 All right, thank you for inviting me. Thanks for participating in this event and in this debate and thank you all for coming. Let me just correct one thing about the description of my position. I am not for a minimal state. I am for a limited state and I think there is a big difference between a minimal state. I don't think this is an issue of size. I don't think it's an issue of how big the state is. This is purely an issue of whether there should be a state and then if there is a state what should it do? And I believe in a limited state, a state limited, a government limited to the protection of individual rights and that should be its only function and it should be of a size necessary for it to fulfill that function. When we think of living in a society, when we think of what happens when we come together in a social context, there are only two options. We can either live by the rule of gangs, we live by the rule of violence and force or we can live in a right-respecting government state. There are many options in between. We can have mixtures of them, we can have some gangs and some protection of rights, but the end of the day it extremes. There is a right-respecting government which I think is the appropriate way to live or there is gang warfare. Communism is gang warfare. It is one particular gang in the name of the proletarian inflicting its ideas on everybody else and monopolizing the use of violence over a region, but it's about violence. Nazism is a form of gang warfare. And I actually think anarchism is a form of gang warfare. Without the monopoly, but it is a system of legitimizing force that force is something to be traded in, force is something to be negotiated. It is a system that places might above right. Most societies today are a mixture of those two. We have elements of organized monopolistic coercion, the state regulating the state redistributing wealth and all of that. We have elements of relative freedom from coercion where the state is actually protecting our rights, protecting us from crooks and criminals and fraudsters, arbitrating disputes rationally and objectively. We don't have, in my view, in the world in which we live today, which is a mixture of these two extremes if you will. We even have today a form of anarchy within our societies. It's called the mafia. We have different groups of mafia. They interact with one another primarily through the use of force, although they sometimes have what we call treaties and arrangements on who gets the inflict violence against whom. Gangs in southern Los Angeles have very strong, you know, those kind of relationships where they inflict violence, but they also have agreements about this area. I sell drugs. Those area you sell drugs once in a while. We fight and we kill each other, but generally they have their own little governments within a new region in which the big government, the federal government does not protect rights. Those neighborhoods in LA are not, the government is not protecting rights. So to me, this issue of anarchy or, I don't know, stateless society, which I assume means no government, is on the same category as authoritarianism because it is a system of legitimizing force. Are you going to tell me how much time I have? Because I've lost track. Okay, so how much time do I have? I've only spoken for four minutes? Well, oh, I have four minutes left. Ten more minutes. Okay, cool. So that is, I consider anarchy a form of authoritarianism. And I think it's inevitable outcome, the inevitable outcome of any anarchy, the inevitable outcome of any system that places might above right is that that who has the most might wins, that who has the most might inflicts his ideology, his ideas, his power over everybody else. What's much more interesting to me is what a proper government looks like. And I think a proper government is necessary for human success, human flourishing, human production, human reason to be achieved. The fundamental, the fundamental means by which human beings survive, the fundamental means by which human beings thrive, the fundamental means by which we as human beings achieve success, including happiness is by the use of our reason, by the use of our mind. The enemy of the mind, the enemy of reason, and therefore the enemy of human life is force, coercion, authority. It is somebody else using violence against us. Violence is the enemy of thinking and therefore the enemy of human life. Therefore, to live in a society, to live in a community, to live together, which is an enormous value for human beings, there is an enormous value for us to be together, not to be isolated on desert islands. To live together, we must, we must extract violence from human interaction. One thing that is unacceptable is the use of force between individuals. One thing is unacceptable is to use coercion. Therefore, coercion, violence, force must be extracted from human society. That is why we form government. That is the role of government, to be the monopoly over the use of retaliatory force. What we don't want is individuals based on their whim, based on their emotion of the moment, based on their ideas, using force on other people because they think they somehow have been wronged. That use of force has to be placed under objective authority. It has to be placed in the, in the, the behest of that agency responsible for protecting our rights. Individual rights are the means by which we subjugate a society to moral law. It is the means by which we recognize the fact that an individual, individual has a right to his own life, is free, must live his life free from coercion, free from force. And the job of government is to protect that individual from criminals, mafias, gangsters, to protect that individual from the use of force against him. And to arbitrate disputes between us even when there's no criminal involved. Sometimes good, rational