Idaho Abortion Ballot, Flock Cameras & Free-Market Economics

Bob Neugebauer Welcome to the Idaho Pulse. This is your host, Steve Bob, bringing you another opportunity to find out what is happening in our state. Since many of our legislators try incessantly to keep us in the dark. And joining us today is our favorite commentator, Ron Nate, president of the Idaho Freedom Foundation. So without further delay, let’s get on with the show. And welcome to the Idaho Pulse, Mr. Nate. 

Ron Nate How are you doing, Bob? A great day to to be alive, to be on the radio, to be talking about freedom principles, economic markets, and and all sorts of good things going on in Idaho and also a few little bad things going on in Idaho. 

Bob Neugebauer Well, let’s get to the good things first. Then 

Ron Nate All right. 

Bob Neugebauer we can spend some time on the bad things. 

Ron Nate Okay. All right. First of all, the good thing, the most important good thing that I should mention is that if is doing its America two fifty celebration dinner this Saturday, July eighteenth, and it’s at the Boise Center reception at five, dinner at six thirty, tickets. A few tickets are still available, so you can go to Idaho freedom dot org and a pop up will will appear there, giving you the opportunity to buy some tickets to our event. It’ll be great. We have Kyle Mann from the Babylon Bee speaking. We have Kelly J. Keen from Let Women Speak. Uh, she comes from the UK to tell us what the US needs to do to avoid becoming the UK. I mean we, we left there for a reason. Right. And so it’s going to be a great dinner. A few tickets left. Get on, get on line and uh, get those purchased up because, uh, we do plan on selling out. 

Bob Neugebauer Nothing like a sell out, my friend. But 

Ron Nate So. 

Bob Neugebauer wait a minute, wait a minute. Isn’t that what our legislators do? 

Ron Nate Don’t get me started. Don’t get me started. So, uh, yeah, we have some, some interesting things to, to talk about this week. I think issue number one, uh, Secretary of State Phil McGrane just announced yesterday that the initiative to re legalize abortion in Idaho does have enough signatures to be on the ballot. It will be on the ballot. And I think it’s proposition one. So it’s all hands on deck for those of us who want to protect life, which is the first step to protecting liberty. If you don’t have life, you don’t have liberty to protect. So we want, uh, we want to do our best to make sure that people know that, um, after Roe v Wade, the Dobbs decision left it to the states to decide whether or not we’re going to protect innocent life or not. And Idaho needs to step up. So that’s front and foremost for the next one hundred days. We need to defeat that initiative. 

Bob Neugebauer Agreed one hundred percent. We don’t need to kill another sixty six million. 

Ron Nate No we don’t. And in Idaho, when it was legal before the Dobbs decision, Idaho was was terminating, killing one thousand five hundred babies a year. That’s like four babies a day. Does 

Bob Neugebauer Amazing. 

Ron Nate that sound like the kind of state you want to live in for innocent babies killed every single day. 

Bob Neugebauer We don’t kill that many that are on the list to be killed because of crimes. 

Ron Nate Yeah. So, um, that that’s, I mean, Idaho, uh, should have a culture of life and a culture of freedom and, uh, and dang it, you know, are we are we good Christians or not? Are we, are we God fearing population or not? We need to we need to work on this. Number two, you ready for issue number two? 

Bob Neugebauer Well. 

Ron Nate Okay. Number two, uh, the US Supreme Court decided a case from Missouri, which is Monsanto versus Darnell. You know who Monsanto is? 

Bob Neugebauer Absolutely know them very well. 

Ron Nate Yep. 

Bob Neugebauer Owned 

Ron Nate They are. 

Bob Neugebauer by Bayer. 

Ron Nate Yep. They are owned by Bayer. Bayer Global, which is, you know, based in Germany. They did Bayer aspirin, you know, back in the day. They still do that. But they also have a lot of subsidiaries, including Monsanto that has facilities here in Idaho. Monsanto produces roundup. Uh, roundup is a glyphosate based herbicide, which does great at killing weeds, but it also apparently is associated with, uh, being a lead cause of things like, uh, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and creating diseases and harming people too. And so Bayer came to Idaho a few years ago and said, hey, we want to pass this legislation which protects us from Liability lawsuits. It was a horrible bill to say that, you know what? That you can have license to kill and harm people and not be liable for it because you just put a little warning on the label. Uh. 

Bob Neugebauer Who sponsored that bill, by the way? 

Ron Nate Uh, it was Mike Moyle. 

Bob Neugebauer Oh. Thank you. 

Ron Nate Yeah. Uh, it was a horribly negative bill. We rated it negative. The bill died. Uh. Got stopped. They tried it again the next year. If has been vigilant on on fighting against liability immunity because we saw what happened in Covid, right? When you 

Bob Neugebauer Yep. 

