September 24, 2025 • 20 mins
This is a rebroadcast of ep. 119
In this episode of Libertarians Talk Psychology, we dive into the Netflix series Narcos and connect its gritty storytelling to America’s decades-long War on Drugs. While Narcos shows the DEA and U.S. forces hunting down Colombian drug lords, the real question is whether U.S. policy fueled the very chaos it claimed to fight. Was the United States truly protecting its citizens, or did political interests, corruption, and unintended consequences make the situation worse?
We explore how prohibition, black markets, and government intervention shaped the rise of cartels, and what psychology tells us about power, control, and human behavior in this so-called “war.” This conversation challenges mainstream narratives and asks listeners to think critically about history, politics, and the human cost of the War on Drugs.
Clip Used: Narcos, season 3, episode 10
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Bluesky
All audio & videos edited by: Jay Prescott Videography
In this episode of Libertarians Talk Psychology, we dive into the Netflix series Narcos and connect its gritty storytelling to America’s decades-long War on Drugs. While Narcos shows the DEA and U.S. forces hunting down Colombian drug lords, the real question is whether U.S. policy fueled the very chaos it claimed to fight. Was the United States truly protecting its citizens, or did political interests, corruption, and unintended consequences make the situation worse?
We explore how prohibition, black markets, and government intervention shaped the rise of cartels, and what psychology tells us about power, control, and human behavior in this so-called “war.” This conversation challenges mainstream narratives and asks listeners to think critically about history, politics, and the human cost of the War on Drugs.
Clip Used: Narcos, season 3, episode 10
Follow Us:
YouTube
Bluesky
All audio & videos edited by: Jay Prescott Videography
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is a rebroadcast of an earlier episode.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
You're listening to the podcast Coffee with Mike and Julie
Libertarians Talk Psychology. This is current commentary from an NBA
businessman and a PhD psychologist, Too might.
Speaker 3 (00:18):
Today, I want to talk about some realizations I'm coming
to after I watched a Netflix series, Narcus. This series
has to do with the drug trade in Columbia from
the nineteen nineties nineties. Yeah, well nineteen seventies really, But
(00:40):
the point is that I'm suspicious after watching three seasons
and how this hole from Pablo Escobar and how he
became a billionaire in the cocaine traffick, and how the
US got so involved in it and his death and
then the Cali cartel takes over and then they defeat
(01:01):
the Cali cartel, I'm suspicious that not only was the
United States involved in it and making it worse than
how to be To begin with, I'm beginning to be
suspicious that the US was the driving force behind the
drug trade.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
To begin with, does the series suggest that the US
was a driving force? Okay?
Speaker 3 (01:21):
The series is all about controlling the bad guys, and
the bad guys were the drug traffickers. So they were
all in favor of killing these people.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
So it's like cops and robbers.
Speaker 3 (01:32):
But the characters in the show, and this is based
in reality, they're talking about real historical characters. But they
expressed their frustration with government corruption, including US government correction
and including the corruption in US agencies like the DEA
and the CIA. They were frustrated with that and they
were overcoming that corruption in order to kill these bad guys.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
Now is that depicted in the series? Yeah? Okay, it
so we were messing with them, and our cops were
involved in the storyline of what's going on in Colombia.
Speaker 3 (02:08):
In Colombia, so let me just mention a couple of
drug related facts in Colombia. Drug related deaths in the
fifty years was over two hundred thousand people. Most of
those were civilians in Mexico over that same time period.
It's four times that number.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
Four times that number in Mexico.
Speaker 3 (02:29):
Yes, but the show wasn't dealing with that. I just
happened to one across.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (02:34):
And keep in mind that we used to have big
drug wars against pot and right now pot is no
longer as serious a crime. We aren't killing each other
over pot. And roughly fifty percent of the United States
is able to access legal marijuana. And of course, if
you're going to keep guide in mind, then also keep
(02:56):
in mind we used to have big time drug wars
when it came came to alcohol in the al capone days.
That was a big deal.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
Yeah, And whatever you restrict, I mean, that's the libertarian philosophy.
Is that restrict it, and you increase the supply demand issues,
and all of a sudden you have a black market.
That's right, And so it's stupid to create go around
creating black market.
Speaker 3 (03:20):
So let me go ahead and just play this little
clip that is an excerpt from the show and just
kind of discuss it from there.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
And so the truth got out. The news that the
Cali cartel had donated to the President's campaign in exchange
for virtual immunity turned Columbia upside down when the highest
ranking DEA agent in the country went on the record
and said, not only did the United States know about it,
(03:49):
but we allowed it to happen. They couldn't ad from
it anymore.
Speaker 3 (03:54):
Okay, So I'm not sure where to go from here
on that except to go let me go ahead and
go to my jokes.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
We go from black market death, market death everywhere and
go to jokes.
