 Well, what a fantastic week. I want to thank all of you personally for coming here this week making the trek during the COVID era and We really appreciate you're spending some time with us You know a lot of people say in this day and age. Well build your own platforms build your own institutions And I think in a sense that's exactly what we've done here at the Mises Institute we've created an educational organization that has Thousands and thousands and thousands of videos and articles and books are all available online free around the world Instantaneously in many different languages, and I think that's what building your own institutions is really all about You know, there's a sometimes reminded. There's a great scene and he's pronto's fans in the audience But there's a great scene where some hapless victim is standing there in front of Tony and and Silvio and Paulie Walnuts And he says something like God the Romans, you know, where are they now? And Tony says you're looking at a mass hole and sometimes that's how I feel about the Austrians, you know, here we are So our topic today is really the topic de jour in America. It's the mob and I don't think we're gonna ever look back on 2020 without thinking about it talking about the mob And so I think we all understand at least in this room that mobs are presented sort of halfway house of sorts between politics on the one hand at outright civil war on the other So they're kind of this midway point between, you know, politely telling your neighbor what to do via the ballot box and Actually going over and burning your neighbor's house down So this is the choice. Of course, it's always facing America Namely mobs or markets and it's the choice that always and everywhere exists two ways of organizing society Which are inherently intention, but which have been brought into very stark focus by the events of 2020 So I think understanding the reality of that choice Helps us to sort of reframe our program of political and economic and personal liberty and to something That's maybe more coherent and especially more urgent. I Think we've come to the point where it's time to abandon some of the stilted language and thinking of The old tacit social arrangement in this country because that arrangement no longer exists So 2020 It's definitely the year peak mob and it's easy enough to ascribe all of this tension Well, we had the George Floyd killing and riots that came after that protests that came after that We've had the stress and tension of COVID-19, which has got a lot of people Stuck at home and sort of angry But we all know that all of this strife was sort of baked into the cake So to speak I mean America had very serious financial problems very serious social and cultural and especially Political problems by that. I mean the politicization of America prior to 2020 But nonetheless if we look at the scoreboard a little bit about 2020 to date and we still got five months ago people You know, we have Minneapolis where from what I read $500 million worth of damage to over 500 buildings matter of fact We have a friend of the Institute who owns a convenience store Minneapolis. He called me yesterday We talked about how he had had some armed guys on his roof for about 10 days of his convenience store So when our friends the less they will they have insurance? Okay, they have insurance Portland, Portlandia has had 50 straight days of rioting and unrest at night still going on the federal courthouse and now a police station are both surrounded So I guess if you have a date in federal court in Portland district You are currently on hold Seattle had the Chas the autonomous zone which was occupied for several weeks. I Went and dug up a story about the Capitol Hill neighborhood in Seattle Which had been a little bit of a rough part of town adjacent to downtown and it had been gentrified over the 1990s especially by the gay community and Had more recently been sort of discovered as a slightly more affordable part of Seattle less 10 years and then a lot of new People came in and the article in question in the Seattle newspaper had a sign up in front of a gay bar that said That was protesting sort of the gentrification of the gentrifiers the earlier gentrifiers and the sign said We moved here to get away from you And I thought man if that were if somebody had that's kind of signed up and a lot of other different contexts That would not be acceptable and it was actually featured in the in this story And of course we've had unrest in Washington DC in Chicago still ongoing the Christopher Columbus statue is being surrounded We have had unrest in Richmond, Virginia Certainly in Los Angeles there was a two-day riot and You want to talk about bad this riot came within about a block of David Gordon's Long-time deli restaurant Cantor's deli. So I mean we talked about civilization here people This is where David Gordon gets his a ham and pastrami every afternoon And and I jest but seriously Cantor's deli is a landmark in Los Angeles been there for decades and the people who own it David is like family to them and vice versa. So there's no joking matter to him and of course Not just riots per se, but also statues have come down all across America not just Lee and Stonewall Jackson and Jefferson Davis and Rothbard's favorite John C. Calhoun in South Carolina But also of course Washington and Jefferson and Grant perhaps and Teddy