 This is Mises Weekends with your host, Jeff Deist. Hey, ladies and gentlemen, welcome back. Once again, it's Mises Weekends. We're joined by our good friend, Dr. Bob Murphy, who's today in his office at Texas Tech. Bob, how you doing? Doing great, Jeff. Thanks for having me. Well, you know, I looked back and I noticed that we have never done a Mises Weekend show on the subject of climate change, which was a little surprising to me. And it's very much in the news. We just recently had these 13 U.S. federal government agencies release their joint climate assessment for which the Trump administration was immediately attacked. And of course, we have these riots going on in France, even as we speak, which are at least in part fueled by a gasoline tax that President Macron has imposed to fight climate change. Well, I thought it was a good time to bring up the issue, but I want to just set it up a little bit this way with you, Bob. There's a lot of questions behind the science itself. That interests me less than the politics and the economics of the whole climate change movement. So we have a few questions to consider to get out of the way. First and foremost, is climate change real? Is the earth really warming? Number two, if it is real and the earth really is warming, is that caused at least in part by human activity? And if number one and number two are correct, number three is, well, what do you do about it? What sort of trade-offs should we accept to stave off the danger posed by a warming climate? So a lot of questions here, but Bob, I'd like to talk more about number three, what should we do about it? Give us your take having studied this more than I have. Okay, sure. And let me just add, there's actually like a step 2.5 in there is, suppose climate is changing and humans are partially responsible, is it helping humanity or hurting it, right? I mean, people just assume that, wouldn't it be weird if the optimal temperature for humanity happened to be prevailing in the year 1800? You know what I mean? And so, and that's not just merely a rhetorical question that some of the studies on the economics of climate change do show that for modest warming, actually it confers net benefit. So I know this is talking like a mainstream economist, but I'm just saying, even on their own terms, the actual published literature, it's not obvious. So for a lot of them, they would say, oh, well, the warming that's gonna happen through like the year 2050 is good, but then after that, it really starts rapidly turning around. And so we just gotta get ahead of the curve and start slowing emissions. And in just so in case your listeners are wondering, like, well, how could it help? Well, if it gets warmer, then fewer elderly people die in the winter or there's certain regions where they could grow, agriculture would be enhanced. Also, the more CO2 there is in the air, that's better for crops in general. Okay, so again, it's just odd how people automatically assume that warming temperatures are necessarily bad. And no, why would you have assumed that? So that's an issue as well. So your approach is the one that I've taken. So I've been working on climate change issues for many years now. Rob Bradley, who founded the Institute for Energy Research got me into it. He actually got, Murray Rothbard was his PhD supervisor. So Rob wasn't at UNLV. He was a different school, but they allowed you to have somebody else be your chair. And so actually Rob is one of, I think maybe a few people who has a PhD that technically Rothbard was his supervisor. And yeah, I have always, what's interesting is when I first got into it, I thought I was gonna have to go to these so-called skeptic scientists or whatever, deniers as they would be dismissed as. And that's not the case at all. All I do with all the work I've been doing on this, I mostly just quote stuff from the Obama administration or from the UN and say, look, their own reports do not support the conclusion, right? So in their executive summary or their summary for policymakers and then what the New York Times runs with are these blaring headlines or like this latest national climate assessment. All you have to do is read the thing and you can see, no, actually this doesn't support what the headline takeaway was. Right, well, isn't that pretty sorted though the way they use the term denier, which is of course to link people who are skeptical about climate change with Holocaust deniers. So talk about a scummy rhetorical tactic. I mean, it's a shutdown term just like racist. It's designed to say, no, no, no, you're a bad person because you think bad things about this. Now, let me just ask you and I do not know the answer to this. Does IER get any money or funding from people who might benefit from climate change skepticism? So they, and I generally don't know exactly who the donors are, but they do get money from certain companies but it's more mid-range things. My understanding is that the big company, like Exxon and whatever, don't fund them. They may have in the past, I'm not sure, but they don't anymore because the big oil companies actually have now bet on climate change, right? And so they get invested natural gas and things. So it is funny to me when people say stuff like, well, geez, even Exxon now supports a carbon tax. And it's like, well, because they've invested a lot natural gas