Bryan Calcott

And so I just look at it from the effective standpoint, and I just ask, when is enough enough?

When do we finally accept that the current system as is isn't producing the results that we want?

and admit that I think that it's a structural problem.

And what I tell people all the time is that, to me, democracy is a failure.

Instead, I believe in what I call a consumerocracy.

And I think that if people were more aware of the ability that they have to change the world, to change the political landscape through their consumer decisions, I think that there would be more change and, you know what I mean, just like more positive impact as a result.

Well, I guess then the question becomes, you know, what right, what duty does the government have to,

to protect people from themselves.

And we were just talking about Appalachia, and I'm not trying to single out anybody from Appalachia.

I mean, there's a lot of good people in Appalachia, but there's a lot of people that just don't give a shit about their health.

And was it because they were born in these unbelievably poor counties, in these rural places, and if they were born in different circumstances?

It could be Maslow's.

But when you come down to it, it's really not.

So do you know about government subsidies?

Right.

No, exactly.

Let's talk about like the war on drugs and alcohol, because I mean, I think that's a good topic.

so the war on drugs that is um based on the belief that the government has the right to protect you from doing harm to yourself yes for the first 75 years of this country's existence it was actually believed that any sort of drug law was unconstitutional the founding fathers clearly believed that the government did not have the right to protect you from yourself if you look at the constitution it's saying you have the right to these things and the government will make sure that there is no intervention

from outside forces but it is ultimately up to you to go out there pull yourself up by your bootstraps when it comes to drugs we're saying oh no no no we you know we have the ability to protect you from ourselves and you look at it and say okay well here's this here's this regulation and ultimately what was the result

Did we stop drug use?