Joe Rogan Experience #1639 - Dave Smith

Dave Smith is a stand-up comedian and political commentator. He is also the host of the "Part of the Problem" podcast, and co-host of the "Legion of Skanks" podcast.

Dave SmithguestJoe Roganhost

Jun 27, 20243h 12mWatch on YouTube ↗

EVERY SPOKEN WORD

150 min read · 30,036 words

0:00 – 2:18
Lost wallet travel chaos, digital payments, and the modern need for ID
1. DSDave Smith
  (drumming music plays) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out.
2. NANarrator
  The Joe Rogan Experience.
3. JRJoe Rogan
  Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day. (rock music plays) Hello, Joe Smith.
4. DSDave Smith
  Hello, Mr. Joe Rogan.
5. JRJoe Rogan
  What's cracking, brother?
6. DSDave Smith
  Not much. Glad to be back.
7. JRJoe Rogan
  Thanks for coming out.
8. DSDave Smith
  Thank you.
9. JRJoe Rogan
  Thanks for making the trip, man. Sorry you lost your wallet. We're gonna find out how libertarian you are when you get to the airport. (laughs)
10. DSDave Smith
  Oh my God.
11. JRJoe Rogan
  (laughs)
12. DSDave Smith
  I'm really such an idiot.
13. JRJoe Rogan
  That's-
14. DSDave Smith
  Lost, lost my wallet on a plane buying the stupid internet. I went into my bag to buy, get my wallet so I could buy the dumb internet, which doesn't even work.
15. JRJoe Rogan
  Right, barely works.
16. DSDave Smith
  And fell asleep and left my wallet.
17. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah, if you think you're gonna watch YouTube on that, good luck.
18. DSDave Smith
  Yeah.
19. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah, you can kinda tweet.
20. DSDave Smith
  (laughs)
21. JRJoe Rogan
  You can kinda check your email.
22. DSDave Smith
  Yeah, yeah, it's, like, pointless.
23. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
24. DSDave Smith
  And I had a great... When I got to the hotel, I realized I lost my wallet and I was like, "All right, there's a Starbucks here in the hotel. I'm gonna go grab a coffee and just relax." And I go up and order a coffee and then it just hit me. I was like, "Oh, I don't have a wallet."
25. JRJoe Rogan
  (laughs)
26. DSDave Smith
  And then I was there and I was like, "Wait hold on. Let me figure out the... Is, do I have the app?" And I had to go set up the whole app and everything, and then I... Luckily these days you can buy it with an app.
27. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah, you can do Apple Pay too at a lot of those.
28. DSDave Smith
  I had none of that set up, but now I have it all set up.
29. JRJoe Rogan
  D- It really makes you realize how we, we still need this little piece of plastic, this laminated thing with your face on it.
30. DSDave Smith
  Mm-hmm.
2:18 – 4:37
Humans as parasites… and the weird health effects of plastics
1. DSDave Smith
  He made a few solid points.
2. JRJoe Rogan
  Did he?
3. DSDave Smith
  That whole thing about humans being, uh, parasites.
4. JRJoe Rogan
  Yes.
5. DSDave Smith
  Remember that? You were like, "Hmm. I, I see it."
6. JRJoe Rogan
  If we were humans, we would not like humans.
7. DSDave Smith
  Yeah, that's for sure.
8. JRJoe Rogan
  For sure. Yeah.
9. DSDave Smith
  If you were, like, building a case against humans, like you were a neutral party talking to God building a case against humans, you could build a pretty strong one.
10. JRJoe Rogan
  Very solid. This woman that we had on yesterday, um, Shanna... How do you say her last name?
11. NANarrator
  Swan.
12. JRJoe Rogan
  What's that?
13. NANarrator
  Swan, sorry, yeah.
14. JRJoe Rogan
  Shanna Swan.
15. NANarrator
  Yeah, it's, Smith is in my head.
16. JRJoe Rogan
  Oh.