Roosevelt, maybe Christopher Columbus Maybe some of you saw Nancy Pelosi said the other day when asked about this in her former hometown of Baltimore Where her dad was a nasty cronious mayor said? People will do what they do Which sounds all like people did some things and of course Even father unipero Sarah Who is the great Spanish missionary who built or helped build and start 21 Spanish missions across this home? The state of California has been toppled in San Francisco And that hits a little closer to home because those missions are still active working summaries for a lot of people My own wife has her father's remains At one of the Spanish missions missions just north of San Diego I wonder whether it's maybe time to take your loved ones remains out of those missions I wonder how long those will will last without being defaced or worse And of course we have the McCloskey's in st. Louis who had their home the famous Anheuser-Busch mansion attacked by a mob And showed some very poor Firearms skills when they came out and also we're not exactly dressed for the occasion But you know I give them a lot of credit. They stood in front of their house and they stared down the mob That's not nothing But in addition to all these events that we've read about there are a thousand little micro events by mini mobs every day across America And because everyone has one of these damnable cell phones. They're all being recorded in grocery stores, etc gas stations mini marts at all across America and I know in our own state of Alabama But I suspect across the country that the fact that some of them the pro mask people are now being emboldened by Mandates by sort of what I would call the color of law that we're gonna have a lot more of these incidents with the Maskers you're yelling at people and having altercations So when we look at all these sort of physical tangible Examples of the mob in 2020 the the obvious Historical example we like to look back on is 1968 and you know is this as bad as 1968 none of you were alive, of course And how can we compare the two eras so I did a little digging online And I noticed the first thing it happens in sites like CNN and the Atlantic etc. Is that oh no no no 2020 is nowhere near as bad as 1968 which leads me to believe it's as bad as 1968 Or worse But it's it's awfully hard to compare because you don't really have rest counts or body counts all that sort of stuff It's hard to get and and comparing the dollar amounts of damages is just nominal and that doesn't really work too well but again, we have five months to go in 2020 and You know we think back especially to what happened in Minneapolis and comparing that to Detroit You had sort of the overhang in 1968 of the of the Vietnam War Which have really affected people's consciousness. I hate to say more than our ongoing wars in the Middle East affect ours You also had the fairly recent Assassinations it's still in people's memories of both RFK and Martin Luther King, Jr. So, you know, there was certainly some Unrest at that time that would rival perhaps the unrest we have today of the Trump versus anti-trump and COVID and all these kinds of things But as an aside, you know that great champion of civil liberties With six houses or whatever Mitt Romney Who of course recently made a grandstanding pose of marching with Black Lives Matter the governor of Michigan who actually called out the National Guard to violently quell those 1968 protests Was none other than George Rodney So perhaps he thinks he is atoning for the sins of his father But one thing America did not have in 1968 was the idea of a digital or online mob and that we've got in spades today So that's really creates what we call cancer culture But don't think that cancer culture or online mobs don't have physical manifestations in the sense that they Effect people's real lives in the virtual excuse me in the tangible physical corporal sphere. They do let me throw out some examples of digital mob victims Some of you obviously know gab which was created to try to be an online platform to compete with Twitter That was founded by a gentleman named Andrew Torba. Well, he was recently not only deplatform, but he was debanked And so not only mr. Torba, but everyone in his family everyone in his address Where he lives, which I don't know if he has children or not is no longer able to use the services of commercial banks a Little closer to home some of some of the professors in our circles know Professor Harold Ulig at the University of Chicago Who was at one time the department chair? And he is currently barely Editor of the Journal of Political Economy, which is a prestigious journal in economic circles And he said something a few years ago that was somewhat dismissive I guess allegedly in a class about Martin Luther King and a student wrote this down and this was 2015 or something But then this this somehow came to light in 2020 and and they tried to cancel him from this position Of course, we have James Bennett the editor of the New York Times who was recently forced basically by the mob To step down after I guess He green-lighted in an editorial by that horrible senator Tom Cotton I think it was basically, you know, unleash the hounds or something like that But nonetheless as an editorial decision And we recently just a couple days ago saw this letter in Harper's About some sort of more old-fashioned left-wingers Bumoning