 Welcome back to the Agora cafe for more coffee and philosophy Today, I'm happy to have joining us my friend Eric Mack Who is a professor emeritus and philosophy at Tulane University? former faculty member at Tulane's Murphy Institute of political economy He's written many many articles and a couple of books Wanted on John Locke for Bloomsbury academic back in 2013 and then most recently one on libertarianism For Paul depress so welcome Eric. Good. Thank you very much Actually, there's a kind of a mini book another book on Locke called the essential John Locke that the Freys Institute has has just published But it's a little strange because apparently Or you can get through Amazon is the Kindle version of it and if you want the the real physical version You have to contact the Fraser Institute So everybody Right to the right to the Fraser Institute for the oh and you can download it for free from the Fraser Institute side Yeah, I'll make a note of that. I'll have links to all these things in the description. So there's a good Oh Calling something so should I start calling something be essential anything is always sort of asking for trouble because Someone's always gonna say you lift out the most important thing on a very essential thing You know it's not the thing that I've devoted my career to you left out You know, it's right, you know book we have book for chapter 37 of This particular obscure work That's right. So this is my way of Implicitly criticizing the entire Locke scholarship Yeah, yeah So should I start by talking a little bit about how I got involved with libertarian thought and sure it was Ironman as usual So back in high school a few years ago And Where you grew up where you know, where is I so I? went to a small Private high school in Queens, New York called the garden school. So you're not an Indian by birth. I'm so shocked Yes, yes, yes, so you're here so that I should the real origins probably is the origin of my accent Which I which I sort of pleased with my mother was a grade school teacher She went back to teaching when I was a year old and My grandfather came to take care of me every day for the next four or five years and he had this nice Eastern European Jewish Eastern European accent and so he imprinted me with that and 45 years of living in Louisiana was not enough to overcome That early that early Imprinting so well, I went to Ivan in the southeast for 30 years and I Don't think I've a part of an accent yet No, no, I couldn't tell I can't hear accents Which I think is part of the reason I've never changed my way of speaking. So I went to high school in and actually interestingly this was the only sort of Correct political judgment really I can think of my parents making a new public high school was started near where I lived in Queens and My mother especially thought that it would be totally chaotic and useless at least during the first several years If I went there and I would have had to go there if I stayed in the public system So she convinced both my dad and a couple of our neighbors who had sons who At the same age I was that we should all go to this little private school the garden school Which was run by Mr. Flowers Flowers Yes, it was it was it was very very nice and I'm trying to remember and I can't When a friend of mine there Talked me into reading the fountain head But I can't remember that conversation, but I was very taken with the fountain head and In Class in English class we were reading Boswell's biography of Samuel Johnson have I got the name? Yeah, I've remembered the name correctly and There were some scenes where Johnson is bullying various other people and Making them kowtow to his opinions and the teacher said Well, you can see how selfish Johnson was and all of a sudden I hear myself saying no no He's wasn't being selfish He was driving his sense of self-esteem from what he could do to these other people And I remember sort of leaning back in my chair and looking at this friend of mine Who was at the far end of another aisle and he goes yes, you got it. So that was my Introduction to Rand and and that was in New York City so during high school I went to a bunch of the Unran Institute lectures and stuff like that Well, it was the Brandon Institute then right Nathaniel Brandon was still He was at pretty much at his peak at that point over that in the next several years. So so he was around and I Might as well tell my best on Rand story which is sort of fits in at this point and I'm not sure if I've told this to you Roger go not A few years later when I was in college. I was at Union College and it's connected in New York I think I didn't get into Amherst by the way because of the the Jewish quota. They just had too many smart Jewish kids coming from New York and I knew kids from other areas which Less good grades and stuff But they got into Amherst, but I didn't so anyway, I was at Union College and During the summer I was taking a course at the Nathaniel Brandon Institute with the maggot Linda Peacock who's been living with on Rand's corpse ever since and He asked a bunch of us who were philosophy majors to meet with him and we'd have philosophical discussions and We did have a nice meeting is about eight or ten people who were philosophy majors or beginning to do graduate work in philosophy and It was actually a surprisingly productive and open philosophical discussion and so at the next meeting of the course that Peacock was Lecturing in he called us up and he said I've told miss Rand about our meeting and she would like to meet with you so we're all excited and we go off to Brandon's apartment a few days later and we get in there and and Rand is there and Brandon and Barbara Brandon and so on and Brandon pulls out some little note cards that One of the people had written some philosophical questions on in preparation for the discussion with Peacock And he says we've called you here to tell you that Nobody who has read any of on Rand's works or Who has any degree of philosophical integrity could possibly ask any of these questions And and he goes on to berate us for a while and I don't remember how long it was Samuel Johnson Yes, that's right. That's right so He berates us for a while and and then this incredibly remarkable thing happened that All of us except one person in the group. I'll mention in a minute So maybe eight were of us Oh, he berates us for asking any of these questions and then Rand in this with her beautiful smile says to us But of course if you have any questions You know, please ask them and we sort of look at each other and decide We're to be struck struck by lightning again We're not gonna we're not gonna we're not gonna fall for that and And without saying anything at all About eight of us just stood up and walked out Which was great and the guy who didn't Was harry bin swanger who was still involved with those people and he went over to apologize He sort of dealt down and so on so that was my that's my best Yeah, I'm sorry. I have her. So anyway, you're bored, but that's actually what I was hoping that you would tell Yeah, good. Good. It was it was and um The friend who I mentioned who got me interested in on Rand Was also in that group and I saw him a bit for a couple of years and then I didn't see him for 30 years Or have any contact with him And when I sort of reacquainted with him His memory was exactly the same as mine. So that was that was good Because this is the sort of thing you could puff up, you know, otherwise, so but anyway, because of rand I was I'd be you know, decided to do philosophy And And probably Thought I went to do epistemology and metaphysics because The view was that that's what you should do ultimately Um, and so when I went to graduate school at the university of Rochester Uh, and I actually worked a lot with The great really great con scholar, uh, luis speck One of my colleagues is also Say again, one of my colleagues was a student of his also just told me also Kelly jolly Oh, okay. I don't know. Yeah. Yeah, so he was he was terrific. He likes to imitate beck Yeah, yeah, good go beck was uh, and um, um, and beck had this Exaggerated sense of my abilities for some reason He um I wrote a paper on con for him in my first semester in graduate school and And he thought this, you know, he I got an a on and he thought it was really great and And Called me into his office and he said, you know, mr. Mack. This is a terrific paper, you know, I think You know, we definitely should try to get this published and there's only One objection which I'm sure you're aware of To the argument you make and so here's the objection, right And but I'm sure you can think of a response and working into the paper and do that and we'll send we'll send it off to con student I had no idea what he was talking about with the objection. It's just completely beyond me So I said, yes professor. I'll come back to with you when I've worked this out and uh, But never did but but I was going to write a dissertation on synthetic a priori propositions truths and