Ep 10: Libertarians should consider conservatism | Bhuvana Anand on coercion and human flourishing

Bhuvana Anand is the director and co-founder at Prosperity, a nonprofit that helps state governments identify and implement economic reforms. Bhuvana is a rigorous thinker, a reformer at heart, and someone who has spent years working both inside and alongside the state. What makes this conversation special for me is the evolution of her worldview. Bhuvana has long been associated with liberal and libertarian circles, believing deeply in freedom, choice, and limited government. However, in conversations leading up to our recording, she mentioned to me that she has recently become increasingly drawn to more conservative ideas. I thought this podcast would be the perfect place to explore this. This recording marks my 10th public episode, which is really quite exciting, and I hope you enjoy listening to this one. Hi Bhuvana, welcome to the podcast. Thank you for having me, Deepak. This is my first recording where we have spent the last 45 minutes going back and forth, trying to structure what your belief is and what I have to disagree with you on. It feels approximately like we've landed on this really strange place where you have traditionally been a classical liberal. You believe in freedom, the defence of negative rights. I mean, even looking at the career you've had, by and large, the orgs you've worked with have been focused on pro-coercion, much less pro-state. However, off-late, you have also been struggling with the fact that the libertarian position does not maximise human flourishing and that it feels like libertarians have to pick either between a coercive state or a coercive society to reach some ends. Fall listeners are one of the examples that we spoke about was women's safety. You can either do this through lots of cameras all over the place, then you pick pro-state. Or you can do it through the uncle standing on the corner who sees a boy, you've teasing somebody and says, "I'm going to report this to your parents." And that can only happen because I know your parents. We don't live in small nuclear families dispersed across the land. It's a great way of framing it. But we still have to pick. Otherwise, that question of how women remain safe in this sort of society will just remain an open question. I'll pause here. I'd love for you to try and just articulate the boundary conditions. But if you look at the person behind your face, there's some disconsourte. There's something that seems to be lacking in the true libertarian position. What is that? And then where do you feel like you've shifted to now? And then I'll try and disagree with that. Great. I was very young persoated on the value of freedom and of the perils of coercion. Now coercion largely by the state, but also all kinds of coercive relationships. I think the big shift in the last few years is a more sincere appreciation for the value of a certain kind of coercion, not state kind, but societal kind. And that might, some might call it, say that it makes me a conservative as it were. The value of family, community institutions like, for example, religion, local elders and so on and so forth, which are coercive, you know, sort of by degree, right? I think I have renewed respect for what they allow you to achieve. So if you were, if you wanted the footprint of the coercive state to be very small, my senses you would have to concede room for the coercive society to be able to play a part, right? And I think this is where my position has shifted or this is what has been on my mind for the last few years. Yeah, I love this so much. There's a variable here that I think is important for listeners to sort of pick up on because that changes the flavor of this conversation and that variable is human flourishing. If the end that we were trying to accomplish was maximizing freedom, which in my understanding is the liberty to end that we want to maximize freedom and minimize coercion, then you could have possibly outcomes where flourishing is not maximized. And one example may just be drugs where making drugs available across the board means that people have access to them and use them. And there are people I love and care about whom I would actively counsel to stay away from drugs. And so clearly there is some moral position where I'm saying that by avoiding this short term high, there is like so much long term value to begin and you will live a much richer and fuller life. Right? So I want to spend some time on this variable, this human flourishing variable, right? Now the liberty I didn't push back would just be that in a libertarian world. I would still exist and so I would counsel my brother to not consume drugs and the state would not enforce this. And in most libertarian setups it's not like human relationships disappear. We still care for each other and love each other. But you may argue that this is not still conservative, right? This is just people who know each other and counseling each other. But something incrementally is taking place for this to be a more conservative position. So can I get a sense of that? This human flourishing angle and then what about the conservative position helps accomplish that better? Yeah. I think for many choices that are not conducive to your own flourishing on the long margin, it is very hard, particularly when you are young to be able to appreciate the wisdom of what someone is saying to you, the caution that someone is giving to you and the ability to be able to persuade with reason is weak. For two reasons, one is it's hard to explain why you should get up with the sun. Today we know because of Andrew Huweman and all of that, that there's a circadian rhythm and there's cortisol and there's a man. That's not always easy to explain all of this, right? Or that because you don't have the tools to be able to listen and understand and be persuaded, you might need stronger forcing functions. And coercion is one of those, right? So it's not enough that your pure group who probably know as little as you do try and toxins into you but that the, I'm going to use this word and I'm going to get pan for it, but that the whip of the parent is available, that feeling that the whip of the grandparents is available or the house elder is available, feeling that the panchayat is available, feeling that the temple is available and so on and so forth, right? And the beauty of many of those relationships is naturally we have figured out subsidiarity in there, right? The things that we talk about in the political sphere, there is extraordinary subsidiarity that is built into these coercive relationships, that non-state relationships, right? I think one of the things that I've, and by the way, this is not just about young people, I'll give you another example. A friend of mine said something to me many years ago that was very, very persuasive. He said, "The poor don't make bad decisions because they are stupid, they made bad decisions because they are stressed, right? And when you are stressed, you are likely to make poor decisions, for example, indebtedness, taking on more debt, things of that nature." And there is something to these coercion adjacent community structures that is deeply valuable, that I don't think the libertarian position appreciates enough, that I think the conservative position appreciates a lot more. I think the conservative position also appreciates that because society and human beings are as complex as they are, and as interwoven as they are, if these institutions do not exist, the state will step in, right? And therefore, it is far better for us to have these coercive community structures, structures available, so, and I'll tell you the realization, right? The difference between these kinds of family, religion and so on, the difference between these structures and the state is next to impossible to exit. These are very hard to exit, the price of exit is high, but it's not that there is no exit, right? And these structures fill in this remarkable, it's almost like a, what's the word, a shield against the state taking control, right? And I don't think we've, the libertarian position appreciates the value of this shield against the state enough. Jonathan Hyde wrote a book recently on the impact of social media, on teenagers, especially women, and something that he noted as part of the book was that the impact was not as profoundly visible in those communities that had a stronger Christian bent, actively practiced Christianity. So some European communities, for example, where they went to church frequently, had a strong family unit, just saw a diminished impact compared to more liberal communities. So there is like, I'm sure there is data to point towards the fact that having a family unit around you just makes something easier. One of the things that somebody who's pushing back me say is that not every family is alike. In fact, the Anakarina beginning could come to mind it, unhappy families, are happy in their own ways. Sometimes the children in these families, the spouses in these families, are effectively trapped as a consequence of that. So the trade off here is that sometimes those things will happen. You will get into situations where many times, correct absolutely. I'm sure you know people who have gone through rough childhoods. In India, specifically in a generation ago, in a most socialist India, in a most case, India, was just a harder time to even raise children, or be part of a family unit. You will actually see many of those children today turn towards more nuclear families, who actively make choices that their parents didn't make because they don't want to be part of those coercive structures. If we have to pick between the conservative position being one that we lean towards versus the state stepping and saying I'm going to do what the family unit would have traditionally done. One of the things that we risk is that the conservative position may expose certain individuals to a different kind of parent age, right, that you just wouldn't see on the liberal side because all of us have to share the same state, but we unfortunately don't share the same family. How do you solve for this? Yes, you can opt out. But certainly not when you're a child, certainly not. And even