Speaker 3 (04:07):
Well, I've almost made my point is that I am
suspicious that this whole thing was driven by and accelerated
by the United States involvement in the drug trafficking. Thought.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
Well, I would say that I would agree with that
hypothesis because any system and the comps. We've talked about
the police force, and there's law enforcement. Let's just talk
about law enforcement. That includes a lot of agencies that
want to do their job and see themselves as morally superior.
They want income protection, they get a job in law enforcement,
(04:41):
and all of a sudden, everybody's a crook. That's the
nature of a system. It begins to define its own
survival and so instead of get a proper outcome to
law enforcement, you get these unintended consequences. So a system
like law enforcement has two goals. One is it's go
to you know, fight crime. The other that we find
(05:04):
at an unconscious level, is to survive system survival. So
you get that no matter what system you're talking about,
you're going to get those two goals.
Speaker 3 (05:13):
All through this series, this Narcos series, and now, by
the way, buyer. Beware, most of this is in Spanish,
so you have to.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
Read this if you're watching a subtitle. I mean, you
were talking about this.
Speaker 3 (05:25):
Show, kind of brushing up on my high school Spanish
to take you.
Speaker 2 (05:28):
I guess you know, I've noticed that I kind of
prefer to watch something in French, you know, to see
if I can figure out what they're saying. But you
know you hate subtitled films. And then I'm walking in
there You're watching Narcos and like, this is in Spanish.
So I guess it was very interesting to you, because
I've never seen you agree to watch anything subtitle.
Speaker 3 (05:49):
It's a topic that I like, and I like that
it was based in reality. But also if you remember,
I have a family tied to this, and I want
to mention that I.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
Don't remember that I blocked on that you have a
family tie to the.
Speaker 3 (06:03):
In the In the series, they mentioned that one of
the major bad guys was Seal Very sal Very Seal
Very Seal was a very effective pilot who was flying
drugs back and forth from Columbia. But Barry Seal is
from Louisiana. In fact, he's from Baton Rouge. He was
a big time LSU football fan.
Speaker 2 (06:25):
He said in one of the interviews, you know, before
he was killed, that what are you going to do
in Baton Rouge, Louisiana when you can't go to the
football game?
Speaker 3 (06:33):
That's right, you know.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
That was his excuse for becoming a drug trafficker.
Speaker 3 (06:37):
Well, if I remember, right, I have to be wrong
about that when he made that particular comment. But the
US found out who he was, and he felt like, okay,
well I have a you know, I can just turn
over I can just tell you what I got pictures.
You know, I got proof.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
I can become an informant.
Speaker 3 (06:54):
I can become an informant. And they said, okay, we
need to put you in witness protection. And I think
that was when he made his comment, if you put
me in witness protection, I can't go to LSU football
games on the weekend. And that's that's my whole light.
I mean, that is what life is about, is LSU's football.
So of course he was not in witness protection. He
(07:15):
was at the Salvation Army location well in Baton Rouge.
Paulo Escobar, people from Columbia Tracking tracked him down and
murdered him in his car in Baton rouge, you woll
to say something.
Speaker 2 (07:30):
Yeah, I'm trying to say that the judge in that
case totally blew it. He knew he was.
Speaker 3 (07:35):
In a dan.
Speaker 2 (07:36):
The story that I heard was not that very CEO
asked to be out of protection. The judge threw him
out of protection. It was very suspicious why the judge
took him out of protection.
Speaker 3 (07:47):
In fact, I heard it through some attorneys. They what
they expressed to me was that the judge gave Very
Seal very limited choices when it came to the witness
protection stuff, and the very just wasn't much of a
choice for Burry Seal.
Speaker 2 (08:03):
I heard it was no choice. He took him out
of witness protection. Okay, here's the story I heard, and
of course this is just all kinds of stories, but
that the judge made a decision that got him killed.
Speaker 3 (08:15):
Yeah, that's a good way to say. So, he was
sleeping at the Salvation Army. He was stationed at the
Salvation Army at the time. My father was having problem
with the law. And by the way, that the death
of Burry Seal was a big deal in in the state,
he was a big deal nationally.
Speaker 2 (08:35):
I mean, it's a big story. There's a movie about this.
There's a movie about Barry Seal.
Speaker 3 (08:40):
Anyway, so berryit he's in that very Seal is murdered
the next night. The person who takes over Burry Seal's
orders was my father at the stay at the Salvation Army.
My father was in trouble with the courts over tax
basi and I think it was I don't know what it.
Speaker 2 (08:56):
Was, probably always taxed.
Speaker 3 (08:58):
So my father had a period of a month or
so where.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
He was doing community service.
