The Tom Woods Show, episode 566. Prepare to set fire to the index card of allowable opinion. Your daily dose of liberty education starts here, The Tom Woods Show. Alright everybody, come on now. Here's an easy way to make 25 smackers. You ready? You head over to tomwoods.com slash eBates where you get cash rebates for almost all your online purchases and you refer one friend and you get $25. Come on now, tomwoods.com slash eBates. You gotta have like one friend and you get $25. Tomwoods.com slash eBates right now. If you guys like console or handheld games, then Gamefly is for you. Because with Gamefly you've got a huge selection of games that can be delivered to your door cheaply. Instead of buying two to three games a year, you can play all the games you like by using Gamefly. Plus they deliver the games on the release dates. So if you're looking forward to that new release, no more standing out in front of the store at midnight. Get a 30 day free trial through tomwoods.com slash game. Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of the show. We're gonna talk about something truly fundamental today and that is the non-aggression principle. And this principle has actually come under attack even by libertarian thinkers. People who call themselves libertarians have been saying lately, you know, maybe we ought to chuck this whole thing and forget all about it. And I want to talk a little bit about that. And joining me to do that today is who else? Our old friend Stefan Kinsella, who is a tremendous libertarian legal theorist. He's the author of Against Intellectual Property. He's the author of many important and path-breaking scholarly articles in the libertarian tradition. And you can follow him over at stefankinsella.com. He has a podcast, he does all kinds of things. But check out that website and of course the show notes page for today. We'll have information that will help you. And that's tomwoods.com slash 566. Stefan, welcome back. Hey, glad to be here, Tom. Happy New Year. Same to you. We are in a presidential election year now, 2016. You know that Austin Peterson is running for the libertarian party nomination. He has been critical of the non-aggression principle. So I thought the non-aggression principle, believe it or not, is a topic I have not covered. And here we are. I mean, yeah, obviously it's come up, but we haven't devoted an episode to it. And here we are in episode 566. I didn't talk about public choice until episode 563. Totally crazy. So still fundamental topics to get to all the way in 2016, all these episodes in. What I want to do is talk to you about the non-aggression principle and then throw at you some of the objections that have been raised in recent years by philosophers. I'm not going to deal too much with Austin Peterson, but I'm sure he's got in common some of these sorts of objections. Tell us first of all just basically, basically, basically what the non-aggression principle means. Like in less than a minute and then we'll get into more detail. Okay, but we've talked about IP, contract theory, legislation, all of which I felt like I could, you could learn something from what I knew. Oh, yeah, no question about it. I don't know what you're going to learn from me on this. You know all this already, Tom. Yeah, but look, on these theoretical things, I still feel like you're much smarter than I am. Okay, all right. Now you have to go prove that. Yeah, no. Okay, so the way I think about it now, and I've refined my thinking over the years, you know by trying to counter disagreements and arguments against us, I think aggression is a term that really refers to interpersonal violence, like when you actually hit another person. That's really what the core of the idea is. So if you say you're against aggression or against hitting other people or like actually physically invading their bodies or using their bodies without their permission, aggression in that sense or non-aggression, the non-aggression principle implies property rights in our bodies. So they're almost the same concept. Self-ownership or body ownership is almost the same thing as saying you're against aggression when we're talking about our bodies. So that's really what it means. But then we come to other types of conflicts that we can have with each other over external resources in the world, things that are not animate, well, except for animals, but things that are not self-owned, things that were previously unowned in the state of nature and that we need to use as means of action in the Mazesian sense, right? So we need to use these things as means of action. We need to appropriate them and start using them. And if you don't want to have conflict over them because conflict is possible in the use of these resources because of their nature, as scarce things, then we have rules that say who is the owner of those things. So there's like an analogy between your ownership of your body which translates into the simple stark non-aggression principle. There's an analogy between that ownership of that propriety, your right to control your body, your right to say who gets to use it or invade its borders, right? Like you can consent to surgery. The doctor is able to cut into you because you consented to it.  So the consent of the owner is what the essence of ownership is about. It's about the right of the person who owns the resource to deny or grant permission to others to invade the borders of that thing. The same thing would be true for these external resources that we own, but the way that we come to own them is different than the ownership of our body. So if you say it's aggression, if someone walks on your lawn without your permission, then it doesn't sound exactly like the aggression of interpersonal aggression between people hitting each other's bodies. So we sort of extend the concept of aggression to property rights. But in the case of external objects, I think the property idea is more fundamental. That is, we have to identify who the owner of a resource is by our property theories before we can determine what an act of aggression is. If I take... Okay, yeah. Yeah, let me jump in here because that's actually been raised as an objection against the whole principle by Matt Swalinski and probably others. And Matt Swalinski is a philosopher at University of San Diego. I've had him on the show before. We talked about the basic income guarantee idea. And I want to go through in a few minutes some of his objections. But one of them is, he says the non-aggression principle is parasitic on a theory of property. So in other words, in order to know what constitutes aggression, you have to know what is justly owned property. But I think that is really just a nitpicking objection because all right, yeah, no kidding. Of course you need to know what property is and what legitimate property is. But once you do, then we're against aggressing against it. So, okay, in one sentence, I just dealt with his problem. That just seems nitpicky to me. I think it is. In fact, one reason I think some of the original libertarians would call it the non-aggression axiom. And I think they were using the word axiom more in the way Ayn Rand did. Ayn Rand used the axiom word, not like a mathematician would use it as some sort of postulate. But I think she used axiom to refer to a principle that was so, that was self-evident in the sense that denying it would lead to contradiction, almost like an a priori-type truth for contra-fromises. So most libertarians now call it the non-aggression principle or even the ZAP, the zero-aggression principle. Now, I tend to think of the non-aggression principle as just a short summary of what we believe in. It's basically a stand-in for our property theory. The property theory is, in a sense, more fundamental. I agree. All right, so now that we've got this all out of the way, and that's the basic gist of it, we have to deal with some objections that have been raised. And it's become really fashionable, for some reason, especially among philosophers, to attack the non-aggression principle. And by implication, it suggests that libertarians who really think it's something important are, well, kind of simpletons. They're not as advanced as the rest of us are. And so they're going to show us, now, Matt's a sweet guy, and I don't think he's an arrogant guy, but that's the spirit of this that I've gotten from a lot of people. So let's talk about, I'm not going to go in through these in order, but this is just from an article that Matt wrote called Six Reasons Libertarians Should Reject the Non-Aggression Principle. Let's pick one because I know, Stephen, you've written about it. I've read you write about this. And he says that one reason we should reject it is that it does not include a prohibition on fraud because he says that you hear libertarians always talking about why it's legitimate to use violence against, to prevent either force or fraud. But if the only legitimate use of force according to the non-aggression principle is to prevent or punish the initiatory use of physical violence by others, well, fraud is not physical violence. So therefore, the non-aggression principle can't protect you against fraud. Now, you've actually conceded some of this, but then I think worked your way out of it. So help us through that. Right. Well, I mean, he has a germ of a point there. You could make the same argument about trespassing against property. Let's say you're on vacation and someone breaks into your house and uses it. For us to call that aggression, as I said, it's a little bit of a stretch because there's no person there that you're really aggressing against. So the metaphor breaks down a little bit. But what we mean by that is that you're using someone's resource without their permission. So if you keep going back to the idea that we need property rights in society so that we can all use resources peacefully and cooperatively and we need to know who the owner is for that purpose. Right. So and this goes back to our previous conversation about contract theory. If you think of contracts as binding promises, then you get into all these problems that we have now with modern legal theory. If you understand that the essential human right, that all human rights are property rights, as Rothbard pointed out, and that property rights are identified in accordance with three or four very simple rules. The Lockean rule of appropriation, the rule of contract, like you can contractually transfer your resources, and then some kind of rectification rule. Like if someone harms you without your permission, then they owe you some kind of recompense and maybe they lose some of their property rights to the extent that they need to compensate the victim. Those rules are basically the foundation of the libertarian conception and even the Western legal conception of what justice is and what property rights are and how they should be identified. So out of that comes an understanding of contract. A contract is simply the exercise of dominion by the owner of a resource. He is either granting permission or denying permission to someone else to use or not use the resource, either permanently or temporarily. Permanently would be like a sale or a donation or a gift, okay? And so this is what property rights all amount to. Now, libertarians do do what he says. They all, they will just say, we're against aggression and against fraud. You know, they'll just kind of throw that in. And I think we have to understand what fraud is and why we would prohibit it and how you can justify that. If you go back to the contract theory, contract means that the owner of a resource can deny permission or can transfer ownership to someone else. Fraud arises when there's a type of transfer where one party is being dishonest about what they're transferring. So for example, if you give me an apple and I give you a penny in payment for the apple, the implicit understanding we have and maybe even the explicit understanding if we write it down is that I'm transferring ownership of my penny to you in exchange for and conditioned upon, you're transferring to me a good apple, you know, that's not poisoned and doesn't have worms in it and that you actually own. So there's a host of subsidiary or auxiliary conditions that accompany these contractual exchanges. And if I'm giving you a bad apple knowingly doing that, then I am in effect receiving your payment, your penny, knowing that your transfer to me is not being... You're giving the penny to me conditioned upon my giving you an honest, good, healthy apple. And if I knowingly give you a bad apple for that penny, I'm taking your penny without your consent. Similar to someone, like if you have surgery and you give the doctor permission to do an appendectomy and while the doctor's in there, he does some other stuff that you didn't consent to. That could be a type of trespass, right? So in this case, fraud basically means in the law, we call it theft by trickery. So I think really the only type of fraud that can be justified as being a crime or a type of bad act in libertarianism is theft by trick. You're basically receiving someone's resource or their property and using it without their effective consent. Well, it seems like I could draw an analogy that might be easy for people to understand.  