097 - Interview with Mike ter Maat, Libertarian Party: Addressing America's Economic Challenges

Speaker A: Foreign. Hi and welcome to Boom. It's on the Blockchain. My name's Alistair Caithness. We're in our 97th show and, um, we've got a special guest with us today, Mike Turmatt. How are you, Mike?

Speaker B: Good. Thanks for, uh, letting me join you today. I'm excited to spend some time with you. Thanks very much.

Speaker A: Okay, that's great then, Mike. So the first thing just to kick things off for the show, Mike, if you just want to just introduce yourself, a little bit of your background, etc.

Speaker B: Sure. Uh, I am currently the Libertarian Party's vice presidential nominee, as was determined at an open convention at the end of May. I am by trade a professional economist. I've taught economics at three different universities. I worked for the White House for a couple of years. I had my own business, uh, educating financial services executives and providing, uh, an array of, uh, strategic consulting services. I also spent about a decade in Washington advocating for free markets and uh, and greater competition, mostly in the financial services space. So I've been around a little bit as a second career for 11 years. I was on the road as a police officer in South Florida in Broward county, from the age of 49 to 60. So I spend a lot of time talking about reforming the way that we hold police accountable, changing, uh, our criminal justice system as well. As you might imagine. I spent a lot of time talking about monetary policy and fiscal policy.

Speaker A: Perfect, perfect. So just to give a bit of insight, because I know a lot of people, uh, when they look at America, they only know of the two parties, obviously, Republican and Democrats, and we'll speak a little bit about their convention in a minute. But, uh, just give a bit of insight. What is the Libertarian Party and what are their key policies and how are they different from the two main parties?

Speaker B: Sure. I appreciate that the Libertarian Party is the third party in the United States. Uh, we are in past cycles have been on, uh, all 50 of our state ballots and the only party that comes anywhere near being able to achieve that every four years. Uh, it is not yet clear that we'll be on 50 ballots this year. Uh, but we'll be on close to that. If not, if not all of them. Ours is the party that stands up for libertarianism, which is to say a very traditional, uh, set of what are, uh, fundamentally American values. Uh, there's no getting around the fact that the Constitution of the United States government, as well as our 1776 Declaration of Independence are best described libertarian documents. We believe that our government was designed and developed and maintained to protect our civil liberties, to protect us, uh, in a safety sense, uh, and really not much else should we be entrusting to the government. So we're all about holding government accountable, shrinking it down to its, uh, originally intended size in terms of scale, uh, and scope. Uh, and we also believe in decentralizing authority as much as possible down to states and down to local governments. And of course for the individual to be primarily responsible for making his or her own decisions.

Speaker A: Perfect, perfect. And you know, I'm originally from Scotland, so we use a first pass deposit system in the UK and understand the difficulty for third parties. But within the UK there's still opportunity for third parties to essentially get seats in government. They, you know, Nigel Farage, who's a sort of, ah, poor man's version of Donald Trump for people in America who've never seen him before. You know, he opened up this year, ran in a couple policies, got five, six seats in government. Why is it so difficult for the Libertarian Party to get any seats into the Senate or the House?

Speaker B: Our system is set up differently. It's not proportionally allocated. Every single seat has to be won, uh, by a particular candidate. And so we would have to, on the order of, uh, 40% in a particular congressional district, we'd have to beat out the other two parties, the larger, more familiar parties, the Republican Party, the Democratic Party in a particular district. And that's a, uh, very high hurdle to clear.

Speaker A: And then how difficult is even to get on the ballot? Because we had Lanny Sharp on the show before and he was talking about running for govern in New York and how every time he runs for governor it gets more and more difficult for him to actually even get on the ballot.

Speaker B: Well, that's true. Uh, Larry is a fantastic candidate and a fantastic Libertarian. And ironically, Larry is, uh, much of the reason why it's so difficult to get on the ballot in New York, because he did so well two cycles ago that the Democratic, uh, establishment, along with the Republican Party's, uh, cooperation, did set the bar much higher. We are required to collect something like 60,000 signatures in something like a six week period, which is enormously expensive. And we just don't have the resources available to us to accomplish that in such a short period of time. Such as one example, the Republican Party and the Democratic Party obviously, uh, control all of the state legislatures in the United States. And so they're the ones that make the rules about who is allowed to get on a ballot. And so they make it very difficult for anyone but themselves.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, no, no, that's very interesting. So, you know, I was looking at your site before you came on the show, so I just want to run through a few of your policies I think our viewers would be interested in. First, one is just obviously artificial intelligence, AI. The other part is they talk about it, but they sort of don't go into too much detail about it. What's your policy on AI and what's your thoughts on AI, Mike?

