Countries should be making their own rules and laws. But after WWII, the United Nations was formed, greeting global rules for the entire world.

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Here’s a transcript of our conversation:

Brittany: Hi, Emma.

Emma: Hi, Brittany.

Brittany: So, you know, part of the foundation of this country is the belief that states have the power to make decisions for themselves. And, you know, for example, some states have higher taxes than others, and so people can choose to move to the taxes that, or the states with lower taxes. And some states have laws about what you can put in your body. We talked about that with raw milk or things like cannabis that are used as medicine. But some states say no, and some say yes, and the federal government actually says no, but there’s some elements of state rights that we’ve talked about in a different episode, but. So, you know, this allows each state to make their own decisions, and we love that. Now, on a bigger skill, every country also has their own laws. You know, for example, even though America has a lot of problems, many of which we’ve talked about on this show, we have a more free market system than many other countries. but not all others. There’s actually a few countries beating us, but we have, you know, relatively free considering other countries. So some countries have higher taxes that they use for big welfare states. We’ve talked about welfare states before. That’s the government taking taxes from people, stealing, you know, theft from people and redistributing that. So offering free daycare for people. In many ways, public school is kind of a welfare, program. Okay. So, you know, different countries have different levels of that. So, okay, why do I bring all this up? Well, both states and countries have something called sovereignty, and this is one of my favorite words, and sovereignty to explain it. In simple terms is the right to self-governorship. It means you are a single entity. So the individual has sovereignty, you know, states have sovereignty, but countries also do when it comes to the global stage, the global stage, meaning the whole world. So unfortunately throughout history, there have been attempts to institute these like global governances. So these are people who would police the whole world, which we don’t love So that’s not great. Now the most successful one to date has been and successful meaning support, not successful in their performance, but it’s been the United Nation. So Connor and I have been doing a World War II series, and we’re, we still got some episodes to do on that, but the UN to keep this in mind, was born out of the chaos that happened from World War II. You know, people were so scared of what happened in World War II, and that’s completely justifiable. You know, as Connor I talked about, it was so terrifying that people were like, okay, we need some sort of global power to keep countries in check. We have to do this. So that doesn’t, you know, happen again. But Emma, I’m gonna turn it to you now and ask you to tell us a little bit about the origins of the United Nations.

Emma: Yes. So it was established in 1945, so right as World War II was coming to an end, and it was the continuation of something that, preceded, it called the League of Nations, which was started after World War I. And as evidenced by World War II, shortly after, was not very effective. Now, President Woodrow Wilson really wanted us to join, but we refused, which was part of the reason that it was not successful. So for as dangerous as a world government might be, at least it was, you know, giving them a little bit of credit. At least it was a voluntary organization. Yes. So after World War II, the world was very exhausted. We had had two world wars. Hitler had committed horrible evils beyond anyone’s nightmares, and people really wanted to ensure world peace. And I think that they had basically convinced themselves that coming up with some sort of global government system would help them do that. But it proved to be nothing more than a security theater because the Cold War began shortly after. So it didn’t even stop us from getting into wars and getting into conflicts. It just sort of changed the way that the conflicts played out because as we’ve talked about the Cold War, it wasn’t as much actually fighting back and forth with bullets and bombs and stuff like that. It was just sponsoring wars between other countries and fighting through technology and innovation. So during the Cold War between Russia and America, both countries were mad because they both believed that the UN was favoring the other. So, there were some problems, but it wasn’t, it was never actually addressed through conflict, like a normal war. And I think the UN existing was probably a very big part of that.

