The Burritoflation Debate

Welcome back to the Power Market podcast. I'm Ryan McMakin, editor-inchief at the Mises Institute. And with me today, as usual, are two of our contributing editors. We have th Bishop and we have Connor O'Keefe. And uh boy, we got we got a lot to talk about in terms of determining if you are a whiner or not. Do you think the cost of living is too high? Well, the leading Republicans and leading GOP thinkers, top MAGA people, think you should just shut up and quit complaining about the standard of living because we're in a golden age and everything's awesome. Uh but before we get to that, before we learn how amazing everything is and that 25 year olds who have trouble paying for food should just shut the hell up, uh we're going to talk a little bit about um we got some upcoming events which of course no one who's 25 or under will be able to afford to go to. But I'm sure some of our older donors can probably come, right though? Or maybe if you're doing well for yourself, even the youth can come to this event because we're talking like what 70 80 bucks for uh some of these things. But anyway, I don't know. Tell us all about it. Well, thankfully we do have student scholarships available for all of our events. So, if you are concerned about the price of burrito and artist student, please feel free to take up that opportunity. But yes, we've got several events on the calendar coming up in this jam-packed year. Uh coming up uh uh right around the corner next week in Albuquerque, New Mexico. We're talking about gold and silver prospecting for Liberty. Uh Ryan will be a speaker there, part of the 2026 Global McMaken Tour. Um some great lineup. Um and uh September 12th in Greenville, South Carolina, the other side of the United States, we're talking about why government schools don't want you to understand economics, which may also be relevant to some of the conversations we're going to have later today. That's on September 12th there. And in the middle, uh if you're in the Auburn area, stop by for a special event. We're recording a Mises Academy course on the ethics of liberty by Dr. Wanjiru Ajoya. Um, so it's going to be an intimate live recording of these talks. We have a few different extras as well bundled in for those who do attend. Um, and that will be on August 27th through the 28th. So if you want to learn more about these events and of course coming up, you know, not too far after that in October will be our supporters summit in San Antonio, Texas. That's the first time I've made a read for that, but feels like we're getting we're getting closer there. Um, so you can find out more about that in every event I've mentioned at mises.org/events. Uh, we also have a new giveaway. Um, you know, we have been cranking out shipping out uh free Rothbard books for several months now. The case for a 100% gold dollar is the selection for August. mises.org/giveaway is where you can find that book. book and if you've gotten the previous ones then you you won't automatically get it. So again sign up again there. And last but certainly not least very excited for a new edition in the Mises bookstore. We have cronyism rise of the corporate estate 1849 to 1929. It is the sequel to cronyism liberty versus power by our own Dr. Patrick Newman. very much a Rothbartian inspired history of the growth of the as the title implies the corporate estate but uh you how the rise of the American empire also gave rise to greater corruption within the economy. Uh Patrick follows the Rothbardian angle of naming names highlighting the importance of uh you know the rise of different regulatory bodies but then the battle over the personnel choices for those regulatory bodies to get all sorts of extra goodies for selected people there. Um again if you want to understand yeah goes into the history of the Fed all sorts of stuff you want to understand how we got the elites that we have now. A lot of that story is told during this period. I've read the book myself. It is a fantastic read. Great narrative. Can't recommend it highly enough. And you can find it now at the Mises bookstore. You can find it also on Amazon. And if you are a broke college student, you can read the free PDF at mises.org. Audio book coming soon. And I think that's everything on my list, right? >> Yeah. We always put this stuff for free online. That's the thing. We get these books when they're brand new. They still just go up in PDF. So it's not like there's even some waiting period or anything. It's just if you're like me and you're from the 20th century, you like to hold an actual book a lot of the time as I do. So, I often uh like to buy books even if they are available online for free. You know, when I was joking about like the cost of these events and stuff, I realized that maybe this is information some people would like to have is when we do have these regional events, uh we don't actually make money on these. These are usually funded mostly by some local generous donor. So, if you are a the sort of person out there who's interested in having one of these events near you, this is often the motivation like our one coming up in Albuquerque. It's a local entrepreneur who's given a lot of money to fund the event. And what we're charging for the event is really just to make up for the rest um so that we're all breaking even on this sort of thing. But if you're somewhere else in the country and you're thinking, "Hey, maybe I'd like to have Mis Institute people near me for an event." Uh, you should just call our office, uh, ask for Christy probably and you can talk then about, hey, I'm interested in having one of these Misa circles near me as well. You can talk about costs and all that sort of thing. So, I realize that hardly anybody knows maybe out there how these events uh, occur and who funds them and where they why they they happen. uh it's often just a local donor is interested in putting on the event. So uh there you have it in case you're interested. So speaking of uh people who have money uh or those who don't, let's talk about what's up with the GOP messaging on the economy lately. Uh apparently I don't know something a memo went out which said make people hate us as much as possible because that seems to be what the GOP is doing now. And uh so here's the thing. It's about burritos. Let's talk about burritos. >> Feels like a very Jonathan Newman talk. >> Yes. And uh people on social media started talking about how burritos are really expensive now and it's it's really difficult to eat out. And they were saying, "Hey, how come things haven't gotten any better under Trump in terms of the cost of living? because I just see my cost of living