individuals disagree. And there has to be a mechanism by which that dispute is resolved without us having to go into the street to duel it out. Peaceful resolution of disagreement is an important function of government. But all of these functions are complicated. They're hard to figure out. What is violence? What counts as force and coercion? How should disputes be resolved? Where are rights being infringed? And how does one protect against the infringement of rights? All of those questions, procedures about discovering who is, who did what? What are the procedures of evidence? What are the procedures of courts? How do you determine the guilt of somebody or the innocence of somebody? Do you use a jury trial in that case? How does a jury trial proceed? The whole process of defending individual rights is a complex, complex process. It is not obvious. It is not simple. And it must be done objectively. It must be done based on ideas, based on rational ideas, not based on whim, not based on I'll do it my way, you do it your way. How do we, how do we resolve things if that is done? There has to be one ultimate authority that determines which way is right. What rules of evidence count? What rules of evidence don't count? What is legitimate? What is illegitimate when presenting facts? Or what are facts? How do we determine them? So the government's job is a complex one because it requires objectivity. It requires dedication to the facts of reality. But there is no way around it. Government is not a necessary evil as many menarchists would argue. Government is a necessary good because it is a requirement for human survival, human success, human thriving. Without it, we cannot, we cannot peacefully plan long term, know what the clear rules and guidelines are for behavior, know where we violate somebody else's rights and where we don't. Without it, we have no certainty whether our actions are legitimate or illegitimate. Whether we're going to be prosecuted by some legal agency or not be prosecuted by a legal agency. Government is required in order to provide that objectivity which allows us to plan for the future, to think, to act and to pursue a life, liberty and happiness. So, government is a necessary good. Anything that undermines, undermines the legitimate function of government works against the individual, his rights and his ability to live a successful life. Now, the fact that governments today don't live up to the standard of what a good government should be is not a reason to abandon the idea of good government, the idea of individual rights. And to the extent that life in the world today is pretty good, to the extent that people do produce and build and create stuff is to the extent that governments are indeed protecting those realms in which we are acting, protecting our rights in those limited realms. The fight needs to be to properly define individual rights and to bring about governments that properly understand the limited role in only protecting those rights, to get governments to stop violating our rights, to stop adhering to the gangs who advocate for redistribution of wealth or advocate for regulating this industry versus that industry, to eliminate the rights violating aspects of government and secure the rights protecting aspects of government. Thank you. Thank you. What is the difference between objective and non-objective law and what are the consequences in society of each? That is one of the most important questions today. And objective law is a law which defines objectively what constitutes a crime or what is forbidden and the kind of penalties that a man would incur if he performs the forbidden action. Objective means definable, graspable by irrational consciousness. Therefore, an objective law would be a law which a man can understand and apply so that every man ahead of committing an action would be able to tell what is the crime forbidden, what penalty would he incur if he commits it and can make a decision accordingly. To be a law-abiding citizen he should be able to understand the law and apply it as guidance to his own social actions. Now, a non-objective law is one which cannot be defined. It means a law without specific definition which may have as many different interpretations as there are men. Under a non-objective law, a citizen cannot tell what is permitted or forbidden. He cannot tell what action is socially accepted, what action will be punished and what will be the nature of the punishment. A non-objective law is left strictly at the interpretation of the authorities, usually the judges and the dictatorships, it would be the commissars, but in any case a non-objective law is one which a man cannot interpret himself, a law that is not defined and is in fact undefinable. The best example of it is of course anti-trust legislation where a man cannot tell actually what is permitted to him or what is forbidden and may commit a legal crime without knowing that he's doing it. Mr. Ryan, a very popular legal doctrine holds that law is actually what the judges say it is and that legislative enactments are only sources of the law which the judges use to derive what they believe the law is. Do you believe this is a primary cause of the present state of non-objective law? It's not the primary cause, it's one of the manifestations. I believe if I'm not mistaken it was Justice Holmes, Oliver Wendell Holmes who originated that doctrine. He was the worst philosophical influence on American law. That is a statement of pure non-objectivities, is the formula for tyranny, because if the laws are whatever the judges interpret, I don't see the purpose of having any laws at all. It simply means that whatever the judges or the authorities decide at any given moment will determine what happens to the citizens of a country. It is not a formulation of law, it's the destruction, the negation of the concept of law.