 My topic is on democracy, de-civilization and the building of a counterculture. I'll start with some very systematic things and then it becomes a little bit easier. Because every action requires the employment of specific physical means, at least the body, standing room and some external objects. A conflict between different actors must always arise whenever two actors try to use the same physical means for the attainment of different purposes. The source of conflicts is always and invariably the same. Namely the scarcity or the rivalrousness of physical means. Two actors cannot at the same time use the same physical means, the same bodies, the same spaces and objects for alternative purposes. If they try to do this, they must clash. Therefore, in order to avoid conflict or resolve it if it occurs, an actionable principle and a criterion of justice or law is required. That is a principle that regulates the just, lawful or proper versus the unjust, unlawful or improper use and control or ownership of scarce physical means. Now logically what is required to avoid or conflicts is quite clear. It is only necessary that every good be always and at all times own privately. That is controlled exclusively by some specified individuals or individual partnerships or associations. And that it is always recognizable which good is owned by whom and which is not or by someone else. The plans and the purposes of various profit seeking actors or entrepreneurs can then be as different as they can be and yet no conflict will arise so long as their respective actions involve only and exclusively the use of their own private property. Yet how can this state of affairs, namely the complete and unambiguously clear privatization of all goods be practically accomplished? How can physical things become private property in the first place and how can conflicts be avoided from the beginning of mankind on? Now a single praxeological solution to this problem exists and it has been essentially known to mankind since its very beginnings even if it has only been slowly and gradually elaborated and logically reconstructed. To avoid conflict from the start it is necessary that private property be founded through acts of original appropriation. That is property must be established through acts instead of through mere words, decrees or declarations. Because only through actions which take place in time and in space can be an objective, intersubjectively ascertainable link be established between a particular person and a particular thing. And only the first appropriator of a previously unappropriated thing can acquire this thing as his property without conflict. Because by definition as the first appropriating, the first person who appropriates something cannot have run into conflict with anyone in appropriating the good in question because everyone else appeared on the scene only later. Now this importantly implies that while every person is the exclusive owner of his own physical body as a primary means of action, no person can ever be the owner of any other person's body. For we can use another person's body only indirectly. That is in using our directly appropriated and controlled own body first. Thus direct appropriation temporarily and logically precedes indirect appropriation. And accordingly any non-consensual use of another person's body is an unjust misappropriation of something that is already directly appropriated by someone else. All lawful and just property then goes back directly or indirectly through a chain of mutually beneficial and because of that also conflict free property title transfers to prior and ultimately to original appropriators and acts of appropriation. And Mutates Mutandis all claims to and uses made of things by a person who had neither appropriated or previously produced these things nor acquired them through a conflict free exchange from some previous owner are unjust and unlawful. Now let me emphasize that I consider these elementary insights argumentatively irrefutable and because of that also a priori true. If you want to live in peace with other people and you demonstrate that you wish to do so by engaging in argumentation with them then only one solution exists. You must have private or exclusive property in all things, scarce and suitable as means or goods in the pursuit of human ends. And private property in such things must be founded in acts of original appropriation namely the recognizable and bordering or enclosure of scarce resources or else in the voluntary transfer of such property from a prior to a later owner. We can say then that these rules express and explicate the natural law. Natural given the uniquely human goal of peaceful interaction and natural because these laws are given and merely discovered as such by men. That is, they are emphatically not laws that are made up, contrived or decreed. In fact all men made rather than discovered or found law that is all legislation is not law at all but the perversion of law namely orders, commands or prescriptions that do not lead to peace but to conflict and are because of that dysfunctional of the very purpose of laws. Now this does not mean that with the discovery of the principles of natural law all problems of social order are solved and all frictions are to disappear. Conflicts can and do occur even if everyone knew how to avoid them and in every case of conflict between two or more contending parties then the law must be applied and for this jurisprudence and judgment and adjudication in contrast to your addiction is required. There can be disputes about whether you or I have misapplied the principles in specific instances regarding particular means. There can be disagreements as to the true facts of the case who was where and when and who had taken possession of this or that at such and such times and places. And it can be tedious and time-consuming to establish and sort out these facts. Various prior later disputes must be investigated. Contracts may have to be scrutinized. Difficulties may arise in the application of the principles to underground resources to water and to air and especially also to flows of water and flows of air. Moreover there is always a question of fitting a punishment to a given crime that is of finding the appropriate measure of restitution or retribution that the victimizer owes to his victim and of then enforcing the verdicts of law. Difficult as these