12/05/14 – Sheldon Richman – The Scott Horton Show

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Hey, I'm Scott.
It's my show, The Scott Horton Show.
All right.
First up today is our friend Sheldon Richman.
He's about as libertarian as hell.
He's the editor of The Future of Freedom, the journal of the Future Freedom Foundation.
Sheldon's got a new piece today, everybody, his TGIF.
That doesn't mean what you think it means.
It means the goal is freedom.
And also it's sort of a Friday article he does every week for the Future of Freedom Foundation, FFF.org, The Ferguson Distraction.
Well, now tell me, Sheldon, what could possibly be nothing but a distraction about the crisis in Ferguson, Missouri?
What I tried to point out in the Ferguson distraction is that we have a continuing problem with the police in throughout the country.
And to hint to hang our evaluation of the problem on any single case is a huge mistake, because what happens is if people think that the grand jury in St.
Louis County did the right thing, then they think that means there's no problem that the rest of us complain about.
On the other hand, if they had indicted Wilson, Officer Wilson, that would have been for a lot of people taking this proof that there is this problem.
But it's really however you evaluate that that case.
And there's a lot of murkiness around it.
Right.
You and I weren't there watching.
We still have the problem nationwide, regardless of what the particular facts or the particular facts about Michael, Michael Brown and Darren Wilson are.
We still have a problem.
So we can't use that as a test of whether there's a problem or not.
That's what happens with the celebrated cases.
Right.
The case of the week becomes everything gets hung on it.
And it's just that's just a big mistake.
Well, but here's the thing about that, though, is there's a new one every couple of days or so and it's not going to stop like that either.
So if people want to make a cause celeb out of this one, this one or the other one, it's keeping it in the news and, you know, count to 10 and there'll be breaking news.
A cop in another city shot another unarmed black man.
Yeah.
Which has its own particular facts and people will just do the same thing over and over again.
So it doesn't end up helping those of us who are trying to get across that there is this systemic problem.
Well, but I guess I'm I'm kind of disagreeing a little bit in saying that you have people rally around this one case.
And, of course, in the case of Michael Brown, the reason that it became such a big deal in the first place was because when a few people started milling around grumbling, they called out the 3rd Infantry Division, you know, to put down the riot when there was no riot.
And the whole world went, whoa, one thousand times the militarist crackdown necessary for the scale of the peaceful protest about what had happened.
So that was what made it a big deal.
But it brought the whole subject to prominence.
We're now everybody's talking about police abuse like on like we see on our Facebook feeds.
It's now the entire national conversation.
And even though people are saying, yeah, but what about this about Mike Brown?
OK, well, what about Eric Garner?
Well, what about Tamir Rice?
What about Ruben Brisbane?
What about a guy girly?
What about and there's going to be the cops are killing some guy right now.
And he's and so when people try to dismiss the one cause celeb, they really can't.
Because there's another one right there.
Ready.
Always.
It's not going away anytime soon either.
And yet by latching on to the particular cases, it has helped, you know, bring the subject to a much higher level of prominence in the national discussion.
Right.
I'm not saying we shouldn't be talking about it.
We should be talking about it.
But I'm just saying we shouldn't hang it on any given case, because a lot of these cases are always going to be somewhat murky.
I mean, it's far clearer in the case of Eric Garner than, say, in the case of Michael Brown.
Right.
And then people also then start looking at the particular personalities involved, which is a mistake.
Right.
The search for the perfect victim.
Brown is certainly.
Yeah, Brown certainly had his own problems.
Garner less so.
I mean, Garner Garner has runs in with the law, have all been running with the law, have all been, you know, so-called victimless crimes.
I mean, I should say victimless so-called crimes, you know, selling loose cigarettes, having marijuana, giving a false name to to the police.
I mean, he didn't strong arm anybody.
He didn't steal anything from people.
All he did was deprive the New York government of revenue.
And that's not a crime.
That's a virtue.
