Welcome to another episode of the Secular Foxhole podcast.

Today we have a great guest with us.

Anders Igmereson was born and raised in

Sweden.

He immigrated to the United States in 1994 and

became a US.

Citizen in 2002.

He has a BA in Economics, Finance and Administration from Stockholm School of

Economics and a Master of Education in Montessori pre K through K education from

Loyola College of Maryland.

He's a graduate of the Freedom Focused

Leadership Program of the Rockies, which I've heard great things about.

Andres is a champion of individualism individual rights, limited government and

capitalism.

He has his own substac, and there's Igmerson

substac.com.

And he's written for the Federalist American

Spectator, town Hall, Heartland, Daily News, the Objective Standard, and a parody.

Miscellaneous media outlets.

Anders, how are you?

I am doing well.

How are you?

I'm doing very good, thank you.

Vic, I'm so rusty, I'm nervous.

That's okay, blair, you have a routine of this, and this is more interesting.

That's true.

This will be episode 69.

You could directly from the Gecko plug your

website also because that will give a title of your book.

Yes, that's correct.

So the website is thinkwright.com one word.

Yes, and that's why we're here today, to talk about his book of the same title,

Think Right or Wrong, not Left or Right.

And Andrews, what compelled you to write such

a book?

Well, I perceived a gap, if you like, in the political discourse.

I think a lot of people are focusing on either more deeply philosophical matters.

And there is a gap in the sense that the disenchanted middle, as I call them, the

people who don't feel at home in any political party, we have a growing independent

constituency in this country.

Yes.

And I think a lot of what they're disenchanted with is the fact that both the political left

and right, they don't feel represented by either of them.

And so with this book, I'm trying to kind of reframe the conversation in terms of morally

right to left instead of politically left or right.

Okay, you mean morally right or wrong.

Morally right or wrong.

Exactly.

Yeah.

I'm listening to the audiobook on Audible, and you have done updated version.

Also, how has the comments, feedback and input from that coming?

So the second version or the second edition that I published last summer, it was a

couple of new chapters that I added to it based on current events.

So, for instance, I hadn't covered inflation in the first edition.

So that was something I added and a couple of other minor things.

Then also, some of the examples, I updated them, tried to make them a little bit more

timeless.

But overall, the book is not changed greatly.

But if you want to buy it, make sure that you get the second edition out there.

The first edition should not be available, but sometimes when you search out there, you land

on the old edition for some reason, but it's the second edition that is the latest.

Great.

All right, Andrews, I'm glad you.

Gave.

Us the synopsis of the book, but let's go into it a little deeper.

Now, I prefer Iran's definition of rights as a sanction of independent action, but today I

think rights are confused with entitlements.

What do you think of that?

Yeah, I agree.

The concept of rights has been diluted to

basically represent anything that anybody feels they're entitled to, but they forget to

ask the question of whether their alleged right to whatever an education, health care, a

job, secure retirement, et cetera, whether that is violating the individual rights of

others, of their neighbor, if you like.

And I like the lithmus test for what is a true

right or not by asking yourself the question, is this supposed right of mine?

Does it violate the right of others because they have either to pay for it, like my

education, or their actions are limited by the regulations that are implemented to support my

alleged rights? And so if the answer is yes to that question,

then your alleged right is not a right.

And I just like to go back to the Declaration

of Independence, because I think that is one of the most or still the most succinct popular

definition of what individual rights are, the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of

happiness, possibly with the addition of the right to property for clarity.

But that's how I think about rights.

Yeah, very good.

Now, today, you and I know that there's

basically two fundamental types of political philosophy individualism and collectivism.

Collectivism seems to have won out today, or it's certainly dominating today.

And in my view, that's why America is in decline.

Do you have a thought on that?

Yeah, I mean, it certainly dominates.

I wouldn't say that it has won out yet.

I haven't given up.

No, of course.

Exactly. But I think pretty much the entire history of the country of the US.

Has been a battle between individualism and collectivism.

And, yes, collectivism currently has the upper hand.

And I think guess you say that explains why America is in decline.

Well, it's three against the world then, so far.

Right.

And collectivism has descended into tribalism,

I believe, both sides of the aisle, if you will.

Yeah, I mean, I see tribalism as one version, if you like, of collectivism.

But, yes, tribalism has certainly increased in importance in recent years.

Like me, you're a staunch advocate of capitalism, but today capitalism is blamed for

everything that actually is caused by state intervention.

That's my personal opinion, but I think the growth of government bears me out.

So how do you define capitalism, and is it the opposite of cronyism?

No, I wouldn't say that capitalism is the opposite of cronyism.

It's commonly viewed as a free market economic system, but as a social system, it is so much

more.

Right.

Yeah. So it's the only social system that recognizes that individual rights,

including property rights, are the only true rights, as we talked about before.

And under such a system, the only role of government is to protect those rights.

So that makes for a very limited government.

So for your listeners, the government under a

capitalist social system has only three functions.

It protects your individual rights from being violated by foreign aggressors, and that's why

we have a military and from domestic aggressors people committing fraud, theft,

murder, et cetera.