problems may occasionally be the guiding principles to be followed in searching for a solution are always clear and beyond dispute. In every case of conflict brought to trial in search of judgment the presumption is always in favor of the current owner of the resource in question and Mutates Mutandis the burden of proof to the contrary is always on the opponent of some current state of affairs and current possessions. The opponent must demonstrate that he contrary to prima facie evidence has a claim on some specific good that is older than the current owner's claim. If and only if an opponent can successfully demonstrate this must the questionable possession be restored as property to him. On the other hand if the opponent fails to make this case then not only does a possession remain as property with its current owner but the current owner in turn has acquired a lawful claim against his opponent because the current owner's body and time was misappropriated by the opponent during his failed and rejected argument. He could have done other in his view better things with his body time except defend himself against his opponent. And importantly also the procedure to be selected for dispensing judges along the lines that I just indicated is also clear and implied in the very goal of peaceful argumentative conflict resolution because both contenders in any property dispute let's say John and Jim make or maintain opposite truth claims. I John am the lawful owner of such and such a resource versus no I Jim am the lawful owner of this very same resource and because of that both John and Jim are interested partial or biased in favor of a particular outcome of the trial and because of this only some disinterested or neutral third party can be entrusted with a task of dispensing justice. This procedure does not guarantee that justice will always be done of course but it assures that the likelihood of unjust verdicts is minimized and errors of judgment most likely and easily be corrected. In short then for each and every property dispute between two or more contending parties it must hold. No party may ever sit in judgment and act as final judge in any dispute involving itself. Rather every appeal to justice must always be made to outsiders to impartial third party judges. Now we may call the social order that would emerge from the application of these principles and procedures and natural order. A system of natural justice, a private law society or also a constitution of liberty not to be confused with Hayek's. Interestingly although the prescriptions and requirements of a natural order appear intuitively plausible and reasonably undemanding on its constituent parts that is on us as individual actors. As a matter of fact however we inhabit a world that sharply deviates from such an order. To be sure there are still traces of natural law and justice to be found in civil life and in the handling of civil disputes. But natural law has become increasingly deformed, distorted, corrupted, swamped and submerged by ever higher mountains of legislative law. That is by rules and procedures that are at variance with natural law and justice. Now it is not too difficult to identify the root cause for this increasingly noticeable deviation of social reality from a natural order and to explain this transformation as a necessary consequence of one elementary as well as fundamental original error. This error you can call also the original sin if you will is the monopolization of the function of judgeship and adjudication. That is the original sin is to appoint one person or one agency but no one else to act as final judge in all conflicts including also conflicts involving itself. The institution of such a monopoly apparently fulfills the standard definition, the classic definition of a state as a territorial monopolist of ultimate decision making and of violence. The state and no one else is appointed and permitted to sit in judgment of its own actions and to violently enforce its own judgment. Now this involves in and of itself a two fold violation of natural law and justice. On the one hand because the state thereby prohibits anyone involved in a property dispute with the state from appealing for justice to any potential outside third party judge. And on the other hand because the state excludes everyone else except itself from proffering his adjudication services in such conflicts. Moreover from the original error predictable consequences follow. As a universal rule each and every monopoly shielded from competition leads to higher prices and lower quality of the product or service in question than would have been the case otherwise. In the special case of a judicial monopoly and the particular service of adjudication this means on the one hand that the quality of law and justice will fall and natural law will successfully replaced by monopolist made legislation. That is by perversions of law because predictably the monopolist will use his position as ultimate decision maker not only to resolve conflict between contending property owners but increasingly also to initiate or provoke conflicts with private property owners in order to then decide such conflicts in his own favor. That is to expropriate the just property of others to his own advantage on the basis of his own made up laws. And on the other hand the price to be paid for justice will rise. In fact the price of justice will not simply be a higher price that justice seekers may or may not be willing to pay as would be the case for all other monopolies that justice seekers must pay whether they agree to it or not. That is private property owners involved in property disputes with the state will not only be expropriated via legislation but they must also pay the state for this service of expropriating them thus adding insult to injury. In effect with the establishment of a judicial monopoly all private property becomes essentially fear property that is state granted private property. Private property is only provisionally private and left under private control. That is only until some state made law or regulation does not decree otherwise. Thus creating an environment of permanent legal uncertainty and causing an increase in the social rate of time preference. Now let me term the process that is set in motion with the institution of a state namely the progressive deviation from a natural order and system of justice and