Speaker B: Well, first and foremost, I think it's important to say that I just don't believe our government is smart enough to play a, uh, regulatory role in this space. And that's not to say that I don't think that there are potential risks out there, uh, to our society because of AI. Uh, we don't know how those risks are going to play out, but in fairness, we don't know how the benefits are going to play out either. We all believe that in an industrial sense, the upside from artificial intelligence intelligence could be enormous, and we don't want the government screwing that up. Regarding the downside risks, I just don't believe that the government is in a position to play, uh, a useful role. So I would ask the government to stay out of it. Is there a role for private sector organizations in this space to come together and develop best practices to hold each other accountable? Absolutely. And you see that in any other, any of a number of other technological areas where the government just doesn't have the expertise. Now, as a libertarian, I would argue that the government really doesn't have the expertise in any area, but especially one that's developing as quickly and one is, uh, so technologically advanced as artificial intelligence. We do have, you know, our party embraces the use of artificial intelligence. We do have an AI bot up, uh, that we call Lisa, which, uh, your viewers can find@libertarianintelligence.org, it is a bot to answer questions the way a libertarian would. So it's fun, right? It's a tool for some, it's a toy. It's a good time. I think people will enjoy it. But it's not the kind of thing I want the government involved with.

Speaker A: So what is the government's policy on it right now or how are they looking to control it? Working with the sort of major companies out there?

Speaker B: They have not issued, uh, rules yet, but there are a number of legislators who, you know, have formed working group who, uh, are kicking around ideas. And this is the sort of thing that is every time a first step toward a regulatory regime. And I believe that that's to be avoided.

Speaker A: Okay, so coming on to one of the other policies, wanting to sort of dive into is know a lot of people speak about like end the Fed within the Libertarian Party, you know, what does that actually mean and how can it be implemented?

Speaker B: Right inside the Libertarian Party we say end the Fed. And the reason is because I believe the right policy is to end the Fed. Uh, look, uh, the Federal Reserve System is uh, by all accounts a uh, well meaning organization. We have given it 100 years to demonstrate that it's able to live up to its mandate. And just as an empirical objective matter, I think it's time to admit best efforts notwithstanding, it's unable to do so. I've worked with Fed economists for decade after decade. I was in Washington as an economist myself. I have every respect for the intelligence and the work ethic, the patriotism of the folks that try to make the Fed work. But the truth is that the Fed's policy does not reduce the boom bust cycle swings in the American economy or anywhere else around the world. Empirically, uh, we believe, we have the data that demonstrates that a simple rule that controlled how much money stock was allowed to be created would do a better job, uh, of reducing the boom bust cycle than the discretionary policy of the Federal Reserve System. And so very much I believe that we need to, as a first step toward getting rid of the Federal Reserve System, take away its discretionary authority over the creation of money.

Speaker A: But if we do that, how can you sort of ensure economic stability?

Speaker B: We would be more stable, our currency would be more stable, and our business cycle would be more stable. If instead of the Fed trying to guess what way to go and then accidentally exaggerating its policy responses, if instead of all that, we had a rule that said the money supply was going to increase by say 3% per year, which would approximately target a zero inflation rate rate instead of the 2% target of the Fed today. And uh, it would accommodate economic growth without big swings in money, uh, money prices. And this would allow the market um, of price signaling really work the way that we want it? No? Today, if investor trying to anticipate the value of the return on your investment in the future, you have to guess not only what inflation is going to be, but the Fed's response to it. We need to eliminate all of that and get back to a system where price increases and deflation actually have meaning outside of guessing what it is the Fed is doing.

Speaker A: So how does that actually control inflation then? Or they always talk about the Fed being able to control inflation through interest rates. How does this system without them actually work better?