Speaker 3 (09:03):
Yeah, you had to do community service, but he was
staying in the same bed that Barry Seal had been
in the night before. So well, let me do my
corruption jokes.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
Since we'll go we'll go from death, death and death
and mayhem. Yeah, criminals, death, mayhem. We'll go to the
jokes lighting up.
Speaker 3 (09:25):
And I guess the point is when you're talking about corruption,
the point is when you're trying to enforce laws that
control consenting adults, you're going to get corruption. Well, you're
going to get corruption and government no matter what, but
especially when you're trying to enforce laws that are restricting
consenting adults, you're going to get some serious corruption because
(09:47):
there are going to be some people in government who think,
why are we enforcing this stupid law.
Speaker 2 (09:51):
Well, I'm going to go further than that and say,
anytime you restrict anybody, you take the risk of a
black market being created. It's unintended consequence, which fuels the
unconscious law enforcement reinforcers. But you create crime and then
you get paid to fight it is a feedback loop
(10:13):
that we don't often see. It's a it's invisible to us,
but you create crime by making something a crime, and
then you have to pay your law enforcement to fight crime,
ramp it up, and to ramp it up.
Speaker 3 (10:27):
Because the solution is always more government, more police. There
you go to solve them.
Speaker 2 (10:33):
There you go. So that that's a never ending story.
Speaker 3 (10:36):
That's the series. That's this narcous series. They start off
by commenting the drug enforcement agent starts off by saying,
in the early years of Columbia, we were chasing guys
who were wearing flip flots because they're trying to hide.
There it's marijuana and they're trying to run away from
the cops and they're wearing flip flops trying to want
to run away from the cop. When things got more serious,
(10:59):
people started having guns, and they were shooting at the cops,
and they would weren't wearing flip flops anymore more. They
were wearing they were more elite. Yes, you know, the
the bullets, bullet, bulletproof vests and all this. So as
you ramp up the enforcement effort, you ramp up the
profit that the black market realizes and they get more
and more creative about avoiding the police.
Speaker 1 (11:20):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:21):
Now, this is a good topic, and I don't I
want to keep on this for just a minute more
that any system the way you're talking about this, the
means becomes the goal rather than the end, and we
lose track of the d and it becomes bureaucratic. I mean,
that's the word for when the means become the in
(11:42):
rather than the inn becoming.
Speaker 3 (11:44):
The end, and the public has a short memory, they
have actors, they don't really remember. Wait a minute, what
we were doing in the first place, and what you know,
did we really have much of a drug problem before all?
Speaker 2 (11:56):
Yeah? Yeah, to add to that, wasn't cocaine in original
coca cola?
Speaker 3 (12:02):
Well? I think so, but at.
Speaker 2 (12:03):
Least that's the rumor is like cocaine, people could go
and get cocaine I mean, I think Freud smoked cocaine
or I mean, in other words, this used to be long,
long time ago legal not that I'm for legalizing it,
but I don't know, I don't know this.
Speaker 3 (12:21):
Apparently, it wasn't until the nineteen twenties that we started
prescribing drugs, started having doctors prescribing drugs. And as soon
as we did, as soon as we started restricting what
people get at the drug store could have, we started
a black market and we started having enforcement problems. But
(12:42):
before the nineteen twenties, you could go to a drug store.
You could buy anything you wanted to, and it was
up to the druggist to recognize that there's a problem
and say, look, I don't think you ought to be
you need to you're addicted, you know, yeah, you're getting addicted.
We need to be helping you with this. And it
worked pretty well, but people were concerned about it, so
(13:03):
they started trying to restrict the drugs. And it doesn't
take but a few years and people forget that. You know,
we didn't have a drug problem until we started.
Speaker 2 (13:11):
Well, we need to we need to talk about that.
I mean, that is a very very important point. The
question is would you have more drug problems if you
restrict are more drug problems if you don't restrict The
idea is I think not well understood. I don't think
it's well understood. I do know that if you don't
restrict it, you shift the accountability and responsibility down to
(13:35):
the individual. And if you do restrict it, you have
the responsibility in the group, group behavior, the police who
are created by the group. So if we just think
of it in a set in simple terms, there's the
group and the individual. Where do you want the ultimate
responsibility to reside. I wanted to reside with the individual
because why because the individual is less corruptible than the group.
(13:59):
When the group goes corrupt, the group is cheating, it says,
every single time. It's not like only once in a while,
it's every single time.
Speaker 3 (14:08):
Okay, I have two corruptions, Joe.
Speaker 2 (14:10):
Okay, this is a good point for the joke.
Speaker 3 (14:11):
Okay. A little girl asked her father, Daddy, what is corruption?
Go bring me a beer and I'll tell you. But
mommy said you should stop drinking. Get yourself an ice
cream too while you bring me that beer.
Speaker 2 (14:22):
Okay, why is that funny?
Speaker 3 (14:25):
It is funny, but he corrupted his daughter.
