日志
Jeffrey Tucker 美国资本主义崩溃
已有 5 次阅读2026-10-31 07:30 |个人分类:Jeffrey Tucker
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yz73KvZ1iO4
Jeffrey A. Tucker tucker@brownstone.org
Brownstone Institute » Jeffrey A. Tucker
Jeffrey Tucker is Founder, Author, and President at Brownstone Institute. He is also Senior Economics Columnist for Epoch Times, author of 10 books, including Life After Lockdown, and many thousands of articles in the scholarly and popular press. He speaks widely on topics of economics, technology, social philosophy, and culture.不仅马克思主义者对美帝国的现状怨声载道，自由意志主义者也对西方正在走的方向感到震惊。以下是他们的一份分析：
• US Capitalism at Brink of COLLAPSE. The Sh...
Original Transcript: https://www.video-translations.org/tr...
Translated Transcript: https://www.video-translations.org/tr...美国资本主义濒临崩溃，冲击已至｜杰弗里·塔克
不仅马克思主义者对美帝国的现状怨声载道，自由意志主义者也对西方正在走的方向感到震惊。以下是 他们的一份分析： 杰弗里·塔克与帕斯卡尔一起探讨人们对西方制度日益下降的信任。塔克将中央银行 制度、金融化和通货膨胀与不平等、战争及家庭经济的不安全感联系起来。他们就中国的经济成就、意 识形态的局限，以及民主究竟是失灵了，还是被寡头利益集团所俘获展开辩论。讨论涉及特朗普的承 诺、政治报复、宪法变革和公众的幻灭，随后转向医疗保健中的激励机制、生活水平，以及一个棘手的 问题：如何从当今的制度危机中孕育出一个更具人道精神的社会。
今天，布朗斯通研究所的创始人兼所长杰弗里·塔克首次做客我们的 节目。杰弗里，欢迎你。
#Jeffrey Tucker
这是我的荣幸。谢谢。
#Pascal
很高兴请到您。昨天，我采访了拉迪卡·德赛教授，她是一位直言不讳的马克思主义经济学家。我想， 为了公平起见，接下来应该采访一位在我看来，自认为分析立场很接近自由意志主义的人。您研究过路 德维希·冯·米塞斯，而且据我了解，您还是他的热情拥护者。这样说对吗？ 对，没错，是的。 从自由意 志主义的视角出发，您怎么看当前的世界政治局势？
#Jeffrey Tucker
嗯，我想我会这么说：比起意识形态，我更愿意从事实出发。意识形态有时会误导你，因为它建立在预 设之上。预设也许是必要的，但也可能扭曲你眼前的现实。所以对我来说，最重要的是尊重自己所了解 的事实，而不是透过意识形态的滤镜来看待一切。 意识形态这个东西很奇怪。我觉得，从某种意义上 说，要理清思路，确实需要它。但要理解这个世界，它却不是一个特别有用的工具，因为世界远比任何 一种意识形态所能概括的复杂得多。所以，我并不是来宣扬自由意志主义的，甚至也不是来宣扬路德维 希·冯·米塞斯的观点的。他是个天才，但当然，他也犯过错，任何人都会犯错。 这就是我的看法。我来 这里不是为了维护某种意识形态体系。如果我能帮助大家看清我们周围世界的某些方面，对我来说就足 够了。
#Pascal
对。你知道，我觉得，意识形态可以说是一套关于事物应该如何运作的基本信念。但另一方面，我们也 有一些基本信念，认为世界是由什么推动的。比如，马克思主义者的出发点是资本主义与工人阶级之间 的斗争。而我想，自由意志主义者的出发点则是自由，或者说个人自由的根本重要性。这样概括算准确 吗？
#Jeffrey Tucker
是的，嗯，我会说，就是让社会组织能够不受统治阶级的控制，自由地、自发地发展。所以从这个角度 来说，我看待世界的方式，和二十一世纪的马克思主义者看待世界的方式，我觉得有很多相通之处。事 实上，我有很多非常要好的朋友，他们都是从马克思主义的视角来看世界的，而大多数时候，我都很难 不认同他们的看法。
#Pascal
您对我们正在经历的这场危机，基本上是怎么看的？我是说，目前我们在好几个领域都面临着危机。比 如法国的政治危机，暴力事件正在那里蔓延。我们还看到好几场战争正在进行。乌克兰有一场大规模战 争，美国和伊朗之间也有一场大规模战争。还有好几处局势非常暴力。我是说，我不会把加沙的情况称 为战争，而更愿意说，那是对民众的屠杀。那么，您认为，这一切巨大的破坏力究竟从何而来？
#Jeffrey Tucker
嗯，如果一定要我指出一个根源，我会说是法定货币。由于转向纸币制度，以及中央银行权力的扩大， 世界经济结构经历了前所未有的金融化。随后，央行的政策变得越来越糟糕，包括实行零利率。这使生 产结构出现了严重扭曲，也让全世界的资源从民众手中流向金融机构。而这些金融机构又去寻找回报最 高的投资。那是什么呢？制药公司，还有以战争为导向的国家体制。所以，如果你问我根本问题是什 么，我会说，这就是根本问题。
#Pascal
好。你为什么认为法定货币会对这些不同的行业产生这么大的影响？如果采用不以法定货币为基础的支 付体系，比如说金本位制，为什么情况就会不一样呢？
#Jeffrey Tucker
对。其实，问题甚至不在于金本位本身，而在于，货币究竟是由人民选择，还是由一小撮精英选择。在 人类历史的大部分时期，绝大部分时期，我们使用的都是健全货币。也就是说，货币以某种实物兑付为 基础，或者有某种实实在在的东西作支撑。不管是贝壳串珠、白银还是黄金，其实都无所谓。但当中央 银行这个卡特尔逐步废除这些制度，最近一次就是废除金本位，转而实行纯粹的法定货币制度时，一股 前所未有的权力就被释放到了世界上。你可以无限量地创造货币，想资助什么就资助什么——说白了， 所有战争都能靠它来买单。第一次世界大战就是这么发生的。如果世界上没有中央银行，一战就不会发 生。
我是说，一个多世纪以来，我们一直都知道，是中央银行让第一次世界大战成为了可能。而那场大战之 所以爆发，是因为很多政府都想试试自己的新玩具。军火工业造出了各种神奇的小玩意儿。他们想看看 这些东西到底好不好使，而中央银行就在那里给他们提供资金。但那已经是一百多年前的事了，说真 的，情况非但没有好转，反而越来越糟。所以战争一直没停过。 可是在二〇〇八年金融危机之后，美
国的美联储搞出了零利率政策，这违背了现实规律。而它所做的，就是把资本主义的逻辑彻底颠倒了。 在传统资本主义下，节俭有回报，投资有风险。所以，除非你有个真正的好点子，否则存钱总比投资划 算。二〇〇八年之后——其实，基本上从二〇〇一年之后就……
#Jeffrey Tucker
借钱总比存钱划算。如今也依然如此。所以，勤俭节约不再吃香，审慎判断也不再吃香。现在，投机才 是这个世界的王道。
#Jeffrey Tucker
而这一切之所以成为可能，就是因为货币从黄金转向了纸币。我认为，归根结底，这就是毁掉这个世界 的根源。这就是为什么我们会有战争、疫情封控，以及世界上许多政府认为自己拥有无限权力的想法。 我的意思是，世界上大多数议会和国会都觉得，花多少钱都没问题，欠多少债都不算多。而民众则通过 通货膨胀为此买单。通货膨胀严重扰乱了人口结构的自然变化，以至于世界各地的人都比大约半个世纪 前穷得多。我知道，我们觉得自己有了更多好玩的东西，这当然挺好，对吧？
我们有手机，也有流媒体音乐，这些东西我都喜欢。这很好。但按现在的生活标准，在世界上几乎任何 地方，一个有好几个孩子的家庭，都已经不可能只靠一家之主一个人养活了。这跟五十年前很不一样。 所以，从这个角度看，各种统计数据都严重失真了。美国有人说，家庭收入中位数在上升。这简直是胡 说八道。本质上，这些就是统计谎言。他们的做法是计算人均收入，却不考虑每个家庭总共工作了多少 小时。如果把工作时长也算进去，那过去半个世纪，美国的生活水平已经大幅下滑，具体多少我说不 准，可能是百分之二十、百分之三十，甚至高达百分之五十。
#Pascal
我认识的一些经济学家会认为，这更多是政策优先次序的问题，而不是金融体系的问题。但在过去三十 年里，中国让五亿到八亿人摆脱贫困、跻身中产阶层，我认为这个成就是相当明显的。那你又怎么解释 呢？另外，至少在我看来，中国用的应该也是法定货币，还是说，他们用的其实是某种经过伪装的东 西？
#Jeffrey Tucker
不，这得看起点。三十年或五十年前，中国还远远算不上第一世界国家。毛泽东时代以及更早时期遗留 下来的大规模贫困依然存在。但通过允许一定程度的经济自由，中国很快就赶了上来。尽管是一党制国 家，中国直到今天仍然允许这样的经济自由，而且自由度相当高。 中国有意思的一点是，它根本就没 有打官司的文化，这很有意思。监管方面也是如此。我的意思是，它是个独裁国家，但总的来说，只要 你不去招惹政府，你就有自由，也有自由定价的权利。这是一种很奇怪的情况。 而在西方世界，我们 被各种诉讼缠得脱不开身，人人都不停地告来告去，弄得大家都害怕了，什么都不敢做。
他们不敢创业。监管体系庞大到这种地步，让我们陷入了一种奇怪的经济停滞状态：法定货币体系正把 财富从中产阶级手里转移出去，只流向精英阶层。贫富差距一年比一年呈指数级扩大，似乎谁也不知道 该怎么办。这在很大程度上，是我们这套由法定货币驱动、受到高度监管的体制造成的。 中国，没 错，也使用法定货币。全世界都一样，对吧？但至少中国完全没有那种层层严管、动不动就打官司的文 化。就是说，只要你不招惹政府，听中共的话，你就没事。我的意思是，这是一种不同的自由，跟我们 几百年来在西方民主制度下拥有的任何一种自由都不一样。但现实就是这样。
#Pascal
也许我们可以再谈一谈关于货币的这个论点。戴维·格雷伯这样的人，以及整个现代货币理论学派，都 认为所有形式的货币，本质上都是债务。这里说的不是作为价值储藏手段的货币，而是人们彼此交易、 支付商品时，经手流通的各种货币。因为一个人的资产，就是另一个人的负债。所以，你实际上无法把 债务和货币分开，因为货币就是债务。你怎么看这个论点？你觉得这个说法有道理吗？
#Jeffrey Tucker
嗯，也许吧，但你说的是现代货币理论。这些人在琢磨，能不能靠无休止的通货膨胀来给全世界提供资 金。我就是不相信这一套。我认为，归根结底，只有实行硬通货本位，才能保住中产阶级的财富和文 化，创造繁荣。不过，是啊，很遗憾，这个机会已经错过了。如果你问我有什么恢复健全货币制度的计 划，我还真拿不出来。我确实不知道。我不知道该怎么从现在的局面走到那一步。
