August 13, 2025 • 42 mins
What if everything we think we know about fighting crime is wrong? Drawing from my extraordinary journey through the American prison system, I take you behind the steel doors to reveal truths about crime and punishment that politicians and pundits never discuss.
The current response to rising crime in Washington DC reveals a familiar pattern – conservatives demand tougher sentences while progressives call for police reform, yet neither addresses the root causes of criminal behavior. My time as an inmate gave me unprecedented access to the inner workings of drug cartels and criminal enterprises, revealing how our prohibition-based approach to drugs actually fuels the violence we're trying to prevent.
I explain why legalization (not mere decriminalization) of drugs would dramatically reduce violent crime by eliminating the black markets where violence is the only means of contract enforcement. This isn't about enabling addiction – it's about recognizing that prohibition has failed throughout history and continues to waste billions while making our communities less safe. I share firsthand accounts of how the prison drug trade operates, demonstrating why interdiction efforts are doomed to fail against the economic incentives of prohibition.
Beyond drugs, I explore how social breakdown contributes to criminal behavior and why neither "tough on crime" nor "defund the police" offers practical solutions. By shifting our focus from being tough on crime to being smart on crime, we could concentrate our limited resources on preventing and solving violent offenses that directly harm others.
If you're tired of simplistic solutions to complex problems and want to understand crime from someone who's seen both sides of the justice system, this candid discussion offers perspectives you won't hear in mainstream political discourse. Subscribe now and join me in reimagining how we approach one of society's most persistent challenges.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey everybody, it's me, your pal, herbie K, host of
A Radical Reset libertariancandidate for the 4th
Congressional District ofArizona, as a libertarian, and
let's talk today about crime.
Okay, so today's subject?
I'm going to talk about crime,because the news that's taking
place at this time is thatPresident Trump has essentially
(00:25):
not federalized but augmentedthe DC Police Department and
taken over the senior managementof it it seems cooperatively,
because the DC police chiefseems on board with this to
clean up the crime that's goingon in the nation's capital,
which, evidently going back toone of the things I often say,
which is figures, lie and liars,figure regardless of statistics
.
The fact is universallyDemocrat and Republican, as far
(00:48):
as I can tell.
Everybody who lives in DC saysit's a hellhole and I have to
tell you that I this is not anew issue as far as I'm
concerned when I lived in theWashington DC area from 1970,
let me think what it was 1977 to79, I think, were the two years
I lived I I was stationed atthe national security agency at
(01:10):
fort meade.
I was a russian linguist, um.
I lived in laurel maryland withmy?
Um first wife, who I marriedway too young but got two
beautiful children, so that thatwas not a mistake.
It was just an unfortunatechoice of who the mother was
going to be.
But that's a digression Anyway,by the way, god rest her soul.
She since has passed away.
(01:31):
I do not carry grudges.
I've let this go a long timeago, so I don't want you to
think I'm one of these guys thatwalks around hating my exes.
Actually, I love my exes.
I have two ex-wives.
One is deceased.
She died of an overdose and itwas probably suicide and I don't
really know the whole story,but it's very, very sad and I
(01:52):
agree.
And my second wife is alive andwell and we're good friends and
we'll probably remain friendsfor the rest of our lives.
I am a great friend and acrappy husband.
I've come to that conclusion.
This is why I have not marrieda third time.
I divorced I'll get into crimein just a second but I divorced
in 2004 from Terry.
We had been separated for acouple of years before that.
(02:13):
So you know it was almost andwe had the world's friendliest
divorce.
We used one lawyer.
We divided everything up downthe middle.
I paid my alimony and my childsupport and you know there's no
drama there to find out.
I always considered payingalimony, um, a badge of honor,
until my company's collapsed andI couldn't pay it anymore.
But that was that's what sentme to prison, and that's another
(02:35):
long story for another day.
But, um, and I never taught, bythe way, I just want to share
with you.
I never talked about the detailsof my crimes because it would
be weaseling and in order to, mylife today is about redemption.
Even doing this is aboutredemption, just leaving the
world a little better than Ifound it as a Stoic, which I
(02:56):
came to in prison, frankly, somepeople have a Christian
conversion.
I had a Stoicism conversion andI've always been an objectivist
.
Anyway, as a Stoic, I came tounderstand that I forget where I
was going with that thought.
Look at that, I just had asenior moment.
(03:17):
I was going to say somethingclever about adopting Stoicism
in prison and I know I was goingdown there and I completely
lost my train of thought.
And, by the way, not becauseI'm going senile, but I do this
sitting in my living room,frankly, and I'm looking at my
aquarium and in my and I havetwo aquariums At one point I had
18.
This is what a nutcase I am.
And, uh, I have some new fish Iput in, and I was just watching
(03:39):
them in in one of in one of mytwo aquariums, my 29 gallon, and
it was just.
It caught my attention and itjust.
You know, I don't have thebrain power to concentrate on
two things at the same time.
Okay, let's get back to crime.
Let's get back to crime and thesubject matter at hand.
I was talking about my ex-wives, anyway.
My second wife, terry, and Iare really good friends, anyway.
So why didn't we marry?
(04:00):
I didn't remarry.
I didn't remarry because I cameto the conclusion that two
strikes and you're out.
That was the whole point of thatwhole story is that, you know,
I don't know that I wouldinflict me on another woman.
Now, when I say inflict me, youknow I've never struck a woman
in my life and I'm notdenigrating, and you could, you
know, freely, during thiselection, I wouldn't doubt that
someone's going to dig up myrelationship with Terry and go
(04:21):
talk to her and she's going tosay I'm a nice guy that's never
been angry or violent oranything like that.
It's just not in my nature.
I can count on one hand howmany times I've really lost my
temper in the last 20 years.
You know, I really and it's notbecause I suppress my temper,
it's because I'm mostly laughingat things I've learned to just
kind of slough them off.
(04:42):
I've learned to just kind ofslough them off.
But, having said that, I date,but it would take what makes me
a crap husband and I'm onlysharing this for those of you
who might be in your ownrelationship issues, so you
don't feel alone.
I find that when you haveproblems, if you share them I
think this is the theory behindthings like aa and and addict
(05:05):
groups is that when you find outeverybody else's problems,
yours aren't such a big deal, sojust to share it with you.
Um, my mother scarred the shitout of me and basically I set up
betrayal in my relationshipsand I do it unconsciously.
And when I say betrayal I don'tmean, you know, like running
around, although I have donethat in the past, much to my
(05:25):
deep chagrin and regret.
But you know, no, I'm notdriven to run around, I'm more
driven to kind of ignore.
You know, the relationship setsup and I come off, as you know
Peter Pan, and then the nextthing, you know, I turn out to
be Captain Hook, you know, andnot that I'm a bad guy.
I just women don't like to beignored and I have a tendency to
(05:49):
do that and do it unconsciously.
And I do it because of allkinds of hidden betrayal dents
in my can and I'm aware of it.
But even though I'm aware of it, I obviously can't do a lot
about it, or I haven't done alot about it and it would just
take.
I've had one relationship in mylife where we got through it all
the way to the other side andthat one I ended up destroying
because the woman was older thanme and I somehow couldn't
picture that I was 27.
(06:10):
She was 35.
And we'd gotten to the otherside of my betrayal issues and
everything was going well and Idestroyed it anyway over
silliness.
So you know, I just don't thinkI have a good.
I'm just not good.
People aren't good ateverything.
I'm better off just playingwith my dog and my cat and my
fish and I'm really a swellfriend.
And you know I love women.
I don't hate them.
(06:31):
I didn't become a misogynist.
I just because of my mother'sbetrayal of me with my
stepfather the pedophile, youknow it just dented the crap out
of me.
So I'm really and at 68 yearsold.
I have to be honest with you, Idon't think about it a lot.
You know where, like sex woulddominate, for example, the
physical part of relationshipswould dominate my thought.
(06:52):
You know, earlier in my lifetoday it creeps in every now and
then and that's about it.
So, anyway, I don't know why Ishare all that with you.
I just felt wanted to.