post the age of 18 and what I'm hearing is you're not really arguing for till you're 18, you're under the parent age of your, you know, and then at some point you move on and you're a free individual. But rather that this is a feature of society that we live as part of communities, those communities play a role of forcing functions, but you never get to pick the community that you're born into. Yes. And it's very hard to move across. And it being a function of birth seems like a variable that's hard to correct for. No, you're absolutely right. And I don't think there is any way to ensure against this. I think the thing to appreciate is true that the state is the same for all of us, but it doesn't realize in the same way for everybody either, right? Because fundamentally, the state is going to be executed or the mandate of the state is going to be executed through human beings. And just as human beings in families are, you know, sort of variegated, so also are the agents of the state variegated, right? So you can potentially find a social worker who's just wonderful and thoughtful and kind and able to exercise every tool in their kit to be able to help. You're also going to find completely disinterested bureaucrats. And that same thing is going to happen in the conservative setup. I think the only difference is because the conservative, not the conservative, because the non-state structures have other forcing functions on them and have examples that are rich around them. The correction is possible. The correction is more feasible and perhaps more likely. It will not come to bear in every case. There is no way to ensure for this, right? Just as there is no way to ensure that everybody will have good life outcomes. No matter how good your conditions that you may set up, things will fall apart for some people at some times. And this I think is much more appreciated by religion. I think the state refuses to accept that. I think that is the shortcoming. And that is in some ways what we should be wary about in the case of the state. So I'll give you an example. Think about prayers, right? How much of the ethos of prayers is about surviving bad times, is about holding on to fortitude, is about staying true in the face of adversity, is about not losing faith, right? What is that saying to you? It is saying to you that shit happens, but that let's build a practice of fortitude to be able to withstand shit that will happen versus the utopian state which is going to say to you that I'm going to try and build a system where no shit happens to anybody ever, right? And in the process of shit happening to everybody all the time, right? And so my intuition on a lot of this is if we're constantly comparing the best outcome of one system with the prevalent outcome of another system, what is that? The Nirvana fallacy, right? The state Nirvana, it's not fair and it's not right. You will have mistakes, you will have god-awful outcomes in both systems, but long margin you are going to have overall better outcomes in one system than in the other because there are correction mechanisms that are there. And I will also acknowledge that because of the nature of communities, norms, because of the nature of these forcing functions, ossification is modulitely, right? Of course, ossification is modulitely, but the ossification runs to ways. The ossification of good practices is modulitely the ossification of bad practices and modulitely, right? And so for people like us who'd want to get people to change their minds in these community instruments, the task is to try and chisel through that which is not nice, right? That which is not helpful, that which is not in keeping with the times, that which was always horrible and continues to be so. My making sense? And yes, that is a real challenge because societies do not change their minds overnight. My submission to use, this is a feature again, not a bug, because if you change your mind all the time, you couldn't have that kind of stability, you couldn't have that kind of correction mechanism and so on and so forth. And that is the task, is how do you get society to change their mind without the use of coercion through persuasion, but this happens over long periods of time. Yeah. And I think getting comfortable with that is why. Yeah, this is actually part of the next question that I wanted to bring up because as you were speaking, I'm thinking about, you know, there are those moments in time where there is a shift in what we consider the model landscape looks like. So we will suddenly in a span of a hundred years all agree that all human beings are equal, irrespective of race or, you know, religion, gender, sex, any of those things were all fundamentally equal people. And when that happens, the coercive arm of the state has been so much better at normalizing that truth because the challenges, I think, if you look at a more, society driven change, you have to convince the minds of millions. And if we think about this like a meme or a virus that sits in the brains of people, that meme has to fundamentally change, or I have to put out this idea. And then it has to replicate in your brain and you should transfer it through your family and through your neighbors and your other relations and has to move through society. And that is slow and it takes time. So for me to convince you that castus is something we should not practice is a hundred year project versus using the arm of the state. And they step in and say, look, it is just illegal for us to practice. Yes. You may so think that castus is fine, but we have prevented its practice, which one probably ensures that you you will eradicate the idea of cast quicker than you would otherwise. And then to help people who are in depressed classes today as part of that enterprise. And this is what the argument to sound like. How do we pick which of these battles without the state and which of these we say, yeah, it is a mind virus, but we're going to let this play out slowly. Or do you feel like by and large, even if there are downsides, we want to try and relegate more of this through the society route. That's a great question. I did warn you that I don't think in binaries. And so you know, you're probably not going to get is this better than that from from me. Mostly because I'm not persuaded that one it's set up that way. In order for the state to say cast ought to be illegal or will be illegal, you need people's representatives and now assuming we're talking about our liberal democracy, right? You need people's representatives who are going to vote that into law, which means the process of changing minds in society has succeeded or begun to succeed. Right. And so I don't think the same human beings who are agents of the state are also part of society, right? So it's coming from somewhere. But yes, there's a very interesting, you know, sort of concept about what kind of state do you want to build. Do you want to build a mirror state or do you want to build a lighthouse state? The mirror states, John, is to reflect the position of the people at the time. The lighthouse state is to show the possibility of what things can be like. And this was in some ways at the heart of the constituent assembly debates, choosing a lighthouse state. And so I see deep value in embracing a lighthouse state. However, just as the state can will into being memes of the time, right, it can also will into being horrible memes for the time. Yeah, for example, the Indian state just as it tried to outlaw or discredit casteism, it also deeply credited socialism, right, and the state of the commanding heights. And that's the risk you run. Because there are no, the state that can do one can do the other. And what the state and therefore what you want is a state that is a lighthouse state, but where the breaks on what the state can do are really, really strong, which means, you know, sort of red dip, which means paperwork, which means a long distance to decision from when the idea first germinates in somebody's mind, right, it has to be difficult to do good things and bad because what you want to approximate is what what society gets right, right? It has deep breaks, the breaks take, it takes a long time for good ideas or good behavior or good norms to get cemented just as it does for bad norms to get cemented. And you want to approximate that in the state in shorter periods of time. And the way you would do it is make it hard for something to become law, right, make it really, really hard for something to become law. So I'm sympathetic to what a lighthouse state can do for a people, can do for changing conventional positions around or conventions and norms and more is even, but there must be breaks. I don't add one more thing here, which is, look, while it's true that a lighthouse state can can take a defining position on Amore, it is also true that that's all it can do. In order for people to get cast out of their lives is a long journey that society has to traverse, right? It isn't that it's been 70 years since we said, you know, we don't like cast, we don't think human beings should be discriminated against and certainly not by the state. But even today, casteist practices are deeply entrenched, right? Is this a success? Is this a failure? Is not completely clear to me. Mandel commission is a classic example here. I'm going to make so many enemies, right? I get the wisdom, I get the desperation, I understand, you know, Baba Sahib Ambedkar's case for reservation, I think is really strong. I think unless you have suffered that, the rest of us have no even distant approximation of what it meant to live in that way. Yeah, so I get the case for all of it. I don't think we have not reflected enough about how much of that position we were able to achieve in internalized and how far we got from that position. Did the Mandel commission help us bring down casteism? Did it entrenched further? Did it give opportunity? Did it also hollow out capability? These are truths that we must engage with. These are conversations and I feel like the binary position on these is wrong because it will not get us close to helping our fellow humans, right? Or leaving a better world for those to follow. Am I making sense? Yeah. As you're talking about this, I have been in parallel