Flock is Down in Florida, Protests are Up in Spain, and Oil is Pumping in Venezuela

Welcome back to the Power Market podcast. I'm Ryan McMacon, editor-inchief at the Mises Institute. And joining me today are two of our contributing editors. We've got Tho Bishop and we have Connor O'Keefe. And we've got a variety of issues I think we're going to cover today. There hasn't been any one thing really dominating the headlines, but there there's definitely stuff going on. So, I think we can cover a few uh different issues relating to things like like bonds, like gold, like immigration. Uh so, we'll get into that here in just one minute. But though, we've got events coming up here in the near future, right, for the Mises Institute. >> Yeah, Ron, we can tell you're not a college football fan because Lane Kein versus the SEC has been dominating the headlines. But uh we also have coming up at the Mises Institute some great events uh and in the SEC footprint. So they it works there. I can make that as a bridge. Uh the in Greenville, South Carolina on just next weekend uh we've got what government schools uh don't want to teach you or why government schools don't want you to understand economics. What will they not teach you proper economics? Um we've got a great lineup there. Uh no Ryan McMon this time. This is not part of the 2026 making world tour, but we do have uh play Peter Klein, Jonathan Newman, Mark Thornton, Paul Swick, and our good friend Pete Faggley. Um so that will be a great event in Greenville, South Carolina. There's still a little bit of space open for that one. And uh our supporter summit is coming up in October on the 22nd through the 24th in beautiful San Antonio, Texas. Uh if you want to learn more about that and get a peak of the events already shaping the calendar for 2027, you can find that and more at mises.org. And of course, a reminder, we've got two great books that just hit the Mises bookstore. Uh both of which Dr. Patrick Newman has a buy line with. We've got Cronyism, Rise of the Corporist State, a sequel to his book on Cronyism, Liberty, and Power in Early America. great great read about how uh the the elites were formed during the progressive era and post civil war politics. A lot of great narratives in that and also uh the making of an Austrian economist, a biography, an intellectual biography of Murray Rothbard. Again, both of those are now up at the Mis bookstore, also on Amazon and anywhere else you get your books. So, I highly recommend checking those out. Back to you, Ryan. >> All right. Well, let's follow up on our discussion from two weeks ago about flock cameras. remember we uh we talked about that a bit and there's actually some interesting developments that have occurred since then. The the backlash has not gone away and I wanted to talk about our man Glenn Jacobs who I think we just briefly mentioned last time but there's I think there's a several different issues uh contained uh with the the Jacob situation. So, if you don't know, Glenn Jacobs was cane uh in pro wrestling and he is now the mayor of Knox County in Tennessee and he's a or at least has been historically. I don't know I don't know what his status is when he's an actual elected official. uh which he's wrapping up his eight years now as mayor in Knox County, but historically he's a Mises Institute supporter and you can see that in a lot of his work um as mayor down there in in Tennessee. And there's for years there's been an autographed picture of Kain of Glenn Jacobs as Kain in in the offices there in one of the offices that I would often sit in when I was visiting the institute and I just called it the Kane office. Um which I don't I never followed pro wrestling but uh I kind of like the concept. I I like the Kane character, let's put it that way. So good for him. Great career in pro wrestling. He went on and he so he became mayor of Knox County. And the reason he got mentioned this last time is because he delved into the paperwork for the flock camera operation in Knox County. And this had been set up by the sheriff's department. And what uh Jacobs found was that essentially the sheriff's department had been so totally unethical and really skirting the law. It's it's it's not clear if it's even what they did was legal or not, but but they were clearly trying to avoid uh telling the public that they were importing a bunch of flock cameras. So, what they had done is is since and if you've ever worked for the government, you know that there's a certain dollar amount over which you then have to have like board approval or some sort of extra approval for spending money. So, the sheriff's department being sneaky liars went in and they're they were saying, "Well, we need to get in under what I think was a $25,000 limit on on the procurement. We're going to do $24,990." It was like literally $10 below the limit. And they did this multiple times. uh Jacobs went in and said, you know, really if you read the the way the law is written, the full purchase is what matters, not these individual purchases you're making to skirt the law. So, he just declared then the contract to be uh not valid between the sheriff's department and uh the county. And of course, the sheriff's department whined and bitched and moaned about it. Uh but now it looks like the county has gone back and the actual elected officials have said, "Yeah, we're kicking flock out of the county altogether." And this comes after the county had already spent $2 million on it without asking any voters, without any sort of illegal vote. So now they're trying to recover from that politically. And it was all started off by the sheriff's department, which I mean just should tell you what you need to know about law enforcement on this issue. they will lie to your face about it so they can get their spy cameras and that seems to be the issue there now. >> Yeah. Well, we had a similar situation on on even a bigger scale in Florida um earlier this week. Dantis through the Florida Department of Transportation FOD um announced that all of the permits for license plate readers um obviously a key part of the flock uh infrastructure there um were going to be revoked in the next 30 days. And so immediately within 24 hours I think every single county in the the state um you know announced some sheriff's office, local police forces, things like that. I mean pretty much um you know on you know every state road and which is obviously most of the veins going into um cities and things like that. I mean