 Can type questions and all that the Q there's a Q&A feature, you know, right? Hey everyone Welcome to triple V show dedicated towards advancing the message of a free society. I'm your host Mike Shanklin Today, I'm joined once again by Stefan Kinsella. How are you doing? So I'm great. Good to be here Michael Yeah, good to have you on the show So we wanted to have you who would have thought we'd be talking about intellectual property with Stefan Kinsella, right? But obviously it is one of those topics that we have to address I think there's a lot of harm that comes out of it just like the state which is why I talked about stake general But I wanted to actually go a little bit more and kind of dissect these these Discussions, I'm not gonna call them arguments that I've seen but at least discussions over over this topic and Obviously it is it is something that's hard to understand unless you have some kind of a background in property rights and all that but For those who already have this kind of grounding. Let's go a little bit deeper. So we have You know designs is really what we're talking about when we're talking about IP or a concept, right? So it's all up in the head and mental but what I'm People are saying that you you can I guess what I'm trying to get out here Is that people are accusing you of saying that you can't that you're gonna? It sounds like you're gonna stop them from trading Things which you're not you're not saying that you're gonna stop people from trading stuff I think there's a difference between saying well What is property and what can be traded? So one of the questions that came up is can you trade something that you don't own right? Well, let me ask you a question first of all how long are we gonna do we have do you have so I know how much time to budget for different issues About 12 hours. I'm just gonna go for it. We got all time today. Okay so The ATIP position gets misconstrued a lot so one way This a brief digression is you know, we'll get accused of being anti intellectual Right or anti creativity or we're hostile to you know, we're materialists or something like that Which is not true at all Libertarians believe that you only have the fundamental right to not be aggressed against So we say that the only thing the law can prohibit is the initiation of violence against person or property and We libertarians get Curricured by mainstream people by saying well, you don't have any other values then well, that's not true We just think that having the legal system protect the physical integrity of our property. It's all we need from the legal system to Are you there? Yeah, I'm here. Okay your pictures some psychedelic 60s thing now That's my logo. Thanks, though Yeah So in course we know that's that's not a good criticism of libertarian of libertarianism Likewise, it's also not a good criticism of liberty of anti IP libertarians that That we don't because we don't want to have a property right in ideas. Let's say that we're against Ideas and the importance of ideas. We just don't think we think that protecting property rights in physical things Scarce resources is sufficient, but that of course the role of the mind is very important And by the way, half of the liberty of the IP advocates get angry when you say that what they're in favor of is a property Right and ideas they say well, we don't believe in the property rights and ideas We just believe in the property rights in the physical instantiation of ideas or something like that You know some kind of bizarre Copyright or patent doctrine and then the other half of them get angry Yes, because they say that we don't believe in protecting ideas So I never know which IP proponent to argue against because they're all over the map now in the particular question You asked about this is an important question and This is one reason why IP which has never been my favorite topic is becoming one of them because to figure this stuff out requires you to Re-evaluate a lot of fundamental property concepts and libertarian concepts It requires you to kind of clarify in your mind a lot of issues So this gets back to your question about can you trade? Ideas or things like services things like that So to solve to solve issues you have to get back to a Question of contract and the question of property Okay, so I can kind of go into that if you want and tell you where I think the mistake is Where we got off the wrong off on the wrong track. I think that's perfect I think that's that's attacking the right problem go for it. Okay, so So You have Until 95 let's say with when the digital revolution the internet revolution really kicked into high-gear It you didn't really have to become clear on these issues. You could you could have a sloppy formulation of Rights property rights you could say like Locke did for example Now Locke Locke is sort of our intellectual forefather, right? And a lot of libertarians retreat the Locke's arguments, which is that you own yourself Whatever that means because I think the concept of self is kind of vague. I would say we own our bodies Okay, that's a slight clarification And just to add that it's because of double counting or triple counting like you can't say that you own your body When you're saying you own your brain well I think that the idea that you own your labor, which is the next step is the double counting owning yourself It's just vague. It's not clear. What's meant and when you use vague terms it could it could lead to Equivocation even unintentional equivocation, which means you get someone to agree Well, you own yourself right and then later on then they start talking about souls or something bizarre that you didn't mean You really meant you you own your body, which means no one has the right to treat you like a slave and to actually You know stab your body or threaten you with force if you don't listen to their orders So it's really about body ownership It's okay to call that self ownership, but you have to keep in mind you're identifying That with your sleep with your body because yourself is bound up with your body whatever yourself is Anyway, and then the second step of lock is that we own ourselves therefore we own what our labor because the labor comes from ourselves and Therefore you own unowned resources in the world that you mix your labor with so that's sort of the locking argument That's okay as far as it goes I think that modern libertarians have a more precise and rigorous way of describing these things We have more economic terms now. We're not as flowery Where our arguments aren't necessarily bound up with religious arguments like Locke was trying to make for example He said we own ourselves because God gave it to us and this this commons of things that we can homestead by mixing our labor We can do that because God gave it to mankind in common. So there's this religious admixture there which Which makes the arguments either Less precise or depend upon some kind of narrow religious view that not everyone might have that's talking about these things so my point is the lock in idea is good, but it's it's not surprising that we can clarify it now and It especially needs to be clarified in the age of digital technology and the internet So what I think Happened is that The people Have relied upon the common law Okay, the common law as a rough approximation of a private law order like libertarians sort of think that the common law is at least presumptively More or less libertarian so they take for granted these legal concepts and Practices that have arisen over the centuries and they assume that they're like presumptively libertarian. So they say things like If you own your body You can sell it this comes into the debate about inalienability and some people say well No, you can't but about other products and other things that we own they they'll say well if you own something It means that you can sell it Okay, which actually doesn't follow and I can explain why and they also say the converse if you if you sell something It means that you own it and then so then they'll say well, there's nothing wrong with the contract For me to sell my labor services for example like an employment contract So that must mean that I own my labor and if you own your labor then lock was kind of right And if you you can mix your labor with something or you create something or if you sell an idea You know then that must mean you own the idea now I think these are both Fallacies and there was a fallacy because people haven't clarified their thinking about these things The right way to look at it in my view is let's just kind of clear away the clutter start from the beginning and think Why are we libertarians? What does the basic libertarian principle? What are the basic libertarian principles and they are very simply that? Because we live in a world of scarcity that is Resources that we need to employ as human actors including our bodies, but including other things in the world We need to employ these things to achieve what you want But because the world is such that there can be conflict over these things Then if we want to live in peace and prosperity and have some kind of way of using these things without Conflicting and fighting with each other then you have to have some kind of rule system that allocates who owns these things. That's what property Property rights are and the basic libertarian rule, which is more or less the Lockean