preparing for a podcast on caste specifically. I don't know if it'll happen because the guest is still trying to figure out the dates. But this has led to me reading a lot of the literature around caste that exists as of today. One of the things I think Ambedkar would disagree with you about is the reliance on society. Because that to him was where this evil germinated and stayed and did not leave. He was imploring the state to please step in and resolve this because I feel like this society will otherwise not resolve this question for centuries to come. Then one way to think about this is you have a certain degree of elitism. We have some people who have thought these subjects through as a consequence of really researching reading and trying to be as unbiased as possible about what the data says. Then you try and enshrine something as sacred. So an example of something that we've said is sacred is that all people are equal. Or the classical libertarian will say that my ownership of my own body is sacred. This is not in question. I own myself and that is that. I feel like most I already start with something like that. You have something that you hold sacred. And the enforcement of that sacred thing, the right to self-property, these sorts of things that in the Indian constitution we think of as sacred, is then delegated to the state. Where we say it doesn't matter if society has not caught up yet. But state will step in and enforce this with a heavy arm because it is in that domain of things that we do not question anymore. And then for things outside this domain or even at the margins of this domain, we buy and large at least I'm trying to paraphrase your argument. We buy and large want to go back to society and say you folks have to catch up and change your minds because the alternative is that we have big government. And we have a large state doing more than we want them to do. Something like that. But I'm articulating this well, do you agree with this so far? Very much. My only disjunct is to say that when I'm making this argument, I'm making it to my libertarian friends. I'm not making it to those who want to create a lighthouse state. Right? To them my argument is different. And that is that be very careful, human freedom ought to be sacrosanct because it'll play out in ways that today you have not even begun imagining. My making sense to you? Yeah. This I feel is the is the fine line that you are trying to walk and it is a hard line to walk. Yes. And I think the reason is because you have married two different ideologies on one side. Somebody who wants to maximize freedom. And this is the most important thing in the world to them. And on the other side, folks who are looking at suffering and saying no, we have to be able to pave a path to human flourishing. And you are an acrobat standing in the middle, trying to balance human flourishing. Contortionist. Through like first principles of freedom. And in my role on the podcast, I want to try and disagree with this. This is even possible. I read on liberty and was told before I read the book that this is seminal literature on while liberty matters. I was really struck by how he speaks at length about the Victorian society around him and how he felt curtailed by society in general and almost no reference to the state. It was actually shocking to me how little he spoke about the state and how much he spoke about society. I'm wondering if that is one of those inevitable outcomes. So maybe the way to phrase this question is, should we give the state a whip? That curtail is how far society goes. So one of the things that we hold sacred is we're saying, yes, cool, we would like for society to figure out most of these things. We don't want the state to make drugs illegal. We'd rather you learn from your peers, your parents, your grandparents, your uncles and aunts that drugs are not safe to consume. And you that truly believe it in your heart of hearts as opposed to avoiding it because it is illegal. Something like that. Or you consume it recreationally to whatever extent is reasonable. But if we feel society gets too far and too Victorian and at that point the state steps in and says no further, would that be something that you think makes sense where the state still has has an umbrella function even over the limits that society can can traverse? Yes, and I think the state already does, right? As as core residents, all of us have agreed that I am not allowed to perpetrate violence on you. Yeah. So it's all right for me to try and persuade you to not take drugs, but for me to physically restrain you and you know sort of to beat you to death or beat you into submission is not okay. We've already relegated that function to the state. So absolutely and I feel like we've already arrived at that understanding. And for the rest, I think this is something that we're not paying enough attention to. The mechanism of the state matters and we're all dealing with a roughly having agreed that people's representation as the form of how state mandate will get exec-decided and executed is a settled matter roughly speaking, right? Because it is a settled matter. It isn't too separate, you know, they're not completely divorced from each other. There isn't state and society. There is how much the state does and how much it allows society to do. Yeah. And I'd say that there, that line will not, not the line, that compact will be arrived at by the people's representatives, right? This is a good thing. It's not a bad thing. It will not get all the answers right all the time. But some things it has already agreed on. They're not being adjudicated anymore. Well, perhaps they will be releticated sometime down in the future. But so far, we're all agreed that a person is not allowed to exercise physical, violent, coercion on another person. And children are a separate subclass families and children. It's a tough one. But we made that decision. So, for example, the state, no agent of the state, even in domestic violence, even 30 years ago, 40 years ago, would have said, it's okay to beat your wife, right? At least in liberal democracies, they would have said, it's not a nice thing, but it's between husband and wife, right? There's no one's to it. It is not that the violence was ever condoned, ever is a exaggerated word. But understanding that when you step in there, there are risks. You may want to do it and we've chosen now to do it, you know, sort of go full throttle. But we also chose to go down that path after having done years of mindset change, right? And so, my senses, these are not playing out parallelly separately from each other. They're very much enmeshed. The agents are drawn from the same pool, right? And often are the same people. And so, I'm not seeing a conflict as much. Yeah. But how do you feel about if there was a politician elected into power who said emphatically that given these things that we hold sacred, you cannot beat anybody up, even if you are married to them. Yeah. And so, the state will go into effect today this morning. And this is not a gradual, ezen process because there are lives today that we would like to save. And that's that. Would there be something that you're saying is problematic? Do you really feel like, even in those cases, there should be the state sort of broadly indicating that we do not like this way of behaving. But we're not going to use a very heavy hand to enforce. It's rather that this mind-writers die out than that we come out as a hard-in-force. And I think this is the crux of what we've been going back and forth on for a bit, right? Is the more things that you add into that bucket of these are sacred and they're not negotiable. The more the state will use its heavy hand. I may argue that absolutely they should. Like in case of physical violence. I may even extend it so far as even to children. Children who did not even choose to be born cannot be beat up because you're not going to do not like how they behave. In all those cases, the state must explicitly come out and say that as of this morning, we're not going to permit this because it is now sacred. Yeah. So in this example, in specific, would not it clearly be that the state should be enforcing as opposed to allowing society to figure it out? Or is there an unintended consequence that I'm not seeing? So I'm very comfortable with the state enforcing this. Because I know that in the democracies that we inhabit, that will come about after years of persuading your peers in the hallowed halls of discussion. This will not happen overnight. The state doesn't wake up one day and say, "Kal say ye ho ga." It starts a process. There are a whole bunch of hoops to jump. That's a good thing. And that's why I feel a lot more comfortable saying that if it does come about, it's in part the will of the people. That's okay. Yeah? And our job really is to convince the people that they've gotten it wrong. And then try and roll the clock back. Because the way this decision is coming about is a bunch of people who we have selected to be able to make decisions on our behalf, to be able to weigh the pros and cons on our behalf, have come together and over a significant period of time. It's in every single legislation that has been passed has happened over a lot of time, no matter how strong the majority is. It has happened after deliberation where it has gotten shot, where shortcuts have been taken. It's inevitably been a joint failure. And that's a good thing. And therefore, I'm not as worried about this. Is that yes, the state will make these decisions. Yes, you will also have these black spawn events where horrible decisions get through without any deliberation. But my sense is overall the system is able to exercise caution, which is really what you want. So I'm not a purest on freedom. I'm a freedom simpatico, but I'm not a purest. I feel I'm an institution's believer in that sense, right? Yes, if the people of are coming together and thinking they want a certain kind of state or a certain kind of control on their lives and they're willing to write that into the social contract, I'm comfortable with that. As long as there are bricks in how that gives them enough time to change their mind, right? It gives enough time for evidence that might persuade them otherwise to come up. That