pretty much you know within a 24-h hour period flock was pretty much removed from Florida or or started the process of removing it statewide. And I think kind of that dives directly into what we were discussing a couple weeks ago is that this this populist backlash, the broad nature of this um you know has the ability to act really quickly. I did not expect us to be talking about this two weeks later um particularly with a state like Florida. But um it it definitely goes to show um just how quickly this action is evolving and and Dantis has always been someone who's doesn't mind just doing things. And so, uh, this is definitely I was always interesting seeing all the the the messages out there from various law enforcement officials around, you know, it's like, oh, of course, we've always agreed that the trade-off between public safety, you know, there there is no conflict between uh individual liberties and public safety and therefore yada yada yada. Um, you know, they they were dra kicking and screaming and now Florida will will be a flock-free flock free state in in most meaningful ways. Theoretically, I guess you'd have like cities and still do it, but like you for the most part, this seems pretty pretty broad and and largely absolute throughout most of the state. >> Well, I saw Oh, go ahead, Connor. >> I was just going to say it shows the um something that I often like to remind people, which is that public opinion does matter still. I think there's a lot of people out there that have the sense, I think, especially in our circles, that it's all meaningless. The government's just going to do whatever they want to do. Um, and you know, that certainly I think uh can grow out of what you know I believe is to be accurate criticisms of democracy and stuff like that. But no, the state does what it can get away with. And this is a good example now of this issues getting enough attention. People are getting worked up enough about it that the state can't really keep getting away with uh you know what what they had in the past as the Faulk thing continues to grow. Um and it gets back to what we were talking about last week. I I view it as coming from the fact that people just don't trust institutions and people in power anymore. And I think the Tennessee case is a good example of that. I mean, when you have these, I guess, sheriff's deputies going $10 below the limit so that they don't have to have that extra council um oversight of that issue. That that is not what the government that is not them doing something purely for the public good. They're not just doing this to keep people safe. this is them trying to get away with something. And if there wasn't all of this national interest and, you know, enthusiasm about flock, it's probably, it's likely, I imagine, that they would get away with that. It's just because people are so worked up about it, you know, appropriately, in my opinion, that it's getting that kind of attention. So, it does actually matter, you know, when we're like talking about these issues, trying to wake people up to it, like that that is not a meaningless thing in our current system, even though it can sometimes kind of feel like that. Yeah, and I I hope it is reminding some people that law enforcement is generally not your friend. Um, a lot of people forgot that. I guess after COVID, they just forgot about it. They forgot that it was the cops who were shutting down your business because you opened your restaurant when there was a lockdown order. It was the cops who, and I know this was true in many cities because police officers told me this, that they were essentially being prepared to make mass arrests against people who left their homes uh during the lockdown orders. Fortunately, the government chickened out in the end in most places. They were unwilling to carry that out. But nine out of 10 police officers were 100% willing to do that. To just round up the people in general, throw them in patty wagons, ship them off to jail for leaving their houses. That was where the endgame was for police departments across America on top of shutting down businesses, on top of harassing citizens, for uh violating just these completely madeup uh things that that health departments were handing down. And remember they were arresting people for going on playgrounds. Uh I mean just the harassment was astounding. And then everybody forgot about it. Uh I think because the left then engineered all of this BLM stuff and everything. And then the right which has the memory of a goldfish decided that oh the police are on our side now. They're they're anti-woke or something which this is illustrating again. No, they are 100% in favor of spying on you every minute of every day. And they're justifying with the most laughable stuff like, "Oh, if you don't if you don't let us spy on you every day, grandma with Alzheimer's is going to wander off and get lost. So therefore, we need to abolish the Fourth Amendment for grandma." Uh, and it's it's really quite remarkable that they're getting away with this. And and I've seen a couple of videos also with cops saying basically, well, we just can't we can't enforce the law anymore. You have no reason to expect public safety unless you give us uh these flock cameras. And I noticed that in a lot of these cases, the police, they always put on their tactical gear, right? To make it look like they're on their way to war or something while they're just like in a suburban uh basically conference room doing a press conference. So, it's it's so much theater. It's so much whining about how, god forbid, we do any actual work. It's just the typical sort of behavior you'd expect from a bureaucrat. Give us what we want or we will give you nothing in return even though you're already paying for it. So, I'm hoping some people are starting to see just how law enforcement really functions on a lot of this. Uh, go ahead, though. Well, that that's kind of, you know, I'm I'm going to put on I'm I'm assume the the McMaken role and kind of take the the the negative sort of you the the the concern fory sort of view on this is uh that that like the the uh my my concern is that like part of the appeal of Flock or the success of Flock is that like it's it's like the perfect embodiment of new era surveillance for like a Tik Tok generation because you had the overt, you know, you you could take a video out in front of it, right? like there's there's these there's very very public physical things that you could see. I think