 All right, we'd like to get started. My name is John Northrup. I'm moderating the ethics panel discussion today, titled Mapping the Ethical Mind Field. Our panelists in the order in which they will be speaking, answering the first question, are Scott Olmsted, right here, David Friedman, and David Bose. I'll introduce each of them one at a time. Scott Olmsted is a member of the Central Committee of the Libertarian Party Radical Caucus. He was a member of the 1981 National Platform Committee, and he is currently completing his PhD at Stanford University in Engineering and Economic Systems. David Friedman is at the Economics Department at UCLA. He's currently visiting the Tulane Business School. He is the author of Machinery of Freedom and Guide to Radical Capitalism, which he tells me is now available from Waze Fair Books. I guess it's been out of print for a while, and it's currently available there. And he will be speaking tomorrow at the convention on what does a libertarian economist do? I can't wait to hear. And then David Bose is Vice President of the Cato Institute in Washington, D.C. He was Research Director of the Clark for President campaign, and he was Director of the Clark for Governor campaign. So those are our three panelists. We were to have Kent Guida also with us today, but he has been called to a national committee meeting, which has unfortunately been scheduled for the same time as this panel. If he, I understand if he can get a break from that meeting and come down and join us for a while, he will. So for the time being anyway, there will only be three panelists. The way this is going to work is that I will pose an opening question and give each panelist say four to five minutes to answer the question. And then I will give each panelist an opportunity for rebuttal. And then after the round of rebuttal is completed, we will begin to take questions from the floor. In the absence of there being any questions from the floor, I have a few of my own. And I would ask that when you do ask questions, you keep them as brief as possible so that the answers can be as long as possible. After all, that's why we're here. And then finally, we will end the rounds with a round of summations from each one of the panelists. The first question that I would like to, well, the purpose of this panel is to discuss the ethics of various proposed strategies for transition from whatever kind of society we may call the one in which we now live to what we might call a libertarian society. I have solicited questions in advance from these panelists and I will be taking questions from the audience as well. But first it would I believe be useful for us to get a flavor for the fundamental biases that each panelist brings to this discussion. So to that end, I will open the discussion with the following question. Can there be a conflict between strategies which are effective and strategies which are that is effective or practical and strategies which are ethical or principled? In other words, can an ineffective strategy be principled? Can an unethical strategy be justified in terms of its effectiveness? Or is it always true that if a strategy is unethical, then it is not practical and therefore there is no conflict? Didn't understand the question. That's my fault. Our first speaker is Scott Olmstead. Well, one of the things he told you is not correct. I did not get to submit any of these questions in advance. And in fact, I was very recently coerced into being up here. So, given about 10 minutes to think about this, these are my opening comments. To me, the real question here is one of ethics versus efficacy. This is the way I first was introduced to libertarian ideas. Having been an econ major studying economics, my first inclination was always to think about the efficacy or efficiency aspects of all sorts of things. And when someone finally pointed out to me that what ethics is about is about constraints by which you might first rule out certain actions. And then you might take the allowable set and think about the effectiveness of those in pursuing whatever goal it is you have in mind. That was a bombshell to me. I never thought about things that way. So, when we think about, if we come up with an example of this, for example, might be lying, an individual might decide that his or her ethics rule out lying. Now, that doesn't mean that you might not possibly think all the time when possibilities come up for achieving some goal of using of lying to help accomplish that. And this comes up all the time. I had to help try to bring someone to a surprise party recently. Just try to do that without lying to someone, get them to a party, okay? So, I think it's easy to construct a conflict between the ethics and the efficacy of certain actions. Now, the LP's goal, the goal of Libertarian Party is a little more complicated. It has an interesting twist to it and that is that we are trying to bring other people to our ethical point of view, okay? So, we're looking back on our own ethics and when we consider the efficacy of doing that. Now, I could imagine that if no one, if we could be sure that no one would find out that the National Committee could effectively send out a team to rob a bank and use that to finance the LP. But, of course, what is the point of that? You violated the Libertarian Ethic itself and what's worse is I can't imagine any sort of strategy that included any significant amount of such violation of ethics ever being kept quiet enough to where the public wouldn't think we were being hypocritical. So, to put forth my bias, I guess, in this regard, again, in general, I think it's possible to construct conflicts between ethics and efficacy. At least where you're trying to convert people to your ethics, I don't think there really is a conflict. You're going to have to stick with it if you're going to be effective in bringing that about. I think that there unfortunately can be conflicts between what is effective and what is ethical. Putting it differently, it may be that the way which is most likely to achieve my objectives involves doing things that I am not morally entitled to do, such as stealing from you, so that I think in principle that conflict does exist in the real world. The only sense in which I disagree with the question, as it were stated, is that it has the phrase justified in terms of its efficacy. That is the question, can an unethical strategy be justified in terms of its effectiveness? It can't be justified in terms of its effectiveness. If it's unethical, it's unethical. If something is immoral, that means you shouldn't do it, but it nonetheless may be the case that you will be morally obliged to give up the most effective strategy because it is a morally forbidden thing for you to do because it involves violating people's rights. So I certainly do think that such conflicts can exist. Obviously, one tries to reconcile them, one tries to figure out morally legitimate ways of achieving what one wants to achieve, and one may engage in very detailed and Jesuitical arguments in doing so, but there ultimately is that conflict. Now, one thing I would like to say to those people who believe that there is some a priori reason why there can't be a conflict, and obviously there are libertarian moral philosophers who think that they, as it were, have a proof that you can't have a conflict between what works and what is desirable, that people who believe this always use this belief to say, I've proved it's moral, therefore it must be practical. And they don't seem to see that the argument cuts both ways. If I prove that it's impractical, it must be immoral, all right, that all you've really demonstrated, if you, the moral philosopher, can prove that something is moral, say, and I, the economist, can prove it's impractical, and if practical and moral are always the same, then one of us has made a mistake, but you don't know which one. You still have to refute whichever proof you believe is wrong. Now, I would like to sort of say, as a closing comment related to this, that there are two different issues I think this panel may have to deal with, having to do with the transition to a libertarian society. One of them is, as it were, the sort of tactical issue for the libertarian party or for me as a speaker of how we persuade people, how we end up getting elected or getting other people elected with our views. The other is the question, even if you were in a position of power, what would the appropriate things to do be to move from where we are now to where we want to be? And those are interrelated, but they're not the identical question, so that the place where I most clearly see a possible conflict between ethics and practicality is not in the problem of a libertarian party coming to power. I think I've got a sort of strategy for what the party ought to do that is both moral and effective, but assuming we get our ideas implemented, it seems to me quite likely that in the short run, we cannot defend North America from other hostile states without permitting things that we as libertarians object to, such as funding our defense with stolen money. And that I think is a very serious sort of practical moral problem, but when we have more time, that will come back. I want to start by defining a term here, maybe a little more narrowly or maybe just more specifically in what's been done so far, I think. In my discussion of whether a strategy can be ethical and effective at the same time or whether there are times when it can't be, as far as I'm concerned, the libertarian party and the libertarian movement