如果我们能对每一家中央银行说：“你们必须关闭公开市场操作窗口，不能再购买政府债务。”那将是一 个巨大的改变。我认为，这可能是我们能做出的最好的改革，但眼下我们离这一步还远得很。我的意思 是，这个提议简直荒唐，因为中央银行存在的全部目的，就是为政府融资。而政府存在的全部目的，就 是维持银行的流动性。所以，他们结成了一个卡特尔，做着一笔对彼此都很划算的买卖。他们握握手， 就把我们其他人给抢了。
#Pascal
如果这笔钱真的能用于社会公益，而不是用于暴力，用来建设公共住房之类的项目，那就好了。
#Jeffrey Tucker
公共住房是最糟糕的住房。不是吧，你跟我说，公共住房？政府根本就不会盖房子。历史早就证明，政 府什么都干不好：发福利也好，连修条路都不行。我的意思是，政府就是什么都干不了。 听着，我这 是站在一个美国人的角度说的。也许别的国家的政府还不错。你知道，我记得我去过澳大利亚好多次， 还有加拿大，对吧？也去过其他国家。我当时就想，嗯，人家的政府比我们的强。美国人不擅长治理国 家，这可是出了名的，简直糟糕透顶。我们政府干的每一件事都烂透了。
其实，美国政府有一点很奇怪——也许欧洲也是这样，也许日本也是这样，我不知道——那就是，在美 国，政府做的几乎所有事情都外包给了私营部门。真的，几乎所有事情都是。就这一点来说，我觉得这 很糟糕，但它多少还能运转。比如，我们有公路，有邮政服务。实际上，几乎所有政府机构做什么事， 都会跟私营公司签合同。所以，政府本身并不直接提供产品和服务。我想，这就是我主要想说的。对。 所以，是的，公共住房——那也许是七十五年前的一个梦想，但放在今天，就行不通了。
#Pascal
那么，既然我们已经有了现在这些体制，你觉得接下来会走向何方？它们就摆在这里。我的意思是，我 们不能指望它们凭空消失。与此同时，我们看到，不满情绪相当普遍。在我看来，唐纳德·特朗普当 选，在很大程度上是美国民众对建制派的一次抗议。正是这些建制派建立了这套体制，而这套体制又让 很多人陷入贫困，甚至到了一个家庭的主要经济支柱已经无法养活全家的地步。你怎么看目前美国民众 不满情绪的发展趋势？
#Jeffrey Tucker
遗憾的是，这种情况没有任何历史先例。在一个工业化的民主国家，当广大民众对整个体制失去信任 时，会发生什么，我们没有任何历史先例可以参考。我们不知道最终会走向何方。对于当年苏联民众失 去信任后发生的事，我们抱有一些幻想，对吧？他们推翻了独裁者。你知道，那些卫星国的民众推翻了
自己的政府。捷克共和国和波兰发生了各种形式的革命，拉脱维亚、爱沙尼亚和立陶宛则脱离了苏联。 你知道，关于三十五年前发生的事，我们听到的就是这些故事。
但是，在一个工业化的民主国家里，当广大民众不再信任政府，也不再信任所有掌握社会主导权的机构 和群体时，究竟会是什么样，我们并没有真正的先例可循。我指的是学术界、媒体、大企业、科技界、 政府、每一个机构，以及所有精英。现在发生的就是这样的事。最后会如何收场？我不知道。不幸的 是，在我最悲观的时候，我会觉得，我们正在退回到二十世纪三十年代。当时，西方世界的很大一部分 都陷入了法西斯主义与社会主义之间的斗争。你说，我们是不是正在走向那样的局面？有时候，看起来 确实如此。
看看巴西正在发生的事，你会发现，极权主义的共产主义者正在跟，你知道，社团主义的法西斯分子斗 争，对吧？我是说，这似乎成了世界上很多地方都在上演的一种模式。我不希望事实如此。但是，你知 道，下一个阶段会是什么样？真的很难说。不管下一个阶段是什么样，它终究会到来。而且我认为，这 在很大程度上取决于我们。我们必须重建这个世界，因为过去一百年来发生的一切，尤其是过去六年来 发生的一切，在我看来，都是完全不可持续的。非常、非常令人担忧。这也要求我们重新思考那个长期 以来被我们视为理所当然的范式。
#Pascal
我完全同意。我想，我们很多人现在都在努力这么做，一边挠头，一边琢磨：一方面，不能再这样下去 了；可另一方面，我们又不知道还有什么别的出路。 你怎么看特朗普政府执政以来的发展？因为我回 想起唐纳德·特朗普竞选时的那些演讲，甚至是他一年半前、快两年前，一月份发表的就职演说，有一 句话我一直忘不了。他当时站在那里说，这届政府不仅会因为我们结束的战争而被人们铭记，也会因为 那些从未打响的战争而被人们铭记。 我当时忍不住为他鼓掌，因为这正是我非常希望看到的。可后 来，事情当然又完全朝着相反的方向发展了。而他的社会政策也完全沿袭了老一套的模式，让一个极小 的寡头阶层更加富有，而不是让普通民众受益。你怎么看这届政府到目前为止的表现？
#Jeffrey Tucker
嗯，你知道，在某些方面确实有了一些进展，这一点我承认。也就刚好能让像我这样的人满意，让我们 不得不继续支持他，因为另一个选择实在太可怕了，对吧？事情就是这么运作的。不过，总的来说，有 时候我会想，特朗普政府是不是一种只揭露部分真相、借此掩盖更多内幕的安排。就好像那些精英，不 管他们是谁，选中了他，让他扮演伟大的民粹主义领袖，因为他有号召力，有那套说辞，各方面的条件 都对他有利。但如果你真去看看他做了什么，在健康、扭转新冠政策，以及战争与和平这些问题上，他 做到的，大概只有我们所期待的百分之一。我的意思是，伊朗战争就是他第二任期的一场大灾难。
我是说，这就是他的那场新冠疫情——他第二任期的“新冠疫情”。当然，他的第一任期被最后一年的新 冠封锁给毁了，对吧？那是特朗普政府遭遇的一场灾难。可以说，这就是他们在二〇二〇年输掉大选的 原因。 他以一个强硬反抗者的姿态重新上台，头五十到一百天左右，看起来也许还挺顺利：政府效率 部横扫各个机构，推行一些削减措施，还承诺撤销美国国际开发署。这个机构、那个机构，也有了一些 不错的人事任命。可从那以后，施政就真的处处受阻、束手束脚。现在除了坏事，基本上什么进展都没 有。 不过，我也不是说偶尔就没有好事。我觉得，今天把弗拉维奥·博索纳罗从巴西救出来，可能就是 个不错的决定。
#Pascal
我还没注意到呢。发生什么事了？
#Jeffrey Tucker
嗯，你知道，弗拉维奥·博索纳罗当时在对抗卢拉这个人。可以说，他赢了那场选举，但当然，胜利在 最后一刻被人窃取了。我们可以争论这一点，但看起来很明显，这场选举就是被窃取了，跟二〇二〇年 我们美国发生的情况一样。 好，那么，新政权获胜还不到一天，就开始打弗拉维奥护照的主意了。卢 拉的私人律师要求他交出护照，他们真的是在打压他。而马尔科·鲁比奥促成了美国对弗拉维奥·博索纳 罗的保护，把他送上飞机带到美国，让他免于入狱，或是遭遇其他什么事。
所以，我算是支持这件事吧。这并不是说，我认同博索纳罗政权所做的一切。我的意思是，他们可能跟 他们反对的那些人一样残酷。不过，我不喜欢一个政权取代另一个政权之后，就惩罚所有政敌的做法， 而巴西现在确实正在发生这样的事。所以，你知道，如果要谈政治上的不同倾向，我在某种意义上其实 是赞成的。虽然我不喜欢美国干预别国事务，但我赞成特朗普政府动用一切可用的和平手段，为弗拉维 奥·博索纳罗这样的人提供庇护。
#Pascal
对。我在想，这会不会也是美国未来可能出现的一种局面，就是不同届政府，或者政府内部的不同人， 会相互迫害。我们已经看到唐纳德·特朗普遭遇了什么。不管你怎么看他——我可一点都不喜欢唐纳德· 特朗普——整个“通俄门”事件，试图用那些极其荒唐的指控，说他与俄罗斯关系密切，来抹黑他，而我 们现在知道，这些指控都是捏造的，这实在是荒谬至极。而他们在他卸任后试图整他的那些做法，也同 样是一场不折不扣的骗局。
我的意思是，看看这些指控在细节上较真到了什么程度：付钱让某个人保持沉默，这本身并不违法，但 与这笔钱有关的记账差错，却最终被认定为会计欺诈，好以此起诉他，称他是个罪犯。这种把法律当武 器的做法，实在透着一股威权主义或党派势力借法律打压对手的味道。我相信，我们原本以为，至少美 国不该是这样的。围绕各种政治主张，双方可以斗得很激烈，但争斗结束后，大家各自回家，赢家赢得 一切。可事实并非如此，至少现在已经不再如此了。
#Jeffrey Tucker
嗯，所以，这是我们眼下面临的一个重大的历史问题。美国是所谓民主制度的典型案例。美国建国的时 候，君主时代还没有完全结束，但已经非常接近尾声了。那是一个专制君主和国王统治的时代，王位长 期由家族世袭，人民没有发言权。 而美国建国，就是为了弘扬民主。人民将成为政府，政府也要回应 人民的诉求。嗯，写在纸上，这一切看起来非常美好。如果你读过托马斯·杰斐逊这样的人写的东 西——他是我心目中的英雄，就是这里的这位，对吧？——或者读过托马斯·潘恩的著作，就会知道， 他们都主张把个人权利的准则和市场力量引入政府本身，对吧？这就是当时的理论。而美国采用了一种 罗马式的共和制度。
那不是纯粹的民主，也不是纯粹的多数统治。但我们有制衡机制，对吧？我们的国会实行两院制，有参 议院，还有一个本质上相当于下议院的机构，也就是众议院。所以，我们借鉴了历史上的许多制度，试 图建立一套完美的政府体制。 而在大约一百二十五年的时间里，美国一直被誉为拥有正确模式的国 家。我们找到了办法，找到了有限政府与民主之间恰当的平衡，并把权力下放给各州，或者个人、家庭 和社区。内战是个重大的例外，但我们暂且把它放在一边，因为，当然了，我们有奴隶制这个原罪，你 知道，而这是我们必须消除的，对吧？
所以，这就是我们在十九世纪末面对的模式。当时，大家都喜欢美国。可后来，第一次世界大战爆发 了，对吧？于是，极权体制突然降临到这个世界上。这本不该发生，但它确实发生了。 如今，距离第 一次世界大战已经过去一个多世纪了，我感觉，世界的整体心态已经不再倾向民主了。就好像在说： “你们这套制度糟透了。你们成天就知道争夺政府权力，为了争夺权力，浪费了大量社会和经济资源。
这套制度行不通。像中国这样实行一党执政、由明智的统治者掌舵的体制，显然比你们更有竞争力，表 现也更好。” 所以，这让我非常担忧，因为我觉得，我们这个时代的氛围所传递出的信息就是：民主已 经失败了。
“宪政已经失败了。我们需要英明的统治者掌握最高权力，他们必须是独裁者，而且不能被推翻。他们 应该有权——说真的，也有义务——镇压反对力量，因为反对国家就是反对社会。那是在浪费资源。民 主浪费资源，效率低下。” 而我认为，我们正在朝这个方向走。我想，我们或许在二十世纪三十年代就 已经看过这一幕的前传了，对吧？但一百年后的今天，我觉得事态正变得非常严峻。我之所以担心，是 因为我非常怀念美国那场伟大的实验，对吧？看到我的杰斐逊雕像了吗？对吧？我就是很喜欢这些人。 我热爱启蒙运动。要说他们为民主本身提出的论证，我也不能说自己完全被说服了。不过，嘿，民主总 比大多数其他制度要好。只不过……
#Pascal
我也非常赞同这一点。当然，针对你刚才的观点，反驳的说法就是：不，失败的不是民主，而是寡头阶 层成功控制了整个体制，对吧？所以，到头来，如果你只能在卡玛拉·哈里斯和唐纳德·特朗普之间做选 择，而选票上却没有吉尔·斯坦、伯尼·桑德斯，或者其他所有你能想到的人，那就算不上多么民主，对 吧？这就好比让你选：“你想被绞死，还是被电死？到底选哪个？告诉我。” 是，我做出了选择，但我还 是不喜欢这个结果，因为结果都一样，对吧？这就是说两党其实是一党的那套论点。而且我们都知道， 只要你有足够多的钱，就能买到很大的政治影响力，对吧？