Obviously I took it, it's a case of trickery in it and therefore I took it without your consent. If you had had full knowledge, of course you wouldn't have given me the $500. You would have given it to your real mother. Yeah, in the law we call that informed consent. There's no informed consent. And in contract theory, we call that the meeting of the minds, right? When you have a contract, you say the contract has to do with the meeting of the minds what the people actually agreed to which is one of the reasons I have problems with the idea that a fine print and all these click wrap and shrink wrap agreements is always enforceable. Yeah, I remember we talked about that in a previous episode. That was really interesting to me because I had never really thought about it because we all click that we accept the terms and everybody knows that nobody ever reads the terms and so I asked you what, obviously we wouldn't enforce something in those terms that said, oh, by the way, we get half your income but I wanted to know why would we not enforce that and you basically gave this answer. Yeah, but the point is that the idea that fraud is a type of violation of rights, sorry, my poodles are barking, they'll stop in a second. The problem with the reason that fraud can be prohibited and it's a violation of rights comes straight out of libertarian property theory. So I think Zulinski is wrong to say that fraud could not be prohibited. I think it's a pure outcome of property theory just like the idea of trespasses and just like the idea of contract is. Let's look at his very first objection it has to do with air pollution. Now he says Rothbard, he agrees that Rothbard was correct to say that industrial pollution violates the non-aggression principle and therefore must be prohibited. He says, but Rothbard did not draw the full implications of his principle. Not just industrial pollution but personal pollution produced by driving, burning wood in one's fireplace, smoking, et cetera runs afoul of the non-aggression principle which implies that all of these activities must be prohibited no matter how beneficial they may be in other respects and no matter how essential they are to daily life in the modern industrialized world and this is deeply implausible. Now later on by the way at the end of this post, I don't know if you ever saw this post but at the end he says that he acknowledges that people have dealt with some of the issues that he raises and he says that both you and Brian Kaplan have tried parentheses unsatisfactorily to my mind to address that issue. Do you want to try to address it satisfactorily to his mind right now? Well, I think we have to keep a few things in mind. Number one, what is the competing theory? Well, let's go a little bit meta. When anyone's coming up with an extended series of arguments against the non-aggression principle, I get a little bit nervous. There's a great line in Ayn Rand's money speech in Atlas Shrugged where they say that anyone who attacks money, it's like the leper's bell of an approaching looter, okay? And so whenever I hear someone coming up with a sustained argument against the non-aggression principle, my immediate thought is, hold on a second, they're trying to justify aggression because otherwise why would you really oppose the non-aggression principle? So it's just a smokescreen for some attempt to argue for aggression, which I think in effect it is because these people are not anarchists so they support the state and the state has to commit aggression.  So I'm always a little bit on guard. The other thing is when you talk about these difficult issues like pollution and things like this, you have to think, they're criticizing our theory but what's their theory?  There's always going to be a dilemma with these hard problems that they raise. So I'm not really sure why it's a criticism of us but when you get down to it, I think Rockbart's theory is basically correct. It's only the core of a theory. He didn't flesh it out for every possible application but in terms of pollution, I think we have to recognize a few things and I think there's a few ways the law has satisfied and solve these things and that would be compatible with the libertarian evolution of legal principles. So for example, there's the idea of a servitude which is the right to use. Rockbart talks about this in more stark terms like if you're the first person in an area and you start polluting with a factory, you've in a sense homesteaded an easement over surrounding areas to pollute and anyone who comes there is what we call in the law coming to the nuisance so they can't complain about it. So it's just a question, it's like a Kosian question almost of who gets the property right in this respect and we would say it's who gets there first who starts using a resource in that way first. We also have to recognize that we all are similarly situated as being human actors and human bodies using the world in certain ways. We all pose some risk to each other.  So we just by existing, we pose risk to each other but we have to accept that bare risk because that's what we bring to the table as well. You can't complain about the mere fact that someone else exists. You also can't complain that they move around the earth. When they move around the earth, they actually cause gravitational and other waves to pass through your body to some extent. They don't affect you and this gets to the Rothbardian and the Hopian idea of property. Property is about the right to exclusively control a given resource, a type of thing that only one person can use at a time and what that means is that invasion is prohibited. Someone else can't quote unquote use the resource without my permission but if someone is moving around or sending electromagnetic signals from a radio antenna that passed through my property without affecting my ability to use it, they're not really using my property. They're not affecting it. They're not affecting the physical integrity of my property. They're not preventing me from using my property as I see fit. And the same thing I think can be said for very minor small emissions of pollution just from you living, right? Exhaling, inhaling, et cetera. These things have to be tolerated in society because everyone does them and they're part of what it means to live. So you could call it like a life servitude. We all are born with this sort of permitted ability to act and interact with each other to a certain very small degree but when it gets to a larger degree that's measurable and actually starts affecting the ability of people to enjoy and use their resources like major scale pollution at that point in time it rises to the level of something that's actionable. Rothbard calls it I think a nuisance. The common law calls it a nuisance. You could call it a minor trespass, whatever. So I just think these are continuum issues that are easily dealt with in a libertarian legal order as well as they can be dealt with in any conceivable legal order. Well, related to that, related to the pollution objection is that the non-aggression principle prohibits small harms for large benefits. And again, he gives a couple of hard cases. Let's take just a brief moment for this message and then I'm gonna give you this hard question. I know I have a lot of game players in my audience and Gamefly is an easy way to play a lot of games and spend just a little money. Instead of buying two to three games a year you could get an entire year's worth of the Gamefly service and rent as many games as you want with no late fees, with a pre-addressed envelope for easy returns, there's no contract you can cancel anytime and rentals will ship to arrive to you on the actual game release dates. If you're interested in brand new games they'll arrive to you on the day of release. And if you decide you like a game you can keep it at a heavily discounted rate. Get a free 30 day trial at tomwoods.com slash game. All right, this is directly from the Zwolinski piece. He says, the nap of course, non-aggression principle prohibits all pollution because its prohibition on aggression is absolute. No amount of aggression, no matter how small is morally permissible and no amount of offsetting benefits can change this fact. But suppose to borrow a thought from Hume that I could prevent the destruction of the whole world by lightly scratching your finger. Or to take a perhaps more plausible example suppose that by imposing a very, very small tax on billionaires I could provide life-saving vaccination for tens of thousands of desperately poor children. Even if we grant the taxation as aggression and that aggression is generally wrong is it really so obvious that the relatively minor aggression involved in these examples is wrong given the tremendous benefit it produces? What do you say to that? The tactic he's using is something I've seen in a lot of conservatives who will say they value liberty. They're with the libertarians in valuing liberty. It's just not their only value. That's what they always say. And what they're trying to do is they're trying to set up a balancing scale. They're trying to say that we have to take all these values into account. All the things that quote-unquote matter. Liberty matters, yes. But it's not the only thing that matters. And the problem with libertarians is that they think only liberty matters. Which I think is actually a strawman. It's actually not true. Libertarians don't believe only liberty matters because none of us are just libertarians. We have lives and we value many things in life. And liberty in a sense a means to other ends that we value. But what they're doing is they're just trying to come up with an excuse for saying that they think aggression is justified in some cases. So what they're saying is they value liberty just not that much. So in this case, the presumption I think of Zulinski's argument is that our basis for being in favor of liberty is some kind of utilitarian balance. In other words, we really can't have any principles. We can't have a principled reason to be in favor of liberty. And I think that's wrong. The libertarian simply is a person who believes like most human beings do that aggression is unjustified. We just take it very, very, very consistently and very seriously. And we apply a little economic logic and a little knowledge and we get to a more consistent edifice in how we apply these principles in daily life. But most people think it's wrong to murder someone. These hypothetical examples that people like Matt come up with well, first of all, they're absurd because the government does not in fact do good with its very limited ability to tax only billionaires. And in fact, that's not realistic because they would never only tax billionaires and they would never only do good with the money that they took. So the examples are just absurd in the first place. So they can only serve to be an attempt to justify some, something similar to what we have now, which is basically a semi socialist, very large mixed state system that taxes people, redistributes wealth, puts people in jail for not obeying the laws, drug laws, tax laws, constriction laws, antitrust laws, et cetera. So I think this is just really a backdoor argument to justify the existing order or something like it or something like even a quasi minimal state that we would all, you and I would agree is still too tyrannical. So I'm not sold on this idea. I don't think that the argument for rights is based upon the idea that we're doing more, we're doing a net sum benefit for people. We're not all utilitarians like this argument sounds like. So I would say it's wrong to take money from Donald Trump and to give it to poor people not because the poor people aren't made better off and made more better off than Trump has made worse off, but because it's wrong to steal. The principle I have is that it's wrong to steal and I don't see how pointing out the fact that some people would benefit from an act of theft means that it's not an act of theft. Let's do this one on risk because you've already