And that's why we have law enforcement,

police, et cetera.

Yes.

And thirdly, it prosecutes offenders.

And that's why we have a court system.

Cronism, on the other hand, is, I think, as I see it, is special interests that lobby for

favors from politicians and government bureaucrats and politicians and bureaucrats

encouraging this behavior.

So it becomes like a cabal between not only

big business but big business NGOs, et cetera, and politicians and bureaucrats.

So if you contribute to my political campaign, I will represent your interest should I get

elected, or something like that.

Now, that is a cronyism.

It's a consequence of too much government.

So if you think about it, if politicians and

governments bureaucrats weren't able to wield all this power companies and other interest

groups, they would neither have an opportunity to carry favors because there wouldn't really

be anybody to go.

To to carry those favors.

Nor would they have a need to protect themselves from the force of government in

terms of when they implement non objective laws and regulations, et cetera.

Because there's a lot of good players out there, good companies, and they just feel that

they have to have a presence in Washington to defend themselves.

Right, but none of that would be there under a capitalist social system because there would

be so little left for politicians to decide upon that basically most people, most

companies, most other organizations would have very little interest or reason to go to

Washington.

The phrase like from a novel, that if you want to comment on that or expand it's,

our man in Washington.

Right?

Yeah, exactly.

So there wouldn't really be a need for a man

in Washington.

From.

A long time, I've just thought, well, they have to go to Washington to pay bribe

money.

That's to keep from being railroaded.

Yeah. In a way you could look upon it as a legalized racket if you like.

Legalized in the terms of immoral loss.

That shouldn't really be there.

I agree.

Now, capitalism is sometimes criticized as

creating monopolies.

But what is wrong with Apple, say Apple having

70% of the market or Microsoft being the dominant operating system in the world?

Yes. Here you really have to differentiate whether their quote unquote

monopolist position has been achieved through share competence in a free market or whether

it has been done through carrying government favors or getting some protection.

So in a society where individual rights are respected and where the government is limited.

A company can only reach a high market share, whether it's 70, 80, 9100 percent through

sheer competence.

And that should be celebrated because it's a

marvelous it's a fantastic achievement.

Yes, it is.

But to maintain it, the company will constantly have to innovate to improve quality

and to reduce prices in order to stay ahead of the competition.

And we see that today, even in our mixed economy, that companies that achieve a

position like that through sheer competence, which does happen even in our mixed economy,

they don't maintain that position for very long.

It's maybe a couple of decades or something, but the competition is relentless and trying

to take a piece of the cake.

And if you look at who were the big companies

1020, 30, 40, 50 years ago, compare that to today, it's a constant change of who is on the

top.

So the accusation of that capitalism is

creating monopolies is entirely wrong.

Now, the only immoral monopolistic situations

are those that are created and protected by government, whether that is through

legislation, regulations, tariffs or subsidies, but anything that prevents others

from competing on equal terms.

So take the US.

Postal service as an example.

They have a monopoly of mail delivery on mail

delivery, by law, it's actually in the Constitution.

It shouldn't be there, but it's nobody else is allowed to deliver mail to your mailbox.

So you cannot contract with a different provider to get your mail, et cetera, et

cetera.

So that's a government created monopoly, which

is immoral because it infringes on your right to contract, basically.

But then you can also look at the Postal Service.

It's kind of interesting because it's also a good example of how even in this mixed economy

and even with these government protections, how difficult it is to maintain a monopolistic

position in the long run.

Because take package delivery, for instance.

So the US Postal Service, they used to deliver all the packages in the country as well, but

they don't have a monopoly, a government sanctioned monopoly on package delivery.

So you saw the ups coming, FedEx and most lately Amazon, and they are just running

circles around the postal services.

I mean, the Postal services is still

delivering packages to some extent, but they're a distant fourth, I think, in terms of

volume.

And they do it at a loss all the time.

So that's a good example of how it's hard to maintain that position.

Now, the second example, there is technological innovation.

So even in the area of mail delivery, where they supposedly have a monopoly, well, what

has happened? Everything has gone electronic.

So you get email, you pay your bills online, you bank online, et cetera, et cetera.

So the amount of mail, of real mail, not just the crap that you get in your mailbox, the

amount of real mail that you get today, I don't know if it's like 10% of what it was 20

years ago, or something like that, but it's going to go down dramatically.

And the only reason why the postal service is still in existence is because we subsidize it

massively with tax money every year.

Right now, while you were talking, I was thinking of another injustice towards the

free market, as in labor laws like the minimum wage and so on and so forth.

I consider the minimum wage, again, unconstitutionally, immoral.

It's a barrier to let to keep people out of the market instead of at a certain level,

certainly at a beginning level.

What do you think of that?

Yeah, no, absolutely.

I mean, if you talk about having a concern,

for instance, the least fortunate in society, if you want to turn that way, or the low wage

earners or people who need to get into the labor market somehow they're priced out often.

Because if you don't have the skills to, for instance, meet a minimum wage of $15, nobody

will hire you.