Ron Nate have pharmaceutical companies that are immune from liability from vaccinations, they have no incentive to make sure that those vaccinations are indeed safe and effective like they claim. And, and, uh, there’s a lot of cases, a lot of reports of vaccination caused harm from pharmaceuticals who have liability immunity. Do we want to pass liability immunity on the companies producing chemicals, potentially dangerous chemicals. We wanted to make sure that that it didn’t create those bad incentives. So the bill stopped in Idaho. Nonetheless, a guy in Missouri who contracted non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, uh, sued Monsanto and won. A jury of his peers in Missouri awarded him one point two five million dollars of damages for the herbicide effects. It went to the Supreme Court and the US Supreme Court just a few weeks ago, decided in favor of Monsanto and said that, yeah, you put a warning on the label, therefore you’re immune from liability. And so they use this federal labeling law to preempt any state based decisions on the issue. We did our best to keep Idaho safe and out of this mix, but the Supreme Court has overruled by doing it in a Missouri case. This is why we always need to value state sovereignty and keeping the government out of areas, keeping the federal government out of areas that shouldn’t be in. This is, uh, uh, a federal law that says you can be immune from things simply by putting a, a little warning on a multi-thousand word label. And that’s supposed to protect you from liability. That was a bad outcome. 

Bob Neugebauer Yeah, but we have a lot of bad outcomes like that. And I wasn’t surprised that, uh, the Supreme Court went the way it did. I understand there has been a, an elusive chemical company that has many products that are on the market that are dangerous. Yet 

Ron Nate Yeah. 

Bob Neugebauer they, they have not been put to the test of a real severe penalty for any of them. And that’s what concerns me. When you allow something like this to happen, it opens the door for more of these types of cases that have come before the Supreme Court, many in different ways and forms. 

Ron Nate Exactly, exactly. And so there’s that going on. Abortion initiative, herbicide related harms and deaths. And another thing going on. And every time I report on this, if I even do a little short video or a little short article, it blows up with all sorts of reactions and comments. And that is the growing prevalence of flock cameras. These automated license plate readers, and even more beyond that, are simply video cameras put everywhere, that are making Idaho and communities become a surveillance state. And so every time I report on these flock cameras, I get reports and comments from all over the state about how expensive they are, how invasive they are and how they have the potential to be abused. You know, we have a report of a police officer once tracking his ex-wife using flock video camera footage that the sheriff’s office had access to because they have the contract with the flock cameras. 

Bob Neugebauer So let me ask you a question. 

Ron Nate Mhm. 

Bob Neugebauer Why is it that nobody in our legislature gives a flock? 

Ron Nate I think there’s going to be several bills coming through the legislative session this next time that are going to address the issue of flock related cameras. There was a bill passed this last time. It was specifically about automated license plate readers and what just what the officials could and could not do with the data and video collected. But we find out that that bill is far short of the protections needed, so that you don’t feel like you’re going to be watched everywhere you go. Do you want to be watched everywhere you go, Bob? 

Bob Neugebauer No. I want to have a watch on my wrist everywhere I go, but I certainly don’t want anyone watching me. 

Ron Nate Well, government wants to watch you. They want to watch you everywhere you go. And by the way, they always sell this under the under the guise of, of safety and security and, uh, but, and it’s true that there might be a case here or there that was solved or, or, uh, suspect apprehended because of video camera surveillance. But nobody has made the case that, uh, a compelling case yet that the security proffered outweighs the loss of your fourth amendment rights to, to go about your daily business without always being under the watchful eye of Big brother. 

Bob Neugebauer Ron, you know, it makes me feel safe having a thirty eight caliber revolver on my hip. 

Ron Nate That is safety. That is. Yeah. 

Bob Neugebauer Exactly. 

Ron Nate Yeah. And, uh, so That is something we’re tracking, and we’re going to follow up the legislation on. And I’ll tell you, you know, we just did a one of our new analysts here, Aaron Van Atta. She is just awesome. She came from The Daily Caller, and she did a great article this week on the flock cameras and how much they’re costing. Did you know that Caldwell City did you know? Did you know? Did you know that Caldwell City spends upwards of half a million dollars a year on their sixty one flock cameras, plus their drone surveillance? About half a million dollars a year? Does that sound like a a wise and prudent use of taxpayer funds? Do you think taxpayers are happy about that, using their own money to watch themselves through the eyes of government? 

Bob Neugebauer No, but it tells me why they couldn’t afford to pay the price for the animal shelter in Caldwell. 