hit on the subject of risk. He really takes this to an extreme with an example by David Friedman. I guess not really an extreme. I mean, your point that basically by existing we're all theoretically a risk toward other people. That was the Thomas Hobbes view. Everybody is equally the murderer of everybody else that doesn't justify preemptive murder of everybody. But here's what he says. The nap clearly implies that it's wrong for me to shoot you in the head. But to borrow an example from David Friedman what if I merely run the risk of shooting you by putting one bullet in a six shot revolver spinning the cylinder aiming it at your head and squeezing the trigger? Thank goodness I don't have Walter on for this. I can't imagine what the answer would be. What if it is not one bullet but five? Of course almost everything we do imposes some risk of harm on innocent persons. We run this risk when we drive on the highway. Parentheses, what if we suffer a heart attack or become distracted? Or when we fly airplanes over populated areas. Most of us think that some of these risks are justifiable while others are not. And that the difference between them has something to do with the size and likelihood of the risk harm, the importance of the risky activity and the availability and cost of less risky activities. But considerations like this carry zero weight in the naps absolute prohibition on aggression. That principle seems compatible with only two possible rules. Either all risks are permissible because they're not really aggression unless until they actually result in a harm or none are. And neither of these seems sensible. Well, so I think what he's doing here is I wouldn't call the non-aggression principle absolute. If you call it absolute it doesn't mean it's not nuanced, right? We have difficult cases. We have continuum issues. Those issues exist for any political theory. The fact that Zwilinski thinks that the non-aggression principle as he states it so starkly and simplistically doesn't tell you immediately what risk levels are permissible. Doesn't mean that there's a better answer. What do we do? We have a legislature that comes up with a statute.  Why is that something that's even better? So the thing is trying to find a hole in the non-aggression principle to say that it's not justified to justify an intentional act of aggression which is what they ultimately want to do just doesn't work. In these particular cases I think that theorists have made some headway actually. These are not easy issues. In some of my writing on rights theory I've got this thing called a stop-all where I come up with a rights theory based upon the common law idea of a stop-all which is that you cannot consistently maintain an ethical position that contradicts another position that you're simultaneously maintaining or that was implied in the action you just committed.  In terms of these probability issues the law has dealt with these issues by having different degrees like you can have first degree murder second degree murder, negligent homicide and something totally unintentional where if you have a seizure and your arm hits someone and they die you didn't even commit a wrong at all in terms of intentional action so you have a continuum between intentionality of actions and I think you could also have something about probability so for example I've argued that the reason why we talked about fraud earlier libertarians also say that threats are not permissible you can't commit aggression or threaten aggression or commit fraud they always throw in threats as well and so I've worked on why are threats and the reason I think is because you are in the classic definition of a threat or an assault actually in the law an assault is when you attempt to harm someone or you put someone in fear of receiving a battery so if someone is sleeping and I swing an axe at their head and I miss that is an assault because it's an attempt of murder if I point a blank gun at you and make you think you're about to be shot that's also assault because I'm putting you in fear of receiving a battery both of those I believe are species of aggression and the reason is because the victim is entitled to do back to the aggressor what they did to them but what did the aggressor do the aggressor attempted to hurt someone or put them in fear of receiving an act of aggression so if I capture my tormentor and I want to put him in fear of receiving a battery he knows the system is happening he knows it's an institutional system so I can't pretend to hurt him without putting him in fear he has to believe that I actually have the right to hurt him so I have to have the right to hurt him to put him in fear of receiving a battery likewise if he performed an action that had a 10% chance of me being harmed I have the right to do that back to him but since I have to do it intentionally I can't make it 10% likely unless I reduce something else so I can reduce the severity so there's different ways you can balance these things out or you can imagine juries would find creative ways to balance these things out but they would take into account the probability of harm and also the other consideration is in any legal system you have to imagine that de minimis harms would not be actionable because any attempt to enforce your rights is going to involve the community somehow your insurance company or your neighbors or some posse or a jury or something and if you're just always a litigious person suing for very tiny things you're going to be just a bother to everyone and so those types of little de minimis things are going to tend to be ignored by the legal system because you should just handle those yourself or ignore them and don't bother us to help enforce those kinds of trivial rights so I think you can see how over time you would have developed a spectrum of minor risks things that we all do that people have to tolerate things that get to be more appreciable and actionable and people can take actions based upon those with a developed legal system so I don't see that there's any reason why a legal system based upon libertarian property principles couldn't address these issues as well or better than a legislative approach or whatever the quasi-mini-status approach of the menarchist would be. In a way I've done you an injustice here Stefan because I've left for the end one of the thorniest or at least most controversial questions and that is the issue of children so I've got a five year old and I decide not to feed that five year old and I haven't if you were to force me to do the positive work of feeding the child that would be aggression because you don't have any right to force me to do things that that would be aggression so therefore I am even if we may all admit this is a moral abomination I'm certainly within my rights to starve the child according to the non-aggression principle why is that not the best way to think about the non-aggression principle is there a way out I actually think this is an easier one than some of the others and this is probably an issue that you and I would probably agree on maybe not a lot of not every other anarcho-capitalist maybe Rockbar maybe Walter Block wouldn't agree with this completely my view is that you can incur responsibility in life look I agree with the libertarian idea that there are no positive rights there are no positive obligations that is the basic rights we have are negative their rights that other people refrain from taking actions that they're not permitted to do but we don't have the right for them to act on our behalf but I think that means that you don't have any unchosen positive obligations but you can acquire an obligation by your actions so for the example I give is if you push someone a stranger into a lake then you have an obligation to jump in and rescue them because you cause the harm and you have an obligation to minimize the harm that you've done to this person whereas if you're walking by a lake and you see a stranger drowning you don't have the positive legal obligation to jump in and save them I would say you have a moral obligation perhaps in some context but not illegal but your action of pushing them if you cause the harm to someone then that does give rise to an obligation to reduce the injustice that you've done to them and I would make an analogy to that to having children there is a natural process that we're aware of that gives rise to the existence of children we create children by our actions and these children by nature are helpless and independent on their parents and therefore I believe that if you voluntarily procreate you do have a positive and even legal obligation to support that child whether you can actually have a legal order that has some enforceable rules that come in and do that is probably difficult because it's difficult to make someone sing a song but they promise to sing it's difficult to make someone be a good parent by a threat of compulsion but that is the basic situation so for example in Louisiana where I'm from it's based on the Napoleonic system and there's a practice called forced airship forced airship means that the parents have to leave a certain portion of their state to their children unless there's one of 23 enumerated things the child has done that gives them the parent an excuse to disinherit the child like if you don't visit your parents more than two years or if you slap your parent or if you don't visit them in jail or bail them out there's like an enumerated set of causes but other than that you can't disinherit your kid or that was the law until some change in a libertarian sense I'm not completely in favor of that of course but I don't completely oppose the idea that a parent has some obligation to support their children and that's what that idea is based upon so I don't agree that the obligation to support children is unlibertarian at all it's a result of your actions libertarianism is simply the idea of that we want to live in peace and prosperity and harmony with each other so we come up with property rules to let us determine who is the rightful owner of a given contested resource but it also means that you can't violate other people's rights by your actions and if you do you have some responsibility and these actions don't all have to be acts of aggression if you cause someone to exist I think you have an obligation to care for them until they're ready to stand on their own feet well that is exactly my view I used to really be puzzled by this one because I obviously didn't want these awful outcomes but I didn't know how to make it all work theoretically and then as you say I mean I basically came to the same conclusion that you did it's not really difficult a problem after all but there's just been so much talked about with regard to it and when libertarianism comes up on salon or slate or something they're always talking about us as the people who want to starve children it's not really probably not a fair way to talk about our views now Stefan anytime I have you on I mean people are always very I get very very good responses and I want to make sure that people are coming to visit you and so they can find out more about some of the writing that you've done the work that you do what's the best and quickest and most efficient place to send them to? My website stefanconcella.com and unfortunately my mom spelled my name the right way so it's S-T-E-P-H-A-N I know there's different variants out there so that's how Stefan is spelled Alright, stefanconcella.com it is well as always Stefan enjoyable and a lot of great information and faulty ideas smashed in a gentlemanly way and sometimes it's fun to smash them in an un-gentlemanly way but today you shed an awful lot of light for us and I appreciate that. Thanks very much Alright once again the show notes page is tomwoods.com slash 566 Before I let you go let's talk about a couple other things that fellow Tom Wood show listeners are up to there's a great new Christian Libertarian blog up it's a group blog and it's called altarandthrone.com altarandthrone.com it's beautifully laid out it looks tremendous it looks like a blog that's been around for ten years but they just started it and you'll see all kinds of interesting topics for Libertarians in general but if you're a Christian Libertarian you're really really gonna like altarandthrone.com so check that out also Libertarianplatform.com wow that I can't believe that URL had not been taken somebody or that domain name was grabbed by a Tom Wood show listener and there you can see up-to-date posts about goings on in the Libertarian party which is an interesting thing to follow as well you can check that out at Libertarianplatform.com and as always if you forget the names of these sites well just remember today's show notes page which is tomwoods.com slash 563 because I will link there to these two websites that I mentioned today if you are thinking of starting a blog and you'd like to get a little bit of a kickstart from me by getting your blog mentioned remember tomwoods.com slash publicity is how to go about doing that but you have to go to tomwoods.com slash publicity before you start up the blog in order to qualify for that and I also give you all kinds of free goodies to help make this a smooth and easy process so you have one less excuse to stay blog-less alright thanks for listening everybody see you tomorrow become a smarter Libertarian in just 30 minutes a day visit tomwoods.com to subscribe to the show for free and we'll see you next time