one of the one of the scary things one of the one of the concerns I have is that okay let's say you have this massive retraction of flot cameras uh when it comes to the broader surveillance state in its modern form of technology right like this this is a small relatively new and this this this form you know addition to something that's been growing for decades and decades right and so how much of this you know do you have people that kind of like oh golly gosh darn you know we've had our big I think there's something true kind of the larger mindset like all of American politics Right now so many people conceive of politics and political action and you know everyone wants their own march on Selma, right? Everyone wants to considers themselves like great civil liberties, you know, activists, right? And so they like I check the box here and yet like okay fine flocks flocks down but the broader state right the broader se you civilian surveillance apparatus all the things that you know most of us opt into either uh knowingly or I think more commonly apathetically but not willing to give up the convenience or the tools the services etc etc etc of just modern life that you fine we got this one victory but you know really how much of this really impacts the net surveillance aspect that exists in the modern world. Again, we can, you know, some people can go full Krinski in kind of, you know, how they view these sort of things, right? I'm not, you know, that's up for every individual to to to think about, but I I I'm I'm a little skeptical of how much this, you know, sparks a broader reconsideration of the more fundamental problem outside of, you know, you know, we talked about this a little bit, right, about just rebranding flock, you using a different contractor, yada yada. that's the most most basic example of this that we actually have seen already play out. Um but you know does this become an afterthought when some of these victories are you know are Fidians going to still care about the concept of AI and big big you know daddy you know big brother you know watching every move if it's okay now we're just you know pulling cell phone data rather than having the very obvious you know Orwellian depiction of a camera outside your house. No, you're right. It's a never- ending thing. And they're already plotting their next move in the sense of so Flock gets kicked out. They bring back another brand of the cameras, Axon or whatever. And then they're just saying things like, "Well, can you just attach them to the top of like a really tall street lamp instead of using the usual shorter poles so it'll be harder to cut down so we can just keep spying, but it it'll just be easier for us." And then I'm hearing about palunteers like putting together their spy satellites. I mean, yeah, there's there's so many different things going on at once. And as long as you've got a significant portion of the population willing to go along with it, yeah, they're going to get away with it. And there's no shortage of conservatives pushing this sort of thing. Like there's this guy who pops up in my feed named Will Chamberlain. I don't know, he's like with the Edmund Burke Institute or whatever. Total apologist for the surveillance state. uh really shocking and I assume that this is moderately mainstream conservative sort of stuff. So uh there's never too much government power for these people uh as long as it's anti-left, right? Basically what he was saying, we need a surveillance state to own the libs. That was his whole position because the far-left likes crime and they don't want surveillance cameras. So therefore, you have to want surveillance cameras if you're not woke. And I guess some people fall for that sort of thing. >> It's absurd. And you're you're seeing I'm seeing a lot of that right now with like there will be some clip that goes viral from like a teen takeover or something like a bunch of like like somebody taking or a big group taking over a grocery store or something and these conservatives are pointing to that like this is why we need flock cameras. It's like they're already on camera. I'm watching video of this. Like the problem isn't that the government doesn't know who these people are. It's that they're not doing anything about it. Like the data already exists there. So putting more cameras up there is not actually a step towards a solution there. Like the the problem what you were saying though like the problem is so much deeper than this one brand of camera that's going up on some street corners. It really like it's it's a deeply systemic thing. It reminds me of like the frustration I was having where talking to a lot of right-wingers especially they were almost acting like if we had just if Trump had just fired Fouchy the whole p pandemic response would have been great. They would have been the whole federal government would have been really like working purely in the interest of keeping everybody safe. And it's like no the like okay I'm not a fan of Fouchy. have a lot lot of problems with him. Um, and I wrote a long article about him recently, but he was serving his role well because in like that it's not like he came in and corrupted a system that was supposed to work on behalf of all of us. He was serving his role well in a system that is working against us. And it's a similar thing with this flock thing. And I also I'm always kind of interested in like the media component. I think there's just different uh dynamics here that feed into it. I think the fact that Flock camera is kind of a catchy name, like there's just reasons that this just kind of took off as a thing. If they were called some boring name like X1D cameras or something that there's a good chance like it would not get to the current level. So like it's important to not get too distracted and focused on the very surface level thing because yeah, you're right. If it just rebrands, if it if Flock goes away and they switch to another camera or they go back to something else that all the problems are still there. you don't want you don't want to get too focused on what is really the symptom of a much deeper problem. >> Well, one thing I think is interesting is and you know looking up various legal cases involving this um for my own interest in our episode a few weeks ago is that like I I do do think it's going to be interesting and again the assumption should be bad, right? Like I'm not trying to say the Supreme Court's going to come in and save us, but like there has been I