continue to go up. And in response to that, there was just this whole wave of MAGA people, uh, establishment MAGA people, right? Not like, you know, rank and file MAGA for the most part, uh, who are saying, "Stop complaining about the cost of food. Everything's great. Get a job, losers." And this, uh, I I want to specifically point to a a post on Twitter from Dan Krenshaw. Remember Dan Krenshaw uh defeated in his primary? So kicked out of Congress, now unemployed. By the way, never in his entire life has held a private sector job. His entire life has been uh living off the sweat of the taxpayers. Uh he was either in the military, he w uh where of course he was defending America by shooting up tribesmen in Afghanistan who were no threat whatsoever to the United States. Uh, and then as if that wasn't enough, then he became a congressional staffer and then he joined Congress. The guy has no clue how people make money, how wealth is created, nothing. Uh, he certainly knows how to get wealth when you have the inside track because uh, famously people have tracked how he was able to use his insider knowledge as a member of Congress to make millions and millions of dollars trading uh, in Congress. So basically, he's a thief, lived his whole life off the taxpayers. And so this is what he says when some people complained about the price of burritos. He says, "Just hearing about this dumb $20 burrito debate, so just thought I'd make the losers on social media angry before going to bed. Stop whining. Get a job. Eat ramen like the rest of us did in college on a budget with four roommates. So you hear that people vote for us because we think you're losers and you should get a job if you think life is expensive." Ben Shapiro had some very similar comments. Uh, and then I saw even lesser people like uh some guy who I don't even subscribe to, but he keeps showing up in my feed by some sort of right-winger MAGA guy, a guy named like Jeremy Kaufman. He's jumping on the bandwagon talking about how if you think life is expensive, you're just a loser. And then but my favorite was now how that the debate is all of these bag of people lecturing you on how you're not stretching your dollar enough and how if life is expensive just eat lower and lower quality food. So now what the MAGA narrative is is if food is expensive for you buy the 7030 ground beef. That is the highfat garbage ground beef. Make burritos from that. Burritos are already poor people food right? So, let's be clear about that. Make burritos with that. And then one MAGA guy actually said and then cut it with uh reff with beans, right? Spread out. Take one pound of ground beef. You can feed your family of eight with that, but just you cut the meat with with beans. Why not just throw like sawdust in there, too? You know, make a salad from uh some dandelions from the cracks in the sidewalk out front. You know, if that's not how you're eating, screw you. Why are you complaining loser? This seems to be now the current MAGA narrative. So, if I'm not mistaken, I don't think this is going to translate into big votes come November. But, uh I don't know. Though, what do you think? Well, I do want to dehomogenize kind of where this debate is going on because you kind of like like the whole thing started with uh one of the producers from Turning Point and again very much communicating as kind of you know GZ Gen Z grievances here and that's what was the catalyst for all this thing that had a had an impressive shelf life relative to to Twitter discourse and and I I think that there's there's some dividing lines here between uh you know and and of course this all ends up going back to foreign policy right there's there's a fascinating overlap between those that are saying, "Yeah, suck it up, Gen Z. You know, everything's great." You know, it's it's your own personal failings, your own irresponsibility, and those that have been advocates for the Iran war and those that have been the most skeptical or critical of the Iran war saying like, "No, actually, this is really bad." And this kind of goes to I I think Orin McIntyre kind of started a bit of this guys last week where he's basically talking about, "Hey, look, like, you know, we're this this this Iran war continues to be a disaster. you know, it's the economy stupid, everyone's eyes off the ball in that like what do you expect is gonna happen politically? Like this is complete malpractice. Um, and so, and so regardless of the playbyplay of the politics in the midterms, which I think is is less interesting than what it really highlights in terms of one just the perception because I I think this really goes down to like if you want to understand why there is growing cynicism of free markets, why capitalism has never been less popular as a term with the current generation of, you know, young adults. It's because the people that go out of their way to wrap themselves into the mantle of, you know, free markets and capitalism, which of course they point to Milton Friedman and they point to, uh, you know, Ronald Reagan and, you know, they lament, um, you know, the disruption of these, uh, traditional, you know, conservative economic talking points. Um, you know, it it goes to just a a complete uh disinterest in the real affordability issues that are going on. And when all of you hear when you hear like just, you know, grab pick yourselves up for the bootstraps. It's your fault if you're poor basically. And you these are vulgar ways of of characterizing these sort of things, but that is the message that comes out of this and that is purred. Um and surprise surprise people are are you know the anxiety and the frustrations for you know variety of reasons we've talked about you know a a lackluster jobs environment concerns about uh uh economic growth u you know depressed wages particularly among white men which is a large contingent of you know jinzy conservative voters the turning point USA folks um you know this is not what's been the past and there are plenty of good reasons to talk about it again like you know this is you know why we students at Misesu, a lot of the lectures were dedicated towards highlighting all the things that are screwing over the current generation. Um, but like there's this is why you have a complete disinterest in a lot of the status quo economic takes that are misappropriately sold as the embodiment of, you know, American USA capitalism. And, you know, this is a very very real problem. Um and and the thing is like they don't have much to respond to because again like this entire environment has been propped up by you know freedmanite policies. It's it's it's you know neoliberal policies that increasingly makes