Hey, what's up guys, this is Alex from Xtrades back to you with another weekly trade ideas list. Hope everybody had a wonderful trading week once again. Last week was pretty interesting. I would say it was very choppy all the way until Wednesday and the randomly out of nowhere fed Bostick, who's a non-voter by the way, came out and said that you could see a pause by the summer market pretty much grapher straws on that and ended up rallying. So rallied it from Thursday all the way up into Friday the close and we ended up closing green. So a pretty good week for the stock market actually, despite the choppiness earlier in the week. Hopefully this week we can, you know, maybe get some more clarity. Maybe Jerome Powell will throw us a few hints while he testifies to Congress. So let's go ahead and get into the economic calendar this week. You can see on this website, I don't need, you can put like a one star, two star, three star for market impact. I went ahead and did a two star just so it can filter out and show us the most important things on the economic calendar. For Monday we have factory orders. I wouldn't say this really has too much of an impact on the market. So I wouldn't worry about it too much, but we are very data sensitive right now. So anything's on the table. Tuesday, most important, we got Fed Chair Jerome Powell speaking to Congress. So he'd be testifying to Congress and people will be looking for hints, maybe talk of policy in that conversation. Wednesday, we have the balance of trade. We also have the Joe's job openings. Joe's job openings had a pretty good impact last time. So we'll have to keep an eye on that. We have Fed Chair Jerome Powell speaking again to Congress at 10 o'clock. Should be interesting. So we have two days of Jerome Powell and you already know the whole markets can be listening for that. Thursday, initial jobless claims. Also a Fed Bar speech at 10 Friday, non-farm payroll is arguably the most important data set of the week. Also, we'll show the unemployment rate and it has other factors into the labor market. So this should give us a little hint into the labor market. One thing that I'm personally looking for, I'm looking for the labor market to tighten up. That would be good for the market. A lot of people are going with the soft landing narrative, despite the labor market not coming down because they are showing that, you know, the economy is acting resilient. There hasn't really been too much of a constraint on the consumer as well as people are holding their jobs and finding new ones. And that's all despite rising interest rates, by the way. And this is why people grasp onto the soft landing narrative, which I mean, it could be delusional, but in history, usually we're going to see a fall in the labor market. We're going to see a lot of unemployment and that's what's going to fight inflation. Make people spend less inflationary. Let's go ahead and get into our first setup here. If you're new to these videos, we go over five individual tickers as well as the market indexes, the volatility index, and also the US dollar, which also have an impact on the market. So usually you can find a pretty good day trade in these setups that I show you. And also you can find good swing trades as well because we are looking at the one day time frame. And usually we're only looking at the one day time frame. Sometimes you'll see stuff in the hourly too, but this week should be mostly the one day time frame on these specific setups. So our first setup here, we're looking at UPSD. You can see as a bullish falling wedge breaking out here. Ideally you'd be looking for a move up to 2031. There's a small wick right here at 1932. It'd have to get over. If you go into the hourly, you can see why this 1938 level would be important to break over. But you do have a little free space right up to that on this wedge breakout. If it can get over that, it would probably back test and then try to get up into the 2031. This is looking pretty bullish for UPSD. I'm a little skeptical though, just because it did close up 6.5%. So this was already way up, but I mean, it doesn't look too overextended yet. UPSD is a very volatile name. So this thing does have huge moves.  That's just something to keep an eye on. But overall this does look bullish. It is back above the 50 period moving average. That could help. You got the KDJ crossing upside. So that's also bullish. Last week, I didn't have too many bullish setup. You might remember Exily, Exily worked out pretty good right off support. What else did we have? We had a LUV calls as well that bounced off the trend line. Ended up holding pretty good, but I wouldn't say it had like the greatest week or anything. It closed higher than we opened Monday, but it wasn't like a huge gain or anything. But it did hold the overall trend line. So this week, we have a little bit more bullish setups just because that's what the technicals are showing. And we also have one or two potential put setups. But we'll go ahead and get into our next one here. So next, we're looking at IWM here. And I really like this bullish breakout here. And the reason for that is because it's reclaiming this 189.24. You got the KDJ crossing upside, holding overall demand zone. You got a nice bounce off the 50 EMA. And you're also breaking out. Not ideal price target would be this wick high right here at 194.87. And that runs directly into the main supply zone at the top here, which is a rally based drop supply zone. So IWM looks good here. This is actually a tradable setup this week. Usually we just add it to our index analysis, but it actually made it into my list this week because this does look pretty good for upside. So we're looking at calls on this and also looking at calls on UPST, by the way. These are two bullish setups if you didn't already understand. We'll look for that 194.87 potentially for IWM. This is a pretty big breakout candle. It could have, you know, maybe it'll do a period of consolidation first before going higher or it could even pull back and have a back test. But overall, I feel like this one on 94.87 will hit eventually. Yeah, looks pretty good here. This will be a tradable setup this week. This is not just analysis for the indexes. This actually looks pretty good. So definitely going to be keeping this one on watch, looking at calls on this one. You can see it'd be prior. It did have that little downside, but that's because it broke this up turn line. But not that it's formed a base and kind of had a little consolidation period and also have two support areas holding the 50 EMA. You got demand zone low holding. You got to reclaim over 189.24. You got a breakout. That's why this is able to look like it's going to get momentum. So that's IWM looking at calls. Next, we're going into TSM. So this is a trend line play specifically. This had a pretty nice bounce here. You can see three tests on the 50 EMA.  And it's overall holding the structure and also bouncing up the trend line. This would be a test one, test two. This would be a test three or four off the trend line. Ideally, we're going to see move up to the supply zones. Probably as about a size as I can put you for now. It's about 92.40s or so. We can get the exact here to be 92.33 for the supply zone. This looks good for upside, but for every trend line play, especially in volatility this year, I do set an alert. So we'll right click at alert and we'll just put a breakdown just in case it does want to break the trend line and we'll have to switch, you know what I mean? But right now this is holding a bullish structure. So calls are the focus. You're going to be looking for upside here.  But also that would give you a signal to go ahead and jump into puts assuming that the daily candle clothes closes under the trend line.  You got uptrend line holding 50 EMA holding. This looks like a pretty good curl up that would head up into supply. So definitely going to be looking at calls in this. It looks like China had a pretty good week as well. The other day the Hong Kong index just had a crazy balance. I think it was up like 4% or something. So that maybe gave it a little gas the last few days as well as US equities pumping as well from Fed Bostic talking about pausing. So that's where TSM, like I said, looking at calls, nice little structure here, nice little trend line, but then you do have that insurance for the trend line alert just in case it breaks and then you can switch your bias. Next, we're going into LLY. So this is a longer term trend line place. It's a little bit different than TSM. Even though it's uptrend line, this is a longer term trend line. So this is all the way from 2020. This is also a test three uptrend line. So ideally you'd be looking for a bounce here. You can see a nice bottom wick slash shadow at the bottom of this weekly candle. If you go to the daily, you can see the daily close above. So it's still holding. Ideally you could see a move up to the supply right here, about 328. That's probably about as high as I could put you or that would put you right near the daily 200 SMA. You can also see it reclaiming this 317 wick low specifically right here and put a little smiley face next to it. You can see that 317 right there. You can see a reclaiming above that could take it higher as well as it's holding the uptrend line all the way from 2020. So this is a weekly timeframe set up. Looks really nice. I did go ahead and set that alert at the trend line the same way I showed you on TSM. You just right click, you add alert and you wait for it to break. If you wanted to put setup on this, but honestly, this is still holding the structure. So ideally you'd be looking for calls as long as it's holding up Monday, Tuesday. It's holding the overall structure, not selling off too much. It's not crossing back below the trend line. You are still in play here. But since we are in volatility, you do want that insurance and you want to be able to switch just in case because we switch so fast sometimes. And that's why you set the alert.  