Speaker B: It works better because inflation comes from too much money. The reason we have so much inflation is because the Fed is always expanding the monetary base. If you control the monetary base and allow it to increase at only, for example, 3% per year, you would never give inflation an opportunity to take off. The Fed believes that the right target is 2%. I don't, there's no empirical data to back that up. The correct target for inflation I believe is zero, not 2%. The 2% comes really from a political standoff, uh, for monetary policy itself. It's large enough to give the Fed, uh, some leeway without being in the Fed's mind too large.

Speaker A: So what about when there's sort of financial emergencies? So say like, you know, Covid came along. Whether we talk about, you know, whether we should have shut everything down through Covid or not, you know, it's a different discussion. But again, the Fed were able to print money so people can actually go home and okay, we're dealing with the consequences. A major emergency. If there's no body in place, how can this be fixed?

Speaker B: It has to come from fiscal policy. If you believe that the federal government of the United States should be borrowing money from the future and pumping it into our economy, which I would believe is a bad policy. But set that aside just for a moment. If you thought that were the right policy, then that's what the federal government should do. It does not aid the effectiveness of that policy to obscure it by having the Fed purchase and monetize the debt. That just screws up the price mechanism. It doesn't, uh, either enhance or subvert the federal government's ability to raise debt.

Speaker A: So how will monetary policies be implemented?

Speaker B: Without them, you would have to rely. Well, today the Federal Reserve bank in New York is the organization that actually, uh, carries out monetary policy. It doesn't set the policy, the Fed does. But the Federal Reserve bank of New York is the organization that uh, actually engages in the transactions. You don't need the Fed to engage in the transactions and you don't need the Fed to evaluate, to measure what money stock is. And so you really don't need the Fed except, uh, for this purpose of setting discretionary monetary policy, which is a bad idea. I believe that we should be living without the Fed. We should be setting a rules based system targeting 0% inflation and engaging the Federal Reserve bank of New York to conduct the transactions to make that happen. The way that we engage the Federal Reserve bank of New York today

Speaker A: so you spoke about a sort of fixed monetary growth rate. Like how does that actually work?

Speaker B: Then you would decide that the monetary base should expand by 3% a year and the Federal Reserve bank in New York would engage in transactions to hit that target. Rather than what we do today, which was we asked the Federal Reserve bank of New York to hit a discretionary target by the Federal Reserve. And the Federal Reserve, uh, sets this either as a matter of trying to hit a particular interest rate or during other times it engages in a completely different apparatus and just decides to pour a certain amount of money into the system. But in case the Fed engaging in completely discretionary policy without knowing the long uh, term effects of its policies. And now ex post looking back, we know that Fed policy does not mitigate the boom bust cycle.

Speaker A: How would that reflect government spending then, so say for defense etc. So currently we're in two or three.

Speaker B: It would not affect it whatsoever. Well it might have in the sense that uh, have the Fed constantly rising debt, uh, so it might put a little bit uh, extra pressure on the Treasury Department to not borrow quite so much money. That's a relatively minor and secondary effect to the extent to which we have m, uh, crappy fiscal policy in the United States and we do, we have horrible fiscal policy in the United States. That is uh, another matter which I believe needs to be addressed by an overall cap on federal spending rather than asking the legislature to enact uh, reductions in particular programs, which as you can imagine in the United States is a horrifically difficult thing to do politically. It would be difficult to institute an overall cap as well, but it would be much more politically viable than going after individual programs.

Speaker A: Right. Okay, so in terms of taxes then how does it, how would it affect people's taxes going forward? Would their taxes go down or how would it be more state taxes or how would that actually operate?

Speaker B: Monetary policy would not affect uh, it, I mean you would uh, inflation and so you'd have hidden tax. But as far as an income tax goes, it would, the, the absence of the Fed would not affect that directly. But reducing the amount of money that the federal government can spend absolutely would take pressure off of um, the legislature to continuously increase taxes the way that it has, uh, the past 100 years. We need to get rid of that pressure to continuously bring in more revenue to the government. And that pressure comes from allowing the government to spend so much money.

Speaker A: So if we're thinking of sort of switching topics like central bank digital currencies, you know, CBDCs, there's been some papers written out there, the implementation of this. How do you think the government's going to implement it? Uh, and what is the downside for the general public with this?