the increasing erosion of all private property rights and the corresponding growth of the legislative and regulatory powers of the state that causes the process of de-civilization. While steady in its direction the process of de-civilization that is begun with the establishment of a state may proceed at different speeds at different times or places sometimes more slowly and sometimes at a faster pace. However another additional error can be identified that will result in an acceleration of the process of de-civilization. This second error is the transformation of the state into a democratic state. This transformation does not involve any change in the status of the state as a judicial monopolist yet it involves a significant two fold change. Entry into the state and the position of ultimate judge is open for every adult inhabitant of a given territory and the function as final judge is exercised only temporarily for some short fixed period by the winner of regularly recurring secret and anonymous one man one vote elections. Now predictably this change will lead to a systematic acceleration of the process of de-civilization. On the one hand as Helmut Scherk above all has amply demonstrated the feeling of envy is one of the most widespread and powerful of de-civilizing motivational forces. All major high religions have therefore condemned the desire for the property of one's neighbors as sinful. In a natural order or a system of natural law and justice people too some more and some less are tempted of course to expropriate the property of others to their own advantage but in a natural order quite in accordance with religious prescriptions such temptations are considered to be immoral illegitimate and even sinful. Everyone is expected to suppress such desires. With a state in place some initially just a few people are permitted to give in to such immoral desires for an indeterminate period and use legislation and taxation as means to satisfy their own desire for the property of others. Only with democracy however that is the free and unrestricted entry into the state are all moral restraints and inhibitions against the taking of others lawful property removed. Everyone is now free to indulge in such temptations and propose and promote every conceivable measure of legislation and taxation to gain advantages at other people's expense. That is whereas in a natural order everyone is expected to spend his time exclusively on production or consumption under democratic conditions increasingly more time is spent instead on politics. That is on the advocacy and promotion of activities that are neither productive nor consumptive but exploitative and parasitic of and on the property of others. Indeed even the opponents of such a development must waste their time increasingly on unproductive endeavours that is on politics if only to defend themselves and their property or take precautionary actions against such incursions. In fact under democratic conditions a new class of people emerges namely politicians whose profession it is to propose and promote law decrees and taxes designed to expropriate the property of some to the advantage of others mostly of course to themselves. Moreover owing to regularly recurring elections the politicization of society never comes to an end but is constantly reignited and continued. Legal uncertainty or lawlessness is thus heightened and social time preferences will rise still further thus increasingly shortening the time horizon taking into consideration in one's action plans. And in the process of political competition that is in the competition for the position of ultimate decision maker such politicians and political parties will rise to the top who have the least moral scruples and the best skills as demagogues that is of proposing and propagating the most popular assortment of immoral and unlawful demands from a near unlimited supply of such demands on offer in public opinion. On the other hand as the other side of the same coin democracy will lead to increasing corruption. With open entry into the state the resistance against state rule is reduced and the size of the state will grow. The number of state employees and administrators will increase and because their income and livelihood is dependent on the continuation of state power to legislate and to tax they will not necessarily but most likely become reliable and loyal supporters of the state. In particular the class of intellectuals that is the producers of words, the wordsmiths in contrast to the producers of things namely the manufacturers will thus be bought off and corrupted because there is little and highly fluctuating market demand for words rather than things. Intellectuals because of that are always desperate for any help they can get to stay afloat and the state in permanent need for ideological support for its relentless onslaught against natural law and justice is only too willing to offer such help and employs them as public educators in exchange for the appropriate propaganda. Yet it is not only state employees that are so corrupted tax revenue and the state's range of control over other non-monetary assets and holdings will far exceed what is necessary to employ and equip its own workers. The state can also disperse income and assistance to various members of civil society. The loyalty of the poor and downtrodden for instance can be assured through so-called welfare programs and the rich and the captains of industry and indirectly of course also their employees can be corrupted through government privileges, contracts, interest-bearing government bonds and so forth. And the same policy can be used also for the purpose of dividing the members of civil society so as to more easily control and increasingly factionalized or atomized population, the policy of DVD at Impera. Now while the principal direction of social evolution can be safely predicted based on a few elementary assumptions about the nature of men, the state of democracy in particular, all details concerning the process of de-civilization remain of course uncertain and unclear. And to be more specific, one must look at history. In particular, one must look at the last 100 years. The history since World War I in 1918 when modern democracy came into its own displacing the former monarchical system. Now while this history confirms the general prediction the actual results are truly horrendous surpassing