cancer culture and starting to be a little worried that maybe the guillotine is is being Set up a little closer to their house And I think it was two days ago. We had this grandstanding announcement by Barry Weiss who against all odds Despite being from what I can see someone of no account or intelligence or ability whatsoever A complete cipher landed a job at the new york times And declared her departure because this cancer culture is just too too much You might want to stay tuned to her twitter feed because I suspect she's going to have a soft landing And already had something planned for her own personal finances that tends to run that way in those circles But there have been others and not always on the right oftentimes on the left I mentioned Barry Weiss but The author jk Rowling of the harry potter series and also the great tennis player martin and navet rola navet rola, excuse me Both strong left feminists have come out against Transgenderism in its sense In this in the with the idea that you know men transgender men Positioning themselves of women as I should say biological men positioning themselves as transgender women have started to invade some of the female spaces And that this is actually in encouraging its feminism So both of them have gotten some heat from that And when you think about cancel culture you say well, you know jk Rowling is really rich She has a giant mansion She has all these all this money in the bank So she's going to be fine and that might be true But you know what what if the mob literally comes to her neighborhood? Like it did with the mcloskies in she called excuse me at st. Louis. What if it just surrounds her street? This has happened in places like bel air and Beverly Hills recently All of her neighbors are going to you know, not want this commotion and she might be stuck in her house not able to leave in a car So the idea that money insulates you and and if we're going to have all kinds of penalties in people's lives for offending the woke gods Then why wouldn't that also extend to a civil penalty? Why shouldn't you the uk passed some law that jk Rowling is actually Oaks a civil penalty. Why shouldn't they actually be able to go after her money and her mansion? It seems like about a quarter step away from where we are. I'm not so sure that's far-fetched But I before we move I just want to mention that sometimes you have to have a little shut Shade and froida a little a little like excitement when some people are canceled I'm against cancel culture, but There's nothing wrong with feeling a little twinge of happiness from time to time And this is surely something we can all feel when certain celebrities get the boot including some who have done blackface Jimmy Fallon Apparently, I you know did a skit years ago where he pretended to be the comic Sarah Silverman Apparently has done blackface You know, so these kinds of things tend to come back to bite the people who Put them in motion and most recently A black celebrity and podcaster named Nick Cannon It's got found himself in trouble and potentially being canceled by the mob and I don't know who he is until this week So I can't opine much more on that But it's just interesting to see this stuff happening to people who perhaps thought that they were not only immune But in the vanguard of this revolution so For our purposes talking about the mob, we cannot imagine that it's not going to come for economics. Of course, it's going to come for economics If you're familiar with fin twit financial twitter There are some voices on the left who Occupy that space very noisily people like Noah smith who goes by no opinion a writer at at Bloomberg Marshall Steinbaum Sort of a hack economist at University of Utah Stephanie kelton Who is now famous for the for being the sort of the laziest proponent of mmt, which you heard about earlier this week She also has a new book called the deficit myth I think these people are really sort of replacing the old guard left In economics the brad de longs and the greg man cues and and perhaps even the paul krugman's Forbes recently had an article in Forbes, right? We think of Forbes is sort of a pro market publication not so much Had had an article about check out these five new economists new new new Remaking the science, you know as though there's not an edifice or a body To economics it just needs to be remade and they were all they were all females And so the article really hyped that up and and it just typed up their femaleness None of them were really free market or or how you know capitalists they were it was just One of them was a big green one of them was ester du flow recently wanted Co one and a Nobel for behavioral economics, which is nonsense one of them was kelton You know, so it was just it was just all about their femaleness not about their the fact that the Economics, which they professor practices from where I sit egregiously wrong and misguided But when Forbes uses the term remaking economics I think that tells you a lot about what you need to know because a lot of people on the left Especially but on the right somewhat they think economics isn't a real science It's just sort of a bunch of intellectual cover for business interests And that you can kind of make it up as you go and that economies can be commanded By legislatures with things like minimal wage for example or tariffs or whatever it might be And so economics