Speaker 2 (14:27):
You can have an ice cream as long as you
bring me this. Okay, here's another one that is that's
kind of lame, but it is. It is kind of funny.
Speaker 3 (14:35):
Yeah, call me a racist if you want. But south
of the border is a sea of violence, corruption and stupidity.
I would in touch with a ten foot pole. Thank
god I live in Canada.
Speaker 2 (14:48):
He's talking about the United States. Oh that's sad but true.
Speaker 3 (14:53):
Sho. You can see where Canadians would say that. Of
course they can't say it now. And this truck or thing, really, you.
Speaker 2 (14:59):
Know, I have this in Canada and you can't get
out of Canada. They lock their as citizens in I know.
I mean I heard that and she's like, we aren't
allowed out of the country. I was like, what the
hell kind of country is that you can't get out of?
It had to do with COVID, which is COVID and
its lack of proper treatment has escalated the power in
(15:23):
the fascist glob glob I've said glob and I meant blob.
The fascist like blob. It's good, like a glob of spit,
Like yeah, but the COVID is like, we can protect
you from dying of COVID. Well, in fact, they couldn't.
(15:45):
In fact, they facilitated old people dying of COVID in
New York. They facilitate a bunch of old people getting COVID.
The behavior of a group is almost always wrong because
the group dynamics well group behavior.
Speaker 3 (15:58):
Group four fits in with my comment that government can't
do anything right.
Speaker 2 (16:02):
It can't do anything right. And you know, there is
a reason psychologically for it is because and I find
this out, feel like I'm in the trenches, you know,
in my community. But it's like a laboratory learning experience.
For me. It's like it's very, very frustrating, and then
when I accept it, it's like fascinating. But they can't
do anything right because when human beings get together, they
(16:24):
have no mechanisms for problem solving. There are a bunch
of kooks when it comes to problem solving. This is
why I enjoyed working in industry. In industry, aside from
this sounding sexist, there was always some guy at the
top whose job it was not to be an idiot.
There's no such thing with free ranging primate. It's like
(16:45):
some of the psychologists and leadership of positions, it's like
let me show you how much I can be an
idiot about this.
Speaker 3 (16:51):
Oh, that such thing as an idiot leading a group
in the primate, is that what you were trying to say.
Speaker 2 (16:56):
Oh, I must have bungled that terribly to have you
so confused us. The reason I liked working with industry
is because there was always some guide top at the top,
who wanted to be better at effective problem solving. Okay,
in volunteer organizations, no such person. It's just a free
for all of idiocy. And that's kind of like. People
(17:19):
are not good at group problem solving. So when you
get a group, you're very very lucky to have good
leadership and good followers, and mostly you don't.
Speaker 3 (17:28):
So the distinction I would make from your observation is
that in a business, they got to make money, you have.
Speaker 2 (17:35):
A clear feedback mechanism, where at least to some degree,
you have some feedback loop that is self correcting. But
where do you have that in a volunteer organization, which
is the basics of politics. Politics are all volunteer volunteers.
Like I'm in this group, I'm in the left group,
and therefore I follow like an automaton. Whatever they say,
(17:58):
I copy, whatever they say, I'm going to talk about
copycat behavior in primate, but I'm in the right and
I copy whatever they say. That's irrational. And so in
business you have someone who's like at the top trying
to be better because you get that direct feedback, corrective feedback,
it's like you're either failing or succeeding, or you're neutral.
Speaker 3 (18:20):
One other observation I'd like to make about that is
you get bad leaders all the time. Yes, they just
don't survive. Yeah, a lot of business.
Speaker 2 (18:27):
Yeah, because of that direct feedback is like he failed, Okay,
move him out, demote him, and put somebody else in.
Speaker 3 (18:34):
If you're lucky. If you're not lucky, the whole business
goes under and the competing business survives.
Speaker 2 (18:41):
The competes wins, which is the reason we're talking. That's
the reason we're libertarians because we believe in that feedback loop,
and in government you don't get any of that. In fact,
that's what's blown me away in the last ten years
when I started looking at it. Clearly from an organizational
(19:01):
psychology standpoint, these people not only don't use feedback loops.
When you get the feedback to government, it makes no difference.
They ignore the feedback, it's amazing phenomena.
Speaker 3 (19:15):
No, they don't respond to what makes sense.
Speaker 2 (19:18):
There you go.
Speaker 3 (19:18):
They respond to the public rising up and objecting.
Speaker 2 (19:22):
Day. Well you say that, you say that, but is
that really can we really say that's true right now?
Speaker 3 (19:27):
Well, they will fight the public if they can.
Speaker 2 (19:30):
There you go. It's kind of depressing, but I mean,
change has always happened. We've always progressed forward. But it
takes a long time, takes a lot. And you know,
Benjamin Franklin said that he has this quote and I
can't remember it, about how long it takes for something
to make a difference. It's like a couple of generations.