But maybe you have the skill to be paid $4 an

hour.

And that's a starting point, right?

Yeah.

No, it isn't much money.

You won't survive on it, but it's a starting point.

You gain experience and it won't take long before you move up the ladder and make more

money.

But today, yeah, no, there is not even a way

of getting into the market for a lot of people.

And I think that explains quite a bit of the unemployment.

We see people like Joe Biden tried to rally against the gig economy and the

freelancers and so on talking about this, that they wanted to stop different ways of earning

money and doing side gigs and several jobs at the same time.

Certainly in California there was a movement to do that.

California even even implemented a law, I think.

But I forget if that was under Trump or Biden.

But anyway, six and one half dozen or the other.

Another thing that bothers me again, certainly the left for decades was in bed, if you will,

with the labor unions and you see the right to work laws being rolled back in states now

which protects nonunion labor.

So that's another injustice.

I think that it should be corrected.

But in your book, though, in the Green, you

mentioned that you added a chapter on inflation.

What is inflation?

Yeah, so inflation, there's a lot of misconceptions about inflation.

People look at increasing prices and they say, oh, that's inflation.

But really the only source of inflation is government printing money out of thin air to

finance the welfare state as they can't raise enough taxes to pay for all the obligations.

And when I say printing money in the old days, they really printed money.

Today it's electronical, they print them electronically.

So it's gotten even easier, unfortunately.

And increasing prices that people normally see

as inflation is just an effect of inflation.

It's not the cost.

Right, yeah.

If we're talking about a capitalist social system the system that I advocate in

the book, the government doesn't have the power to print money physically or

electronically.

So there wouldn't be any inflation.

There wouldn't be a Federal Reserve that controlled interest rates, that would be set

by the markets and certainly they wouldn't have any unemployment goals that would just be

also market based and money itself, that would be managed by the private market, by banks.

Currencies would compete freely based on how sound they were.

I suspect most of them would be gold based.

And over time you would probably, just like in

any other industry, you would see a consolidation of currencies and we'd be left

with a few broadly accepted ones, whether that is dollar or Swiss franc or something

completely new, who knows?

Right.

I remember as a boy, you go to the grocery

store, a loaf of bread is a nickel, a gallon of milk is $0.15.

Now, of course, as you said earlier, a loaf of bread is $4 and a gallon of milk is $7.

That's just, again, runaway money printing and flooding the market with worthless paper, if

you will.

And it's interesting if we look back before this latest rapid increase in inflation

and the government has this goal of keeping it at 2% and had for the longest time and they

managed to keep it around that number one, 2% is totally arbitrary.

Yes.

And number two, 2% is hiding even keeping it at 2% is hiding a lot of inflation

in the sense that the government money printing is going on and that it is what

brought us to 2%.

And a lot of it's actually spilled over in the

stock market and the housing market, which is not part of the inflation calculations.

But in a free market, in a capitalist social system, we would continuously see prices go

down and you would get more value for your money because human beings constantly look to

get more for less and companies try to improve efficiency and use less raw materials and

anything to increase their profits.

Right?

And over time, you would just see prices going down.

Without the government printing money, in this period where we managed to stay around 2%, we

would have seen decreasing prices and all of us would have gotten more out of our money

year after year.

That's what capitalism does.

That's right.

Now, the Left keeps harping on inequality.

I think it's our view, yours and mine and Martin's, that in a truly capitalist society,

inequality is not even remotely important.

What do you think?

Well, so you have to differentiate, I think, political and economic inequality.

So in a capitalist social system, there will be in a way, inequality is really not a good

term, but yeah, there will be people who will make a lot of money and people who will make

less money.

Sure, but what's the expression?

The tide lifts all boats.

So with the productivity, with the increased

wealth all around, everybody will get richer in a capitalist society, which we see that to

the extent that we have been capitalists in our mixed economy over the last 100, 200

years, everybody has gotten richer.

And that's okay.

Economic inequality is not a threat to you as a person.

Yeah, no, it's not.

However, if we're talking political

inequality, that's a different thing.

And in a capitalist social system, political

inequality is also a non issue.

I mean, it's truly a non issue because with a

limited government that we talked about, limited to those three functions that are

listed initially, there isn't that much to vote on.

So if you take an example, saving for retirement, today, most of us are trapped in a

government run system called Social Security, and some 12% of your pay is deducted every

month.

You only see 6% of that deduction on your

paycheck.

The other six, your employer is paying.

And this is not going to a dedicated account for your retirement that you can look up every

month and see what the status is.

No, this goes to pay the Social Security for

current retirees.

So you are basically subsidizing your parents

and your grandparents.

So when your turn comes to collect, you'll be

dependent on future salary and wage earners to continue to fund the system.

But Ponzi scheme.

Yeah, well, it's a Ponzi scheme.

Yeah.

So imagine, for instance, that we saw a revolt among young people.

I would love if that happened, but I don't see it.

But let's say, just for the sake of discussion, that young people revolted and

said that we are fed up with this, we don't want to pay into this system any longer, and

that this was put to a vote.