it more difficult for the younger generations and to bail out uh foreign countries and boomers right and that is a core essentially for a lot of traditional GOP. Um, so I think it's a very interesting dynamic of I for one, I'm just glad to see economic concerns and an an economic topic be pushed to the forefront on the fact it has to be done through a burrito example is, you know, it just seems >> but that's exactly the sort of thing that gets people engaged, right? Is we can all conceive of a burrito. We're not talking about a trillion dollars here. >> Yeah. And it's something concrete and real like and of course then you have some people that just shoot themselves in the foot like I mean like Tyler Cohen you know people like okay well it's maybe it's not $10 $20 but a burrito should even cost $10 and Ter's out there it's like oh burritos don't cost $10. It's like well go to Chipotle guy like yeah you can get $3 burrito at the at the Taco Bell uh you value menu but like $10 is pretty low for a burrito and about any place you're going to. So like the act of of just completely denying like the self-evident is I think very much a a a DC intellectual sort of thing as well. So like there's this this is a story that captures a lot of different meta trends. Um and I think that's partly partly why it has resonated so much. But it's I'm just glad to see we're talking about economics again. >> Imagine telling the people that they that the foundation of their diet should be stuff from Taco Bell. >> I mean and then taking yourself seriously doing that with a straight face. Hey, I love Taco Bell, but I know that if you're eating there a lot, you're probably not doing great uh health-wise >> in a few ways, >> right? So yeah, in more than one way psychologically you probably got problems too. So yeah, these people are so out of touch is just really quite remarkable. And uh Connor, I mean you're closer to this actual demographic of people. So uh you think the whole shut up and eat more reffried beans uh message is going to resonate a lot with your age group? >> Not at all. But I mean it's it's unbelievable to me that it's happening. I thought this was common knowledge. This is what the Biden administration did and it's a major reason that they lost. It was I think one of Trump's biggest advantages is that the Biden administration made a very clear choice that we're going to go in like there's all these people kind of chattering about economic pain and yeah, you know, the inflation's really high, but they had all these different ways of spinning it and they decided we're going to go out and deny the economic pain is real and that's going to be our strategy. And it completely completely blew up in their faces and I thought this was really clear. So to watch the GOP adapt the exact same strategy is remarkable. And of course like this is not going to go well for them. But I I want to go back the point you made about how the burrito is a concrete thing is I think key to this whole thing because really what we're talking about here and what only the Austrians are talking about is the actual cause of this affordability crisis or whatever which is the canon effect. And it's the fact that they're creating currency and the currency doesn't go out to everybody at the same time. It goes to some groups first. And so that decreases the value of the currency, but it does it it's essentially a wealth transfer, but it's a wealth transfer that is not that visible. It's it's pernicious. It's not something you can point to easily. And so really what that creates and you know it's one of many ways that the government uh warps the economy to basically transfer wealth but it's kind of like because it's so unclear. It's so abstract. It gives them a lot of room to really bump it up. And so it really is the major factor here. It's the Fed. It's central banking. But the overwhelming sense that people have, especially people that are um you know, the ones being drained of wealth rather than the ones benefiting, they know something is wrong, but there isn't anything concrete they can really point to. And that I think is really the key dynamic here. And like that's what that that tweet that started it all. He just sort of this kid I guess that he was like quoting just sort of grabbed something random. A burrito shouldn't be $20. He the point isn't the burrito. The point is all of the like just this sense that like the economy is rigged against them and they're right about that. They're they're right that the economy is rigged against them but it just creates this messy situation where because nobody else is talking about that either they don't understand that and don't believe that or they do understand that but they benefit from it so they want to kind of opuscate and focus on other things. the the whole conversation just devolves into yeah there's the whole debate about like yeah the people taking it too literally like no this is specifically about this one food and it's just a debate about that which is they're missing the point there but then you know other people will offiscate like I said and like they're they're just going to take whatever their pet issue is and sort of use the affordability crisis as an excuse to push that but no it's like at the end of the day the Austrians are the only ones talking about the actual real cause of this And so like it's just infuriating to watch this whole debate happening and nobody basically on any side like to your point though the the free marketers here are also presidential banking in this kind of like neoliberal world that we're critiquing and it's just it's a very infuriating thing to watch. But yeah at the end of the day like you got to read mises.org to understand the actual cause behind all this and it is very difficult. It takes some abstract thinking there. But and that's the whole point that the reason that central banking is such an effective way to take wealth from society as a whole is because it's not that obvious. It's not something you can point to. It's not like your income taxes which you look at, you know, at least once per year. It is invisible. It's almost the perfect form of theft. And um yeah, it's so it's just it's been uh kind of an enraging few days to watch this debate play out. I will say I want to give a shout out to uh chef Andrew Grl who has kind of meant himself like on on right-wing Twitter. He was you know California restaurant tour was big on COVID stuff but but I I I will give a shout out. So his his response to this was was very like I don't know if he's a meas.org writer but he mentioned that the funniest thing about the burrito debate is no one is getting rich