(19:50):
He noticed it, and I'm noticing it now that we're
pretty as humans, we're pretty irrational.
Speaker 3 (19:57):
Well, I think we've discussed this is about as far
a we can go do anything you want to say
before I conclude.
Speaker 2 (20:04):
Well that we're kind of drilling down and we're kind
of very much worried about law enforcement being able to
correct itself. That's what the narcos, your binge worthy narcos
watching is like, Oh my god, the interventions of law
enforcement might be just as app to make it worse.
(20:24):
In contrast, to making it better.
Speaker 3 (20:27):
I'm going to take that as a conclusion.
Speaker 2 (20:30):
Okay, this has been a rebroadcast of an earlier episode.
This is a rebroadcast of an earlier episode.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
You're listening to the podcast Coffee with Mike and Julie
Libertarians Talk Psychology. This is current commentary from an NBA
businessman and a PhD psychologist, Too might.
Speaker 3 (00:18):
Today, I want to talk about some realizations I'm coming
to after I watched a Netflix series, Narcus. This series
has to do with the drug trade in Columbia from
the nineteen nineties nineties. Yeah, well nineteen seventies really, But
(00:40):
the point is that I'm suspicious after watching three seasons
and how this hole from Pablo Escobar and how he
became a billionaire in the cocaine traffick, and how the
US got so involved in it and his death and
then the Cali cartel takes over and then they defeat
(01:01):
the Cali cartel, I'm suspicious that not only was the
United States involved in it and making it worse than
how to be To begin with, I'm beginning to be
suspicious that the US was the driving force behind the
drug trade.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
To begin with, does the series suggest that the US
was a driving force? Okay?
Speaker 3 (01:21):
The series is all about controlling the bad guys, and
the bad guys were the drug traffickers. So they were
all in favor of killing these people.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
So it's like cops and robbers.
Speaker 3 (01:32):
But the characters in the show, and this is based
in reality, they're talking about real historical characters. But they
expressed their frustration with government corruption, including US government correction
and including the corruption in US agencies like the DEA
and the CIA. They were frustrated with that and they
were overcoming that corruption in order to kill these bad guys.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
Now is that depicted in the series? Yeah? Okay, it
so we were messing with them, and our cops were
involved in the storyline of what's going on in Colombia.
Speaker 3 (02:08):
In Colombia, so let me just mention a couple of
drug related facts in Colombia. Drug related deaths in the
fifty years was over two hundred thousand people. Most of
those were civilians in Mexico over that same time period.
It's four times that number.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
Four times that number in Mexico.
Speaker 3 (02:29):
Yes, but the show wasn't dealing with that. I just
happened to one across.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (02:34):
And keep in mind that we used to have big
drug wars against pot and right now pot is no
longer as serious a crime. We aren't killing each other
over pot. And roughly fifty percent of the United States
is able to access legal marijuana. And of course, if
you're going to keep guide in mind, then also keep
(02:56):
in mind we used to have big time drug wars
when it came came to alcohol in the al capone days.
That was a big deal.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
Yeah, And whatever you restrict, I mean, that's the libertarian philosophy.
Is that restrict it, and you increase the supply demand issues,
and all of a sudden you have a black market.
That's right, And so it's stupid to create go around
creating black market.
Speaker 3 (03:20):
So let me go ahead and just play this little
clip that is an excerpt from the show and just
kind of discuss it from there.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
And so the truth got out. The news that the
Cali cartel had donated to the President's campaign in exchange
for virtual immunity turned Columbia upside down when the highest
ranking DEA agent in the country went on the record
and said, not only did the United States know about it,
(03:49):
but we allowed it to happen. They couldn't ad from
it anymore.
Speaker 3 (03:54):
Okay, So I'm not sure where to go from here
on that except to go let me go ahead and
go to my jokes.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
We go from black market death, market death everywhere and
go to jokes.
Speaker 3 (04:07):
Well, I've almost made my point is that I am
suspicious that this whole thing was driven by and accelerated
by the United States involvement in the drug trafficking. Thought.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
Well, I would say that I would agree with that
hypothesis because any system and the comps. We've talked about
the police force, and there's law enforcement. Let's just talk
about law enforcement. That includes a lot of agencies that
want to do their job and see themselves as morally superior.
They want income protection, they get a job in law enforcement,
(04:41):
and all of a sudden, everybody's a crook. That's the
nature of a system. It begins to define its own
survival and so instead of get a proper outcome to
law enforcement, you get these unintended consequences. So a system
like law enforcement has two goals. One is it's go
to you know, fight crime. The other that we find
(05:04):
at an unconscious level, is to survive system survival. So
you get that no matter what system you're talking about,
you're going to get those two goals.