Ron Nate No comment. I don’t know about that. So that’s interesting. Yeah. Do we want to watch people or take care of animals? MM. But, uh, so those are, those are some of the issues going on that we’re keeping a watchful eye on that if we need to put surveillance cameras in the, in the legislature and the city councils and the county commissions. Right. Watch them all the time. 

Bob Neugebauer Well, I don’t have any up here, and I don’t expect to see any anytime soon except on the homes that are there for security. 

Ron Nate Yeah. 

Bob Neugebauer Um. 

Ron Nate And there’s a difference between government watching you and using cameras to watch your own and you yourself using cameras to watch your own property for your own security. 

Bob Neugebauer That’s exactly right. The problem is, is that the government seems to think that they know better and that you need their protection. Well, keep your protection. I can protect myself. You allowed us to have guns. That’s how we protect ourselves. I don’t care what anybody else says. You walk the streets nowadays. You put your life in danger. 

Ron Nate Yeah. 

Bob Neugebauer You take a look at what’s going on in New York City, or what’s going on in San Francisco or Los Angeles. Every time you walk down the street, you take your life in your hands. 

Ron Nate Well, let’s bring this closer to home. You heard about the attack on the greenbelt a week ago. Somebody stabbed and killed on the greenbelt, right? 

Bob Neugebauer Yes. 

Ron Nate Uh, that’s that’s right here in Idaho, in Boise. And two nights ago, there was another attack on the greenbelt. Uh, a young lady was accosted and assaulted, and, uh, reports from passersby got that suspect apprehended. And so it’s happening more often. We should not have to live in a community where we’re young women or anyone else should, should feel nervous about walking on the greenbelt at any time of the day, and the warnings I saw from Boise City was all the precautions you need to take about walking on the greenbelt. I want to see the precautions the city is taking to, uh, to, uh, uh, you know, keep us safe. So. 

Bob Neugebauer Well, they don’t they don’t have the money to do that because they’re busy painting flagpoles. 

Ron Nate There you go. There you go. Mhm. 

Bob Neugebauer It’s more important to have a flagpole that’s painted the various pride colors than it is to have cameras in a park where we know there are crimes taking place. 

Ron Nate That’s right. So, um. There. There you have it. Um, uh, so the government, I don’t know, it’s, it’s frustrating to, to see all these things happening and, uh, the things that need to be done don’t get done. The things that don’t need to be get, be done seem to get done all the time. But I want to give an economics lesson today, if you don’t mind. 

Bob Neugebauer Please go ahead. 

Ron Nate Okay, so this is broader than just Idaho. This is this is Ron Nate, again with economics one hundred and one on the Idaho Pulse. I appreciate you having me on. Uh, every week and be able to talk about the issues going on in Idaho, but also about economics. Uh, if you might remember, a couple of weeks ago, I talked about, uh, a few weeks ago, I talked about comparative advantage and the importance it is to understand that you don’t have to produce everything you consume. You can specialize in what your comparatively good at and buy the things you’re comparatively bad at, and you’re better off. Not only that, the people you trade with are better off themselves. Specialization and trade yield economic benefits to all those involved. You only trade when you’re better off than not trading and the same with your trading partner. Trade creates value. We also looked at supply and demand a couple of weeks ago, and how using supply and demand and having flexible and functioning prices is a lot better than government trying to allocate things or trying to control prices and manipulate markets because they inevitably create shortages or surpluses, because government, despite their noble intentions, will never have enough information to get the prices right for you. Markets freely functioning. Do the jobs that government only wishes it could do. Today I want to talk about a broader sense of all this. We can understand the micro effects of trade, the micro effects of supply and demand, but the macro effects of an entire economic system. In economics, we look at economic systems as, you know, what? Every community, every economy, every country, every world has a set of resources at its disposal. These resources are not usually sought after by the people themselves. It’s not that I want wood or I want stone, or I want oil. We want the things that are produced from them. And so every economy, with their given set of resources, has to have some mechanism of deciding what to use those resources to produce, um, uh, how, how to produce from those resources. And then who gets what’s produced? Those are the three fundamental economic questions, what to produce, how to produce it, who gets what’s produced. Because we already recognize every economy is endowed with a set of resources, some better than others, some not so much, you know, and so it’s, it’s okay. But what you do with those resources is very important. Uh, and So the way an economy answers those three questions defines an economic system. And I’ll give you two extremes. In a purely capitalist system, what I would call a free market system, what to produce. Well, first of all, let’s let’s look at the resources in a market system. Who owns the resources? It’s private ownership. Private property is key to the functioning of of capitalist society. So private ownership of resources says, you know, what are you going to do with the resources? Well, the markets will determine it. If wood is most valuable in its use for building houses, house prices will attract the wood to the house markets. If if if there’s a big craze on skateboarding or something and skateboards, use wood, then as the price of skateboards go up, it attracts more wood to the skateboard industry. Prices have a great way of attracting resources to where they’re needed most and deterring them from where they’re not needed at all, because the price doesn’t justify using them there. So markets decide what’s to be produced. How are they be be produced? The most efficient companies providing the most value for those resources are the ones who will survive and thrive. Markets again, deciding how things are produced, who gets what’s produced. If you want a house, how do you get it? You go and buy it. You pay the price for the house. Uh, and so who gets what’s produced? Who’s ever willing to pay the market price? If somebody doesn’t want to buy a house, they don’t buy a house and they don’t get the benefits of the wood that went into those houses. And so, uh, those who want to sell houses will attract the resources they need to sell the number of houses they want to sell. So markets have a great way of allocating resources in terms of what is produced, how it’s produced and who gets what’s produced. So the advantages of a market system is you have an efficient system that directs resources to where their most valued. Um. Adam Smith. One of my favorite economists talked about this. Uh, do you remember when Adam Smith wrote The Wealth of Nations? I know you weren’t alive back then, Bob, although some might dispute that. But you 