So let's go, let's talk aboutcrime.
So the president's intervenedand most honest people,
including a lot of honestDemocrats like, for example, the
governor of Maryland, wes Moore, have come forward and said he
(07:16):
hasn't been openly critical ofthe president.
You know he's talked aboutthings that he's done as a
governor and he's, as Democratsgo, he is a good governor.
I'm not going to get into thenuts and bolts of Maryland
politics but overall, from whatI've seen, he's a pretty
competent guy.
In fact he's probably one ofthe better guys on the
Democratic side.
And even the mayor ofWashington DC, muriel Bowser,
(07:39):
has been muted in her attacks ofTrump because really things are
out of control.
Forget the statistics.
Figures lie and liars figure.
It's violent crime, gang crime,it's just.
And folks, that's the nation'scapital, it's just a disgrace.
Now it's interesting.
You know people.
The Republicans will screamtough on crime, tough on crime.
The progressives will screamdefund the police.
(08:01):
Defund the police and send outsocial workers.
In between is everybody elsewho's like, totally confused.
I thought I would talk today.
Instead of being tough on crime, let's be smart on crime.
Let's try something new.
Crime is a word that has manydifferent parts to it.
You know, there's violent crimeand there's drug crime and
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there's theft crime and there'stheft and there's fraud and
there's all kinds of crime underthat catchphrase.
But when most of us think aboutcrime, we're thinking about
violent crime and invasive crime, the kind of crime that when we
come home and you walk in thefront door and your house has
been looted and everything's allover the floor and your prized
(08:42):
possessions are gone and youfeel completely violated.
It's almost as if you've beenraped.
It's all over the floor andyour prize possessions are gone
and you feel completely violated.
It's almost as if you've beenraped.
It's not on the same level.
Don't think I'm equating itwith rape, but it's an emotional
rape because your space hasbeen violated and it's a
horrible thing to be robbed.
I've been mugged.
I was mugged in San Francisco.
(09:04):
As a matter of fact, when I saywhen I was mugged, I fought
back, so nothing bad came to me.
I ended up getting into a fightwith a pack of homeless but
aside from a couple of bruises,I emerged relatively unscathed.
But I've been mugged and I wasmugged just because I was
standing there.
I mean just the target.
(09:26):
And having gone to prison, Ithink I have a very unique
perspective on crime andcriminals that other people just
don't have, of my similarbackground.
So all of you listening to meare probably from my general
similar background, which ismiddle class to upper middle
class.
Some of you may be raisedwealthier than me.
I was raised upper middle class.
I had a lot of advantages.
(09:47):
I'm educated, I'm an autodidactLike you, I'm interested in
lots and lots of things.
But if I hadn't gone to prison,I don't know that I would have
ever well, I know I would havenever been exposed to the
criminal element.
To be able to, I spent fiveyears digging into the criminal
mind.
So I think that I'm betterqualified than virtually every
other expert around if you canget past the part where I've
(10:09):
been a criminal.
Now, if you can't get past thepart where I've been a criminal,
I completely understand.
I do not get into that argument.
As I said earlier, I don't getinto the weeds on what I've done
and why I should or should notbe forgiven and what the details
are and mitigations andeverything else, because every
word I would say would be oh.
And that brings me back to whyI was bringing up Stoicism Every
word would be weaseling.
(10:32):
And in Stoicism and this was myoriginal point I was going to
when I was converted to Stoicismin prison, I converted myself
by reading the meditations ofMarcus Aurelius.
But anyway, to live a life ofvalue in stoicism, to live a
life of worth and of value, youhave to live a life of virtue.
And I think that thatunderlines what's wrong with our
(10:54):
whole society, because so manyof us have left traditional
religion and are out theredrifting aimlessly without any
track to run on, and becausedecadence is so fun and we do
everything so dumb in oursociety in so many ways
governmentally that we end up inthis morass of indecency that
we make decent.
And it's all connected Crime isall connected to the general
(11:19):
decadence that we find ourselvesdescending into as a country
and as a culture.
So today I want to talk aboutbeing smart on crime and I'm
going to go quick, butEverything I'm going to talk
about most everything I'm goingto talk about you can find in A
Radical Reset, the Manifesto ofAntipolitism, which is available
to you on Amazon in Kindlepaperback or hardcover, written
(11:41):
by me, herbie K.
Okay, so let's talk about crime.
First of all, let's recognizethat there are limited resources
with which a state or federalgovernment can fight crime.
This is really primarily astate and a local problem, and
there are only so many dollarsto do that and we've been
spending them stupidly for solong as part of our run-up of
(12:04):
the national debt that this iswhat I'm going to talk about
when I say let's be smart aboutcrime.
So the first suggestion I'mgoing to make and this is going
to be the most controversial,well, maybe not the most
controversial, but I'm justgoing to get it right off my
chest we have to legalize drugs,not decriminalize drugs.
Legalize drugs.
Now let me again this isspelled out in detail in my
(12:32):
basis, including footnotes in aradical reset, but I want to
just make this very, very clearand I'll share it with you as a
story.
I like to tell stories toillustrate my points.
When I was at the Kingman prison, so I was in a few different.
I was in the Pima County jailfor about two weeks and that's
where you go right after trial,and then I was sent to Alhambra
prison, which is a sortingprison, kind of just.
Well, you got the mentalpicture.
It's where they separateinmates by risk.
(12:55):
How much risk, community risk,are they?
What are the chances arethey're going to attack a guard,
attack another inmate, so onand so forth.
Once I went through that thatwas about 10 days I went to Yuma
.
I almost said Yuma, I almostput an H on it.
I don't know why I would havedone that.
I went to Yuma because I havegood Yuma.
You know that's a New Yorkaccent saying Yuma, you get it
(13:15):
Nevermind.
So I was out in Yuma, yuma,yuma.
By the way, the asshole ofAmerica, I'm sorry.
I know there are nice parts ofYuma and I've camped outside of
Yuma and bass fished on theColorado river many times.
But as far as the prisons go,what a shithole and flies like
you can't even understand,because they're right in the
middle of the lettuce fields andit's just swarms of biting
(13:38):
flies all the time.
It's just delightful and theonly thing that keeps the flies
under any kind of control arethe pigeons.
So we have gajillions ofpigeons which occasionally
inmates grab, slaughter and eat.
Yeah, I know, fun place prison.
Anyway, it's not an everydayoccurrence, although I have seen
them capture it into Sidewinder, which is a small rattlesnake
that moves sideways.
(13:59):
But anyway, I myself neverpartook, just saying.
But I want to talk to you aboutso.
After Yuma I was transferred toa private prison in Kingman,
arizona, and Kingman that was amuch better prison.
Speaking from a prisoner'sexperience, the private prison
was much better run than thepublic prison.
Period, end of story.
(14:20):
Just like in everything else inlife, profit is not a bad word.
They just did a better jobrunning the prison.
I'm not saying it was more laxor more slack or more anything
else, it's just that everythingworked and the state prison
everything.
It was anybody's guess.
So the menus were exactly thesame.
The state provides the food,they cook it.
But it tasted better in Kingman.
(14:41):
It was just better prepared,more care, more this, more that.
Everything was better.
Medical care was better, period.
But the other thing that wenton in Kingman prison is the drug
trade, and that's where I'mgoing to with this on the
legalization of drugs.
Long story short, I got to knowa lot of what are called the
PISAs very, very well.
Pisa is so prison is brokendown by racial group and, by the
(15:05):
way, that's a self-breakdown.
The prison doesn't do it, theinmates do it.
They just don't like each otherby race.
So there are the white guys,and I've talked about this
before, so I'll do this fast.
There are the white guys thatare called the Woods, which is
short for Pecker Woods.
Don't ask me why white guysself-identify as a Pecker Wood.
They do.
They're run by the AryanBrotherhood.
And the skinheads are the gangsthat run the whites in prison.
(15:27):
Each racial group is run by agang, frankly.
Then there are the black guyswho are called the kinfolk in
prison, and I forget which gangruns the kinfolk.
And then there are the Chicanos,which are the American Latins,
and there are the Paisas, whichare the foreign Latins.