think an interesting acknowledgement um from several court cases dealing with surveillance that basically a lot of them were in defense of you know technology 5 years ago, 10 years ago etc. uh you know whatever the question at hand was but you know within the opinions there's there's a lot of um indications of recognition that as technology increases and you know that that some of these questions become more valid with if technology becomes better at doing x y and z um and that's why we've seen some of these you know uh u various policing tools start being struck down there was the carpenter case the one using geoencing data a couple u that came out this year. Um, and so I'm interested to see, you know, is there any um um, you know, how does the the combination of increased, you know, nominally private I know we we we talked about why it's not the case last time around, but the nominally private tech uh, security sector, you know, to what extent is the legal system um, prepared, capable uh, uh, and able to update? Again, this is not to say the Supreme Court is the body that really cares about civil liberties and golly gosh darn like they're going to protect us, but like these are questions that have been out there asked. Um, and and really, you know, some of the problems that we have with this sort of stuff is like one some of the justifications used compelling, you know, whether or not they're compelling, right, is like, oh well, you know, in the modern day and age, you you know, we can't do a warrant process because that's so antiquated, things like that. There's a lot of I think interesting upgrades to the legal system that you know these are questions that that are going to be confronted one way or another. Again, I think the default expectation should be it will be in the side of the regime and be very expansive. Um but but even like I mean so much of the the tech companies code like the the the extent to which um you know the the agreements between in uh between customers and tech companies it doesn't matter what the legal ease in the contract is to the extent people care about that and don't just scroll down but you always have this massive gaping backdoor change because there's always some provision like we're going to listen to the government. So the government, you know, single-handedly changes what it expects of tech companies. Like you like these are these are, you know, interesting legal questions that go beyond just the public sentiment side of that. And I'm I'm interested to see how this sort of stuff resolves because these are questions that are not going to be going away. And I think they invite very interesting questions from, you know, label libertarian legal lens, but also broad more broadly on this topic. >> Yeah, I think we've haven't heard the the end of this. It's just I I do agree with you though, right? There's so many things going on right now on the surveillance state front that I think this is just one thing that attracted some attention, but it has really drawn out, I think, just how much of the people who you thought maybe were on your side are not right. Local law enforcement, support your local police. That means apparently supporting the surveillance state. Uh, and you I mean, heck, you even got guys like uh Grady Jud from Florida, who I see conservatives post all the time. He's out here whining about not having flock cameras. Interestingly, he's also one of the few departments uh that doesn't have body cams on his deputies. So, so spying for me, but not but no uh no recording of what we're doing for the general public seems to be the position. basically a microcosm of the larger state uh where they control all the information and you have none and I mean that's that this is a conservative hero we're talking about right here. So, not doesn't speak well, I think, to any sort of uh overall sea change unless something significant uh significant changes. And of course, right, we've got a couple members of Congress that were introducing bills. Probably Massie was one of them. I forget if he was involved, but oh, we're going to cut off federal funds for any use involving flock cameras, things like that. We all know that the leadership in Congress is not going to let that happen. and public opinion. It it does matter at the state and local level. And you see that sort of responsiveness, right? Just how short a time frame it took for some city councils, some county commissioners, some state legislators and governors to respond to the backlash. But nothing like that's going to happen in Congress because they have just a much tighter grip on power and they're much much more separated from uh the general people who elect them. Right? your member of Congress simply doesn't care about some sort of mass movement back home because he knows he's he's got he's an incumbent which means he's almost certainly going to get reelected. Doesn't matter what you say or do. Uh because that's just the way that system is set up and they're not allowed to really run legislation anyway because that's all orchestrated from the top. So, uh, you got we got a long way to go in terms of changing the federal view of this sort of thing because they are still all in on the surveillance state. Um, but speaking of law enforcement not being your friend and really not caring about you, uh, let's look a little bit at SUTA in Spain. Um, I we never covered this, I don't think, on Power Market at all. I don't think we've even mentioned it, although I've run two or three articles on it, especially when it really got underway a few weeks ago. Now, this is a situation where there's some Spanish enclaves on the northern coast of Africa. And these date back hundreds of years, really back, I think, to the 16th century. And of course, nowadays, uh, they're really the most civilized outposts in North Africa, right? This these are places where there's actual religion of freedom, where they have well-developed economies. And so of course then the people in Suda who are Spanish citizens and they're part of Spain, they have a much much like something like three or four if not more times the size of per capita GDP than the surrounding area which is Morocco in this particular case. So what you've had for years and years and if you follow these sorts of things you know this has been going on a very long time. Uh, but this is just the latest flare up of it where you've got this country of millions and millions of people that are right next to this little