Everybody should be trying to do that.
If you live in New York or your own respective cities and states.
I just think if it becomes personality attached, then we can it weakens the case.
And look what's happening.
People blame militarization.
Sure.
The police had an ugly display after after the the Darren Brown and Michael.
Sorry, Darren Wilson, Michael Brown incident.
They were it was outrageous what what the police did, threatening totally innocent people, just standing there reporters who weren't were creating any kind of harm.
But and so and we fixed now on the militarization of the police, which, of course, is a huge issue.
And I agree the police department shouldn't be acquiring such stuff.
But, you know, long before there was militarization of militarization of police, cops were beating people with rubber hoses and and billy clubs.
So you don't need militarization to have huge brutality incidents, whether racial or not.
And you don't even need victimless crime laws, as I point out in the article.
People have been arrested and beaten and I assume one place or another killed because a cop gets it in his head because he doesn't like the person that he's chasing some store to rob.
OK, that has nothing to do with drugs or guns or or victimless crimes.
So they don't need that stuff.
It does make it easier, but they don't need that stuff.
So so if we fixate on that stuff, we're really missing the core problem.
The core problem is the model of policing.
Right.
This top down occupational occupation army model of policing.
That's the real problem.
All right.
Now that gets lost, I think, in these individual cases.
Yeah.
And you know what?
I want to get back into all that in the second segment here.
I'm very interested in it and I really want to give you a chance to explain, you know, what you think could be good ideas for for other ways of doing things.
But I want to ask you and you do talk about this in your article, too, about what all race has to do with it.
Because, of course, cops do kill white people all the time, too.
They kill everybody all the time, although it sure looks like, you know, the old days of Jim Crow to black people.
And obviously, proportionally, they get it much worse that I wonder, you know, I see a lot of people saying, well, race is a red herring in this.
It's all just about the state versus the people.
But I guess I don't see any black people saying it's just a red herring.
And I see people, I guess, kind of dismissing why I see white people dismissing race is the problem.
And I see black people and and I guess others looking at it through their eyes, seeing it as purely a racial issue.
And whereas you and I look at it as from a libertarian government monopoly issue and this kind of thing, you know.
Well, look, as usual, it's complicated.
I know.
I know it's easy to say that.
But I think we always have to keep in mind these things.
These things are complicated.
Race is definitely a huge factor.
I don't want to underplay it.
I think there is a systemic racism that that is the vestiges vestige of American history.
I know that conservatives like to dismiss that.
And I think it's wrong.
I think it's wrong to do that.
I think mixed in with that.
And it's hard to distinguish.
Is this occupation army model and mentality?
The fact that they're in for the cops are enforcing victimless laws against, you know, victimless crimes is also part of it.
I think in the case of Eric Garner, it wasn't purely race.
I think they would have done the same thing.
It's class, too.
They would have done the same thing to a poor white guy who is depriving the city of revenue from the cigarette tax.
I think that was more about revenue than race in that case.
All right.
Hold it right there.
We're going to take this break.
I always ask a big question right before a damn break.
Right back after this.
Scott Horton dot org.
LRN dot FM. Hey, I'll Scott Horton here.
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Hey, I'm Scott.
Welcome back to the show.
You know, Sheldon does have a TGIF today.
It's called tackling straw men is easier than critiquing libertarianism.
Hey, you got that right.
I hardly ever see a liberal or a leftist actually criticize libertarianism.
The close thing I can even think of to that was a hardcore, serious as Marxist communist economist arguing a very technical point with Hans Hermann Hoppe.
And I thought, wow, well, there's a there at least having an honest discussion.
You don't find nothing like that at salon dot com.
But anyway, so we're talking about the cops with the great Sheldon Richman from the Future Freedom Foundation.
And you had me at get rid of the current system entirely, Sheldon, but replace it with what?
Well, I can't exactly specify with what I want, some spontaneous bottom up form of governance.