Now, if you're on the collecting end of this,

this would be a huge threat to your retirement and your welfare, right?

So in that sense, your vote would be important.

Right.

You would need to vote to make sure that you

can keep your retirement benefits and not be put out in the street or whatever.

Now, your vote, though, doesn't count for much.

So in that sense and there will probably be pressure groups on both sides who kind of

wielded their power.

And in the grand scheme of things, your vote

would be worth very little.

And in that sense, you would be politically

unequal because you can't really compete with those pressure groups who have their

connections in Washington and elsewhere.

Okay?

Now, if you imagine instead a system where you were in control of your saving for

retirement from the day you started working, you would be able to put the money in a

dedicated account that you were in charge of.

You would shop around for the institution you

think would manage your money the best.

If you're not happy, you change bank or other

financial institution, not unlike what you do with the money that you may be able to save on

top of your Social Security today, like 401K, like IRAs or something like that.

But in this system, politics would never enter into the equation, and the question of

political equality becomes moot because retirement is totally outside of politics.

It's just something that is taken care of in the market, and you can apply this reasoning

to all areas of society, whether it's health care, education, food, insurance, and so on

and so forth.

If you were in control, if the government

wasn't involved, your vote would be of no importance in those areas.

So, for instance, today, if Apple comes out with a new smartphone and you don't like it,

you don't have the gut reaction that you have to go to your politicians, hopefully not to

carry a favor, right? You just move on and buy an Android phone or

something or whatever.

And that's how the market is working.

We vote with our feet and our wallets, not with our votes.

In a capitalist social system, your vote would be of very little importance and political

inequality wouldn't be an issue.

And do you think the politicians stoke that issue because of the mixed economy?

They that's like a club.

They beat over the head of the capitalist

private sector, if you will.

Does that make any sense?

Yeah, they stoke envy.

Certainly they do.

I don't know how self aware they are of and actually scheming for power here.

I really couldn't say.

Or if they're just products of the system and

take it for granted, it's hard to say, actually.

Yeah, all right, well, don't touch on envy again, though, because whenever I was

raised, when I see an achievement, to praise that praise that person who did achieve that,

whether it's they bought a new car or they bought a house.

So envy, I think, is terrible.

I won't say disease, but certainly what's the

mental term I want? Perhaps.

You probably know about that in Sweden, but it's originally from Denmark.

Jante.

Yeah, no, I think envy is an interesting phenomenon.

A psychologist once explained to me, which I thought was very clarifying, that envy itself

is just an emotion.

It isn't inherently good or bad.

It just tells you that someone else has something that you value, but you currently

don't have it.

If that is a nice car, a successful career, a

terrific spouse, or whatever.

But it's the action you take when you

experience envy that can be good or bad.

Okay, certainly.

So, for example, if you feel envy when you read about a successful entrepreneur or

something, you can either decide to pursue something similar in life, go out there and

try to replicate or find your own thing that will make you money and to attain the value

that you're currently missing.

So that's a good response to the emotion of

envy in that sense.

Envy actually, it's a signal sometimes it's

good to experience that.

We say, oh, wow, I didn't even realize that I

wanted that in my life, and now I do.

So let's go out and get it.

Or you can decide that since you're not a successful entrepreneur, you don't want this

other person to succeed either.

So you vote for a regulation that will harm

his business or higher taxes that will reduce his wealth or something like that.

And that's where I think when you say that politicians stoke envy, it's the bad side of

envy because they appeal to the worst in us, if you like, and they know that that is a very

powerful tool for them while to get elected and so on and so forth.

So you have to be really careful there when you have the gut reaction maybe that we should

tax the rich or whatever, the fact that it's immoral, you're going to check your emotions

and see that, okay, do I think we should tax the rich?

Because I'm envious of them.

And if that is the case, try to take one of

those good actions instead based on your envy and try to achieve something similar in your

life.

That was a question cut down with tall poppies in Australia.

Yeah, but the problem is when we're rich that are really rich, like Warren Buffett and

others, and Bill Gates saying, yeah, please tax us, and others also.

Right? Yeah. That's really disgraceful that they do

that.

You'd think that if they're so eager to give

up their wealth, just give it away, they don't need to go to the politicians and ask

everybody else to have to do the same thing.

So instead of buying a rope, as Karlmarks was saying, and hanging himself,

they need to get your book.

Fernanders yes, exactly.

Absolutely.

I was going to toss in the abolished

billionaire movement as part of that.

Yeah, I mean, it's in the same category now.

Whenever I'm challenged about my advocacy of capitalism, I get questions like,

well, what about the poor? What about orphans?

What happens to them?

Yeah, this is where a capitalist social system is particularly great.

Yes.

So if you start with the poor, poverty is basically eradicated because capitalism

unleashes what I call in the book, the unimagined.

And that are all the inventions and improvements that we can't even imagine.

That happens when people are free to act on their visions and ideas.

So when individuals are free to pursue that without the interference of government

regulations and with minimal, if any, taxation, we'll see an explosion of new

products and services that we cannot even conceive of today.