And that's where your risk tolerance comes into play. It's where risk management comes into play and you go ahead and set that alert. You wait for it to break and then you could stop out or you could switch the puts, do whatever you want. And that's the good thing about trend lines is they're pretty bilateral. So you can play them either way, but you do have to wait for that confirmation first. But I really like trend lines because they provide opportunities in both directions. But right now you can see it's holding the structure. Same thing is like TSM. TSM was holding the structure. This is still holding structure. So ideally you'd be looking for that upside since it is holding. So that's why I'm looking at calls. Next, we're going into PANW. So I really like this one for a put trade specifically. One thing I am going to be looking for, I'm looking for that daily candle close. I want to see a bearish daily candle close indicating that it's reacting to 192, 93 resistance first. But you can see we're pulling up into this massive supply zone all the way from 2020. Acted as resistance here. Kind of had a small resistance here in top wake, but now it's retesting. But you can see the resistance here at 192, 93. You can see it's a nice little top area. We are now testing that directly. So ideally we want to see that daily candle and start to curl down from here. Since we are kind of looking bullish on the indexes a little bit, maybe just go ahead and wait for that daily candle close for sure. Or if you're day trading, just make sure you see that cash open selling as something that's going to validate your thesis. Maybe even use Camarilla Pivots or something. Go watch my other video on the strategy. It will give you a nice entry on puts. You could either short at R3 when it pops or you can go short below S4 intraday. So make sure to go check that out if you want a good day trading strategy and also a good area for entry points. So that's for PANW. This does look really good for a counter trim reversal on puts. You got massive resistance. You got big old supply. Looks really good. You also got a pretty big gap below. I feel like this will fail eventually, but you don't want to put a time horizon on it because the market could stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent. So I'm sure you heard that one before. So yeah, like I said, if you want to be saved, just wait for that daily candle close. If you get a daily candle close, look and bearish. You know, that'll give you your entry and it'll look pretty good for a swing trade. Otherwise, if you're day trading, you know, just use the Camarillo Pivots, wait for something to break in support. Maybe wait for Friday's load to get taken out and that will give you a good entry for puts. So that's our five setups. Next, we're going to be going into the indexes. You can see IWM already made it into our list. So we're just going to be going over spy and QQQ in terms of equities. The next, we're going into the spy. Really big fake out for the bears. You can see it broke the trend line, but also we were focused on that 200 SMA last week. It did hold that as support, even made a little double bottom and then eventually reclaimed the trend line. So now we're looking a little bit more bullish. Maximum PT, I got forced by, I got us up to supply at 406, which is pretty, I mean, pretty close by. And then also have us going up to the trend line, maximum frequency resistance about there. But overall, this does look bullish just because it reclaimed the trend line. It's holding 200 SMA support. I am in some April puts here just because the economic data's been looking pretty mug and looks like inflation could stick. So I took a small bet on puts. Got them probably about down here. So I did get faked out on this trend line, but we got plenty of time on it. Got April expiration. So we'll see how that turns out. But right now, spy looking pretty bullish after these two closes. Also reclaiming the trend line. You got KDJ crossing up. You got 200 SMA support. You got to reclaiming the 50. So you got a couple of things going for you right here, but keep in mind it is mid range. So this is not really giving you like the greatest entry or anything, but overall the structure is still looking pretty bullish. It really sucks too, because this uptrend line really could have been, this uptrend line breaking really could have been a nice downside play, assuming we got under the daily 200 SMA. Probably gonna take us down to this weekly demand at 383. But overall, I am looking for this 383 demand to get tested eventually. We'll just have to see how it goes right now. Since we're so data dependent, the Fed is also data dependent. It really makes anything a coin toss. Nobody's safe right now. So don't wanna get overconfident on anything right now. Be a skeptic in everything you enter. Realize the market can't go against you, but that doesn't mean you're the trade scared or anything. Maybe just go smaller, try to bring it down a notch and realize that we're in different market conditions now. We're not in free money, hot money market anymore. We're now in rising interest rates, inflationary environment, all that. So you just got to be careful. Yeah, spy looking pretty bullish here. It would need to get back under the trend line, obviously to be bearish. You can't see some resistance at 406 supply, like I said, and also resistance at this little uptrend or a downtrend line. So that's where the spy looking decent. Next, we're going into QQQ. So last week, the focus on QQQ is this demand zone. And you can see why. And also we had the 50 and 200 had a major confluence right here. And you can see why it acted as support. I mean, it didn't break either. It closed below this one day on Thursday, but it did reclaim above. So we never got an official close below the 200. And that's why I'm guessing it did go higher. You can see now reclaiming 296.88, which comes from this previous resistance that also acted as support right here. Acted as a slight resistance here, but now reclaiming back above. You can see it has a little supply zone right here. So likewise with spy QQQ, I got you up to supply in this downtrend line maximum. That's about as high as I could put you. And that's just because you never know how it's going to react once it gets to the line. So we just have to go off the technicals. But overall, it did hold its low. So looking bullish similarly, but honestly, the IWM looks the best compared to spy and QQQ, IWM looks great. As it has that fresh breakout, you have, you know, resisted slightly above. That's not like a super hard rejection area or anything. And, you know, it could see some room upside. So it looks way better than spy and QQQ to be honest. Spy and QQQ is right now is just kind of mid range. If you entered right here, you're not getting the best entry. It only have a couple of points up to the downtrend line. And same with spy. If you entered up, you know, it looks the same pretty much. You only have a couple of points of the supply and the downtrend line. But yeah, I mean, kind of ugly, right? I mean, there's really no pattern here or anything. Same with spy. It did have that up trend line breaking that was looking good, but now it's invalid. So kind of just have to wait for something else to form on this. Maybe once it gets up to the trend line, it could play puts off that, make a nice, you know, day trade if it had a quick rejection. But otherwise, I mean, maybe just set an alert at the up trend line, wait for it to get up there. Once it gets up there, you know, you could take some puts at the downtrend line if you get the right rejection at the area. So maybe just wait on the QQQ. This could be setting up for something good if it gets up into the trend line. Vicks hate this thing so much. This thing is just, I mean, it's just all over the place. You can see it's been stuck in a range. We broke out of that. I don't know if you remember the last few videos. We were focused on that, you know, wedge breakout. It broke out for a couple of days. Even made it all the way up to 2363.  So we did have a little bit of volatility and also the, you know, the spot breaking the trend line.  And that didn't do it for it. We still bounced. So for the Vicks this week, you can see it's getting up to the 1811 support bounced from here a couple of times. So I mean, it could, you know, start curling up here. If this holds, you know, you're getting it back up to the 20s easily. If it gets under this 1811, that takes you down to 1706, which is the lowest point and also the most recent lowest point. And that's pretty much your levels. I mean, you can see it's back under the 50 EMA, the 2022 to 2023 average close did drop from 20, what was that 25, 2497 down to 2489. So, and I got that from my data. To go to my data, these are the last five closes from the week. You can see you got your average right over here, show value 2489. And this is the average close from 2022 all the way to current. And the reason why we tracked this is because that's when volatility started picking up a lot more. That's when the Fed started raising rates. So it's pretty important to pay attention to volatility in most recent conditions. But you can see it's got a 50 EMA, just like, you know, we track on our trading view here. We almost got to the whole median target, but we just didn't quite make it. So, but now, I mean, now that we're lower, I feel like this will have another shot back up to the average eventually, but it's gonna need some time maybe to bounce around here, make a base off the 18s, let algorithms and institutions go ahead and start messing with the SPX options. The SPX options is then gonna start messing with the VIX. And if you didn't know the VIX is based purely off supply and demand of SPX options, 30 days out. So 30 days expiration on SPX is what affects this. Yeah, like I said, under 1811, it's gonna take you to 1706, that'd be bullish. I'd really like to see it get under there. That'd be a nice signal for calls. If it did get back above and hold this pretty well, it would probably get back above 20. And that's where, you know, the major psychological level has always been. Just make sure to watch if it gets back over 20, especially if it starts picking up over 20, that's a good indication that something might be picking back up on the short term.   Over 20 here, got a nice shoot up, et cetera. So you can see why 20 is the psychological level it always has been. But otherwise, I mean, this is just showing that options are getting very cheap right now. This is pretty low. Like, for real guys, this is about as low as the VIX, you know, it's been in a long time. Well, it feels like forever, but it's just crazy. So puts are pretty cheap right now. Implied volatility overall 30 days out is pretty cheap right now. Which kind of scares me to be honest, because once it gets down here, it really does start to kind of start picking up. And I feel like this is when people start getting skeptical that, you know, people start thinking, oh, volatility is coming down.  Fed's gonna pivot, blah, blah, blah. And then something comes out of the woodwork and we just start spiking back up.  I mean, it's just crazy. So markets are crazy right now. But especially to keep an eye on this 1811, like I said, wait for it to get back over 20 if you want to be overly bearish. Wait for it to get in our 1811 to be bullish. All right, and next, we're going into the DXY. So we're looking at the four hour this week just because it's kind of been a little bit choppy. This is pretty much where we opened up Monday and we just kind of stayed in this range. With some notable price points I'm watching, we really need the dollar to get back under this right here. And that also pans out to 104.09. So your zone is 104.09 to 103.96. That's pretty much gonna act as support. It will until proven otherwise. If it does get below that, I feel like that'd be really bullish for stocks. So right now holding overall structure, you do have two tests on the downtrend lines as unconfirmed. If it gets up to test three, that will form the downtrend. But otherwise still holding structure, there's really nothing crazy here. Just watch that 104.09, 103.96, really bullish signal if it can get under that. And you know, you can probably start looking at calls in the market to be honest. Once it gets under that, that would be a really good signal. As well as if the VIX got under that 1811, that would be really good as well for the short term. So that's your levels this week. Pretty short for the dollar. You can see, I mean, it's got a resistance point here. It's got a resistance point here. It got 104.066 and then 105.35. If it gets back over that 104.066, which comes from this, it could have back up to the downtrend line. So that's another area of focus. Otherwise it looks like it could fall down to the support. That'd be bullish for stocks and pretty much overall fits with the spy reclaiming its trend line and you know, having that room up to supply in the downtrend line. So that's for the dollar guys. Really nothing fun this week. We've already been over the COVID 2020 peak. We also pretty much topped out, you know, around the resistance point that we were looking at last week. It didn't quite make it all the way there, but you know, it is close enough to start finding resistance. And now I'm just kind of staying in this range. So, you know, like I said, just that 104.09 to 103.96. If it gets under that, start looking for a bullish market. If it reclaims that 104.66, you know, just be cautious because it could run up to that downtrend line. But that's the video guys. I hope you guys enjoyed it. I hope the setups work well this week. I feel like last week, they weren't like crazy good or anything, but you know, there was a couple, couple gems that worked out pretty good. There was like Microsoft puts and Exile calls. L.E.V. worked out pretty good. I personally didn't have that great of a week on the stock market. I feel like, you know, it could get better this week. Hopefully we'll get some volatility and hopefully we'll make some money. I know some people, you know, they did pretty well. But me personally, I feel like it could have been better for me personally. And you know, that's just, that's gonna happen in the business. So hopefully all these setups work out well. Hopefully we'll have a good trading week. I love you guys. Make sure you like, comment, subscribe to Xtrees YouTube channel and I'm out.