They're mostly Mexican, butthere's some El Salvadorans and
(15:49):
Guatemalans, and so on and soforth.
A Paisa, it means country inSpanish, and Guatemalans, and so
on and so forth.
Apaisa, it means country inSpanish.
So basically, the country guysversus the city guys in the
American cities, and they hateeach other.
The reason they're twodifferent groups and not
together is they hate each other.
It's just as simple as that.
I don't know why they hate eachother.
I'll let them explain it to youif you ever get into a
discussion.
(16:09):
I have some inkling, but that'snot what this is about.
And then there are the chiefs,and the chiefs are great.
Those are the Native Americansand they keep to themselves and
they're very quiet and they'remostly there for
alcoholism-related things,because Native Americans just
don't metabolize alcohol.
Well, I think that's a medicalfact.
I think I could be crazy, butanyway, they're quiet're,
(16:33):
they're quiet and they keep tothemselves and they're mostly
easy to get along with.
I don't see, I don't think thewhole time I was in prison I
said 20 words to a chief.
You know, at one time I saidmore than 20 words, but I mean
at one time, and it's it wasn'thostile.
They just don't, they're,they're.
They're in their own place,they worship their own way, they
do a sweat lodge, they do thedrum, the dance, the whole thing
(16:55):
.
It's very interesting.
I used to like to hang outaround them, but anyway.
So back to the Pisces.
The Pisces ran the drugs in theprison yard because they're the
ones that are all connected tothe cartels.
And in the book A Radical ResetI lay out how the drugs got
into prison.
A little hint it doesn't comeup the assholes and vaginas of
people that come into prisonlike on TV.
Yes, that does go on.
And yes, people do try to bringit in up their asses and do try
(17:17):
to bring it in in their vaginas.
Visitors, you know, to comevisit their husbands and
boyfriends and all that kind ofgood stuff.
That's all true.
But that's an insignificantamount of drugs because, frankly
(17:38):
, there isn't not to be.
Well, I am going to be, I'mbeing graphic on purpose, but
there isn't an asshole in theworld big enough to carry the
amount of drugs that go on inprison Annually in the Kingman
prison.
I know this because the Piscesand I again, we're close and we
talked about numbers and whatwas going on and they were doing
about three and a half milliondollars a year in drug sales
inside of prison.
It's all done with barter andcashing it out on the outside.
There's a sophisticated systemon how it's done.
Well, when I say sophisticated,as sophisticated as an
unintelligent not unintelligent,sorry, uneducated drug addict
(18:00):
could handle, but there is asystem for how to convert the
barter to cash and pay for yourdrugs and so on and so forth.
And they come in by drone andthey're picked up by corrupt
corrections officers and thenhanded to the PISAs who then
distribute it.
And I don't mean to castaspersions on corrections
officers.
It's hard to raise a family offour on what they make and or
(18:22):
five or six or however big theirfamily is, and they're easy
targets.
And here's the bottom lineabout drones the worst substance
that's ever been invented inthe history of mankind that
kills more people than caraccidents and murders and any
other kind of accident combined,and every other kind of drug
(18:43):
but the one I'm going to namecombined and cancer and heart
disease.
The substance that kills morethan all of those things
combined every year is alcohol.
There are approximately twobillion people on the planet
that could be classified asalcoholics.
Here in the United States it'sabout 1 in 20 people is an
alcoholic.
Most of them are functionalalcoholics.
They don't consider themselvesdrug addicts, but they are.
(19:05):
There's absolutely nodifference, except that alcohol
is worse for you and much harderto withdraw from.
When you're a serious alcoholic, you're the kind that really is
drinking every day hard.
And, by the way, what do I callan alcoholic?
I'm going to use the definitionthat's used in a number of
studies.
But if you're drinking morethan four beers a day, or the
equivalent, you're probably analcoholic.
If, seven days a week, you viewthose beers as something you
(19:28):
have to have whether you tellyourself you don't have to have
them but you're going to havethem anyway, or whatever
bullshit you tell yourself youdon't have to have them but
you're going to have them anyway, or whatever bullshit you tell
yourself you're probably analcoholic but you're probably a
functional alcoholic.
Okay, and there are degrees ofthings.
We have to recognize this asgrownups.
Not everyone ends up in agutter.
Most alcoholics that I've knownin my life are perfect,
perfectly functional.
In fact, they're married toalcoholics and their children
(19:49):
grow up to be alcoholics.
They're all functionalalcoholics.
I grew up in an Irish Catholicneighborhood and I don't mean to
cast aspersions on the Irish,but there are certain things,
certain cultural stereotypes,you know, that lend themselves
to cultural stereotypes and inthe Irish, drink like fish.
I grew up in a place calledMount Lebanon, pennsylvania, and
back in the 60s people lefttheir doors open.
Neighbors would come back andforth.
(20:09):
We were all close to each otherand there were the Foy's and
the Cooney's and theMcElhenney's and the Keys and
the Merck's and the there's justa whole bunch of Irish
Catholics and they all went toeither St Anne's or St Thomas
More Church and we were like thetoken Jews on the block, which
was another story altogether,for another day.
But the long story short is weused to keep alcohol in the
(20:29):
house just for our neighbors.
My parents didn't particularlydrink, not even socially really.
We just thought Jews aren't bigdrinkers, we like to chew our
calories.
I don't mean that to be a joke,it's really kind of true.
But you know not to say therearen't Jewish alcoholics.
There are.
But we really kept beer andalcohol in the house for our
neighbors who would stop in andthey would start drinking, to
(20:54):
open the refrigerator and take acan of beer out, and the only
reason there was beer in therefrigerator was for them to
begin with, and it wasn't even abig deal, you know, it was just
a normalcy and I'm sure a lotof you live a life similar to
that and you're functionalalcoholics and that's great.
I'm not here to judge you, butI'm here to tell you there is
such a thing as functional drugaddicts.
You know, not everybody whotouches fentanyl turns into a
(21:15):
freak and we have to startaddressing alcohol is so much
bigger.
Fentanyl is a pinprick comparedto what alcohol kills every
year.
But just you know.
We've just decided as a culturealcohol is okay and the rest
are bad.
Now alcohol has some thingsabout it that other drugs don't
have, most of which is thesocial aspects.
(21:36):
You know I smoke marijuana, I'mthe first to tell you but it's
hard to be social when you'restoned out of your mind.
Now I get together with a fewof my friends and we have a
little smoke sesh we call it.
I don't do it during the day.
I'm not high as I'm talking toyou, but oftentimes at the end
of the day I'll get togetherwith a couple of my friends here
in the apartment complex I livewith and with our dogs usually,
(21:56):
and we get together.
I think we hotbox our dogs andwe have a little smoke sesh.
But the thing of it is it's notas social as alcohol.
Alcohol loosens you up, reducesyour inhibitions.
I understand why people like it.
I don't drink simply because Ican't stand the taste of alcohol
.
I just got genetically lucky.
It tastes like poison to me, Ito me, I to me.
You might as well drink rubbingalcohol.
I just don't understand it.
(22:17):
But having said that, I get thebenefit.
But I think it's time to growup, america, and understand that
we lost the drug war from thetime we began it.
And, without going into theentire dissertation, I do, in a
radical reset, the manifesto ofantipolitism available on Amazon
.
Without going into all that,let me just cut to the chase.
Okay, there is no example inthe history of the world of a
(22:40):
successful prohibition ofanything that anybody in a
culture wants, not just drugs,whether it's prostitutes or
drugs or anything else.
There's no such thing as asuccessful prohibition.
Prohibition, the word, simplymeans prohibiting the population
from getting something thatthey want by law.
A prohibition creates a blackmarket.
(23:00):
That's all it does.
And the reason I saylegalization, not
decriminalization, is we havefucked up marijuana legalization
.
It's not legal anywhere.
It's decriminalized everywhereor almost everywhere.
Legal anywhere, it'sdecriminalized everywhere or
almost everywhere.