or the common law rule the basic libertarian rule is when we see scarce resource in the world that could be disputed that two or more people have a dispute over or could have a dispute Including your body then we solve the question of we want to say we want to have a dispute resolution Rule we want to say who gets to use this thing. We want a property rule. The libertarian answer is in the case of your body The person himself is the owner very simple in other words. We don't believe in slavery. We believe in self-ownership or body ownership In the case of other things There's two or three simple rules that we apply to determine who owns the thing Number one we say who was the first person to appropriate it from the unknown state of nature Okay, if you can identify that person, they're the owner Unless they used a contract to give it to someone else Okay, so contract in a third case might be tort or crime like if you commit a tort against me Now maybe I have a better claim on your resources than you do because you owe me compensation But basically it's either an action of the appropriator the homesteader or the action of that owner or Another owner by making a contract or some kind of tort or other action But it's an action of some person that we can trace to determine who owns this resource Now when you own resources one Benefit to owning a resource and what it means to own a resource is that means you have a legally recognized Right to be the exclusive person who can use this resource, which really means You can decide if someone else can use it or not That means you can deny them permission or you can grant them permission, which is called a license also in the law So if you own a house you could give your fruit you could invite someone to a dinner party and That would be giving them permission to use your property because you're the owner or you could refuse them Entry or you could kick them out if they act like if they don't act properly okay, so You can use this incident or aspect of ownership to come up with contract. So contract is just the Exercise of authority over a thing that's owned. It's a consequence of property rights It's not like an addition to property rights or even the basis of property rights If you own a resource if you are the one legally recognized to be able to deny people the right to use it or To grant them permission then you can grant them permission in different ways. You could grant it gratuitously like inviting someone for a party you could give it permanently Like you could give a gift to someone or you could sell them something in which case you alienate your ownership of something Like when you sell someone an object that you own that you manufactured you could give it conditionally You could say I will give you this This object that I own, you know this this I'll give you this This chair that I made Tomorrow if certain things happen, I could make it conditional You know if you go to school if you go to school if you go to college I'll pay your tuition for the first semester. I could make a conditional gift I can also engage in what we call a regular trade, which is the typical thing people think about so I could say I will give you my pig if you give me You know ten hens You own some hens. I own a pig. We're gonna make a trade So the condition I'm placing on my alienation of title to my pig is if you give me your your hens But that's just one type of alienation or use of ownership Not every contract is a trade of two-owned things like that and one example would be if I tell you well I want my house painted you have the skill to be a you know you have the time you have the ability You control your body you own your body So you have the ability to not paint my house if you don't want to so I have to induce you to do it And I want you to do it so I say I will give you this gold coin If you paint my house Now that has a certain resemblance to the earlier trade where we have two items being exchanged for each other But it's not the same because in this case, there's only one Title being transferred. That's the money the money's transferred Conditionally upon a certain event occurring being satisfied, which is you're performing an action that I want to happen That doesn't mean that you're selling me your labor although people start using that description because of the similarity of the nature of the Transaction so people start saying well an employment contract or a service contract. It's similar to an exchange Right and therefore you they describe it economically in a sense as selling your labor Well, then people start thinking well if you're selling it you must own it right now. They're wrong about that Actually, you don't own your labor. This is the double counting part you own your body But to say that you own your actions that you perform with your body is not only double counting. It's just it's just weird Well, how sorry interrupt you how would you how would you labor or label labor then I mean do you give it any kind of I think labor is just an action. I mean labor is just a type of action In fact, I think it's almost synonymous with action So why don't use the word action if you use the word action that you see it's kind of awkward to say that you own your actions Although some people actually say that they'll say you own your memories you own your thoughts you own your You own your love you you own your passions. I mean they they use words and precisely Well, you're responsible for the consequences of your actions I think that's part of the best way to put it right I think you are responsible for the consequences of your actions But that is because of the property rights other people have in their scarce resources Because they have a scare they have a property right that is a legally recognized exclusive right to control a given scarce resource Which means that other people do not have the right to invade the borders of or or uninvitedly as Hapa says uninvitedly chains the physical integrity of someone else's scarce resources their body or other scarce resources they have a legitimate property area because they have a property right There are some actions I am not permitted to perform and if I do perform them I have violated their rights I've committed trespass and therefore I owe some kind of Restitution or there's some kind of consequence to me because of that But it's not that there's a limit on my property rights. It's that there's a limit on my actions Okay, but even then you wouldn't say you own your actions now one one side point to make here You said that some of the critics of the anti-ip positions say that we want to Prohibit ownership of ideas or we want to prohibit ownership of non scarce resources This is actually not Correct, we don't want to prohibit anything. Let me explain What I think is the proper way to look at it the Libertarian view is simply that there are property rights in scarce resources And what we call rivalrous resources in other words for every resource that there's potentially conflict over your body and other Material resources in the world The things that can be means of action things that we can employ to causally Effect the world to achieve what we want to achieve for these kinds of things We believe there ought to be property rights in them and that they should be assigned according to the simple rules I Mentioned earlier. We don't say that there can't We don't say that there should not be property rights in non scarce resources I think the right way to look at it is that it is literally quite literally Impossible in fact, it's meaningless to talk about property rights in non scarce resources. It's not that I want to pass a law prohibiting it I don't want to pass a law prohibiting two plus two equal Equaling five. It's just that two plus two does not equal five, right? It is literally impossible to have a property right in a non-scarce resource because property rights are Legally recognized exclusive rights of control. You can't control an idea in that sense You can't exclude people from using it because it's infinitely reproducible You could have 10 or a million people using the same algorithm or information or knowledge about the world at the same time It is literally impossible to control information What is possible is to control scarce resources? So if you have control of your brain and your body and you have knowledge that only you have it's secret or private knowledge Your control of your body gives you the ability to keep that information secret Doesn't mean you own the information, but once information is public and it once it spreads It's a recipe basically. It's literally impossible to own it and When these IP laws like patent and copyright are enacted What they really are there are not really property rights and ideas What they really are is a property right in other people's scarce resources that are already owned It's what I call a negative servitude or a negative easement. It's basically a grant by the state To the person that claims this IP right a patent or a copyright. Let's say that gives them a veto right over how other people use their already owned property or They can use that to extort money from the person or they can use that to get physical force from a from a real court Aimed at a person's body or property saying you can't use your body or property in this way So it always comes down to physical Resources