17. DSDave Smith
  The... (laughs)
18. JRJoe Rogan
  I don't know his last name.
19. NANarrator
  Yeah. (laughs)
20. JRJoe Rogan
  Her book, um, she, she wrote this book about how chemicals, uh, mostly leached from plastic or getting into human bodies-
21. DSDave Smith
  Mm-hmm.
22. JRJoe Rogan
  Uh, one of the big ones is phthalates. Uh, other ones are glyphosate, that Roundup, uh, chemical that Monsanto uses on crops, and they're affecting the way children, uh, develop in a radical and very measurable way. From the advent of petrochemicals from the 1950s, the advent of plastics, that we started really using plastics a lot, the, the size of men's taints has shrunk. That's one... This is so crazy. This is one of the big ways that you could recognize males versus females in animals. One of the things that is so remarkably different between them is the size of the taint. The male's taints are always much larger. What'd she say, like 50% larger?
23. NANarrator
  50 to 100%.
24. JRJoe Rogan
  50 to 100% larger.
25. DSDave Smith
  That's the problem in America?
26. JRJoe Rogan
  No, no, no, it's way worse than that.
27. DSDave Smith
  These tiny, tainted men-
28. JRJoe Rogan
  Mm-hmm.
29. DSDave Smith
  ... are ruining everything?
30. JRJoe Rogan
  It's plastics. It's making them have lower sperm counts, significantly lower sperm counts, like 50% lower sperm counts than they did 50 years ago and on a straight downward trajectory, along with miscarriages. Miscarriages are on the rise, sperm counts are on the way down. It is crazy when you, when you just see what we've done to us.
4:37 – 5:40
AI optimism vs doom: Lex Fridman, Elon Musk, and existential risk
1. DSDave Smith
  How many of these geniuses have to come out and be like, "Listen, AI is really dangerous and we should stop building toward it." And then half the time even they go back to building toward it. Like-
2. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
3. DSDave Smith
  ... they're just like, "Well, but at the same time, this is what we're doing and so..."
4. JRJoe Rogan
  Have you met Lex, Lex Fridman?
5. DSDave Smith
  I have not met him, but I'm a fan.
6. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah, I wanna get you guys together.
7. DSDave Smith
  Yeah.
8. JRJoe Rogan
  I would love to get you guys together. I wish you were in town more than a day. Um, he'd probably have you on his show. He's, um, he's an AI researcher.
9. DSDave Smith
  Mm-hmm.
10. JRJoe Rogan
  He, he's, he works in AI and he, he has a different view of it. He thinks AI is gonna work with people. Like, him and Elon are on the opposite side of things, but I'm, I'm in camp Elon. I think we're fucked.
11. DSDave Smith
  I am just for strategic reasons gonna be in camp Lex, 'cause it's happening either way.
12. JRJoe Rogan
  (laughs)
13. DSDave Smith
  So I might as well. I'm gonna try to believe Lex.
14. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
15. DSDave Smith
  That guy's super smart and if he thinks that, I'm gonna go with him.
16. JRJoe Rogan
  He's definitely super smart. Um, it's, it's, uh, for sure he, he understands there's room for a, a catastrophe. There's room for a, a massive error that lets these things become sentient and just start gunning people down on the streets.
17. DSDave Smith
  Yeah.
18. JRJoe Rogan
  Or starts using us as human batteries.
5:40 – 7:00
Nukes, Putin, and diplomacy: why escalation rhetoric is reckless
1. DSDave Smith
  Yeah, but look, man. Think how fragile shit is, like just that we got all these countries with H-bombs and shit.
2. JRJoe Rogan
  Look at what's going on-
3. DSDave Smith
  And that, you know-
4. JRJoe Rogan
  ... right now with Ukraine and Russia.
5. DSDave Smith
  Mm-hmm.
6. JRJoe Rogan
  Where they're, they're moving planes and, and, and troops to the border. It's like, that's real.
7. DSDave Smith
  Yeah.