Decriminalized means youreplace the drug, useless
bureaucracy, which adds costs tothe marijuana, which makes it
more expensive than if youcontinued to buy it from the
(23:22):
cartels.
So, ironically, thedecriminalization of marijuana
has not been harmful to thecartels, because they're still
selling pot and undercutting themarket, and they sell just as
high quality weed as as thedispensaries do, or so I'm told
Wink, wink, nudge, nudge.
So, having said that, we have tolegalize and we have to accept
(23:45):
the fact that a small percentageof the population, about one in
20 people, are going to flushtheir lives down the toilet,
whether it's on alcohol or drugs.
It's almost always on alcohol.
Drugs will hardly add to thattotal.
And not everyone's a junkie.
There are functional heroinaddicts, there are functional
cocaine addicts, there arefunctional, there's addiction,
(24:07):
but there are degrees ofaddiction.
Okay, and fentanyl, which is thecurrent boogeyman, is the
reason that the cartels arebringing in fentanyl, which is
the the current boogeyman, isthe reason that the cartels are
bringing in fentanyl.
There's two reasons for it.
One is it's a lot.
It packs a lot more bang forthe, for the volume, so it's
easier to smuggle it into thecountry, which saves costs,
which allows them to sellcheaper to their customers.
(24:29):
And that brings me to thesecond reason, which is their
customers want it.
A heroin addict knows how tohandle his or her heroin.
Now, yes, there are a lot ofoverdoses and fentanyl is
dangerous.
If it were legal, there wouldbe far fewer overdoses because
it would be properly cut,properly diluted, so to speak.
That's what cut means, so thatit would be used much more
safely and we would kill farless people than we do today.
(24:53):
On fentanyl overdoses, I'm notsaying fentanyl is great to be
used unprescribed.
I'm saying that all addictionis is the unprescribed
medication of self-loathing.
That's what addiction is, andall we're doing is filling up
our prisons full of people whohate themselves because they
grew up in horrible situationsokay, almost always without a
father, with mothers that, asoften as not, are addicts
(25:16):
themselves, raise themselves onthe streets, breed like bunny
rabbits.
They're not restrictingthemselves to one or two
children like the intelligent orthe educated or the upwardly
mobile.
No, no, no, no, no.
They're out there humping likebunny rabbits, having baby mamas
and baby daddies multiple.
I had a woman.
I drive part-time to supplementmy income at this point in time
(25:40):
because I am not a wealthy man.
I drive something called Vail,which is kind of like Uber for
convicts.
Guys with criminal recordscan't drive Uber, so I drive
Vail.
Anyway, long story short.
Yeah, I know I have someexciting stories from that too.
I had a woman in my car thismorning, lovely young woman, but
she has eight children and thegirl couldn't have been 30 years
old Okay, she maybe was 28.
And I mean she was trying totake care of her kids.
(26:04):
She was taking them to thedentist.
It's not like she was a reallypretty good mom actually, but
she had eight kids by get this,eight different baby daddies and
that's.
And in talking to her I don'tget the judgments inside the car
because I don't want to havefights inside the car, which is
exactly what it'll end up being.
So I just listen and nod myhead, but she just didn't see
anything wrong with that.
And that's what's going on,guys, and we need to bring this
(26:27):
out into the sunshine and stopit, because it all links to the
undermining of our society andthe increase in crime.
So part one of being smart oncrime is legalized drugs.
Bring it out into the open.
Okay, long story short.
If we legalize drugs, the costto support a habit will drop
from hundreds of dollars a weekto for $20,.
An addict would be able you'dbe able to buy heroin, for
(26:49):
example, in a Walgreens for lessthan the cost of aspirin,
because heroin is cheap toproduce and it's not patentable
because it's been around forever, so it would be produced by
generic producers.
The same is true, by the way,of all of the drugs cocaine,
crystal meth, whatever theyshould be able to walk into a
Walgreens or a CVS or whateverit is you've got near you, rite
Aid, whatever.
Pick up the drugs safely andproperly.
(27:12):
Cut, pick up sterile needles.
If they're doing mainlining, alot of them smoke it.
A lot of them don't necessarilyshoot it.
I learned all this stuff inprison and let them go home and
do what they want to do andfunction through their lives.
And most of them you'll neverknow that they're addicts,
because they're functionaladdicts and the ones that aren't
won't have to break into yourhouse.
So theft and violent crime willplummet.
(27:35):
You see, guys, the reason thecartels are violent.
Let me explain it to you as aguy that counted many guys in
the cartels as friends when Iwas in prison.
Okay, listen to me carefully.
They aren't violent becausethey're monsters.
They're violent because they'rein an illegal business that
they can't sue if they getscrewed in a business deal.
So it's all done in a handshakeand there are no enforceable
contracts.
So if party A screws party B,party B's only recourse is
(27:58):
violence.
So if we legalize drugs and theycome into the sunshine, let's
say, the animals convertthemselves into legitimate
enterprises that are sellingdrugs in the United States
legitimately, in the open,paying taxes, yada, yada, yada,
they won't have to kill anybody.
They'll go to court.
By the way, I don't know thatthat would happen.
I don't know what thetransition is.
I don't know that Pfizer orMerck wouldn't do it.
(28:19):
I don't know who would do it.
It's not important.
In a free market, when a needpresents itself, plenty of
people will step into the breachto find ways to fill that need.
But all of them will be cheapbecause there'll be no cost of
interdiction, which will reduceviolent crime and theft by 90%.
Don't kid yourself.
They say that only 34% ofpeople in prison are there for
(28:43):
drug crimes.
That's again one of thosefigures lie and liars, figures,
things.
That's because they're talkingabout possession or
paraphernalia or sale.
But the other 60 somethingpercent, 62, 63%, most of them,
their violence is drug relatedbecause they were in an illegal
enterprise.
And if the drugs were legal,there wouldn't have been an
(29:03):
assault, there wouldn't havebeen a murder, there wouldn't
have been a beat down Now therewill still be psychopaths, but
just imagine a world where 90%of crime goes away and all that
funding isn't being wasted andwe can then concentrate on
putting more police on thestreets and preventing real
crime, real murderers, realrapists.
That's what I'm talking aboutbeing smart on crime.
Step one is legalize drugs.
(29:26):
Stop fighting a war.
We're going to lose, becauseeverybody loses a prohibition.
There is no historic example ofsuccess.
Whenever someone thinks they'regoing to do something
successful that nobody has donebefore, what they're saying is
yeah, everyone else was dumb,I'm the smart one.
What do you figure?
The odds are that in all ofhistory, he's the smart one.
It's like right now, this guy,zoran Mandani, is running for
the socialist mayor of New York.
He's going to win and NewYork's going to get what they
(29:46):
voted for.
Good and hard, believe me andyeah, I know I'm stealing that
quote, but it is what it is.
That was HL Mencken, by the way, who had disdain for democracy
and disdain for the voters,which I kind of understand where
he was coming from, without the19th century cultural disdain
that goes with that.
But anyway, mandani is going tofail because of socialism can't
(30:06):
work.
He's not going to be.
There are plenty of socialistidiots in this country who think
that he's going to be the oneto be able to do it.
Good.
It don't fail like all theothers, because it can't succeed
, it's.
It's a horrible system thatwill always fail 100% of the
time.
Prohibition is a horrible ideathat always fails 100% of the
time.
We are not going to be thefirst culture in the history of
the world to have a successfulprohibition.
(30:26):
It hasn't been successful sofar.
It's never going to besuccessful.
And we spent over a trilliondollars since 1971.
That's just in federal money,not to mention state and local,
which is even higher and we'vepissed away every penny of it
and stopped.
Yeah, they catch a little drugshere and a little drugs there,
but they just keep on it coming.
And when you read the book ARadical Reset and you really
(30:47):
should I talk about differentways drugs are brought into the
country, and the ways that Iknow because I was taught by the
cartel guys themselves areprobably outdated already.
I mean, who do you think thebest and brightest will pay you
a million dollars a year to besmart?
Or the government will pay you$60,000 a year to be an armed
bureaucrat.
Who do you think is going toget the better of that contest?