enclave of Spanish civilization that has fewer than 100,000 people. And what happened then a few weeks ago is at the prompting of their government most likely and probably with NGO money and who knows what else was uh orchestrating it and encouraging it about 80,000 people maybe certain nation states on the eastern end of the Mediterranean were involved uh where 80,000 people suddenly amass on the border of Suda and decide oh we're all just going to push through that. And so they were swimming around the border, right, because it has a has a a maritime border there. They were swimming around to get in the country and they basically just completely overwhelmed the city. More migrants moved into Suda over that couple of days than there were people living in Suda at that time. So it was a complete disaster. The the uh the city came to a standstill. There were refugees everywhere. Of course, not really refugees. They were state orchestrated migrants moving in. You could even say since it was state orchestrated virtually like I don't know as far as I could tell 90% men military age. This was a geopolitical situation being engineered by Morocco and possibly their ally the state of Israel. Uh the US maybe because um Spain of course has been declared the enemy in recent days because of their opposition to the Israeli operation in Gaza and things like that. And so shortly after uh Spain announces that they're they're going to cut ties with uh with the state of Israel and stuff, lo and behold, Morocco, which was naming highways after Trump uh which is very happily engaged in which has recently in recent years normalized relations with with Israel, suddenly now the just out of nowhere all these troops are looking to overrun Spanish territory and Uh it it is now continuing. They they yeah they threw out some of them, but there's still tens of thousands of Moroccans still in Suta. Girls can't go to to school because crime is out of control. There's looting. People are afraid of being assaulted. There's rapes. Uh and this of course uh many in the state of Israel think this is great. Spain's getting what it's deserved. Uh the Moroccans are kind of like playing it off like, "Hey, we weren't involved in any way." Trump used it as, "Oh, this is what happens when you have open migration." Uh, but Trump probably knew about it and and let it happen u because it served his purposes there rhetorically and also happened to punish Spain at the same time. Spain is really doing nothing about it. This is relates back to the issue of law enforcement being useless because if you have a border but you're unwilling to enforce it that is you're unwilling to enforce literal hordes of people that outnumber your native population in a city just come in pillage loot. Stores are constantly being broken into. You can't move around the city. Uh there's just filth and dirt everywhere. The Red Cross of course then comes in and and make sure that the people can stay by handing out free stuff all the time. German NOS's are there handing out free phones to the migrants, uh free food from the Red Cross. A lot of local Spaniards are kind of getting wise to it. They're now trying to kick out the Red Cross, which they can see is clearly an operation of some sort of um geopolitical group, right? They're not there to to feed hungry people. And now there was there's protests in Spain. 50,000 people were protesting the non-action on the part of the regime. So what is what does this mean then? I mean it's it's really a remarkable situation and just the the sheer magnitude of it. So yeah, what do you what do you think though? >> I don't Madrid has responded. They're sending millions of dollars for uh for social workers. So they have responded. Um I mean no I think it's I mean like again like this this you know I I you with respect paid to the um uh Middle Eastern war driven migration massive overruns that we saw in in other parts of Europe um kind of kicking off the la the populist era the last last decade or so um throughout the west. U I can't really think of anything that's more of a of like a true like camp of the saints sort of moment than than this particular incident. I think it's very interesting. is along with and and perhaps further supported by the uh uh you know various theories of foreign actors participating in it that a lot of people have indicated that there were like um it was almost like you know social media inspired flash mobs of uh of information kind of got out there that is part of the reason why this was such an organized massive wave and and I think it really goes to just how um the the for one the explicit weaponization of immigration in this vivid way. I mean, first and foremost, this is like a caricature of what people were talking about a decade ago. Um, to the, again, I think that social media and the again, going back to our our topic of technology, the ways that that has a a a very real influence on these very old social problems and the way that they change the the size and scope of them and therefore the the consequences there on after. Um, and I'm also interested to see just the the political ramifications within a country like Spain that has a very left government right now. This is something that has been seized upon by um, you know, various right-wing parties there. Um, and you you very much have a, you know, this particular part of the country which always been a little bit different than the rest anyway. Like I mean this this very real nationalist sort of spirit there on the extent to which the government has, you know, worked against their own interest on this problem. I I think it's a it's a very interesting um illustration of many of these you know broader macro problems that have faced again particularly most of the the west for the last decade and just reminder that these tensions are still very much out there and at play and in many cases escalating >> well and in addition to that their president is being accused of having known about it beforehand and taken no action. Pedro Sanchez uh is he's their left-wing prime minister and yeah, he clearly welcomes the immigrants as far as I can tell. >> Yeah, it's kind of those things like would you rather him know about it or not know about it? Like what would be a worse outcome from >> nefarious or incompetent? That's kind of the constant question with this stuff. I so I don't know too much about this specific story, but um I guess what just stands out to me and this is true for all of politics, but