material resources that are scarce resources. So it's really a disguised way of transferring ownership of existing material resources It's it's like I was explaining to someone the other day, it's like religion when people say There are wars fought over religion. This is in a way a sloppy formulation. What they mean is the the motivation for people to fight is Religion religious disagreement, but the fight is never over religion. It's always over scarce resources It's over people's bodies or people's land or people's money or their cows or their women or whatever This is what a fight is. It's an actual physical clash of people. Now. I want to kill you Because you won't become a Muslim or a Christian or whatever right so When people say they fight over religion that's a shorthand for giving an explanation of the motives Why people are having a physical clash over physical things, right? likewise when people say that There's a property right and ideas. That's a sloppy and somewhat dishonest way of Explaining their rationale for taking a real property right in real things away from me. So what they're saying is Because There's something special about your ideas that you generated The law should take some of your existing material property and give it to someone else in terms of this negative easement So really it's always about physical force being used against real things like your money your fact Your resources or your body So this is the fundamental mistake the fundamental mistake is when people When people confuse these concepts and they're not clear on them. It's time that we become clear on them and Once once they become clear the nature of the aggression and the trespass and the taking Involved in patenting copyright becomes clear. It becomes clear that it's simply naked aggression. It's a completely unjustified government intervention into the market Aimed at basically protecting people from competition. I mean there if you read what people say defensive copyright they'll say Like I said I posted on Facebook the other day. There's a patent law firm They're they're sending a brochure to me because I'm a patent lawyer We can help your clients do this and we'll help them protect their I do they'll protect their intellectual property and from being From having competition with you know from their competitors in other words The entire purpose of these things is to stop competition. I have people ask me all the time Well, if I don't have a Patent on my pharmaceutical. How am I going to what's my incentive to to to make drugs? My answer is your incentive is to make a profit by selling a product on the market Then they'll say well, what I really mean is how can I make a profit if people can compete with me? I'm like exactly you don't want people to compete with you, but that's the free market, honey So yeah, there we are go ahead now you Basically, you're basically saying that once Once the the formulation of the concept the design is out in into the other people's minds Public domain is what it's usually labeled as it's pretty much a done deal I mean there's you can't put the genie back in the box It's your responsibility if you want to not have this designer concept But this is this is a little bit of a challenge here for you. Maybe you can see right through this What about the fact that since it is in somebody's head, right? I guess can you say that that the thought pattern is scarce? Does that make sense in other words if I am thinking of something? Is that a real thing so let's yeah, let's let's take a simple example. So let's say that you have You want to create a You want to create a sword You think it'd be useful to have a sword Or maybe you think you can sell the sword because you have skills at that So you have to obtain the raw materials, right? So like you obtain some iron ore and you have other things like you have an anvil and a furnace and other equipment Now you take this iron ore which you have to obtain title to somehow you have to obtain ownership Somehow you either go take it out of the ground if it's unowned or you purchase it from a previous owner, right? right so You own so this is one mistake a lot of people make is they say that well Creation if you produce something then you're the owner of that. Well producing implies rearranging Existing raw materials into some other configuration and if you didn't already own the raw materials That how how did you have the right to use them in your process? So if you're just rearranging them you own the resulting product because you already owned the things you're rearranging Not because of your production your production Transform them and made them more valuable. So let's let's take but that's a tangent getting back to your question Let's imagine I have this raw iron ore. It's in one pattern, right? And now I rearrange it by heating it and hammering it Forging it into a sword now. It's got a new pattern now. Would you say the pattern is a scarce resource? I don't think so. It's just a description of the arrangement of the material That was owned So no, I don't think that and that's analogous to the pattern of ideas in your brain. You own your brain you own your body How your brain is arranged is not ownable It's not a scarce resource Okay, okay. No, it's knowledge In fact, if you think about praxeology what Mises taught Mises talks He doesn't go into a lot of detail about this aspect of it, but it's pretty clear Human action is a very simple thing. It's a human Controlling his body and exercising his will and his choices to try to achieve something in the future Right to try to change the outcome of what would be to think and act Say again to think and act. Yeah So to change something to change the outcome of events you have to employ physical causal means that means you have to Use something that's causally efficacious that actually works You know if I want to get rid of a tree stump on my lawn I might choose dynamite because it actually explodes and causally gets rid of the tree stump, right? If I use I Don't know if I use wet paper. It's not gonna do it. It's not a causally efficacious means that example, but still So the point is there's a distinction. There's two important elements to human action one is the availability of the ability to control Necessarily Necessary means that can help you achieve it. That's what property rights are for you need property rights in your body and in these scarce means because they're scarce you need to use them because you you have to have scarce means to get something done We want property rights so that we don't have conflict over these things But you also need knowledge or what you could call in general recipes or information about the world To guide your action. So these things are complementary aspects of action But one of them is a scarce means one is knowledge The scarce means are subject to property rights. The knowledge is not the knowledge is useful And in fact is crucial and if you think about the knowledge is useful for two things. It's useful to Number one to decide on what possible ends in the future are possible. You have to have some idea of The ends possible and you have to have some knowledge of causal laws Scientific knowledge so that you can choose the means to achieve it So the knowledge is sort of two-fold and this in the first type of knowledge involves knowing yourself and knowing the world so for example, if you're hungry and you have a desire to be satisfied and you have a sweet tooth, let's say you might know from experience that The sugary products like a cake might do the trick, right? That's knowledge that you have you've acquired by experience and self-knowledge But if you've only ever tasted a vanilla and a chocolate cake, it might never occur to you that a cherry cake or a Apple strudel or or a coconut cake might also satisfy. You might never thought of these things, right? So if so the knowledge you have about yourself and about what's possible Informs the universe of the ends that you can visualize It might only be a small number of options that you even think are possible But if you've had a wider experience or you're smarter Maybe you think of six six or ten or a larger number of ends that you can go for and then you choose among those Wider number of ends and there's more likely that you can now choose one that satisfies you even more So your profit and effect potentially grows and Then you have knowledge about how do you? Employ means in the world to achieve Whichever end you've chosen and they go back they go back and forth with each other too You kind of can see you can sell each one informs the other right your knowledge of what means are possible Informs what ends you might go for in the first place and your knowledge of ends is informed by your knowledge of means They go together, but they're somewhat distinct So your knowledge of means, you know, you might know I can I can bake a cake I can hire someone to bake a cake for me. I can purchase it from the baker down the street or Maybe you think you can pray and the cake will be conjured up by some magic spell Now that's false information because it actually won't achieve your ends But it's still knowledge that guides the actions that you perform So we have to think of information patterns recipes as useful as a as an crucial ingredient to action But I don't think they're properly considered scarce resources. All right. I got I got a question from somebody in the Viewership area. They want me to ask we don't own things we use them, right? And I want to say that Own ownership is just saying who can control what at what time right? Yes, the ownership. I think the best way to think of ownership is it's a Legally recognized and now I when I say legal I don't mean we have to have a state system whatever sort of Legal or law rules are widely respected in a given area as it can happen in poly it can happen in polycentric law, right? Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely. It was it has happened. It does happen right to clock So ownership simply means that there's a widely legally recognized right To control a resource. So human action is the use of resources. That's correct But if you don't have legal rights, for example, Crusoe on an island by himself Someone not in society has no property rights. He only has human action He only employs scarce resources, but he has no socially recognized legal or exclusive right to control the resource because there's no one else to respect his rights in society because there's a possibility of multiple human actors Desiring to use the same resource at the same time in the same way in a way that excludes other people because of this possibility then There's a possibility of conflict and if there's conflict then people spend their times physically fighting or being violent And you're you're not able to use the resource As efficiently, let's say at the least right or maybe you can't use it at all because it's taken from you So life is totally different because of the various advantages of social cooperation Because we're a social species most human beings tend to have some empathy for their fellow man They value themselves, but they also value their fellow man value their fellow man, and they value the The social order they value the ability of cooperation most people are basically decent in the sense that they Disvalue interpersonal violence Doesn't mean they never engage in it, but at least they have second thoughts about it or at least they think If I'm going to engage in violence with someone I'm a little reluctant to do that. I feel some qualms about it So I want a justification for it So they seek to justify their actions not everyone but enough people to generate legal norms and rights norms No, absolutely All right, so I guess one of the things that is confusing to I think we summarize this basically You own the electrons that go from your from the computer to your internet provider and all around the world Well, at least you you might you know you have a contract for that in essence and those are real scarce items, right? I mean the electrons really are real things out there with atoms and then you have That's real properties just like the paper and the ink that the design might come on right But the actual concept or the design itself can basically it can never it can never be See that's my question though. Why why would you say that? It's It makes sense now to me too. Okay. Well, I think I know let me let me mention this I think I know kind of where you're going with it It gets back to this question of why am I prohibiting people from owning non-scarce things? It's not a prohibition. It's simply that the real nature of these ownership rights See ownership always has to be enforced against real things against material things scarce things with physical force So the question really is who gets to control this money like who gets to control the money in you in your bank account, right? Should it be you or should it be someone else? It should be you unless someone has a good reason for taking it one good reason might be that you gave it to them by contract Another might be that you committed a tort Another might be that you stole the money from them. Okay, but other than those kinds of things you own that money and These rules always it's so an analogy. I give you two analogies one would be inflation. I Mean if you don't really understand the nature of money you might say well You might sort of associating money with wealth just like people falsely associate The ability to sell something in a contract with ownership of the thing that sold that's not actually true So people associate money with wealth. So they might think why doesn't government just print more money? Make everyone rich Have a high minimum wage make everyone rich, but we understand that if the government prints more money It inflates money and that dilutes the value of existing money or reduces the purchasing power of existing money All right, that's called price inflation We understand that you can't print money for free. I mean when I say free There's not it's not that there's no cost to it. There is a cost It's just the cost is borne by the population in general if the government prints a trillion dollars This year they can spend a trillion dollars But that means that the purchasing power of everyone else is reduced by a trillion on average That's why there's price inflation, right? A similar phenomena exists in the field of what's called positive or welfare rights So your typical liberal will say You know, well, we're not opposed to property rights. We just want more than that So we believe yeah, there should be property rights in your car and in your bank account in your house and your body They call that personal property instead of just private property, right? Yeah, I don't know what they call it But but they'll say we just want to add more rights to that. Let's have the government add more So in addition to these regular rights, you know, that's what the four the four What is it called the four freedoms of a Wilson or the right for freedom from want freedom from fear or whatever? We're gonna say well, they should also be there should be a right to your body But there should also be a right to education and there should also be a right to Health care and there should also be a right to a job all these kinds of things, right? And a right to a minimum income even right? So we're just adding rights who can claim about more rights Well, the problem is these are positive rights and they come at a cost because every right has a correlative obligation now your Your negative so-called negative right to be free of murder that is free of someone stabbing a knife into your body Only gives other people a negative obligation that is an obligation to refrain from a given action to refrain from Crossing the borders of your property without your permission and we can all live with that We can all live with a live and let live set of rules That's what the libertarian non-aggression principle is about but as soon as you have a positive right That has a correlative positive obligation So if you have a right to a minimum income that means that other people have a positive obligation to provide you with that income which means Basically, they're your partial slaves that you own part of their bodies or their other labor or whatever, right? That's the problem with it. These things don't come for free and it's the same thing with Granting property rights in non-scarce resources. They always have to be enforced with physical force against physical things So it always chips away at and comes at the expense of it takes one way to imagine this is imagine that We had had patent and copyright since the beginning of humans human history and That the terms were not finite like they are now that they were perpetual like some IP advocates Advocate actually like galambos and some others even some randians Okay, now that means that we would be living in a world by now where everything that's ever been thought of every useful The idea of lighting a fire the idea of building a home instead of living in a cave the idea of using clothing, right? the idea of cooking food instead of eating it raw all these things would be owned by someone and For you to engage in almost any action that you can conceive of to survive or to live in the world would be trampling on Literally thousands or millions or billions of other people's idea rights property rights You'd have to get permission of everyone all the time your entire life would be a series of a seeking permission from people paying Licensing fees and royalties and trading Basically life would be snuffed out in other words the point is if you have if you seriously have a real IP system it Increasingly strangles and comes at the expense of property rights in the real world and would we would die as a species We would we would literally be snuffed out Yeah, it's like an economic sanction It is it's like an extreme economic sanction that's so extreme that we would just die Which is why these people make exceptions for it because they don't want to push your idea It's just like the people that advocate minimum wage Right, they want a seven eight nine ten twelve dollar minimum wage, and you say well, why not a hundred? They go, oh, that's that's extreme That's crazy because they sort of know that that would that would that would cause the economy to collapse and everyone would die You know, so they don't advocate that they just want to chip away at it a little bit Yeah, but that's still bad. It's still bad to reduce people's income and to reduce their liberty All right, so only partial go ahead. Yeah, so YouTube user bonded liberty wants to ask who grants these rights like property rights Or are they just there because