off an $18 burrito. As a restaurant owner I can tell you this. Nobody wants to charge $18. We'd rather you sell a $12 burrito and have you come back twice a week. The problem is the cost of running a restaurant has exploded. only a few people get rich in this scenario. The people closest to newly money create created uh everyone else just takes just pays more for takeout. And so so so Andrew Gr understanding canon effects better than the Wall Street Journal. So like I was I was glad I was heartened to see that as as part of the discourse out there from uh from someone who is not formerly affiliated with mis.org at least yet. >> Right. Right. And of course, guys like Dan Krenshaw wouldn't have the slightest clue how to run a restaurant or raise money in the private sector. And so it's to them, it's all just funny money. It's all just imaginary. Hey, I can always just make more money by selling a book or becoming a lobbyist or doing some other corrupt thing that Congress members can do. And so meanwhile, guys who run restaurants, I mean, anyone who's encountered the cost of labor, rents in any major city, I mean, I can't believe that restaurants are even still open anywhere because they're just so incredibly expensive. And anyone who who's unaware of this is just so utterly clueless. I did want to go back to just to to get the specifics on you were noting that it was someone at TPUSA who had noted this. So, here's what the email said, or rather not the email, the uh the Twitter post. He said, "One of our TPUSA college students gave me his take on affordability. Quote, "A burrito shouldn't cost $20," unquote. Um, and then so in response to that, Mark Thson, who is a highlevel Trump advisor, a neocon, you know, a head >> mag he's a Bush He's a Bush Bush alum. >> Well, of course. Right. Of course, he's a holdover from those days. Uh says, "Cry me a river. The burritos in the college cafeteria are included in your meal plan." Uh I mean, could these people be any more obtuse? And then to his credit, Cernovich, who I'm not the biggest fan of, uh he says Trump's top adviser mocks concerns over price of living and cost of food in his response to the which of course is correct, right? I mean, what a bizarre turn of events politically. And so that just seems to be where we are now. But but that's the thing though is that there is no way like and this it's going to be a constant game of every political shift is adapting to actually economy is a lot better than you guys think you know than your lying eyes are telling you because there's no interest in in legislating that the underlying issues here like they you know everyone is no one's interested in cutting spending back to pre-COVID levels much less anything beyond beyond that right every little thing is throwing granny off the cliff and so the Fed has to print it and has to accommodate I can tell you have a major reckoning in this. There there is no policy solution to any of this. Um yeah, I'll say we'll see how quickly u Mandani's I wonder how the the price of a burrito will be at the the New York City uh public grocery stores. But that's like it's just going to be a constant flip on trying to rotate and spin away the realities of the economy because there's no underlying political will to deal with the underlying root causes of all this. >> Now, I do have to say this. Oh, well, Connor, I got to get this out. He said that we're throwing granny off the cliff. Isn't this really more of granny throwing Junior off the cliff? >> Yes. Yes. In practice. Yes. >> Because if you look at, and this goes back to one of Connor's articles from a couple weeks ago about the gerontocracy, right? You you'll notice that the rhetoric only goes one way, right? It's old people hating on younger people. Often it's just middle-aged people. It's even like millennials like Shapiro ragging on like 30 year olds uh for whining too much, right? He's a spiritual boomer, right? And so what you got then is uh all these people saying, "Hey, you young people should cut back. You young people are complaining. You young people should do with less." How come no one is saying, "Hey, grandpa, you didn't save enough, so you need to do with less. You need to cut back. You need to eat cheaper food. Nobody dares say that, of course, because it's just guaranteed that we'll continue to tax the hell out of young workers so that they can keep funneling those funds up the ladder to the pension class because that's just how the political system works right now. So, I just found it interesting how uh the ones who are expected to uh to cut back, it's it's only one group of people, those who haven't had a chance to make any money yet, screw them, just do with less. But but there there is a I think a clear foreign policy perspective to this is like one of the reasons why Ben Shapiro is a spiritual boomer is because he recognizes that the core political constituency he needs for to promote his foreign policy ends is very much that Fox that that demographic of of voter and so there he's he's acting with his own rational self-interest both being isolated from the realities of it all. One one other we're just yeah highlighting some of our favorite tweets from that um is also from from Ronin McIntyre. You can't explain inflation to a neocon whose foreign foreign wars rely on him not understanding it. It's like yeah like that really and that gets to a lot of the macro real divides here because it's it's and these camps are going to continue to fight, right? Like I'm interested to see how this discourse continues. I'm not expecting it's like oh now we need to go back and reevaluate our Ron Paul quotes from from 2012. Like that'd be the ideal outcome there. But like these divides I think are continue to to to perpetuate themselves. Um and so you this is not the end of Burritogate I think but um you know Well, that's the point. The tweet sums it up a lot better than I probably was going to, but yeah, it's not just that like the Warhawks don't understand that the Fed is behind the affordability crisis. I mean, maybe some of them do or they like kind of convince themselves um otherwise. But no, they cannot get the foreign policy they want without central banking. And so, if this issue was actually addressed, they would lose out on everything they want in terms of the empire there. So it's like you I think it's naive to just think that if we just write enough articles then Ben Shapiro and all these people are going to see the light and come to our side but they should be called out for that. It's like no you're you're obuscating on this and saying oh no we just need to do these other little policy and like you know he was calling