and that helps their business model now and it squeezes the mid-level guys who actually would benefit from the status quo. So that's, I guess, my answer on that one. So Bob, a lot of people will just say, oil interests and people like the Koch brothers like to fund climate change denial because it's in their interests to continue to have an oil-based economy. Sure, I mean, that's certainly the case. So I guess, given that some people would benefit from certain things, they're obviously gonna pay people, they're gonna support stuff that helps them. And the opposite thing is to say, well, all these people who are on the payroll of the government, the government benefits from a carbon tax and taking over the energy sector. And yet that skepticism doesn't go the other way. So all I can say is as far as the work that people do, just look at it and see if it is slanted because it's of the funding, there'd be what's the mistake in the research, so. I would say that the average Mises Institute donor might be a little skeptical about it, but is open to it. I mean, where should an average person, open-minded person, a person of good will, where should they go to get past the headlines? Where could they go to read some science about climate change? Because again, I'm more interested in the politics and economics beyond that. But if I wanted to look into is climate change real? Is it man-made? Is it harmful? Where would be a good place for me as a libertarian-minded guy to start? I guess I would say something pretty safe and right down the middle is Judith Curry's blog. And so she was somebody who, she's a climate scientist. I don't remember what her exact area of specialization was, but I think the big picture on her I'm not saying that she's the single best person, but in terms of someone who's concerned and I get what you mean about funding and politics and whatever, and ideologies that she was in the mainstream as it were. And then just over time, doubts started arising. And then when she just started raising them and saying, you know, on this particular thing, I'm not so sure this is a slam dunk, as we've been saying. And then just the response of her colleagues just biting her head off and saying, oh, you don't wanna go with those deniers, do you? That kind of stuff, you know, we play ball and let's, and so I think that, and she became more and more ostracized and then, you know, and now, so I don't even, I think the term she would use is what's called a luke warmer. And so what that means is people who they say, yes, you know, it's more CO2, that's gonna trap more heat, the standard, you know, greenhouse effect and so forth. But, and just so your listeners know, Jeff, that even in these models where really bad things happen and there's a runaway climate change, that's not a mere matter of chemistry or the standard greenhouse effect, you have to have what's called positive feedbacks. So it's like, oh, is there's a little bit of the direct warming from these effects, then the polar ice caps melt and then this happens and da, da, da, da, and so it's, you know, it's a bunch of things that all cascade where somebody else's model might say, well, no, if there's more things and there's more clouds and maybe that reflects some of the sunlight, maybe there's a negative feedback. So my point is that it's, you know, they're arguing over what's gonna, what's happening in these computer simulations it's not merely extrapolating the historical trends that if that's all that we're happening, it wouldn't be catastrophic. It's that they have to build in things, you know, where there's genuine disagreement. So I think Judith Curry is a good place to start then people can just read and see. And also just like the tone also, let's see, Roy Spencer is somebody that I think seems pretty, you know, just hit the tone, I've seen him give talks and whatever in terms of personality. So I guess I would say those two and then people can go from there. But that's what I would say in terms of, you know, you feel like the person doesn't have an agenda that they're honestly trying to just say, here's what the latest findings are. And by me not mentioning other people, it's not that I'm saying they're all not like that. It's just that I could see how, you know, depending on their affiliations, people might be skeptical. But it's not just the politics and the funding. I mean, think about it, there's a psychology to this. There's so much money and jobs and reputations on the line. There's almost a sunk cost psychology against ever admitting you were wrong. Can these scientists, on either side of this, can they ever change their minds? You know, because sometimes it takes us 50 years to find out someone was disastrously wrong about someone, about something like the overpopulation stuff that Paul Eric was pushing in the 60s and 70s. Now we find out wasn't correct. And there's almost a sunk psychology to all of this. You're right. And I think that's part of the danger when it really is just this, you know, empirical issue. And also, by the way, that's partly why early on, I was always trying to make sure my analysis, because number one, I'm not a climate scientist. So, you know, I don't know as much as these people do. But I didn't want to say, oh, the reason there shouldn't be a carbon tax is because you know what, I've looked at it and I don't