Speaker B: Well, it remains to be seen exactly how the government is going to implement it at the moment. The Fed says that it is ready to go with its own digital currency, its own blockchain based currency. It says that it is waiting for enabling legislation from Congress. I do fear that the Fed will eventually grow tired of waiting and will just unilaterally decide to issue the currency. There are a couple of downsides. Number one, nobody who pays any attention to the US Federal government believes that the Fed would resist the temptation, the pressure to hand over transactional data to the Treasury Department or the Justice Department or other agencies inside the federal government. When that request is made, remember that the Fed would have access to data, not just metadata, but hard data, on every transaction conducted by this currency, which, if it were to spread, could represent a substantial proportion of transactions conducted not only by Americans by, but by individuals around the world. So the privacy concerns are huge. There is just no good reason why you want your government to have access to all of these private transactions. Number two, and possibly even more importantly, regarding the development of our economy, you do not want the Fed in the business of issuing its own currency. Because the Fed is in the business of regulating financial institutions generally in the United States, and in a very detailed fashion, regulating the largest financial institutions in the United States. There's no question that the Fed would bias the set of rules by which all digital currency had to operate in favor of its own currency. Right. This is to, this is absolutely to be avoided. As we're in the infant stages, right. Of the development of the blockchain based economy. We're about to hit an inflection point in which we all hope that the smart economy is going to really take off. Your viewers have, uh, more expertise in this area likely than I do myself. None of us knows exactly when that's going to take off, but it's going to be soon. And in a very, very profound way. We don't yet know the characteristics of the currency or currencies that are going to be most helpful in making that a smart economy take off. And so you don't want to presuppose, you don't want the federal government guessing which currency we are going to want to use, even what the characteristics of those currencies might be that we're going to want to use. We need a competitive market for currencies. Let the best currency win, whether it's an American currency or currency from any place else.

Speaker A: I think China is sort of leading the way with CBDCs or uh, starting to implement it into their nation. And you know, for some of the viewers out there don't understand that, you know, if you get issued this say version of the digital dollar, digital yen or whatever it wants to do, they can actually control how that's spent. So if you went to the liquor store and you wanted to buy some cigarettes, it might not be the best thing because it goes against health care. But you want to do that or you want to buy some liquor, say a bottle of whiskey, the digital dollar can essentially stop you spending money in that. It's not like this paper based dollar. So that's one of the things they're talking about in China there. So I think for people understanding it from home is, you know, you could be getting paid in this digital dollar and then they can actually stop you spending certain items with it. It just the transaction just wouldn't go through. And the same way as transactions don't go through now. It's just the same thing.

Speaker B: Absolutely. And as a first step in that direction, the government would be collecting data on. It could tax you differently on different types of transactions to affect your behavior. This is not an appropriate role for a government.

Speaker A: Yeah, it's definitely a control measure that people don't seem to think about. And you know, I already know the white paper's been put out there as well from the White House. You know, you can just Google it. I read it. So it's a bit high level, doesn't go into much detail. But you know, there's a monetary policy out there ready to go, you know.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, it's a real problem. We need to stop the government from playing a role in currency going forward.

Speaker A: Mhm. So talking about currencies, what's your view in cryptocurrency and the uh, Libertarian Party's view in cryptocurrency?

Speaker B: We need to allow these currencies to compete. We don't think that we should be picking a winner, that the government or anyone else should be picking a winner in an unfair fashion. It's for markets to determine. Importantly, uh, I believe that we need robust competition not only among cryptocurrencies, but between cryptocurrencies and other currencies. Currencies and among other currencies. I think it's a real problem for the world that, and potentially even in the long run for the United States, for there not to Be a robust competitor to the dollar, you know, whatever is in second place. Whatever is your favorite second place currency today, right? The British pound or the euro or renminbi or, you know, bricks or whatever is your favorite. It's in a distant second place. There is, for all practical purposes, no real competitor to the international reserve currency status of the US Dollar. And that makes the Treasury Department and the Fed fat and lazy. But it also means that when the day comes, if we do not correct the fiscal policy of the United States, the federal government is bound for a financial collapse by the middle of this century. That's not, you know, me looking into a crystal ball. That's just because I can do arithmetic. It's not going to make it. And when that happens, that means a collapse of the bond market. It means a collapse of the market for the US Dollar. That's what leads to an international depression. Not recession, but deep depression, out of which it would be very difficult to climb working markets for bonds and for currency. And this is something that we must avoid. Not because the federal government, United States, is such a wonderful organization that we need to preserve it and prop it up come hell or high water, but because a disorderly takedown would be a problem for the world. And without a competitive currency to replace the dollar, there would be hell to pay for generations.