And as we talked about earlier, those products and services, over time, they will get less

expensive, they will get better quality.

And meaning that you get more and more value

for your money with each year passing.

And then secondly, also under capitalism,

we'll see more and higher paying jobs because of increased productivity.

So in a way, the individual is king in the labor market because human capital will always

be, in short, supply.

It may be hard to imagine this, but you can

see it in certain industries today, tech industry for instance, they're constantly

short of qualified people and that would be the norm throughout society in a capitalist

social system.

So basically nobody who wants to work will be

poor.

So poverty is basically not an issue.

Now, there may be a few people who are poor because of circumstances outside of their

control.

Sure.

And that's where charity comes in.

And in a capitalist social system where people

make more money than ever, people will yeah, they will spend some of their money on

material things and travel and personal things.

But pretty soon you start to look around and say, you know, getting that fourth car really

doesn't give me that much additional value in life.

Right.

Or third house or whatever it is.

And they look at it and they start to incorporate more immaterial values in their

value hierarchy and that can often includes charitable exploits.

And there will be plenty of people who are interested in helping out the people who are

poor without any fault of their own, perhaps.

Yes.

And then this doesn't only apply to wealthy individuals.

I mean, all of us, we all have our causes.

Yeah, we all have our causes.

Exactly right.

And we will have more money than ever.

So we will set aside more money for those

causes.

And that means that I would suspect that there

will be competition in helping the poor.

There won't be enough poor to help for the

money that is available.

Now, if you talk about you mentioned orphans

as well, is that what you do?

Yes.

Okay, so taking care of orphans, I mean, the same thing.

It will be a charitable sector that will basically compete for taking care of orphans,

because I think that will be an area that will be particularly of interest to a lot of

individuals, but also in a capitalist social system.

The charitable sector is also subject to market forces.

Right.

So you will see a lot of different solutions

probably in terms of placing orphans in new homes, how to treat potential mental issues,

et cetera.

So over time, being an orphan, if you like,

will probably be less traumatic than what it is today when kids are moved from foster home

to foster home and you hear about these really tragic cases where you spend years and years

in ten different foster homes and things like that and no wonder people have problems.

I think that in that competing market, market, competing for ideas, there will be different

models tested and over time orphans will be helped a lot better than what they are today.

I will put in here a short thing then about Value for Value and the Podcasting 2.0

initiative based on this model that you could then send support to Nation but also adding

your positive feedback feedback loop.

For example, when they listen to this

conversation.

And then they could send a digital telegram

with satushis that's a partial of a bitcoin, and that will go directly to the content

creators without any special fees and in a secure and safe way.

So we will see more of this in the future, how you could support and help and also value

things that you decide, was it for a value for me?

And I then send a donation or a hat tip or whatever.

So I'm very positive in the future.

Yeah. No, and I think that's a good example of something that just a few years

ago, we wouldn't even have imagined that that would be an option right now.

We see it and who knows what will come in the future in terms of not only in the markets for

products and services, but also in the market for helping people and different other

charitable pursuits.

Yeah.

One more thing I want to bring up here when we're talking about the poor and orphans

and so on.

In the early days of America, there used to be

mutual aid societies and they flourished.

But as socialism grew in America, they saw

them as unnecessary competition.

So the government people, I guess, were

bamboozled in letting the government take those over.

Yeah, I think that a lot of that happened in conjunction with the

implementation of Social Security, because that killed off most of the mutual aid

societies.

We were basically insurance and people could

say for retirement.

And they filled different functions.

And I read in a book, I don't remember which one, you may be familiar with it, but it gave

the example of Chicago in the second half of the 19th centuries.

At one point, the city officials, they were concerned because there were what they thought

too many charitable organizations available and they thought it put a bad reputation on

the city.

We really don't need all these charitable

organizations.

Wow.

Yeah. You can see a glimpse of what it would potentially look like when I say that

there will be more money than there will be causes to support.

That's an interesting example that you mentioned, Chicago, because that was one

organization when I was a member of in the past called Vossa Order of America in Swedish,

but it's a similar name in English.

And that was like an insurance company because

at one time, Chicago was the second largest city in Sweden because it.

Was immigration, because of all the immigrants.

Yeah. And then they started up this lodge system so you could have a link to your

former country and have support if something would happen in the new country and vice

versa.

So that was like one part of that lodge system

was with insurance, that you could get help and connections and links back and forth.

And that could work today also to set up with oh, absolutely.

Private insurance companies.

And it's direct exchange voluntarily.

Yes. All these government programs that we have, whether that's in retirement,

like Social Security or in health care and such, they're crowding out all these different

options that would exist under a capitalist social system and that we had a lot of it

before the welfare state grew to the proportions it has grown to today.

True enough, true enough.

Now, another issue I think that politicians

stoke is immigration.

I favor immigration the way it used to be,

where you would come to, say, Ellis Island, you would be processed through and if they

would give you a physical exam for your health and then you would present whatever papers

that I guess you brought with you to prove who you are.