think that actually the upper troposphere's done, do blah, blah. You know, that's because that could just go the other way. And then so you certainly wouldn't want to build a case about, you know, the use of coercion on something like that. So that's why I've always tried to just remain agnostic and say, look, I'm just gonna go with what, you know, these so-called mainstream sources say. And you're right. The problem with demonizing the other side and as you're calling us deniers and all these things is that yeah, how can you walk back from that? They're really, you know, all these are just rhetoric about, you know, this is the fundamental issue of our generation. And this is, how can you possibly tiptoe back from that when you've made it that this is like the modern civil rights movement, like as Cortez is saying and so forth, that they infuse it with all sorts of different things. And so yes, there's no possible way psychologically they could say, oh geez, all those people I was demonizing is wanting to kill our grandchildren or horrible monsters. It turns out they were actually trying to preserve our liberty and no one's ever gonna say that. How could you live with yourself if you realize you've been doing that? Well, what would they have us do if we believe the Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's of the world? What would they have us do? Because as you've pointed out, a carbon tax is not enough. Right, so yeah, I think you're referring, I had a recent IER piece on that where called climate interventionists won't stop with a carbon tax. So just the context here, Jeff, is there's a lot of economists who are generally sympathetic to the free market might even call themselves libertarian. And they've been saying to libertarians and conservatives for a few years now, hey guys, why don't we make a deal with the left on this carbon tax stuff? Because look it, I know maybe Al Gore's crazy and whatever, but either way, as long as they agree that it's revenue neutral and that we use the receipts to lower corporate income tax or personal income tax, whatever payroll tax, that we'll get a boost to the economy or at least it won't be a big deal and then they'll get their thing and then we'll get rid of all the cafe standards, we'll get rid of the clean power plan, we'll get rid of all these crazy top-down regulations and just put a price on carbon. And so there's lots of stuff wrong with that strategy including that historically they're not revenue neutral that there's always a net tax hike even in British Columbia that the which for a few years looked like they were obeying that pledge and now they're cooking the books and that's a net tax hike. But beyond that, it's just going to the progressives and I'm not going to some like crazy Marx's website or something, just like people at Vox and so forth, they openly talk about how no, a carbon tax is just one arrow in the quiver, we have to have all sorts of regulations and everything is on the table. It's they want to have industrial planning, they efficiency standards, they want to revamp the transportation sector, they want to have research and development funding from the government for solar and wind and batteries and all this other stuff and even things like your diet, that's a big thing. And then one of the most chilling aspects is how they say, wow, in terms of the cost benefit and the numbers, reducing family size, in terms of getting the bang for the buck, I mean, that's really great, just something like giving contraceptive to girls in Africa and things like that. That's really the best way, in terms of the money you spend and how much you reduce emissions because of if they slow population growth, the way they're looking at humans are just these vehicles that end up putting more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. So, probably what I'm saying is this is not merely a technical matter where they're just trying to solve a negative externality with a Pagovian tax. No, they really think capitalism per se is wasteful and there's too much consumption and I'm not putting words in their mouth. Again, you can go through leading people from these camps who will openly say that yes, we need to totally revamp the whole way the global economy works and this is the civil rights movement of our time and this is the defining issue of our generation and they use this transformative language so you can see it's kind of goofy to say, oh, well, look at this report says that GDP will be 3.8% lower and so they're not thinking about it. It's not a matter of fixing a market failure. They think that markets per se are wrong. But I noticed, Bob, this always seems to come from rich white Western nations that have affluenza. In other words, who are we to tell billions of Indians or Chinese that they can't drive automobiles like we do that they can't crank their air conditioning, that they can't enjoy air travel like us? I mean, there's a lot of hubris in this, in the West telling the East that they have to moderate their economic aspirations. Oh, definitely, and I mean, it's, I try to shy away from it in my official writings just because I don't wanna play their game and use late, like as they call us a denier and say that they're the white man's burden kind of thing but the way, I mean, there was recently on Vox, Ezra Klein was interviewing