Rare News Desk
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Jeffrey Tucker: Kurt it’s always a pleasure, of course.
Kurt Wallace: The Republicans took congress and we now have Obama who’s a lame duck president. With regard to human nature and legacy how do you see Obama the first African American president of the United States a Democrat with an atrocious record expanded wars, deported more immigrants than Bush had little transparency, massive surveillance state did not break the racial divides as hoped. Could his obvious statism and disregard for civil liberties in some way bring the races together in the United States?
Jeffrey Tucker: I look at Obama as just a classic case. A president who rises to power with great hopes who ends up being like an utter and complete failure. And this is a failed presidency which now has two excruciating years to go through endless nonsense. The one thing that he really has bragging rights about is Obamacare. But let’s face it, it’s a complete calamity. Anybody who says otherwise is a total liar.
It hasn’t achieved anything that it’s supposed to achieve. And I think the real problem here is people have too high expectations for the presidency. Particularly with regards to race relations. Of course that was the big hope that electing the first black president is going to fix the race problem. But I hope now we learned this is just not true. The people have to fix their own race problem.
The problem of antagonism between the races is largely created by the state, has to be solved by individuals themselves. You can’t rely on some despotic leader to come by and sweep into place prosperity, well being and social harmony for the world. That just a myth and it’s not true. So, I’d like to think that we’ve learned from this experience with Obama. Unfortunately, people are always looking for the next messiah, that’s the way it always seems to work.
Kurt Wallace: Rand Paul is appealing to Democrats, many say a Reagan-style strategy in growing the Republican Party. Are libertarians starting to see his plan to gain a broader support unfold, or are his ideas of liberty too muddy with politics?
Jeffrey Tucker: Well, libertarians have been very skeptical of Rand Paul actually, and I think this is really of a case of over scrupulosity on their part. There’s a little indignation. But you know look politics is necessarily muddy. He’s the best senator probably, from a libertarian point of view, that’s been in office in at least a century.
The brilliant thing about Rand that I’m most excited about is not so much his reach out to Democrats, although that’s entirely possible. But rather the way he’s changing and really could permanently change the Republican Party. Particularly on issues like mandatory minimum sentencing, the role of surveillance and war and imperialism. On these subjects, he’s maybe not perfect from my point of view. But, he’s really a vast improvement over the Republican establishment.
So yeah, I’m very, very excited about him and his effect on the Republican Party. I think there’s a really strong chance of he’ll get the nomination and be elected president. At that point, I’m unwilling to say whether or not the net effect will be in favor of human liberty. But, I can’t rule it out. I’m feeling really good about this in general. In the end though of course he is a politician and that’s what he specializes in.
I’ve always believed that the reform of American society is going to occur from within and not top down. But, nonetheless having a president like Rand Paul who may be less willing to commit the troops abroad and enter into wars and unleash the FBI and the CIA against American citizens has got to be a good thing.
Kurt Wallace: In terms of Bitcoin, last time we spoke it was at an all time peak about a year ago. We’ve seen innovations and we’ve seen a lot of things happen in terms of human behavior. But the price of Bitcoin has come down significantly. What are missing or what are we not seeing about this technology at this point that people should key in on?
Jeffrey Tucker: Kurt, I think the most important thing to understand is that as a technology whether Bitcoin succeeds or fails has nothing to do with its price. Whether its exchange rate is $1 or $1 million really doesn’t matter. It can be just as useful to become the next global currency whatever the exchange rate is. It really just doesn’t matter.
Of course human nature is that we get really interested in something when it’s going up in value relative to dollars. But, I think to some extent that a little be losery. What really matters is that the transaction volume is dramatically increasing — just last week had the second day in the history of Bitcoin in which daily transactions exceeded 100,000. Which is actually really gigantic. And adoption is taking place all over the US, Canada and the UK and all of the developing world which make it more exciting.
But there’s still other innovations that are taking place in this space. Bitcoin runs on a ledger called a blockchain. Blockchain is capable of transmitting all kinds of information. Not just money and currency but also contracts. There are two really exciting companies out there one called Ethereum the other called Counterparty. They are increasingly being tapped by very large fortune 500 companies to put in place systems of B2B accounting and contracting that can bypass government bureaucracies and agencies and maybe even create new forms of security and futures contracts.
Far more efficient than our existing systems of money and banking that people have been condemned to use for the last 100 years. So, that’s where the innovations is taking place. The important thing that Bitcoin and blockchain is that they cannot be uninvented. They’re absolutely brilliant and you’ll notice that even the most severe critics recognized the sheer brilliance of the technology itself. So, we’re going to see immense development in these things over the next 10 years and it’s going to fundamentally challenge the way we think about money and banking and contracting.
Kurt Wallace: You’re coming up on a year of Liberty.me and you launched this almost a year ago. We spoke about your new social experiment within the site itself on Hayek’s theory of social change. What have you learned so far in terms of the community? How’s it going?
Jeffrey Tucker: Well, the main thing I’ve learned is that this crowd sourcing of information and technology and editorial control has actually worked. Every single day at Liberty.me I think we have the best content that you can get anywhere in the liberty space. And Kurt, what’s interesting to me is that I’m not even the editor.
All we do is allow people to post things and if you allow that sort of freedom, you see that they perform really well. I’m thrilled at how well it’s worked. It’s confirmed my theory that there’s been too much control, too many gatekeepers, too much in addition that exaggerate their importance. Liberty.me has amazing content everyday and we’re starting to see the community really take off as a coherent group. A place where you can meet people and discuss ideas and work your way towards a freer life.
In every area I would say Liberty.me has exceeded my expectations. The one thing that I’ve learned from my own point of view is that it’s not possible to keep up with demand. We’re hustling every day to keep the platform well developed enough to please our customer base. That’s what we wanted and that’s what we’re getting and it’s certainly keeps me on my toes — I can tell you that.
Kurt Wallace: Jeffrey Tucker is the CEO of Liberty.me, distinguished Fellow at the Foundation for Economic Education thanks for being with us today on Rare.
Jeffrey Tucker: It’s my pleasure, thank you so much Kurt for having me.