even the worst fears. As far as moral degeneration and corruption is concerned and taking only the US as a dominant example and model of a democratic state into consideration a few indicators shall suffice as an illustration. In the US, a code of federal regulations that is a document listing all government rules and regulations did not exist at the beginning of the period that I'm looking at from 1918 on until 1937. By 1960 however, the code of federal regulations had reached 22,877 pages and by 2012 this code had swollen to a total of 174,545 pages subdivided into 50 titles regulating in minutest detail everything imaginable from agriculture and aeronautics to transportation, wildlife and fisheries. Whereas natural law is comprised of only three principles namely self-ownership, original appropriation and contractual property transfer from a prior to a later owner then. Today after 100 years of democracy no aspect of production and consumption is left free and under regulated. As well at the beginning of the period considered here, no more than a handful of federal crimes existed concerning methods such as treason or the bribery of federal officials while all normal crimes were defined and prosecuted by the individual states. By 1980 however, the number of federal crimes had already grown to about 3,000 and by 2007 it had reached 4,450 criminalizing not just ever more non-tortuous actions and victimless crimes but increasingly also motives, thoughts and speech. As a second indicator for the degree of corruption it is revealing to contrast the total population number with a number of state dependents. Presently, and these are rough figures, presently the total population of the United States is about 320 million or about 260 million if we subtract the number of people below age 18 and ineligible to vote. By contrast, the number of people wholly or mostly dependent for their livelihood on state funding includes the following. The number of state employees, all levels of government considered, is about 22 million. 46 million people receive food stamps in the United States. 66 million people are social security recipients. 8 million people receive unemployment insurance. Federal government spending alone for profit firms amounts to some 500 billion dollars which accounts according to an estimate by Charles Murray for about 22% of the American workforce and that is roughly 36 million. And lastly, non-profit organizations and NGOs which have an annual revenue of about 2 trillion and employ almost 12 million employees receive about a third of their funding from government accounting for about another 3 million dependents. All of this brings us to a total of state dependents of about 181 million people. That is only 79 million people or about one third of the adult U.S. population of 260 million, a third of them, can be said to be financially, wholly, or largely independent of the state. Whereas close to 70% of the U.S. adult population or 57% of the total population are to be counted as state dependents. Finally, as a third indicator of moral degeneration and corruption, a look at the top of the democratic state system is instructive, namely at the politicians and political parties who run and direct the democratic show. In this regard, whether we look at the U.S. or any of its satellite states in Europe and all around the globe, the picture is equally unambiguous and clear and equally bleak. If measured by the standards of natural law and justice, all politicians of all parties and virtually without any exception are guilty whether directly or indirectly of murder, homicide, trespass, invasion, expropriation, theft, fraud, and the fencing of stolen goods on a massive and ongoing scale. Every new generation of politicians and parties appears to be worse and piles even more atrocities and perversions on top of the already existing mountain, such that one feels almost nostalgic about the past. They should all be hung, robbed in jail, or be forced and busy making compensation. Instead, they parade around in public and bright daylight and proclaim themselves pompously, pretentiously, arrogantly, and self-righteously as saintly do-gooders, as good Samaritans, selfless public servants, benefactors, and saviors of mankind and human civilization. Assisted by a higher intelligentsia, they tell the public in endless loops and variations that, as in Alice's Wonderland, nothing is what it seems. A quote from that book. When I use a word, Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone, it means just what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less. The question is, said Alice, whether you can make words mean so many different things. The question is, said Humpty Dumpty, which is to be master? That's all. And it is politicians who are the masters who stipulate that aggression, invasion, murder, and war are actually self-defense, whereas self-defense is aggression, invasion, murder, and war. Freedom is coercion, and coercion is freedom. Saving and investment are consumption, and consumption is saving and investment. Money is paper, and paper is money. Taxes are voluntary payments, and voluntarily paid prices are exploitative taxes. Contracts are no contracts, and no contracts are contracts. Expropriation is restitution, and restitution is expropriation. Indeed, what we can see here or otherwise since does not exist, and that which we cannot see here or otherwise since does. The normal is anormal, and the anormal is normal. Black is white, and white is black. Male is female, and female is male. Worse, the overwhelming majority of the public far exceeding even the number of state dependents falls for this nonsense. Politicians are not despised and ridiculed, but held in high esteem, applauded, admired, and even glorified by the masses. In their presence, and in particular in the presence of top people, most people show themselves awestruck, submissive, and servile. Indeed, even those opposing or denouncing one particular politician or party do so almost always only to propose or hail yet another different, but equally absurd and confused politician or party. And the intelligentsia, which finds its own verbal mumbo-jumbo echoed in the blabberings of this or that politician or political party, virtually drools over them. And on the other hand, the number of those who still hold onto the principles of natural law and justice as a basis of all moral