Bob Neugebauer Yeah, 

Ron Nate knew. 

Bob Neugebauer well. 

Ron Nate He wrote 

Bob Neugebauer Funny 

Ron Nate the. 

Bob Neugebauer man. 

Ron Nate Yeah, well, Adam Smith wrote The Wealth of Nations. And I want to give you just a little insight into this. Prior to Adam Smith’s writings, the most predominant way of thinking about the economy was what we call mercantilism. And the idea of mercantilism is still around today. There are people who believe this way that you made your country wealthy by by getting more gold and treasure in it. The wealth of a country was measured by the money and precious metals and precious things that it commanded. And so a country got wealthy by selling goods abroad and not buying goods abroad, because whenever you bought money from bought something from another country, the the wealth, the gold and silver left your country. But whenever you sell abroad, the gold and silver flows into your country. And so the the idea of mercantilism was this flawed idea that if you track the gold and silver and the precious metals that countries did better by selling abroad, but restricting trade and not buying from abroad. And so therefore, you got more riches coming to your country and staying in your country. Adam Smith shined the light of truth against that ideology by saying, you know what? The wealth of a country is not measured by the gold and silver it commands. It’s measured by the goods and services it commands and the and the, the well-being that is created from those. And so just like our lesson on comparative advantage a couple weeks ago, that you are better off as a country through free trade. And that includes selling abroad, but also buying abroad because of free trade. Idahoans can consume bananas even though we don’t grow bananas. And so by producing potatoes and wheat and barley and selling those to other countries and states, we create the wealth in Idaho to then buy bananas and cars and computers, the things we don’t produce in Idaho. And so we command more goods and services from these resources by selling and trading, by operating in free markets than otherwise. And that’s why the title of Adam Smith’s book was An Inquiry into the Nature and the causes of the Wealth of Nations. He was looking what made nations wealthy. And it wasn’t hoarding silver and gold. It was by maximizing trade and commanding more resources, goods and services through trade. 

Bob Neugebauer I think that you’re right in many respects. Okay. And I agree with you, and I agree with what Adam Smith said, which 

Ron Nate Mhm. 

Bob Neugebauer means that President Trump is exactly right in trying to bring these manufacturing plants back to the United States. We were one of the largest, the greatest manufacturing countries in the world. Uh, we lost seventy thousand factories within the last twenty years. They disappeared. Why did they disappear? Globalization. Globalization. What did that do to us? It took all of our funds to purchase funds from China. Purchase funds from wherever country. India. That was selling something that we wanted. But isn’t it better if we produce it here? 

Ron Nate I’m not buying it. 

Bob Neugebauer You don’t have to buy it. I’m buying it. 

Ron Nate You 

Bob Neugebauer I go to 

Ron Nate know. 

Bob Neugebauer the store and buy it every day. 

Ron Nate Okay. I’ll agree with you on this ground that the the bleeding of jobs and manufacturing from America is not simply a market function, but it was a government driven function because we made manufacturing in America so much more difficult with regulations and taxes. So it’s natural 

Bob Neugebauer Agreed. 

Ron Nate for manufacturers to go to other countries where the taxes and regulations are lower. That’s great. Um, we would rather have them stay here with a lower tax structure and lower regulation structure. So I agree with you on that. But in terms of buying stuff from China, why would I buy something from China if I get a better bargain, a good at a better price, a good good at a better price than I’m getting in America? And there’s nothing wrong with that. Similarly, those in China will buy from from the US or other countries when they find a good good at a reasonable price and they will benefit from it too. International trade is not bad. International trade is good because of international trade. I get things I couldn’t have possibly produced myself at a price that’s reasonable for me. And similarly, our trading partners get that too. So let’s stop driving out manufacturing. Let’s manufacture everything we can. And it’s reasonable here. And those things that are aren’t reasonable here. Let’s buy them from the rest of the world more cheaply than trying to produce them ourselves. That’s what free trade is all about. 