Speaker 3 (05:13):
All through this series, this Narcos series, and now, by
the way, buyer. Beware, most of this is in Spanish,
so you have to.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
Read this if you're watching a subtitle. I mean, you
were talking about this.
Speaker 3 (05:25):
Show, kind of brushing up on my high school Spanish
to take you.
Speaker 2 (05:28):
I guess you know, I've noticed that I kind of
prefer to watch something in French, you know, to see
if I can figure out what they're saying. But you
know you hate subtitled films. And then I'm walking in
there You're watching Narcos and like, this is in Spanish.
So I guess it was very interesting to you, because
I've never seen you agree to watch anything subtitle.
Speaker 3 (05:49):
It's a topic that I like, and I like that
it was based in reality. But also if you remember,
I have a family tied to this, and I want
to mention that I.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
Don't remember that I blocked on that you have a
family tie to the.
Speaker 3 (06:03):
In the In the series, they mentioned that one of
the major bad guys was Seal Very sal Very Seal
Very Seal was a very effective pilot who was flying
drugs back and forth from Columbia. But Barry Seal is
from Louisiana. In fact, he's from Baton Rouge. He was
a big time LSU football fan.
Speaker 2 (06:25):
He said in one of the interviews, you know, before
he was killed, that what are you going to do
in Baton Rouge, Louisiana when you can't go to the
football game?
Speaker 3 (06:33):
That's right, you know.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
That was his excuse for becoming a drug trafficker.
Speaker 3 (06:37):
Well, if I remember, right, I have to be wrong
about that when he made that particular comment. But the
US found out who he was, and he felt like, okay,
well I have a you know, I can just turn
over I can just tell you what I got pictures.
You know, I got proof.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
I can become an informant.
Speaker 3 (06:54):
I can become an informant. And they said, okay, we
need to put you in witness protection. And I think
that was when he made his comment, if you put
me in witness protection, I can't go to LSU football
games on the weekend. And that's that's my whole light.
I mean, that is what life is about, is LSU's football.
So of course he was not in witness protection. He
(07:15):
was at the Salvation Army location well in Baton Rouge.
Paulo Escobar, people from Columbia Tracking tracked him down and
murdered him in his car in Baton rouge, you woll
to say something.
Speaker 2 (07:30):
Yeah, I'm trying to say that the judge in that
case totally blew it. He knew he was.
Speaker 3 (07:35):
In a dan.
Speaker 2 (07:36):
The story that I heard was not that very CEO
asked to be out of protection. The judge threw him
out of protection. It was very suspicious why the judge
took him out of protection.
Speaker 3 (07:47):
In fact, I heard it through some attorneys. They what
they expressed to me was that the judge gave Very
Seal very limited choices when it came to the witness
protection stuff, and the very just wasn't much of a
choice for Burry Seal.
Speaker 2 (08:03):
I heard it was no choice. He took him out
of witness protection. Okay, here's the story I heard, and
of course this is just all kinds of stories, but
that the judge made a decision that got him killed.
Speaker 3 (08:15):
Yeah, that's a good way to say. So, he was
sleeping at the Salvation Army. He was stationed at the
Salvation Army at the time. My father was having problem
with the law. And by the way, that the death
of Burry Seal was a big deal in in the state,
he was a big deal nationally.
Speaker 2 (08:35):
I mean, it's a big story. There's a movie about this.
There's a movie about Barry Seal.
Speaker 3 (08:40):
Anyway, so berryit he's in that very Seal is murdered
the next night. The person who takes over Burry Seal's
orders was my father at the stay at the Salvation Army.
My father was in trouble with the courts over tax
basi and I think it was I don't know what it.
Speaker 2 (08:56):
Was, probably always taxed.
Speaker 3 (08:58):
So my father had a period of a month or
so where.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
He was doing community service.
Speaker 3 (09:03):
Yeah, you had to do community service, but he was
staying in the same bed that Barry Seal had been
in the night before. So well, let me do my
corruption jokes.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
Since we'll go we'll go from death, death and death
and mayhem. Yeah, criminals, death, mayhem. We'll go to the
jokes lighting up.
Speaker 3 (09:25):
And I guess the point is when you're talking about corruption,
the point is when you're trying to enforce laws that
control consenting adults, you're going to get corruption. Well, you're
going to get corruption and government no matter what, but
especially when you're trying to enforce laws that are restricting
consenting adults, you're going to get some serious corruption because
(09:47):
there are going to be some people in government who think,
why are we enforcing this stupid law.
Speaker 2 (09:51):
Well, I'm going to go further than that and say,
anytime you restrict anybody, you take the risk of a
black market being created. It's unintended consequence, which fuels the
unconscious law enforcement reinforcers. But you create crime and then
you get paid to fight it is a feedback loop
(10:13):
that we don't often see. It's a it's invisible to us,
but you create crime by making something a crime, and
then you have to pay your law enforcement to fight crime,
ramp it up, and to ramp it up.