And then you would be let in, so to speak.

But now just the open border, let everything

and anyone in is not my cup of tea.

What do you think?

Well, first you mentioned Ellis Island, and I must say that visit to Ellis

Island for anybody who has immigrated, it's one of the most moving experience you can

have.

It's a really powerful experience.

So if you haven't been definitely put that on your list for a vacation.

I actually also visited while I was in Sweden here in May, Marie and I, we visited in the

town of Beckhu, an immigrant museum called The Immigrant House, which is focusing on the

Swedish immigration to North America.

And it was very interesting, actually.

I wrote a blog post here not long ago on my substac about it.

And so if anybody's interested, they can check it out there.

But anyhow, back to the subject.

Well, fundamentally, and this is now we're

talking about a vision, a shining city on a hill.

Sure, immigration is free.

It's open because the freedom of movement is

really an individual right and nobody should have the right to prevent you from moving

wherever you want as long as you're not violating the individual rights or property

rights of others.

Now, I realize obviously that we're a long,

long way away from that, but our immigration system is a disgrace totally.

And there is no interest, it seems, neither on the political left or right today to address

it.

They're just putting Band AIDS on it all the

time.

I don't know why it's so hard to do that.

Because I think just drastically increasing the number of work visas, for instance, per

year, and establish a waiting list so that potential immigrants could at least be able to

plan for their future, I think that would go a long way towards solving the problems that we

have at our borders today.

But yeah, I don't know why it's I mean,

historically it has always been a contentious issue, it seems, in this country and in other

countries.

But I think it's fundamentally it's based in a

fear of the unknown or something.

And in this country, people are afraid of

immigrants taking their jobs or lower their salaries and wages or take advantage of our

social safety net or increasing the amount of drugs in the country or diluting American

culture, whatever that means.

I mean, none of which is true, but it's part

of what we're dealing with right now.

I see it as an American inspirator.

United States of America.

It's a melting pot.

And I think Harry Bins, when he wrote a great

essay about that because this issue is even so called dividing or debating between

objectivist also and so called objectivist and others on principle.

I agree with you, Anders, and then I'm realist also understand the situation.

And we have a clearer example of that here in Scandinavian Sweden and rest of Europe.

And Blair and I, we had the honor to be on a guest, being guests on a show where talking

about these kind of issues about integration, about races, collectivists and crime and so

on.

And that was interesting to hear questions

from an American perspective and view and also having discussion, international discussion

about that.

Just to bring this back a little bit to the vision and this shining city on a hill

under a capitalist social system, a lot of these concerns that people have today, they

would go away because there wouldn't be a social safety net to take advantage of, for

instance.

And as we talked about earlier, there will be

more jobs in a capitalist social system than there are people.

So you wouldn't really have to feel threatened or fear losing your job without finding

another one.

That fear would be very limited.

But obviously, how to convey that to people, that is a marketing challenge that we

certainly have to figure out how to do.

It's really tough now just to mention a story.

You mentioned American in Spirit once I was told a story by someone.

I think it was about a Hungarian man who had fled during the Hungarian uprising in 1956

with his parents.

And he was just a little boy, and at some

point or another he didn't hesitate.

He loved his dad.

And he didn't question at that age what his dad was deciding, but he was curious.

He asked the question because they left Hungary.

He got to Austria and then continued to America.

And he asked, So why do we want to go to America?

He asked his dad, and his dad said, Son, we've always been Americans.

We were just born in the wrong country.

Which kind of addresses the spirit that you

mentioned, that being American is not limited to being born to or living in America.

It's a spirit.

It's a commitment to individual rights,

whether you know how to express that commitment or not, but wanting to live your

life free and respect others right to do the same.

Well said.

Well said.

I have a few more questions, Andrews, if you have some time still.

Sure.

All right, let's tackle environmentalism.

They claim that capitalism destroys the planet, and I firmly disagree because if you

want to actually preserve something, let's say like Warehouser or Georgia Pacific.

They're paper producers.

Well, they have millions of acres of forest

land.

Well, they're not just going to cut all that

down and not replant.

They have to think, 100 years ahead of time,

let's grab what we can and screw the, you know, screw the pooch.

So again, I I disagree that capitalism is the cause of any environmental damage, although

I'm certain some aspect of it has occurred.

What do you think?

But player, isn't it also that the word about environment, that every surrounding

around us is our environment and we do have a moral right to change that or improve that

environment?

That's what I think.

Yes, I'm profoundly pro human, but that

doesn't mean that I exclude what happens to my environment around me.

Do we lose Anders?

No, I'm still there.

I'm listening.

Yeah, I think you kind of answered your own question there.

But yeah, I agree that as humans, what we're doing where we're adjusting nature to us, not

adjusting us to nature, but so as it pertains to capitalism in the long run, a capitalist

social system preserves nature not as a goal, but as a consequence.

Basically, this goes back as I see it, when I mentioned that as human beings, we always try

to do more with less, and companies and individuals try to become more efficient, more

productive.

And in a company setting, you want to increase

your profits.