Bob Neugebauer I 

Ron Nate Uh. 

Bob Neugebauer agree with you on one. Except for one concept. 

Ron Nate Here we go. 

Bob Neugebauer When a country like China gets a lock on a particular industry, and I will tell you, the pharmaceutical industry is that industry. They produce inferior products and they get away with producing inferior product because it’s accepted. They are the primary producer of pharmaceutical products based pharmaceutical products for the United States consumption. That is a problem. So you while you’re manufacturing, can be any place. All right. The quality of the manufacturing is the most important thing. You need to have some control over it. If you have no control over it, you don’t know what you’re buying. 

Ron Nate Why would I buy an inferior product from China? 

Bob Neugebauer They’ve been doing it for years because they didn’t have another source. 

Ron Nate Why isn’t there another source? 

Bob Neugebauer They closed down their operations here in the United States. 

Ron Nate How come? 

Bob Neugebauer Probably because of regulation. 

Ron Nate There you go. There you go. 

Bob Neugebauer I don’t deny that regulation is a problem. But by the same token, without regulation, you have a more serious problem because then manufacturers will go wild and do whatever they want to do. I’ve seen that happen personally. When I was in the brokerage business, I watched these companies manufacture inferior products and sell them here. 

Ron Nate Huh? Uh. I have a hard time understanding why consumers would continue to buy an inferior product. If there is a free market where businesses can produce a superior product too, albeit at a higher price. Shouldn’t the consumer get to decide whether they want inferior cheap versus superior expensive? 

Bob Neugebauer Don’t disagree, but if there’s only one source, it doesn’t happen that way. 

Ron Nate Yeah, I know, so we should get regulation out of creating one source production. 

Bob Neugebauer Right. Exactly. 

Ron Nate Cool. So I think we agree more than we disagree. That’s good. 

Bob Neugebauer Yes. 

Ron Nate Um Adam Smith in The Wealth of Nations wrote this is the benefit of trade by the way. He wrote it is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner. But from their regard to their own self-interest. And that is the artistic beauty of a of a market system, Bob, that, uh, you know what? People don’t make me dinner at McDonald’s because they love me, not because they’re being benevolent. They do it because they love themselves. They get paid a wage. They get profits from providing dinners to good folks. And because they love themselves. The market system is the only system yet discovered in the world where because they love themselves, it’s turned into a a motive and an incentive to make them want to serve others. In a socialist system where there’s not a profit motive, I have no incentive to serve others. My only incentive is to take, take, take. In a market system, serving others benefits me. Bill gates doesn’t love me. Uh uh uh uh uh. Elon Musk doesn’t love me. Elon Musk loves himself. And because of that, he produced an entire car company that makes a lot of car consumers happy. And it makes Elon Musk profitable at the same time. It’s a win win it. 

Bob Neugebauer I don’t I don’t disagree with you, but we are seeing the exact opposite happen in New York City right now. 

Ron Nate Yeah, yeah. It’s turning to socialism. And when it’s socialism and you take away the the profit motive, how do you better yourself in a socialist system? You don’t better yourself by producing something because you can make a profit on it. If they take away the profit motive, what do I produce for? I produce for myself and no one else, because only I get the benefits of anything I produce. And so it turns, it turns from community to individuals. That is the irony of socialism versus capitalism. Socialism turns people inward to themselves about the individual. Good capitalism turns people outward into how can I serve my fellow man if I find a way to serve them? If I build a better mousetrap for people, I’m going to do better myself. So their selfish interests are turned into community interests. Because you profit a lot by making a lot of other people happy. It’s a beautiful thing. And it’s it’s counterintuitive that the self-interest turns people into servants of others in a capitalist system. 

Bob Neugebauer So I ask you the question, why do we see socialism on the rise within our country by the youngest group, the thirty and under group? 

Ron Nate Because it sounds good, it feels good. And to the feeble, undeveloped mind, it sounds more virtuous that I 

Bob Neugebauer But 

Ron Nate don’t. 

Bob Neugebauer we. 

Ron Nate We need 

Bob Neugebauer But 

Ron Nate to worry 

Bob Neugebauer we. 

Ron Nate about the community. 

Bob Neugebauer I understand that, but we have been paying tens of thousands of dollars to send these kids to school to learn about capitalism. Unfortunately, they have learned nothing. 