Speaker 3 (10:27):
Because the solution is always more government, more police. There
you go to solve them.
Speaker 2 (10:33):
There you go. So that that's a never ending story.
Speaker 3 (10:36):
That's the series. That's this narcous series. They start off
by commenting the drug enforcement agent starts off by saying,
in the early years of Columbia, we were chasing guys
who were wearing flip flots because they're trying to hide.
There it's marijuana and they're trying to run away from
the cops and they're wearing flip flops trying to want
to run away from the cop. When things got more serious,
(10:59):
people started having guns, and they were shooting at the cops,
and they would weren't wearing flip flops anymore more. They
were wearing they were more elite. Yes, you know, the
the bullets, bullet, bulletproof vests and all this. So as
you ramp up the enforcement effort, you ramp up the
profit that the black market realizes and they get more
and more creative about avoiding the police.
Speaker 1 (11:20):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:21):
Now, this is a good topic, and I don't I
want to keep on this for just a minute more
that any system the way you're talking about this, the
means becomes the goal rather than the end, and we
lose track of the d and it becomes bureaucratic. I mean,
that's the word for when the means become the in
(11:42):
rather than the inn becoming.
Speaker 3 (11:44):
The end, and the public has a short memory, they
have actors, they don't really remember. Wait a minute, what
we were doing in the first place, and what you know,
did we really have much of a drug problem before all?
Speaker 2 (11:56):
Yeah? Yeah, to add to that, wasn't cocaine in original
coca cola?
Speaker 3 (12:02):
Well? I think so, but at.
Speaker 2 (12:03):
Least that's the rumor is like cocaine, people could go
and get cocaine I mean, I think Freud smoked cocaine
or I mean, in other words, this used to be long,
long time ago legal not that I'm for legalizing it,
but I don't know, I don't know this.
Speaker 3 (12:21):
Apparently, it wasn't until the nineteen twenties that we started
prescribing drugs, started having doctors prescribing drugs. And as soon
as we did, as soon as we started restricting what
people get at the drug store could have, we started
a black market and we started having enforcement problems. But
(12:42):
before the nineteen twenties, you could go to a drug store.
You could buy anything you wanted to, and it was
up to the druggist to recognize that there's a problem
and say, look, I don't think you ought to be
you need to you're addicted, you know, yeah, you're getting addicted.
We need to be helping you with this. And it
worked pretty well, but people were concerned about it, so
(13:03):
they started trying to restrict the drugs. And it doesn't
take but a few years and people forget that. You know,
we didn't have a drug problem until we started.
Speaker 2 (13:11):
Well, we need to we need to talk about that.
I mean, that is a very very important point. The
question is would you have more drug problems if you
restrict are more drug problems if you don't restrict The
idea is I think not well understood. I don't think
it's well understood. I do know that if you don't
restrict it, you shift the accountability and responsibility down to
(13:35):
the individual. And if you do restrict it, you have
the responsibility in the group, group behavior, the police who
are created by the group. So if we just think
of it in a set in simple terms, there's the
group and the individual. Where do you want the ultimate
responsibility to reside. I wanted to reside with the individual
because why because the individual is less corruptible than the group.
(13:59):
When the group goes corrupt, the group is cheating, it says,
every single time. It's not like only once in a while,
it's every single time.
Speaker 3 (14:08):
Okay, I have two corruptions, Joe.
Speaker 2 (14:10):
Okay, this is a good point for the joke.
Speaker 3 (14:11):
Okay. A little girl asked her father, Daddy, what is corruption?
Go bring me a beer and I'll tell you. But
mommy said you should stop drinking. Get yourself an ice
cream too while you bring me that beer.
Speaker 2 (14:22):
Okay, why is that funny?
Speaker 3 (14:25):
It is funny, but he corrupted his daughter.
Speaker 2 (14:27):
You can have an ice cream as long as you
bring me this. Okay, here's another one that is that's
kind of lame, but it is. It is kind of funny.
Speaker 3 (14:35):
Yeah, call me a racist if you want. But south
of the border is a sea of violence, corruption and stupidity.
I would in touch with a ten foot pole. Thank
god I live in Canada.
Speaker 2 (14:48):
He's talking about the United States. Oh that's sad but true.
Speaker 3 (14:53):
Sho. You can see where Canadians would say that. Of
course they can't say it now. And this truck or thing, really, you.
Speaker 2 (14:59):
Know, I have this in Canada and you can't get
out of Canada. They lock their as citizens in I know.
I mean I heard that and she's like, we aren't
allowed out of the country. I was like, what the
hell kind of country is that you can't get out of?