stand for the principle that you should not initiate aggression against innocent people. We don't stand for, as a movement, as a philosophy, all the other principles that I think as an individual I should live up to. So, my definition of unethical or unprincipled in the context of libertarian movement is does it violate rights? Something that violates rights is unprincipled, it's unethical, and it shouldn't be done. Generally, I would say, following that, once you decide whether an action or a strategy violates rights, that's the extent of, as a movement, the ethical question. If it doesn't violate rights, then it becomes a strategic issue. Does it help us move toward liberty? I generally think, lying to the public about what you want to do, being racist, whatever other unethical thing somebody might do that wouldn't technically violate rights, I think that would be ineffective in moving us toward liberty. But it's not the same thing as being a rights violation. Okay, given that, I think there are some unethical actions, that is actions that violate rights that probably would help us move toward a free society. I can think of some of those, and you shouldn't do them because they're wrong, because they violate rights. And even if it appears to put a severe crimp in your plans at some point, in terms of moving closer to a free society, you would be wrong to do it. However, I don't think that's true of strategies. As was said here a minute ago, if you had a strategy based on robbing banks or killing people who stood in your way, or anything like that, that's clearly not going to help us move toward a free society, because people will realize that we are being hypocritical, and because you're not gonna have libertarians in a movement that does that sort of thing. So I do think they're individual actions, and I can't say that I've actually run into them, but I can conceive of them, where I think rights violations might help. Basically, I think we ought to remember the point that I'm making is that the question is, does a strategy violate rights? After that, once you say it doesn't violate rights, the question becomes, does it help us move toward a free society? And there, I believe, we are only at the very beginning of devoting enough strategic thought to what libertarians need to do to move toward a free society. So I would urge us to focus a lot of attention in the next few months or years on moving beyond shouting allegations of principle and unethical at each other, when what we're really talking about is I don't like the way something is done, and start discussing, does it help to achieve liberty? Before we go on to other questions, I'll give each panelist an opportunity, which he may or may not take, to address any other items that the other panelists have brought up, beginning with Scott. Is there anything you wanna say? Yes. Okay. Totally, with regard to David's comment, some people would argue that fraud counts the same way force does, and if so, then lying about your views in order to get votes might argue the violent and very business. Do I get to rebut the rebuttal, or only the previous statements? You have a lot of time. Okay, I have no specific rebuttal of the earlier statements. I would just say in response to that, I don't think what I say to somebody else in order to convince him of my position, or even to get votes, is a contract, and therefore I don't think it's fraud. If I tell you I like your new hairstyle, even though I'm lying, that may or may not be a wrong thing to do, I don't think it's fraud, and I think the same thing is true in regard to votes. I see it's sort of like lying to the state, which I do think is permissible. Okay. I'll entertain some questions from the floor. Yes, or you had your hand up first. This is something that you brought to David. I have to proceed as I just referred to your statement. Personally, I don't personally regard, and I don't know what most objective is, with regard to rights as an ethnic primary, and regard them as a wide concept, regarding the basis of ethics of being rational self-interest, which a lot of people don't seem to discuss anymore. So my question would be more different than to ask you about rights. My question is this. If your ethics is based upon rational self-interest, and consider it to be the proper basis for ethics, that would be the proper basis for ethics. How can something be practical in a world? It's first part of the question. Second part of the question, I do regard rights as a proper basis for legal code for society. And if that's the proper, then I'm gonna say second part, first part of the question. The answer is that if your ethical code really consists simply in that behavior that maximizes your rational self-interest, then there can be no conflict between what's ethical and practical, but that doesn't apply if on the way from rational self-interest to ethics, you introduce a whole lot of double talk about man-quam-man and this and that, and why life both situations are special. Then all I'm saying is, if you take literally the idea that ethics are simply rational self-interest, then there is no conflict. But my impression, at least a lot of objectivists have argued with, and this may not apply to all of them, or to the correct objectivist position, is that they end up with an ethical position which somehow in the distant past came out of rational self-interest, but is by no means identical to do in what is in your rational self-interest. And at that point, there is then a possible conflict. But either of the panelists- And of course I am not an objectivist and I don't believe that ethics come out of rational self-interest. You wanna comment? Yeah. I guess my comment would be not never having been an objectivist, my view of sort of where the idea of ethics came from is that there is a conflict between sort of short run and long run interest and the short run it may be to my interest to steal from my neighbors or whatever and the long run, however, it would generally be in my interest to have rules against such things. And so I don't know what I'm adding much to what David said. I just must admit that my thinking on where this ethics comes from has still not solidified. I still have not heard a really good answer to tell me exactly where I should regard rights that's coming from. Okay. Yes, sir. Tom, do you see the three panelists' comment on, for example, the first campaign policy that folks with the last presidential list and what ways they were impactful and what ways they were effective in any way on that point? We'll begin with you, rotate the order. I'm not sure I remember enough of the policy proposals, but let me take the one which I looked at fairly carefully, which was the White Paper on Expenditure. And that was one where I would have said that my view at least is that for Clark to advocate this is both practical and morally legitimate. If he were president, however, you then run into a fairly serious problem. And that is that presumably on his principles, he has to pardon all tax resistors since they are acting morally. If all tax resistors are pardoned, the take from taxes is going to drop rather catastrophically and he will then not have the revenue to fund the even the drastically reduced expenditures he wants. So that would give you an example, not of a conflict between moral and practical in the campaign. I should say my, I have a way of avoiding this very difficult problem. And that is that I don't intend to ever have a libertarian president since my strategy for the libertarian party, as I've said before, is to imitate the successful strategy of the American Socialist Party. That is to win essentially by getting enough votes so it pays the other parties to steal some of our ideas. And then our votes go down and so we introduce more and more radical ideas. And after a while, we convince more people of those. So our vote total goes up a bit and then the parties steal those ideas. So it essentially my view would be that if we ever consistently get more than 10% of the vote we've done something wrong. And that therefore we're not gonna have the problem. And of course those immoral Republican and Democratic presidents will have no scruples about collecting the taxes for the reduced level of expenditure we forced them to come out in favor of and so forth. But that's only a sort of an ad hoc solution. That's a solution that keeps the problem from arising. But the question of what do you do if you somehow get elected president? It seems to me that they're very serious. Oh, probably. Are the American socials happy with what they got from that strategy? I am certainly very unhappy with what they got with the Southern Democrats. But they certainly got a large part of their platform. I think that's unfortunate. If the part white papers were impractical, my experience was that it's because they were still perceived as free bumpers by a lot of the rest of the world despite some criticism of the military that they weren't radical enough. But sticking to the definition that I gave earlier, question of whether they did or did not present a radical enough proposal is not a question of libertarian ethics. It's a question of strategy. Any other sort of white paper, whether it's called for the abolition of taxation, a 10% income tax cut, a property tax cut or whatever, the question is which of those will help us move closer to a free society? And there are trade-offs involved. You offer a more radical perspective. You'll get some people more religious. You offer a more moderate position. You can get