we're individuals when you're mine That's not like an anarchist. I mean maybe you can weigh in what you think on this one. I mean in today's world They're granted by the state. I think argumentation ethics plays into this obviously, right? Well, that's my that's my perspective not every libertarian shares that but in today's society The state has monopolized the legal function and even the idea of government like I'm always trying lately I'm careful to try to distinguish government from state Because if you say you're an anarchist they say well You're against government and they equate government with law and order and with a legal system and this kind of stuff but to my mind Just just as the government has taken over the function of education largely and roads and So now people identify roads as being a government function. It's not really I'm sorry I should say a state function government is also not a state function It's just something the state has taken over but without the state you would have roads You would have education you would have government in the sense of institutions of law and order And that is where these rights will be quote granted by now They're granted by government edict or fiat because by state fiat or edict State a state type government. I should say in a private society of Assuming a sufficiently justice oriented population and to my mind that really means You have to have two things to have a just legal order. You have to have people that are basically decent they have Civilized values they generally want to cooperate with people they generally have some empathy for their fellow man And you have to have economic literacy If you don't have economic literacy then you might believe that some kind of statism or totalitarianism or communism is The best way to go or is the only way to go or something like that But if you have some economic literacy then you start realizing that the way to achieve our goals of peace and prosperity and harmony and social cooperation is a Free market which is respect for private property rights. So I would say that I wouldn't say they're granted on the free market I would say that they're socially recognized by the bulk of your fellow men because It comports with their values and with their understanding of economics And I think you can't really respect others if you don't allow You know if people can't control the resources around them just look at Cuba, right? You know, I think it's a perfect example of that that like you have the claim of somebody else If we're going to all be our own kings in our own way and be truly equal where none of us are going to have an ethical Advantage over other or somebody else we don't we can't use forced hierarchy on them That means no no Nietzsche people can just monopolize the resources either. So we'd have to voluntarily trade for them I mean it just comes back down to the logic of since we are individuals and we want to get along with each other And we are free autonomous individuals. We have to respect Everybody else in their own autonomy. So that's the way I look at it, right? So I'm seeing the comments now that you're seeing now. So I see what I see where you're getting this from anyway I'm getting hang of this technology this fancy technology Technology, that's right. So what do you think about? What's your opinion on the? You mentioned argumentation of it give me I'm curious what your take is on Yeah, I mean I approach to justifying rights Well, I definitely agree with it because it's basically saying if you argue against your individual choice Then you're being hypocritical in nature. I mean you can't you can't say Well, what we should do is is Centralize all of these resources and not allow other people or give them the false facade that a vote's gonna help or something Like this for that you don't even need to vote because it's all gonna come back down to horizontal democracy Okay, I think people think that there's this like perfect place where somehow you're gonna be able to Everybody's just gonna have this come by our moment We're all gonna just give all the poor people stuff from from and no property rights and everything just but the thing is we we have Disagreements even if you use the scientific method scientists today still have Disagreements on the end results of a scientific method So not not that say that I mean look at look at metaphysics or physics in general too Once you think you understand something it flips upside down on you, right? And so in essence since we are Individuals like argumentation ethics basically states for me to open my mouth and to argue That I have The that we should be communicating, but then I should use violence. Yeah, it's obviously you're just like What's it gonna be are you gonna be are you gonna have a discussion with me and treat me with respect? Yeah, and allow me to do it as I wish or you can use violence on me Those are the only two options. Yeah, and if you if they admit the first then they can't deny that there's something Unique about each of I mean it seems to me that if you it's basically If you approach someone with the art well We first have to argumentation ethics recognizes that there's a distinction between The way we establish scientific knowledge about causal laws, right the scientific method, etc That's a descriptive view of the universe and the world around us, but when we're talking about Norms and values and aughts and shoulds and morals We're kind of having a conversation about what we all think should be done, right? So that implies that you if you make a proposition to you you're trying to justify it I'm saying listen. Here's what I think the rule should be about how we should get along in society Then you're implying that you have a reason for it. You don't you can't just say it's arbitrary You have to have a reason for the rule some reason and so if I propose well, I think the rule should be that that Everyone should leave me alone, but I get to I get to hit you over the head when I feel like it well That is that's like an arbitrary assertion because If I say that people should leave me alone Presumably there's some reason for that even if I don't know what it is There's some reason for it and the only thing it could be is that it's something to do with my nature My nature as what as a fellow human being Which a characteristic which you also share so if I'm saying that I have the right to be left alone Then it's I can't I can't deny that you have a similar right because we have a similar nature Unless I can point to some difference between us Other than the mere fact that you're not me, right? It has can't just be that you're not me I'm me and you're you and therefore I'm I should own the universe. That's not a little conversation Has no chance of ever persuading anyone. It does with George Bush and Obama. That's for sure Yeah, they use that's why they have to use force now if I tell you The reason I get to use force against you and you can't use it against me is because yesterday You broke into my house and you killed my children and stole my sheep So you've actually committed an action That distinguishes you from the rest of humanity, right? It marks you as different You have done something objective in the world that does justify me treating you differently than you're entitled to treat me Now that would be in my mind the reason why it is permissible to use at least defensive force If not force for restitution or even for retribution So when people say hoppa's argument a station ethics doesn't make sense because it's possible For a master to argue with his slave. I don't think that's a legitimate criticism for a couple reasons number one if if in the case of let's say a Antebellum American shadow slavery The owner is granting his slave temporarily the right to argue the owner is actually contradicting himself by maintaining ownership of the slave He's actually this actually demonstrates the power of argumentation ethics. Amen. I mean, he should he should free his life I mean, he's he's wrong to do that But on the other hand if I caught you attacking my family and you know, you're you're I'm using self-defense Against you to subdue you My argument my justification is not arbitrary. It is grounded in the nature of things It's not just a particular what we call a particularistic argument It's not that I'm not I'm not simply saying I can use force against you because you're you and I'm me That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying no I can use force against you because you invaded my property you committed an action that violated my property rights and Therefore I'm entitled to do something similar back to you In fact, you have no right to complain about it because you've already endorsed this normative rule in your actions Can so you know where I think it really comes from I think people are afraid that like somebody's gonna take over the world through Capitalism like that's even possible, right? I think that's really the fear that some guy is gonna get like 99.99999% of all resources And then take that last hundred percent. It will never have good humanity again or some nonsense like that It's just part of it. Yeah, I think I think they That comes from again economic ignorance because it's People ignore the fact that it actually costs. It's costly to to maintain your property You know if I wanted to homestead a patch of land for a