And I told beck that I want to do that And he said, well, that's terrific. Mr. Mack. Uh, I think you should acquaint yourself with the secondary literature This is still the days of of mimeograph sheets, right? So he handed me probably about a 20 page Staple together batch of mimeograph sheets. Maybe 20 or 25 Articles That's right. That's right. And Maybe 60 of the articles were in german and 30 and french maybe 10 in english And he said, uh, you know just sort of read through these things and acquaint yourself. So, uh, Then I had lunch with richard tale who was also at rochester at that time and Somehow in conversation with him I said You know somebody could write an interesting dissertation on natural rights And he said, uh, why don't you? Uh, and I went wow And so then I had to go to beck and uh Sort of explain that somehow I decided really to do natural rights rather than That a priori propositions and uh, and but he was my second reader and he turned out to be Much more important advisor. Even who was your first reader? So so tale it was my first week and uh, yeah, and I wrote I wrote the whole dissertation And put it in his little mailbox And two days later It was in my mailbox with a little note from him in which he said I think this is very good, but I think you should have more subtitles That was his entire And then I then I worked with that a lot So I think beck beck in ways that I can't specifically remember Must have Must be somewhat responsible for the sort of Kantian tone of my work in political philosophy So I think probably more than most libertarian theorists and Maybe at least as much as nozik Uh, there's this sort of Uh Kantian coloration to my to my position and I'm sure that beck played some role in that although again. I can't remember exactly. I don't remember a moment where uh, where uh, Something clipped that he had said, uh, but anyway, so I wrote this dissertation on uh, on natural rights, which was uh Finished before anarchy statement utopia was published. Uh, so I'm sort of pleased about that. Um And then parts of it have been got got published fairly early on in, uh The personalists, which was this journal that john hospice took over when yeah, I remember it Yeah, yeah, so for a while It's named or something else. It's now the pacific It's something quarterly or yeah, that sounds I remember pacific is in the time. I remember, you know, looking up various articles probably yours among them back in Yeah, yeah, back in the day when I was hunting down various leads Yeah, this would have been the very early 70s. I think uh, so uh, a few years ago. I was at Why would have hunted down in the early 80s? Yeah, I was at one of David kelly's Objectivist Institute Institute of Objective Studies summer things. Yeah, it would be nice changing the name to Yeah, uh, because it's it's an institute that's in the federal witness protection program. I'm guessing but yeah But I think it started off as the Institute for Objective Studies And that's been the at the society and the objective center and I think it's the atlas Now. Yes. Yeah So at this actually was at the first one of these I went to that this friend of mine from high school somehow saw an announcement of it and he came there and that's how we We we acquainted ourselves but uh, some very nice young man Came over to me and said, uh, oh, you know, I've read your in 1971 paper on How to derive ethical legalism from the personalists and and I said, oh, you know, that was a paper my dad wrote But I thought that was fun anyway, uh, so, uh So, uh Yeah, I went to Rochester originally because I thought I was going to do metaphysics and epistemology Uh, there was a course even on The nature of universals, right and I As a good handy and I thought I Had to take that course. It was turned out to be a terrible course and uh, and I was saved by that, uh, that lunch conversation with Richard Taylor in terms of the doctoral dissertation an anecdote that uh That kelly tells about Lewis whitebeck is uh, they were taking a course on uh, you know on con and The first section of con that's labeled the tipic of practical reason and Bex says Well, can anyone tell me what a tipic is? And there's just dead silence in the room and he says There are dictionaries boys and girls Again dead silence He says well, if you had bothered to consult the dictionary you would have discovered that the word tipic Is not in the dictionary Yeah Yeah, yeah, uh I heard a story actually from Robert Paul wolf about Um, oh my gosh I've forgotten this thing. This is the extremely famous Greek and medieval harry wolfson uh, who is it who's taught at harvard for many years and And he also had this sort of Eastern European Jewish accent and he was teaching an Aristotle seminar and He starts the seminar by saying uh The crucial thing I want to get a course to you at least at this meeting is that according to Aristotle matter was edible And the students look he says it's Crucially important that you grasp That the edible that that matter is edible according to Aristotle and students are sort of looking One student raises her hand and says a professor. I'm sure it's very very important But I just don't understand why the fact that you can eat material is the crucial thing about Aristotle and Wolfson says edible edible two plus two is four edible Uh So let's see after grad I've spent four years at Rochester. Uh, and then I I got my first job teaching at a horrible place called Eisenhower college, which doesn't exist any longer in cynical falls and I had I got that job Was a long complicated story. I won't tell the whole story But basically I got that job because George Walsh who was associated with iron rand Had made a huge mistake and quit his job at Hobart and William Smith college, which was a real place And took over the job as the head of philosophy at Eisenhower college and I had met I had met uh, George at one of these Listen to tapes listen to lectures about objectivism on tape that was Taking place in Russia. So he wanted to harm me and uh And I went there I guess I should mention that it was around that time that I uh first became aware of the uh, um, the Libertarian arguments for anarchism and I was at that time an anarchist Which upset George a lot And uh, you know, I'm even wondering you were probably at Cornell not yet at Cornell. This would have been like 67 68 I was three years old No, it's close. All right. Okay. So anyway, because Really, yeah, really. Okay. Okay. Well, yes, you were I was Especially remarkable At that time I had some dealings with the uh, with some sort of objective is student group at Cornell and Oh, I must have been around there even though he hadn't gotten the wrong pants yet, but um Anyway, uh Yeah, so, um, uh, I taught at this place for four years. Um I um, I did a very smart thing because um, I did I knew I did not want to spend my life at this horrible little place But I knew that there was this thing called adaptive preferences, right? And I would get used to it and decided it wasn't so bad and so on So when I went there, I decided I have to immediately begin to do things Which will at least eventually get me fired and so I did many many Things which were perceived perhaps as somewhat obnoxious like the uh, the academic vice president of the place spoke with a sort of froggy voice and Um, so I called him froggy, right? And then publicly would address him as as froggy, which would probably cool now that I think about it, but Uh, so as you can recognize accents when they're froggy and uh, I did do the yeah I did I got I got the frogginess and uh, and ultimately this culminated in a sort of hilarious episode in which I tried to get the fellow who is the chairman of the tenure and promotion committee um We moved from the tenure and promotion committee because uh, I had In the company several other people heard him Uh, expressed the view that uh, that Adolf Hitler was a great man And it was only too bad that he wasn't allowed to finish his work um, and uh This fellow was apparently determined to help finish his work by ensuring that every Jewish candidate who came up for tenure was rejected What's his admiration for Hitler? Was there any cognitiveness with that and being in a college named after Eisenhower? Uh, together was kind of on the other side didn't didn't ask the fellow was he was a Sikh I mean a very very large Sikh guy Who had been a police captain in India? And had come somehow ended up as a professor of English Uh at this college. Uh, so he was called the guerrilla Gorilla or guerrilla Ah Geo or so on, uh um So, um, yeah, I tried to get him removed but the the other person who was pointing to the Conversation in which he said all these nice things about hitler was a friend of his who was also the dean of humanities at the college and uh When I Said, you know, dr. Murdoch heard the same things I heard right, you know, why don't you ask him? Dr. Murdoch said You know by that time in the evening. I'm always too drunk to remember what people say That was very