所以，就有这样一种说法：“哦，既然这个制度从根本上说并不是真正民主的，那我们需要做的，就是 回归真正的原则：一人一票。然后大家再来一决高下。”当然，也可以有其他形式，对吧？我们可以设 想，美国实行议会民主制，由总理而不是总统来领导。也可以设想实行直接民主制，每年有两三次，就 两三项法案征求你的意见：“你赞成还是反对？”我的意思是，理论上，这些都是可以考虑的选项，对 吧？但现行制度就是这样。那么，对当今的美国来说，最理想的民主形式会是什么？
#Jeffrey Tucker
所以，回过头来看美国建国时的制度模式，我认为那是很辉煌的。我的意思是，首先，我们实行金本位 制，没有中央银行。好，也就是说，金融势力基本上已经受到了遏制，对吧？而且，过了一百四十年， 这套制度才被推翻。他们曾试图在美国设立一家国家银行，但在十九世纪，这种尝试大多遭到了拒绝。 所以，当时没有中央银行，也没有所得税。人们挣多少钱，都可以自己留着。权力也大多下放给了各 州。
一七七六年的时候，我们其实没什么像样的中央政府。我的意思是，在《邦联条例》之下，几乎就等于 没有政府。一七八九年，我们有了宪法。好，这下我们有政府了。但即便在那个时候，政府的大部分权 力仍然属于各州和人民。后来，这种情况才开始逐渐改变。 而且我跟你说，美国有一个几乎没人提起 的重大变化，就是——我在想那是第几条修正案来着。我想是第十三条修正案，差不多吧。你可以查一 下。不过，我们以前的国会是两院制的。所以，我们有一个上议院，还有一个下议院。
一九一三年，宪法加入了一项新的修正案，废除了设立一个类似上议院的机构的理念。这样一来，各州 作为州，就不再在参议院拥有代表了。参议员突然改由全民投票选举，这就意味着，实际上只有大城市 才能决定参议院的人选。而众议院的人选也只有大城市才能决定，对吧？所以，国会的两院如今代表的 都是同一批人。 让州议会选出参议员，关键在于，州议会代表的是整个州的全体民众。你明白这一点 吗？这是个很大的变化，对吧？
所以突然之间，开国先贤所设想的参议院，就被一项宪法修正案废除了，取而代之的是另一种东西。可 能是第十七修正案，我记不太清了。对，我想是第十七修正案。他们改了一个词，就废除了两院制国
会。于是现在，参议院代表的只是美国的大城市，而不是整个州。所以，这类结构性的改变带来了灾难 性的后果。 所以你可以说，美国现在实行的宪法，已经不是十九世纪时的那部宪法了。它的宪法在结 构上已经变了。再加上一个中央银行，就凑齐了造就一个利维坦式庞大国家机器的条件。所以，你说， 接下来我们该往哪儿走？
我觉得，重新找回开国元勋最初的愿景，是件非常好的事。但要做到这一点，光靠想象、发表演讲、制 作人工智能视频，或者投票给下一个候选人，是不够的。这需要深刻的结构性变革，而且必须尽快发 生。 我先稍微往回说一点，谈谈特朗普，以及他所代表的东西。我一直觉得，特朗普当选的时候，那 些对他惧怕不已的建制派，其实应该非常感激他。因为我一直都知道，从某种意义上说，他恰恰是那个 会让这套体制继续运转下去的人。而公众当时的情绪，甚至早在他第一次当选时，就已经近乎要闹革命 了。
我是说，当时民众心里有那么大的怒火。虽然没法跟现在比，但即便在那时候，愤怒的程度也已经非 常、非常高了。现在的愤怒大概是那时的十倍。我觉得，特朗普一直扮演着这样一个角色：把民众带有 革命性的民粹怒火，引向一套并不真正打算动真格的改良议程，就这样阻挡、压制民粹运动。我认为， 这就是他在这里起到的作用。 我不是说他本人不是革命者。我觉得他可能是，也可能不是。我的意思 是，谁知道他到底是什么样的人呢？但他所扮演的历史角色大致就是这样：遏制、约束民粹运动，重新 引导它的方向，让它最终转而支持统治阶级的建制派。
#Pascal
其实，看着这一切发生，还真挺耐人寻味的。我们经常看到，在政治体系的不同阵营里，一些可以称为 “大安抚者”的人物突然冒出来，对吧？他们引导民众的愤怒，靠这股愤怒赢得选举，然后再让它慢慢消 退。我认为，奥巴马当年在左翼阵营中起到的作用也非常相似，对吧？他成功地压下了这股愤怒，却让 体制照旧运转，甚至进一步把它推向了——怎么说呢，我会称之为大寡头统治，而这种统治已经接管了 西方民主的很大一部分。在我看来，如今德国由一位贝莱德前首席执行官执政，绝非巧合。这本来就是 这套体制运作方式的一部分。所以，从某种意义上说，我倒认为，民主是从内部被掏空了，而不是正遭 受来自外部的攻击。
#Jeffrey Tucker
对，没错，我觉得大概是这样。我的意思是，说来也挺有意思，回想起我自己当时对这整件事的态度， 大概是在二零一六年，我写了一本书，叫 Right-Wing Collectivism。对吧？这本书后来被译成了葡萄牙 语、西班牙语，还有世界各地的其他语言。我当时在警告大家，要警惕唐纳德·特朗普，说他对人类自 由构成了真正的威胁。我还提出了一套详尽的论证，一直追溯到一八二零年的黑格尔，对吧？说真的， 从某些方面来看，那是一本很棒的书。我的意思是，虽然不完全正确，但可以说，背后的直觉是对的。 我当时对这个人猛烈抨击，对吧？后来，我渐渐对他有了好感，也接受了二零一六年的选举结果。
我当时想，嗯，你知道，从很多方面来说，他代表着对建制派的一种颠覆。建制派都反对他。所以在我 看来，也许他还是有些可取之处的。从二零一七年到二零二零年，我对当时的局面还算能接受。我想， 嗯，也许他没我想的那么糟。 然后新冠疫情就来了，对吧？虽然他一开始反对封锁，但当你所说的那 些寡头——在这里就是制药公司和深层政府——给他的压力大到一定程度时，他就屈服了。突然之间， 全世界大多数人都被封锁了，部分原因就是，大家原本都以为特朗普会抵制封锁，结果他却配合了。所 以，那就是一场灾难。
然后，他又给我们带来了那种“伟大”的医药产品，也就是mRNA疫苗之类的东西。我认为，这些东西伤 害了世界上很大一部分人。所以我就想，也许我一开始的直觉是对的。 接着，拜登在美国上台了，结 果他实际上比特朗普糟糕得多，简直差得太远了。然后特朗普又出来说：“你看，拜登烂透了。你们应 该投票给我。”所以我就想，好吧，也许到头来，他才是我该支持的人。我不会说自己成了他的粉丝，
但我觉得，在二〇二四年，特朗普比另一个选择要好。 我从来没想过，自己会说出这样的话。要是在 二〇二〇年，那根本无法想象，因为封锁之后，我当时对特朗普怒不可遏。真的是怒不可遏。我说： “看吧，我二〇一六年就说对了。他一直就不是个好人。”
然后突然间，四年后，我却在跟所有人说：“好吧，他总比另一个选择强。也许他会把我们解放出来。” 结果果不其然，上台才一年，他就发动了对伊朗的战争，对吧？这简直是一场难以想象的灾难。 所以 现在，我也不知道了。现在我觉得，就像你说的，我们面前只有这两个选择，而它们不过是两种口味的 毒药，对吧？这么说，多少有点绝望的意味，而我不愿意这么想。我真的认为，会发生一场根本性的转 变，而且很快就会发生。我不认为全世界广大民众会永远生活在这种寡头暴政之下——无非是两种口味 的暴政。我觉得，总有一天，这种局面会被打破。只是我还不完全清楚，那会是什么样子。
#Pascal
是的，我想我们很多人都在想这件事。从某种意义上说，要是有什么办法，能逼这些人把话说完整，那 就好了。他们两个从来都不把话说完整。巴拉克·奥巴马那句话，完整说来就是：“是的，我们能，但我 们不会去做。”句号，对吧？当然，后半句是后来才显露出来的。至于唐纳德·特朗普，完整说来就是： “让美国再次伟大，也许以后再说。”所以，他们都没把话说完整。而不知为什么，这套体制总会重新占 据上风。这也就是为什么我频道里的很多人，包括麦格雷戈将军，还有其他人，都预测说，你知道，局 势正朝着某种革命、暴力、大规模政治暴力的方向发展。我不认为会发生这种事。
#Jeffrey Tucker
嗯，我不知道。我也不完全清楚。而且谁也不知道，对吧？我是说，没有人能完全明白接下来会发生什 么，因为在人类历史上，我们从来没有遇到过这种情况。发达社会的治理体系已经高度工业化、数字 化、公司化，表面上还是民主的，可全体民众却对所有掌握主导权的机构和群体都失去了信任，这会是 什么样子？不信任媒体，不信任学术界，不信任专家阶层，不信任政府机构，也不信任任何跟它们有关 的人。谁都什么也不信了。好，那么，你说，这会带来什么结果？又会把我们带向何方？
我觉得，作为知识分子，我们所有人到头来，多少都会在思想里吸收一点黑格尔式的辩证法。我们习惯 从历史阶段的角度思考，也都在问自己：“下一个阶段是什么？”奥威尔会说：“靴子永远踩在脖子上。” 对吧？但作为心怀希望的人，我们不愿相信这一点，我也不愿相信。 所以，我并不完全清楚下一个阶 段会是什么样。我希望自己知道。要是我是个先知，我就能预言了。可我真的不知道。但我能说的是， 现行体制肯定是完全不可持续的，尤其是在美国。人们根本不知道，从财务和经济的角度来说，如今在 美国生活，承受的压迫已经到了多么荒唐的地步。
如今在美国，基本医疗已经负担不起了。我不知道大家是不是明白这一点，但真的已经负担不起了。比 如，一个四口之家，每个月要花三千到四千美元在医疗上。那么，这笔钱到底买到了什么？它买不到任 何医疗服务，买到的只是获得医疗服务的资格。在那之后，你还得自己掏一万美元、两万美元，甚至五 万美元，保险才开始赔付。即使到了该赔付的时候，保险公司也可以对你的理赔申请提出异议，把它退 回来。你唯一的选择就是打官司，而这基本上也没什么指望。
所以，实际上，这个国家的医疗费用正在把美国家庭逼向破产。好吧，这简直是一场灾难。我们的货币 每年贬值大约百分之四。过去六年里，每一美元的购买力已经缩水了多达三十美分。一个家庭要是没有 两份收入，根本就过不下去。我的意思是，情况已经糟糕到了这个地步，可媒体对此的报道却远远不 够。我们的生活水平正在大幅下降。然后，你知道，当我向人们指出这一点时，他们就说：“嘿，你还 有什么好抱怨的？你能在线看电影，还有各种新奇玩意儿。”
“你可以整天刷TikTok视频。你看，你的日子多好啊。”不好意思，这根本就不现实。我是说，我们曾经 称之为文明的一切，正在以惊人的速度消失。家庭维持不下去，家计难以为继，人们没有能力养家糊
口——说到底，就是根本没法以任何可行的方式，让人类这个大家庭继续繁衍下去。这就是今天西方世 界正在发生的事。让我震惊的是，居然没有人在谈这个问题，尤其是那些经济学家，你知道，他们没完 没了地争论实际收入中位数。不好意思，这根本就不成立。完全不成立。所有人都在骗你。
#Pascal
对啊，但我的意思是，就该这么跟他们说，对吧？你去吃你的实际收入中位数啊，去吃你的奈飞订阅 啊，然后看看有多好吃。你倒是告诉我啊。你知道吗，这种事迟早会让他们自食其果。突然有一天，人 们就会说：“不，比起你现在提供的这个东西，我宁愿有点吃的。这已经是我唯一还买得起的东西了。 可我现在订奈飞，居然比买个汉堡还便宜。”对吧？这太糟糕了。我是说，这显然糟透了，不过好吧。