Bill Gates and the initial tweet that they sent out on Twitter to promote the interview was just ugh, it was chilling where they say, one of the biggest problems the world is facing, colon, rapid population growth in Africa. Bill Gates explains why and what it will take to turn around on Monday's episode of the Ezra Klein Show. So here's Bill Gates and Ezra Klein casually discussing how are we gonna have there be fewer Africans in the future? And I mean, they were so tone deaf, they didn't even realize that some people were gonna say, ah, that's kind of not a good tweet. You know, they took it down and changed the content or the way they described it. They left the interview up. So I think you're right, Jeff, that this really is a very affluent thing where the, and this is what some of the nations, you know, the poor, less developed nations, when they go to these climate conferences, they bring his points up. They say, wait a minute, you guys are the ones, you know, you're up in the United States who put all the CO2 in the atmosphere so far and now you have a high standard of living and now you're saying that we don't get to build coal-fired power plants, you don't have the cheapest form of electricity, that we have to go up to these next generation things that are more expensive. And so that's partly why in these deals, there's promises of huge amounts of money being transferred from, you know, so-called first world nation governments to the lesser developed ones as part of the package. Like, okay, go along with these emission pledges and on the side here, we'll give you $20 billion, how's that? And so again, just that's partly why this stuff, this engine just keeps rolling. There's all these different people who are motivated by different things. So a lot of, I think people like representatives from these other governments just see a huge gravy train, like, oh, this is the pretext by which we can get the U.S. government to give us billions of dollars. Yeah, so of course, oh, I'm very concerned about climate change. Right, but we don't want people burning coal, but we also don't want them opening nuclear power plants, which doesn't produce any CO2 or raise the temperature of the atmosphere. It's interesting that we're going to force third world countries to go directly to so-called renewables, which are inefficient and costly, as you point out. I mean, this is almost unbelievable. You're not gonna be able to provide electricity for billions of people any time in the near future without burning coal. Right, and this is, I mean, that's a great point, Jeff, and this is why, again, here, I'm speaking with broad strokes and obviously people are individuals and the casual person who just is concerned about the environment, and geez, I don't know if I trust these, but I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about like the committed activist groups, you know, who this is what they do. When they wake up in the morning and they go do climate change all day and then they go to take a break and recharge, that I don't believe them when they say that they really think that our grandchildren face mortal peril if we don't act now to slow emissions because you're right, Jeff, if they did believe that, they would be the biggest proponents of nuclear power and they're not. They don't want there to be new power plants either and so I don't believe them. I think really, they think Americans and other Westerners consume too much and they don't like cheap energy. So it's not that they dislike carbon-intensive energy, I think they don't like cheap energy period that they think that facilitates, you know, the lifestyles that they don't approve of. Right, well, but let's just take the average person in the West, a well-off person who does believe in climate change. What do they really think the trade-off's gonna be? It's just gonna be some amorphous sense of higher taxes mostly on the rich or do they really understand that what we're talking about is a deprivation of lifestyle. Who's gonna turn off their air conditioning? Who's not gonna drive their car when it's convenient? I mean, we're talking about real trade-offs in lifestyle and it's easy to talk about climate change. It's not so easy to change your lifestyle. Yeah, exactly. And this also the polling supports this too, that when you, I mean, it's a standard thing with, it shows the limits of politics and how goofy it is and how, quote, social decisions don't make any sense, you know, compared to private ones, where obviously, yeah, you poll a bunch of Americans and say, are you concerned about climate change? And they'll say yes, you know, I don't know what the numbers would be, but they would say yes, depending on the question was worded. And then if you ask them though, how much would you pay per year to help fight this? And then the number, you know, it's not a huge number. And especially the more accurately you worded to say, would you be willing to pay such and such if it meant, you know, this change in global temperatures. And when you actually show them the trade-off and here's what your cutback would get you and everything, you know, that it's really meaningless. So I think you're right, Jeff, that it's people in general are concerned. And that's a good, it's an admirable thing that if someone is led to believe as they've just been indoctrinated since