convenient. So shortly after that I was fired So, uh, that's that was my uh, my checkered Early, uh history Well, I mean, so that's that's not a bad reason for being fired No, no, no, no, no it worked out fine. That actually what was what was interesting was that I it was This was all according to my plan And yet I still felt And you couldn't have counted on having a pro hitler guy there. That was just uh, no no that helped out that helped out And in the meantime Because of the anarchism business, uh Uh, I think george walsh I don't know but I think he was not as uh, I think he maybe he Maybe he thought he could have done something to protect me, but he didn't do as much as he Perhaps ought to have done to protect me because he was a little pissed off about the anarchism Stuff, you know, so shortly after that I I actually pretty much stopped being an anarchist. I know this is a horrible thing to say But uh, I'll mention the philosophical argument that uh, that um led to my Probably the beginning of my giving up The anarchist position my wife and I were watching Uh, I think was it was a frank church and senator from Idaho who had these hearings about abolishing the cia And we were watching this on tv and uh, um My wife said, um You know now that I think about it. I'm against abolishing the cia. I was Disturbed and puzzled by this. I said, well, why would you be against abolishing the cia? And she said, uh, if we abolish the cia, we won't know where those people are I thought that was So you can see the projection right onto uh, you know, you want to know precisely who the people are who are using force And then maybe you have more chance of controlling them. I guess the argument So anyway, I did the last the last bit that is you know, is the real track Yes. Yes. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Sure. No doubt about it. Uh, then I uh Um I didn't get it went back in the job market didn't get a job for the uh for the next academic year, but Discovered there was a pretty easy way to sort of Worm your way into what was called a liberal arts postdoc fellowship at at harvard So I did that In 74 to 75 and that was right after anarchy state in utopia came out and um um I I took a I sat in on a seminar that michael walzer did. I was going to do a seminar with judy score, but didn't Um, I sat in one of nosic seminars on philosophical explanations um, but mostly uh About every two weeks. I would go and spend the afternoon Talking to nosic about political philosophy. Uh, and that was terrific Then I went back on the job market And I think partly because one by then I had so I didn't really really nice letter from beck who really liked me Uh, a really really nice letter. I'm presuming from nosic and uh My wife was teaching university of max excuses at that time Became friendly with the lady who at that time was robber pole wolf's wife We got to know wolf Quite well. I actually gave the libertarian lectures in Wolf's undergraduate political philosophy classes at university massachusetts So I had a letter from him too So that that's not a bad portfolio Yeah, that was good that worked out. Well and sort of I got uh, that's where I that's When I ended up coming down to tulane Where I stayed for Over 45 years Yeah And tulane was pretty good because my department was mostly saying people Uh And then I you were teaching it too late and your wife was teaching it Uh, that's you that's right that um, just for your you for our viewers I might not know who she who mary sewage is you want to say anything about Or what she yes Yes, she's so mary sewage is her name And oh is it she actually started out More in aesthetics than in medieval philosophy And Wrote a dissertation that was sort of philosophy of language Aesthetics about the nature of fictional language and I think was called truth truth and Meaning in fictional Language or something like that But more and more drifted over into Doing medieval philosophy and she does The sort of stuff what I really love about what she does which I don't understand at all Is it's the sort of stuff That can only be done in an incredibly wealthy society Where people are able to some people are able to spend their time in these Just incredibly esoteric fields. So she does Medieval philosophy of language and philosophy of logic and a lot of it is involves producing um Scholarly editions out of Fragments of manuscripts that I've described that have survived from the 13th century. So yeah So I had the very good fortune that Mary can read my papers when I'm writing them and help me by making suggestions, but But I can't I can't reciprocate because I Don't know and Mary occasion now that I've gotten a little more interested in people who wrote in latin Occasionally I'll bring the The latin text which I can't read and I have some reading of the English text And again that includes a lot to wrote some of his early stuff and that's right. That's right. That's right And stuff on the law of nature, which is probably that's right. That's right. That's right. And I think I think the early tracks on government were probably yeah In latin as well. So so yeah, so I so she can help me out and I and I'm just incapable of reciprocating Unfortunately So that's what she does Wish we go from here. I'd like Philosophical views Oh, sure Sure, you're you're Indian randian lockian synthesis or yeah So You know when I was a I was about to when I was a kid, but this was through a period of time that I Let me go back a minute. I think my My real break probably with Objectivism Was not so much that episode I told you about right because after that I I still would get the objectivist literature and read it and stuff But actually it was probably Um On the anarchism issue And what struck me About because but when when rand had this little like one or two page attack on on anarchism, you must remember this I think about what Yeah, well, it was more like I think just like a a little Oh, one of those one of those squibs in the objectivist or the object of newsletter. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, and at this point I knew enough about what the anarchist arguments were that I could see that she was You know profoundly denouncing Something which she didn't have the least bit of understanding of right and so that was that I think of us was a interesting moment I think just just Interject briefly there. I just finished reviewing foundations of a free society for which is a an iron rand society publication anthology and There's a piece in there by your old comrade and arms harry bin swanger Where he's he's arguing with uh, it's an anarchist and he says Well, you know, I've been I've been debating anarchists for the first for the last 50 years And this is the first time I've ever heard this argument That if it's all right for the government to use retaliatory forests, it must be all right for individuals use it too Really he's never come across that argument before in 50 years of debating and he is Contributing an essay on this topic. Yeah He also mentioned again someone and he's replying to also someone citing david freeman spoke He says well, I never read david freeman But I remember having a conversation with him, you know a few decades ago and Here were my reactions and this is this is an odd way of doing Yeah Yeah, yeah, my last conversation with him was uh Probably the within six months or so of the the brand and ran break And uh I actually I was with this high school friend of mine who I've mentioned a couple of times who probably knew Binswanger knew Binswanger better than I did Uh, and we were in Binswanger's East 60s townhouse was Binswanger's family had a lot of money and You know when he was like 20 years old, he owned this beautiful Like on 61st street east 61st street townhouse. Oh, that wasn't too far from rand's apartment, right? I know she was in the empires that she was it. No, no, she was on on Her property was on a 30 flex I think I mean her I think her apartment was on 66. Wasn't it? I think it was much further downtown And I was about to make a mistake because I was thinking of the empire state building with They had offices there for a while, but uh, yeah, her apartment was on the 66th Yeah I don't remember. Okay. My only knowledge would be where brandon's apartment was but now i'm uncertain that I remember Where he's his was but anyway So I was we were at in at binswanger's townhouse My high school friend and myself and binswanger and he said something like well, where do you stand on between brandon and rand and And I said, uh, well, uh, I really don't know what actually was going on but uh, the statement that brandon had sent out seemed to me a lot more coherent and Then what ran had to say and I could see like the the shutters come down You are clearly one of the evil ones, uh, uh, so I'll tell one more story later on about that the rand world but I always thought when I was, uh When I thought of myself as something like an objectivist that That there were these two propositions that objectivists