out Shapiro was calling out tariffs and regulations and like that's true but the core issue is the central banking and he would never touch that because it goes after his favorite policy or it goes after his foreign policy which is his his priority and so yeah like that needs to be part of the conversation and we need to make people aware of that. Yeah, it's it also highlights, you know, we've been talking about the French Revolution a lot lately. People act like, oh, the only reason there was a reign of terror is that people read some philosophy books and then they wrongly thought that it was acceptable to kill a bunch of people who you saw as your oppressors. But let's get another 10 years of leading political figures telling people who are scraping by to just shut the hell up and eat crappier and crappier food and stop being negative and start real start realizing how great you have it and how the status quo is awesome and just behave yourself, follow your orders, pay your taxes, be quiet, and do what your betters tell you to do. I I don't think we should be shocked if violence ends up breaking out after a certain amount of time of that sort of thing. And I mean that just seems to be what these people are are committing themselves to, right? It shouldn't obviously it's the classic let them eat cake sort of thing except it really is just let them eat reffried beans. I mean this it's so bad. >> Not as good as cake. And I mean, this is the sort of thing that invites true hatred uh toward the sorts of people that say these things and they're just acting like they're above it all. That there's never going to be any sort of a problem. And but it really drives home just how despicable a lot of these people truly are. They truly do hate their fellow man if if that person doesn't fit into their political agenda of non-stop war and whatever other social engineering they're into. And just to really emphasize that, I totally agree with you on this, Connor, right? every step of the way. It's the exact same thing that was happening under Biden, saying the exact same things, the exact same line. Things are great. You don't know how good you have it. I since I have a functioning memory, I remember that during Biden, well-paid economists at the Wall Street Journal and elsewhere were cranking out articles saying, "People keep saying the economy isn't great, but why don't they know how good they have it? Why don't people know how great the economy is? Who are these stupid people that don't see how wonderful everything is? The assumption was that, oh, there was an average number here somewhere and the average number seems okay, so I guess everybody's doing great. That's just I guess when you're living in a gated community or something, that's how you engage reality. Um, but that's just not going to fly uh in November of 2026, I don't think. Although, who knows what might happen in the meantime. And then we wonder why people have no interest in economics when when all of the credentialed experts within the field given the titles, right? Like you know it's no one's done more damage the science and people that propped up the >> I wrote an article about that it's economists fault directly because people don't experience the economy through aggregates and that's all economists are really uh focused on. But it's also like I guess I'm a little I'm trying to think about what actually is behind this because what's confusing to me is that um like they could just be doing such a better job at this. And I mean the big thing that the thing I expected and I think we were talking about this back when the Iran war started was that this gave Trump an excuse for any economic problems. He could just say it's the Iranians fault. And so it's kind of remarkable to me that they're just not going with that. like that. It It seems like it would be a lot smarter to be like, "Yeah, well, this is why we really need to open the trade and like mobilize, but instead they're just trying to gaslight everybody into thinking it's all great. It's it's like it's the gaslighting approach, which the last president just fell on his face doing." And they So, like part of me wonders if it's just coming from Trump because Trump does his whole MO for the last few months has been to just pretend like everything's great. He's pretending like there's these extensive talks happening with the Iranians and just they're begging for a deal. In any given moment, they're going to just like unconditionally surrender. It's not true, obviously, but he just keeps talking as if it is. And he seems to be doing or at least wants to do the same thing with the economy. He was like just uh had a few stops doing some speeches that I think were focused on the economy. And like that's the whole thing is we are living in the golden age. And so I'm wondering if it's just uh how much of it is a top down thing that Trump the man will not say that there's any issues right now and so everybody has to basically fall in line with that or if all of these GOP strategists are really that stupid that they're like let's just try exactly what didn't work for the last team and hope it hope it goes better. >> Well, this raises an important issue back to what you're saying about economics right now. We've said it here many times at the MES Institute. The reason we learn economics is to is to find out how you're being ripped off, right? Because it's one thing to know you're somehow vaguely you're being ripped off, right? You're being victimized somehow by the regime. Often they make it obvious just like they are right now. Basically saying, "Couldn't care less whether you live or die, just shut up. Appreciate us, the ruling class." But how do you explain how are you being impoverished? How are you being ripped off? Now, we have an answer to that because we're looking at how people really are being ripped off through monetary inflation, through the regulatory system, which destroys competition in an actual functioning market, makes it harder for you to start a business, to earn a living, just even at a lower reg right lower middle class sort of level where you're just basically paying your bills. A lot of those avenues are closed to people because of the regulated monopoly economy that is held in place by government, not by markets. Now, if you know all that, then you can see the virtues of the market system. Not only is it a system that allows you to earn a living better, but it's simply more the just it's a more just system. The reason that we like the free market is because it brings more justice. Is it because it's the right thing to do is because it helps ordinary people become better off. These