childhood, you know, for younger people as they go through school, I mean, that's all they hear is climate change, climate change, and you know, this is the modern social injustice of our time and the whole fate of the planets at stake here. I mean, yeah, of course, what a lot of honest good person wouldn't want to do something about that. But then when you actually show them, here's what it would entail. Yeah, all of a sudden, oh geez, yeah, I don't, I kind of like my car and so forth. I like my SUV. Well, the other thing I hear is that it's not a political issue. This is a human rights issue or an issue that all humanity ought to be involved with and that there's no, that we shouldn't even be talking about this in economics terms of trade-offs. And then I've also heard sort of a backup argument. Hey, even if some of our predictions are wrong, it's just gonna mean we'll have a cleaner environment. So that's the worst case scenario, even if we are overstating the long-term impact. Who cares because we'll just have a cleaner environment? This is obviously a very non-economic argument where we're not even talking about trade-offs or what could have been or the seen and the unseen, but rather, hey, who could be against a cleaner environment? So it's interesting that how successful the climate change people have been at eliminating even a discussion of what these trade-offs might look like. Yeah, and to me, maybe, I don't know how solid this analogy is, but I'm sure obviously Mises listeners would get this. It's sort of like with socialism, how originally the claim was, oh, the socialist way of life or method of organization will provide much better goods and services, a higher standard of living for people. And then when it was clear that that wasn't what was gonna happen, that wherever socialism was implemented, obviously there was mass poverty and so forth, especially relative to what otherwise would have happened. Then it went to, oh yeah, the problem with capitalism is mass production and consumerism. You know, I mean, so the argument changed. And similarly here, that yeah, originally, because I've been in this now, let's see, well, more than 10 years at least, originally the claims were that, yes, this is a slam dunk in terms of standard cost-benefit analysis. There's this negative externality and then, you know, I and others were going through there and looking at their own numbers that, well, no, you didn't frame this correctly. Once we take into account, you know, these very practical issues and actually these studies show, and yeah, maybe a very modest carbon tax, but nothing on the order of what you guys are proposing, that what you're saying, using these standard models would be disastrous. Just a quick example, William Nordhaus, who just won the Nobel Prize in economics, you know, for his work on the economics of climate change, his own models recommend allowing for warming that's like over three degrees Celsius. Whereas, you know, now that everybody knows the two degrees Celsius is the absolute limit or else we're just gambling with our faith. So that's what I'm saying is the standard economics and the stuff, even mainstream stuff, not just Austrian things, but in total main, you know, allows for much more than what everybody is now saying is the bare minimum we need to do. So my point, Jeff, is other economists, and I was just pointing this out and then all of a sudden the goalpost move. Now it was not, it was like, oh, well, you can't use standard cost-benefit. The stuff you're saying, Jeff, that that was more like the second round after the original claims all got blown up and people realized, oh yeah, gee, so where it stands is under most middle-of-the-road scenarios, the stuff they're proposing, even according to the UN's own documents, the costs in terms of forfeited output and the way you would quantify that in terms of how much lower is our lifestyle and whatever, because of these measures, is about a wash with, and these are the damages we would be avoiding by having lower emissions. So again, using their own model and then they say, well, there's a lot those models don't leave out. But it was like, okay, for years we were beaten over the head and saying, you guys are deniers, the science is settled. So then you start quoting from the settled science and they say, oh, well, no, those models don't have a lot in them. Do you see what I'm saying? How it was like, wait a minute, this is the stuff you pointed in. So we had to use these things that the UN was publishing and then you start doing it and they go, well, yeah, but that's incomplete. So the whole thing is a big farce that, yes, it's just the goalpost move that all along, they know what the answer is gonna be and they'll adjust the rhetoric. So it's like, now you would have to prove that no, there's 0% chance this is gonna happen. Cause even the stuff they're pointing to, it's like very low probability events, but they're kind of just saying, well, but it might happen. And so why don't we just play better safe than sorry? It's like, well, you can't disprove something entirely. But again, as with so many political things, it's not a clear eyed look at the potential costs and benefits. It's always just this narrative of good intentions and whatever happens is almost secondary to those good intentions. And, you know, I wanna throw