gives enough time for the voices and opposition to be able to state their case and so on and so forth, right? So putting in place those hurdles, those bricks is what I obsess over. I think that's the game. The game setting it up as state versus society is getting distracted by questions that are roughly settled. The game is the state is going nowhere. If the state is not going anywhere, all of us have to lend ourselves into the great task of putting in place bricks. I want to reiterate here that this is more a case that we are making for the average libertarian listener because I feel like a lot of this would sound very different if you were talking to somebody who was more than 100% and didn't already agree on freedom being the thing that you want to maximize. Let me try and make there obvious. You have introduced two variables, maximize freedom, maximize human flourishing and the libertarian will come and agree with you saying yeah, maximize freedom but what is this human flourishing thing? I want to maximize freedom and many will argue that that is the only path to automatically maximize human flourishing. There is no additional coercion required by any sort of hierarchy whether state or society. But somebody on the left will say what is this freedom thing that you are talking about? I agree on the maximize human flourishing that is truly a problem. People, disease, social discrimination, disabilities, all sorts of things that they truly struggle with and we directed the state truly to solve this. Make the world slightly more utopian for everybody than it would have been otherwise in a mona and our and our guest world. And the way they push back is by saying this freedom variable is one you have borrowed from libertarians simply because you have a sympathy for that position given where you started. But if you were to rebuild this from the ground up and say what I care about is maximize human flourishing. We would allow for so much more coercion because those billionaire types have billions of dollars but there are people who struggle and starve today or Indians and people in Sierra Leone die off tuberculosis today but drugs to solve it exist in the United States or you will have a big farmer company who is just holding patents for no reason or humans die. And if you simply allow for more coercion either through the state or society is not so relevant then we could maximize this human flourishing. And I am going to hand it back to you to try and make that middle case. The middle case is I am not really more on the socialist bent in this conversation and I am not on the liberty and bent in this conversation. There is an amalgamation somewhere in the middle that is conservative place where we can meet both these ideas and that is better than each of these ideas individually. Why is it so? that so. I think those on the left are right. In that, should we want human flourishing? Can we not deploy a little more coercion to get us there? I think they're right. The problem is they can do it once right now. For some people at this point in time for a very narrow set of needs. I think that's a very limited definition of flourishing. Right. What you want is what system will allow for this to keep happening without needing you to determine what margin of coercion needs to be extended on hold towards what end at which point in time. Right. Because what you're saying is I am able to spot today you mentioned tuberculosis malaria, malnutrition, you know sort of calorific intake right and so on and so forth or certain kinds of medicines and availability. Every one of these requires somebody to have identified the most important thing that you will have tried to solve via whatever exercise of coercion. So it means that person has to have the you know sort of the ability to spot the most important thing for that point in time has to be able to identify who the coercion is going to be levied on what kind of coercion and what result they are anticipating from it or how they're going to deploy the fruits of that coercion right and that's four places to fail for a single benevolent agent to be able to do it. I think my friends on the left don't appreciate how doomed to failure that is and how limited in time that is you might be able to do it now I'll give you an example think about a natural emergency yeah of flood and earthquake and it's so obvious in some ways and it's simple to be able to deploy coercion on for that particular period and time to solve human emergency at large scales yeah it's very clear and simple but every day human life is not a natural emergency every day human life is human beings walking in a thousand different directions based on a sum total of their you know sort of of human genetic experience right which is really what it is to be able to to towards those ends to be able to swoop in and to find that right correction in that right way is a mistake it is not feasible not just this it's not just one person there are 80,000 people who want to be able to deploy the same mindset for different corrections yeah somebody wants to solve tuberculosis somebody wants to solve calorie how many people will you cause how many agreements will you have to reach how many compromises will you have to make and so on and so forth and I think the I don't think they are wrong in feeling angst at human suffering or feeling that we have the way with all to be able to solve this I think where they are wrong is in understanding the limits of what is possible and the limits are are more constraining than they have appreciated right and this is my point of sort of departure from those on the left and my submission to them would be when you look at the human experience when you look at every day humanity the one thing you must take away is a deep sense of humility right that your ability to be able to control so many things towards the end you want is a pile of style and that's what you should avoid right that it's fraught it cannot happen the other thing that I would submit to them is suppose we were all agreed that everything is broken everything needs to be solved right we've agreed that protecting human beings are nasty and protecting each human being from violence at the hands of the other must be done by benevolence state suppose we agreed that look not just this there are there is a class of problems where human beings struggle to coordinate their actions in the right direction yes there is a class of problems so public goods for instance there is a class of problems where human action can make human action can make it harder for another person to flourish negative externalities for example right and there is then this class of problem of heartache where some human beings are just not able to take advantage of opportunity yeah because of the lousy hand that they have been dealt right of all of these you have to start somewhere where will you start because ultimately what you this is a hierarchy of possibilities yeah that some possibilities will increase your chances of tackling other possibilities however if you choose to tackle all of them at one time simultaneously you are not going to tackle all of them what you're going to do is dissipate a pool of resources across all of them and what I would submit to my friends on the left is to say or my friends who are more state sympathico is to say even if I were to concede that you know what you're aiming for is right you still have to contend with pragmatism which is what will you do first will you do all to poor spec simultaneously or will you do one a sit move to the next and I think there is a hierarchy the first order function of the state the thing that is going to guarantee that most people are able to flourish is getting rule of thought done right the first part of rule of law is that one human being does not get to extend violence on another right this is a reasonable and again I know that's more nuanced it's everything to do with person and property and so on this is a first thing you will do doing this is not trivial it isn't easy to get third agents of the state to be able to you know sort of do all of this yeah it is not trivial I would submit that the second class of problems which is where there are coordination troubles is the thing we tackle next which is a building of roads which is a building of sewage systems which is a building of you know sort of all kinds of public goods infrastructure as it but right now after that I would submit to you that the third class is hard but useful and even there folks get too distracted by positive externality I would say to you the negative externality first right how do you solve the problem of water contamination when you set up a factory at the top of a hill right it's critical it's important for you to think about it and I would say that should all of this and I get the challenge and I get the challenge that what will you do with the guru-level law system future and our malnourished I understand it saying to you that you have only this much coercion that you can extend and only that much that you can force people to pay up because ultimately you will need resources to all of this what will you do with those resources right how will you divide the pie is really the question that you're or divide the pool of resources if you will and that's not as simple as they think they're making it out to be I think we have to be clear headed about that apportioning of state resources and having markers on when it is time to move up the hierarchy as it were right like having some sense of okay problem A is mature my solution or my solving of problem is has reached maturity I'm happy to move to problem B and so on and so I think they may disagree with you on the arrangement of this hierarchy yes the existence of the police first just to yeah to make sure that you are safe and I am safe also extends to private property is your house is safe in my house is safe except I have no house and you do and I would be so much more predisposed to succeed in a world where I could leave because I have nothing to lose but much to again and it is not true of the elites right they have so much to save safe guards since they do have private property and then somebody on the left may end up saying that to be honest what we