guys just use the term free market like a slogan. >> Right. >> Right. They couldn't care less about justice or about markets because in their world, the point of markets is to funnel more funds to themselves and their friends. And so then they take their corporatist economy where they're getting constant bailouts where they're all getting zillions of dollars in government uh contracts, which covers pretty much all the billionaires, right? Who all at this point have been bought by the regime and get huge amounts of government contracts and other favors. And then they say, "Oh, that's the free market, and if you don't like it, you should you should whine." And that's why they have to that's why they respond this way when people point out that the market is not helping them. Right? First of the mark's not allowed to function because you got people like Shapiro in charge. And so they're like, "Hey, help. I'm getting poor. Things are getting worse." Well, if you're one of these lazy guys like Crenshaw, who clearly doesn't have the slightest clue how markets work, then all you can do is lash out and say, "Well, stop complaining because we have a market system and it's great. And if you don't appreciate how great it is, that's on you. That's how stupid you are." We, of course, can point out, "Yeah, this is why you're getting screwed. This is what the government is doing, destroying the marketplace where you might be able to make a buck, where your labor would be productive. You're not allowed to do that because the government's screwing you and the marketplace and here's why. But since they have no explanation for why people getting poor, they have no explanation for the way people are getting ripped off. They just deny it's happening. They just deny there's poverty. They just deny that there's a lack of opportunity for people. They just refuse to believe it exists. Or probably deep down they know it exists, but since they couldn't be bothered to figure out why, they just forget about it. Screw it. Just stop whining. because all that matters is that my buddies get their government jobs again next term. And so that's that's how it happens is you're too lazy to know how markets work. You don't know how people are being impoverished. So then you're only the only option that's left to you is to pretend people aren't being impoverished. Pretend everything's great. Just shut up and embrace the status quo. And that seems to be what I just keep hearing constantly. That's what I get from Vivvec, right? Is, hey, you know, you don't know how well you have it. Things are good. And if you want to actually do something radically different, well, that's tribalism. That's not appreciating how wonderful the government is. That's basically the message he was trying to give to young people when he got booed off the stage uh at a recent uh conference of college students. >> Yeah. >> Right. Just lecturing them about how great everything is and that the their only choice is to follow the status quo, vote for the people who are in charge, shut up and be obedient. That was the message. And that seems that just seems to be what we're getting now. Uh if you want anything radically different, you're an extremist. You're a weirdo. You're a freak. You're probably a racist. So, forget about it. And that's I guess that's what they've chosen to do. I don't I don't think it's going to be a winning message. >> Yeah. Well, and that's like I mentioned this quote in my uh thesis you talk on on neoliberalism is that you know Rothbard saw like kind of the the the collapse of the classical liberal project was it abandonment of of radicalism and a sense of justice in favor of these kind of technocratic you know efficiency you know improvements on the margin there and like how that's just not enough to maintain a free society. It's not enough to convince the masses of the virtues of markets that it allows itself to be kind of hijacked by you know a technocratic a latest class that that you pays lip service to these things while enriching themselves and that's why like you know Rothbart's perspective on the need to defend free markets was always very much grounded on the need for a sense of justice and a a mass movement and you know keeping these these flames lit. Um and so like that's it's always been you know part of I think the underlying zeitgeist and some of the tensions there like you when we complain when we talk about you know Milton free when we talk about some of these other aspects within the libertarian movement free market movement you know often it can come across like okay well you know almost like a purity test like you you see line like oh well you know you guys just aren't you know we hear this all the time in our circles right like oh well you you just want to be more pure than others like no there's something there's something sociological here about differences and things like foundations and we're seeing it play out and you know right now like this is exactly why um you know the kind of the Rothsardian in defense of free markets is is spiritually so much different on top of the theoretical perspective on top of the difference of the methodology on top of etc. All of them are blended together and it's very you can't just take away one piece like these these are you know these are very different DNA strands in terms of how you approach these things and I think you know we're definitely have seen the you know this is this this is why like this is this is it playing out in real real time. Yeah, and everybody watching this needs to go watch th's talk from Misesu on that exact topic because as you point out in that talk, the Rothbartians are really the only non-socialist alternative out there with, you know, a full belief system, full coherent worldview there. And so in this whole moment where yeah the the neoliberals are rightfully getting attacked for a lot of reasons that we kind of agree with, the only alternative people see out there are the mumanis or the democratic socialists or even you know communists and yeah but like there is another alternative out there that is not socialist and that is actually like coherent and yeah on the side of justice and um yeah we just we need more people be to be aware of that. Yeah, we want to be on the side of morality and justice, right? We are not I mean, you still encounter these clueless people and they're always these like establishment Republican types where they will go out and lecture people on how you want free markets because it's more efficient because it's a better incentives system. And then they it's like they're trying to throw out a bunch of big words that they think are