Speaker A: Yeah, and I was actually looking at video of Charlie Munger, who is one of the most negative guys speaking about like the likes of Bitcoin. But he said the ultimate outcome of the US Dollar at some point is it's going to go to zero. So then moving to the digital dollar. So, so for people to, you know, as an economist, for people to understand why is the dollar becoming worth less year on year in terms of what they earn and what they can buy?

Speaker B: Because we issue too much of it, we allow the Fed, uh, to create too much of, is out of proportion relative to the underlying economy of the United States and of the world. We just keep issuing more and more because it's convenient for us, because we use it to acquire federal debt, which makes it easier for the federal government of the United States to borrow money, which is what makes it easy for them, uh, to spend so much. This all comes back to bad policy, bad politics. That's what drives this whole thing. We need to stop the Fed from issuing money. Nelly. I think that most Americans, most people around the world, I think, would be shocked to learn how we set monetary policy in the United states, that every six weeks we lock up 12 really smart, really well meaning, really well educated people in a room and we basically ask them what is their mood regarding the economy going forward. This is how it's done. This is not a metaphor. That's actually how the world's most important price is set. I think most people would be shocked if you were to tell them that's the mechanism by which we set the price of eggs. They would say that's a horrible idea. They would be right. But the fact that this is the most important price in the world, short term interest rates on the American dollar makes it absolutely horrific and we need to stop it.

Speaker A: Come on to like banking as well. So we've had the banking Crisis back obviously 2008 but recently there's been a few silver bank and a few other banks have gone under as well or had to be propped up. How do you see the banking industry going forward?

Speaker B: Well the banking industry is very strong these days, which is why we only have had a handful of failures since 2008. And even those were for very, very specific reasons. I believe that the banking industry would be much stronger if we had a much more stable currency. This is the biggest reason why I want to get rid of the Federal Reserve System because its existence in terms of controlling monetary policy creates extra volatility in currency markets. But the second very important function of the Federal Reserve System is to regulate financial institutions. And it does not reduce volatility here either. It creates a herd mentality where everyone, all the major financial institutions, United States have to play by a, ah, very narrow set of rules regarding how they evaluate risk, uh, how they conduct their uh, tests of their ability to withstand risk. They should have a much more diversified view of how it is that they want to manage risk. I believe personally that these institutions should not be told that they have to have the Federal Reserve System as a regulator. Most banks around the world, most banks in the United States have quite a bit of flexibility in terms of who it is that they choose as a regulator. The major financial institution, the biggest banks have to accept Fed regulation. I think that's a horribly dumb idea. As a matter of fact, I think that banks should be allowed to give up their FDIC insurance and go without any regulation at all if they should so choose. I don't believe any financial institution would do that. Uh, at the very least they would have to engage a very tough private sector auditor. But they ought to have the option to do so.

Speaker A: Okay, and then, so how will, how does the Fed interact with other countries like the, you know, the European Union etc? How did like the banks how did the governments, how does it all interact together so people can understand?

Speaker B: Mike well, today monetary policy is in many cases coordinated across uh, national institutions. Uh, this is not a good idea. We should be allowing currencies to compete. Uh, you should not be trying to talk, uh, either the European Central bank, uh, or the British Exchequer or anybody else into following your monetary policy lead. It's a horrible idea. It's reminiscent of the Treasury Department's idea of trying to coordinate corporate income tax around the globe so that there's not competition, uh, for uh, attacks and regulatory environment as well. Horrible ideas. If you saw corporations behaving in such a collusive fashion, you would immediately suggest that it was bad for the economy and that it were anti competitive. And it is. We need environments across the world to compete for the investment, uh, of corporations and wealthy individuals competing in a regulatory sense, competing with their tax rates, competing with strong currencies. We should not be trying to coordinate these things across national lines.

Speaker A: So moving on to some of your other policies then, spoke about you being a, uh, former police officer. What's your policy on crime? Because obviously in America right now I think it's like 1.9 million people are now in jail and that's up from 1.2 million less than 10 years ago. So it's going, growing pretty quickly. What's your policy on crimers?