maintained one is that People are to seek their own it is good or fulfillment or well-being whatever And then there were all those problems right in rand about whether that was just longevity or Right. Well, that's about uh, but there was that proposition And there was a proposition about respecting other people's rights And I always thought that uh It was not Were not just for the sake of your own well-being that you should respect other people's rights but that Other people had a claim on you That their rights be respected Uh, so that in some sense Talking about other people's rights as reasons for how you should act was giving What I later learned could be called Another regarding reason, right? It was there was something about the other person in virtue of which you should be constrained Not just something about what was in your self interest And And in a way that's Where a lot of my philosophical writing has started which is To try to explain what it is about other people That give me a reason to be constrained in my behavior towards them And if the reason is said to be well, it's Advantages to me to be constrained then I haven't yet come up with the right type of reason The right type of reason has to be something that Proceeds from some fact about the other person Not from some fact about myself to put it probably too crudely And so and so And The reason to be constrained is not because It advances the good of other people Um, because then the good of other people becomes part of your ultimate end and that's incompatible with Your own good being your only ultimate end. So it has to be a different type of reason And which I think of as a deontic reason and so This is where A type of what I sometimes call the type of dualistic view I adopt right namely that there are different types of reasons There are value-based reasons and the core value-based reason is The rationality of the pursuit of your own well-being properly understood and all that stuff And then the core Of this other type of reason is the reason is the fact that other people are beings with who have ends of their own And that fact becomes a reason for your being constrained and how you Treat other people. It's the fact that they're beings of that sort Not the value for them or being beings of that sort. So that's what A really really basic thing that I've tried to work out When I and I was separated from had nothing to do with these various objectivist movements for a long time And then I got involved for a while with the kelly people And one of the things that struck me During that involvement Was that they were as committed as the official orthodox randians to the view that ultimately the reason For there could be no there could be no reason for being constrained in your behavior towards other people except a self-regarding reason right and You know, maybe it took the form of Well I wanted to try to say more about that except that It seemed to be impossible to get across the idea that There might be a consideration on behalf of Being constrained in how you treat other people Which didn't resolve itself into a self-interested consideration And so I was that's and that seems to me to be deeply wrong And so I was more right than I realized in thinking that That what I take to be the randian position on this Is thoroughly completely held by by across the board by randian type people and So A criticism which might have seemed to me to be unfair when I was back back in the day That it's that the objectivism The objectivism is close to solipsistic Uh Seems to me less unfair than I thought it was. I mean there is Something there is, you know that that every consideration has to ultimately resolve itself into Considerations of one's own genuine long-term well-being And that which means that ultimately There's nothing that one owes other people Right All proper behavior is something that you owe to yourself, right? And that The more I think about it the more I think that that's that's a mistake So part of my view is always and I've always sort of thought that there is this sort of tension in In human life, right between the person's perfectly reasonable good pursuits of their ends and The fact that there are ways of pursuing those ends that Are unacceptable, right or unacceptable except under the most extreme circumstances And so there is this tension in human life and The objectivism seems to Refuse to recognize that there's That possible tension, right? Which maybe ultimately can be resolved, but it's complicated much more complicated How do you by the way a quick aside is look I just looked up and of course you're right for three main apartments who are on east 34 35th and 36th And if I if I had pictured Manhattan geography to myself instead of just thinking of the numbers that felt familiar I would have realized that 66 was way too far A field. Yeah. Yeah, and my memory was simply that it was near it was near the Empire State Building Was my was my memory. Yeah, but um, you know, so the you know, so you know the other way of um Of trying to uh Deal with this problem sort of a more Aristotelian and less Kantian way Is to treat other people's interests and concern for them As part of your own Interests rather than as a strategic means to them Uh, so that you know that gives the Randians more of what they say they want But there's still a lot of resistance because they've got this this focus on survival as the you know as the basic driver of Normativity right and of course Other people's interests are not constitutive parts of your survival um Now now I've seen some interesting some fancy footwork In fact in the in this the volume I mentioned foundations for free society Greg Salmieri gives this argument actually specifically replying to something I'd said in an earlier piece. He says well uh, you know is um, you know, it's photosynthesis and you know, uh strategic means to a plan to survive Or is it part of it? Well, it's both because it's um Uh, you know, it's photosynthesis is a you know, it's a means to plan surviving But what is the plan surviving it's engaging in these various activities and photosynthesis One of them well fine that works for photosynthesis, but it doesn't work for rights respecting because You can survive just fine without respecting rights You know not just fine and uh, you know in an elevated sense We're just fine in the sense that you are you are still alive and conscious Right. Um, right So, uh, you know, so although I prefer the more Aristotelian to the more counting one although my my Aristotelianism is You know, it's more counting and inflected than than some versions But still the uh, you know the the main problem with the sort of the mainstream random view does seem to be this this strategic view which doesn't is isn't really obvious in In the novels as much. I mean I have a heart and when I mean Rand has this passage which he talks about Oh, why you know why you should be honest and why you shouldn't tell lies and sort of stuff about How it's you have you have to keep track of too many lies And it's who are the fake reality about keeping track of all these different lies And you know, am I supposed to believe that that's why Howard work and Dagny tagger Don't cheat their customers because they don't have the processing capacity to keep track of all their lies Because they do actually, you know, right, you know, they're smart enough that they could be successful Uh, I mean look at the look at Francisco. Duncania who Who does engage in massive, you know deception and fraud but he doesn't you know in In a virtuous way for virtuous motives against evil oppressors Uh, so it's not as though, you know, it's somehow impossible to do. Um But I think that when ran my theory is when Rand Tried to start building the philosophical foundations for The ethical outlook she had in her books, uh You know, she had um She had served two Restricted a set of tools and so she started looking looking at these very strategic accounts of of of well-being very strategic accounts of Morality, I mean in a way it reminds me of John Stuart mill and John Stuart mill and you know, maybe it's sort of Universalist rather than individualist consequentialism in both cases, you know, mill has this sort of this very rich uh theory that combines aspects of Classical Greek conception of human nature and romantic self realization and classical liberal rights and so forth Then he wants to cram it all into this consequentialist Framework and it creaks and it groans and it's it's he's putting all this good stuff into this musty old bottle that he inherited from his father Right, right the example that I have used a couple of times and I haven't used it for a while And I don't remember actually the the details, but in the fountain head when rock blows up the Low-income housing thing courtland courtland house. Yeah, there is there's a line or two And I can't remember how it goes But where he assures himself That the watchman is not there Uh, therefore it won't be killed