farm I don't want to make it too big because the bigger I make it the more resources it takes to to patrol it and to keep it up and if it let's say I tried to homestead I built a fence around a Thousand square miles and a virgin continent I mean if I've just got a little farm in one corner of it that's really all I'm gonna be doing day-to-day and Over time there might be people wandering into the other corners of it and they might be homesteading living on they call squatters, right? And over time they acquire by what we call acquisitive prescription or statute of limitations nowadays They acquire a right to use it and I think it's perfectly proper because I'm not I basically demonstrated By my lack of patrolling the land and my lack of taking action to kick the squatters off I've demonstrated acquiescence in what they're doing. I've effectively abandoned that land to them So there's a limit to how much? Property you can control and On the other hand the more property you really can afford to control. It's only because you're extremely productive and you're generating Resources with the land that the property you're using that permits you to monitor and control The resources you have that's a good thing. That's a that's something we want to encourage That's a productive resource which is kind of like one of the world. Yeah, it's kind of like demonizing monopolies I demonize violent monopolies, but if there's the free market monopoly Technically, I guess it's not always a monopoly because you always have all these alternative Substitutes and anybody can compete but in theory, let's say some company is a monopoly in a free market somehow They have this like one thing that they're producing. It's because they are absolutely Amazing at making this thing and no other company can do it nearly as efficient as them, right? Yeah Look, I got this is my computer on the YouTube, which is about 60 seconds away. That's kind of cool. Sorry Don't want to mess with your mind here Back to reality Yeah, it's funny you're watching that Oh, yeah, you know you can click on the click on the little view all comments on the upper right-hand corner And you can just see comments and they come in there's a lot of people watching It's just a game would you say on the upper right-hand corner of the YouTube channel on the upper right-hand corner of the YouTube video You'll see where it says view all comments, and you can click that There's not there's a lot of people watching, but there's not a lot of people commenting right now but anyway Yeah, let's move on. I want to go to John Myers wants me to ask you are he's first states I always like hearing him in debate whether a corporation can exist in a free market or is it a simply a state granted privilege Is his main question is limit can limited liability for corporations exist in a free market? And I'd like to say this real quick when I think of if Incorporation the first thing because that was really started out by a state, right? I mean like well, I guess we didn't have property rights to have free market businesses like that really back Before the state tried to incorporate things. This goes back to Roman times, but really started hitting heavy I think over in the Europe in fourteen thirteen hundreds fourteen hundreds is what I'm going for my history But my thing is I don't like I think it's it is a government Legal term. I like to differentiate which one which one limited liability or corporations corporations I like to say that corporations Are state licensed businesses and that Non-state licensed businesses are just I just call them free market businesses and when I break that down to somebody Like I've been on partisan exchange that group that Facebook group and I've been talking to people and I once told the slady She's like you just want corporations in blue talk And so I said you are the one who's actually enabling put putocracy through the state, right? We'll kind of go on back to the fact of trying to take over the world through the free market That's why they entered the state in the first place because you got to use the guns of government to really take over the world Right, but the to me corporations themselves are like you could have I think they're different than free market businesses This is all comes back down though to the definition of a corporation I also think you will have some limited liability written into contracts But I I'm also weary because I don't want to create an incentive where people just donate to any business that they Don't even go like I'll just donate to the mafia. You know, maybe they'll make me a profit today They have to have some Responsibility as to their actions, right? Yeah, so okay, so we're Changing yours now, which is fine. I'm fine with that. Okay. Let me say a couple things number one. I Just had a pretty explicit Lecture on this at the Hoppe's property freedom Society In October and it's not online yet. I'm waiting for the YouTube. It's coming soon So that I'll pause that soon and you and I actually discussed this issue before and I can discuss it with Stefan Melanie too, and I've written on this issue First of all, I don't I don't think in a free society. There's any limitation on what you can call yourself So let's let's talk about that. It's like the gay marriage issue. I mean You're you're entitled to use whatever words you want to describe your relationship or your arrangement If other people don't accept it, they don't use it You know if I am a man and I call myself Chelsea and Mrs. Some people might adopt that usage some people might not if I'm if two gay guys get married or they have a Ceremony which they call a wedding and They call themselves married and husband and husband Some some religious people may refuse to go along with that. This is just the interaction of free people Words or what people can use whatever words they want Corp means body in Latin corpus, right? So corporation means a body that word is used primarily because the state co-opted the mechanism and They adopted what's called the entity theory. So they say that a corporation has a legal Status. It's a legal person. It has an entity and the state says that that This grant of legal personhood is necessary for the corporation to exist and Therefore we the state can condition that privilege that grant and we can tax the corporation We can regulate it. We can make it a good corporate citizen, etc. I Think this is a lie the state A company doesn't need the state's help to become a corporation or to use the word corporation or To achieve limited liability status more or less not exactly like the state grants it but more or less So in a free society, I do believe you could have you could have firms Let's just say firms or businesses and they would basically be what we call limited liability Partnerships or something like that They could have contracts with their vendors which by which they say or and their and their creditors and their customers And they make it clear when you deal with us if there's a dispute if there's a lawsuit If there's damages that we owe you They're going to be limited to certain defined corporate assets, but not the personal assets of the So-called shareholders of this venture. I think that's if that's done by contract is perfectly Legitimate in fact almost no one are used against that Because it's by contract the question of tort liability and by the way I go into this in more detail in my talk Which I'll try to post soon the question of tort liability is is more difficult because That there's no contract with the tort victim. He's just someone run over by a FedEx truck Right. He never agreed to only pursue the assets of the truck driver But the question we have to ask is Why should anyone else be liable for the for the negligence of a given person? That's that's what we call vicarious responsibility or liability and Unless you have a good reason the person who commits an action is the one responsible for it So if you're run over by a guy driving a truck Then he is responsible for that and only him unless you can show someone else should be liable Now I think you could make an argument that his his boss may be liable in some cases In some cases not at all. I mean, what if what if this guy? Drives a FedEx truck and he's running his errands and he decides to go stop a bar. He gets drunk He goes on a three-day bender drives across Arizona. He runs over a couple of people Me okay, so is that FedEx's responsibility? The only reason you could say it is is because they supplied him with the truck Well, but they didn't supply him with the truck to go kill people What if you loan your brother-in-law your car to go drive to Walmart and He hits someone while he's driving your car. Does that mean you should be liable? So you're saying it's intent-based I think it should be intention-based and and this is what Patrick Tinsley a good friend of mine and I argue in our article causation and of aggression Where you have to develop a theory of causation Rooted in Misesi and praxeology terms and I don't think that This is basically a simple-minded people. So people just have this simple-minded strict liability theory They assume that if you own property you're responsible for it. Well, actually, I think you're responsible for your actions Not your property Now let's say someone breaks in your house and steals your gun And they kill someone with it Does that mean