more people to say, gee, the little carry is wrong, something I should read more about. And I think you have to make sort of trade-off there. So I think they were as ethical and as practical as put things together in that situation. It's a little off the subject, but my perspective on the American Socialist Party analogy is that I don't think American Socialist Parties are happy with what they got. And I think I would be equally unhappy as a solid libertarian with what we would get in following this strategy. Ultimately, while I think they will do some of the things, I think some of the parties, the major parties will accept some of our ideas and they can implement them, although we found a great leak a lot of our members didn't implement very many of the ideas. Even if they did, ultimately there are a lot of niche ends of state control over people and I don't think the other parties will just narrowvote. And that's why, difficult as those problems will be to face someday, I think the challenge for us is to be willing to face the problem of how you implement these things. I guess my main complaint about the Clark campaign was, what he sort of, what Clark said was really his idea was to campaign on a smorgasbord of issues. And try to get, put together a constituency, each of which was paying attention to its own issue that the libertarian party was saying the right thing to them about. And seems to me like there's a large number of people out there who are still waiting to hear the overall message and to see things tied together. I disagree with David Friedman that if we ever get more than 10% or doing something wrong, I think that if we manage to get more than 10% and we manage to stay radical and principled and not in a fritter way our basic platform, then we're doing something right because we're getting across the message that the other parties are not to be trusted, okay? That's key. I think I'll let it go with that. David Friedman's asked for something. Yeah, I just wanted two very brief comments. One of them on that, the reason I don't want us to get more than 10% of the vote is if we start getting more than 10% of the vote, we're gonna stop being principled because people will find that being powerful in the Libertarian Party is a way of getting income, power, prestige, and so forth and those professionals will beat us amateurs. So my argument is essentially an argument about the internal dynamic of the party that as long as it's reasonably small, it's gonna be dominated by ideological forces which will keep it on the straight and narrow path and when it's large it'll turn into another Republican party. I'm respectfully disagreeing. These are the socialist party. The reason the socialists don't like what they got isn't that they didn't get what they want. It's that they didn't like it once they got it because socialism doesn't work. They wanted universal public education but they didn't like what the public schools turned into. They wouldn't have liked it if they had put it in by winning the election either. Okay, other questions from the floor? Yes. In regard to what you said before, I'm here. You mentioned we should stop yelling at each other saying that we're immoral if it's sort of a primacy of are we advancing for us whether it's, excuse me, literally. I like to go beyond that. I like to go beyond that. I'm actually starting by- You're supposed to get caught. I like to go beyond that. One of the things that has been a concern of mine in watching the movement grow over the last 10 years is the abysmal way we're treated each other in general. And in a free society, along the way we've forgotten to treat each other as easy-to-do deeds. And I see that happening too much in the movement today. And so I'd also just briefly to my question for comment, Rosalie Nichols, a sometimes activist in the movement and author, was once quoted as saying that every rights violation is an injustice. But not every injustice is a rights violation. Definitely we as libertarians are concerned with those injustices which are rights violations. But I think that perhaps one of the problems we've had in advancing ourselves as a movement is a parent lack of concern with injustice which is not specifically related to rights. So I invite comments from all of you. I think one of the problems is that we sometimes use words that do have two different meanings, like injustice. I mean, I would sort of prefer as a libertarian in your convention to discuss political philosophy to say that justice basically is the implementation of a system that respects rights. But I'm not saying that there aren't other things that are colloquially injustices. And I guess you're saying that libertarians while libertarians also show a concern for those other things. I think to some extent that confuses the message and it gives us a, it tells some people who are not doing anything or they don't care that there's something wrong with them. And I would find that that would put some people off. Basically, however, again, I think it's a strategic question. Would it be better to be a party that puts a lot of emphasis in going out and helping the poor individually? It's better if it's in a case generally of injustice done by the government. And we're against that. But all of you to show our concern by taking the baskets of food and helping the poor find jobs and things like that. I think it's a strategic question. Is that a good use of resources for libertarians? It's a good thing for people to do. Is it a good use of libertarian resources? And I guess I'm implying toward the position that our limited resources ought to be booked for specifically advancing our ideas and being organized, being on balance and do all the things that we think advance liberty. And then we ought to have a general image of being concerned about injustice in a broad sense. But we shouldn't be tying specific problems to libertarians. For those of you who don't know, the woman who asked the question is June Jenness who I owe a great debt to. I learned a great deal from at Stanford working with her at Stanford libertarians and other projects. She asks a really good question about how we, how do we talk to each other about our differences? And now I'm associated with a group that often gets maybe justifiably so called Dirty Names because of the way it treats the differences among us. My personal role has been to try to make this a contest where everyone punches a, you know, doesn't punch below the belt, keeps their gloves on, whatever. I was the one who created the Brickbats and Boutains Column in Libertarian Vanguard. I wanted to weigh a language which we could say to people, you know, we still love you but we think you're wrong on this, okay, and then you can talk about it. And it's interesting, it's interesting I was told, I wasn't there, I was told at the platform, that at the platform meeting in Texas in May or June whenever it was, that this was used in the debate, okay. People would put forth an argument on this plank, whatever and so on, they'd also say no, I give you a Brickbat for that. You know, I think it's this, okay, this is a way that we can talk to each other about our differences. And maybe it's been successful, maybe it's not. I'd love to get your comments on such a thing. Extraordinary as it may seem, I believe I agree with both of the previous speakers. I'm not in the habit of agreeing with anybody. But I think I would summarize David's comment from my standpoint as saying that I'm an economist and as an economist of course I believe in the principle of division of labor. And that in terms of the division of labor, the function of the libertarian party is not to spread general morality, light, food for the poor and so forth, but to spread libertarianism. At the same time, I also believe that as individuals there are certain ways we should behave. And although I do not believe that I can deduce ethics from rational self-interest, I nonetheless believe there is a very large overlap between the two. And that on the one hand, I think I ought to be a reasonably honest, kind, gentle person. And on the other hand, I also believe that if the libertarian party is made up of reasonably honest, kind, gentle people, it will probably work better and be more effective than if it isn't. So that in that sense, I agree with what Scott said, I think that we ought as individuals to try to behave decently and that that will help achieve our goals. A plug for my personal hero in this department who's George Orwell, that I think a lot of what is important in making a political movement work is being willing to be honest about where the holes are in your own argument, honest about where your side may be wrong or was proved wrong last week or maybe you still think it's right but not as right as you thought it was and so forth. And I think that we could use a great deal more of that. One of the things that struck me in the Middle Eastern panel was the tendency of people who want to be in favor of Israel to then simply sort of blank out the anti-Israeli half of the evidence and people who want to be in favor of the Palestinians to blank out the anti-Palestinian half that sort of you had one person saying in effect all of the Palestinians who left Israel at the time of the 48 war did so because they were driven out by Israeli terrorists. And on the other hand, you have the other person saying in effect all of them left because the Arab state said get out of the way so we can invade and kill all the Jews. Both events happened and it seems to me eminently plausible that