Brittany: Absolutely. And it’s weird because again like it didn’t do much to solve the problem. The Cold War still went on for decades. So, it’s funny, they don’t do much. It’s kind of like TSA. That’s what it reminds me of. Yeah. You know, TSA exists, we all have to go through it. And they’ve failed, you know, there’s been studies, they’ve failed like 95% of their safety tests, but people want them there because it makes them feel safer, even though they’ve literally done nothing. So it’s one of those things, but there’s also some problems with it. So the UN is supposed to promote, you know, peace and friendship among nations. There’s nothing wrong with that, right? We want peace. We want to be friends with people, you know, that’s a great aspect of it. But they often implement rules that go against our nation’s sovereignty, and remember, that’s their right to self-govern. And now we obviously know the Iraq war was a terrible idea. So no one here is supporting, the Iraq war, but it’s, there’s an interesting story here with the UN because the United Nations did not support the US in our war. They were very much against it, you know, as we’ve talked about, there was no proof that Saddam Hussein had these weapons of mass destruction. And so George Bush, the second George Bush at the time, he went against the UN, he made some very brash statements, some harsh statements against the UN. But, it made a lot of people who supported George Bush and the war really mad because they believed the UN should not be telling us what to do, which is absolutely true, however, obviously, as we know, the Iraq war was an awful idea. Now, a lot of people, especially like in our sphere, and Ron Paul and people like that, have called to limit the UN and keep going to at least keep it weak, because if we’re being honest, it’s not very strong because they have an agenda. And I think, and I wanna talk about this for a few minutes, Emma, so please feel free to jump in. One thing that I really fear that they do is climate change. You know, we’re, science is always evolving. We’ve talked about this with vaccines, and, you know, I’m not here to debate whether climate change is real or not, but there’s a lot of wondering what exactly is going on with it. You know, is it manmade? Yeah. And also, it’s funny to me because the only solutions that the UN and other people suggest is taxing corporations. And what’s funny to me about that is taxing a corporation is not going to make the environment better. It’s just what they call, you know, like a scapegoat or sometimes called a red herring, just a weird excuse. Oh, yeah. To get countries or to get corporations, excuse me, to pay sums of money so that they can continue, you know, using it as a welfare,  apparatus or way to redistribute wealth. So that really scares me. And then you had, what is that horrible girl’s name? Greta.

Emma: Greta Thornberg.

Brittany: Thornberg, who was, you know, dressing the UN, and people were crying. And, one thing I don’t like about it, even though it is voluntary, is it serves as a bully. So if, you know, we were to say, no, we don’t wanna participate in that, then it’s like, oh, you guys hate the environment, you do this. And I think, and I’m, I don’t have these details. Right. So here’s another thing for you guys to go research. I believe that when President Trump was in office, he did not like sign on to one of the climate change or he.

Emma: Paris Agreement. Yeah.

Brittany: Yes. Do you remember, do you wanna tell us? So do you know enough about that to kind of comment a little?

Emma: Very briefly. Okay. Yes. So the Paris Agreement was basically these countries came together and said, we’re going to limit our carbon usage and we’re going to do X, Y, Z to fight climate change. And from my understanding, a lot of it was kind of like Brittany had been, has been saying today it was sort of security theater, and it wasn’t stuff that was actually going to impact or make a noticeable impact on the environment because a lot of the countries that were signing onto it were not the worst polluters when it comes to, you know, carbon emissions and plastic in the ocean and those sorts of things. The worst countries when it comes to that stuff are typically China and India. And I don’t believe they were even a part of the agreements.

Brittany: So, China’s not even in the UN I don’t think China’s. No. even allowed to be in the UN.

Emma: Yeah. So, you know there were all these countries that actually, when you look at the last couple hundred years, have been greatly reducing their carbon emissions and have been actually, you know, doing a pretty good job at reducing their impact on the environment. And it was sort of this theater thing where it was kind of like this feelgood club, and everyone who was in the Paris agreement was in the feelgood club was doing great things.

Brittany: It’s her signal, which we’ve talked about before.

Emma: Exactly. So it wasn’t actually doing very much to help the environment, and when Trump left it was basically him, you know, in my opinion saying, you know, we don’t really care about this theater. We’re doing, pretty well overall environment-wise, and, you know, if you really wanna make an impact, why don’t you talk to India and China? And people really did not like that. So interesting little piece of theater going on there.