Speaker B: The fundamental problem with the criminal justice system in the United States is that it at a local level, is not designed to align with the underlying ethics and values of its, uh, attendant citizenry. We have plenty of jurisdictions where politically motivated individuals have gone soft on crime because they have been accused of being too harsh in the past, or being accused of being too right wing, being accused of uh, some weird bias. And so they lay off the prosecution of certain crimes. And we see uh, the crime rate uh, explode in these areas. Similarly, you see uh, district attorneys and prosecutors, uh, going too harsh, uh, for political reasons. The war on drugs is the primary example where it does not align with American values. Americans are not a people who believe that we should be telling other Americans what they can or cannot do with their bodies. The idea that the federal government of the United States and local governments should be incarcerating people for using a drug is, uh, in an ethical sense, weird. It is the main reason why we have so many people incarcerated in the United States. But as a practical, set ethics aside just for a moment. As a practical matter, the war on drugs doesn't work. There is no reason to believe that we have reduced addiction, that we have reduced the number of deaths from overdose. Not only do we have an opioid use, ah, explosion in the United States, but we have a horrific, um, epidemic of overdose, uh, deaths in the United States. It's time, I believe it has been high time for a long time to treat addiction as a medical problem, which is, of course, what it is. Criminalizing it has not worked. And there's no reason to believe that criminalizing drugs is going to reduce addiction or death going forward. And I wish I were wrong. If criminalizing it, you know, helped, I would suggest criminalizing, uh, cancer. You know, let's criminalize all kinds of human frailties, and the world would be a better place. But we know not only ethically, but empirically that's just not how this works.

Speaker A: Yeah, that's super interesting. I think it's, uh, one of the things I like where Larry used to speak about is victimless crime. If there's victimless crime, why are we putting these people to jail?

Speaker B: Why do you call it a crime?

Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. Why do you call it, ah, a crime? Exactly. That's a great point. But, yeah, because that's a real problem as well. I think it's. And then what they've seen in other companies where they're starting to legalize, uh, a lot of drugs is there and dealing as a medical problem, what they've seen is the. The addiction rates go down rapidly.

Speaker B: Yeah, you got to stop driving it underground. Right. You make it very difficult for people to raise their hand and say that they need help. You also make it difficult for there to be trusted providers in this space. If the only people who are allowed to sell you drugs are criminals, then you've got no one that you can trust. You've got no quality control. Obviously, this is what leads to so many opioid deaths. It's not intentional overdose. It is overdosing with something that, uh, you know, about which you are uncertain. You don't know all of the ingredients and in what proportions, because the person providing it to you is an idiot and a criminal.

Speaker A: That's what's strange to a lot of people is in some states it's legal, but in some states it's not.

Speaker B: And only marijuana, not harder drugs, which remain, uh, illegal everywhere.

Speaker A: Yeah. So how will this policy be implemented federally in the end, do you think, Mike? Or will it just continue the way it's going?

Speaker B: We need the Federal Reserve, the federal government out of it completely. And then we need to encourage each state to experiment. Each state, uh, I believe will, in time, as a First step, completely decriminalize the use of cannabis as a second step. This is just me guessing about how this will play out in the future. But my guess is that each state will take its turn experimenting with the decriminalization of non addictive drugs while other states watch the leaders to see how their experiences play out. And then eventually I believe that states will begin to decriminalize drugs that are even more dangerous. Not because we want to encourage anyone to use them, but because we want to bring this problem into, uh, the medical system and out of the justice system.

Speaker A: The likes of a lot of people with ptsd, they're talking about using, uh, LSD and other sort of drugs as well. That can be proved to be highly successful at helping these people who are in like, you know, severe anxiety and depression, etcetera, as well.

Speaker B: So absolutely, there is strong evidence to suggest there's a lot of value there. And let's be honest, it shouldn't be the case that you have to prove to your government that there's value to be able to, uh, be able to use it. We should have private sector organizations evaluating this. But in the meantime, you can't be criminalizing it just because the government hasn't yet been convinced of the value.