impressing people and which are all very clinical and uh very bloodless and they think that's going to resonate with people or something. They should be trying to convince people that justice is on their side. But I don't think that's where they come at it from. They don't come at it from a justice. They come at it from a very utilitarian standpoint of hey my buddies will get richer um if as long as stock price keep going up sort of thing. And I mean they they don't even really they don't view the markets as like a truly human institution as the the interacting of free individuals just doing their own thing and being left alone. That's what markets are. It's just leaving people alone. Markets are a natural thing that occur naturally if you just leave people alone. That's not even what those guys are talking about. They want this this whole uh militaryindustrial complex government industrial policy sort of thing that's picking winners and losers and centrally planning everything because for them that's how you build up their preferred sort of regime. Uh and so of course in the end people are like well what if I don't benefit from that regime and so people then don't vote for them and then since they're labeling themselves as the free market party right these people are our worst enemies. They're defending a horrible economic system. A kleptocracy basically is what the Republican preferred economic system is. It's just a non-socialist. It's a non-left kleptocracy. Then they say, "Oh, we're the party of free markets." And then they and then we use similar language and they're like, "Oh, you guys are just like them." So these people are our worst PR imaginable. They're poisoning the well against us. And we're always trying to change the language and say, "Oh, well, this is what we mean by free markets and everything, but as long Oh, it's it's just such a hard game to play." >> Well, at the risk of making this podcast, just did you see that on Twitter last week? Um uh last week, I mean, you kind of saw I think a similar dynamic where like there's this whole kurfuffle over like the the concept of a common good. And don't get me wrong, I I rec I fully recognize that there's a lot of evokion evoking of the the common good, particularly in like current u you know some of the the Catholic integralist circles that are are all sorts of things that are not good, right? it's collectivist, that's, you know, basically like kind of quasi, you know, kind of was like, you know, you know, right-wing progressivism, whatever. Like, I fully grant all of that. But you'd have certain you'd have a lot of these like libertarian pundits outside of our sphere like mocking the entire concept of it and acting like it's some sort of modern notion you use to justify like post liberalism or whatever, you know, they're the little hobby horse crusading against right now is. It's like no, like I mean, like, you know, it's like Mises's defense and kind of the the messian concept of of kind of his version of consequentialism. you know, Rothbard and and the the influence of Catholic, you know, Catholic teachings on on kind of his view of natural rights theories. Like these are these are very old concepts. These are not necessarily anti an antithetical to to free society or free markets, right? And so acting like any concept of these very ancient uh wisdoms are are, you know, modern propaganda to justify, you know, whatever enemies that you don't like right now that you you think are, you know, the woke right people. Just kind of further goes into just the the absurdity of some of these debates going on. And when those are the, you know, and undermines, you know, modern defenses of actual free markets of of non socialized markets, um, at times like it's it's not surprising that's not resonating with people. And I think again a lot of this was kind of a spiritual forebearer to the the current uh discourse going on. >> Yeah, I've kind of uh changed my I guess strategic view on this in recent years. I remember talking with you though a few years ago. you were up here for some event and we were talking about this sort like I guess the common good conservatives the the right what I call the right-wing progressives kind of or cast American compass um group and I remember talking about how like yeah we really need to go after them but I mean and I still do I still think we need to out >> uh maneuver them but I think we need to do that by drowning them out by being louder and by by having a better story to tell because really like their story is just progressivism it's just oh we've had blah and it's not working and we need to pivot away which is just what all the leftists say. And so, yeah, like I I'm not saying we should give up anything to them, but like the way to beat them is to be the better critics of the status quo because they're not very good critics of the status quo. They have some institutional backing. I mean, thought it was kind of funny how um it was American Compass is getting all this like money from these left-wing um organizations. They're because they're allies when it comes to economics, which is at the core of then a lot of the the more uh social stuff. There's interesting thing interesting things there. But yeah, it's like the the Rothbartians have the real answers to the affordability crisis to all of this stuff and our narrative is just not being told. People are not hearing it. They're all they're hearing is Mum Donnie and he's the only like him and his ilk are the only alternative to the Dan Krenshaw that Gen Z is hearing right now. And so that's why they're flocking over there. It's that simple. Well, isn't it remarkable how all of the allowable discussion uh on Fox News, CNN, even in any anything uh that has a whiff of establishment uh media in it, the only ideologies that get discussed are ideologies where the end is always massive corporate government power. Like there is of course a hardcore leftwing that is for the dismemberment of the state and which you could see could actually weaken state power. Those people are never allowed to talk uh in any sort of establishment media outlet. Uh and conversely right people on on the libertarian side then are of course never allowed to comment on that. You're you're really only a choice allowed a choice of huge massive overweening government with left-wing social policy or huge massive overweening government with right-wing social policy. That's what you're allowed. I don't think it's a coincidence that that's what's allowed in media. Um but I also wonder if maybe just part of it is that people are hardwired uh to just prefer that well government has to plan society. We need a