you're your or co-conspirator with them that you've committed murder? I don't think so Well, what if I sell you a gun unless I know you're going to commit murder with it? Why am I liable for what you do with property that I loan you or give you or sell you or that you steal from me? So I don't think that responsibility attaches to ownership of property ownership is the right to use and the right to exclude It's not a responsibility issue. It's the right to use and exclude You're responsible for your actions not your property That's that's how I look at it. No good stuff So so I think actually you would have something in a free market very similar to corporations of Today whether they will be called corporations. I don't know. I don't know if you'd call them I don't care what you call them. Yeah, but I do think that limited liability is the default presupposition Because people are responsible for their own actions and if you want to show someone else's liable You have to have a good argument and shareholders Have not caused the employee to become negligent Agreed they simply vote for directors and they have a right to get dividends and Some of them may have given some money to the corporation, but so to customers Or customers all liable for every I mean every McDonald's customer Or they're supposed to be liable now for every tort every McDonald's employee commits, right? Yeah, I'm with you. I'm with you. Obviously on that I have some questions from the thing. Well, I also want to talk about Why you identify was anarcho-libertarian, but we'll get to that after this question Somebody says hey Stefan says Harrison last night a person called into the Malony show and mentioned you our argument was on the word ownership ownership implies exclusive use of and Exclusive use of and Malony was saying we Own the effects of our actions. This is moral responsibility as you are discussing Yeah, but it is not really owning the action. I agree. I agree. I agree. I think I think I think Yeah, I've heard Stefan use these terms many times. I don't think I mean seven. I agree on almost everything. I think right It's just I'm more legalistic minded and my style is maybe a little different What he says you own the results of your actions I think what he means is you should be responsible. Yeah for what you do I wouldn't say I wouldn't use the word ownership for that because I think it's potentially Misleading confusing so you know, but I understand why he uses it You know what I always say is if you get to the point where you're arguing whether ownership is a good enough term for us Libertarians to use You've already gotten to a free society. Oh, yeah. Yeah. This is this is not a problem. I mean not a problem Yeah, exactly. Yeah, when more people are talking about that question they already get the rest of it, right? Well, actually My podcast number 25 you and I talked and we talked about this limited liability issue in the very next podcast I'm looking on my page number 26. I talked with Stefan Malinu about this whole issue He I don't know if he's being polite or but I thought we more or less agreed because he Before that he is sort of had doubts about corporations limited liability And I recently heard him on another show where he's expressed out So I don't know for quite eye-to-eye on this issue I think if you cut through the the semantical confusion, maybe and the different terminology Right, we're basically on the same term Oh, none of us agree that the government should be granting state. I would agree with you and or with whoever With Stefan, I think the government well the government shouldn't exist the state shouldn't exist Right, and they should get out of the business of incorporating charting corporations. I just have a different prediction about what would happen I don't think that in a free society you would find shareholders or the investors of corporate companies Personally liable for every tort committed by every employee And of that corporation or that firm just because they gave money to it And not only that I think that the the very concept of employee is a state concept the state has these categories because By classifying what an employee is now they can regulate you they can say if someone's an employee You have to withhold taxes for them You have to give them a certain union organizing rights all these kinds of things. This is completely a state This is done by the state for the state's interest just like property rights by the way this the original not property rights themselves, but You ever heard of the Dome's Day book like this is back in England in the no There's just something but this is like the government went around trying to Put stones markers down to figure out who owned which land and have a book Showing who owned what now we think if that's a good thing. We need property title records. We need deeds Why do you think the government did that? Well, it's a control so that they for property taxes. They want property taxes They can collect taxes from so you got to be really wary of all these government Attempts to control things now you have another question about why I call myself anarcho libertarian Yeah, it's actually kind of the last question for the day, too. Okay, we've already been here over an hour But this is great conversation. I love it Blake Williams says maybe asking to talk about his view on why libertarianism is neither left Nor right and perhaps a discussion on left libertarianism mutualism Anarcho-communism stuff like that. Now, we've kind of had this conversation before too. We've done a lot of that a lot of stuff but Why is it like some people automatically label us as Rightists and then just try to label us with Republicans and I think there's you know There's obviously two different worlds that we're talking about here because when when there's the the property right view of left Right, which is the left means no property rights in theory, you know historically and the right usually means that we do Believe in property rights and then on the other side of this you have left right Which just means liberal conservative which is all muddled and fuzzy and makes no sense whatsoever So that's that's the way I view it But you like to use the word anarcho libertarian and I I think it basically shows I've always argued that you have to have Voluntaryism at its at its base before you can even have voluntary collectivism right you have to respect the individual So I've always argued that that you can have an anarcho-commun inside of Anarcho-capitalism, but you can't have anarcho-capitalism inside of anarcho-communism, right? Well, I agree with that And I don't I don't claim strongly that libertarianism or anarcho is the best term to use I'm I mean You know socialists might have been the best term if they hadn't been corrupted by the socialists liberal might have been the best Term to use I'm not opposed to voluntary. It's I think it's a good term My understanding is volunteers is more or less synonymous with what I mean by Anarcho-libertarian. I think the term libertarian is okay I mean, I think the term libertarian is okay But there are different types of libertarians unless you want to say that anyone who believes in the state at all Like any menarchist even is not a libertarian and I do think that they're not consistent and they do They do compromise their principles by being in favor of the state even an ultra menarchist But I'm not willing to read them out of the movement. I mean, I think they're basically libertarian. They just are confused on the nature of the state So I think we need to distinguish types of libertarians we have Anarcho-libertarians we have menarchists You can even include maybe some classical liberals is on the fringes of what we believe in Gerard Casey has a brand new book. That's great. It's called libertarian anarchism So he does it the other way around he talks about anarchism What flavor of anarchist are you and he says we're libertarian anarchists because we believe in private property rights or et cetera I I don't have a strong opinion on that on the left-right issue. I Tire of these debates about Whether we're really of the right or of the left. I think that a lot of modern libertarians at least until the last say generation Came in from sort of in America at least from right oriented Groups like Chamber of Commerce type groups Leonard Reed Foundation for economic education The early Republicans sort of pro-business kind of guys, you know, pro-market. I mean the Republicans very cold water that very cold Yeah, that kind of stuff. I mean the Republicans are now in a US the religious right which are not libertarian the neocons which are just pro-war Control freaks and the free market types which are like a subset of libertarian. They believe in a They're kind of soft libertarians or partial libertarians But there's there is libertarian strands of left thought too so you can see why some people come into it from that direction too But just because people historically or chronologically Or in their personal history, I Mean everyone comes into libertarianism From where the personal history there are certain influences they vary some are left some are right some are different Some are atheists some are religious. I don't know, you know, whatever I don't think that the way people come into it should characterize the movement itself and I Am a strong believer. I've always