#Jeffrey Tucker
这简直让我抓狂。我越看就越愤怒，因为那些摆弄数据的人、美联储，还有几乎所有的经济学家，都在 这些事情上撒谎。而一旦你，你知道，窥见了幕后的真相，就再也回不去了。
#Pascal
这简直就是，你知道，专门给人讲笑话用的，对吧？就像泰坦尼克号上的人：大家都慌了，搞数据的人 却告诉你：“你看，漂浮率的中位数完全正常。我们没事。”
#Jeffrey Tucker
对，而且西方还有另一个问题，那就是一种针对文明的生物攻击，简直无法形容：制药行业的势力，还 有那些没有效果、不安全，最终造成毁灭性后果的疫苗。我们刚出版了一本书，整整一千零四十八页， 都是人们对自己接种新冠疫苗后受到伤害的真实报告。我前前后后读了大概十五个小时，才读到二百七 十五页左右。我是在X平台上直播读的。这大概是我读过的最令人心碎的东西。但这还只是个开始。
你知道，大概三分之一的成年人都对精神类药物上瘾了，对吧？那我先很快地梳理一下。现在，美国的 资本主义出了一个严重的问题。美国雇人最多的是医疗行业，远远超过其他行业，对吧？对。那这是不 是说明我们很健康？不是，恰恰相反，我们非常不健康。那么，这些利润是从哪儿来的？是从人们的疾 病中来的。所以，我们有整整一个行业，包括制药公司和医疗公司，它们的盈利计划……
#Jeffrey Tucker
就是让他们之前那些药物和治疗造成的伤害最大化。所以，这就像是一种由医源性伤害驱动的经济。我 不知道我们该怎么摆脱这种局面。 几个月前，美国政府一位级别很高的官员给我打了个电话。他当时 正在研究这些数据，看了之后，真的感到非常不安。他意识到，美国一些最大的企业，竟然是靠让人生 病来发财的。他问我：“你有什么办法，能让我们改变这种激励机制？我们怎样才能让人们靠治好病赚 钱，而不是靠让人生病赚钱？” 我拿着电话坐在那里，抱歉，我一句话也说不出来。我没有答案。我不 知道这个问题的答案是什么。这是一个严峻、可怕、令人痛心的问题。但它触及了问题的核心：民众的 健康，就是社会本身的力量。而我们却变得越来越不健康。
#Pascal
是啊，但我觉得你一下子就戳中了痛处。如果一件事成了一个产业，那么从中获利的人，他们的利益就 在于卖出更多同样的东西，而不是真正把事情做好。这种现象到处都能看到。 日本的英语培训产业规 模庞大，可日本却是世界上英语普及程度最低的国家之一。但这依然是个价值数十亿美元的产业。每趟 列车上，你都能看到英语课程的广告。但说到底，目的就是卖课，而不是让学生学会英语。所以，你得
到的教育质量也就糟糕透顶。可人们并不知道这一点，因为他们觉得专家总知道自己在做什么。 但问 题就在这里。这并不是说这些人本性就坏，而是说，如果把它构建成一个营利性产业，这个体系就会以 这样的方式不断自我延续。
#Jeffrey Tucker
我知道。我完全明白你的意思。我一直都在想这个问题。我们有时候都会把自己想象成未来的历史学 家，对吧？我们会想，假如我们是三百年后的历史学家，我们会怎么描述我们这个时代？我想，大概会 这么说：这是世界历史上最富有、最能创造利润、资源最丰富的文明，却把其中百分之九十九都浪费在 了蠢事、寡头、浮华的玩意儿和无聊的事情上。这就是我的感受。骗局，坑蒙拐骗。对，对，对。在我 看来就是这样。 过去这段时间，就说过去三十年吧，我们本来有机会建造地球历史上最伟大的文明。 你知道，到处都充满美、和平、满足、团结和欢乐。人人都能过上好日子。可我们却把这一切都浪费在 了垃圾、荒唐事、娱乐、骗局、坑蒙拐骗、掠夺和政治斗争上。我是说，在我看来，这简直就是世界历 史上最大的悲剧之一。
#Pascal
是的。我希望，只要我们不亲手用自己拥有的核武器终结这场实验，我们就还有机会努力让情况变得更 好，因为说到底，这个星球上有八十亿人。我们注定得靠自己组织起来。只是我们目前还不太擅长。只 是目前。所以，我希望我们最终能做到。
#Jeffrey Tucker
再看看吧。再看看吧。
#Pascal
杰夫，这次谈话非常精彩。非常感谢你分享自己的思考。想关注你的人，可以去哪里找到你？
#Jeffrey Tucker
布朗斯通研究所的网址是 brownstone.org。欢迎订阅我们的邮件。我们每周发一封，基本上就是一份 文章列表。我觉得，我们做的工作堪称世界上最出色的工作之一，因为我们不偏向任何党派。我们努力 客观地看待当今世界局势的真相。至少，作为布朗斯通研究所的编辑兼所长，我努力做到客观。是的， 我骨子里是个革命者，但我也努力尊重事实。
#Pascal
非常感谢您与我们分享您的见解。各位，如果想关注杰弗里·塔克，可以访问布朗斯通研究所的网站。 我会把链接放在下方的简介栏里。杰弗里·塔克，非常感谢您今天抽出时间接受采访。
#Jeffrey Tucker
我的荣幸。谢谢。
US Capitalism at Brink of COLLAPSE. The Shock is Here | Jeffrey Tucker
US Capitalism at Brink of COLLAPSE. The Shock is Here | Jeffrey Tucker
Not only marxists complain about the state of the US Empire, the libertarians, too, are shocked with the direction the West is taking. Here is one of their analyses: Jeffrey Tucker joins Pascal to examine declining trust in Western institutions. Tucker links central banking, financialization and inflation to inequality, war and household insecurity. They debate China’s economic success, the limits of ideology, and whether democracy has failed or been captured by oligarchic interests. The discussion considers Trump’s promises, political retaliation, constitutional change and public disillusionment before turning to healthcare incentives, living standards and the difficult question of how a more humane society could emerge from today’s institutional crisis. Jeffrey's Links: Brownstone Institute: https://brownstone.org/ Jeffrey Tucker’s articles: https://brownstone.org/author/jeffrey-tucker/ Neutrality Studies Links: Neutrality Studies Substack: https://pascallottaz.substack.com Support Neutrality Studies: https://neutralitystudies.com/donate Neutrality Studies shop: https://neutralitystudies.com/shop Time Stamps 00:00 Jeffrey Tucker: facts, ideology and liberty 04: 04 Fiat money, central banks and the warfare state 09:56 China’s growth and the debate over economic freedom 16:32 What happens when society loses trust? 20:06 Trump’s promises, power and disillusionment 25:07 Lawfare, democracy and the American founding 36:51 Trump, Obama and containing popular anger 46:10 Living standards, healthcare and a squandered future
#Pascal
Welcome back, everybody, to Neutrality Studies. Today, we're joined for the first time by Jeffrey Tucker, the founder and president of the Brownstone Institute. Jeffrey, welcome.
#Jeffrey Tucker
It's my pleasure. Thank you.
#Pascal
I'm very glad to have you. Yesterday, I talked to Professor Radhika Desai, who is a very outspoken Marxist economist, and I thought it's only fair to talk next to somebody who I think sees himself as very close to the libertarian side of analysis. You have studied and are, I think, an ardent fan of Ludwig von Mises. Is that about correct? Yes, that's correct, yes. How do you view what is currently going on in world politics through your libertarian lens?
#Jeffrey Tucker
