my book about the federal reserve

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so once again thanks for listening and we'll see you next time on Tom Mullin Talks Freedom