some people left for one reason, some for another, some for both and some for neither and yet there's a strong tendency not to be willing to admit that because it makes it so hard to have a tidy, pure argument. From time to time, as they request, I will give the panelists an opportunity to ask other panelists questions and Scott Olmsted has. This seems to me to one that's right in the middle of the ethical minefield. And that's thinking about proposals to change the way taxes are collected or the tax rates or whatever. And it's particularly relevant perhaps in the flat tax question. That is, if you have a proposal to change the tax structure somehow and it raises one person's tax, at least one person's tax, the overall tax they pay to the government, is it immoral, is it unethical, should libertarians oppose it? I don't have a good answer so I'd like to hear the other panelists. Let me give you, it suddenly struck me that there's an interesting and non-obvious analogy. It is arguable that if I put a good lock on my door, the result will be to increase the number of crimes against other people because the burglar will come to my house and they'll say I can't break in there, I'll go to the next house down. And yet it seems to me hard to say that on those grounds, it's immoral to put a lock on my door. So that my initial instinct, without thinking about it a great deal, I thought about the question, should we advocate changes? But if you put it into, anybody's tax goes up and my initial instinct is that in some sense, if I'm not entitled to collect the taxes, I'm not entitled to force you to pay a tax. But if by voting for politician A instead of politician B, I can get what I regard as a generally less oppressive tax system, oppressing me less and oppressing most other people less, seems to me legitimate to do so, even though unfortunately one consequence is that there are gonna be a few people who are gonna end up getting oppressed more. And it seems to me that's close to analogous to the lock on my door, although it's a somewhat complicated analogy, it's not exactly identical. I think flat rate tax is a difficult question and it does bring up some good questions about what sorts of policy proposals that's appropriate for libertarians today. It's one thing to say that it's clearly sensible to propose a tax cut that doesn't abolish taxes but cuts taxes. The flat rate tax probably would make some people's taxes go up and other people's go down and a lot of it depends on where you set the rate, what you mean by a flat tax in Washington, what they frequently mean by a flat tax is not lower rates or anything but broadening the tax base, everything you currently get that isn't subject to taxation would be brought in. Their perspective is certainly not that taxes are gonna end up being lowered. On the other hand, from an economic standpoint, it certainly would be a tremendous boon for the economy to have marginal rates no more than 19%. Even if the overall tax rate wasn't changed, if the overall burden of government on society and some proposals might even be less than 19%, I am inclined as a libertarian to say it would be wrong to implement a proposal that would raise one person's taxes and lower everyone else's but I'm not comfortable with that conclusion. If I were president and a bill that didn't pass and my signature would determine whether this bill became law and it would raise one person's taxes and lower everyone else's, would I really refuse to sign that law? Would I really veto that? Would I put myself in the position of making 220 million people pay more taxes and one person not pay more? I'm not comfortable with coming to the conclusion that I wouldn't do that but I can't say at this point that I would endorse a plan that would increase somebody's taxes. I have the answer for you, David. You sign it and then you pardon the person who's taxes went up. That's a very good idea. I would probably do that despite having been reported in fram recently as having said that a libertarian administration would cut down tax evaders. I think I probably wouldn't and I think that would be a good proposal. I think, however, it's a little off the point. I mean, you don't always get the opportunity to do that so it doesn't really change. I think the strategic element you sign yourself in. Yes, sir? One of the things that Clark campaign is to buy some television time at greatly reduced rates because of the government law that requires them to offer this time is this clearly taking some property rights away from the television stations who sold the time at less than its commercial value. On the other hand, it's the most effective means of communication that the party has. Was it medical? Was it effective? And what will we do in 84? We don't do that. Okay. Well, I don't think it's really a problem in 84, frankly. But if we had this opportunity, it's a difficult question, I agree. And you have to know a lot about the way the FCC works in order to answer it properly. You have to determine what would have happened in a free market and how close we are to a free market and what we can do in a system where we're not in a free market. Clark also drove on government roads at greatly reduced rates from what they would have been had there been a free market in roads. I clearly don't think there's anything wrong with that. Clark used the nonprofit postage rate at presumably lower rates than a free market would have, although that one, I don't think it's clear at all. Might there well be lower rates, but lower than anybody else could get. So we were taking advantage of something there. On the other hand, there were services we paid more for because there's government intervention. Maybe not airlines in this campaign, but certainly in previous campaigns, our candidates paid more to fly on airplanes because the government regulated the airlines. I would say when the networks announced reluctantly, but they do announce, this time is available, in effect what you had there was that the networks made a deal with the FCC. You keep the other networks out of business and politicians get cheap air time. Now that's not a good deal, but if they're gonna offer it to Democrats and Republicans, I think they have to offer us the same deal just like the post office. And so I think that we should have bought all the time we could get $25,000 to reach 20 million Americans at one time. It's clearly the best use of money you can get. And I think given the situation we found ourselves in, it was not unethical to accept the same terms that the networks offered other parties. Well, I guess when I think about this one, I also think about, I try to keep in mind at the same time the question of, would we accept the government subsidies to the presidential candidates or races or whatever it is, were we to be able to qualify for them? And it seems to me that so far libertarians have been almost unanimous in rejecting those. And then the question is, does this subsidy or does this cheaper air time fall in the same category? I'm inclined to first ask the question, what will happen if we say no? Okay, will the other parties get it? And if that's, it was my understanding, I think that that was the case, that there was a fixed amount of time and you were allocated so much, but if you didn't use it, some of the others got it. I could be wrong on that. So it seems to me that in that case, I'm inclined to say it's okay to take it for the same reason as driving on government roads. Now, why doesn't that argument apply to the direct subsidy of money from the government? Well, maybe it does. If I sound wishy-washy on this, it's because this is really in the middle of this minefield. I would think that the first thing we'd wanna do, if we ever did, I'm not saying we should, but if we ever did decide to take the government subsidies is find some way to first offer it back to taxpayers. I'm not advocating that we do that, but it might be a hell of a way to make a statement if we ever decided to go in that direction. I guess I'll leave it at that. My gut reaction is that it was unethical. I'm not sure that's right. I believe about three quarters of David's arguments are wrong, but I'm not sure about the other quarter. In particular, it seems to me talking about, well, our candidate paid more for this and less for that is a little bit like saying that because someone else stole $50 from me, I'm entitled to steal $30 from you. That seems to me it's quite irrelevant. Similarly, with regard to the post office, I don't think that's relevant. I think there is a legitimate question of along the lines when he says there's been a deal made by the radio station for the FCC, and I think that the distinction Scott is making is close to the distinction I'm inclined to make. It seems to me if I take an action which results in the government using force to take money from you and give it to me, that there is a pretty clear case that I have aggressed against you. If I know the government is taking a whole lot of money from people and I take action to make sure that I get some of it, then it seems to me that I haven't aggressed against you. In a sense, that's driving on the public road. It's getting the benefit of some of the money the government's gonna steal anyway. And when I say my gut reaction is that we shouldn't have, my gut reaction is that what was happening was asking the government to force an essentially private firm to sell something below its market value. And if that's what was happening, it seems to me we shouldn't. And I don't think it's enough to say, well, the