There has never been a period in my own lifetime when American people have had so little trust in, or regard for, the nation's government. Witnessing the events of the past four-plus years – or indeed, the past couple of weeks – one might rightly declare that we have reached peak clown show in the realm of governance.

So is it time to just cut it loose? Would it be better for states to simply go their own ways, and let the feds continue to flounder? And if so, what are the mechanisms by which they might do this? Would such a move require outright secession, or violent revolution? Or does the very law upon which the nation is founded allow for it?

I pose these questions to Mike Maharrey, National Communications Director for the Tenth Amendment Center.

Mike is also a reporter and analyst for Money Metals.

You can find Mike on Twitter.

He is the co-author of the books "Constitution Owner's Manual: The Real Constitution Politicians Don’t Want You to Know About", and "Nullification 101: An Introduction to the History, Constitutionality, and Practical Applications of Nullification."

What is "fiat science"? It's what you get when the state creates a lot of money out of thin air, then hands out bunches of it to scientific establishments, where decisions are made not on the basis of market forces, but on the basis of political ones.

I speak with genetics expert and founder and CSO of Medicinal Genomics, Kevin McKernan, about why fiat science is a problem, the utter failure of the regulatory state, what needs to change – and what is starting to change.

If you're still saying "peer-reviewed" like it's a good thing, you might want to take a listen.

Our previous conversations about the problems with medical research and peer review in particular, are here and here.

Kevin's Substack is here.

...and the post where he discusses Rebekah Barnett's FOIA reporting, and showcases Dr. Paul Offit's lies, is here.

The UNITAID/Andrew Hill story can be found here and here.

You can find Kevin on Twitter, here.

Kevin's NCI (National Citizens Inquiry) Testimony is here.

And you can learn about CannMed here.

“Unfettered capitalism” creates a “dog-eat-dog” world in which the strong profit at the expense of the weak, everyone only looks out for their own interests, and society becomes selfish, atomized, and less human, with its members caring only about making money, not about each other.

So goes the standard mainstream view of a free society, and free markets. If you went to a government school, you heard some version of this.

Economist Guido Hulsmann has a new book out that tears this caricature to shreds. In Abundance, Generosity, and the State: An Inquiry into Economic Principles, Dr. Hulsmann systematically demonstrates the ways in which people naturally tend to help each other and to produce goods and services that do not directly benefit them in any material way.

He then shows us how government intervention works to stifle and even squash much of this activity – from government control in money and banking encouraging irresponsible financial behavior and discouraging voluntary donations (if you take nothing else from this interview, be sure to take note of the “saturation mechanism” and what happens to it in an interventionist system), to the tragic outcomes of the welfare state.

Dr. Hulsmann turns the standard caricature on its head, and shows us in painstaking detail, how it is not freedom, but coercive interventions in the lives of free people that work to create a society of self-centered and atomized individuals.

Dr Hülsmann is a professor of economics at the University of Angers in France. He is also a Senior Fellow of the Mises Institute and a corresponding member of the Pontifical Academy for Life.

His website is here.

And his book, Abundance, Generosity, and the State: An Inquiry into Economic Principles, is here.

The book he mentions, The Welfare State We’re In, by James Bartholomew, can be found here.