want to start with is the redistribution problem is equalizing either opportunity but even outcomes across the board. Most private property was acquired through violence and it's how you have a disproportionate advantage over me. And so we don't start with police. We work backwards. But early butter and wooden, like the liberty and types want just as far as the police and nothing more. Now how would you as a conservative approach this as a place where these two folks don't agree at all? I embark on that thought experiment which is considered. Let's redistribute everything. Yeah, what happens tomorrow? And I don't think that's the question that the left has contended with enough. They've contended with the question of yesterday and today but not of tomorrow. Because suppose there is a days like you reorganized and we've apportioned all assets equitably whatever that might mean. By whatever formula they prefer. Let's take that. Let's do it. What happens tomorrow? And I think what they've not appreciated is within 10 steps you will find yourself exactly there. And are you assuming that you will not have deep. So let's say that in your hierarchy of steps to follow. Step two is setting up protections for people in their property. Exactly. Yeah. Right. So once you've done that now you have many more people to satisfy on this margin. And it's not just about protecting the property. It is also about facilitating relinquishing of property. And I don't think they appreciate that people may not want what was to hold on to what was redistributed to them. Right. They will want to transfer it. They will want to hand it over. They will want then to give it to their children and so on and so forth. They want to cut it into bits. A cell of portions of it for every single one of these. You need the rule of law to work. Second, that's what the left would argue that it comes next. So therefore it's not second. Right. Even to do that reorganization on Mars. You need that course of battalion who can follow orders. How is that course of battalion going to do this? I get what you're saying. Right. What is the mechanism going to look like? What is the police in that place look like? So it's one thing to think about you know, Raktag rebels shooting the rich and taking over their things. But there needs to be an administration that's now creating a ledger of everything that has come up that is now creating some in this world a geocoded system to figure out where person is. So it's not trivial. Getting that done is predicated on rule of law. Yes. Is predicated on agents of the state behaving in certain predictable constrained ways. And I don't think they've appreciated why perpetually once we've signed the social. The first thing we've signed in the social contract is a delegation of all exercise of violence to one entity. Right. And that is predicated on the exercise from that point forward of all this violence and predictable simplified, transparent and sanctioned ways. So my sense is I don't think it's been fully appreciated what it means to do that. Got it. Let's say you and I are standing at the precipice of the Indian independence 1946. Right. And we have a role to play in interrupting this constitution. I think that many folks in the left are saying something like I refuse to participate in this enterprise of setting up a state. Yes. I will not join this this state unless one of the ends of the delegation of violence is the redistribution of assets. I do not mind that you set up the police force first. That is fine by me. But the first thing that the police will do is reduce the liberty and type has has walked into the room and is saying what I want the police force to do is defend my private property. The property and type. Absolutely. Yes. And on my and I'm yelling saying this is actually unfair. And I do not want none equal starting place. And if we have we have to be a fair society then we must do it this way. And that's why I'm pushing back on this this hierarchy. I mean you've put something like negative externalities quite far in the future. But that's what the left is saying that sure we should do this. But then significantly earlier than you are estimating. We first want to reduce to long before everything else begins. No, and that's a fair argument. Right. I think there are two things to think about on here. One is if this is going to be negotiated in the constitution assembly, I'm thrilled about it. And should we all agree that that's what happens. I'm thrilled with it. Right. Because that's not what the left the at least the deep redistribution is left person is saying they're saying I hate that constitution assembly. I want to burn it to the ground. Then all we are saying is we're going to we are going to exercise coercion on you. Yeah. There is no argument that you can make to coercive agents of that nature. You cannot this there is no reason to play with it. Right. If you're willing to shoot down a mass of human beings for your ends, it's the end of all conversation. Then I feel no need not just no need. I have no ability to be able to reason you off that precipice aside from beg for human life. Right. But the second part, which is suppose you're going to have this grand fight in constant more power. I'm entirely sympathetic. If you're able to convince your peers without coercion, like without physical coercion by sheer prowess of oratory and sincerity to execute this more power to you. Let's get it done. And I think what they will discover is it's not that easy to convince somebody to give up their property and not the richest. It'll be the guys closest to the poorest who you will have to fight the hardest to convince because they will have the least amount to give. Right. And I think it's a great forcing function. Convince your peers and get it done. No problem. By the way, this played out in assembly. Right. Let's do this played out beautifully in assembly. And it played out in wonderfully sort of innovative ways. And I think one of the things that happened in our constituent assembly that I don't think people pay enough attention to is in this extraordinary time of massive polarity. They managed to bandage their way into a new doll. It's a remarkable power of example of negotiation and settlement and giving and taking that such that nobody is happy at the end of it. Right. We said, great outcome in some ways to have because should everyone have been happy. I think that was utopia. Having some being happier than others was not acceptable. So then they arrived at this merry third where everybody was left dissatisfied. And I think that's part of the reason why we have managed to continue. And I think there's a grander political lesson in somebody who will show me down over these things that I'm gabbing about. I think the grand lesson of democracy, James Buchanan defines democracy in my favorite way, which is democracy's government by discussion. Right. And I think in some ways of libertarians want to get their writ on the world, what they need to do is ferment dissatisfaction, a collective dissatisfaction. That's the way in which you will put breaks on the state if that makes sense to you. By making sense, like getting everybody into this loose, loose proposition, constantly in a loose, loose status. I think that's kind of one interesting twist that's been on my mind. I don't think I'm describing it very well, but in my mind it's really playing out really. No, okay. So just to go back to the root of where they started, my question was if you have to maximize flourishing while not having no regard for freedom, how would you answer this question? And that's led us all the way here. You know, since the podcast has is spanning so many guests from so many different backgrounds, some of them are certainly from the left. And so they have points of view that don't maximize freedom. And usually one of the ways that I'm trying to push back with them is to make the anarchist case, is to ask, okay, so you don't seem to sympathize with the liberating position. But a lot of what you have a gripe with are the institutions that are enshrined in the state. And you and the anarchists share this in common. In that anarchist will say, I also have a problem with these institutions. And this also came up on the podcast with Amit, where I was trying to figure out what a classic liberal type does when somebody wants to to succeed from the union. If I were to stand up tomorrow and say I'm happy with the Indian state. And I know longer want to play a part in this in this state. It's not like you can hand off my plot of land to me and say this is your own country do what you will. There is coercion for me to stay. There is not too much room for me to leave. I was born in this place. It didn't consent to it. There are lots of those gaps. And I feel like the position that you are trying to defend will come under attack from all of these things. So the libertarian will push back on why we maximizing human flourishing. We want to maximize freedom. And your retort is I am trying to maximize freedom with the constrained condition that it helps us maximize human flourishing. The folks in the left will say we would like to maximize flourishing. What is the freedom is exactly. And then the anarchist will just say that this is not a joint project. We are not all one big country trying to do exactly the same thing. I mean Ambedkar's chief concern was to have a separate electorate for the depressed classes which he was negotiated down post Gandhi fasting. We will not pack all of that to say okay cool we will agree on reservation. Which now is the second question under fire. And these negotiated outcomes like you said have left nobody particularly happy and equally said. And hence we have a country. But if any of these groups were to stand up and say we want out. What does the conservative say? So if let's say particularly groups in the depressed classes, depressed costs were to stand up and say we no longer are happy with this. Our original ask still stands we like a separate electorate or we are out. And it's not even possible to cordon of a separate country because they are not geographically limited to some part of the country. It is a person to the population that is diversely spread. How does the conservative respond to