Speaker A: Yeah, perfect. Perfect. So we're just coming up to near the end of the podcast, Mike, and then just want to speak a little bit about the other parties themselves. It's in the last few weeks, it's certainly been, uh, in the public eye, ah, in terms of both the Republican and Democrats. So if we start with the Republicans and Donald Trump, what do you think happened that allowed him to actually be shot at at that, um, rally? He had?

Speaker B: Well, a number of things. Uh, and by the way, first and foremost, sometimes we skip over the obvious, but I don't want to do that today. I don't want to skip over the fact that one individual was responsible for pulling the trigger. This was, uh, an apparently troubled person, um, of um, criminal intent, who should bear full responsibility. Obviously this is someone who was, uh, killed by a counter, ah, sniper with a Secret Service. I don't want to accidentally lead anyone to believe that other people bear direct responsibility for this. This was the act of this person. Right. That's important for us to keep in mind. Now is there an environment in the United States of political rancor, uh, that may contribute to people thinking it's a good idea to engage in this sort of activity? Yeah, that's probably a contributing factor. Right. Do we, in my view, need to be more careful about accidentally, in effect, dehumanizing our opponents with the language that we use. Yeah, I think that that's a reasonable concern, uh, that we all should share and we should all take a step in the right direction to reduce the volatility of our, of our language. Having said that, there were also breakdowns in the security apparatus itself, which are, you know, quickly, uh, coming to light. The Secret Service Agency, uh, inside, uh, of the federal government of the United States has responsibility for keeping these people safe. This was absolutely, obviously a major failure on the part of the Secret Service. They do use other agents, uh, other agencies with whom to coordinate to get the resources that they need to maintain a large area like the one that we saw at which President Trump was speaking in Pennsylvania a couple of weeks ago now. But that doesn't mean that it's anyone else's fault other than the Secret Service. And it may turn out to be that. This is not the sort of thing where you can put your finger on one particular mistake. It may be several mistakes. Um, maybe it was not taking sufficiently seriously a particular type of threat or particular type of possibility. I think it's important for us to wait and see the FBI's analysis of what actually happened, as well as an internal investigation of the Secret Service regarding communication and what was actually done. I do agree that it was the right thing for the Director Cheadle to step down, as I understand that she did today. I think that she should have tendered her resignation many, many days ago. This was a, uh, major failure, uh, for her agency of the highest order. And I think that the president should have accepted her resignation a long time ago.

Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah, that's a good point as well. So, so, and then obviously we're going to move on to the Democrat Party, uh, at this moment in time. In the recording podcast, we've not actually seen President Biden for a few days, but he has stepped down. But what's worrying to a lot of people, if they think about democracy, and they're always talking about any democracy, is there wasn't actually any sort of voting system for Kamala Harris now to be the leading Democrat candidate. Can you just give your take on what's actually happened and how really the process isn't that democratic at all.

Speaker B: No, I'm not completely different. We are going to have. Before we get carried away, we are going to have an election in November. People, uh, have an opportunity to vote for the Libertarian Party ticket. That includes myself, obviously, and Chase Oliver, our presidential nominee, who's a great guy and I encourage everyone to go check out votechaseoliver, uh, dot com and Mike Tremont dot com. By the way, Mike Tremont, the last name is spelled with two A's. It's T, E, R, M, M, double A, T. So it's a little tricky to spell, uh, but you'll be able to find information on the campaign there. So it's not like this has undermined democracy completely in the United States. But to your point, yes, I think that everyone wishes there had been a democratic process of sorts to select, uh, Kamala Harris. I do believe that most Democrats would say the same thing, that they wish that there were a more robust democratic process. In fairness to Democrats, and I am not given to, uh, suggesting that I have a lot of sympathy for their plight, but in fairness, I think that this is more incompetence than, uh, evil. I think that they have gotten themselves into a crappy situation because of a series of bad mistakes, beginning with, well, I guess you could begin with, uh, putting up, uh, Joe Biden as your nominee four, uh, and five years ago. Probably a bad idea, given his age at that point. A lot of us knew that he was slowing down already, but people figured, what the heck? If we just get through the election, we'll be okay. And then for Joe to hang on for as long as he did and for the Democratic Party to. And for the media to help hide the effects of the aging process on the president, a whole lot of people bear partial responsibility in effectively covering that up. That did not help the situation. And then the Democratic Party subverted the idea of having a robust primary to challenge the President. That was another mistake and a huge mistake. If you had forced the president to get out there and debate his other competitors, a lot would have come to light, uh, as much potentially as a year ago and certainly six months ago, and we wouldn't be caught. You know, coming down to the last couple of weeks, the way that we are now, and in fairness to the Democratic Party, they will have their convention. It will be an open convention. They can vote for whomever they want. But it is because they did not have this primary process that was worth a darn, that they see themselves now stuck with Kamala Harris effectively, and no one is going to lead a meaningful challenge against her. It's. It's a real shame in my view, but I think it is the result of a lot of bad decisions.