networks are handing glove with the FCC because although there's some truth to that, nonetheless, if anybody wants to run a television station at the moment, they have got to be handing glove with the FCC. Otherwise they put him in jail so that it's a little bit unfair to say, we can steal from you because you're dealing with the government. I'm reminded of Manny's line in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. Do business with the authority. Do business with the law of gravity too. Yes, Jim. What's the meaning of the freedom of government? What there being of course is that the money that is won is what I know behind the tax payers. I know that libertarians have frequently talked about the freedom of government for what freedom of the nation has. We're interested, but it's not rated or the other people in the government can pay those bills. So I'd love for you to think about that. This is not just an academic question since the bookstore run by the San Francisco party and the radical caucus was broken into and broken up by the San Francisco police a couple of years ago. And the party there brought a suit against the city of San Francisco with the ACLU. Basically, I really can't tell you much details about the suit itself, but it looks like probably we're gonna collect some money in an out of court settlement sort of thing to keep it from, so it won't go to trial. Our prospects for actually taking it to trial and winning would be a lot better except that the pretext which they used for busting up the bookstore, that there was drug sales in the bookstore, they did find some people with drugs in the bookstore. That's a fact, so it makes our side look really bad. Whether it happened the way they said it did is another question entirely. It gives the people who might receive that money. It's not gonna be very much, I understand. A real dilemma, okay? Do we offer it back to the taxpayers somehow first? Pro rat of share, come and get your two cents or what do we do? Again, I don't have a real good answer for this. I would like to see some way first of offering it back to taxpayers somehow before we decided to keep the rest of it or to say that any taxpayer who didn't come and collect his pro rat of share is authorizing it for use against the state in some fashion. A related question is, what's come up in California? I heard talk of a possible initiative last year some time of something called a just compensation initiative, okay? The idea being that government whenever it did any one financial harm, decrease the value of their property due to rent control or just confiscated outright or whatever would have to pay roughly a market value for this. Okay, now on the face of it, the libertarian might say well, gee, that's gonna be more taxes for more people to pay for these things that the government is seizing or controlling. But I'm inclined to favor such an initiative simply because it will tie the hand of government much tighter than it's currently tied. Now they can seize things or control them without any feedback at all, any controlling mechanism at all. Whereas if they had this, especially in the light of Prop 13 and the tight budgets in California, there would be just no way that they would be able to control nearly the amount of property that they do. Maybe some of the panelists would like to comment on that issue as well. I think my inclination is to say that if I sue the government and vote against all tax increases, I am at least doing the best I can to make sure that the money that gets paid to me comes out of expenditure, not out of income. Now, it's a little bit tricky. I suppose if it were really my professional opinion that the effect of suing was mainly to make taxes go up, I would be reluctant to do it. But in a sense, after all, you could argue that when you shoot the guy who's trying to rob your house and he then gets away, that imposes high medical bills on him so he's gotta get a little bit more active in his business and rob three more houses. As a rezoning, it doesn't need to be a sufficient reason against injuring him. So I guess, again, my gut reaction is yes, you can sue the government and yes, you can get money from government in any way you plausibly can, as long as in the process, you do your best to avoid encouraging higher taxes. So that's my policy in the past. At the moment, I'm at a private university. But my policy at various points in the past when I was at a public university was to refuse to sign the petitions that circulated to the legislature telling that they ought to have more taxes to give the state university more money, to tell anybody who I asked, but I thought they had to have less taxes and give the state university less money, but nonetheless to collect my salary. And that seems to me as equivalent, is equivalent to being willing to sue them. I have seen you feeling more people who get ripped ass over accepting past payments from the government or supporting a law that would give payments to people, but perhaps I'm wrong. The real question it seems to me we have to ask in response to the question and this deals with the question of whether we would accept subsidies if we ever got 5% of the vote after an election, is how does the government get its money and how much does it get? Does government get all it needs? The legislators get together and they add up and they say, well, we need this much for social security and this much for education and we gotta pay this much for that suit. And we took three people's rights away and so we have to pay that and then they send us a bill. I don't think so. I think public choice and class analysis and all those sorts of things are generally correct when they lead us to the conclusion that the government takes all it can get and then it allocates it. And so if you have a government job that simply means that some other economist is not getting that salary. I don't think it means the taxpayers of California are paying more. It may even mean that some OSHA agent isn't getting the salary and some balancing act. At the same time, should we take the government subsidies? Well, I'd be inclined against it and there are good strategic reasons not to take it, but on the other hand, if the government, I also understand just as an aside from election lawyers that there is no way to take the money and give it back to the taxpayers in any sort of way, that would be buying votes with government money which supposedly is illegal. Oh. Oh. Oh. In any case, if the choice is we take it and we use it to advance the libertarian party or we don't take it and you come to the conclusion that the government is going to spend all it can steal, then by taking it, maybe we prevent them from building another MX missile or opening another OSHA regional office. And would I not take it if I thought that was the impact of our decision? I think in that case, we might want to think about it. It's not a clear case, there are strategic reasons not to do it and certainly the TV value of burning the check on the steps of the capital has something going for it. But if it's going back into a treasury that's gonna be used to do things most of which are worse than giving us money, I'm not sure it's clear. Just a brief comment, I agree with David that basically on the theory that government takes all it can get and then allocates it. I think that supports a just compensation measure simply because it would mean that they're gonna have to allocate some of that to paying off the people whom their property, their tanking. And so not only would less property be taken but someone might be compensated for what is taken. I just wanted to say first, I think it very unlikely that either a model in which there is a fixed amount they can take independent of everything else and they take all they can or a model in the other direction can be correct. That my current area of professional research is the question of what determines how much money governments spend and I'll talk more about that in my talk tomorrow. Building on both of those points, I would say what government can take obviously is a subjective factor. And so my inclination would be to say a just compensation measure would be the sort of thing that would be used to justify publicly why we need an increased taxes. It's the same thing with if you get on food stamps or something, are you just taking money that would have gone to somebody else? Maybe so in the static model but in a dynamic model they're gonna go into Congress and say there were 400,000 more applications for food stamps last month. So to the extent you contribute to that you influence public opinion in the direction of letting them steal more. So you have to weigh those considerations in your model. Okay, in the back, yes sir. Comments on a study. I wonder if we can with the comment of the transition proposals for social security which might, at least as I understand it, certain proposals involve temporary increases in payroll taxes, do you see this in the short run? What do they think that's that? The question is transitional proposals towards ending social security which involve temporary payroll taxes increases or whether those proposals are ethical? I think it most unlikely that any such proposal would be prudential, would be desirable since I would say the clearest sort of casual empirical observation about taxes is that once they go up they don't go down. So therefore I would be opposed to that. If you're asking is there any conceivable case in which some transition which involved increasing some tax would be