I think it's especially true with immigration right now is that the most important thing is optics. And I think, you know, there there are obviously ideologues on both sides. You have, you know, hardcore immigration restrictionists who want to, you know, basically deport everybody. And I'm talking a little bit more about the US, but I think it's it's similar uh broadly in Europe as well. And then on the other side, you know, the hardcore open borders um supporters, some of them may not call themselves that, but they at least want more immigration and, you know, less restrictions right now. But I think most people, and you know, once again, the important thing for us to always remember is most people are pretty apathetic about politics. They're not like us. They don't obsessively follow this stuff. And of that giant group, which is kind of the important group in terms of like that they're they have the numbers. They're like the independents that can swing one way or the other. When it comes to immigration, I think that most people are uncomfortable with footage like this of a bunch of people running across or around a border crossing and they're uncomfortable with imagery of, you know, people being put in cages or marched um and essentially a heavy crackdown. And so I think the real battle in in immigration sense is through who can get their who who can reach their goal in a quieter, less visible way. I think going back a few decades, the more pro-immigration side has been winning that. Um but really especially once again more in the US just going back like a few cycles like um obviously the the first Trump term was a in large part a response to a lot of the open immigration in the years before but then I really think like the you didn't get the Biden years of a lot of people flooding over the border without the optics of that first Trump administration the whole kids in cages thing which was largely not true but the truth doesn't matter. about the perception of it. And then of course, what was it? Uh I mean, I always remember the um the Eagle Pass, Eagle. There was that one crossing during the Biden years where they just had this insane footage of people camping on both sides and moving across. And that really what was that I remember that happened shortly after there was that incident where like the border patrol agents on horses who had um it was like lassos or something and it once again wasn't true but there was there were photographs taken that looked like they were just these guys in cowboy hats were just whipping these like Haitian migrants and so that optic kind of drove then the Biden administration to really pull things back there. you get this whole thing and so it goes back and forth and then because of that eagle pass thing or whatever it was called you get the second Trump administration where now they're really trying to look tough and crack down but then you get like the ICE shootings and stuff which probably going to swing things back in the other side. So it's just this back and forth thing and I just I so I feel like when I see something like what happened here in uh Suta or however you say it like this I think was an optics loss for the those who want less immigration restriction here. That doesn't mean you know it's this clean thing like it's a battle but yeah there are to as you mentioned protests right now but like if they if they really wanted to um move more migrants you want to do that quietly and this was not quiet which does you know it begs you know or it brings up interesting questions about what was actually happening here um behind the scene but I don't know that's just what this kind of story brings to mind for me. Yeah. And I think it illustrates that the real debate is going to be right just it's going to be the more immigration party and the less immigration party. Clearly the party of closed borders total migration moratorum for 20 years can't see that getting a whole lot of traction. Uh at the same time the the open borders the true open borders position or even the mostly open borders position right virtually no one is ever like totally open borders, right? Let let the cartels come and go as they please. let people uh with smallpox across the border, right? It that that position nobody ever took seriously. But even the less open bordersy position like say the the Brian Kaplan position of okay, I could see like some limitations on disease or military units or things like that, but totally unrestricted economic migration. Nobody's going to take that seriously, I think, after this Suda thing, right? I mean the Kaplan position is is that the the the economy of SUTA should now be booming uncontrollably. They should be taking off. Spain's economy should just be absolutely amazing. And you should you should embrace rapes on your streets. You should embrace the fact that your daughters can't go to uh to school because your GDP per capita just went up .001%. Why don't you know how good you have it with 80,000 Moroccans flooding your city? That is essentially the unrestricted economic migration position and no one's going to take that seriously either. Nevertheless, there's a whole lot of room in between which is oh well we need at least 2 million migrants a year is what they're going to say on the left and then how do you deal with that then? I mean, clear clearly the easiest way to prevent being in a situation where you're sending in ICE to route a bunch of people in cities is to have an actual border where you don't have a million people come in that you later have to remove. But the regime is clearly unwilling to do that uh for whatever reason. It's not actually you don't even have to build a huge wall. It's not that hard to maintain a border. Uh but we live in a country where you pay more and more in taxes every year and the services get worse and worse every year. You can see it at the city level. You can see at the federal level. Uh that's just where we are right now. And is an extreme version of that in Morocco and Suta. And I don't know where it's going to happen. Other countries can see where this goes, right? like Italy has closed its border with Spain on this recognizing that Spain apparently has no control over who's coming in. Could be terrorists. They don't even know. Um and so there is some concern about Spain's border with the rest of the EU and that's an obvious problem, but it seems something that Sanchez isn't particularly concerned about. >> Yeah. Well, I mean the EU has had