this? Which is how are we happy with the outcome that everybody is equally unhappy? And what do we say when some people stand up and say I actually don't want to be unhappy. I want to be happy and so I'm out. The conservative says right in the process. Which I don't like. I don't like your process. This game that you have said. No, so correct. That leaves me with nothing because the only answer that you have is to bring guns. That's the only answer. And I don't have any reason to argument to give against it because at that point we all feel it because it doesn't matter right what I put on the table anymore because I can't negotiate with someone who has a gun to my head. Are you with me? So at this point we failed. What the best we can do is agree to some rules of engagement. Rules of engagement are no guns in the room. Let's talk. You will give some. I will give some. Let's figure out a process by which perhaps you will end up quote unquote seceding. Yeah. At my end I'm going to make it as hard for the process to guarantee a secessionist outcome. At your end you're going to work as hard to have positions that maximize a secessionist outcome. Yes or I get what I want in the negotiation. Correct. So either party tries to get what they want and I'm saying to you that the conservative or the nationalist would want to minimize any chance of that happening and you will want to maximize any chance of that happening right. But we cannot do it when anyone has guns in the room. And I get that it is unfair because on one side the establishment does have the guns. It has the meta part of the state. I get that. That being said I feel breaking our head over this hypothetical is not useful because I cannot change that right. I just I can't change it. In order to change it I need to bring guns and then we're back to the same loop. So there isn't a changing of it. The bed and I think that was in part the wisdom of Gandhiji. The wisdom of nonviolence as an approach right is that at some point people have to put down their guns because otherwise we're this doesn't end. It isn't just about secessionism. It is about terms of secession. It is about water rights. It's about everything then we are done. Then there's no conversation. Then there is appropriation and let's agree that the rules of engagement are appropriation. Now you can't complain to me that I have more resources to protect against appropriation than you do to fight for appropriation or for reappropriation. There's no conversation to be had. I feel like some of these thought experiments are not interesting to me. There is no way out of it. What can I do? What I can do is perhaps expand the option set by introducing a third character in this game. Introducing more flexible options, more rounds of engagement. All of these things are possible. Violence ends all possibility. One more question and then we can take a short break. I want to move to just norms. That is really interesting to me because we have to collectively agree on the way some things operate and work. If we don't then we don't make a lot of progress because we're all just tugging at opposite ends. Across every interaction that we have, we broadly have norms that we agree on. Most of these as in the conservative domain are just upheld by society. You will be called out for it because it is not in the norm or you will be appreciated for it because it is in the norm and so you tweak your behavior to meet the broad norm base that already exists. Let's say we want to introduce a new norm. My gripe is that we spit on roads in India and it is just I would love to live in a country where we don't spit on our roads. There is no way I can envision the state capacity required for the government to step in and stop spitting. I can't even think of and also how to moralize the allocation of any state capacity towards stopping spitting when so many other things could better deserve that. But then on the flip side we've had 70 years and no really society run solution for stopping spitting. We all seem to be generally accept spitting. So what is your retort for a person like me? An Indian who wants to live in India free of spits on streets. Who do I go to? Do I go to the state? Do I go to society if the latter? Then how do we end up convincing and coercing them into not spitting? Yeah. I don't think you can coerce people into behaving better. I really don't think you can. You can do deterrence but you have to generate pride around the outcomes that certain behavior gets you. We should be clear about that. For example, murder. Our Naisam Hita, our doesn't say dhaushal not murder. It says if you murder, you will x and y will happen with you. It's the Bible that says dhaushal not murder or the Gita that says in some or whatever it might be. So we should be clear about what says what anyway. In some ways I feel like we've written all of these things and perhaps not articulated why it is so clearly enough. Suppose you were you wanted to live in a spit free India. I think two things need to happen. One, religion needs to come out from under the control of the state. Religion in India is deeply circumscribed by the state. But I say religion I mean religious institutions more than anything else or norms of personal conduct are deeply, deeply controlled by the state. That release needs to happen. It is only where temples, mosques, Gurudwara's churches become vested with the norms project for outside of the ambit of personal life. Will you get the kind of outcomes you want? And today our institutions are obsessed with one with one of two things. Survival, which is my own treasury, my own temple, board running and so on and so forth. Or with personal code, which is what happens in my marriage, what happens with my children, what happens with my property and inheritance. Just the ambit is super narrow. The ambit of religion did not extend beyond these two things because we loomed so large. The Indian state loomed so large in it. So the maturing of that institution to be able to say, "Hey, my church sermon is going to be about spitting. He's going to be about personal hygiene as it affects other people, right? He's going to be about public health. Never happened." And so this is one thing that I can imagine would need to happen. Now, of course, given you a 50-year project of state retreat and I have no idea how you do that. But I feel like this is critical. Without that, you will not get any of this, right? And the second is suppose you wanted to live in a spitt-free India. Yeah, there are two types of spitt-free India. Spitt-free India, one is where nobody spits. Spitt-free India, two is where people spit, but it's cleaned up and gone really, really quickly. Or you have spitt-rooms and all that. Correct. Some kind of organization, both community as well as state that is available. And I'd say to you that while I'd love for it to happen, I'm also curious about how to better make be happen. And perhaps some amount of attention on making be happen. And I'd I think we've been hyper focused on one and less so on two. Now there again there is a state adjustment that is required right. Spitting is hyper local. The fact that India doesn't have subsidiary team in any serious sense meant that you couldn't locally solve it. So today we have an India where everybody spits. It's the same anywhere aside from maybe one sick him off right. But aside from that everywhere it's the same kind of spitting behavior. It belies the imagination at least for me. How come we don't have five places that are spits free where people don't behave in this way. It makes no sense to me that that shouldn't happen. And I suspect that that's because we have no subsidiary team. So maybe India can solve you know for spitting but Brahman Mumbai corporation might have been able to solve for it. And because you killed subsidiary team in any serious sense you also don't have that possible. But the corporation is still the state. What is the society because I do think that we would love to solve this. No, but I don't think that binary is fair. It's not like that right. When you have subsidiary team you have local representatives with a lot more way with all as well as skin in the game to be able to use the machinery of the state and vice versa to be able to get these outcomes right. And subsidiary team is what local government is the least is the form of state that is most acceptable to libertarians and left alike right. It's the one form of state we all love. The one form of state in India we don't have and so maybe the way to get there is subsidiary in that local institutions of both government but also a lot more local fragmentation of community or local community supremacy. Now yes, some will say Khappan chayat. It's a great example of getting that kind of subsidiary there right. And yes, Khappan chayat has done some horrible things. Khappan chayat has also done some extraordinary things right. Maintaining communal free, communal tension free zones, maintaining village level hygiene, maintaining commons in you know sort of small geographies, figuring out and not fair to everybody I grant you that. But even in a system that is stacked figuring out some formula for a portioning of access. Yeah, I'm not saying they got it right. I'm just saying to you that it's not trivial to have even negotiated settlement around some of these questions right. It's a great example of how to get some of these things done. In rural India, in deep rural India, spitting isn't quite what it is in urban India right. It's a lot more circumscribed than it is because you'll spit you'll spit into your punches house right and so on and so forth. So this is my long winder thinking on how might you solve a problem as simple as spitting. I think somebody in Singapore will just say state that's the only way to do this and you know we've been able so when the when the prime minister said come out and bang pots and pans, we were able to mobilize huge chunks of the population to do this. But when the same prime minister cleaned up the street and said we want to pursue a Swachabharata we didn't really see a lot of any relation and then it's just for the penalties and you know jail time if you spate right. Those sorts of things and drive the change. I'm just making the case for somebody