(31:08):
Just saying Okay.
So you know the talent is inthe cartels because that's where
the money is.
And I know that's ugly, butit's real and that's what being
an objectivist does for me.
(31:29):
There is such a thing asobjective reality.
You can pretend it isn'tobjectively true, but it is.
You can say no, it's not.
Yeah, you can insist all youwant, it's not true.
And it flies in the face ofreason to think that the top
talent would go to work for thepolice when they can make
millions of dollars working forthe cartels and the average
person.
Yeah, they're hurting addicts,but they don't care because
they're not related to theaddicts.
And why should they?
They're really very littledifferent from the guys that
make sugary cereal and make kidsobese and diabetic.
And they do because there'smoney in it.
(31:49):
That's just part of it.
No-transcript.
Hey everybody, it's me, your pal, herbie K, host of
A Radical Reset libertariancandidate for the 4th
Congressional District ofArizona, as a libertarian, and
let's talk today about crime.
Okay, so today's subject?
I'm going to talk about crime,because the news that's taking
place at this time is thatPresident Trump has essentially
(00:25):
not federalized but augmentedthe DC Police Department and
taken over the senior managementof it it seems cooperatively,
because the DC police chiefseems on board with this to
clean up the crime that's goingon in the nation's capital,
which, evidently going back toone of the things I often say,
which is figures, lie and liars,figure regardless of statistics
.
The fact is universallyDemocrat and Republican, as far
(00:48):
as I can tell.
Everybody who lives in DC saysit's a hellhole and I have to
tell you that I this is not anew issue as far as I'm
concerned when I lived in theWashington DC area from 1970,
let me think what it was 1977 to79, I think, were the two years
I lived I I was stationed atthe national security agency at
(01:10):
fort meade.
I was a russian linguist, um.
I lived in laurel maryland withmy?
Um first wife, who I marriedway too young but got two
beautiful children, so that thatwas not a mistake.
It was just an unfortunatechoice of who the mother was
going to be.
But that's a digression Anyway,by the way, god rest her soul.
She since has passed away.
(01:31):
I do not carry grudges.
I've let this go a long timeago, so I don't want you to
think I'm one of these guys thatwalks around hating my exes.
Actually, I love my exes.
I have two ex-wives.
One is deceased.
She died of an overdose and itwas probably suicide and I don't
really know the whole story,but it's very, very sad and I
(01:52):
agree.
And my second wife is alive andwell and we're good friends and
we'll probably remain friendsfor the rest of our lives.
I am a great friend and acrappy husband.
I've come to that conclusion.
This is why I have not marrieda third time.
I divorced I'll get into crimein just a second but I divorced
in 2004 from Terry.
We had been separated for acouple of years before that.
(02:13):
So you know it was almost andwe had the world's friendliest
divorce.
We used one lawyer.
We divided everything up downthe middle.
I paid my alimony and my childsupport and you know there's no
drama there to find out.
I always considered payingalimony, um, a badge of honor,
until my company's collapsed andI couldn't pay it anymore.
But that was that's what sentme to prison, and that's another
(02:35):
long story for another day.
But, um, and I never taught, bythe way, I just want to share
with you.
I never talked about the detailsof my crimes because it would
be weaseling and in order to, mylife today is about redemption.
Even doing this is aboutredemption, just leaving the
world a little better than Ifound it as a Stoic, which I
(02:56):
came to in prison, frankly, somepeople have a Christian
conversion.
I had a Stoicism conversion andI've always been an objectivist
.
Anyway, as a Stoic, I came tounderstand that I forget where I
was going with that thought.
Look at that, I just had asenior moment.
(03:17):
I was going to say somethingclever about adopting Stoicism
in prison and I know I was goingdown there and I completely
lost my train of thought.
And, by the way, not becauseI'm going senile, but I do this
sitting in my living room,frankly, and I'm looking at my
aquarium and in my and I havetwo aquariums At one point I had
18.
This is what a nutcase I am.
And, uh, I have some new fish Iput in, and I was just watching
(03:39):
them in in one of in one of mytwo aquariums, my 29 gallon, and
it was just.
It caught my attention and itjust.
You know, I don't have thebrain power to concentrate on
two things at the same time.
Okay, let's get back to crime.
Let's get back to crime and thesubject matter at hand.
I was talking about my ex-wives, anyway.
My second wife, terry, and Iare really good friends, anyway.
So why didn't we marry?
(04:00):
I didn't remarry.
I didn't remarry because I cameto the conclusion that two
strikes and you're out.
That was the whole point of thatwhole story is that, you know,
I don't know that I wouldinflict me on another woman.
Now, when I say inflict me, youknow I've never struck a woman
in my life and I'm notdenigrating, and you could, you
know, freely, during thiselection, I wouldn't doubt that
someone's going to dig up myrelationship with Terry and go
(04:21):
talk to her and she's going tosay I'm a nice guy that's never
been angry or violent oranything like that.
It's just not in my nature.
I can count on one hand howmany times I've really lost my
temper in the last 20 years.
You know, I really and it's notbecause I suppress my temper,
it's because I'm mostly laughingat things I've learned to just
kind of slough them off.
(04:42):
I've learned to just kind ofslough them off.
But, having said that, I date,but it would take what makes me
a crap husband and I'm onlysharing this for those of you
who might be in your ownrelationship issues, so you
don't feel alone.
I find that when you haveproblems, if you share them I
think this is the theory behindthings like aa and and addict
(05:05):
groups is that when you find outeverybody else's problems,
yours aren't such a big deal, sojust to share it with you.
Um, my mother scarred the shitout of me and basically I set up
betrayal in my relationshipsand I do it unconsciously.
And when I say betrayal I don'tmean, you know, like running
around, although I have donethat in the past, much to my
(05:25):
deep chagrin and regret.
But you know, no, I'm notdriven to run around, I'm more
driven to kind of ignore.
You know, the relationship setsup and I come off, as you know
Peter Pan, and then the nextthing, you know, I turn out to
be Captain Hook, you know, andnot that I'm a bad guy.
I just women don't like to beignored and I have a tendency to
(05:49):
do that and do it unconsciously.
And I do it because of allkinds of hidden betrayal dents
in my can and I'm aware of it.
But even though I'm aware of it, I obviously can't do a lot
about it, or I haven't done alot about it and it would just
take.
I've had one relationship in mylife where we got through it all
the way to the other side andthat one I ended up destroying
because the woman was older thanme and I somehow couldn't
picture that I was 27.
(06:10):
She was 35.
And we'd gotten to the otherside of my betrayal issues and
everything was going well and Idestroyed it anyway over
silliness.
So you know, I just don't thinkI have a good.
I'm just not good.
People aren't good ateverything.
I'm better off just playingwith my dog and my cat and my
fish and I'm really a swellfriend.
And you know I love women.
I don't hate them.
(06:31):
I didn't become a misogynist.
I just because of my mother'sbetrayal of me with my
stepfather the pedophile, youknow it just dented the crap out
of me.
So I'm really and at 68 yearsold.
I have to be honest with you, Idon't think about it a lot.
You know where, like sex woulddominate, for example, the
physical part of relationshipswould dominate my thought.
(06:52):
You know, earlier in my lifetoday it creeps in every now and
then and that's about it.
So, anyway, I don't know why Ishare all that with you.
I just felt wanted to.
So let's go, let's talk aboutcrime.
So the president's intervenedand most honest people,
including a lot of honestDemocrats like, for example, the
governor of Maryland, wes Moore, have come forward and said he
(07:16):
hasn't been openly critical ofthe president.
You know he's talked aboutthings that he's done as a
governor and he's, as Democratsgo, he is a good governor.
I'm not going to get into thenuts and bolts of Maryland
politics but overall, from whatI've seen, he's a pretty
competent guy.
In fact he's probably one ofthe better guys on the
Democratic side.
And even the mayor ofWashington DC, muriel Bowser,
(07:39):
has been muted in her attacks ofTrump because really things are
out of control.
Forget the statistics.
Figures lie and liars figure.
It's violent crime, gang crime,it's just.