If you're tired of manually uploading files into your OneDrive folder, then we have exciting news for you. The recent OneDrive update as of August 15th of 2018 allows you to automatically upload files saved in your desktop, pictures, and documents. This new feature is called Known Folder Move, and is very easy to enable. If you wish to enable it, then click on your OneDrive icon in your notification area, then War, then Settings, then click on the Auto Save tab. Finally, click Update Folders. A new screen will pop up. Click Start Protection to start syncing the contents of the folder. If you already have data in these folders in OneDrive, they will sync down to your computer. You can minimize the window as the sync runs in the background. Now you can save files directly into desktop pictures and documents, and they will automatically be synced into OneDrive. With your documents in the cloud, they will always be available, no matter where you go. I'm Steve at the Protective Trust Training Department, and we'll see you next time.


Hi everyone, happy Thursday, Joe for jaspyscasebreaks.com coming at you with 2019-2020 Panini Chronicles basketball fat pack break number 353 with a chance to win spots in that that 12 team immaculate basketball random number block it's $500 a spot so yeah we had to do a filler for the random number block so there we go we have to do that also a little extra bonus within this pack break if you bought spots right we only sold 23 spots straight up if you bought one of those 23 spots we're gonna randomize your names top seven we'll get an extra spot it's not bad right so big thanks everybody right here let's grab this down to this and new dice roll separate dice roll for this top seven after seven we'll be in one two three four five six and seven the final time so first off thanks everyone for just buying you know you get a little bonus chance right here and congrats to the winners of packs or extra spots in this pack break Steve Robert Oliver Soria Robert Russell Robert and Johnny there you go congrats to you we'll put a little rooftop next to your name which indicates hey I won a spot so you can distinguish it from your other spots it's nice to keep track of that let's copy that and now we've got to randomize again new dice roll names and teams to see what we do for this little pack break right here Jack vain what's going on no worries glad you joined glad you got into the wish there was more but maybe more tonight let's roll it randomize it five and one six times one two three four five and six and final time after six we got Johnny down to Douglas now the giveaway will be obviously be a separate dice well we always do the pack break first all right five and one six times for the teams one two three four five and six and final time after six we got the Warriors and Bulls all right here's the first half of the list right here we've got Robert with the heat no trade windows and stuff like this but we got Oliver Soria with the Pelicans Grizzlies for John Sullivan just a little pack break let's see what happens it's print and rip there are some delicious smells coming from the other room here what are we eating over there wow I feel like I feel like I'm in a cartoon where the scent of the food is wafting over the wall and beckoning with a finger saying goes into my nostrils and I'm about to float off my feet into that room like a cartoon all right here's the here's the final list right here what happens here RJ Barrett RJ Barrett is a copper Anthony is that an autograph yeah look at that the rare autograph out of these little packs right here Isaiah Roby there you go Isaiah Roby for OKC OKC moving Chris Paul shaking things up adding assets doing all that sort of stuff we got LeBron James right here and XR RJ Barrett who's got a little bit of help out there after the draft so we'll see and LeBron James and Anthony Davis his teammate goes to Oliver Soria and the Lakers all right so nothing too crazy there but let's see who gets those $500 number block spots so it's gonna be top two after seven five and a two good luck one two three four five six and a seventh and final time after seven thanks everyone for giving this a shot we do have to do a couple more of these so if you're watching live and if you feel like giving another shot please do please do all right so from three down to 30 we'll get them next time thanks for trying and congrats to these two lucky SOBs we got Steve Burch and Robert Runkel congrats to the both of you you are in that $500 number block thanks for playing thanks for getting in I'm Joe for jaspercaserakes.com we'll see you next time for the next one bye


Good morning Hank, it's Tuesday. I really liked your video on Friday and I thought maybe today we could continue our discussion of failure by turning to the question of my new book. So it's been almost five years since my most recent novel, The Fault in Our Stars, was published. Why nothing new since then? Well, in my case, because a very public success happened to coincide with a series of very private failures. The Fault in Our Stars was my fourth novel, but the experience of publishing it was vastly different from everything that came before. Like, for context in the week after it was published, The Fault in Our Stars sold more hard covers than my three previous novels had ever sold combined, which, to be clear, was wonderful news. But at the same time, I was hard at work on this new book about teenage identity thieves, because, you know, that's what I did after publishing a book. I wrote a new one. But it wasn't working. Now, partly the concept itself was flawed. I've always wanted to write a proper thriller, but I'm no good at writing any of the proper thriller stuff. You know, like, I'm not great at action scenes or knowing how guns work or plot. But also, I started to feel this intense pressure, like, people were watching over my shoulder as I was writing. By April of 2012, I ditched most of the identity thieves story and reimagined it as a story about two boys who find something terrible while exploring storm drains in their little hometown. I wrote about a hundred pages of that over the next few months. None of it was ever very good, though. Meanwhile, The Fault in Our Stars continued to sell, and in May of that year, I read an amazing screenplay adaptation of the book, at which point I realized it might actually become a movie. And somewhere in that period, my job stopped being person who writes books, which is a present tense job title, and became person who wrote that one book, which is a past tense job title. Like, I remember one night my best friend Chris saying to me, it must be weird getting all this money for something you did at Starbucks a couple years ago. And it was weird. I was elated and grateful that The Fault in Our Stars was reaching so many readers, but at the same time, I was terrified because I felt like I could never follow it up. By the time the movie started shooting in the fall of 2013, I was failing to write a new book, this one about teenage con artists. I spent almost a year on that one before eventually giving up. I remember being in a hotel room right after the movie came out, looking at these hundreds of pages as I realized they would never be a book and just sobbing. Now, I want to be clear here that these are high-class problems I am very grateful to have, but I also want to be honest about the fact that they are problems. Writing had always been a safe and sane way for me to pour out my obsessiveness and recursive thinking, but then suddenly it just didn't provide that release anymore, and I realized, you know, that I could stop. Writing had become kind of miserable, and as I devoted more of my time to Crash Course and the art assignment, I realized I have amazing work that I am so lucky to do. I missed writing, but in the way you miss someone you used to love. And then, about a year ago, I went back to it. I started writing something just for fun. I kept saying that to Sarah, I'm just writing this for fun, I'm just writing this because I think you'll like it. But of course, those turn out to be pretty good reasons to write. Still though, this is all kind of hard to talk about because the usual arc of these narratives is, I had some failure, but then I plowed through and found greater success than ever. And I'm not at all sure that's how this story will end. I don't know if I'll ever publish another book. And if I do, I don't know whether people will like it. I know they probably won't like it as much as they liked The Fault in Our Stars. I hope I finish the book I'm working on, I hope you like it, but I don't know. But I think what changed is that I got okay with not knowing. I used to be so certain, I used to have all these unshakable beliefs about books and writing and how to be a writer. Now my beliefs aren't just shakeable, they're shaken. That feels uncomfortable, but also productive, I think. Hank, I gotta get back to writing. I'll see you on Friday.