So you want to use less raw materials if you

can.

And you can see this, especially in the last

2030 years with the information technology and digital economy, a lot of development and a

lot of what we're doing, the products and services that we use, they're not even based

on raw materials.

It's bits, zeros and ones.

They're not really physical.

Yeah, they reside on a computer and we're a

blade in a service center or something.

But the amount of resources that goes into

that is minuscule for the power and the productivity that they contribute.

So over time, we'll be using less raw materials, but get more productivity and more

use of the products that we're creating.

And that's just a consequence of a capitalist

social system that allows human nature to basically function as it's supposed to.

So we can see some of this already today.

So if you take Europe, for instance, has more

forests today than it has had since the Middle Ages, because we don't need all that land for

agriculture any longer.

Now, if they didn't subsidize agriculture to

the extent that they do, there would be a lot more unprofitable farms that went out of

business and even more cultivated land would have been returned to nature, so to speak.

So you can probably look up TV programs about wildernesses in Europe that have basically

returned to where there were hundreds and hundreds of years ago and new species and old

species have come back and all that stuff.

So under capitalism.

We would see more and more of that.

We would have more pristine nature, if you

like, not as a goal, but as an effect of the fact that we're becoming more efficient in our

resource use.

Now, contrary to what these environmentalists

say, it's actually the more authoritarian, authoritarian social systems that the ones

that don't respect or respect less property rights that have a more negative impact on

nature.

If you take old Communist Soviet Union or

Eastern Europe, they were environmental cesspools because they didn't have well

defined property rights.

So nobody back to your Georgia Pacific

example, nobody takes an interest in the long range value of the land that a property owner

does under capitalism.

So they were just cutting down forest and

spewing out waste and whatever, and they've created all these environmental catastrophes.

You see the same today in Communist China and in Russia and many other countries that have

similar social systems.

I would say that a country in general, there

is a direct correlation between your social system.

You will have more pollution and more environmental issues.

The more authoritarian you are, the less you protect and respect property rights.

Now, that's excellent, Andrews.

Thank you for that.

And let's continue harping on the left, because the latest outrage, in my personal

view, is that they claim that racism is a fundamental aspect of the capitalist system,

and it's obviously the exact opposite, again, in my humble opinion, because of the discovery

of individual rights.

What do you think?

Yeah. No, I agree.

I mean, racism is a form of collectivism.

It's the most crude form of collectivism.

The fact that the idea that the color of your

skin entitles you to certain rights, I mean, that should have been a dead concept by now.

So without this collectivist notion, the idea that your group entitles you to something,

that you have rights based on your group, the group you belong to, without that, racism

would be a very marginal issue.

And as I said in the book, in a capitalist

social system, there is a marketplace of ideas in addition to a marketplace for products and

services.

And over time, good ideas win out over the bad

ideas, just like good products and services went out over bad products and services.

Now, a person may still be a racist under a capitalist social system, but in order to

survive or thrive, those ideas would be largely unacceptable, and you would keep them

private.

So I give the example in the book of a

restaurant owner.

Let's say that he's a racist and he opens a

restaurant for black only or white only or Jews only or whatever.

Now, in a society where that is not socially acceptable, and in a capitalist society, there

wouldn't have to be any laws and regulations preventing him from opening a restaurant with

those rules as long as he owned the building.

But if he rented the building, his landlord

will probably have something to say about that and may not want a restaurant owner like that

and his suppliers.

Someone may put pressure on the suppliers and

say, you know what, you really shouldn't supply this guy.

Someone who happens to be a racist or have such inklings, they would probably keep it

very private if they want to survive in society and reach a certain level of

acceptance.

And over time, it would be pushed to the

fringes even more.

And the free market of ideas that the

capitalist social system provides where you don't have government regulation that today

actually is cementing and making worse a lot of these racist tendencies with affirmative

action and you name it, is certainly making it a lot worse.

All right.

Andrews in my view, with the nomination and

election of Trump, the GOP has basically jettisoned the free market wing, so to speak,

of that party.

Why aren't conservatives friends of capitalism

and freedom?

Yeah, I agree with you that the GOP seems to have been hijacked by the worst

elements of conservatism.

I still think there are conservatives out

there who are decent a lot, sure.

But they're awfully quiet right now.

I subscribe to a few newsletters like the Dispatch and the Free Press.

Free Press is Barry Weiss.

There's a lot of good stuff out there and a

lot of people pushing back.

And I think we will see a breakthrough sooner

or later.

But right now it looks pretty dark.

I agree.

And so why is this?

Well, I think well, conservatives are conflicted.

On the one hand, they see the benefits of capitalism, of the marketplace and things like

that, but they're overriding morality.

And this is painting with broad brushstrokes.

Sure, conservatives are often religious, most of them are.

And they subscribe to a morality that tells them that sacrifice is the moral ideal and

which fundamentally is in opposition to the selfish pursuits of profit that capitalism

represents.

So when push comes to shove, morality trumps

politics.

And if the two are in conflict, they will

revert to their moral position.