And folks, that's the nation'scapital, it's just a disgrace.
Now it's interesting.
You know people.
The Republicans will screamtough on crime, tough on crime.
The progressives will screamdefund the police.
(08:01):
Defund the police and send outsocial workers.
In between is everybody elsewho's like, totally confused.
I thought I would talk today.
Instead of being tough on crime, let's be smart on crime.
Let's try something new.
Crime is a word that has manydifferent parts to it.
You know, there's violent crimeand there's drug crime and
(08:22):
there's theft crime and there'stheft and there's fraud and
there's all kinds of crime underthat catchphrase.
But when most of us think aboutcrime, we're thinking about
violent crime and invasive crime, the kind of crime that when we
come home and you walk in thefront door and your house has
been looted and everything's allover the floor and your prized
(08:42):
possessions are gone and youfeel completely violated.
It's almost as if you've beenraped.
It's all over the floor andyour prize possessions are gone
and you feel completely violated.
It's almost as if you've beenraped.
It's not on the same level.
Don't think I'm equating itwith rape, but it's an emotional
rape because your space hasbeen violated and it's a
horrible thing to be robbed.
I've been mugged.
I was mugged in San Francisco.
(09:04):
As a matter of fact, when I saywhen I was mugged, I fought
back, so nothing bad came to me.
I ended up getting into a fightwith a pack of homeless but
aside from a couple of bruises,I emerged relatively unscathed.
But I've been mugged and I wasmugged just because I was
standing there.
I mean just the target.
(09:26):
And having gone to prison, Ithink I have a very unique
perspective on crime andcriminals that other people just
don't have, of my similarbackground.
So all of you listening to meare probably from my general
similar background, which ismiddle class to upper middle
class.
Some of you may be raisedwealthier than me.
I was raised upper middle class.
I had a lot of advantages.
(09:47):
I'm educated, I'm an autodidactLike you, I'm interested in
lots and lots of things.
But if I hadn't gone to prison,I don't know that I would have
ever well, I know I would havenever been exposed to the
criminal element.
To be able to, I spent fiveyears digging into the criminal
mind.
So I think that I'm betterqualified than virtually every
other expert around if you canget past the part where I've
(10:09):
been a criminal.
Now, if you can't get past thepart where I've been a criminal,
I completely understand.
I do not get into that argument.
As I said earlier, I don't getinto the weeds on what I've done
and why I should or should notbe forgiven and what the details
are and mitigations andeverything else, because every
word I would say would be oh.
And that brings me back to whyI was bringing up Stoicism Every
word would be weaseling.
(10:32):
And in Stoicism and this was myoriginal point I was going to
when I was converted to Stoicismin prison, I converted myself
by reading the meditations ofMarcus Aurelius.
But anyway, to live a life ofvalue in stoicism, to live a
life of worth and of value, youhave to live a life of virtue.
And I think that thatunderlines what's wrong with our
(10:54):
whole society, because so manyof us have left traditional
religion and are out theredrifting aimlessly without any
track to run on, and becausedecadence is so fun and we do
everything so dumb in oursociety in so many ways
governmentally that we end up inthis morass of indecency that
we make decent.
And it's all connected Crime isall connected to the general
(11:19):
decadence that we find ourselvesdescending into as a country
and as a culture.
So today I want to talk aboutbeing smart on crime and I'm
going to go quick, butEverything I'm going to talk
about most everything I'm goingto talk about you can find in A
Radical Reset, the Manifesto ofAntipolitism, which is available
to you on Amazon in Kindlepaperback or hardcover, written
(11:41):
by me, herbie K.
Okay, so let's talk about crime.
First of all, let's recognizethat there are limited resources
with which a state or federalgovernment can fight crime.
This is really primarily astate and a local problem, and
there are only so many dollarsto do that and we've been
spending them stupidly for solong as part of our run-up of
(12:04):
the national debt that this iswhat I'm going to talk about
when I say let's be smart aboutcrime.
So the first suggestion I'mgoing to make and this is going
to be the most controversial,well, maybe not the most
controversial, but I'm justgoing to get it right off my
chest we have to legalize drugs,not decriminalize drugs.
Legalize drugs.
Now let me again this isspelled out in detail in my
(12:32):
basis, including footnotes in aradical reset, but I want to
just make this very, very clearand I'll share it with you as a
story.
I like to tell stories toillustrate my points.
When I was at the Kingman prison, so I was in a few different.
I was in the Pima County jailfor about two weeks and that's
where you go right after trial,and then I was sent to Alhambra
prison, which is a sortingprison, kind of just.
Well, you got the mentalpicture.
It's where they separateinmates by risk.
(12:55):
How much risk, community risk,are they?
What are the chances arethey're going to attack a guard,
attack another inmate, so onand so forth.
Once I went through that thatwas about 10 days I went to Yuma
.
I almost said Yuma, I almostput an H on it.
I don't know why I would havedone that.
I went to Yuma because I havegood Yuma.
You know that's a New Yorkaccent saying Yuma, you get it
(13:15):
Nevermind.
So I was out in Yuma, yuma,yuma.
By the way, the asshole ofAmerica, I'm sorry.
I know there are nice parts ofYuma and I've camped outside of
Yuma and bass fished on theColorado river many times.
But as far as the prisons go,what a shithole and flies like
you can't even understand,because they're right in the
middle of the lettuce fields andit's just swarms of biting
(13:38):
flies all the time.
It's just delightful and theonly thing that keeps the flies
under any kind of control arethe pigeons.
So we have gajillions ofpigeons which occasionally
inmates grab, slaughter and eat.
Yeah, I know, fun place prison.
Anyway, it's not an everydayoccurrence, although I have seen
them capture it into Sidewinder, which is a small rattlesnake
that moves sideways.
(13:59):
But anyway, I myself neverpartook, just saying.
But I want to talk to you aboutso.
After Yuma I was transferred toa private prison in Kingman,
arizona, and Kingman that was amuch better prison.
Speaking from a prisoner'sexperience, the private prison
was much better run than thepublic prison.
Period, end of story.
(14:20):
Just like in everything else inlife, profit is not a bad word.
They just did a better jobrunning the prison.
I'm not saying it was more laxor more slack or more anything
else, it's just that everythingworked and the state prison
everything.
It was anybody's guess.
So the menus were exactly thesame.
The state provides the food,they cook it.
But it tasted better in Kingman.
(14:41):
It was just better prepared,more care, more this, more that.
Everything was better.
Medical care was better, period.
But the other thing that wenton in Kingman prison is the drug
trade, and that's where I'mgoing to with this on the
legalization of drugs.
Long story short, I got to knowa lot of what are called the
PISAs very, very well.
Pisa is so prison is brokendown by racial group and, by the
(15:05):
way, that's a self-breakdown.
The prison doesn't do it, theinmates do it.
They just don't like each otherby race.
So there are the white guys,and I've talked about this
before, so I'll do this fast.
There are the white guys thatare called the Woods, which is
short for Pecker Woods.
Don't ask me why white guysself-identify as a Pecker Wood.
They do.
They're run by the AryanBrotherhood.
And the skinheads are the gangsthat run the whites in prison.
(15:27):
Each racial group is run by agang, frankly.
Then there are the black guyswho are called the kinfolk in
prison, and I forget which gangruns the kinfolk.
And then there are the Chicanos,which are the American Latins,
and there are the Paisas, whichare the foreign Latins.
They're mostly Mexican, butthere's some El Salvadorans and
(15:49):
Guatemalans, and so on and soforth.
A Paisa, it means country inSpanish, and Guatemalans, and so
on and so forth.
Apaisa, it means country inSpanish.
So basically, the country guysversus the city guys in the
American cities, and they hateeach other.
The reason they're twodifferent groups and not
together is they hate each other.
It's just as simple as that.
I don't know why they hate eachother.
I'll let them explain it to youif you ever get into a
discussion.
(16:09):
I have some inkling, but that'snot what this is about.
And then there are the chiefs,and the chiefs are great.
Those are the Native Americansand they keep to themselves and
they're very quiet and they'remostly there for
alcoholism-related things,because Native Americans just
don't metabolize alcohol.