Right, uh, does that sound does that? Yes, could you remember? Uh, and again, uh So what's the motivation for that, right? You'd think the Motivation would be My god this I this is other human being with a life of his own right and It's it's not acceptable for me to take that life, right? Even if it's Sort of incidental to what I'm currently planning on doing It's not It's not Somehow my life will be worse if I take that life Well Am I saying it's worse because then I'll believe I've done something wrong But you need the independent explanation for why it's wrong and that always struck me and so there is So we build into rocks motivational set as they say, right things that the The moral theory as such can't explain so I yeah, so I'm more um As you can imagine, I don't think the the The fleshing out well-being in an appropriate Aristotelian way is gonna Enough get you to The sort of raw fact that other people can't right and uh, you studied with my back I studied with cherry or one so yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, this is right. This is exactly right so, I mean like the dugs, right also have in a way In a somewhat different way, but adopted this the uh Philosophical strategy that you well But then no, I was going to say but then they just met a normative framework stuff, which that's right. Well, that's what I was going to say They need they see that they need Yeah, they see that they need that also, right? That seems like it's the you know, again, that seems like a consequentialist thing it seems like it's The benefits of living in a society that yeah respect, right The benefits of living in this you know the strategic benefits of living in a society that respects, right? That can't be the reason why You know, I should You know, I shouldn't right order my neighbor in secret and take his stuff. That's right. That's right. No, I agree. I agree. Yep. Yep I agree. I agree. Uh Okay, so I know about me the basic point in the second book of the republic uh, is that you know, whatever your account of of uh Of justice is going to be it can't be Well, you do it because all of these You know, you'll you'll secure you know Cooperative responses from other people, uh, right, right? There's the ring of gaijes blows that to hell Right, right. And then there's all these interesting passage in in hayek where he uh He says Well, you'll secure cooperation if you abide by the if there's sufficiently general compliance with these norms But you won't have sufficiently general compliance with the norms unless people think that the norms themselves demand respect, right? So there's a sort of transcendental argument up to the norms. Uh, uh, I've actually written some stuff about this that I Not yet published. Yeah, but I mean seems like I mean, it doesn't seem like kind of thinks that there really is a A reason for those norms. It's just that it's just that you know, everything would better if we think there is it's kind of And I've often said he seems to be doing trying to do the rule utilitarianism what rule utilitarians do to act utilitarianism Uh, it's like a meta rule utilitarianism. There's still the same puzzle If you recognize that the only reason for it is ultimately this This action and it's not there why you're why you're motivated to still abide by the rules and cases where you can Yeah, yeah, I agree with the way and in hayek there are there's He takes the same stand on uh, believing that people are responsible Right, the reason we should believe that people are responsible is that it works out better for us if we believe that Not because it's true Uh, so it's uh So this is and this is old spot of his Vienna 1930s Upbringing. Yeah, I agree with that. Um, let's see So a lot of the work I have done is not just on those really deep questions but on Uh I some I say somewhere and I think this is true. Um, I If I've had a sort of program from my philosophical most of my philosophical writing it's to try to Identify the hardest problems for libertarian political philosophy and come up with solutions to those problems So, um I think uh one of the early versions of that is to come up with A much better version of a sort of locking and proviso And you see an either lock or knows it Um, I think another I I've also I think sort of devoted This is sort of an aside Maybe more time to detailed criticism of People who aren't Well, the people like hill, I'm sorry That type of left libertarianism the hill else line of type I think maybe I'm the most extensive critic of I was going to say within libertarian writers I think actually non libertarians haven't I've done much in the way of of critiquing that type of view Uh, and I think I've probably written the most Uh in sort of criticism of ga cone especially ga cones criticisms of libertarianism But I but also I think the other the other work that I was probably most pleased with And there are a couple of essays involved, but it's Breaking from the idea that lots of libertarians have Either held or they've been thought to hold That's the view that there is one fundamental natural right, which is the right natural right of self ownership And I've sort of argued that there's a sort of an array of natural rights Um That there's something deeper There's something more fundamental, which is like in one essay called the ur claim that uh one is to be allowed to one has a right to be allowed to Pursue one's own chosen ends in one's own chosen way not a right. I'm sorry. You have a claim to pursue your own chosen Goals in your own chosen ways There are Different ways in which that claim can be violated and like interfering with your bodily movements or destroying your personal faculties And The right of self ownership is the proper articulation of this more basic ur claim So as to achieve moral protection to express moral protection against that way of preventing people from living as I choose Uh, there's a right against deceptive manipulation because deceptive manipulation is another way of preventing people from living as they choose uh And there's a right of property, which is essentially the right to Make things your own and exercise discretionary control over what you've made your own And we have that right because preventing people from making things their own or preventing people from exercising discretionary control over what they've made their own It's another way of preventing people from uh Pursuing their chosen ends in their own chosen way So I try to give this account of why there's uh In a certain sense the most the heart the most abstract thing is this rur claim Less abstract Or the the specification of the rights which are plausible ways of articulating the rur claim and then even less abstract more than concrete than that is Uh The conventions that we have For what counts as a violation of these abstractly stated rights uh, and so and the idea is that uh In There are lots of different sets of conventions, which if we had them we would have concretizations of these basic rights Uh, there's no philosophical argument for why If you started from a blank slate you should choose one of these sets of conventions rather than the others There's a reason to drive on one side of the road rather than the other but it doesn't have to be the right side As opposed to that's right. That's what it's called reducing the law of nature There's general principles the law of nature that are independent of convention But then convention determines which particular instantiation of the one that we'll go with that's right. That's right And If we have in fact conventions that instantiate in that way Since we have to have conventions that instantiate So that people can actually know how they're supposed to behave and what they can expect of others Then uh, the Obligation to abide by the abstract right takes the form of the obligation to abide by the Existing and functioning convention. So Um That's something else that I I'm sort of pleased to be writing about and this obviously is a response to people like Murphy and Nagel Who hold that since everything is Everything is Since since the real work was done by conventions. There's no point in Trying to refer back to to abstract rights or the relationship between those rights and in the convention, so I Tried to write against that as well Do you have any thoughts of collecting some of these essays into a book because you might be more accessible than just so scattered across various journals Yes, yeah, yeah um Oh and by the way, uh, in case there's anybody out there who's a Publisher looking for a brilliant collection of essays I've uh, I've been actually I've put together about 14 of my essays and I've written And they're like they're grouped into four sections and in an anthology and I've written this wonderful set of reflections on these essays but Apparently publishers have become very reluctant to publish what they call single What their collections? And so far I have not been very successful at finding Means I've been totally At finding a publisher for these essays, but I'm still I'm still Well, we've got one buyer once it once it comes out Yes. Yeah. Yeah, no I Apparently the idea is by publishers that because you can so readily get through JSTOR or something particular already published essays Well, if you're you know, if you had if you're if you're in an institution and it happens to have subscription, right, you know the right Domain within JSTOR and so forth. I mean, uh, right lots of people who are sort of feel um You know educated interested people who don't have that kind of institutional access, right? Have it all in one In one place. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. This is the This is the argument I've been making to uh to publish it so far Plus the brilliant reflections on all of us that ties it all together in a terrific way Another issue I think is uh is actually the uh the sort of anarchist versus anarchist position and um I Probably when I was an anarchist, maybe every from after I was an anarchist. I uh, I've always argued that the uh, the sorts of arguments against well What the the greatest example, right of a super sophisticated argument against The libertarian anarchist position, right as the first part of nosyx book Uh, and I've always argued that that fails But um What I've really written about is not what I've really written about is What should our philosophical stance be If it turns out to be true that uh collective action problems Are going to be will always be severe or will likely always be severe uh for the funding of Uh public rights protecting public goods, right? Uh, so a good functioning police force if this if that's possible You know national defense type things, right? Uh, uh, and so I've not I my view is that I'm not I I am unable myself to know I can't evaluate You know the sort of complex games theoretical arguments that that people make for uh Um Either the possibility or the like That make for the view that There's a significant chance that The standard collective action problems could be overcome Uh, I can't evaluate those arguments And I can't evaluate the arguments that say that it's very likely they can't be overcome So as a philosopher I try to deal with Uh What could be said philosophically if um If it turns out that if we assume that the collective action problems can't be overcome Uh, and therefore we assume that, uh, um Rights protecting institutions themselves wouldn't be Uh sufficiently funded Unless people are required to make contributions um So again, that's a Uh type of hypothetical question, um And there I argue that Um If it turns out that, uh Um If you have a situation So to have a right, let's say to certain financial resources Is to have a right that it not be taken from you without your consent, right? Without your consent is crucial um so if Consent is not feasible for various reasons, namely You know freeriders strategies strategizing in various ways Uh, so that even though it would be advantageous to you to consent you don't consent because of Those sorts of complicated considerations Uh, then it might be true that um Those funds can be taken from you as long as you're duly compensated So, you know in the language of law type people, uh The right that you have to those funds Um, although ordinarily a property right which says that can't be taken Uh Is demoted to a liability right Uh Which allows them to be taken as long as you do the compensate and the compensation would be the protection that you get so, um And that this is a type of flipping of of nosics view Which is that rights start out as just the liability rule rights And then under certain circumstances, they should be treated as property rights as rights that are protected by property rules so my Hypothesis is that no rights start out as rule as rules protect as claims protected by property rights But there are special circumstances under which The only it's it's appropriate to treat them only as claims that are protected by liability rules. So that's one thing that i'm sort of thinking about and it may be the same thing Is that what allows one which allows one to Engage in what was sometimes called soft paternalism right to grab the person Before the person steps in front of the bus Uh ordinarily you can't grab people without their consent, but uh, it's not Feasible to require consent and you know, because in this case just not time right? Uh, and so What just what makes it okay permissible to grab the person is That under those circumstances their right Is not a right not to be touched but a right to be duly compensated for being touched And the due compensation is saving their lives So if they really wanted to kill themselves it turns out you would have failed to Compensate them and you would be guilty of the rights violation. So So that's paying them or do you compensate them by killing them Right, uh I think that so They're claimed that their rights have been violated because they haven't been able to be killed would be tested by Proposing that you killed them and see how they responded they go as well Then you know that you have to compensate them in that way for their rights violation Have to kill them Yes, well Yes, I guess I mean and of course We're imagining they they're not they now Obviously, they're the big problem a big big problem is people's Minds change in the course of the The story right if they if they continue to desperately want to die I guess You're Unable to kill themselves someone who's like paralyzed or neck down or something I just think it was prison who You know who steps in front of the bus and you pull Right and then and then you say, all right. Well, so I guess you wanted to step in front of the bus All right. Well, let me step in front of the next bus and they say No, you're the one who pulled me back from the bus. So you have to shove me in front of the next bus I could step in front of it. I'm perfectly capable of it. But you know, I demand push me um, yeah I doesn't I don't feel as though you're obligated to I think you read about that because uh Uh You should be having enough to push them Um The if they say And it's true That they needed uber ride back to the bus with the buses run And they have no money for the uber ride You have to pay give them the money for the uber ride Uh But what you what what you owe them is something like the least costly Uh Way of Enabling them to do what you've prevented them from doing right? Uh, and maybe uh, uh, in the case that you describe the least costly is Oh, no, you're free to step in front of the bus not You actually any of you probably in the right to the bus driver, so we would have to Change the example but Say again, they're violating the rights of the bus driver, right? You know interfering. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah Yeah, yeah, so you're right. I mean so yeah, we've been assuming that the bus is just sort of unautomatic You're jumping off a building, you know, you're usually causing littering and and possible endangerment. Yes. Yes. Oh, but Yes, jumping off a cliff in an unknown area jumping off. Yes jumping off a building that you own and Occupied sidewalk that you own Right. That's right. That's right. So in fact So if you're bringing in all those considerations, you have an argument for a non paternalistic argument For stopping the person from stepping in front of the bus namely he's about to damage the bus All right. Yeah, so Uh But don't tell anybody about this argument that we've just developed because it'll then be used To control people's lives even more thoroughly, right? So anyone listening to this video plug your ears during this part. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Uh Yeah, no, I was just thinking about the The helmets if you ride a motorcycle Sure. So there the argument is Your the helmet laws are protecting other people from bearing the course of your medical care Right. So once you do that, right just about anything can be prohibited on harm to others other grounds that would be You know Although, you know, if you're bill Gates, you can then you could you could drive without a right you could drive without a helmet because That's right. That's right. That's right. Yeah, you have to put up a bond before you drive without it So, um, there was a proposal at a certain point Uh, when people were worried about the imposition of costs by For instance hikers who get lost, right and then the medical the rescue people come out that One proposal was that you have to get a license to be allowed to go hiking But and maybe somehow the total fees of the license would come but another was that you would have to post a bond Which would cover the costs of your rescue and that if you didn't so all of these things right or or Angerously totalitarian So again, yeah cover up your views on that. Yeah So let's see, uh What else should I talk about? I remember saying sometime back that there was another story, but I'm not sure I remember the context I Could tell nosyx stories. Oh sure. I'm happy to hear