What's up everybody, it's Jayce here for jaysbyskatesrace.com 22-23, Panini Chronicles basketball just sold out. This was a newer release from this past week. This is a six box half case break. Ran team number one. And again guys, 32 spots, six hobby boxes of Chronicles, all cards shipped. Here's a dice roll, let's click roll. And it is a one out of four, five times. So here we go. One, two, three, four, and five. One, four, five, five, young. Down to young. Two, three, four, five. So there you go. Five times, five times.  So obviously Raptors and Bulls, the only other two you don't have. So let me know if you want to trade, if you want to trade for one of those teams we'll close it right out. T-WC then, take the rest of these teams and you pretty much got all the big teams.  So again, six box half case break, one, two, three, four, five, six on the left, six on the right, one, two, three for the left, four, five, six for the right side. Let's see what we generate here. And it's a four. One, two, three, four, five, six. So we're going to put a little line through these boxes here just so we know that's in the same case. And we'll use this for hopefully the next half. A couple boxes, three of them and then we'll use Neem. So Chan, Tari Eason, numbered to 49, and a numbered Walker Kessler. Devin Booker, to 149 for the Suns. Nice J-Dub. This is a sick card, man. It's an orange Dynagon, a little color match with the Thunder 4 to 75. And Christian Brown for the Denver Nuggets. A little quad-relig autograph. Champion. So again, buddy, pretty much everything yours might as the Bulls and the Bulls and Raptors. Paula Boncarro and little Keegan Murray. We got a Shade and Sharp there numbered to 49 to 149. Boncarro, So Chan, Murray, little Chet Holmgren, Jalen Duran to 149 and a Duran Sebron autograph to 999, 34 to 999 for the Pelicans. So there you go. I love this Dynagon, man. Do you sell most of your stuff? Jen, or do you just do you just collect Matherin to 149? That's a cool color. Ooh, was that Alan? I was so nice. Hall of Fame signature. 47 out of 49. Sixer. You collect, okay. No, I was going to say if you end up selling it, I kind of want to take it off your hands. Big Thunder fan. We got Jaden Hardy there to 149. This is J.W. again right there. LeBron James Orange to 75. Nothing crazy there. Then we got a Coloco to 249. Chet Holmgren and out of 49, Autograph there, Julian Champagne. San Antonio Spergs Yolkitsch and Jalen Duran number to 75. That's for the Detroit Pistons. We're going to jam with all those. Then we got Paulo Banqueiro. Nice. That's number to 149. We'll top of that. Another one there for you buddy. And the Magic. Alright guys, so we got a Christian Coloco to 99. Raptors. Usman D'Ang for the Thunder. Ah, I thought it was Chet Holmgren Autograph for you buddy. Damn. 116 out of 149 based Chet Holmgren numbered. Banqueiro LeBron Banqueiro again numbered here. David Roddy will sub-rex. And Grayson Allen under the lights. Keegan Merton Plates and Patches to 249. Orlando Robinson Silver of Dave Ruggie. Little Tariyes in there for the Rockets. He had a really, really good summer like 149. We got a Dyson Daniels to 75. Yellow or Orange I should say. And the Dynagons are so nice when they're colored. John Morant to 149. Should have one more hit I feel like right. Nice. Limited RPA Chet Holmgren. There you go buddy. That's 7 out of 49. That's Jersey numbered. A little bit eBay 101 as well. 7 out of 49. That's sick man. He looked really good too in the couple games you played and I just think for him as long as he's healthy for the season he's going to make a big impact for the Thunder. Very nice one there buddy. Thunder man. I don't know man. In a few years man they could be they could be team contending for championships. There you go. There's the first three so far. Chet Holmgren definitely the best right there with Allen Iverson. Very solid. Honestly we're extra out of it. I mean I think it's going to come down to like what are you I think it's going to come down to like what are the cubs are going to really want for him. Because obviously it's had a great year right. So I'm not sure where the cubs are at in a playoff position but is that going to happen? Let's just say it doesn't right. That's probably why they're trading right. I'd assume. My thing is that his is a little tricky in the sense that what do you pay for a guy like that. What are the cubs going to want back for him. But I'm assuming they're going to want anything. Because maybe they don't think he would resign with you guys if that was the case. This was more like a prove it deal and then I can go sign elsewhere next season. I don't know. It's just for me nowadays it's always interesting like if a guy's really hot and obviously is on a one year deal kind of deal or popular if you're aspiring. Are you just going to take anything from him or are you still going to really want to hold out to get the maximum for him? And I'm not sure what teams really need him in the sense like minus a Yankees or something like that would want to give up great players for a guy like that. But I don't know what to deal with honestly. You don't want to just trade him for nothing right in the sense that you probably want to get something decent back for him. I feel like with baseball it's always more prospects that get traded than anything. But I'm not too entirely sure man. What do you want back for him or where do you want him to go? I know and is Pico Armstrong ready? Because my thing is that wouldn't he be up here already if that was the case? It's not like he can't be in the rotation. You know? That's exactly true Yankees. Is he even ready? The one thing is that you don't know for sure if these guys are going to even pan out. That's kind of the problem for me at least. It's like you could keep a guy like the same Ballinger that's proven himself, pay him. It's not like he's super old either. But I don't know. Jaylen Brown, Kevin Durant traded. 99. Is he not up right? Why is he not up then?   It's not like they can't have him up and rotate. Parker Tessler, Johnny Davis to 249. Steph Curry. And Atari's Halburne, nice. Wow, this looks beautiful. Out of 25. That is 12 out of 25. Wow, did he get called up right now? Is this like his first game officially? That's awesome.  Well, I hope it counts out for your Cubs Rex because what if your owner or whoever runs it is giving them an extra year just to get better but then when they finally get called up and think they're ready then they're not. I just feel like for most teams if they're ready they're going to call you up. Like you know, I don't think they want to waste another year down there. Rob Chuhomer and his three for three in batting. Out of 149. Tatum. John Morant. John Holger. Jabari Smith, nice. Out of 99. Houston. Out of 25. Tim Hartle with Junior. Out of 49. Again, he's had a really, really good summer league two with the Rockets. LeBron James Silver. So Chen. Kessler there to 25. Tardy Eason. He's been a solid half guys. Half case. Got one more box. I'll do a little recap right now after I'm done with this. Tatum. Hegan Murray there to 149. Dijonte Murray for Atlanta. Ooh, Scotty Barnard. Out of 26. Raptors. Yay, Raptors. Out of 25. Walker Kessler there to 149. And Tyrese Martin, Rookie Otto. That is numbered to 99. A local. Jalen Garan. Yeah, it's going to be a Galarex.  Bob and Tom, no. I don't know what that is and if it's like I don't know what that is though. Is that a band or something? Or is that a movie? Or sorry. I don't know what you're talking about actually. Explain to me. No, didn't listen to too many radio personalities to be honest. The only radio I would ever listen to when I was younger is when I was actually just like heart-pulling my brother when I had my first job with him. Jaren Jackson Jr. I mean I only listened to K-Rock and like local news stations. I didn't really listen to the radio. It's a little before my time really. And there you go guys. So again, a lot of numbered cards and I'm kind of sleeving out the top rookies there. Like Paolo and Shad. J-Dub, etc. So obviously a lot of numbered cards going out there. But obviously Young got the majority of these teams man so congratulations. Obviously you got most of the hits. So there they are right there. And like I said, Givari Smith Jr. Rockets. This Tyrus Halliburley man is really beautiful. Out of 25. Laravia. We have that Alan Iverson of course. Shad Homer was the big, big rookie. Grayson Allen, Paolo numbered. Right. And then this beautiful orange color match there of J-Dub more for me. So there you go man. Thank you so much. Again I did post up the second half. The big stuff hiding in the second half. Pretty low to product. Didn't see any golds numbered below. So maybe any one-on-ones potentially could be hiding in the second half. So if you guys want to check it out, JaspysCaseBricks.com guys thank you.