judgment, and who assess the contemporary world accordingly as some sort of absurdist that is as an insane asylum run by crazed megalomaniacs makes up no more today than a minuscule minority of the population. Smaller in size even than the infamous 1% of the super-rich of leftist fame, but with little overlap with this 1%. And Tenia still is a minority of those who recognize also however vaguely the systematic cause of this outcome. And all of these, the few sane people left within the asylum. These people are then under constant threat by the guardians and wardens of this absurdist town called democracy and are branded as neanderthals, reactionaries, extremist, pre-enlightment, dum-dums, sociopaths, or even scum. Which brings me to the property and freedom society. Because the property and freedom society purposefully assembles and wants to attract precisely such neanderthals, such social outcasts, people who can see through the Schmierentheater, I think the English word is flipid, going on before their eyes, who have had it with all blathering politicians and mass media darlings, and who have consequently just one wish, namely to exit that is to opt out of the legal system imposed on them by the democratic state. But wherever these neanderthals happen to reside, they find themselves in the same predicament. The exit is barricaded or entirely barred. The session from the state's territory is not permitted. One might emigrate from one country to another and thus leave one state jurisdiction A for another state jurisdiction B. But once the movable property remains thereby subject to the jurisdiction of A, and especially also in the case of sale, and likewise remains the transfer of all movable property subject to A's jurisdiction, that is no one anywhere can exit with his property left intact, whether in staying or by moving elsewhere. And not only is the session prohibited and considered treasonous by politicians, but it is viewed as illegitimate as shirking one's duties also by the overwhelming bulk of the educated or rather brainwashed public. Thus matters appear almost hopeless for Neanderthals. The property and freedom society cannot offer a way out of this predicament, of course. Its gatherings too must take place on the ground and are as such subject to state law and jurisdiction. It cannot even be taken for granted that meetings such as ours will be always and everywhere permitted to take place. The property and freedom society meetings can offer no more than a brief escape and reprieve from our real life as inmates of an insane asylum. If not on the ground, then at least in the virtual reality of ideas, thought, and argument. But of course these meetings have a real purpose. They want to accomplish a change of course. At the very minimum they want to prevent the Neanderthal culture, that is the culture of natural law, order, and justice from going entirely extinct. That is they want to help to sustain and provide intellectual nourishment for this increasingly rare species of people and culture. More ambitiously however the PFS wants to help their culture regain strength in public opinion by putting them on display and showcasing them as a uniquely attractive and fascinating species and counterculture. To achieve this goal the PFS seemingly paradoxically engages in a policy of strict discrimination that is of exclusion and inclusion. On the one hand the PFS systematically excludes and discriminates against all representatives and promoters of the present dominant democratic state culture against all professional politicians state judges prosecutors, jailers, killers tax collectors and bankers all warmongers and all advocates of socialism legal positivism moral relativism and egalitarianism whether of outcome or of opportunity. And on the other hand positively the PFS seeks out and admits only people who have adopted for themselves Thomas Jefferson's dictum that there is not a truth which I fear or wish unknown to the whole world. Who accordingly know of no intellectual taboo and of no political correctness and who are committed instead to uncompromising intellectual radicalism willing to follow the dictates of reason wherever they may lead. More specifically the PFS seeks out and admits only people dedicated to the recognition of justly acquired private property and property rights freedom of contract freedom of association and disassociation free trade and peace. Following this strict policy of discrimination the PFS after ten years of its existence has established itself I believe as a veritable monopoly in the world of intellectual societies. A society made up of exceptional individuals of all ages intellectual and professional backgrounds and nations free and unpolluted by all status and everything status unrivaled in the interdisciplinary threats and depths of its radicalism joined in beautiful surroundings and united in a spirit of conviviality and comradeship. A society also of course as we would expect smear despised and even hated yet secretly envied by all the usual suspects but fortunately hailed by those who have had the wisdom and the fortune to experience it. Unlike other normal monopolies however it is not my goal to preserve and maintain the PFS monopoly position quite to the contrary by setting an example in producing an all around appealing and indeed beautiful product a privately produced public good if you will it is my hope that the PFS current monopoly position will only be a temporary one and its example will serve an inspiration to others and more and more similar associations and meetings will spring up and put the mainstream democratic state culture increasingly on the defensive and open it up to the public ridicule that it is so well deserved. There are some positive sides to this institute in the United States put on some road show on weekends Rahim in Vienna attempts something like like this something similar Andre Lichtschlag of Eigentümmlich Frei imitates what I do to a certain extent now. However I'm afraid it is not easy to match this that this is not an easy task and that the PFS is to maintain its unique status for quite a while. Personally I'm planning to continue this project as long as my and even more important as long as Gulshan's strengths holds up. Even more importantly as long as you keep coming and effectively supporting the intellectual enterprise and product that is the PFS Thank you very much.