problems with this work for quite some time anyway. But I I say like I I'll push back a little bit. I my slight disagreement would be that I don't really think it's about having some sort of immigration policy at all of having some specific number in mind having some you know particular restrictions in mind. I mean I think what we've seen in practice is that basically is immigration something that the a regime in power has any interest in controlling or not? Because again like I we we did have you know basically a de facto policy during the Biden years which are you know even more extreme than the Obama years for this particular issue which is that there's no enforcement at all. Right? And so if you have no enforcement at all your policy isn't golly gosh darn you know Mexican gang should come through but in practice that's exactly what it means. Um and and like this this situation there you know an advances is coming. There is no enforcement here. And so it's this back and forth between governments that you know for for whatever reason be they ideological their own you know views on you know they they've rationalized it from humanitarian purposes is their broader political objectives you know whatever their their their reasoning is they refuse to have any sort of serious control there. And then you have the other side where there are attempts to you know deport and whatever that will never be at the same capacity of getting in. it's always harder to remove than it is coming in, right, when you have this back and forth. Um, but again, I don't think that there's any sort of, you know, deeper over, you know, I I think expecting the public or expecting some sort of lasting political condition. You when it's a problem, people pop up, they get mad about it when it is no longer a problem, it kind of rolls in the back burner for most people who are not thinking about this non-stop. Um, and so I, you know, to me, like that's the way I kind of see the policy swings. It's not, you know, it's it's is there immigration control or or not? And if not, then you know anything can happen from that point. >> Well, and it wasn't even the government choosing to do nothing. They were actively subsidizing, >> right, giving money to people. Yes. >> To move to the United States. And that's just so easy as a libertarian. You're right. It's just like, hey, maybe we should just stop giving money >> to these people as step one. That doesn't seem real hard. Why is there even an argument there? because that's a >> then you got the then you got the NGO operations and things like that. It's like oh it's not you know it's not the state you're going to be going to this you know it's you know it's like yeah it's >> yeah the the basically these quasi states within a state that come in and oh we're going to pay all of these people to be there then where's that money come from? Nobody knows. uh I suspect comes from governments and it's a it is a remarkable situation, but a lot of that money did come straight up from governments and I I suspect they're going to go back to that, especially now that we live in a a country that is run by executive order and edict. So, it's not like you need an act of Congress to give money to these people. You just have a president come in and decide, "Oh, well, we're just we're going to find $50 million to give to criminals living in luxury hotels in New York City." And it's fine. And bizarrely, there are some libertarians who seem to think that that's the lazair thing to do is to give away government money to people who show up. So, yeah, we got a lot of work to do on that to say the least. Well, there's as just this last issue which I think we spent a couple of uh minutes on um Venezuela. What's going on in Venezuela lately? I was a I was told that the US was already going to be out of there and this was going to be like a free market paradise now and they were going to have like free and fair elections and all that stuff. Is that what's going on down there yet though? >> Yeah. Yeah. No, it's it's it's a whole it's libertarian beacon down there. No. Um I you know I think this is exactly the sort of outcome that that you know we were talking about in the immediate aftermath is that you know peace has been made with the existing regime and the regime is perfectly happy to basically trade favors from one group of international actors to the United States. Um it's now on steroids with um oil deals with uh uh you know part joint partnerships between American companies and Venezuelan companies. um you know traditional V Venezuelan oligarchs are making out good out of this. Um you know it guarantees you know it's the the biggest oil deal in human history. Um and again you know I you know this is pretty much exactly how we kind of expected it to go. It it is worth noting that I know some of my concern at the time was you know we're going to have like open massive civil war between you know new regime and Maduro loyalists that you know largely has has not been nearly as widespread as I I feared could have happened there. Um but it is interesting that you know this this very overt uh um you know contractual obligations between American companies and Venezuelan the Venezuelan regime on these particular deals. It's uh you know explicitly kind of highlighting the the kind of you know neoc colonialist aspect of this particular forward policy venture. Um but uh yeah so new new new deals with Venezuelan oil and uh this is yeah this is where we are right now in Kacus. >> Yeah it's quite remarkable how much it mirrors the mercantalism of old right. We're we're going to give this essentially our favored government corporations. We're going to give them special licenses to access resources in these particular places and the whole process is politically driven. And that seems to be where we are now with Venezuela. We'll send in uh our people, seize control of the local resources, and then we'll pick and choose which of our political supporters we then uh allow to profit off of that. Um how anyone could support that. and also think that uh the that they're somehow in thinking in line with the American revolutionaries is quite remarkable like this is explicitly what they were fighting against. This is the um the East India Company model. This is the tea tax model. That whole thing bound up in terms of what are we taxing you for? Who gets favors? Where does the money flow? It's the US is the metropolis and Venezuela is the colony and but apparently being