8. JRJoe Rogan
  That's real shit. And Putin was on the news yesterday giving a speech and, you know, warning the United States.
9. DSDave Smith
  And then you'll just have, like, uh, you know, uh, Biden and, and, uh, all the people in the media just, like, talking shit-... just kinda like pushing you to talk shit. Like Joe Biden just gets in that interview and he's like, "I think Putin's a killer." You know, and I- and you're like-
10. JRJoe Rogan
  Well, Stephanopoulos said, "Do you think he's a killer?"
11. DSDave Smith
  Yeah. But he also could have do- he could have handled it in a diplomatic way.
12. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
13. DSDave Smith
  You don't have to be... Like, what are we doing? What, between-
14. JRJoe Rogan
  Right.
15. DSDave Smith
  ... the two of us, we have 90% of the nukes in the world. S- let's just slow down. It's like, yeah, Putin is a killer. So is Joe Biden.
16. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
17. DSDave Smith
  We've all killed a lot of people between our two respective governments. So let's just not talk shit-
18. JRJoe Rogan
  That was-
19. DSDave Smith
  ... 'cause we could kill the whole world.
20. JRJoe Rogan
  One of the funniest things about Trump talking about Russia, and then, like, you know, "Russia has killed people," he's like, "Well, we've (imitates Trump) killed a lot of people too."
21. DSDave Smith
  That was... Look, Donald Trump, feel however you feel about him-
22. JRJoe Rogan
  (laughs)
23. DSDave Smith
  ... I'm not a fan, but one of the amazing things about Trump is that he had no control over the things he said.
24. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
25. DSDave Smith
  It all just spilled out. And every now and then he would say something where it was like, "Yeah, he's right about that." And he said it right to-
26. JRJoe Rogan
  Could you imagine if Obama said that?
27. DSDave Smith
  ... Bill O'Reilly's face.
28. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
7:00 – 15:05
Post‑9/11 wars and regime change: Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen
1. DSDave Smith
  To Bill O'Reilly's face, Mr. George W. Bush, Republican, you know, news guy. And he goes, he goes, "Yeah, we're killers too. We killed a lot of people." And watching O'Reilly have to go, "Yeah, but it's, it's different when we kill all these people. I mean, we're killing people to liberate Iraq." You know, he's killing people and you're going, "Mm, all right, well a lot of those people didn't wanna be killed and it didn't really liberate them to murder them, so..." How many, how many people have, have US led wars killed in the Middle East?
2. JRJoe Rogan
  I think just-
3. DSDave Smith
  Millions?
4. JRJoe Rogan
  ... Iraq alone, were indirectly or directly responsible for over a million people dead.
5. DSDave Smith
  So in, in Iraq it's, it's gotta be well over a million, 'cause that million number was-
6. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
7. DSDave Smith
  ... from a while ago.
8. JRJoe Rogan
  Long time ago.
9. DSDave Smith
  So, it's well over a million people that have died as a result of the war.
10. JRJoe Rogan
  Right.
11. DSDave Smith
  Um, God knows how many in Libya, just by destroying-
12. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
13. DSDave Smith
  ... the country. I think somewhere in the neighborhood of 500,000 in, in Syria.
14. JRJoe Rogan
  The country is gone.
15. DSDave Smith
  Mm-hmm.
16. JRJoe Rogan
  Like Libya is-
17. DSDave Smith
  Oh, yeah.
18. JRJoe Rogan
  ... a failed state, right?
19. DSDave Smith
  Yeah, yep. Fai- completely failed state. One of the, the, you know, better countries in Africa, if not the best one to live in before. Completely failed state. Slavery. Uh, just awful.
20. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
21. DSDave Smith
  Um-
22. JRJoe Rogan
  Slavery on YouTube.
23. DSDave Smith
  Yeah.
24. JRJoe Rogan
  You seen the YouTube-
25. DSDave Smith
  Mm-hmm.
26. JRJoe Rogan
  The slave auctions-
27. DSDave Smith
  Yeah.