Well, I'd rather deal with facts than ideology, I guess I would say. Ideology can sometimes mislead you because it deals in priors, and priors are maybe necessary, but they can also distort the reality around you. So to me, the most important thing is to adhere to the facts as you know them and not see everything through an ideological lens. Ideology is strange. I think it's necessary in a way to organize your thoughts, but it's not a very helpful way to understand the world, which is much more complicated than any ideology can summarize. So I'm not a preacher of libertarianism, or even the views of Ludwig von Mises, who was a genius, but he made mistakes, of course, like every human being does. So that's my point of view. I'm not here to defend a certain ideological structure. If I can illuminate some aspects of the world around us, that's enough for me.
#Pascal
Right. And, you know, ideology, I would say, is a kind of set of basic beliefs about how something should work. But on the other hand, we have basic beliefs about what we think moves the world. So Marxists, for instance, start with this struggle between capitalism and the working class. And I believe libertarians would start from the fundamental importance of liberty, or the freedom of the individual. Would that be a fair characterization?
#Jeffrey Tucker
Yeah, well, I would say the freedom of social organization to develop organically, independent of ruling-class control. So in that way, there's a great deal of overlap between the way I see the world and the way, I would say, Marxists of the 21st century see the world. In fact, I have a lot of very good friends who see the world through a Marxist lens, and I have a hard time disagreeing with them most of the time.
#Pascal
What is your basic understanding of the current crisis that we are going through? I mean, we're seeing crises in several areas at the moment. There's the political crisis, for instance, in France, with violence spreading there. We see several wars being conducted. We have a huge one in Ukraine. We have a large one between the United States and Iran. We have several very violent situations. I mean, I wouldn't classify Gaza as a war, but more as a slaughter of people. But where do you think all of this very destructive potential is coming from?
#Jeffrey Tucker
Well, if I had to name one source, I would say fiat money. We have experienced unprecedented financialization of the world's economic structures as a result of the switch to paper money and the empowerment of central banks, followed by ever more terrible central bank policies, including zero interest rates. This has created massive distortions in the structure of production and driven all of the world's resources away from the people and toward financial institutions, which in turn have
sought investments that pay the highest returns. And what are those? Pharmaceutical companies and the warfare state. So if you wanted to ask me what the root problem is, I would say that is the root problem.
#Pascal
Okay. Why do you think fiat money has such a huge impact on these different sectors? And why would it be different with non-fiat-based payment systems, like if we had, for instance, a gold standard?
#Jeffrey Tucker
Yeah. Well, it's not even about the gold standard as such. It's really about the money chosen by the people versus the money chosen by a small elite. For most of human history, most of it, we've had sound money. So it was rooted in some sort of specie payment or something real. Whether it was wampum shells or silver or gold, it doesn't really matter. But when the central banking cartel gradually got rid of, most recently, the gold standard and replaced it with a pure fiat money standard, that unleashed an unprecedented level of power on the world. You could create endless amounts of money and fund whatever you wanted—essentially, all wars. That's how World War I happened. It would not have happened without central banks in the world.
I mean, we've known this for more than a century, that the central banks made the Great War possible. And the Great War came about because a lot of governments wanted to try out their new toys. The munitions industry had created lots of fantastic little gizmos. They wanted to see how they worked, and the central banks were there to fund them. But that was more than 100 years ago now, and it's only gotten worse, really. So wars continue. But after the 2008 financial crisis, the Federal Reserve in the United States invented a zero-interest-rate policy, which is contrary to reality. And what it did was flip the logic of capitalism on its head. Under traditional capitalism, frugality pays, and investment is risky. So you're always better off saving than investing unless you have a really good idea. After 2008—really, after 2001, essentially...