isn't a real science You get a lot of that sense From fin to it That we need new economics And so let's not forget The mob has gone after the english literary canon And in some part because it mostly consists of a bunch of dead white males Shakespeare etc So if we look back at the body of knowledge, we have an economics the edifice, you know Whether you're talking about adam smith or marks or canes or marshall or samuelson or stiglitz not to mention The austrians like mises and hayek That's a bunch of dead white guys And there is this sense almost a polylogism Foot mises talked about well, there's different logics for different groups of people defending on their their political persuasion All that I think we're starting to see that that there's different economics for different people And I would argue that if jefferson in washington can fall to the mob We certainly shouldn't think that canes and paul krugman can't they can Uh the mob has also come for political Libertarianism no question about it I've mentioned this in the past, but i'm a huge fan a very brief essay that george orwell penn from magazine in 1946 Called uh politics in the english language. Look it up. It's online readable great little quick article And one of the sections he has and that's called meaningless words And meaningless words are words that are used by the political or media or influential class in in what he terms consciously dishonest ways Obviously to try to persuade you to their way of thinking And I fear that the term libertarian Or libertarianism is now One of orwell's meaningless words just like liberal and liberalism has unfortunately become by usage I'm I'm a stickler for the english language, but I also understand that meanings change by usage. That's a fact I've always thought libertarian works better as an adjective not as a noun You know I someone who favors a libertarian drug policy or a libertarian criminal policy or something where where the goal is less state or no state involvement in that sphere of life but Libertarianism noun comes sort of pushes us into this realm where we're talking about being libertarian You know not not so much in the sense of purity tests But though there's a particular sort of type of person or a particular worldview Or a particular outlook that makes one a libertarian as opposed to A sort of a narrow or political and legal theory so I think that's that's uh It's interesting how what a word that really started out as an adjective morphed into a noun And of course today we have the term libertarian or libertarianism Being something that really accepts the language and the framing and the issues and the context even the goals of progressive starting with of course egalitarianism But also this idea that Uh, we need to have an obsession With race and racism with sex and sexuality is political issues And that there's this this phony dichotomy somehow between social issues and economics That's that's of course not true And I fear that as with most movements you could say this even about the Austrian school I would say in a positive way there But in a negative way here is that the sociology of a movement sort of becomes The movement in other words the sociology becomes the ideology the kind of person Becomes the person and so when we allow ourselves to politicize what ought not be political I think this sort of inexorably moves libertarians towards a direction really of of an outright Positive rights worldview and I think that's a very dangerous thing So what we think of as libertarianism today is kind of this muddy mixture of liberation theology I don't like all these constraints on my person and my Self-actualization Which is you know self actualization is a fine thing and we should all work on ourselves, but it's not a political thing It's not something that you need to have as part of your politics And when you when you sort of smuggle it in I think you do injury to that to that concept If we look at a lot of the great libertarian thinkers of the 20th century Uh, you could say albert j knock even iron ran the tana hills Robert nosig sam conkin And of course rothbard at hoppe from our perspective a lot of what we think of as libertarian political theory I think has really been done Uh, you know the idea of anarcho capitalism and how far you can take things with respect to courts and law and police I think has really been done So it's far more interesting today than libertarian theory is the applications Of what a stateless society might look like whether that's you know Where the someone thinks bitcoin is that argument or or uber comes along and just disposes of the of the taxi monopoly Sort of by stealth working in the gray market However, you know, I find those applications more interesting than the theory at this point and so because the mob has sort of Come even for you know, this minority political perspective of libertarianism I think it now is a political program remains pretty hopeless And I think uh, if there's any hope for it, it's at the smaller More localized level So if the mob Has come for us Both literally in a physical sense of statues and the like but also in the digital online space What what's our goal with respect to what's our job with respect to promoting what we would consider sensible Economics or sensible liberty sensible political views Well, I think there's perhaps an argument for reframing the way