Brittany: Absolutely. And just a little side note on that, and I know the whole episode is not on environmentalism, but you mentioned like, India, the funny thing about this is developing countries tend to have really high, what they call carbon emission, you know, outputs. That’s the dangerous chemicals that they believe are making the environment bad. But once they become developed, it decreases because they can start worrying about things like reducing carbon emissions. So yeah, it’s a cycle. it’s something that kind of corrects itself. It’s almost a market correction. But Emma, let’s briefly talk, we kind of talked about the history and our last few minutes. I wanna talk about why global governments are a bad idea and you know if I’ll throw it to you if you wanna, to add some commentary on that.

Emma: Yeah, Absolutely. So I think first of all, you know, something that we’re really big on, our team is decentralization. Yes. And basically, this idea that when you consolidate power and when you give all of our decision rights and all of our, you know, personal autonomy over to some central government that doesn’t know us, that doesn’t know our community, that doesn’t know your individual needs, things tend to become out of whack and they make decisions that may not be in your best interest. They can even become corrupted by the power and just try to manipulate you by taking away your personal rights so that they have more control over you and more money and more power. And that’s why we’re so big on decentralization. And typically when we talk about that, it’s in the context of, you know, America and of the states and of our local communities. But it also applies on a global level as well. So when you talk about creating these powerful, you know, mega governments that are made up of all of the top leaders from all of these top countries in the world, and they’re making the rules not just for themselves, but for all of these major countries and basically for the entire world, that is like the worst of the worst of centralization because not only are they making decisions for, you know, people in their own country that they haven’t met, but they’re making decisions that affect people in other countries with completely different economies and different needs and different expectations for what life should look like. And at the end of the day, you know, not only is it wrong to take away those rights from people to self determinate what they want their country to look like, but also it’s going to be very ineffective. And one thing that I saw, you know, this wasn’t the UN, I believe it was the G20 that was talking about this, which was basically a summit of, again, kind of leaders world.

Brittany: Yeah. World Leaders.

Emma: One of these leaders, world leader things where all these financial people from top countries were gathering together and they were actually pushing for a while, a global tax. So what they wanted to do was create a global corporate tax. So basically no business can ever escape this minimum tax rate. And that’s something that’s really scary because a lot of times developing like,  you know, you hear the term third world country, what does that mean? Basically, it’s a country that has an economy that is not nearly on the level of the United States or the UK or Germany, or one of these richer countries. They’re trying to get there. But what they need to be able to do is create an environment that welcomes business and that welcomes enterprise and that lowers barriers to entry so that people can get businesses starting and can create jobs and, and do things like that that can help lift their economy. Like we were just talking about a couple of minutes ago now, if we passed a global tax and if we actually made it impossible for businesses to move somewhere with a lower tax rate, it would really, really harm those countries that are trying to embrace freedom and trying to say, actually we’re gonna lower our taxes to attract business and attract entrepreneurs who can create jobs and bring wealth here. So that’s something that actually did really help India back in, I believe it was the nineties, they basically embraced the free market economy and said, we’re going to be a capitalist country now. And it’s really, really helped with their poverty. A lot of people have been moving up and out of poverty, basically the poverty line in India. Yeah, it’s awesome. And capitalism has really helped them. And a big part of that is reducing regulation and reducing taxes. So to go back to this main point, I’m kind of ranting here on this obscure global tax thing, but basically, it’s this idea that this small group of people who are basically trying to control the whole world think that they know enough to effectively rule everyone in the world. And that is such a vain, such a silly idea. But that definitely doesn’t stop people from wanting to try it.

Brittany: Exactly. I think you summed it up perfectly. And one more thing to add before we wrap up is one of the reasons we like government so small is that when a government is small, the people have more of a say, individuals have more of a say, it’s already difficult sometimes on the city level, it’s already difficult on the state level, it’s already difficult on the federal level. Imagine how much harder it would be if every individual had to try to, you know, talk to global governance to get anything done. So I think that’s a final thought we’ll leave you with.

Emma: Yep. Awesome. Thanks for chatting with us guys. We will talk to you all again soon. Thank you.

Brittany: Talk to you later.