#Jeffrey Tucker
You're always better off borrowing than saving. And that remains true today. So frugality is out. Good judgment is out. Now speculation is the king of the world.
#Jeffrey Tucker
And that was only made possible by the switch from gold to paper. And I think that is ultimately the source of what ruined the world. That's why we have the wars, the COVID lockdowns, and the belief on the part of many governments in the world that they have unlimited power. I mean, most parliaments and congresses in the world think there's no amount of spending they can't engage in,
no amount of debt that is too much. And the people are paying through inflation. And inflation has led to an outrageous disruption of natural demographics in the population, to the point that people everywhere are getting much poorer than they were, like, half a century ago. I know we think we have more toys, and that's great, right?
We have cell phones, and we have streaming music, and I love all these things. That's great. But it's no longer possible for the head of a household with multiple children to support a family basically anywhere in the world at current living standards. And that's very unlike 50 years ago. So, in that sense, all the statistics are massively distorted. People in the U.S. talk about rising median household income. It's nonsense. These are statistical lies, essentially. What they're doing is calculating income per person, but they're not accounting for the number of hours worked per household. If you do the calculations that way, living standards in the United States have collapsed by, I don't know, 20%, 30%, or as much as 50% over the last half century.
#Pascal
Some of the economists I know would argue that this has more to do with policy priorities than the financial system. But how do you then make sense of the, I think, pretty obvious success of China in lifting between 500 million and 800 million people out of poverty and into the middle class over the last 30 years? China also, at least in my view, probably uses fiat money, or do they use something camouflaged?
#Jeffrey Tucker
No, it's a matter of the starting point. Thirty or fifty years ago, China was not anywhere close to being a first-world country. There was mass poverty left over from the Maoist years and before. But they caught up very quickly by permitting degrees of economic freedom, which they continue to do today despite the one-party state. There's a great deal of economic freedom. And the funny thing about China is that it does not have a culture of litigation, like, at all, which is interesting—or regulation, for that matter. I mean, it's a dictatorship, but by and large, if you leave the government alone, you have freedom and freedom of price. It's a very strange situation. Whereas in the Western world, we're so tangled up in litigation, and everybody's suing everybody else constantly, that people are afraid. They're afraid to move.
They're afraid to start businesses. The regulatory state is so gigantic that we're in a strange situation of economic stagnation, where the fiat money regime is transferring wealth from the middle class only to the elites. And the gap between the rich and the poor is growing exponentially year by year, and nobody seems to know what to do about it. And this is mostly a consequence of our highly regulated systems that are driven by fiat money. China, yes, it has fiat money. Everybody in the world does, right? But at least China has no culture whatsoever of heavy, heavy regulation or heavy
litigation. Like, if you leave the government alone and if you're compliant with the CCP, you're good. I mean, it's a different kind of freedom than anything we've had in Western democracy for hundreds of years. But there it is.
#Pascal
Maybe one more time on this argument about money. What do you make of the argument by people like David Graeber and the whole modern monetary theory school that essentially all forms of money—in terms of what you exchange with each other to pay for goods, not as a store of value, but all forms of money that change hands—are essentially debt, because one man's asset is another man's liability? So you cannot actually divorce debt from money because money is debt. Does that make sense to you?
#Jeffrey Tucker
Well, I guess, but you're talking about modern monetary theory, and these people play with the idea that you could just fund the world through endless inflation. I just don't believe that. I think, ultimately, a hard money standard is the only way to preserve value and culture in the middle class and create prosperity. But, yeah, that ship has sailed, I'm sorry to say. If you ask me what my plan is for restoring sound money, I can't say that I have one. I don't really know. I don't know how to get from here to there.
If we could say to every central bank, “You have to close the open market windows. You can no longer buy government debt,” that would be a dramatic change. And I think that would be the best reform we could possibly make, but we're not anywhere near that at this point. I mean, it's an absurd suggestion because the whole purpose of a central bank is to fund government. And the whole purpose of government is to keep the banks liquid. So they've got a cartel and a great deal going. They shake hands and rob the rest of us.
#Pascal
The nice thing would be if the money were actually used for social purposes and not for violent purposes, and if it went into public housing projects and so on.
#Jeffrey Tucker
Public housing is the worst kind of housing. Like, you're telling me, public housing? Government cannot build houses. Government is historically incapable of doing anything: providing welfare, even building streets. I mean, governments can't do anything. Look, I'm speaking as an American. Maybe other governments are good. You know, I remember visiting Australia many times, or Canada, right? Or other countries. I thought, well, this is a better government than we have. Americans are famously, like, tremendously terrible at government. Everything our government does is awful.
And actually, the strange thing about American government—maybe it's true in Europe, maybe it's true in Japan, I don't know—is that almost everything the government does in the U.S. is outsourced to the private sector. Like, almost everything. And to that extent, I think it's terrible, but it more or less functions. Like, we have roads, we have mail. Actually, almost all the agencies contract with private companies for everything they do. So government itself is not a producer. I guess that's my main theme. Yeah. So, yeah, public housing—that was a dream maybe 75 years ago, but it's not a viable thing today.
#Pascal
Where do you think, then, this is going, now that we have the systems we have? They're just here. I mean, we can't wish them away. At the same time, we see this widespread discontent. I mean, in the United States, I interpret the election of Donald Trump very much as a protest against the establishment that created the system, which then drove a lot of people into poverty and into a situation where one head of household cannot feed his or her family anymore. How do you see the U.S. population's discontent developing right now?
#Jeffrey Tucker
Sadly, we don't have any historical precedent for this. We don't have any historical precedent for what happens in an industrial democracy when the masses of the population have lost trust in the entire system. We don't know what the endpoint is. We have fantasies about what happened in the Soviet Union when people lost trust, right? They overthrew the dictators. You know, satellite states overthrew their governments. There were various forms of revolution in the Czech Republic and Poland, and Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania seceded. You know, we have these tales about what happened 35 years ago.
But we have no real scenario of what it looks like in an industrialized democracy when the masses of the population have lost trust in government and all the commanding heights. I mean, academia, media, big corporations, technology, government, every single agency, all the elites. That's what's going on right now. How does this end? I don't know. Unfortunately, in my worst moments, I'm thinking that we're reverting to the 1930s, when a large part of the Western world was in a struggle between fascism and socialism. You know, is that where we're headed? Sometimes it seems like it.
When I look at what's happening in Brazil, you've got, like, totalitarian communists battling against, you know, corporatist fascists, right? I mean, this seems to be a model that's unfolding in a lot of parts of the world. I don't want that to be true. But, you know, what is the next stage? It's really hard to say. Whatever that next stage is, there is going to be a next stage. And I think a lot of that is up to us. We have to reconstruct the world because whatever has happened over the last 100 years, certainly over the last six years, strikes me as completely unsustainable. Very, very alarming. And it calls for a rethinking of the paradigm that we've assumed to be true for a long time.
#Pascal
I absolutely agree with that. I think a lot of us are trying to do that right now, kind of scratching our heads and thinking, A, it cannot continue like this, but B, we don't know what else there could be. What do you make of the way that the Trump administration is unfolding? Because when I remember the speeches Donald Trump gave when he was campaigning, and even his inaugural address that he gave in January, one and a half, almost two years ago, the one thing I will not forget is that he said, when he stood there, that this administration will not only be remembered for the wars we ended, it will also be remembered for the wars that never started. And I could not help but applaud the man, because that's exactly the thing that I would have loved to see. But then, of course, it goes exactly the other way. And his social policies also follow exactly the same old pattern of enriching a very small oligarchic class and not the general population. How do you view the progress of this administration?
#Jeffrey Tucker
Well, you know, there has been some progress on some fronts, I will say, just enough to satisfy, you know, people like me, so that we have to be fans because the alternative is so scary, right? That's the way it works. But in general, sometimes I wonder if the Trump administration was a kind of limited hangout. It was like the elites, whoever they are, appointed him to pretend to be the great populist leader because he had the appeal, he had the rhetoric, he had everything going for him. But if you actually look at what he's done, he's done about 1% of what we hoped he would do on health, reversing COVID policies, and war and peace. I mean, the Iran war is the great catastrophe of the second term.
I mean, that's his COVID—his second term's COVID. The first term was ruined, of course, by the last year with the COVID lockdowns, right? That was a disaster that befell the Trump administration. That's arguably why they lost the election in 2020. He came back as this great resistance guy, and it seemed to be going well for about 50 to 100 days, maybe, with DOGE sweeping through the agencies, certain cuts, and promises to abolish USAID. We got some good appointments in this agency or that. But since that time, it's really been throttled and hamstrung. And nothing's happening really right now except bad things. But I don't want to say there aren't sometimes good things. I feel like rescuing Flavio Bolsonaro out of Brazil was probably a good decision that happened today.
#Pascal
I didn't even catch that yet. What happened?
#Jeffrey Tucker
Well, you know, Flavio Bolsonaro was standing up to this guy Lula. Arguably, he won the election, but of course, it was stolen from him at the last minute. And we could argue about that, but it seems obvious that it was stolen in the same way that 2020 unfolded for us in the U.S. Okay, so the new regime, not even a day into the victory, was going after Flavio's passport. Lula's personal lawyer demanded his passport, and they were really attacking him. And Marco Rubio made it possible for the U.S. to protect Flavio Bolsonaro and flew him to the U.S. to save him from what was going to be jail or whatever was going to happen.