government to plan society. So there's only two choices. government that plans society for my particular left-wing social view or government that plans society for my particular right-wing view. And you're not even allowed then uh say a more localized secessionist type of view, right? Even if you wanted more localized sort of communitarian government, that's not allowed to be to be discussed either. That's why the left, the communitarian left is never allowed to comment on any of this sort of thing, just like the secessionist right is never allowed to comment on because I think the assumption is that the only allowable institution for changing society is a big central government. And that just I think is a true core belief of people who run media, of uh people like Elon Musk, anyone who has a big platform. um they all believe just that the there should be an enormous central state that does everything. And in on the right, right, you get people like um Hex, Cernovich, all of those guys, right? It always comes down to we just need to take control of the government and then reform society. It's never break up the government into smaller pieces. It's never weaken the government. It's never like truly reform society or build up a stronger uh private sector through churches, schools, families, local communities, that sort of thing. That's never that. It's always give more power to the central state and then that will fix all of our problems. And it seems you can have the leftwing version of that or the right-wing version of that. And I think it's deliberate um that those are the only options allowed to. So, we have a lot cut out for us just like anyone who wants to actually dismember the state uh or engage in any sort of truly like localized anti-state sort of self-governance which isn't just a libertarian thing. It occurs other in other places on the ideological spectrum as well. But none of that none of that's allowed. And uh I think that just comes back to that's the what people honestly believe a lot of the time. And Americans, in spite of all this protesting about uh republican virtue and America the free and constitutional government, most Americans do not believe any of that. Most Americans believe there should be a strong, very powerful central government that uh will do all the good things we wanted to do. All that matters is that my guys get elected so that we can then ram through what ours is. They never think more than like four or eight years ahead of time, though. They never think, "Hey, maybe we'll lose one of these elections and and then the other side will come do to us what we did to them." They don't seem capable of thinking out that far, but that just seems to be the system that we're stuck with. >> All right. Well, we >> I agree >> with that. >> We'll go ahead and wrap up this episode of Radio Rothbart. Yeah, I I think we'll have to come back to this after the election and kind of see, hey, how did that messaging work? Um, and what where do we go from here? Right. So if they if they lose miserably in the midterms, the Republicans do, then what do we just we come up with a hybrid left-wing, right-wing coalition sort of here, we're all going to remove everyone's freedoms together. All we can agree on is another 100,000 flock cameras and then society will be fine. Uh I'm not looking forward to however that turns out uh come next January. >> Yeah. Well, I think it's interesting. like a lot of this discourse is not happening in traditional political circles, right? Like this this is the alt discourse, right? This is the social media stuff and things like that, right? It's funny because it's happening now and then then then like Fox News reports on it, right? Like you know, two days later. But but but but I think that's what makes this stuff even more interesting is that like this is, you know, the you know, the the the divides within you and and you're seeing divides on on both sides right now. like there's there's two different civil wars going on simultaneously within alt media on you know what's what's the direction of politics as a whole but but all that's because all all the real action is happening amongst influencers debating things because politics because there is no political action right like get out side of uh uh you know you there's no actual legislating and so that's that's part of it is like you know when when when Washington is I don't say gridlock it's like got to be a better thing than what we have right now but when Washington just continues to march on at the with, you know, changes on the margin here on certain policies that the executive can have, but there's there's no legislation. There's no broad reforms, which might be a good thing. It's like any broad reforms from Washington's probably going to make things worse. Um, but like it's it's the the constant divides at the at the at the in the the non uh siloed institutions going on right now, which I think is it's going to be very interesting to see where where these things evolve over time given just again I think the pent up frustration um there. So like it's it's creates a very it it has it rhymes in a lot of the things that we expect from politics, but it's happening in different circles now. And so I'm interested to see how that evolves over time with just the the shifting of institutions and the like. >> All right. Well, with that, we'll really wrap up this time the uh the Power Market podcast. Uh thank you everyone out there for listening. Um it's been a couple weeks since our last one, so thank you for coming back. Thank you for joining us again. >> A lot of Misesu lectures on the YouTube channel. Yeah, ton of content uh on the YouTube channel and elsewhere where we just put all that Misesu stuff. So, give that a listen if you've been starved for any sort of audio content out of the Mises Institute, >> including this year I think is the first time we're posting the advanced sessions too. So, there's some like some lectures that you have to go multiple times to to get into those ones. And uh so yeah, for the people that think like, oh, it's the same few lectures every year. Um which is somewhat accurate at the beginning. I think of them as like the core classes. We have some new Yeah. like the some really interesting advance sessions up there too. >> Yes, check that out. And yeah, I would say this was not not just a bunch of core review boot camp sort of stuff. There was definitely a lot of exploration, I think, of new topics. So, be sure and check that out. I think for the three of us, the plan is to be back next week um with another uh power market. So, uh be sure and check us out next time and we'll see you then.