Speaker A: And then how do you think the. The next few months of the election cycle is going to go then?

Speaker B: I think it's going to be an exciting time. I think that, um, more people than ever are open to a third party. I think that our ticket will get a look, uh, the Oliver Termat ticket will get a bigger look than. Than third parties have in the past. I think that we will do well uh, come November 5th. Uh, it'll be particularly exciting because there are so many disaffected Republicans who are looking for a, uh, fiscally conservative, responsible alternative. A lot of people join the Republican Party believing in free markets and free trade, and they have been disappointed, I think, that a lot of disaffected, uh, Democrats are out there who are going to give us a look as well. People who, not only, to your point, never signed up for the idea of supporting Kamala Harris, uh, who have been disappointed with the Democratic Party's agreeing to spend all this money, uh, fostering all of this inflation. But a lot of people also joined the Democratic Party thinking that was going to be an organization that would stand up for your First Amendment rights, that would lean against, you know, against violations of your civil liberties, rather than handling Covid the way that it was managed. I think there are a lot of people disappointed with the Democratic Party for good reasons, who will give us a look. And so I think that it's going to be, uh, a very exciting election cycle.

Speaker A: And then what's the ultimate goal of, you know, this election? With the Libertarian Party, the ultimate goal

Speaker B: is to force the other parties to take us into consideration, in a philosophical and in a policy sense. We want to get enough attention, gain enough support that a Republican and a Democrat going forward will no longer be able to say, who cares? Right. Who will be able to completely disregard our policy, disregard our candidacy, disregard our campaign. We need to get the support required to force them to take our policy into consideration.

Speaker A: Yeah. And I think for a lot of viewers out there as well, who are sort of the Green Party, you know, they face the same challenges as yourself, Mike. You know, and I think the Green Party would get more votes, especially in places like California, if they thought their vote counted for something, if it was under some form of proportional representation for, especially for seats in the Senate or Congress, etc.

Speaker B: Absolutely. I think you're absolutely right about that. And that would create a snowball effect if you believe that it would have some effect, and then it did have some effect, and you could have some elected, uh, officials representing your views, your policy, your philosophy that would, uh, get the ball rolling in a stronger fashion for subsequent cycles. I agree with you wholeheartedly. Our system is set up, uh, to favor a two party system and it's a real shame.

Speaker A: Yeah, it's basically the only thing they actually agree on. Don't let anyone else to the party.

Speaker B: It is. The big thing that they agree on is keeping libertarians off the ballot.

Speaker A: Perfect, perfect, perfect. Mike. So just to, uh, round things off, Mike, how can they find out more information about you and the Libertarian Party? Where to go?

Speaker B: You bet. Well, you can go to mike tremont.com Like I say, it's hard to spell. It's got two A's in it. You can go to goldnewdeal.org which is where, um, my policy platform lives. And it's easier to spell goldnewdeal.org than it is Mike tremont.com youm can go to votechaseoliver.com and see all about the campaign and learn more about Chase. A terrific young man who has been a peace activist for many years and a successful one. He has had success in, for example, disrupting the duopoly's election in the Senate race in Georgia last cycle by causing a runoff between Raphael Warnock and Herschel Walker, which was a very exciting time. So this is, uh, a guy who is, yes, very young, but this is not his first rodeo and I think a lot of people will enjoy hearing about him.

Speaker A: Perfect, Perfect. Well, appreciate a busy guy. So thanks so much for coming on the podcast today, Mike.

Speaker B: Thank you. It's been an absolute pleasure. I look forward to the next time.

Speaker A: Okay, that's great. Thanks to everyone out there. Uh, my name's Alistair Gaithnes. You've been watching Boom, it's on the blockchain. Have a nice day.