Ron Nate Oh yeah. The the the foxes are in charge of the hen house. Right. We’ve we’ve we’ve universities were turned into socialist centers, communist centers of instruction and indoctrination. And we’re reaping the the disbenefits of it. And so what do we do? Okay, so anyway, I, I talked to you about the, the benefits of capitalism, uh, some disadvantages that that the socialists might say about capitalism is it’s unequal. Well, that’s not a for me, that’s not a disincentive. You know, that, uh, should somebody just graduating from high school make as much money as somebody who’s run a company for thirty years? Heck no. 

Bob Neugebauer Why not? 

Ron Nate If they if why would you want to get a degree and run a country for a company for thirty years. If you’re going to be just as good as when you graduated high school, it’s a bizarre thing. So yeah, there needs to be inequity because it creates the incentives for people to develop and prosper. Um, and so focused on equality is, is one of those, uh, you know, enticing principles, but it makes no sense when you take it to the extreme. Should a birthday party clown earn as much as a, as a journeyman electrician who’s putting his life at risk as he strings power lines? Should the party clown get the same pay? No. You need to incentivize the electrician to take 

Bob Neugebauer I 

Ron Nate the risk 

Bob Neugebauer would. 

Ron Nate to do 

Bob Neugebauer I 

Ron Nate the 

Bob Neugebauer would say 

Ron Nate art. 

Bob Neugebauer the party clown depends on how funny he is. Does he make me laugh? 

Ron Nate Yeah. Uh, I don’t think anyone has ever died entertaining a party of five year olds. Okay. Uh, on the other end of the spectrum, pure command economy. Markets don’t decide anything. It’s all decided by government central planning what to produce. Well, we have all these resources. We’re going to form committees to decide what to produce with them, how to produce it. Well, let’s decide where the best place to produce it are. By the way, these data centers are becoming a centrally planned decision, not a market decision, right? When government has to have its hand in all those decisions, uh, who gets what’s produced again? Government decides in Russia, they had allocations of where you would live. Uh, you had to wait a certain amount of time to get a vehicle and certain number of vehicles per area or whatever. So it was all central planning and, uh, the, the, the virtues of central planning, I guess, are equity. You’re all equally poor, but the disincentives of, of central planning is that you get much less produced. You don’t get you’re not producing the right things that make people the happiest because there’s no longer a price signal to direct resources to their highest and best use. And you’re getting less produced overall. And so much more misery in a centrally planned economy. Now, I sense that a lot of people out there might say that I just strawman socialism and I steelman capitalism. And, and I, I, I’m just dyed in the wool that way. Well, let’s look at the data. Did you know that the Fraser Institute, this is a Canada based research system? Uh, they, they do an economic freedom index. So they have a set of metrics to, to help determine which economies are more free and less free. And I’ve looked at this over the years and it’s, it’s a very compelling index for measuring what countries are the economically freest and what are the most command economy economies. Um, oh, by the way, before I move on, I should point this out that Adam Smith, uh, was, you know, is kind of the, the, the champion of, of economic freedom. Right. And so, um, but who’s the champion of a command economy who champions that? 

Bob Neugebauer Got me. 

Ron Nate Uh, can I introduce you to a man named Karl Marx? 

Bob Neugebauer Oh well, yes you can, and. But I’ve already met him. 

Ron Nate Yeah. That’s right. You went to grade school together. Um, okay. But, uh, Karl Marx, you know, pointed out, you know, his whole book, Das Kapital. It wasn’t so much a a promotion of communism as it was a critique of capitalism, pointing out all the warts of capitalism. And so you could read Karl Marx and, and he, he gives the typical criticisms of you’re no longer self-sufficient. You rely on the rest of the world for your things. And so you’re exporting jobs because other people are producing your stuff for you. All those all those little tropes that we hear. But what he misses is exactly what I’m going to point out here, that the enlightenment, the industrial revolution, and the advancement of a free market economy all happened about the same time, late seventeen seventies. The Industrial Revolution starts to pick up. And isn’t it kind of cool that exactly that time we have this revolution in economic thought, away from mercantilism, more toward capitalism, the Wealth of Nations picks up and per capita production explodes eighteen hundreds through the nineteen hundreds, uh, per capita income multiples of what it was. In fact, if you look at seventeen fifty and you look at how a family lived, even here in America, they did not live measurably better than somebody who was living at the time of Christ. It was subsistence farming. You produce for yourself very immature, very few markets for for trading. It was subsistence level living for hundreds of years since Christ. And then in the late seventeen hundreds, an explosion here. Did we suddenly get smarter? I guess there was an enlightenment where we discovered a lot of new ways of production. But I don’t think it’s a coincidence that that was happening. At the same time, we had a much more open and free trading type of society. And you can see it in America, especially, the production explodes and I’m cognizant of your time here. I’ll try and wrap this up in five minutes here, but I’m going 

Bob Neugebauer You’re 

Ron Nate to. 