desirable? I suppose the answer is yes but I think it quite unlikely as a practical matter that anything which simply increased one tax and didn't lower some other tax would be a good idea. I'm not aware of any current proposal that would have as part of it increasing payroll taxes. The Ferrara proposal which the Clark campaign supported could be used that way. Clearly it's not what Ferrara and Clark and the Cato Institute and other libertarians who have supported it have in mind. What we have in mind is that actually in terms of specific payroll taxes it abolishes payroll taxes the first day it's implemented unless you do it on a phase scale but it will lower them. But what it would do is shift some spending to general revenues. Now the way we present the program is then you cut other spending in order to do this. Milton Friedman has always or at least has said in the past I certainly wanna be very careful. I'm sure there's a better expert on his thinking here. But my understanding is he has said in the past opening social security up to general revenues would be a great way to squeeze off every other government program. Social security would just eat up all the general revenues. Strategically there's something to be said for that. To the extent that we come up with a proposal that has the potential to be used that way I think the likelihood is that they're not going to get significant increases in general revenue taxes or payroll taxes on this basis. It would squeeze out something else. Our candidate is you bring the troops home from NATO and that'll fund your transition program to end social security. But there are certainly other proposals that are viable. I would think it would be a bad idea both from an ethical and a practical standpoint to increase payroll taxes. Just as a general point to apply my opening statement what is the most radical social security reform proposal? Is it cut everyone off today? As I've heard some of the variants suggest. Is it cut off all of everyone who has collected more than they put in? Which is to say basically anybody over 68 or 69 because it didn't take long to collect at this point what you put in. Is it the Ferrara plan? Is it something else? To my mind given that we don't increase taxes in implementing any of these plans but the question is how fast we phased them out. The question is which program would get rid of social security the fastest. And I'm willing to have my mind changed but my impression is that the Ferrara plan is the most likely alternative to get social security abolished and therefore it's the most radical social security reform plan. Not sure I would equate how radical something is with how likely it is to accomplish it in a short run. But to speak to the Danny's question about I certainly would oppose anything that had a temporary payroll tax increase in it. I oppose transferring social security to general fund to any sort of funding from general revenue. I think it's the moral case I think maybe can be made against it. To me the income tax is by far the most objectionable tax since it means you gotta lay your whole life before the government and they come after you with guns and take your car or whatever. And I think the ultimate result of transferring to that would be some sort of increase in income taxes. I also like to see people see the individual taxes for the things that they're paying for and that line on their paycheck that says ooh there went another bite to this program which is going broke every five years or so is a good thing, it's a good feedback mechanism to have to rally people against that particular system. I would not like to take that away. I'm not sure what prevailing ethics we necessarily have in the United States. There are a lot of elements of individualism in the United States general ethic. Most people are pretty inconsistent about a lot of things. At least when they talk about what they think when they act on their own behalf they seem to be able to understand their own needs and desires fairly well. I think we can challenge the control that the state exercises over people more directly than that and challenging altruism specifically does not seem like a good idea and I'm not opposed to it as philosophers doing that and that sort of thing but it seems to me altruism is not ultimately the enemy. Mostly the enemy is people not being sufficiently supportive of individual rights and that has to be challenged but I don't think people generally make exceptions to individual rights on the basis of altruism. I also think you have to challenge very directly the concept that any of these altruistic government programs ever have the effect that's brought about and I think that would be a lot more effective in changing people's minds about them. To say we ought not to use government to help the poor I think will be less effective than to say government doesn't help the poor and if we can demonstrate that I think we'll be more effective. I basically agree. I rather than challenging altruism I would like to see us harness it. Seems like that what we ought to challenge is the notion that government equals altruism. A question that my advisor at Stanford the first one to introduce me to libertarianism always puts to people is what is real help to the disadvantaged? Is it a government program of whatever type? And I'm in favor of making people think about that question real hard and I think we can do that. Both of the previous speakers I think just endorse the position I have been arguing for for the past 15 years. I should say I am not at all sure we can get a libertarian society in any way. I hope we can but I'm not sure we can. But I think if we can I suspect we can do it with more or less the same incoherent mix of moral views the population now has. The existing mechanism of government may not be a good libertarian position. Tax in some way fairer at least for a while legitimizes it. Tends to make it harder to evade for those willing to put in the work to evade it. I'd like to hear some comment on this. In the general case of making government organizer is that an idea? I'm not sure whether you're asking the question which is sometimes raised of what might be called or before is as the worst the better theory. The idea that what we really want to do is really make really see government make a real mess of things and we can come charging in as the white knights. So when government really makes, when government imposes price controls that's good for our cause because now people are gonna learn how bad price controls are I think. I was very early, I was initially sort of an advocate of that, that appealed to me but I guess I've hopefully rationally tossed that off. I don't subscribe to the worst of better theories anymore. I think what we have to really look at is real gains for liberty rather than potential because they might be gains in these awful situations that government creates. I want to go for the real as opposed to the fantasizing about the possibilities. Maybe you're asking about I mean are governments for better government or libertarians for better government? I mean I see, I even see bumper stickers occasionally. I'm for good government or whatever it says and of course that's not what libertarians are for at all. Is that the kind of thing you're discussing? I thought that. I think that's the fact that they talk about parts because do we get to talk? I thought that's what you're going to do. Certainly we should take every advantage to predict the mess that governments are gonna make of everything and that has powerful, can have powerful results when you can say, we've been saying this all along, look at the record, we've been right about this all along but as for hoping for that to happen, well, I guess I'm not for that. We're not only for better government, we're for the best government. On the worst is better argument, the reply that I made to that a long time ago was that you can see that this principle works that if you make government bad enough you get a free society by looking at the libertarian anarchist societies which now exist where Hitler and Stalin once ruled. But I should say though that there certainly are some specific cases where making government say if you have a change which makes government no less oppressive but somewhat less noticeable that probably is an undesirable change. So that for example, I would be in favor of repealing the withholding tax on the grounds that the withholding tax doesn't make government substantially cheaper or more efficient but it does make it somewhat less obtrusive and therefore makes people less aware of what they're paying. So there certainly are a few cases where you should make it a little bit worse so you'll get some friction. But as a general rule, my inclination is that you wanted to do as little damage as possible. I hope the others think that there are specific cases for instance, I remember back in 79 in the discussion bringing out that SLS was starting to try to build a libertarian student movement. If they had brought back the draft it probably would have been easier to build opposition in general on campuses. Now whether we would have then been in a position to create more libertarians on campus is a question that was basically up to us to answer. But in the short run like that it would have. Still I don't think we should hope for that sort of thing. I think we should be prepared to take advantage of it if it happens. There is a slightly different question though and that deals with making government more efficient privatization and that