28. JRJoe Rogan
  ... on YouTube? Which is-
29. DSDave Smith
  Yeah.
30. JRJoe Rogan
  Wow. Which is heavy.
15:05 – 24:17
Information wars: corporate media loses control, CNN propaganda exposed
1. DSDave Smith
  Well, uh, uh, that's right. And, and what's happened is that the, the corporate press has lost their monopoly on information that they had for all of our lives.
2. JRJoe Rogan
  Right.
3. DSDave Smith
  Like now, it's like, well, you can get it from all these places. And that, there's good and bad that comes with that, but they're also now flipping out and, and you can see it. Like, they're losing their grip on power and becoming more and more insane about it. Uh-
4. JRJoe Rogan
  Well, they've lost the ethics of journalism.
5. DSDave Smith
  Mm-hmm.
6. JRJoe Rogan
  Like th- like this James O'Keefe thing on CNN, where that guy, who wer- was he the chief whatever he is? Or ...
7. DSDave Smith
  Yeah, I forget his position, but a big, he was a pretty big CNN guy.
8. JRJoe Rogan
  And the crazy thing is they catch him on Tinder dates. So, they, they ... He gets ... Like, it must have, she must have been hot.
9. DSDave Smith
  (laughs)
10. JRJoe Rogan
  Hot girls get you to talk. So, he's got this hot girl and he's telling her how they do propaganda, how they basically would accentuate anything that was wrong with Trump. They would talk about the-
11. DSDave Smith
  Yep.
12. JRJoe Rogan
  ... completely underplay anything that's wrong with Biden. They-
13. DSDave Smith
  Which is, which is, to be fair, pretty obvious-
14. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
15. DSDave Smith
  ... to anyone who just has an open mind and watches CNN. But to hear him say it-
16. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
17. DSDave Smith
  ... still was ... It was powerful.
18. JRJoe Rogan
  And the fact that he said they're gonna do it now for climate change.
19. DSDave Smith
  Yeah.
20. JRJoe Rogan
  It's like, wow.
21. DSDave Smith
  Mm-hmm. And, and th- their, that push is already starting.
22. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
23. DSDave Smith
  Um, can you imagine just, like, if you were, like, the head of CNN and you have to give a meeting in the morning and you're like, "All right, so one more time, guys. (deep breath) If a hot chick takes you out-"
24. JRJoe Rogan
  (laughs)
25. DSDave Smith
  "... to a bar and starts asking you to tell her about how we're propaganda, that's, that's James O'Keefe, all right?"
26. JRJoe Rogan
  (screams)
27. DSDave Smith
  "So, please, please don't just start babbling about how we do propaganda."
28. JRJoe Rogan
  It's so crazy. It's just, it's so weird to see it laid out like that, where, you know, he's explaining how they do it, but what a blabbermouth. The fact that this guy, like, you know, "Hey, man, this is kind of import- Like, imagine if someone heard you say this."
29. DSDave Smith
  Yeah.
30. JRJoe Rogan
  "Imagine what kind of repercussions it would have on the business."
24:17 – 32:27
COVID rules, masks, and compliance culture (plus Canada’s hardline enforcement)
1. JRJoe Rogan
  It's a weird time because everything is so politicized.
2. DSDave Smith
  Mm-hmm.
3. JRJoe Rogan
  There's a great video that a doctor put up. It's really funny. A doctor on, uh, Instagram. It's r- it's funny, uh ... Excuse me, on YouTube. It's funny because, uh, Jamie, remember we were talking about vapers the other day? Where the guy does the, the vape tricks?
4. DSDave Smith
  Mm-hmm.
5. JRJoe Rogan
  Well, this doctor shows how p- how masks don't work at all. And he take ... Like, these ma- ... A lot of masks that people wear, particularly like, bandanas, he's like, "Fucking totally useless." And so he takes a vape, he takes a hit of vape, and then he ju- ... Puts these masks on and then blows, and the vape literally comes right out of the mask. And he's like, "This is exactly what's happening to your breath." And he said in COVID particles, the particles of the virus, the viral particles are much smaller than the particles of this vape. And he goes, "They're going right through these masks." And like, he goes, "Unless you have, like, a sealed mask-"
6. DSDave Smith
  Right.