Bob Neugebauer not going to scare me with time. You can just keep going, my friend. 

Ron Nate Okay. 

Bob Neugebauer I like 

Ron Nate All 

Bob Neugebauer what 

Ron Nate right. 

Bob Neugebauer you’re saying. 

Ron Nate I’m going to make them make the case for economic freedom. Uh, to make trade happen, you need property rights, you need economic freedom. You need a legal system where where trades that are agreed to are honored. And so this idea that capitalism doesn’t rely on government at all. Well, government is the enforcer of justice. So we actually have better, a better capitalist system when we have a government that is a fair adjudicator of disputes in terms of contract law. So that’s good and sound money that to the extent we use money, we are going to um, have it be secure. Um so here we go. The, the Fraser Institute does this economic index of freedom. It looks at the size of government relative to the population. It looks at the legal system of property rights. It looks at access to sound money that is not being inflated away, the freedom to trade and also, uh, low regulation of credit, labor and business markets. And what do you think the top economy is in terms of economic freedom based on those metrics? 

Bob Neugebauer I don’t know, Switzerland. 

Ron Nate Switzerland’s number four. Well done, my friend. Yeah. Uh, New Zealand’s number three. Singapore number two. And it’s kind of an unfair question, but Hong Kong before the China takeover was the number one economic system. This is the twenty eighteen annual report. Uh, Ireland number five, United States number six. We’re not even in the top five, not even in the top five. But right around us is the country of Georgia. Mauritius, United Kingdom is nine, Australia ten. Um, by the way, the Scandinavians are right here in the top twenty. Netherlands, uh, Denmark, Sweden, uh, Finland, all in the top twenty. So these guys who point to, uh, the Scandinavian countries as being models of socialism. There are some of the freest economies based on this index. Um, what do you think some of the worst ones are? 

Bob Neugebauer Well, I mean, let’s start off with Russia. 

Ron Nate Uh, Russia. Yeah. And they’re not as bad as you think Russia is, is kind of middle of the pack. At the bottom we have Argentina. Venezuela is the very bottom in terms of economic freedom Libya, Argentina, Algeria, Syria, Angola, Congo. These are some of the least free economies. And so at this point in my classes, I would pause and I would say, if you are one of the wealthiest individuals in your in your society, which would you rather be in one of these free countries we listed or one of these poorer countries we listed? 

Bob Neugebauer Well, can I ask you a couple of questions 

Ron Nate Sure. 

Bob Neugebauer just to kind of interject a few things here? You say we have a free capitalistic society here. However, when you have legislators and you have politicians putting money into particular areas like the data centers and giving them tax breaks, or 

Ron Nate Yeah. 

Bob Neugebauer like saying, we’re going to allow you to build a thousand homes out here because 

Ron Nate Yeah. 

Bob Neugebauer we need the homes. That’s a dangerous proposition as far as I’m concerned. 

Ron Nate That’s right. And that’s why the US is is not in the top five. And it seems to be slipping every year because we start adopting more and more of these central planning ideas that yeah, markets are good, but government needs to do this. Yeah, markets are great, but government needs to do that. And so as you go down that path, you’re slipping in terms of your free market ideals. And so, you know, my students would say, yeah, I want to be in one of those top ten if I’m one of the richest. And then I would ask him this, and this is the kicker question. If you were in the poorest ten percent of society, which of these countries would you want to be in? Nobody says Venezuela or Angola or the Congo. They all say one of these top ten. America, Switzerland, Denmark, you know, they they name those countries. And I ask them why. And they say, because in a free market, you have opportunities. You have opportunity to grow. If you’re in the bottom ten percent in Congo, I’m sorry, you’re going to be there and you’re going to be miserable pretty much your whole life. But if you’re in the bottom ten percent of society in the United States, it could simply mean you’re in college and your future is bright. Bottom. 

Bob Neugebauer Oh, let me add one. Let 

Ron Nate Yeah. 

Bob Neugebauer me add one more thing. Okay. Because I think we’ve missed one important factor here. And that’s regulation. When you have too much regulation, you inhibit business. You curtail the freedom of business. 

Ron Nate True. 

Bob Neugebauer And that’s what we had for four years with Joe Biden. Okay. 