a nosyx story. Yeah. Yeah Actually the best nosyx story I can't tell you because it'll come across as kind of making fun of somebody That doesn't deserve fun to be made of it'll come across that was so so I just So maybe I'll just tell the story when I would work when I would go to nosyx office Uh to Talk to him about political philosophy I would say At least half of the time I would be there. No, but I'd be there for maybe two or two and a half hours and some afternoon He would get a phone call And I just hear his side of the phone call, but it was clear he was getting a phone call from some new junior faculty member at offered who was a young hot shot in and now fill in Like a dozen different fields, you know physics mathematics game theory economics psychology Sociology And nosyx side of the conversation would be Oh, yes, you know the chairman of your department mentioned that You know you that he had suggested to you to call me And and of course I would be delighted for you to come to my office and for us to discuss your work And and I actually part of the story. I'm not telling is Reason to believe that that very often the um The sort of initial paper that one of these young hot shots would publish, uh, in of course any of these fields uh Would be a paper which, uh Before It was submitted by that person. He had gone to talk to nosyx about and nosyx had helped him write the paper and in one case I The story I'm not telling it was clear to me afterwards that that a paper that Was brought up in a conversation On in astrophysics Was one of these papers someone brought up for other reasons right to make a point And then nosyx said, oh, you know, yeah, I know about that paper. In fact, uh The problem in your discussion of that paper is that you missed the significance of footnote 32 That this was one of these papers that one of these young hot shots at harvard had gone to nosyx, right? So he was it was just apparently common practice at harvard for Any young person in any one of these fields? To be For the chairman of that person's department was to set up an arrangement for this young person to go talk to nosyx about that field Interesting. That's the yeah, because that's the the kind of sort of you Universal savant that we you know think died out. So if not, yeah renaissance, at least yeah by the end of the century. Yeah. Yeah. Actually, I'm remembering now that One time I was talking to him about what my wife did and he said something like I'd really like to talk to her some time about medieval notions of infinity So that could go that kind of that give us a composition that as far as I know that conversation did not take place. Yeah, yeah so, um Let's see, uh one could talk about optimism versus pessimism in the world we're now in but that would be Too much of a downer, wouldn't it? um I think that You know, I talked a little bit a while back about this notion of That under certain circumstances Rights take the form of Claims to compensation if the Right is intruded upon And I think that idea is probably Applicable in some strange rough way to things that have gone on in the world recently namely Uh Sort of on behalf of some segment of the population um, well No Probably what's true, right is that all the people who have been Locked out of work, right and locked out of the right to move Just straightforwardly have had their rights violated, right because the uh the sort of joint danger of them Continuing to work uh has been Exaggerated right, uh, you know the total negative effects of people continuing to move around and Getting infected Hasn't in any way justified The sort of systematic lockdowns But the incompetent to assess What yeah, no, no, so again, and this is a case where you know what philosophers can do is just talk about You know if it's this Yeah, right, right So one possible the other possibility is that uh There is a sufficient prospect of jointly produced ill effects on other people that On very unusual constraints Uh are permissible Um on certain segments of the population basically People have certain types of jobs um But that uh Those people have to be compensated by the people who are Being protected by those constraints and that uh Horribly might justify people who are being protected being taxed to make The circumstances of people who are suffering from the lockdowns less severe All right, so it's it might be a case of a bunch of people saying We don't have to bear the risk That will emerge if you people keep wondering around and doing crazy things like going to your jobs or moving around It's too much of a risk for us to bear So we're going to impose these lockdowns but Our justification that can't be Described as you're about to violate our rights Uh, so the appropriate course is the middle course We don't tolerate you doing that, but we compensate you for not tolerating it. Uh, so What's the issue in that case I should come out uh Well either way then because since I can work from home, um, yes You know the lockdown doesn't apply to me, but also I don't have to be out with other people either And so they're not endangering me. So, uh, I shouldn't be locked down, but I also shouldn't be taxed. That's that's my view Yeah, uh Because I'm not one of the ones that they would be Yes, endangering. Yes. Yes. I rarely emerge right Right, right. So Right. So if you if you can without much trouble uh Adjust your behavior or maybe you don't have to adjust it at all, right so that you're not In danger not in the danger that would be generated for other people Right Then you are not one of the people in whose name the lockdown is being done and Then The argument that I sketch for why you should have to require Why you should have to contribute to the compensation to those people would not go through. Yeah My university is very eager to have us all come back in person and yeah, but they They fell short of actually requiring it. Um, they they used Weasley language for a while, but then finally back back down saying oh no We're not requiring it so long as you can, you know You know so long as you can provide the uh, you know the relevant educational Read between you and your chair. So it doesn't require a higher administrative approval as long as you can agree your chair that Yeah, that's that's my impression of other schools as well, uh friends of mine who initially thought But they were being pressured in some ways to actually Meet their students face to face Well, I know some places where they really are requiring them to come Yeah, um, yeah in person Though that may you know that might if they do that they may suddenly If there's a spike they may suddenly you know have to switch gears Right, right master, right, right, right? Uh, yeah, I've spent too much time sort of reading Stuff that I really am not competent to understand about, uh, you know risk levels All this sort of stuff You're in uh, colorado, right? I'm in colorado and which is uh in this nice little town, which apparently despite There being something like 60 or 70 percent of the normal tourist level to the town which I'm surprised at Uh, and that's been going on for a couple of months now. There's still no spike Well, it's a little easier to do physical distancing, you know out in the Yes, yeah, yeah, and that's what people are doing. Yeah for me, uh The negative thing is that there are more people out on the trails and you do have this Little dance that you do when you cross people on the trail somebody has to kind of should step off of ways and You know, I I pull out a little mask. I have in my pocket and put in my face more as a signal to other people, right? This is one of those occasions where we have to and, uh It's a good kind of test of, uh How I don't know sort of morally alert Other people are and, um Some days it seems to me I'm feeling good about mankind because most of the people seem to be morally alert and other days, uh, I'm impressed with either how Just stupid people are Or uh, or maybe, you know, they they're just not willing to accommodate in these sorts of situations So you're an Auburn when I see I mean, uh, you know when I take a foray to campus I see a lot of people wearing masks, but just driving through Towns The outside cafes and so forth. Yeah, anyone's wearing masks at all crammed Yeah, yeah And you know, whether that's correlated with any Any change in Infection rate or anything like that um I think it's probably too early to say because we're just we're just getting we just finished up the summer Semester and just speaking the fall semester, which will be you know, those are the students have just started coming in um in large numbers and the Yeah, uh The town sort of transforms. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, what do you I mean there's this, you know, there's been The people I the the um sites I go to right, uh Which are probably mostly where Current crisis is being discussed Most of the people are economists the libertarian inclined economists And nobody is almost everybody seems to say There's a sort of crisis there's Risk we don't know what the level of risk is And the risk unfortunately is doesn't come from particular individuals, but from the agglomeration of the things that different people are doing and so at least Some significant level of coercion, which is normally impermissible Is permissible under the circumstances that's the general tone Of these sites that are very, you know Probably everybody writing on that site is thinks of themselves as libertarian, but but mostly economists who think of this so Do you think do you think that that's A horrible response Not necessarily. Um, yeah, I have a piece of written called on making small contributions to evil about uh, you know You know when you about people are doing things that aren't individually uh Harmful but can be harmful uh collectively And I argue for a couple of different claims sort of go in different directions. One is that um You know, I argue that you're often justified in making small contributions to evil because it's just so hard not to um, right But that you know, you have an obligation to sort of You know sort of a um A content imperfect obligation to you know to pick someone's not to do Um But you can't pick all of them. Um, but also in cases where the evil you're contributing to is a rights violation um And then even though what you're personally doing may not be uh, you know Morally forbidden it can be possible uh for um You know for people to exercise some kind of self-defense And we just exercise self-defense against a collective. The only way you can exercise self-defense against a collective is by laws that impinge on the On the individuals now, it's something that shouldn't You know shouldn't be done. You know lightly or too easily, but the i think in principles can it can be justified Right, right. So if we have We have somebody a a full-fledged typhoid mary right who's going to infect Anybody she comes in contact with Justifiable to restrict her movements If we have 10 people each of whom Is one tenth of it is a what there's a probability of right point one, right? Yes, uh, then Somehow maybe where I put it is we can we can We can engage in about one tenth as much restriction, right? We'd have to it might be more than that, right? It might be Yeah, I mean originally came up with this argument thinking about global warming, which again I have sure, you know I don't feel confident to to do to do to assess the actual scientific claims one way or the other but just thinking about you know assuming that um Assume that it's anthropogenic assuming it is Right. Yes. Um You know, so I remember seeing a talk by george ryseman of where he said uh, you people can only be Uh, you can only retaliate against individual responsible actions. You can't you can't You cannot defend yourself against the collective Um, and so if it turns out that the collective activity is actually going to cause all this Uh, all this disaster is nothing you can do Uh, legitimately and that seemed uh Uh wrong to me it is wrong to walter block too Uh, I usually think that there's someone who will Yeah gravitate to some position. I won't agree with but, um Uh, you know He also said no, I think that uh, you know, you can you can defend yourself against uh Uh Collactivity through some kind of Yeah, of course the legal means Yeah, yeah, and actually this now fits into what I was talking about before about, uh, uh Intrusions for which there's compensation, right? You may uh, your alternative May not be You lock up those 10 10% typhoid mary's each of them you lock up one tenth of the time Right, it might be that you restrict All the time you restrict the movements of those people But you compensate them in various ways, right? So you have to stay in your house But we'll pay for your cable tv and your internet will send nice food over to you every now and again Uh So it's You multiply the amount of coercion that you do The amount of coercion that you engage in Across those 10 people is more than you would be for the one typhoid mary, but you you're Compensating them. So maybe that's the way to handle those cases Oh, so that's interesting, uh Yeah, um It's uh It's uh I don't know now whether to think that Uh, the world that existed Eight months ago Is going to come back, uh in fairly short order once we have vaccines and so on or whether um The last gasp of a fairly free society is Already taking place. Uh, I saw a meme online of someone, uh eagerly watching the Oh, you know on uh, December 31st, 2020 They're usually eagerly watching the clock count down for the year to end 1158 1159 and then to their horror it says 1160 1161 December 31st, 2020. It is Ah There's no way out Yeah, yeah, yeah quite a year and of course not just the You know the uh the pandemic but all kinds of Wild stuff has been happening this year Yeah, yeah, yeah Uh, you know in history books unless unless 2021 is like even crazier Uh, but if it isn't in history books, they'll be they'll be you know People will write whole books just about the year 2020 Right, right 68 you said yeah 68. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah 68. I found much more entertaining 2020 uh You could go out in it Right, that's right. That's right. Yeah. Yeah, um Yeah, um What do you what is your view about? The vitality of sort of libertarian thought within academic philosophy These days I don't know. I'm always struck by How many graduate students are being supported by places like IHS And then how few of them I ever hear about five or ten years later Do you have that sort of experience? I'm I'm not as much in the loop as I As I used to be But I certainly know, um Uh, you know a lot of people who I know a lot of people who are you know coming up through George Mason So uh, uh economists not philosophers but a lot of them are very You know philosophically minded and I also I know some you know, some young libertarian philosophers who seem to be having uh promise and careers but uh, you know, I used to be more on the um You know, Mr. Moore on the uh, you know the think tank circuit to everyone from You know from uh IHS to the mesas institute and I'm not really Uh, I'm sort of I'm personally on grout at the mesas institute these days and then I think for you I just retrenched its uh a lot of its, um lecture programs, so I don't have as much contact with the rising, uh Generation between academics as I used to so I don't really know Yeah, yeah, yeah Is this a good time to Sign off. I think yeah, it actually partly just because that there are limits to the processing power of my uh, my internet hookup and so, um You know round between an hour and a half and and two hours is like the The limit if I want to upload these things that it takes forever. So this is yeah Is a good time to sign off Good, let's do I enjoyed this a lot Roger. Thanks for thanks for asking me Yeah, no, I've enjoyed it. I mean we could try to do it again sometime. I'm sure we could find something else to uh Talk about good. Um good Do you have plans for you have other people lined up? Um, well, I just interviewed uh, you know near a baudoir and I saw that one I saw I saw that it existed and Kevin Carson Kevin Carson one hasn't hasn't loaded up yet, but it um Uh It it uh, it'll go up a little bit before Uh yours and I've been lining up Other people, but I haven't uh, but you're the third person I've actually Uh interviewed but they're the best of all the people who have who have promised it Well, I hope that uh, the vaccine arrives Uh, and we'll stay back to getting together Around nice dining room tables Yeah, that's one of the one of the things I Uh, I definitely miss traveling to interesting, uh places. You know, I'm curious to know whether you know, whether Uh, you know, I'm scheduled for both the eastern and the pacific apa. I have the gravestouts Maybe apa happening. Wow, even the pacific apa. I I mean who knows Yeah, california is going to be locked down for five years. I heard Well the pacific apa is in is in uh, portland, uh, oh, oh, okay, that's nothing ever happened Little town of portland. No, that's right. That's right. Yeah. Wow. Wow. I just got um Notice that and I was sure this was going to happen that a Liberty fund thing that was scheduled for november is cancelled uh you know and I have a friend who has a Wedding sort of thing. Um, but they're already married, but they're having sort of a more public celebration of their of their wedding and It was supposed to be in the spring and then when they moved it to december and they thought well surely by december they live in california surely by december But uh, um, you know, I have my doubts about That coming off, uh, yeah Either who knows when I will yeah when that'll happen. So I certainly hope to get out there when it does Yeah, yeah, yeah It'll all come back Most of it will come back. It'll be good Couple of you couple of years of celebration I hope Good should I sign off? Yep. All right. So thanks a lot and thank you. Roger. It's been great. I really enjoyed it Let's bye. Bye. Please