been a strong believer Like there's just basically Nolan chart idea the Nolan chart idea that the left-right spectrum is is is basically a I won't say conspiracy, but it's It's it's it accepting the left-right spectrum is buying into the statist idea in the first place I mean first of all we libertarians don't believe left and right are all that different, right? What's the difference between Hitler and Political left and right right. Yeah, I mean they're they're both Socialists of various stripes, which is what I like about Hoppe Hoppe's book theory of socialism capitalism He characterizes different flavors of socialism Socialism Russian style the socialism of conservatism, you know Welfare state socialism, etc. They're all types of socialism, which is the idea that there's a collective kind of ownership of private property There's different arguments for it. There's different flavors of it fascism totalitarianism communism theocracy welfareism, etc, but Left and right doesn't make a big difference to us and they're both flawed So this argument about whether we're from the right or from the left. I think is a is a stupid flawed argument We're not from either. We're actually Look, I'm proud to be libertarian. I'm very proud to be libertarian, and I think we are far superior I'm not saying there's nothing to learn from other people. There's something you can learn from left writers You got to be aware that they're economically illiterate usually. There's something to learn from conservatives But you have to be aware that they have other problems, too I'm not saying we can't learn from people, but we are far superior to these people They're both our enemies in a sense. They're the enemies of society and humankind Well, so either it's either aggression or it's not aggression I mean those are the only two options and this is the thing when like anarcho capitalism the term is really redundant Because to me you could people who say capitalism if you're not going to allow people to trade money freely and peacefully They're not really a capitalist and anarcho capitalism It's redundant because those two things are the same thing and when people say libertarian I think that the people who go into politics with the and use the the big L libertarian I don't want to attack anybody but The very base libertarian is Is an ago capitalism I mean it's it's the idea that you have free will and non aggression and that if you go out into a System of aggression even I know they're trying to limit it in many cases, but even to me then Libertarian the the actual real definition for libertarian It's just free will just like anarcho capitalism or voluntarism or all that stuff They all mean the same thing to me which yeah, which is why you you I mean maybe you and others use the word Voluntary, so I'm not hostile to that term at all I mean I I I understand why you use it. I think there's something to that. I mean it's about Doing things voluntarily. It's about consensualism. It's about You should leave other people alone Unless they volunteer or agree to it, right? It's you know living that live basically is the philosophy Right. Hey Harrison has one more question for us. He says Mike last thing. Could you put forth the question of is? Self just a mental state due to biological reasons and hence the reason to advocate for body ownership Since the body is physical yet. I don't know if I understand that or can answer that but Let me give my take on it. I'm not a I don't pretend to be a philosopher I I think that we have the ability as humans We're fairly advanced and we have concepts and intelligence and language and we can communicate with each other And I think you can use fairly common sense terms in conceptual ways It seems to me clear that the concept of self is different than the concept of body Accepting that sort of dualistic notion is not mystical necessarily you can be religious or you can be non religious to still hold its view Just like me is distinguished between behavior and action right behavior is the actual motions of a body that you observe Action is a choosing being acting with a purpose now By reasonable inference and introspection and knowledge of ourselves when we see another human body behaving We impute to it action. We assume that it's acting right. We assume. It's not a robot And I think it's a reasonable assumption, but there's a difference between action and behavior There's a difference between body and person. There's a difference between mind and brain For example, the brain weighs about three pounds, but the mind has no weight a dead body has a brain But has no mind for example that you don't have to be a mystic or a religious or supernatural person to believe in In a conceptual distinction between these things So to my mind as a lawyer as a legal minded person as a libertarian the word self to me identifies your person hood Who you are as a leave a person with legal rights now? I don't believe that there's a soul floating out there in some ethereal object Controlling your body like a puppet on a string. Some people might have that model. I don't care if they have that model That's fine. I just think conceptually the concept of person hood is distinct from the body, but they're bound up together They're also connected to each other. So I would say that Consciousness or the mind is my view personal views the mind is an epiphenomena of the activity of the brain but that doesn't mean it does it's not a real phenomena that has a Legitimate or valid conceptual referent the concept of mind has a referent It's a description of the phenomenon that we do observe that exists in reality I think it's thrown off by the brain, but that's fine, right? So I think person hood is more of a legal concept of identifying who you are As as a legal person a person with legal rights That kind of stuff so the self to me is some kind of nebulous vague concept of your identity as a person Which is associated with a given body, but the body is a corporeal Material tangible scarce resource that has a beginning and an end and changes over time So I think there's a conceptual distinction and you know various philosophers Probably have defined and legal philosophers have defined These terms more precisely, but it seems clear to me that there's a distinction between them Which is why I balk at the idea of self ownership Although I use it myself, but more or less as a synonym for body ownership. You know, here's one thing I could argue to what we don't know exactly if somebody dies. Is there some My new weight I'm talking point zero zero One pounds that are lost or ounces or grams, you know that is there once you lose consciousness There's some weight go away, you know just to help solidify the difference between the two well People have tried to measure that before actually tried, but can they Well, they've never they've never detected any difference and a lot of say religious or supernatural people would say that the whole the whole project is misguided because The soul is not a corporeal thing. So then I don't know what it is Right, but you what you just reminded me of was I just heard something recently. I forgot who it was It was an older lecture where the The speaker of or maybe there's a clip from oh, it's clipped from a movie It's a clip from a movie where they talk about the weight of smoke. You've heard about that. I Haven't heard like if you have a cigar you smoke have what what a smoke way Oh, okay. Gotcha, and they said you can never you can't weigh smoke It just goes open to the air and the guys know here's how you do it Take a cigar you weigh it on a scale Then you smoke it carefully And you tip all the ashes onto the scale and when you're done smoking you put the rest of it on there And the difference is the weight of the smoke What it lost and you could actually measure that the smoke does have some mass right right Unlike the alleged soul That's interesting. That's that's good stuff. So I'm gonna have to have you back on the show Thank you so much for doing it enjoyed it Michael. Yes, sir a great conversation. I'll talk to you soon buddy Everyone thank you guys so much for checking out triple V as you guys know I have shows coming out every single day sometimes two or three hopefully the diet I'm gonna have a brand new video talking about these a whole narration video series I got going talking about the unseen costs of the state. It's a very powerful narration video So hopefully I can get it out by tonight. I'm planning on at least by six o'clock Tomorrow I will be on zeitgeist radio and they will be drilling me with questions on anarcho capitalism I'll try not to get caught in their trap of having them Basically say well, this is only one way to do the non-aggression principle, right? So Well, we'll definitely have a good show on that tomorrow and then obviously I have Daniel Rothschild on Friday And then I shoot in the studio for the brand new internet TV show that we're starting up on Saturday Which will hopefully be released on Sunday. So very busy schedule for me If you guys ever have a question about my schedule or you want to have somebody on my show go over to voluntary virtues calm Click on the little calendar button and you can always message directly and I will try to get back to you as soon as possible guys Thank you so much for checking out triple V as you guys know I will talk to you soon. Have a great day. Bye. Bye