sort of thing. And I think in many cases those are not good ideas. We don't wanna make government more efficient. We don't want OSHA to learn how to be more productive. We don't want the Drug Enforcement Administration to get more work out of its employees. And to the extent that somebody can suggest to government a new computer system that would make it more efficient, that sort of thing. I think that's a bad idea. I think that's different from a tax. Yes, if we could cut taxes in half like the Clark campaign proposed. Say we'd gotten elected, say we implemented that. Well that probably would have taken the steam out of the tax rebuilds for a while. But everybody would have had half their tax money back. So I don't think you can oppose that even though you recognize some drawbacks. I just wanted to comment on the question of making government more efficient. I think there it's very much a question of which thing government is doing. Some of the things that government is doing are things that should be done although not by government. So if you make government post office more efficient it seems to me that's an unambiguous benefit even though it may slightly slow down of all of the government post office. If you make the government drug enforcement more efficient that's an unambiguous loss because they're doing a undesirable thing. Unless of course they just cut the number of people they hire proportionally and then you save some money. It's about a Sunday night that liberty was always in the circumscribed for the good of the whole society. Now I'm confused because I always thought the libertarians was the liberty and altruism is not equal to liberty as far as I'm concerned. I would say that altruism neither is liberty nor is inconsistent with liberty that it's a second value which might or may not be consistent. I would not say that altruism is the masses versus the individual. I would say that altruism would be saying that other people are an important value for me. And if I am extremely altruistic I might say that other people are even more important for me than I am. If I am mildly altruistic I would say well I'm more important for me but nonetheless the other people are pretty valuable too. And so if at a small cost to me I can produce a large benefit for you I will do so. That's what I would say that the word altruism means it comes from the Latin word for other. But I would say it seems to me since I believe the libertarian society would be best for pretty nearly everybody that if I were quite an extreme altruist and the main thing I wanted was to make everybody else in the world happy I would be a libertarian because a libertarian society would make people in general happier. If I am a selfish individualist if I'm a selfish individualist similarly since I then wanna make myself happy and I'm one of the people who will be made happier by a libertarian society I'm still in favor of a libertarian society. So that if the only question is how large a weight in my objectives as other people's welfare have I don't think that much affects whether or not I'm an altruist. I'm sorry whether or not I'm a libertarian. Contradiction between altruism and liberty or libertarianism take the case of a woman who decides to enter a convent and spend the rest of her life working to help other people whether it is educating children ministering to the poor in Africa or whatever. She is not doing anything unlibertarian. She probably gets a positive benefit out of knowing that she is helping other people's lives to be better but she is certainly an altruist and yet she's not doing anything unlibertarian. Dorothy Day I think would certainly be considered an altruist, a woman who set up soup kitchens yet she was a Catholic anarchist. She hated the government. She wanted to abolish the government but she spent her entire life working for virtually no wages helping other people. As far as that goes, why are you all here? Surely you all had something better to do. You spend a lot of money to come here. Most of you spend a lot of money year in and year out and a lot of time going to meetings that are generally not very interesting in my experience. I spend full time working for liberty. Is that because I think in the end I'll be better off? Frankly, although I'm optimistic that we can achieve freedom in my lifetime, I doubt I'll be all that young to be able to enjoy it. I know I could be making more money right now doing something else, have more time for travel and all of those sorts of things. Is that a form of altruism? I'm doing it because I think it's right. It's just what they do to people in this society. What governments do to people is wrong and that makes me mad and I want to stop it and it's not just because of what they do to me. I tend to be a pretty middle-class person. I don't want to use drugs. I don't want to do a lot of the things. I never get hassled by the cops. Just probably a flaw in my own makeup. I would like to spend all of my own money but on the other hand I could go get another job, make more money and have just as much take home pay as I would if I got all of this money without the taxes being taken out of it. I guess that's a form of altruism. I hate what the government does to people and I want to stop it for all of them. Just to keep this brief, I think that the whole issue here is over the definition of the word altruism. I think you really hit what's really the problem. It's not altruism but the idea that liberty must be circumscribed somehow for the good of the whole and that's, as we know, simply a mistaken idea and that's what we've got to kind of go after. Anything else that I might say would just be agreeing with the other speakers and we've done that too much as it is. That's right. I'd like to see hands for questions that are likely to cause arguments. The proposal to limit the rates out of privately held corporations out of yet a government franchise one, is it ethical to support that and rate limitations out of private corporations? This is a private monopoly, government franchise monopoly. I don't think a private monopoly for an essential service is a private company and I think that, I'm not saying libertarians ought to go out and be in the forefront of the effort to limit its rates but I don't think it's a private company. It's barely more private than the post office. I mean, technically that's the U.S. Postal Service and although it gets some money from government it's not a government agency. I don't think a franchise monopoly is very different and so I don't see anything basically unlibertarian about opposing its rate increases. You should argue for deregulation. You should use that opportunity to bring up the issue and say if there was competition we'd be able to get better service and probably lower rates. But I don't think, I would say that's not something I'd pick as an issue to go out and lead the campaign to stop the phone company's horrendous new rate increases but I don't think you're talking about really regulating a private company in the sense we know it. I guess I agree with, I think it's Milton Friedman who says better a private monopoly than a government monopoly. Though I would be hard pressed to enumerate all his reasons I liked it at the time when I read it. If I had to vote in such a case if I were a state legislator I guess I would vote against the price ceiling and I would try to use the occasion as an opportunity to bring up the whole issue of should there be a monopoly altogether. I guess I'd really like to think about it more. I hope I wouldn't be placed in that position. I think I agree with both people that my initial reaction is that if such an issue comes up you should say what we are in favor of is abolishing the protection against competition. That's what we want, that will take care of the problem of prices. I should say in my father's defense I believe what he said was he preferred a private monopoly in the sense of a natural monopoly. That is a single firm with no law against other firms coming in to a government monopoly. I don't think that the question involved a private monopoly in the sense of a franchise where it's illegal for other firms to come in. But in any case I'd say my inclination is that you shouldn't have libertarians campaigning for price ceilings because that could see people confused. You should have libertarians campaigning for abolishing monopoly privileges. Okay I think we'll take one more question and then I'll ask the panelists after they've answered that question to summarize and then we'll be finished. Yes. Possible rules or no laws or no heavy hand of the state would come down for a libertarian official raising money from libertarians or from whoever to avoid taking the government money. Then I'd say we should take that route. We should try to provide the money on the side. Let them turn back the salary or give it back to taxpayers or something. Unfortunately, boy in the real world that would be buying a politician and the government is not gonna stand for that. So if it means that all we can have running for candidates, the only candidates we can have running for office and winning are those who are in millionaires and can support themselves without working. Well that's... There's ones anyway. That's so sure. Then I'd say better to have an elected libertarian who's doing the right things, taking the salary and doing the job there in Washington or whatever, which by the way I think is not just voting on the issues the right way, it's using that as a platform to talk to the masses about the broader