Opening up the conversation we do a lot of American things, but it just optically looks different to people What's going on everybody David and Andrew from the fumbroes here? What I'm maintaining some social distance Andrew so much in the news is happening every day week three of quarantine But we got some good news bad news complicated news But first the good news the good news is we're setting up another hype to help online store and donating a total of $2,000 amongst four different charities round one We donated $3,500 to get more PPE for healthcare workers and meals for children of low-income families round two looks like this $500 is going to the NAACP legal defense fund America's top legal firm for fighting racial injustice $500 will be going to the Latino immigrant families together fund giving assistance to minors and children suffering the trauma of family separation $500 will be going to the children of fallen Patriots supporting children of military personnel that lost their life in the line of duty and $500 will be going to the Arab American Institute it encourages civic participation and fights Xenophobia against anti-Arab bigotry basically guys. Here's how the video structure first section We have our comments on your comment comments from our previous video We got 1500 of them these are not just any regular comments a lot of great racial Discussions popped up not just involving Asians, but actually involving other minorities number two We will be giving our opinions on the Andrew Yang Washington post op-ed that you know was very controversial Okay, so the number one comment that we got was hey guys I don't think Asians helped out my group when we were going through our racial struggle. So why should we help you now? We don't want to we don't we're not against you, but we're definitely not gonna defend you you're on your own Basically that was a comment. They got worded in multiple ways. Yeah I think this one I do understand what they're trying to say that Asians as a whole in the masses did not come out for other movements And there were definitely Asian individuals that did but no as far as like the overall Asian-American leadership They did not really back those moves What are some of the reasons why Asians kind of didn't step up for other minorities? We don't even have any Organization to say whether or not we should support somebody or not It was almost like not even a discussion you could argue that we don't even have a real community I'm just bringing up a structural Fact and also to be honest Asians are just not that political period So they don't even come out for even other Asian causes oftentimes Asians actually have the lowest voting rate out of any group in America and I get what people were saying, you know people say all you guys try to play both sides You guys try to stay neutral stay neutral. These are actually larger sort of like sociological questions A lot of Asian philosophy that's based in the east a lot of it is like hey the nail that sticks up will get hammer Okay, literally and that's a very different than the West where it's like the squeaky wheel gets the grease The next point was that Asians build small businesses in other minorities neighborhoods But make people feel unwelcome or don't give back I can't speak on the problem as much as what I believe would be a Solution and when I say solution Andrew, I'm not talking about arriving at complete alignment I'm just talking about getting to a point where there's mutual respect I I believe the first step though is empathy and understanding each other situation We should create more art together for example, it's crash do the right thing Justin Chan made this movie Gooke that was speaking about the LA riots in 92 trying to show both sides You know, I mean we just need more art that's collaborative. Nobody's ever necessarily gonna see things Exactly the way the other person is but they just have to reach some point of mutual respect and mutual understanding And you know what's an issue about the internet I was just thinking about is that a lot of people they build their feelings based off of the internet and I do think it's okay to let your feelings out on the internet I mean to be honest that's a safer place than letting your feelings out in person But it's when people from different communities are commenting on each other and they have no actual real interaction with each other So then they're just seeing what they see on the media and what's being shared all the negative stuff And you know negative stuff it gets shared easier people love share It always goes by or like scratches the immediate Sensations of human nature more than positive. It wants you to get riled up That's why I think John Krasinski started that good news only YouTube channel. I will say this I don't think that positively only that's why this videos is addressing I guess some of the more complicated or semi negative things third most common comment we got was hey guys I was wondering when you guys were gonna get it. Welcome to the club It was a little bit more of a matter of fact feeling Well, what's interesting about this comment is that it revealed that there are internal conversations in those communities About whether Asians are true minorities or not They've been through enough struggle or a similar struggle as them to be accepted into the club I don't even know if there really is a right answer But I definitely know that for some people the way they're defining being a person of color is like your relationship with the larger machine There is some discussion about whether or not Asians like do they just buy so much into the machine Whatever the machine is the systems that are the powers that be that we are like not really people of color in the struggle against the machine And by the way Asians that is a huge umbrella term by the way We understand that there are many many different types of Asians. I'll tell you this guys Obviously, like I said me and Andrew do not have the answers. These are complicated. These are super complicated. They're so multi-layered We're not gonna solve them in our car. Not only that we don't actually control anybody other than ourselves But I will say this based off these comments I do want to dedicate a portion of the channel moving forward to addressing these topics for sure The fourth comment that we received was from people saying hey man our group had to go through something similar like this So, you know, I have a lot of empathy for you guys I don't think it's as bad as what you guys are about to go through believe from more Arab or Indian Americans Muslims That were basically like yo, man our group had to go through a lot of discrimination and stereotypes after 9-11 This is theirs.  The next popular comment was well, you know, I don't really see you guys, you know Be too ultra patriotic in my eyes So I just want to know where Asians stand on patriotism First of all, there is kind of this thought that Asians don't make up a significant amount of the military But if you look at it six percent of the military is Asian-American guess what the Asian population of America is Six percent so literally Asians it is proportional with the population in America So that means we're not really underrepresented in the military Right not to say that the military is the only way you could serve, you know 17% of doctors are Asian and Asians only make up 6% of the American population That means we're 300% like a lot of Asians Try to be doctors what percentage are nurses and what percentage are pharmacists all these people who are so crucial to the Infrastructure into fighting the virus right now, you know, they call them front-liners because they are on the front lines of this war against the virus We of course have people like Johnny Kim Navy CEO astronaut, but then those people that are almost just like Minglin He's the doctor who put his whole career on the line to make sure his whole team in Washington state have PPE and N95 masks Look Asians make up so much of the workforce and you know, law-abiding citizens and stuff It's just like man. We are serving the country Don't think that we need to prove ourselves any extra than anybody else a lot of Asians. We run Service-based industries. We provide a service.  We are providing a service We code your website. Yeah, and guess what Asians are very much part of business We are very much entrepreneurs So I think that we do a lot of American things, but it just optically looks different to people, you know We open up businesses, but instead of selling like serving burgers. We sell noodles and then everybody is like, ah, that's weird That's not American. I'm like, what are you talking about? We're part of like American structure So yeah, here's an anecdote. You know that one movie Lone Survivor with Mark Wahlberg where all the Navy SEALs die except one That's based on a true story and actually of that Navy SEAL team. There's actually an Asian guy There was a Korean American on that squad, but he's not in the movie. Yeah, so it goes to show you there We were getting washed out. Yeah, because it probably wouldn't play well to like a certain crowd if they showed that here Let me make it easy. Just throw Daniel Day Kim in the movie for like 10 minutes Why not point number five under there was some people supporting us saying, you know what? I'm gonna break the cycle of hate with me. I don't want to be participating in anything I'm making sure I'm striking down any sort of Ignorance at any point that I can't there was a lot of support as well, you know people who is like yo I'm with you guys in the allyship and a stand-up for injustices everywhere to any people I can try to empathize and understand, you know the more critical comments about our community But it was good to hear the positive You're talking about from Cardi B Let's stop being xenophobic. Let's stop having crazy anger because I've been seeing a lot of Asians get beat up from the rock By the way, it doesn't matter to me where it came from. It's not a China virus. It's not a Chinese virus It's a human global virus that we're all dealing with Bernice King Martin Luther King Jr.'s daughter Opening up the conversation Now to go on to the second section of this video Andrew Yang former presidential candidate Yep, had a very very controversial opinion piece op-ed in the Washington Post First of all, I think Andrew Yang stepped out of his lane He didn't make his campaign about racial identity or or identity politics. That's not his lane He second of all, it was not fully inspiring. I thought the examples he used and the wording was poor And I don't think he put enough thought into this Third, I would say hopefully he learned from this and I personally I think he can come back and do something better and gain perspective and learn from this as well There was a feeling in Asian America That it's like, yo, we didn't do anything and all of a sudden on the internet in person You know everything from a tiny micro aggression all the way to something more intense It seems like there's just this whole wave of anti-Asian discrimination That obviously even the FBI predicted and what are you gonna tell us and obviously Andrew Yang being the biggest Asian American presidential candidate in history the most famous politician in history What are you gonna tell us and he told us essentially that Racism was human nature and to combat the human nature We needed to throw on more visual American elements, right such as Wear red white and blue be more involved civically go the extra mile just to show people that we're American The core of Asian America is incredibly American. We come to this country and we contribute However, I will say that anecdotally on the outside. We don't wear a lot of college gear You don't see us wear cowboy hats. You don't see us like at the rodeo. That's just not our culture By the way, I get what he's saying gimmick packaging Works but it's also crazy to suggest that people need to change their life to fit the gimmick packaging Dude, I think just because some people don't think that we passed the eye test for an American that we have to go the extra Mile and cater to them. All right So I think that there was a misalignment with who it felt like that piece was meant for and who it was Delivered to that's why so many people are upset at him right now I would say Andrew that as far as being American goes Asians range everywhere from being like a Chris Middleton to a Paul Pierce Now if you know about Paul Pierce Paul Pierce is one of the greatest NBA players of all time But Andrew anecdotally a lot of people don't put him up there. You know why? Cuz his game doesn't fully pass the eye test and Chris Middleton by all means is an incredibly Efficient contributing player He's gonna be one of the main reasons if the Bucks ever win the championship with Yanis But a lot of times Chris Middleton doesn't get the credit either because his game is not that flashy It's just incredibly efficient. He just delivers. He adds a lot of value to the team Nobody ever says Pierce the truth when they're like fading away, but his percentages are up there with like anybody Or he could have wrote two pieces He could have wrote one directly to the Asian-American community on a publication like Nexart sort of addressing the harsh reality of Like the gimmicks which is like wearing college sweatshirts and things like that and then number two We could have wrote something in the Washington Post that was more encouraging people to like reach out to their Asian neighbor and stop being Racist towards people who really have absolutely nothing to do coronavirus and if anything are just helping to fight it Overall we understand where Andrew Yang is coming from. He's a logical guy and it made some sense But the tone and timing was way off We should all do more do as much as we can to help but not because it'll make ignorant people feel comfortable around us But because it's the right thing to do So wrapping this up we said we're gonna explain why we're giving back to these particular charities Our first hype to help store that gave away $3,500 all that money was actually directed towards things that were fighting the Consequences of the coronavirus right that was the first hype to help Yeah, I just want to show people that I hear them out and I can't solve anything Listen guys nobody can control what they're born as or how they live or how their culture is or how like you know Whatever tribe we're born into every tribe has a different culture. First of all at the base of human nature Everybody just wants to live a good life. Everybody wants to make sure their family's happy Everybody wants to make sure their family's safe, but yes people do have different cultures layered on top of that They eat different things. They talk different. They express, you know, some are more expressive Some are less expressive, but I'm just saying that listen guys, I can't change any of that You know what I mean? The the positioning that people are born into but what I can show you is that I hear what you guys are saying I can acknowledge it and I can have respect for it If there was ever a time to go help other people out now is a great time to do it Okay, there's no question. There's people in need. Everybody's in need right now So help somebody out for sure and you know, I'm gonna take any discussions moving forward And I hope that people take our discussions in a consideration moving forward as well Aren't you guys number one make sure you let us know what you thought of our comments on your comments and number two guys Just make sure you let us know one thing that you are doing that's good in this moment They can have a positive impact on greater society until next time you guys with the fun blows we out peace