who absolutely and Singapore is a phenomenal example right. But that Singapore sends you to jail for spitting is a very small part of the story and it goes back to the hierarchy question. Singaporean state is a strong state on very few things. It has selected to do few things and be cutter about those few things. It has elected to do rule of law and be unforgiving about rule of law, property rights and you know sort of protection of your person. It has elected to be unforgiving about public health, the externalities question and it has elected to be profoundly aggressive about public goods. It did not venture into redistribution. It did not venture into or at least continuing redistribution. It did not get obsessed by the idea of outcomes for some are worse than outcomes for other or starting points for some are worse than starting points of others. That's a great example of what is possible if you decide to be a lot more focused and narrow and proceed along the hierarchy. Right. It's not as if one day one spitting was banned. Deepakya or familiar with some of the work that I do at Prosperity and there's a fascinating building regulations in Singapore are some of the most liberal anywhere in the world. They're super strict on a couple of things and on that they broker no resistance. Or they broker no protest. Right. They just refuse to engage on mandively as it were. On. But for the rest it and people are happy to oblige because they turn around and say look, you're asking me for two things. You've made a strong case about this. You've also demonstrated to me that you have the way with all to be able to follow through. But you don't ask me 800 other things. That's a fair deal. Hence he does to for everything on every measure and fails in every. We will run a quick break. We come back. I'd love to talk about religion and a few other small things I know to down. So see you after the break. Welcome. Welcome back. Thank you. If I'm born in Iran and would like to live in a country where hijab airing is not compulsory and it's optional, I can't move to India. And God we don't want to live in a country where this is the thing that we are choosing to enforce. What do we do next? We are conservatives. We broadly don't want the state to be the thing that steps up and says from today wearing a hijab is optional and not compulsory. The state has no business talking about clothing at all. But society around me does not agree with me. Where do we even begin this mission as conservative? Why would the conservative position be any different than the libertarian position? Because here I think you are able to agree with the libertarian that you want to maximize freedom. Yeah. Yeah. But at some point you stop and say that we do not want to maximize freedom so much that human flourishing seems to fall apart. And when you pick the human flourishing part of the discussion, then you are saying that I'm actually conservative in this way and agreeing with some tenets of how they've set up their society. A temple being. No. We're switching definitions. Conservative is not taking the position that human freedom or human flourishing. He is taking the position and the political conservative. I mean, not the traditionalist. OK. I feel like I'm thinking. The political conservative is taking the position saying that human freedom and human flourishing, understanding that in order to get the full spec of human freedom, there are challenges and you want to go slow and careful and have breaks. That's what the political conservative says. And in the instance that the religious text that inspired the conservatism does not allow for that change to take place. What do we do then? That's the question of time to do. Then you need moderates. So you will not get changed from among the people who believe in the idea, right? You will get changed from among the people who do not believe the idea, who want to challenge the idea. So what you're saying to me is there is a class of people who don't want the hijab to be mandatory. Where do they begin persuading those who think it's written in the book? Right? This is the same question for any kind of persuasion. Assuming, let's say it is written in the book. Like they literally use the text you can write it. And this is true of a thousand things that we have done. Like think about the Bible, the Old Testament and all the kinds of things that it says. We've well moved past all of it. Jewish people who still follow the Torah have well moved past many of the things that are argued that, right? And so I don't feel like this is any different. Am I making sense in my sort of passing this happened? Because this has happened as a, I mean, I haven't had a few days to really prep for this specifically. My caricature of a conservative also feels incorrect. And I think you are right that I'm painting somebody who is more of a traditionalist. Yeah. The question itself was unrequired because the difference between a traditionalist and a conservative is something I should have been more cognizant of. Okay. The one of the ways I can think, again, of pushing back against the conservative position is we are in 2025, modern world. Yeah. You can fly anywhere, travel anywhere, work anywhere. And there is no community around me. The community grew up in, if I was contained to my village, my city, then I understand what you are espousing. that is. is not the world I live in. In fact, for many, that is the path to leave what they view as a world they do not, as a constraining world. And I mean, specifically, for example, I speak with female friends who say, "Yeah, I'm so glad that this option exists. If I were 1925 instead, I don't think I would like it just as much." And metaportan cities are this melting pot of cultures and ideas and people from across the world. And that sense of community disappears. By and large, my community is my pio group. They're all about the same ages I am. I rarely interact with people who are much older than me, player paternal role. Just that fact, a highly globalized world that allows mobility. Is that enough to say that this thing that you are talking about, this society-led norm-norm-change process is one that is realistically not possible because the trend is an increasing globalized world with smaller and smaller communities that are more niche, more interest-based, but don't really look like the communities you've been describing up until now. Yeah, no, that's 100 percent right. How well do they fit a world that changed very, very quickly thanks to technological transformation? I think the one thing about institutions and community again, is they don't develop overnight. Yeah, it may seem and yes, it's true that the change process was really, really fast and big changes happened, transformative changes in very short period of time. But I don't think it makes the need for new institutional structures obsolete. It just means we haven't arrived at the answer yet. And I think we will because ultimately what's a community, right? There are two things that in my view need to happen. Thing number one is for people to come together on some shared understanding basis to be able to achieve certain types of events. Child care, for example, just one example, but many, many things, shared common spaces for another, recreation, whatever it might be, but the second thing that you want, and I think this is the part that is not appreciated enough, is soft forcing functions to help us behave better. Social media has taken us in some ways in the opposite direction. Sometimes it try to do the former also by supplanting, right? But I don't know, I don't think it has done well on that count. Provided forcing functions in a god-awful way, right? Pushing us towards behaviors that are really bad for us and actually just terrible behaviors. Yeah, or limiting speech. Narcissism, absolutely. Or killing, you know, the simple rule before you spoke was to think before you talk, right? Dissegment was so important. Every single community institution from your family, all the way to your church, to your, you know, sort of whatever, Panchayat group of elders, the one thing they would have said to you is think, discernment, discernment, discernment. And social media just junked discernment out of the door. And I think that Jordan Peterson, your hate, all of these guys, that's what they're nudging you towards is, guys discernment is getting disappointed. It's not a good thing for us, right? And I think the forcing functions for discernment in this new world have not been established yet. But that doesn't mean we give up on it. And my sense is we will realize the need for it soon. In fact, we're already realizing the need for it. What they look like in this new world, I don't know. One thought that occurs to me is it may lead to a hyper turn towards religion. Because of isolation, right? It's just that it's true you can go anywhere in the world. But eating every meal alone is not nice. For some people they may enjoy it. But for many people, it's not nice, right? It's nice to come, go home to something. And knowing that the idea of home is not heart, but something else, what does that look like? At some point we thought it was my space or Facebook. But clearly that's not it, right? So I suspect that what you're going to get is hyper-global religion in some ways that you can modularize airbnb's for religion. You know what I mean? Can you one example? But one part of me actually hopes that happens. I think it's not a bad thing to give people a space to converge at. Where some things do go wrong, but many things go right. And this is not, we could turn it to be useful. Let's say that what you're saying is possible and true, right? And one critique could be that this isn't the domain of utopian things. That every ideology has one of those utopian places that they think we will all end up in, in the interim, in 2005 and it's not happening. There are only two options. Either we let this be, or we enlist the state to step in. In Australia for example, we have post Height's book, I think that made a big difference. Yeah. Regulation around social media. But lots of countries are not talking about this stuff, right? Then we're back to the same binary folks like you who are saying we would like to solve through