And just like I couldn't I can't tell you what the proper computer industry would look like in a completely free market, because there's there's there's too much that's going to emerge spontaneously by things, by people thinking up things on the spot that I can't hear.
Think of, you know, I'm not in this situation.
I can't tell you what proper policing should look like.
I think what we have to do.
I know what we don't like, what we shouldn't like.
And that's this top down occupation army model.
People are increasingly seeing the police and not just in poor areas.
It may be more pronounced in poor areas, but it's true, I think, across the spectrum as the police, as as they're watching you.
Nobody feels comfortable to see a policeman in the rear view mirror because there's too much you can be gotten on.
Right.
There are too many laws, obviously, that first of all, many so-called laws that address things which in no way aggress against other people or their property.
But yet you can be held responsible and then have a fine and be forced to pay a fine or worse.
We know specifically in New York City that they have this policy, the so-called broken window policy, which means you go after very small things.
And this is somehow supposed to discourage large crimes.
And the theory comes from the name that was identified by the sociologist, conservative sociologist, criminologist, social scientist named Banfield some years ago.
I think The Unheavenly City was his book where he decided that if you have an abandoned building and people are allowed, the kids are allowed to throw stones at the windows and break them.
And if nothing happens, you're going to end up getting rapes and murders in the neighborhood.
And so the idea was crack down on these little things.
And in that way, you'll you'll prevent the big things.
Well, that has been translated into going after somebody like Eric Garner for selling Lucy's.
By the way, I love Lucy's, which is which means untaxed, loose, untaxed cigarettes, individual cigarettes, less than a pack of cigarettes and going after people that do things like that, which are obviously totally harmless.
There are no there can't be any sales of loose cigarettes unless they're willing buyers.
And as everybody knows, smuggling of cigarettes is a big thing in New York City because the tax is so high.
The tax is about half the price of a pack and a pack of like twelve or twelve bucks or 13 bucks a pack now.
So people smuggle cigarettes in from North Carolina and people, low income people like Eric Garner, make some money by selling cigarettes to willing buyers.
Now, who doesn't like this?
Well, the people that rely on the on the tax revenues.
The politicians don't want to see him.
Somebody like Garner erode those revenues.
And the licensed retailers who are don't mind charging twelve or thirteen dollars don't want to see it either.
So they rat out people like Garner.
And then the mayor and the other politicians in New York City have told the police to crack down on people like this.
That's why this happened.
I do think this was more about revenue than race.
We have to stop this.
And getting rid of victimless crime laws will help.
Although police, like I said, can use other pretexts to to harass people and beat up people and kill people.
Let me interrupt for just one moment to say, Sheldon, that I saw Rand Paul said something a lot like that, that the taxes are so high they've created this black market.
Then they're persecuting this guy, collecting the taxes.
And Jon Stewart said, well, that's effing ridiculous, although he didn't explain why it was.
And then that made the headline at the Ross story.
And so every liberal on Twitter and Facebook, or at least on Twitter, they're all passing this around.
And everybody agrees.
And it was funny, like every negative adjective you could possibly think of that they're using against Rand Paul for being, you know, basically every synonym for crazy, lunatic, you know, detached from reality, whatever, all the ones I can't think of my head.
And yet all he said was the plain truth.
And they don't even have an argument or try to make one.
That's what they were doing was enforcing this petty law on this guy to death.
They like cigarette.
They like cigarette taxes.
That's the you know, that's the chic progressive position.
We have high cigarette taxes, which is really odd because they would all be upset if all cigarette smokers quit tomorrow and the money wasn't flowing in.
So the politicians to play games, they would be very upset.
In other words, they need people to smoke so they can get that revenue.
So they like cigarette taxes.
They like so-called progressives, phony men of the people like de Blasio.
And so they don't want to see that attack.
I was told on Facebook that that I should not be saying this.
Why?
Because Ann Coulter has said it.
That's that's the new standard.
So, you know, a broken clock is right twice a day.