It had to do with COVID, which is COVID and
its lack of proper treatment has escalated the power in
(15:23):
the fascist glob glob I've said glob and I meant blob.
The fascist like blob. It's good, like a glob of spit,
Like yeah, but the COVID is like, we can protect
you from dying of COVID. Well, in fact, they couldn't.
(15:45):
In fact, they facilitated old people dying of COVID in
New York. They facilitate a bunch of old people getting COVID.
The behavior of a group is almost always wrong because
the group dynamics well group behavior.
Speaker 3 (15:58):
Group four fits in with my comment that government can't
do anything right.
Speaker 2 (16:02):
It can't do anything right. And you know, there is
a reason psychologically for it is because and I find
this out, feel like I'm in the trenches, you know,
in my community. But it's like a laboratory learning experience.
For me. It's like it's very, very frustrating, and then
when I accept it, it's like fascinating. But they can't
do anything right because when human beings get together, they
(16:24):
have no mechanisms for problem solving. There are a bunch
of kooks when it comes to problem solving. This is
why I enjoyed working in industry. In industry, aside from
this sounding sexist, there was always some guy at the
top whose job it was not to be an idiot.
There's no such thing with free ranging primate. It's like
(16:45):
some of the psychologists and leadership of positions, it's like
let me show you how much I can be an
idiot about this.
Speaker 3 (16:51):
Oh, that such thing as an idiot leading a group
in the primate, is that what you were trying to say.
Speaker 2 (16:56):
Oh, I must have bungled that terribly to have you
so confused us. The reason I liked working with industry
is because there was always some guide top at the top,
who wanted to be better at effective problem solving. Okay,
in volunteer organizations, no such person. It's just a free
for all of idiocy. And that's kind of like. People
(17:19):
are not good at group problem solving. So when you
get a group, you're very very lucky to have good
leadership and good followers, and mostly you don't.
Speaker 3 (17:28):
So the distinction I would make from your observation is
that in a business, they got to make money, you have.
Speaker 2 (17:35):
A clear feedback mechanism, where at least to some degree,
you have some feedback loop that is self correcting. But
where do you have that in a volunteer organization, which
is the basics of politics. Politics are all volunteer volunteers.
Like I'm in this group, I'm in the left group,
and therefore I follow like an automaton. Whatever they say,
(17:58):
I copy, whatever they say, I'm going to talk about
copycat behavior in primate, but I'm in the right and
I copy whatever they say. That's irrational. And so in
business you have someone who's like at the top trying
to be better because you get that direct feedback, corrective feedback,
it's like you're either failing or succeeding, or you're neutral.
Speaker 3 (18:20):
One other observation I'd like to make about that is
you get bad leaders all the time. Yes, they just
don't survive. Yeah, a lot of business.
Speaker 2 (18:27):
Yeah, because of that direct feedback is like he failed, Okay,
move him out, demote him, and put somebody else in.
Speaker 3 (18:34):
If you're lucky. If you're not lucky, the whole business
goes under and the competing business survives.
Speaker 2 (18:41):
The competes wins, which is the reason we're talking. That's
the reason we're libertarians because we believe in that feedback loop,
and in government you don't get any of that. In fact,
that's what's blown me away in the last ten years
when I started looking at it. Clearly from an organizational
(19:01):
psychology standpoint, these people not only don't use feedback loops.
When you get the feedback to government, it makes no difference.
They ignore the feedback, it's amazing phenomena.
Speaker 3 (19:15):
No, they don't respond to what makes sense.
Speaker 2 (19:18):
There you go.
Speaker 3 (19:18):
They respond to the public rising up and objecting.
Speaker 2 (19:22):
Day. Well you say that, you say that, but is
that really can we really say that's true right now?
Speaker 3 (19:27):
Well, they will fight the public if they can.
Speaker 2 (19:30):
There you go. It's kind of depressing, but I mean,
change has always happened. We've always progressed forward. But it
takes a long time, takes a lot. And you know,
Benjamin Franklin said that he has this quote and I
can't remember it, about how long it takes for something
to make a difference. It's like a couple of generations.
(19:50):
He noticed it, and I'm noticing it now that we're
pretty as humans, we're pretty irrational.
Speaker 3 (19:57):
Well, I think we've discussed this is about as far
a we can go do anything you want to say
before I conclude.
Speaker 2 (20:04):
Well that we're kind of drilling down and we're kind
of very much worried about law enforcement being able to
correct itself. That's what the narcos, your binge worthy narcos
watching is like, Oh my god, the interventions of law
enforcement might be just as app to make it worse.
(20:24):
In contrast, to making it better.
Speaker 3 (20:27):
I'm going to take that as a conclusion.
Speaker 2 (20:30):
Okay, this has been a rebroadcast of an earlier episode.
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