community and people. The community itself is absent. Bearing, badly and yeah. And which of the two do you lean towards? No state intervention or that yeah, okay, in the interim, then the government has to do this. If I were to make the decision, if it was in my remit to make the decision, my decision would be do not intervene. Because I don't know this yet. I feel we've just started on this journey and we don't have enough information to be able to make large decisions stopping the march of time. Yeah, I get nervous about it. So it was me in decision, I would kick the gand down the road. I'm going to be rewarded mostly because my god, who will take the brickpads of votes in this one, we are in another way. However, I think there is some measure of inevitability. And this is where some of our conversations also began, right? I spend a lot more time thinking about why political actors behave the way they do than necessarily about what would I do. Great. A lot of my time goes trying to understand it mostly because I'm the reform business, the change business. And I think a lot of the times, those of us who are freedom oriented, those of us who are state skeptics, yeah. We we under appreciate how difficult it is for a political actor to do nothing. And we think the simple answer is do nothing. Yes. If Bhuvna was in the decision, she would do nothing. Here's the thing, the chances that Bhuvna will be in the decisions chair are next to zero. Especially given your policies, I'll do nothing. Right. So what am I going to fight on? And for a politician, for a political actor, a mini shade, the promise is to do something. Now the question in some ways, our battle is not for do nothing, it is for do less or to do less down. So in some ways, you're just reviring ourselves also on what is being clear about what are you gaming for? Not confusing, you know, true North with directional North, right? Or not with the destination North. That is North of here. And so my sense is because consequences are felt in the present and some of them are ugly because difficulties are suffered in the present. This and because we have not been able to solve this, you know, sort of quickly. And because in some ways, we mocked religion mocked local institutions and tried to sideline them so much. So, um, inimical towards them for the longest time, we find ourselves in this precarious position where other community instruments are dissipated and the politician can do nothing except to say the state has to step in. So my sense is you will see the state stepping in. Yes. It's not clear to me that all of it is bad. My gut tells me that even as some of it will be good, there are some downstream effects that will be in ways that we did not anticipate it. And that will hurt us. My submission would be to those of us who are in the business of change, focus on allowing community institutions to prosper. Get the state out of religious control or you know, playing it at least in India. playing a big role in religion. Encourage if anything, not just religion, but quasi-religion, community, whatever it might be, cults, whatever it might be. Encourage it. We don't have a safety net and we are missing the import of that safety net. It's so much of this conversation makes me sound like all I think about is religion. I'm not even very religious, right? I think I'm using it as a proxy for. No, it's the same that I made, actually. Yeah, because the basis for lots of conservative thinking is so religiously oriented that it's hard to separate the two. Okay. There are lots of things I would still love to talk about, including, you know, I think are you utilitarian? What is the human-for-ushing business? Okay, all of that, but I know we're running out of time. So, like a final question. A lot of the sounds like you are making. you're shining a beak and making a call to Libertarian saying, "Look, I understand why you stand and I sympathize with you, but given the pragmatic state of the world inside the big state or that we band together to build communities, right? There is no choice." And sitting quiet in silence just means that we let big state win because that is the way the wind will move. And I want to flip that round on you and say something like, "This is my beak and call to conservatives. That conservativeism is dead." Or rather, you know, you tell me when you will call time of death because the world is too globalized, too distributed. There is no longer meaningful community that is backed by the state, so backed by religion. There is no real paternalistic authority in the sense that existed 50 years ago. The internet has, the internet and globalization and mass mobilization has done that and you have to pick. Either join the Libertarian bandwagon, which I presume you're leaning towards or choose big state. But this community thing that you're talking about is not like a. the same lack of pragmatism that you are claiming Libertarian's showcase is the acquisition. You are. I'm turning towards you. And maybe the question itself is this fair and when do you call time of death? How do you know that the ideology is now so dated that for the world we live in it no long makes any sense? Again, answer every question like it. It were the one you wish they asked you, right? So that's what I'm going to do with this is where I. look, I think that framing is incorrect. I'm sold on Libertarian values. Of course. Yeah. So there's no. That's how we started this. I'm not fighting with anybody. Nobody needs to convince me about the value of human freedom and about nervousness towards coercion to do not the human being. I'm sold on this. I think the question or the line that separates Libertarians and conservatives in some way or classical liberals and not even conservative, right? I'm more classical liberal people. Is when you get up tomorrow, you still have the same set of values. Your goal presumably is a smaller or a no state. Okay. Let's take the anarchist position. Anarcho capitalist position. No state. Yeah. How do you go get there? I have a program. My program may be flawed. You're right. I can't. Even two steps forward, 17 steps back and that becomes the story that I get. You don't have a program. Even if you are to go from here to there, how will you get there? And there is two possibilities. One is in a short span of time, some remarkable accident of persuasion happens where everybody who has been here before disagreed with you in a unique moment comes together and agrees and we're able to write that libertarian constitution. Yeah. This is option one. This is a zero probability event. It's not even a low probability. Zero probability. Number two is you pick up arms and issue the very principles that you stand for, which is I will coerce you into believing in freedom and signing up for ill libertarian constitution. I'm not sure that libertarians want to do either of these, right? So the only thing left to do is for people like me to be chipping away at it. While you build mass, you know, sort of conviction in the direction, it will never be towards the same ends because fundamentally we're all wired differently. We've thought about things differently. It's a feature, not a bug. That we are not all libertarians is a wonderful thing because otherwise we would all be deeply isolated. You know, individualistic hating other human beings largely. Wouldn't we left alone people, right? I think it's a wonderful thing that we have people who've arrived at entirely different points of view. That's what keeps us humble and rich. Yeah. I think libertarians don't appreciate this enough. And the conservative in me doesn't like many points of view, but has come to deeply appreciate this accident of the world that there is so much variation and has learned to treat this as a feature, not a bug. And I think that's the differentiation, if you will. Or that's where I feel like my action program for every day has stepped away from my libertarian friends, which is I'm not fighting, you know, sort of for that libertarian YouTube. I'm fighting for a smaller state tomorrow, more freedom than yesterday, everyday chipping. We are knowing and recognizing. I'm not blind to the fact that, like you said, when will I call time of death? Yes, you're right. How much incremental change will get us there? You're absolutely right. I don't have a clear answer to this question. Which is why I don't have a single, you know, sort of it's not a one step program or a one tool program, right? I talk with people like you, so I might also lend my help in persuading people towards a much, much smaller state. I also teach young people so that we might do that. I also give money to my local institutions, including my local temple, so that they may be that bulwark or they may help, they may be a sanctuary in a refuge. I also, you know, so on and so forth. And I feel like our toolkit of engagement has to become much richer than it is now, even if I was fully aligned on that, on that, on your program. Does that make sense? Yeah, I hear you on that note. I would love to thank you for coming on. I think this is a little bit like a hotspot in the sense that I can hear you also sort of like, you know, thinking through and then giving me answers from like a place of intuition as we're going through this. And then on my end also, I'm like catching up with you and saying, okay, I hear you and what are the ways that I can push back against this. But for me, privately, I opening, this has been like a really wonderful conversation. I learned so much about all of my bugs, right? Yeah. And, you know, we discussed this months ago. And I feel like you have, you've thought a little bit of this through and you sound a little bit different than you did months ago. And I think that'll also be true to yours from now, you know, because if you've moved on positions, which is like an amazing sign in somebody because then you are willing to, you know, constantly change and have your ideas questioned. So I'm glad to have captured you in this moment in time, right? Like this is where you currently stand and to poke back and see if that holds. Yeah, we'd love listeners to write into us if they think they want to add something to this conversation. But, Bhavana, thank you for coming on the podcast. I had a great time.