7. JRJoe Rogan
  "... over your face."
8. DSDave Smith
  It's, it's been something, man, over this last year to watch. It's like a ... I don't know how else you could describe it other than just mass hysteria.
9. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
10. DSDave Smith
  You're like, no one ... You're not even allowed to just have any reasonable, nuanced perspective, where people are f- uh, flipping out about Tom Brady at, uh, at the Super Bowl when he got out of his limo and like walked outside without a mask.
11. JRJoe Rogan
  'Cause he didn't have a mask, yeah. (laughs)
12. DSDave Smith
  He's, he's like 100 feet away-
13. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
14. DSDave Smith
  ... from the nearest person outside, and they're mad he doesn't have a mask on.
15. JRJoe Rogan
  Dude, it's hilarious. It's not ... It has nothing to do with whether or not he's putting people in danger. It has to do with compliance.
16. DSDave Smith
  Yes.
17. JRJoe Rogan
  It has to do with people saying, "He's not doing what you're supposed to."
18. DSDave Smith
  That's right.
19. JRJoe Rogan
  "Do what you're supposed to, Tom. I don't care how many fucking Super Bowls you win. You killed my grandma."
20. DSDave Smith
  Right. (laughs)
21. JRJoe Rogan
  Yes.
22. DSDave Smith
  It's ... This has been ... This year has been an incredible gift to would-be authoritarian regular people-
23. JRJoe Rogan
  Mm.
24. DSDave Smith
  ... who now have been given public license to kind of like crack down on somebody-
25. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
26. DSDave Smith
  ... for not following these rules.
27. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
28. DSDave Smith
  Ev- ... Anyone who's ever lived in an apartment building, you know, in, in a city, you know there's always one person in there who's just like, "Oh," like trying to enforce the rules on-
29. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
30. DSDave Smith
  ... everybody else.
32:27 – 50:59
‘Totalitarian’ 2020 and the power problem: why decentralization matters
1. DSDave Smith
  ... or any of this." It's a very dangerous road to go down. And even, look, even here in America, we... The Constitution and the Bill of Rights and all of this is still just kind of an idea. Like, the, you know, G- Governor Murphy, the governor of New Jersey. I don't know if you saw this, it was last M- April or May. It was pretty early into the, the lockdown stuff, when he was on Tucker Carlson's show. Did you see that?
2. JRJoe Rogan
  No.
3. DSDave Smith
  He... So, Tucker Carlson, again, feel however you feel about him. He's, he's good on some things, he's bad on some things. But he gave one of the lockdown governors a really tough interview at the height of it. And very few people were doing that. And he said to Governor Murphy, straight up, he goes... Okay, so he, he talked about this thing that had just happened where I think, like, 15 Jewish people were arrested for going to synagogue. And he goes, "Okay, so you just arrested these people for going to synagogue. Where do you get that authority? I mean, this is a clearly constitutionally protected right. Like, I... You can read the First Amendment, and no, you don't have the right to do this." And Murphy just responds without, you know, without any hesitation, he responds, "We weren't thinking about the Bill of Rights." He goes, "That's above my pay grade." He goes, "What we're thinking about is the health issue." So, he just told you straight up that, like, well, we repealed the Bill of Rights, at least for this moment. And basically, that's what happened all around the country. Um, uh, the United States of America went totalitarian in 2020. Now, you can believe it's justified because of the virus. I'm not even arguing that. But the fact is... I mean, like, the word totalitarian gets overused. But how would you describe 2020 other than totalitarian? Uh, when you have p- people watching their television to find out what they're allowed to do today from their governor.
4. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
5. DSDave Smith
  "Oh, my governor said I can have a funeral for my father." Or, "My governor said we can go to work, or we can go to church, or we can..." Or that, "Now he said we can't do that." I mean, that is blatant totalitarianism. And you could be really concerned about COVID, fine, but are you telling me you're not also concerned about totalitarianism? Like, take a look the 20th century. It's hundreds of millions of, of people were killed by totalitarian governments. That's scary, scary shit. And-
6. JRJoe Rogan
  But people that are on... They think they're on the right side, don't ever think that's going to happen with their ideology. Like, woke totalitarians never connect themselves-
7. DSDave Smith
  Yeah.
8. JRJoe Rogan
  ... to people like Stalin. They never connect themselves to Marx. They don't think of the fact that they want people to be completely compelled to follow their ideology, with all the horrible examples of a- in history of people being compelled to follow an ideology, forced into following... 'Cause it's one of those things that, like, when the, the Patriot Act was put in place, the, one of the pe- the, some of the people that were sounding the alarms were saying, "Look, Obama is probably not going to do horrible things with this." But what if the next person who gets elected president does? These powers stay, that you don't get to take them back. "Well, hey, this president's kind of wacky. We're gonna pull some of these acts back. We're gonna, we're gonna re- rescind the Patriot Act and the Patriot Act 2, because we don't trust this new president, so we're gonna change the laws, and we're gonna take away power from the government." Well, they never do that.
9. DSDave Smith
  Yeah. I was really hopeful, um, and, and foolishly so, but I was really hopeful that when it was Trump, maybe some people on the left would've woken up to that and been like, "Oh, yeah. You know, all that hypothetical, it could be somebody who you really hate? Well, guess what? Now it is."
10. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
11. DSDave Smith
  "So, maybe we should make the presidency not so powerful, so just in case the guy you hate so much gets in there, you know, he doesn't have all of this power." But that just wasn't the conversation at all. It was just, "Racist," and, "Russia," and, "That's it."
12. JRJoe Rogan
  Y- y- the problem... I mean, I just don't see how we're ever gonna get past the fact that most of these people who become politicians are not the people that you would want to be in charge. Most of them.
13. DSDave Smith
  Yeah.
14. JRJoe Rogan
  Most of them. Like, if you're looking at Nancy Pelosi and you're like, "Yeah, I want her running everything," like, I don't know what to say. Like, if that's, that's your perspective... But for me, I go, "Oh, this is not... That's not ideal." Like, this is not, this is not this, uh, perf- person who's, like, very enlightened and calm and peaceful, and, and really wants the world to be better. No, this is, like, some strange creature that exists out of politics that wears-... African garb and gets on her knees. You remember that thing-
15. DSDave Smith
  Mm-hmm.
16. JRJoe Rogan
  ... with, with her and Schumer where they-
17. DSDave Smith
  Yep.
18. JRJoe Rogan
  ... they put the fucking, the, the, the robes on and the hat on. Like, this is theater, this is like-
19. DSDave Smith
  But, it's, yes.
20. JRJoe Rogan
  ... crazy people theater.
21. DSDave Smith
  But that's the point, right?
22. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
23. DSDave Smith
  That this is theater.
24. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
25. DSDave Smith
  This is all... And so much of it is that, and so much of the corporate woke shit, all of that, this is theater.
26. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
27. DSDave Smith
  You are power brokers, and th- you, you're really counting on people being stupid, and unfortunately, I guess too many of 'em are, to really buy into the fact that this is some real display. You are just using this in order to consolidate more power, 'cause that's what drives these people.
28. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
29. DSDave Smith
  And it's, you know, that's like the thing that's really, that I, I really try to, um, drive home, especially to left-wing people about all the woke shit, is that you're like, just look, ta- take a step back and look at what's happening here. This is all being used to fool you. Like, do you think it's a coincidence that like JPMorgan Chase is, uh, they're like building floats in the gay pride parade and-
30. JRJoe Rogan
  Yes.