So I'm sort of for this. It's not to say that I agree with everything associated with the Bolsonaro regime. I mean, it's probably as cruel as the people they oppose. But nonetheless, I don't like the idea of one regime taking over from another and punishing all their political enemies, which is definitely going on in Brazil right now. So, you know, if you want to talk about flavors of politics, I actually approve in some sense. Even though I don't like American intervention abroad, I approve of the Trump administration using whatever peaceful mechanisms they have to give sanctuary to a guy like Flavio Bolsonaro.
#Pascal
Right. I wonder if this is also one of the possible futures of the United States, where these different administrations, or the different people inside the administrations, will then persecute each other. We've seen how this happened to Donald Trump. Whatever you think about him—and I'm no fan of Donald Trump at all—the entire Russiagate affair, trying to discredit him with very, very bogus accusations about being close to Russia, which we now know were fabricated, is absolutely ridiculous. And the way that they tried to go after him when he was out of office was, once again, quite a scam.
I mean, the level of detail in the accusations about accounting errors related to paying somebody not to speak—which is not illegal—but the accounting fraud that was ultimately found in order to indict him and call him a criminal. This type of lawfare just smells very much like authoritarian or sectarian lawfare against the other side. And this is the kind of thing that, I believe, we thought the United States, at least, was not about. You fight each other very hard when it comes to all the political arguments, but then, once the fight is over, you go back home and the winner takes it all. But not really, and not really anymore.
#Jeffrey Tucker
Well, so this is a major historical problem we face right now. The U.S. is the paradigmatic case of what's called democracy. So the U.S. was founded not at the tail end, but very close to the tail end of the monarchical age—the age of despots, of kings, of long systems of familial inheritance in which the people did not have a voice. And the U.S. was founded to celebrate democracy. The people would be the government, and the government would be responsive to the people. Well, it looks
very good on paper. And if you read someone like Thomas Jefferson, my hero, who's the guy right here, right? Or Thomas Paine—they all believed in bringing standards of individual rights and market forces to government itself, right? That was the theory. And the U.S. adopted a kind of Roman republican system.
It wasn't pure democracy. It wasn't pure majority rule. But we had checks and balances, right? And we had a bicameral system of Congress. We had senators, and we had a House of Commons, essentially, which is the House of Representatives. So we borrowed from many systems throughout history to try to create the perfect system of government. And for, let's say, 125 years, the U.S. was celebrated as having the right model. We figured it out. We figured out the right balance between limited government and democracy and devolved power to the states or to individuals or families or communities. The Civil War was a great exception, but we put that on the shelf because, of course, we had this original sin of slavery, you know, which we had to get rid of, right?
So that was the model we faced at the end of the 19th century. So everybody loved America. But then the Great War happened, right? And so suddenly we have totalitarian systems descending upon the world. That was not supposed to happen, but it did happen. Now, we're more than a century past the Great War, and I feel like the mood of the world has shifted away from democracy. Like, "Your system sucks. You know, all you do is struggle for control of government power, and you're wasting massive social and economic resources struggling for this control. And that does not work. A system like China, with a one-party state and wise rulers at the top, is clearly outcompeting you, outperforming you." And so this worries me a lot because I think the message we're getting from the tenor of our times is that democracy has failed.
“Constitutional government has failed. We need wise rulers at the top who are autocrats, who can't be overthrown. They should have the right—and the duty, really—to crush opposition, because opposition to the state is opposition to society. It's wasteful. Democracy is wasteful. It's inefficient.” And this, I think, is where we're headed. I think we may have seen a prequel to this in the 1930s, right? But 100 years later now, I think it's getting really intense. And I'm worried about this because I'm very nostalgic for the great American experiment, right? See my Jefferson statue, right? Like, I love these guys. I love the Enlightenment. I can't say I'm entirely persuaded by their argument for democracy as such. But, hey, democracy is better than most other systems. Except...
#Pascal
I'm a great fan of it, too. And the counterargument to what you just presented is, of course, to say that, no, it's not democracy that failed. It's just the oligarchic class that managed to take over the system, right? So it's not very democratic if, at the end of the day, the choice you have is between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, but you don't have a Jill Stein or Bernie Sanders or all the others that you could think of on the ballot, right? Like the choice between, “Do you want to be hanged or
do you want to be electrocuted? Which one is it? Tell me.” And yeah, I made my choice, but I still don't like the outcome because it's the same, right? That's the argument about the uniparty. And we know that if you have a lot of money, you can buy a lot of political influence, right?
So then there's this kind of argument: “Oh, well, it's not really democratic at its core, so what's needed is a restoration of the actual principles: one man, one vote. And then we actually battle it out.” And there would be other forms, right? We could think about the United States under a parliamentary democracy, with a prime minister instead of a president. We could think about it as a direct democracy where, you know, two or three times a year, you're asked about two or three bills: “Do you want them, yes or no?” I mean, that would be on the cards, right, in theory. But the system is as it is. What would be the optimal version of democracy for the modern United States?
#Jeffrey Tucker
So if you look back at the founding model of the U.S., I think it was glorious. I mean, first of all, we had a gold standard. We had no central bank. Okay, so the financial powers were already mostly kept at bay, right? And it took 140 years before that was overthrown. They tried to get a national bank here, and it was mostly rejected in the 19th century. So there was no central bank. There was no income tax. So whatever money people made, they could keep. The powers were mostly devolved to the states.
We didn't really have much of a central government in 1776. I mean, the Articles of Confederation were like no government at all. In 1789, we got the Constitution. Okay, so now we have a government. But still, even then, most of the powers of government belonged to the states and to the people. That just began to gradually change. And I'll tell you what, a major change in the U.S. that hardly anybody talks about is—I'm trying to think which amendment that was. I think it was the 13th Amendment, something like that. You could look it up. But we used to have a bicameral Congress. So we had a House of Lords and a House of Commons.
In 1913, there was a new amendment put into the Constitution that abolished the idea that we would have a House of Lords. So no longer were states as such represented in the Senate. The Senate was suddenly subject to popular vote, which meant that only big cities really picked the Senate. And only big cities picked the House, right? So now you had two branches of Congress that represented the same people. The thing about having the state legislature pick the Senate representatives is that state legislatures represented the whole population of the entire state. You see that? It was a big change, right?
So suddenly the Senate, as the founders imagined it, was abolished and replaced by something else through a constitutional amendment. Maybe it was the 17th Amendment. I can't quite remember. Yeah, I think it's the 17th Amendment. They changed one word, and it abolished the bicameral Congress. So now the Senate represents only the big cities in the U.S. instead of the entire state. So these kinds of structural changes were catastrophic. So you could make the argument that the U.S.
is not under the same constitution as it was in the 19th century. It's under a different structural constitution. And you add a central bank to that, you've got a prescription for a leviathan. So, you know, where do we go from here?
I think recapturing the original vision of the Founding Fathers would be a brilliant thing, but that's going to require more than just imagining things, giving speeches, making AI videos, or voting for the next guy. It's going to require dramatic structural change, and that has to happen soon enough. Let me just back up slightly and say something about Trump and what Trump represents. I always thought, when Trump was elected, that the establishment that was terrified of him should have been very grateful for Trump, because I always knew that he was the guy who was, in a sense, going to keep the system functioning. And the mood in the public, even when he was first elected, was practically revolutionary.
I mean, there was such anger in the populace. It doesn't compare to now, but it was, even then, very, very high. Now it's like ten times as intense. Trump, I think, has always been the guy to channel revolutionary populist anger into a reformist agenda that wasn't really serious, and in that way, just kind of block and throttle the populist movement. I think that was his role here. I'm not saying that he himself is not a revolutionary. I think he may be. Or maybe not. I mean, who knows what he is? But that was his kind of historical role: to contain, restrain, and rechannel the populist movement into something that would ultimately support the ruling-class establishment.
#Pascal
It's quite fascinating, actually, to watch that happening. Regularly, we see, on several sides of the political system, what we could call the great pacifiers suddenly arrive, right? They channel the anger, win on it, and then make it ebb away. And I would argue that Obama served a very similar purpose at the time on the left, right? He managed to push it down but keep the system going as it is, and actually move it more toward, well, what I would call the great oligarchy that has taken over much of Western democracy. It's no coincidence to me that Germany now is ruled by a former chief executive of BlackRock. It's just part and parcel of how the system works. So, in a sense, I would actually argue that democracy has been hollowed out from within and is not under attack from without.
#Jeffrey Tucker
Yeah, no, I think that's probably right. I mean, it's funny because when I think back on my own temperament toward this whole thing, back in 2016, I guess it was, I wrote a book called Right- Wing Collectivism. All right? So this is a book that was translated into Portuguese, Spanish, and other languages around the world. And I was warning about Donald Trump, saying that he represents a genuine danger to human liberty. And I had an elaborate argument that goes back to
Hegel in 1820, right? And really, it's a wonderful book in some ways. I mean, not entirely correct, but it had a good intuition behind it, let me say. And I was raging against this guy, right? And then I gradually warmed up to him. I came to terms with the 2016 election.
I thought, well, you know, in many ways, he represented a kind of overthrow of the establishment. The establishment was against him. So, to my mind, maybe there was some redeeming value. And from 2017 to 2020, I was okay with what was unfolding. I thought, well, maybe he's not as bad as I thought. And then COVID hit, right? And even though he initially resisted lockdowns, when he got enough pressure from what you call the oligarchs—in this case, the pharmaceutical companies and the deep state—he caved. And suddenly, most of the world's population was locked down, partly because Trump, who everybody thought would resist it, went along. So that was a catastrophe.