Well, I think that's a medicalfact.
I think I could be crazy, butanyway, they're quiet're,
(16:33):
they're quiet and they keep tothemselves and they're mostly
easy to get along with.
I don't see, I don't think thewhole time I was in prison I
said 20 words to a chief.
You know, at one time I saidmore than 20 words, but I mean
at one time, and it's it wasn'thostile.
They just don't, they're,they're.
They're in their own place,they worship their own way, they
do a sweat lodge, they do thedrum, the dance, the whole thing
(16:55):
.
It's very interesting.
I used to like to hang outaround them, but anyway.
So back to the Pisces.
The Pisces ran the drugs in theprison yard because they're the
ones that are all connected tothe cartels.
And in the book A Radical ResetI lay out how the drugs got
into prison.
A little hint it doesn't comeup the assholes and vaginas of
people that come into prisonlike on TV.
Yes, that does go on.
And yes, people do try to bringit in up their asses and do try
(17:17):
to bring it in in their vaginas.
Visitors, you know, to comevisit their husbands and
boyfriends and all that kind ofgood stuff.
That's all true.
But that's an insignificantamount of drugs because, frankly
(17:38):
, there isn't not to be.
Well, I am going to be, I'mbeing graphic on purpose, but
there isn't an asshole in theworld big enough to carry the
amount of drugs that go on inprison Annually in the Kingman
prison.
I know this because the Piscesand I again, we're close and we
talked about numbers and whatwas going on and they were doing
about three and a half milliondollars a year in drug sales
inside of prison.
It's all done with barter andcashing it out on the outside.
There's a sophisticated systemon how it's done.
Well, when I say sophisticated,as sophisticated as an
unintelligent not unintelligent,sorry, uneducated drug addict
(18:00):
could handle, but there is asystem for how to convert the
barter to cash and pay for yourdrugs and so on and so forth.
And they come in by drone andthey're picked up by corrupt
corrections officers and thenhanded to the PISAs who then
distribute it.
And I don't mean to castaspersions on corrections
officers.
It's hard to raise a family offour on what they make and or
(18:22):
five or six or however big theirfamily is, and they're easy
targets.
And here's the bottom lineabout drones the worst substance
that's ever been invented inthe history of mankind that
kills more people than caraccidents and murders and any
other kind of accident combined,and every other kind of drug
(18:43):
but the one I'm going to namecombined and cancer and heart
disease.
The substance that kills morethan all of those things
combined every year is alcohol.
There are approximately twobillion people on the planet
that could be classified asalcoholics.
Here in the United States it'sabout 1 in 20 people is an
alcoholic.
Most of them are functionalalcoholics.
They don't consider themselvesdrug addicts, but they are.
(19:05):
There's absolutely nodifference, except that alcohol
is worse for you and much harderto withdraw from.
When you're a serious alcoholic, you're the kind that really is
drinking every day hard.
And, by the way, what do I callan alcoholic?
I'm going to use the definitionthat's used in a number of
studies.
But if you're drinking morethan four beers a day, or the
equivalent, you're probably analcoholic.
If, seven days a week, you viewthose beers as something you
(19:28):
have to have whether you tellyourself you don't have to have
them but you're going to havethem anyway, or whatever
bullshit you tell yourself youdon't have to have them but
you're going to have them anyway, or whatever bullshit you tell
yourself you're probably analcoholic but you're probably a
functional alcoholic.
Okay, and there are degrees ofthings.
We have to recognize this asgrownups.
Not everyone ends up in agutter.
Most alcoholics that I've knownin my life are perfect,
perfectly functional.
In fact, they're married toalcoholics and their children
(19:49):
grow up to be alcoholics.
They're all functionalalcoholics.
I grew up in an Irish Catholicneighborhood and I don't mean to
cast aspersions on the Irish,but there are certain things,
certain cultural stereotypes,you know, that lend themselves
to cultural stereotypes and inthe Irish, drink like fish.
I grew up in a place calledMount Lebanon, pennsylvania, and
back in the 60s people lefttheir doors open.
Neighbors would come back andforth.
(20:09):
We were all close to each otherand there were the Foy's and
the Cooney's and theMcElhenney's and the Keys and
the Merck's and the there's justa whole bunch of Irish
Catholics and they all went toeither St Anne's or St Thomas
More Church and we were like thetoken Jews on the block, which
was another story altogether,for another day.
But the long story short is weused to keep alcohol in the
(20:29):
house just for our neighbors.
My parents didn't particularlydrink, not even socially really.
We just thought Jews aren't bigdrinkers, we like to chew our
calories.
I don't mean that to be a joke,it's really kind of true.
But you know not to say therearen't Jewish alcoholics.
There are.
But we really kept beer andalcohol in the house for our
neighbors who would stop in andthey would start drinking, to
(20:54):
open the refrigerator and take acan of beer out, and the only
reason there was beer in therefrigerator was for them to
begin with, and it wasn't even abig deal, you know, it was just
a normalcy and I'm sure a lotof you live a life similar to
that and you're functionalalcoholics and that's great.
I'm not here to judge you, butI'm here to tell you there is
such a thing as functional drugaddicts.
You know, not everybody whotouches fentanyl turns into a
(21:15):
freak and we have to startaddressing alcohol is so much
bigger.
Fentanyl is a pinprick comparedto what alcohol kills every
year.
But just you know.
We've just decided as a culturealcohol is okay and the rest
are bad.
Now alcohol has some thingsabout it that other drugs don't
have, most of which is thesocial aspects.
(21:36):
You know I smoke marijuana, I'mthe first to tell you but it's
hard to be social when you'restoned out of your mind.
Now I get together with a fewof my friends and we have a
little smoke sesh we call it.
I don't do it during the day.
I'm not high as I'm talking toyou, but oftentimes at the end
of the day I'll get togetherwith a couple of my friends here
in the apartment complex I livewith and with our dogs usually,
(21:56):
and we get together.
I think we hotbox our dogs andwe have a little smoke sesh.
But the thing of it is it's notas social as alcohol.
Alcohol loosens you up, reducesyour inhibitions.
I understand why people like it.
I don't drink simply because Ican't stand the taste of alcohol
.
I just got genetically lucky.
It tastes like poison to me, Ito me, I to me.
You might as well drink rubbingalcohol.
I just don't understand it.
(22:17):
But having said that, I get thebenefit.
But I think it's time to growup, america, and understand that
we lost the drug war from thetime we began it.
And, without going into theentire dissertation, I do, in a
radical reset, the manifesto ofantipolitism available on Amazon
.
Without going into all that,let me just cut to the chase.
Okay, there is no example inthe history of the world of a
(22:40):
successful prohibition ofanything that anybody in a
culture wants, not just drugs,whether it's prostitutes or
drugs or anything else.
There's no such thing as asuccessful prohibition.
Prohibition, the word, simplymeans prohibiting the population
from getting something thatthey want by law.
A prohibition creates a blackmarket.
(23:00):
That's all it does.
And the reason I saylegalization, not
decriminalization, is we havefucked up marijuana legalization
.
It's not legal anywhere.
It's decriminalized everywhereor almost everywhere.
Legal anywhere, it'sdecriminalized everywhere or
almost everywhere.
Decriminalized means youreplace the drug, useless
bureaucracy, which adds costs tothe marijuana, which makes it
more expensive than if youcontinued to buy it from the
(23:22):
cartels.
So, ironically, thedecriminalization of marijuana
has not been harmful to thecartels, because they're still
selling pot and undercutting themarket, and they sell just as
high quality weed as as thedispensaries do, or so I'm told
Wink, wink, nudge, nudge.
So, having said that, we have tolegalize and we have to accept
(23:45):
the fact that a small percentageof the population, about one in
20 people, are going to flushtheir lives down the toilet,
whether it's on alcohol or drugs.
It's almost always on alcohol.
Drugs will hardly add to thattotal.
And not everyone's a junkie.
There are functional heroinaddicts, there are functional
cocaine addicts, there arefunctional, there's addiction,
(24:07):
but there are degrees ofaddiction.