Ron Nate That’s right. I mean, yeah, it’s you know, your position as a free market is, is not a steady state. You can either be rising in terms of being a freer economy or falling in terms of being a more regulated economy. And you’re right, we had four years of, of slippage. Um, I’m not sure if we’ve reversed the course yet. Still a lot of regulation. We still have a lot of work to do. I’m making the case for saying let’s rely less on government. Let’s have less regulation. Let’s have more markets deciding things, not fewer markets. So I agree with you. But here’s here’s the kicker where, where I really want to stick it to the liberals. What is important to you liberals, equality, uh, education, health care, all these social programs, right? You ask a liberal what is important to you, uh, having a political voice. Democracy. You, you, you listen to a leftist. Everything they tell you that is bad about America is that we don’t have enough education, enough health care, enough of these social things, right? Well, let’s look at this. Uh, the Fraser Institute and I have done this too, looked at these, these, uh, list of countries in terms of economic freedom, all the way to economic unfreedom. The top quarter versus the bottom quarter. And then there’s the middle half, right? I’m going to go through and I’m going to explain some correlations here. And I said correlations with your economic freedom and some of these important issues. If if you’re interested in income per capita, who you know, what kind of countries produce the most wealth, the freest countries produce about six times the wealth of the poorer of the of the less free countries. I’m not saying rich poor. I’m saying the free countries produce six times the wealth per person than the less free countries. If we look at the top quarter versus the bottom quarter. So in terms of income per capita. But if I’m a leftist, I’d say, yeah, but all that wealth is going to the to the riches and not to the poor. Well, economic growth should help the poor, right? Economic growth also higher in the freer countries, the income share of the poorest ten percent is higher in the rich countries than it is the less free countries, sorry the free countries than the less free countries. Let me say that again. The income share of the poorest ten percent is higher in free countries like US, Denmark, Sweden than it is in the less free countries like Angola, Venezuela. So if you’re interested in the distribution of income and making sure the poor are cared for the most, you got to be for a free economy. The data shows it, uh, the income per capita. If you’re not worried about shares, the per capita income is five times higher in free countries than it is in the less free countries. The poorest ten percent have five times more, uh, resources available to them when they’re in a free country than in a less free country. You live longer. You live about nineteen years longer on average per person in a free country. Uh, you have more civil rights and political liberties. You have higher literacy rates, you have higher quality of education, higher quality of healthcare. You have less poverty in free countries in every metric. That’s important to a liberal. The free countries do better for the poor than the less free countries. If you are a lefty liberal, you should be the most free market person walking around here because that’s what helps people. 

Bob Neugebauer I don’t disagree with you. But by the same token, when I look at just look at our own state, okay? 

Ron Nate Yeah. 

Bob Neugebauer And we have the biggest corporations, the people who produce probably twenty, thirty, forty percent of our GDP here in 

Ron Nate Yep. 

Bob Neugebauer the, in the ag and corporate entity in tech. And right now we have this huge dispute going on about them hiring illegals at lower wages. 

Ron Nate Yep. 

Bob Neugebauer That’s not fair in the system, is it? 

Ron Nate That that’s right. I want to work on that one next week. Can we talk about that one next week. 

Bob Neugebauer Absolutely. 

Ron Nate And I’m going to wrap this up right now. So I just concluded by saying that if you’re a lefty liberal and you care about equality and all these things, you should be the biggest advocate of a free market there is because in every metric that is important to you health care, education, equality, plight of the poor, they do better in a free market. And so when people ask me why I’m a conservative and why I’m so free market, my answer isn’t because I love businesses and big corporations. My answer is because I care about people. I’m a conservative because I care about people, and I love people, and I want people to be able to prosper. And that is true in a free market economy. The US has six percent of the world’s population. The US has six percent of the world’s land area. The US produces twenty eight percent of the production of the entire globe. It’s disproportionate, and it’s not disproportionate because we are a superpower that imposes our will on others. It’s because we have the superpower of a free market that unleashes the productive capabilities of a free people. And it’s an amazing system. And 

Bob Neugebauer Well, 

Ron Nate I’ll 

Bob Neugebauer said my friend. 

Ron Nate thank you. 

Bob Neugebauer So, do you have anything else to add? 

Ron Nate Um, I want to pile on to this next week. I will talk about, uh, those who focus too much on the equality issue and too much on big evil business. And I’ll point them to, uh, point them back to this about why, uh, a free market system does better for everyone you care about. Um, and, and, uh, if you, if you really care about people, you ought to be a free market person because the evidence is clear. 

Bob Neugebauer I don’t disagree, but thank you very much for your time today. I think everybody who is listening has gained some knowledge. 

Ron Nate I hope so. Thank you. Bob. Thank you. And your team. Uh, it’s great being on Idaho Pulse. 

Bob Neugebauer Thank you Ron, and you have yourself a great week. 

Ron Nate All right. You too. Bye.