And then he brought us the great pharmaceutical product that I think has injured a vast swath of the world population, the mRNA shots and so on. So I thought, well, maybe my initial instincts were right. So then Biden took over in the U.S. and became actually far worse, like vastly worse than Trump. So then Trump arrives and says, “Look, Biden sucks. You should vote for me.” So I thought, well, maybe he is my guy after all. I wouldn't say I became a fan, but I thought, well, Trump in 2024 was better than the alternative. I never would have imagined I would have said anything like that in 2020, because I was raging against Trump after lockdown. Like, raging. I said, “See, I was right in 2016. He was always a bad guy.”
And then suddenly, four years later, I'm telling everybody, "Well, he's better than the alternative. So maybe he's going to liberate us." And then, sure enough, a year in, he starts his war with Iran, right? Which is an unbelievable catastrophe. And so now I don't know. Now I think, like you said, we're given these two choices, and they're two flavors of poison, right? That sounds a little bit despairing, in a way, and I don't like to think of it that way. I really do think that there's going to be a paradigm change, and it's going to happen soon. I don't think that the masses of the world's population are going to live under this kind of oligarchic tyranny—two flavors of tyranny—forever. I think at some point something's going to give. I just don't know entirely what that looks like.
#Pascal
Yeah, I think that's on the minds of a lot of us. In a sense, what would be nice would be if we had a way of forcing these people to give us the full sentence. Neither of them ever gives the full sentence. For Barack Obama, it was, “Yes, we can, but we won't.” Period, right? And that, of course, comes later. For Donald Trump, it's, “Make America great again, maybe later.” So they don't give the full sentence. And for some reason, the system then always reasserts itself. And this is why a lot of people on my channel, General McGregor, and others all predict that, you know, it's pointing towards some form of revolution, of violence, of mass political violence. I don't see that happening.
#Jeffrey Tucker
Well, I don't know. I don't entirely know. And nobody knows, right? I mean, there's nobody who understands entirely what's about to happen because we've never been in this situation before in all of human history. What does it look like when advanced societies have highly industrialized, digitized, and corporatized systems of government that ostensibly are democratic, but the entire population has lost trust in all the commanding heights? No trust in media, academia, the expert class, the agencies, or anybody associated with them. Nobody believes anything. Okay, so, you know, what is the result of that? And where does that lead?
I think all of us, as intellectuals, ultimately absorb a little bit of a Hegelian sort of dialectic in our minds. We think in terms of stages of history, and we're all asking ourselves, “What's the next stage?” And Orwell would say, “The boot on the neck forever,” right? But as hopeful human beings, we don't want to believe that, and I don't want to believe that. So I don't entirely know what it looks like. I wish I did. If I were a prophet, I would predict this. I just don't know. But all I can say is that, for sure, the existing system is completely unsustainable, particularly in the U.S. People have no idea how absurdly oppressive, from a financial and economic point of view, life in the U.S. has become.
It's not possible to afford basic medical care in the U.S. anymore. I'm not sure if people understand this or not, but it's just not possible. If you're a family of four, for example, you're going to be paying $3,000 to $4,000 a month for medical care. And so what does that buy you? It doesn't buy you any medical care. It buys you access, after which you're going to spend as much as $10,000, $20,000, even $50,000 before the insurance kicks in. Even if it kicks in, the insurance company can dispute your claim and throw it back to you. And your only choice is to litigate, and that's kind of hopeless.
So, in effect, medical care in this country is bankrupting the American family. Okay, this is a catastrophe. Our currency is losing about 4% per year. Over the last six years, we've lost as much as 30 cents on the dollar of purchasing power. It's not possible for a household to exist without two income streams. I mean, it has gotten so bad, and this is not well reported at all. But we are losing our standard of living dramatically. And then, you know, when I point this out to people, they say, “Hey, what are you complaining about? You've got streaming movies. You've got fancy toys.”
“You can watch TikTok videos all day. You know, your life's good.” I'm sorry, this is not even real. I mean, we are losing anything we used to call civilization at a very dramatic pace. There's no sustainability for the family, for the household, no capacity to support families—basically, to further the reproduction of the human family in any kind of viable way. This is what's going on in the Western world today. And it shocks me that nobody is talking about it, particularly not economists, you know, who are forever arguing about real median income. I'm sorry, this is not a thing. It's just not a thing. Everybody's lying to you.
#Pascal
Yeah, but I mean, that's the thing to tell them, right? Go and eat your real median income, and go and eat your Netflix subscription, and then see how tasty they are. Tell me. This is what's going to bite them in the behind at some point, you know? Suddenly, people will say, “No, I would rather have some food than this thing that you're offering here. That is the last thing that I can actually afford. But my Netflix subscription is now cheaper than my hamburger,” right? Which sucks. I mean, that just obviously sucks, but okay.
#Jeffrey Tucker
It drives me absolutely crazy. The more I look at it, the more furious I get, because the data mongers, the Federal Reserve, and almost every economist are lying about all these things. And once you, you know, peer behind the curtain, you can't go back.
#Pascal
It's almost like, you know, it's made for jokes, right? It's like the people on the Titanic: everybody's panicking, and the data people tell you, “Look, the median floating rate is totally fine. We're okay.”
#Jeffrey Tucker
Yeah, and then you have another problem in the West, anyway, which is a kind of biological attack on civilization, which is indescribable: the power of the pharmaceutical industry and shots that were ineffective, not safe, and ultimately devastating. We just published a book that's 1,048 pages of people's actual reports of injury from the COVID shots. I've read it over the course of like 15 hours, and I'm only on page like 275. I've done this live on X. It's like the most heartbreaking thing I've ever read. But it's only the beginning.
You know, like a third of adults are addicted to psych meds, right? So let me just frame this up really quickly. We've got a serious problem with American capitalism right now. The number one employer in the U.S. is the medical industry. Number one employer by far, right? Right. So does that mean we're healthy? No. It's exactly the opposite. We're extremely unhealthy. So where are these profits coming from? They're coming from ill health. So we've got an entire industry—pharmaceutical companies and medical companies—whose profitability plan…
#Jeffrey Tucker
is to maximize harm from their previous drugs and treatments. So it's like an iatrogenic-driven economy. I don't know how we get out of this. I had a call a few months ago from a very high official in the U.S. government who was looking at the data, and he was genuinely troubled when he looked at this. He realized some of America's biggest corporations were getting rich by making people sick. And he asked me, “What is your solution for how we switch the incentives? How do we
make people make money by getting people well instead of making them sick?” And I sat there on the phone, and I'm sorry, I just fell silent. I don't have the answer. I don't know what the answer to that is. It's a grim and gruesome and terrible problem. But it gets to the heart of this: the health of the population is the strength of the society itself. And we're getting ever less healthy.
#Pascal
Yeah, but I think you put your finger right on the spot where it hurts. If something is an industry, then the interest of those profiting from the industry is to sell more of the same thing, not to actually be effective at what it does. And we see this across the board. Japan has a huge English-language industry, and Japan is one of the least English-speaking countries on Earth. But it's a multibillion- dollar industry. On every train, you see advertisements for English-language courses. But again, the whole point is to sell the courses, not for the students to learn English. Hence, the education that you then get is abysmal. But people wouldn't know it because they think the experts know what they're doing. But that's the thing. It's not that these people are intrinsically bad. It's the system that perpetuates itself in this way if it is structured as a for-profit industry.
#Jeffrey Tucker
I know. I know exactly what you mean. I think about this all the time. We all imagine ourselves to be future historians sometimes, right? We think, as historians 300 years from now, how are we going to describe our period? And I think the description is the wealthiest, most profitable, most resource-rich civilization ever in the history of the world, which squandered 99% of it on stupidity and oligarchs and fripperies and nonsense. That's what it strikes me as. Scams, rackets. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's what it seems like to me. We had the opportunity over the last, let's just say, 30 years to build the greatest civilization in the history of the planet Earth. You know, with beauty and peace, contentment, solidarity, and joy all around. Good lives. And instead, we squandered it all on junk and silliness and entertainment and scams and rackets and pillaging and political struggles. And it's just, I mean, one of the great tragedies in the history of the world, as far as I'm concerned.
#Pascal
It is. My hope is that unless we actually end the experiment ourselves with the nuclear weapons we have, we will have a chance to try to improve things because, at the end of the day, we're 8 billion people on this planet. We are condemned to self-organization. We're just not very good at organizing yet. Yet. So I hope we'll get there.
#Jeffrey Tucker
We'll see. We'll see.
#Pascal
Jeff, this was fascinating. Thank you very much for the insights into your thinking. People who want to follow you, where should they go?
#Jeffrey Tucker
Brownstone Institute is at brownstone.org. Sign up for our emails. We send out one email a week, just a kind of list of articles. I think we're doing some of the best work on planet Earth because we're not partisan. We try to look objectively at the truth about our world situation. At least, as the editor and president of Brownstone Institute, I try to be objective. Yeah, in my heart, I'm a revolutionary, but I also try to stick to the facts.
#Pascal
And thank you very much for sharing your insights with us. Everybody, if you want to follow Jeffrey Tucker, go to the Brownstone Institute. I will put a link to it in the description box below. Jeffrey Tucker, thank you so much for your time today.
#Jeffrey Tucker
My pleasure. Thank you.