50:59 – 57:53
Libertarian “fix list” for policing and legitimacy: end drug war, qualified immunity, raids
1. JRJoe Rogan
  But then there's like, okay, well, I understand what you're saying, and, and you're making a lot of sense, but what's the solution? Like, how do we stop something like the Capitol Hill riot from ever happening again? How do we, you know, how... Well, here's another one. How do you clean up the police? Like, how do you fix this thing? I don't think defunding the police is right. I think you probably need to train them and make, make it much more difficult to become a cop, make it much more respectable.
2. DSDave Smith
  Yeah.
3. JRJoe Rogan
  But how do you do that?
4. DSDave Smith
  Okay.
5. JRJoe Rogan
  How do you do that at this stage of the game? 'Cause this is crazy.
6. DSDave Smith
  So, the solution is libertarianism.
7. JRJoe Rogan
  Ah!
8. DSDave Smith
  And I know that a lot of people, it's easy to just kind of laugh that off or whatever, but this really is... I'm not saying it has to be, like, my exact perfect, you know, like, you have to agree with me on everything. But the clear solution to all of this is liberty.
9. JRJoe Rogan
  Okay.
10. DSDave Smith
  It is... All of this shit is a deviation from what America was really supposed to be, which is basically the Declaration and the Bill of Rights, which are still pretty damn good. And if we just followed them, we'd be in a much better place. I'll tell you, with the police stuff, look, you're never gonna have a perfect system, and there's 300 million people, and there'll be incidents and problems and police brutality. Things will happen. But what Justin Amash put forward in Congress, what Rand Paul's put forward in the Senate, is basically pretty damn good. Uh, end the war on drugs, end qualified immunity, end civil asset forfeiture, end the, uh, the no-knock raids, and particularly raids over bullshit. Like, there should never be a SWAT raid unless someone is in imminent danger. I mean, okay, there's a hostage situation or something like that.
11. JRJoe Rogan
  Right.
12. DSDave Smith
  But, my God, a SWAT raid over suspicion of drug possession?
13. JRJoe Rogan
  Right.
14. DSDave Smith
  This shit is insane-
15. JRJoe Rogan
  Insane.
16. DSDave Smith
  ... which is what Breonna Taylor-
17. JRJoe Rogan
  Right.
18. DSDave Smith
  ... died from, right?
19. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah, yeah.
20. DSDave Smith
  Um, just stop, just end all of this shit. Th- tho, those five policies right there would take care of at least 80 to 90% of the problems in policing.
21. JRJoe Rogan
  Wh- what's the immunity one?
22. DSDave Smith
  Qualified immunity basically means that, uh, police officers, um, in certain situations, not all situations, but basically, um, are immune from being sued the way other people could be sued.
23. JRJoe Rogan
  Hmm.
24. DSDave Smith
  Uh, so if you are a police officer and you do something that anybody else could, would have a lawsuit against you for, they're protected under qualified immunity.
25. JRJoe Rogan
  They did something about that in New York City, right?
26. DSDave Smith
  Uh, I'm not sure. I know there was a proposal for that. I'm not sure what ended up coming from it.
27. JRJoe Rogan
  I think it passed, I think.
28. DSDave Smith
  You might be right about that.
29. JRJoe Rogan
  You're allowed to have civil lawsuits-
30. DSDave Smith
  Yeah.
57:53 – 1:21:52
Drug prohibition’s ripple effects: cartels, fentanyl, inner-city violence, and addiction
1. JRJoe Rogan
  I think you, you're making some really good points and I think, uh, uh, a really good one is ending the war on drugs. Ending the war on drugs and not incarcerating people for the rest of their life for non-violent drug offenses would change a lot in this country. First of all, the whole prison industrial complex, this system that's put in place where there's money to be made by putting people in jail and whether it's private, these are private prisons, or whether they're the, the state-run prisons or the federally-run prisons, it's still the same thing.
2. DSDave Smith
  Mm-hmm.
3. JRJoe Rogan
  There's a business involved. You know, you could split hairs about that. We incarcerate more people than anyone by a long shot. Well, China probably kills more people, but we incar-
4. DSDave Smith
  Yeah.
5. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah. They, they just make people disappear, but we incarcerate an, an in- uh, insane amount of people, an insane amount of people who aren't hurting anybody. And that, that does need to end because then that changes the relationship that people have to the government.
6. DSDave Smith
  Yep.
7. JRJoe Rogan
  It changes the relationship people have to the police. If you're doing something and there's a law that's in place that is supposed to protect you from putting something into your body and protect you from someone selling you something that you want to put into your body, regardless of whether you should or shouldn't, we can make a clear argument that there's already enough stuff that you could buy at any store right now that'll kill you. Enough, like we got right here. We got some whiskey right here. I like whiskey.
8. DSDave Smith
  I love it.
9. JRJoe Rogan
  It's fucking... Drink a lot of it, it'll kill you. You know, drink a lot of it, you'll, you'll, you know, you'll, you'll have liver f- liver failure, you'll get cancer or you'll, uh, literally drink yourself to death.
10. DSDave Smith
  Yeah.
11. JRJoe Rogan
  Pills everywhere you go you can... E- every fucking pharmacy has enough pills to kill you. Like that's... It's silly-
12. DSDave Smith
  Yeah.
13. JRJoe Rogan
  ... to put the hands in, the, the, to put these laws in the hands of people where they can decide to lock you in a cage 'cause you do something that you want to do and they don't want you to do it. That's insane.
14. DSDave Smith
  Yeah, absolutely, dude.
15. JRJoe Rogan
  That would change the relationship that we have with law enforcement.
16. DSDave Smith
  Oh, well, look, there's, it, there's so much. I mean, and you're absolutely right about all of that. And to me, like the, a- and this is the essence of like, why I'm a libertarian and why I believe th- in this shit. It's not... Like, to me it's just as simple as, are we slaves or are we free men? Like, which one are we? Because if I can't choose what I can put in my own body, then I'm a slave to somebody else.
17. JRJoe Rogan
  Right.
18. DSDave Smith
  And I don't mean like child slavery or in the same sense-
19. JRJoe Rogan
  No, no.
20. DSDave Smith
  ... but like, you are not a free person-
21. JRJoe Rogan
  Right.
22. DSDave Smith
  ... if you can't make a decision about what you put in your body.
23. JRJoe Rogan
  Right.
24. DSDave Smith
  And so obviously, directly, like you just said, the most immoral thing about it is the idea of throwing a human being in a cage like an animal for the crime of putting something in their body.
25. JRJoe Rogan
  Right.
26. DSDave Smith
  That... But then on top of that, when you talk about the relationship between people and cops, the effect of the war on drugs has... I mean, look, just like under prohibition when the gang culture rose up and the murder rates skyrocketed, and then when we repealed prohibition, the murder rate went back down. And then the gang members moved into, you know, prostitution and gambling, you know, the other prohibitions.
27. JRJoe Rogan
  Mm-hmm.
28. DSDave Smith
  This is where violent gangs flourish, is like in the dark corners of prohibited, um, activities that there is a large demand for because then there's money to be made there. And whatever you do about the, the laws on drugs, the demand is not going away. And so now you're gonna have gang violence in all the inner cities. Now you're gonna have gangs shipping, uh, um, drugs through the border and stuff like that. You get all of this violence comes in that doesn't need to be there, and there would be nothing that America could do to turn around the crime problem in the inner cities throughout this country than to just end all of the prohibitions.
29. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
30. DSDave Smith
  Just be like, there's no more money to be made here for you guys. And now let what happens in California and in other places, let legitimate businesses come in and do it. I'm not saying it's perfect, but it's a lot better than having high murder rates and high incarceration rates.

Episode duration: 3:12:32

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Libertarian “fix list” for policing and legitimacy: end drug war, qualified immunity, raids

Drug prohibition’s ripple effects: cartels, fentanyl, inner-city violence, and addiction

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