against that sort of thing makes you woke now even though that's what John Adams and Thomas Jefferson were fighting against. I guess they were woke. Uh so it'll be interesting to see how long this situation persists. I mean it could persist indefinitely, right? Because they've already created the situation which most colonists colonial powers are smart enough to do. you just get in good with the local regime and then use the local regime to exploit the local population. So, this does emphasize just what absurd nonsense it was when conservatives were claiming that, oh, the Americans will go in and they'll get rid of socialism and the Venezuelan people will be much better off. They're just being exploited the exact same way, if not worse, than what they were being exploited before the US went in and took out Maduros. same party in power. It's still socialism. It's still strongman type government. It's just as long as they don't run a foul of Washington, they're allowed to exploit their own domestic population as much as they want. But I guess for some people that counts as the latest war for democracy and peace and freedom and all of that sort of thing. >> Yeah. It's like notice how absent the whole like Venezuelan immigrant community, all the people that had fled socialism and you know were being used by the regime by our regime to justify us getting more aggressive with them. They're not useful anymore. So they're just not getting a platform. It's actually kind of a similar thing with a lot of the Iranian people that starting to come a little bit back uh Trump's back talking about the protesters that were allegedly slaughtered um by the Iranian regime. But yeah, that it's that was stark with um Venezuela especially. I'm sure, you know, if they make some move on Cuba, it'll be the same thing. Once they stop being useful, you know, the these communities, these interest groups can uh kind of go away because yeah, there was no actual regime change. It's just this idea, like you said, though, that we can essentially strongarm the same regime, you know, goes to Deli Rodriguez and her brother, and now it's like you guys got to play ball with us. I'm still a little skeptical that this is going to be stable for a long time. you know, it has been relatively stable so far. There are but there's just like some dynamics like yes, but like a lot of the population was very much propagandized against the United States for a long time and probably, you know, it's a little bit difficult to just pretend like 1984 like we're suddenly at war with, you know, the BRICS nations now, uh, not the US anymore. There's also like some things with the drug cartels like deeper in the jungle. Like a lot of this has been sold on going cracking down on drugs. It's like one of their favorite excuses. that's that was their excuse for moving um so much of the Navy into the area. And yet like those cartels had kind of an agreement with the Maduro regime um to sort of leave them alone and to let them operate a bit. And it's like okay so does the US um you know maybe take out a drug boat every once in a while but essentially allow the drug cartels to do their thing like there's just some questions like that. So I'm I'm still a little skeptical of the idea that this is just done and solved and they can kind of move on. But then once again um that and I remember us talking about it right after they took out Maduro. My big concern the the entire time was not about really what specifically was going to happen in Venezuela. I thought it was going to embolden Trump to try something else and that's exactly what happened with Iran. That to me was always the the big problem. So even if somehow this stable uh or relatively stable situation does persist for a long time, I still think that if you just look at the whole big picture, um this was not good for us. Oh, and then yeah, that's one other thing. This like that Trump supporters treating this oil deal like this is really good for us. Like this is going to be excellent for the everyday average American. Like the only way you can kind of understand that right now is through the lens of Trump started this war with Iran and the price of oil has gone up a lot. And so yeah, if we can get some more oil on the global markets, that'll be good for gas prices. But like this is to this is good for specific energy companies. And also there's this whole I drives me crazy is the and especially with um you see it a lot with the MAGA people right now. There's always just this assumption that they're going to be in power forever. And so Trump come this is this is one example, but it goes beyond the oil deal. Trump has really escalated the whole idea of the federal government taking stakes in these companies. And that's part of this deal is that whatever the um I forget what it was called, but like this I don't know if it's a new company or an existing company, like the federal government is going to have a pretty big stake in the actual energy company down there. And um I like I was just reading a a article today I think in um Politico about how all of the like um environmental progressives are just chomping at the bit with this because to them this is like been the big answer. This is what they've been aspiring for is if we can get the federal government to take more control over especially energy companies and uh you know infrastructure all that stuff then that's going to make it way easier to roll out all of their insane climate stuff without having to worry about public opinion or Congress or whatever. And so like Trump's just creating this weapon for the environmentalists that is going to be handed over to them at some point in the in the future. And um that yeah, I think this oil deal is one example of that. Well, we didn't even get time to talk talk about uh the bond situation and the precarious economic situation which seems to be rapidly approaching. And I can say that because >> I have a feeling will not resolve itself before next week. >> Probably not. And I can say that though because I'm not one of these people who's been calling a new great depression for the last 10 years or anything. I've been waiting for real specific issues to show up. And I think the bond issue is a real specific issue that's uh a significant problem. But uh yeah, we'll have to get back to that in the future. So thank you uh gentlemen for joining me today. Thank you everyone out there for listening. We'll be back next time with more. So, we'll see you then.