So so if I say the same thing that Ann Coulter or Limbaugh says, who I just disagree with on practically everything else.
Right.
Then he's stumbling.
It was an amazingly sympathetic discussion of Garner.
Garner's a low income guy trying to make some money.
The tax is what allows this black market to exist.
Blah, blah, blah.
The government is getting it, telling the police to crack down on on people like Eric Garner.
He got it right.
Why can't people admit that?
I'm no fan of his.
Like I said, I disagree with just about everything he says.
But what's wrong with this position?
Show me in logic what's wrong with the position.
They can't.
They don't even try.
And, you know, another thing, another another big point of dissonance on the left this week, Alden, is how the guy that filmed Garner's murder was indicted, but they don't ever say why all the liberals go, oh, my God, can you believe it?
The cop skates.
But the guy that filmed it is indicted, but they don't ever mention why he was indicted on a gun possession charge, which they love.
And so they shut up.
And same for Jon Stewart.
They shut their mouth right at the part where they name the charge that he got nailed on.
Right.
And that's because liberals are as dishonest as conservatives.
Bastards.
Right.
It's it's frustrating because they have all these I think they're sort of mental blocks.
They can't criticize.
They can't lay any, you know, responsibility to de Blasio.
Why?
Because his image is he's a hey, he's a man of the people.
He's a progressive.
He ran to the left of other people in New York City.
And the same thing.
You know, they can't say anything bad about the cigarette tax because, oh, that's a progressive thing.
So we can't find any, you know, bad consequences from such things.
But let them talk.
Let them spell out their case.
I mean, Jeffrey Toobin tried to take that on, too, yesterday.
And it was pathetic.
All he said was, yeah, but wait a second.
Rand Paul didn't point out that we need to discourage people from smoking.
What's that?
First of all, what's that got to do with it?
Even if that's true, Rand Paul's analysis there was right that the tax is very high.
And every time the tax goes up, smuggling increases.
It's a very old story.
You can go back in The New York Times and find stories, you know, dating back for years about smuggling in New York City.
And this is what caused the Boston Tea Party.
Early Americans sided with the smugglers against the customs agents.
That used to be an honorable profession in the United States.
Well, before it was the United States, and probably even after it became a country.
The smuggler was an honorable person.
He was getting around tariffs and other trade restrictions in order to serve consumers.
All right.
Now, I'm sorry.
I got us too sidetracked here.
I really wanted to get back to at least, you know, some ideas for how to move forward.
And we're going to run out of time for this segment.
Sorry to the live audience, but, Sheldon, if it's OK, I want to keep you at least another couple of minutes and ask you to talk about, you know, when you propose some kind of alternative system to the current state of occupation by county and city government jurisdiction and state government jurisdiction the way we have it now.
Are you talking about once we get to anarcho-capitalist paradise?
Are you saying under our current system of 50 states and these lousy constitutions that, you know, maybe we could do this, that or the other thing?
I know liberals listening are going to assume.
Well, no, I assume that liberals listening assume that what you mean is you think that the local governments should hire private police agencies, you know, like Pinkerton thugs to be our overlords instead of the local sheriffs that we vote for.
Is that what you think?
I'm not talking about the central government and my central include like a city government is central for that city.
I don't mean hiring a private, you know, privatizing.
Look, the new left used to talk about decentralized community based policing in the 60s and libertarians were right there.
Carl Hess and Murray Rothbard and others were picked up on that and wrote about it.
It should be.
It should be devolved down to the local communities.
I mean, I heard Ben Carson the other day say, you know, a guy who something think some conservatives like to see run for president, say the police are our friends.
He said, if we without the police, people would be coming into our home saying, hey, I like that.
Hey, I think I'll take it.
Well, he missed a couple of points there.
One is the police already take our private property through asset forfeiture, right?
Civil acts as a forfeiture.
And on the other hand, when some private person comes in and takes our TV set, the police are pretty impotent anyway.