issues. Then I'd say go ahead and take the salary. One of the other things I believe in as an economist is the principle of revealed preference and since I have it several times in the past taking salaries that ultimately came from governments, I can't really claim that I am objecting principle to taking salaries from governments. Now it might be a useful publicity device to try to give the money back or whatever. Two minor comments on what Scott said. First, unless they've changed the law recently, it is legal to give money to subsidize politicians. The way you do it is you give the money to subsidize their campaigns and unless they've changed the law the politician is legally able to pocket what is left from his campaign after the election is over. Maybe they flagged that loophole. We don't know Libertarian whatever, have any money left? That was, but that was recently true. Also, an alternative to being a millionaire is being an ascetic. It is possible to live on a very low amount of money, although it may not be much fun. Washington? Even in Washington. That leads us into David. I didn't start with that. I basically agree with the two previous speakers. I think that especially given my earlier acceptance of the idea of appointed government employees taking salaries, in my general perspective, that that doesn't change the overall level of taxation. The question of whether you would get more bang for the buck by turning it down is a strategic question. If you were getting any significant number of people elected, I don't think you would because you'd have people who weren't able to serve. They would be resigning because they couldn't afford to be in office. As far as the ethical question, I'd feel uncomfortable if it were me, but I wouldn't say it's wrong if you are trying to do something for liberty and you have to take your salary. Actually, it appears we've applied for a government grant for the purpose of illuminating coercion when the funds that you are applying for are gotten coercive. Yes? Oddly enough, oddly enough, my application to the National Science Foundation to fund my research on whether governments spent money because they needed it, because they had it, was rejected. That research got privately funded. On the other hand, I suspect, given the way the granting procedure goes, that it would be conceivable. I mean, I think they don't sort of have a clever expert person going over each one saying, is this ultimately anti-government? So if you could dress up your research proposal sufficiently well in the jargon of your own field, and if you had a good enough feeder to show you were a good person, subsidize, I wouldn't be surprised if it were possible to get research proposals through the NSF, which in fact aimed at abolishing the NSF for taxes or practically anything else. But I didn't manage it. I tried. I work for a public policy institute, most public policy institutions, at least a lot of them, do take government money. We've always maintained that we would not. We haven't been offered any, but I don't know that we couldn't get it if we ask. One of the problems there, of course, is strategic from our own perspective. There are a lot of strings attached to government money. It's a reporting hassle and everything. It limits what you can do. It simply creates a lot of problems. I would be inclined against asking for government grants for that sort of thing. It's sort of, I don't know. I guess I feel it's one thing to take a job that exists, being a city councilman or a congressman, and accepting the salary that comes with it and a different thing to ask for one. It's something like a corporation, should a corporation ask for a government subsidy if the subsidy program already exists? I think it probably shouldn't, but on the other hand, if all of its competitors are being subsidized and the program already exists, I'm not sure I can say that it's definitely wrong. I think it tends to create more demand for government in that case, and the same thing would be true with the grants. I would be uncomfortable with asking for a government grant even for such a noble purpose. I guess I don't see how you can consistently be against coercion and collect the government grant. On the other side of this, just to be wishy-washy again for a minute, when this first came up to me, I was a graduate student in the department where most of the funds or government funds not so happened at the time that the research program I was in was not funded by government, but we're always looking for new money, and so someone said, well, isn't applying for government grant and getting the money, just getting back money that's been stolen from you, assuming that you've been a taxpayer and paid it out, or assuming that you're going to be a taxpayer and you will pay it out at some point, maybe you can get it back first and then pay it back later. I guess I'm attracted by that argument a little bit, but not enough to actually do it. I got an answer. The film Anarchism in America was funded by the Pacific State. I don't know which party the joke was on, the National Endowment for Pacific Street Films, who made it to the United States. Okay. We'll now have each of the panelists sum up for the next few minutes, and we'll begin with David Bowes, and then we'll go with Scott Olmsted, and then finish with David Friedman. Well, I don't have a lot to say except what I opened with, I guess. I think we should be careful to define our terms, and it seems to me as a libertarian movement advancing the libertarian philosophy, our definition of an unethical action or an unethical strategy ought to be, does it violate someone else's rights? Other strategies I may refuse to engage in because I think they are unethical, but I don't think I would make that a stricture for the libertarian movement. Most of the ones that I would refuse to engage in because of their non-rights-violating ethics problems would probably present strategic problems, too. But I think when any course of action or any strategy is proposed, the first question is, does it violate rights? Almost all strategies that I've heard proposed for libertarians do not violate rights. So in that case, the question becomes, does it seem the most likely to help us move to a free society? And that ought to be the question that is uppermost in our minds once we've satisfied ourselves, it doesn't violate rights. I think it's interesting today what we have not discussed at all, which is conflict which has occupied a lot of libertarian press recently, and that is, is it ethical to vote? Is it ethical to run for office? Is that all right? Are there other things that we do as we're engaging in the political process that are simply un-libertarian? None of this stuff has come up today. We've concentrated mostly on the extreme things, on some of the nit-picky things about taking salaries and whatnot. I'm continuously amused at the people who think that to be a true libertarian and to really do the whole thing ethically, you have to live liberty, okay? You have to be sort of a realist street fighter and not use a post office, not like stamps or whatever it is. It seems to me like if you do that, you're treating the symptoms rather than attacking the disease, and I'm really pleased to see that there are substantial numbers of people still in the party who really want to attack the disease of government rather than just treat the symptoms. My complaint about this panel is it's been far too much of a love fest with all of us agreeing with each other. So I'd like to leave you with thinking about the problems that I regard as sort of difficult and unpleasant problems, and those are problems such as you are elected governor or president. It is perfectly clear that the voters are not ready for anything like the abolition of all taxes. What do you do when the first person who refuses to pay taxes comes to you asking for a pardon? That is to say, imagine the situation, which I think is not an implausible one. If you pardon all people who refuse to pay taxes, the libertarian party will never win another election because the voters will say, look, we didn't elect you to abolish taxes, we elected you to cut them by 23%. On the other hand, if you refuse to pardon him, are you not in effect yourself a coercer? Another version of the same problem, and one which I believe is a real problem, though a lot of people here don't, is suppose you conclude when you get elected president that at the moment there is no way of defending against foreign states except with stolen money, that is except with tax money. Do you or don't you continue to enforce the IRS code? In other words, suppose you could abolish the taxes. Suppose you believe that abolishing the taxes would result in a Soviet takeover within the next three years. Do you or don't you abolish them? And again, you seem to be stuck in this situation where on the one hand, it's immoral to steal money. And on the other hand, you get catastrophic results if you don't. So I'd like all of you to think about those problems and to make up your mind as to what you would do, and maybe to be a little more tolerant with people who disagree with you. Thereafter, i.e., I think, if you really imagine really being faced with that situation, you will then be less willing to say, he says under some circumstance we should have taxes, therefore he's not a libertarian. Because most of you, the reason you disagree is you don't imagine the hard problem, not, you disagree with the answer. Thank you. I'd ask that you give all the participants a nice round of applause.