we look at the world Rachel put this together for me quickly, but you know, we have a whole a range of things that a hierarchy Of what compels us to certain actions and what persuades us with respect to certain actions And I'm a lot more I'm a lot happier with persuading people than compelling them So if we look at this hierarchy, you think there's all kinds of things that might persuade you starting with your own self And your own agency and your conscience, you know, your parents the society around you Social pressure maybe even things which you voluntarily Decide to do like entering into an HOA or Work under certain workplace rules at your job So, uh, you know, these are all examples of we can do things without force and compulsion But on the upper tier we have sort of a hierarchy of things that comprise force and compulsion Which are which are sort of on the rise at the very worst end. We have wars outright wars. We have concentration camps We have sort of a police state and mobs and politics engaging in politics and we're sort of there So unfortunately, I think we're climbing that hierarchy rather than coming down it and a lot of human history has been about trying to come down That hierarchy not climate So I think that's really what we have before us in the task of reframing economics and political liberty into something that's more about Our opposition to the mob And the antidote To the mob the corrective to the mob the countervailing force to the mob Is the marketplace Economics if we think about it correctly is really counter politics Because entrepreneurs are the real revolutionaries not politicians not political activists Entrepreneurs are the people out there doing the hard work of creating win-win Trades for people while the political class is out there creating and expanding that zero sum game which moves us The wrong way up this ladder So the entrepreneur replaces the political activists in when we sort of think of reframing things as markets Versus the mob build It really means persuade So mesas gave us this great conception Of liberalism and this to me is one of the greatest sentences he ever wrote He said the the program of liberalism If condensed into a single word would have to read property I mean, that's an incredible statement if you think about it and property, of course It implies a lot of things it implies capital implies production It implies win-win. It implies trade It implies material benefit And that ladies and gentlemen is how we get civilization not through the mob. We get it through markets You know murray Rothbard takes pains at the beginning of man economy and state to point out that Economics as a sort of subset of praxeology concerns itself with voluntary action choice exchange all of which are naturally bound up Perhaps not explicitly perhaps not even consciously, but they're naturally bound up in our notions of political liberty But they can be planted in people's minds Without all the normative strictures necessarily of ethics So I really like Rothbard's framing of market versus the mob, which is basically power versus market That's what he chose to title that section of man economy and state, which is also a standalone book It's the fundamental way we present. I think to the outside world the two choices that are in front of us And of course this echoes Franz Oppenheimer's dictum that we have sort of two basic choices the economic means or the political means So to me, this is a very satisfying way to frame things because We can talk to people without politics No politics. That's what I want Is a world without them and really entrepreneurs are out there doing that they're living without politics They're living outside of politics and that doesn't mean politics doesn't affect them Of course criminality affects every entrepreneur There's public criminality and private criminality. Why do you lock the door of your store at night? Well Okay, so entrepreneurs work around the state the same way they work around people who might want to come break into their store at night But I got to tell you in closing here 2020 is starting to feel pretty late in the game You know, I think the the mobs are moving us towards compulsion So I think we have to oppose not only the mob but mobs per se on the principle that the mob Is the enemy of markets and civilization because ultimately as we have seen and as some of our friends on the left have seen Just in the past few months ultimately the mob is going to come for all of us So our fight today is really Not so much libertarianism versus stateism or agorism or voluntarism or all of these different words we think of it's really about Markets versus mobs. It's about reasonable reasonable people Versus unreasonable people. It's about civilization versus de-civilization and that's what we have unfortunately happening Here in the united states of america So i'm going to close with some ancient wisdom regarding mobs. This isn't new This is ancient wisdom from all the way back in 1981 From that ancient philosopher king Ronnie james deo of black sabbath Who wrote in 1981 for the movie heavy metal the great song the mob rules And ronnie james deo says close the city and tell the people that something's coming to call death and darkness are rushing forward sounds like covet If you listen to fools the mob rules and of course, that's why all of you are here this week. Thank you so much