So, you know, you fill out a form and go out and buy a new TV set or call your insurance company if you have insurance.
The police are going to find it.
So the idea is to decentralize policing down to the community level and let people figure out their own solutions to this.
The top down is not a good solution.
We can see it now.
And, you know, and policing is fairly new, as I mentioned at the end of the article.
London didn't get the bobbies until, you know, about a third of the way into the 19th century.
So I think we could say, OK, we tried it.
It failed.
Now let's let's do something else.
Right.
Just got to zoom out, take a little bit bigger picture.
Look at it, because, yeah, you're right.
I mean, it seems also inevitable the way the system is now.
And, you know, you mentioned this before.
And and in fact, you mentioned it in the context of it not being the end all solution because it is only part of it.
But it seems like drug prohibition is at the root of so much of this.
And that, you know, it's like with the scene and the unseen.
If we hadn't had a war on drugs since Richard Nixon and then especially Ronald Reagan all this time, how might society be?
How might the relationship between communities and their cops be different than they are now between especially minority groups and the cops?
And this kind of thing, it's just there's no way to measure the level of unnecessary grief and destruction and destabilization has been caused in our society by the war on drugs.
Right.
Yeah.
I don't mean to.
And when I said the police could beat up people without that, I didn't mean to downplay.
Sure.
I know.
I mean, that's why I brought it because it was in a different context.
All you have to do is watch the wire, which was written by a former cop.
The producer, I think, is director of former policeman.
Very realistic.
It's the police in the war on drugs is an occupying army.
There's no doubt about that.
And here's what's important about the about the war on drugs.
We call them we call it a victimless crime.
And so, you know, the other side will say, what do you mean, victimless?
The families suffer.
But when that when, you know, when, say, the breadwinner gets involved in drugs and maybe gets strung out on drugs by victimless crime, we don't mean that nobody's affected by drug use.
People, third parties are affected by private conduct all the time.
That's not that does not involve aggression or force, therefore, is not legally actionable.
What we mean by victimless is a more technical term.
It's a point.
Randy Barnett makes a legal law professor and libertarian.
It means there's no complaining witness.
Right.
And when the when a drug when a drug transaction is occurring, the buyer and the seller want to be in the transaction by definition.
So if the police are going to.
So neither one is going to complain.
The buyer is not going to say, hey, that guy just sold me drugs.
Go arrest him.
That doesn't make any sense.
So the police, if they're going to figure out or find these transactions, the police have to be have informants and they have to spy and they have to disguise themselves and wiretap and all that other stuff.
All the stuff that leads to the horrors of policing.
So that's the that's the essential characteristic that the police are going to have to use rotten tactics to find things that because people want to do the things.
It's not like, you know, someone mug somebody else.
The victim goes to the police.
You don't need to.
I mean, they do sometimes.
You don't need to go undercover as a potential victim to find muggers because people will complain and identify the mugger because the person doesn't want to be in that transaction, quote, unquote.
But it's not the case in terms of voluntary sales of guns, sales of drugs, sales of untaxed cigarettes, untaxed alcohol, whatever the case may be.
So the police have to become spies and they have to abuse people and they have to threaten people in order to get them to be informants and, you know, threaten them with with charges or threaten their mothers with charges.
If you don't come and help us, all that nasty, nasty stuff that creates animosity between the police and the people in those communities.
And that leads to the kinds of horrors that we've been sitting.
And that's what we have to end.
Right.
All right.
Well, thanks very much for coming back on the show, Sheldon.
Good to talk to you again.
OK, my pleasure.
Anytime, Scott.
Thanks.
All right.
So that's the great Sheldon Richman.
He's the vice president of the Future Freedom Foundation, FFF dot org.
Subscribe to their journal.
The Future Freedom is just fifteen dollars a year to read it online.
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It's a nice little pamphlet manual like a little booklet kind of thing.
It's good.
The Future Freedom.
He's the editor of it.
And yeah, again, FFF dot org.
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