Okay, and fentanyl, which is thecurrent boogeyman, is the
reason that the cartels arebringing in fentanyl, which is
the the current boogeyman, isthe reason that the cartels are
bringing in fentanyl.
There's two reasons for it.
One is it's a lot.
It packs a lot more bang forthe, for the volume, so it's
easier to smuggle it into thecountry, which saves costs,
which allows them to sellcheaper to their customers.
(24:29):
And that brings me to thesecond reason, which is their
customers want it.
A heroin addict knows how tohandle his or her heroin.
Now, yes, there are a lot ofoverdoses and fentanyl is
dangerous.
If it were legal, there wouldbe far fewer overdoses because
it would be properly cut,properly diluted, so to speak.
That's what cut means, so thatit would be used much more
safely and we would kill farless people than we do today.
(24:53):
On fentanyl overdoses, I'm notsaying fentanyl is great to be
used unprescribed.
I'm saying that all addictionis is the unprescribed
medication of self-loathing.
That's what addiction is, andall we're doing is filling up
our prisons full of people whohate themselves because they
grew up in horrible situationsokay, almost always without a
father, with mothers that, asoften as not, are addicts
(25:16):
themselves, raise themselves onthe streets, breed like bunny
rabbits.
They're not restrictingthemselves to one or two
children like the intelligent orthe educated or the upwardly
mobile.
No, no, no, no, no.
They're out there humping likebunny rabbits, having baby mamas
and baby daddies multiple.
I had a woman.
I drive part-time to supplementmy income at this point in time
(25:40):
because I am not a wealthy man.
I drive something called Vail,which is kind of like Uber for
convicts.
Guys with criminal recordscan't drive Uber, so I drive
Vail.
Anyway, long story short.
Yeah, I know I have someexciting stories from that too.
I had a woman in my car thismorning, lovely young woman, but
she has eight children and thegirl couldn't have been 30 years
old Okay, she maybe was 28.
And I mean she was trying totake care of her kids.
(26:04):
She was taking them to thedentist.
It's not like she was a reallypretty good mom actually, but
she had eight kids by get this,eight different baby daddies and
that's.
And in talking to her I don'tget the judgments inside the car
because I don't want to havefights inside the car, which is
exactly what it'll end up being.
So I just listen and nod myhead, but she just didn't see
anything wrong with that.
And that's what's going on,guys, and we need to bring this
(26:27):
out into the sunshine and stopit, because it all links to the
undermining of our society andthe increase in crime.
So part one of being smart oncrime is legalized drugs.
Bring it out into the open.
Okay, long story short.
If we legalize drugs, the costto support a habit will drop
from hundreds of dollars a weekto for $20,.
An addict would be able you'dbe able to buy heroin, for
(26:49):
example, in a Walgreens for lessthan the cost of aspirin,
because heroin is cheap toproduce and it's not patentable
because it's been around forever, so it would be produced by
generic producers.
The same is true, by the way,of all of the drugs cocaine,
crystal meth, whatever theyshould be able to walk into a
Walgreens or a CVS or whateverit is you've got near you, rite
Aid, whatever.
Pick up the drugs safely andproperly.
(27:12):
Cut, pick up sterile needles.
If they're doing mainlining, alot of them smoke it.
A lot of them don't necessarilyshoot it.
I learned all this stuff inprison and let them go home and
do what they want to do andfunction through their lives.
And most of them you'll neverknow that they're addicts,
because they're functionaladdicts and the ones that aren't
won't have to break into yourhouse.
So theft and violent crime willplummet.
(27:35):
You see, guys, the reason thecartels are violent.
Let me explain it to you as aguy that counted many guys in
the cartels as friends when Iwas in prison.
Okay, listen to me carefully.
They aren't violent becausethey're monsters.
They're violent because they'rein an illegal business that
they can't sue if they getscrewed in a business deal.
So it's all done in a handshakeand there are no enforceable
contracts.
So if party A screws party B,party B's only recourse is
(27:58):
violence.
So if we legalize drugs and theycome into the sunshine, let's
say, the animals convertthemselves into legitimate
enterprises that are sellingdrugs in the United States
legitimately, in the open,paying taxes, yada, yada, yada,
they won't have to kill anybody.
They'll go to court.
By the way, I don't know thatthat would happen.
I don't know what thetransition is.
I don't know that Pfizer orMerck wouldn't do it.
(28:19):
I don't know who would do it.
It's not important.
In a free market, when a needpresents itself, plenty of
people will step into the breachto find ways to fill that need.
But all of them will be cheapbecause there'll be no cost of
interdiction, which will reduceviolent crime and theft by 90%.
Don't kid yourself.
They say that only 34% ofpeople in prison are there for
(28:43):
drug crimes.
That's again one of thosefigures lie and liars, figures,
things.
That's because they're talkingabout possession or
paraphernalia or sale.
But the other 60 somethingpercent, 62, 63%, most of them,
their violence is drug relatedbecause they were in an illegal
enterprise.
And if the drugs were legal,there wouldn't have been an
(29:03):
assault, there wouldn't havebeen a murder, there wouldn't
have been a beat down Now therewill still be psychopaths, but
just imagine a world where 90%of crime goes away and all that
funding isn't being wasted andwe can then concentrate on
putting more police on thestreets and preventing real
crime, real murderers, realrapists.
That's what I'm talking aboutbeing smart on crime.
Step one is legalize drugs.
(29:26):
Stop fighting a war.
We're going to lose, becauseeverybody loses a prohibition.
There is no historic example ofsuccess.
Whenever someone thinks they'regoing to do something
successful that nobody has donebefore, what they're saying is
yeah, everyone else was dumb,I'm the smart one.
What do you figure?
The odds are that in all ofhistory, he's the smart one.
It's like right now, this guy,zoran Mandani, is running for
the socialist mayor of New York.
He's going to win and NewYork's going to get what they
(29:46):
voted for.
Good and hard, believe me andyeah, I know I'm stealing that
quote, but it is what it is.
That was HL Mencken, by the way, who had disdain for democracy
and disdain for the voters,which I kind of understand where
he was coming from, without the19th century cultural disdain
that goes with that.
But anyway, mandani is going tofail because of socialism can't
(30:06):
work.
He's not going to be.
There are plenty of socialistidiots in this country who think
that he's going to be the oneto be able to do it.
Good.
It don't fail like all theothers, because it can't succeed
, it's.
It's a horrible system thatwill always fail 100% of the
time.
Prohibition is a horrible ideathat always fails 100% of the
time.
We are not going to be thefirst culture in the history of
the world to have a successfulprohibition.
(30:26):
It hasn't been successful sofar.
It's never going to besuccessful.
And we spent over a trilliondollars since 1971.
That's just in federal money,not to mention state and local,
which is even higher and we'vepissed away every penny of it
and stopped.
Yeah, they catch a little drugshere and a little drugs there,
but they just keep on it coming.
And when you read the book ARadical Reset and you really
(30:47):
should I talk about differentways drugs are brought into the
country, and the ways that Iknow because I was taught by the
cartel guys themselves areprobably outdated already.
I mean, who do you think thebest and brightest will pay you
a million dollars a year to besmart?
Or the government will pay you$60,000 a year to be an armed
bureaucrat.
Who do you think is going toget the better of that contest?
(31:08):
Just saying Okay.
So you know the talent is inthe cartels because that's where
the money is.
And I know that's ugly, butit's real and that's what being
an objectivist does for me.
(31:29):
There is such a thing asobjective reality.
You can pretend it isn'tobjectively true, but it is.
You can say no, it's not.
Yeah, you can insist all youwant, it's not true.
And it flies in the face ofreason to think that the top
talent would go to work for thepolice when they can make
millions of dollars working forthe cartels and the average
person.
Yeah, they're hurting addicts,but they don't care because
they're not related to theaddicts.
And why should they?
They're really very littledifferent from the guys that
make sugary cereal and make kidsobese and diabetic.
And they do because there'smoney in it.
(31:49):
That's just part of it.
No-transcript.
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