And that means that if there is a conflict and

they see something like in the marketplace now, when you take the social media stuff and

the alleged notion that they are stoking the woke movement, et cetera, and therefore have

to be regulated, as the many conservatives argue, that is an example of that, I think,

where their morality trumps the marketplace.

So is it any room for, as you call it, disgruntled middle or squeeze between this,

any independence or is it too early, too late?

Yeah, I definitely think there is a lot of I think there's a vacuum in the middle

and someone will fill that vacuum and hopefully my book will help fill part of it.

But there is certainly a risk that it will be filled with more authoritarian tendencies and

we're moving even further in the wrong direction.

But, yeah, I think if you look at the abortion issue, for instance.

We haven't talked about that much, but I think it's to the detriment of conservatives,

definitely their position right now on that, and because the broader American public,

they're in favor of some limits, but not banning abortion.

And I think a lot of the homelessness in terms of party is a lot of people it's the abortion

issue, and there are other issues as well.

Now, I think even though people don't feel at

home in a specific party, I suspect that I'm pretty sure that a lot of people are still

supporters of the welfare system as we have it today.

So it's not as easy as just putting my book in their hands.

And yeah, that may give them food for thought, hopefully, but very few people are ready to

fundamentally question Social Security, question Medicare, question public education.

Those are the three big ones.

When the day comes when people in earnest

question those systems, then I think we're on the right way.

Well, let me throw this in, though.

I think education, because of COVID parents,

were awakened to see the horrors that the teachers unions have inflicted and

homeschooling has grown by leaps and bounds all across the ideological spectrum, if you

will.

I mean, religious, non religious, I think

before COVID there was like 8% of children are being homeschooled.

Now it's like 20% to 25% in just that short of time.

So I'm hoping that the education, government education will be slashed.

That'd be one of the first things to go.

Yeah, I'm definitely with you on that.

I just think that it's so deeply ingrained in

the American psyche that if you go out there and talk, if you talk to parents about I hope

you're right, but it will be a long and arduous process.

Oh, sure.

And given that, I think a first step, if we could get the federal government out of

education, that would be a good first step.

And then you start to use the states and local

authorities as labs for this.

I mean, we'll have public schools for a long,

long time, or government schools.

But hopefully individual states will take

action and you'll see movements in the right direction, and other states will then learn

from that and get inspired, and people, individuals will be but, yeah, hopefully COVID

may have been the igniter, if you like, but it's a long struggle.

I believe it when I see it.

Yeah.

Don't want to sound pessimistic, but no.

Government education is definitely, probably

the hardest nut to crack of them all, but still the most important nut to crack.

And Blair, we have talked about this topic in a couple of episodes, and we'll keep

talking about it on these topics.

So that's great to see.

Yeah. I have one more question to throw out here.

Intellectuals on both the left and the right are attacking America's founding, and frankly,

I think most of the populace has either forgotten or never learned of the roots of

America's founding or from the Enlightenment.

So how do we get ourselves through this self

flagellation, if you will?

Yeah.

Rediscover an admiration for our founding fathers.

I think partly it goes back to the education issue and the fact that

homeschooling is growing leaps and bounds.

I think that is providing one inroad to teach

these values again.

But there is not an easy answer.

Actually, one of the most worrying aspects right now, as I see it, is the fact the

explicit rejection of the Enlightenment values by many conservatives, conservative

intellectuals actually.

So you have Adrian Vermul and sora Bamari and

I forget his last name, but there is definitely a movement towards more

authoritarianism on the right.

But back to your question how we can defeat

the orgy of self flaggulation.

We just have to keep at it.

And I think the objectivist organizations are doing a decent job of it.

There are a lot of people out there who are concerned and who are working on who are doing

good work on this.

I don't know if did I mention the Dispatch

news outlet that I think is doing good work here?

And obviously the Iron Institute is, I think, an outlet like the Free Press that I mentioned

where people on the left who are considering themselves more classical liberals and who are

disrespected with the outpouring of wokism and cancel culture and such, there are people on

the left who are waking up to this as well.

So that's good.

And I think in terms of for those of us who get it and know what the solutions are, I

think one of the things that we have where we can do better is that there has been a lot of

focus on defending capitalism, but we really should stop playing defense.

And that's why I don't even like the term defending capitalism.

I use championing capitalism to put a more positive spin of it because it's really the

other guys who should play defense.

They have 2000 years of collectivist dismal

track record.

I mean, it can go back to the start of

humanity if you like to, but let's take 2000 years since.

The ancient Greeks and so on.

Yeah, exactly.

And we really have to put them on the defense

and say that you gosh you have tried this over and over in different shapes and forms for

2000 years and it doesn't work.

It's time to try something different and we

have the solution.

So stop playing defense.

That's what I would tell the advocates of capitalism and go on the offense.

Wonderfully said.

All right, ladies and gentlemen, we've been

talking to Anders Igmerson, author of Think Right or Wrong, not Left or Right.

Anders, it was great having you today and thanks for manning the Foxhole with us.

Well, thank you.

It's been my pleasure.