this out there, Bob, from a libertarian perspective, you almost couldn't come up with a better issue for a status mindset because it crosses national borders. It allows you to tax people, to regulate people. It allows you to beat up on big business. And maybe most of all, it allows you to blast people for their material wants. In other words, to discourage materialism. So it's a perfect issue, really, for a socialist mindset from the get-go. Exactly. And that's, who was it, was it? It was Naomi. I don't wanna get the wrong, because you know how there's two Naomi's running around? It was the one on, I think Naomi Klein was the one I'm thinking of, where she had a thing where at first she had been skeptical of not skeptical in the sense of doubting the science, but meaning she just, it wasn't her thing. She was focusing on social justice issues and whatever. And then when she realized, and I'm not putting words in her mouth, I'm paraphrasing, but I mean this was really her position. And she came out with a thing saying, I didn't realize how the environmental crusade and the fight against climate change actually is the fulfillment, is a way to achieve all these other goals that I've wanted for so long. And it's stuff like that. And people, Ocasio-Cortez recently was talking about her Green New Deal and how that would be one of the chief elements in fighting inequality. And so yes, in their mind, these things are, in the latest, the UN document, the one that came out, I think it was what, in October, the special report from the UN on climate change and how various methods by which we can contain warming to 1.5 C. And by the way, let me just save Jeff before I forget here, the hubris involved, where we're sitting here and arguing about how warm do we want the earth to be in the year 2100. I mean, that's just shocking and so I just need to mention that, but my point is even playing in their own terms in their own game, their conclusions don't follow. And in this document, this UN document, there's all sorts of references to inequality and gender equity and all this stuff. So it's clearly the interventionist planning mindset, people who want to control others and everything is on the table, like you say, because everything conceivably could affect carbon dioxide emissions from your diet, but that's a big thing too. Like can we really allow people to eat meat because if you just look at the whole life cycle of it, in order to get certain calories into your body, there's way more emissions involved if we allow for large scale meat sector or whatever term you want to use, whereas it would cut that stuff out if people just went vegetarian. In terms of that would be better for the planet in terms of global warming. I mean, this is the way they talk. Again, we've talked about family size, everything is on the table because every area of your life involves this in some way, that it's not just electricity and transportation, it's everything. Yeah, it's very scary, the degree of control that this mentality could give to regulators. And of course, they'll pose it as a jobs program when you say she's got a green new deal. They'll say, well, we're gonna create all these new jobs using federal taxpayer dollars to install solar panels or windmills or whatever kind of renewable energy source. And of course, what will be unseen is the huge inefficiency in all of that, the money being taken away from taxpayers and from more productive means to create energy. And the other thing, Bob, that we haven't touched on that I think is coming is the mandated electric vehicles. I think the days of the combustion engine are marked at this point. I think they're very serious about this. Yeah, you're right. And it's, I mean, again, it's all just rolled up in the other things that it's been a longstanding clash where people who on the progressive left for various reasons just really like mass transit. And they really just like the idea of everyone having to rub shoulders and we're all in this together. Whereas the automobile is the symbol of individualism and they know it's just me versus the world baby and this is my own little domain and I'm the king inside my car. And so I think, again, that also spills into this too. And you're right that a lot of these people look at the fact that Americans drive around in cars, it just, it bothers them. And this too, you see like the difference in the European versus American mentality. Obviously some of it's just geographical and densities and you could be at a certain place in Europe and get around without a car. Whereas in the US that's really not practical for most places. But I mean, partly why that if people have seen how cars are different in Europe, it's partly because their fuel taxes are so high. You know, it's a totally rational outcome of their incentives they face. So yeah, the consumers over there, fuel taxes are ridiculously high. And that's partly what's fueling obviously these protests now in France. So I think you're right, Jeff, that this is not just merely a technical matter of, well, gee, there's this negative externality and we put this little tax in place and that should fix it. It really is a clash of worldviews and what people's deeper value judgments are and a lot of people don't like the idea of people having the autonomy that a car gives them. Well, I'll just leave it with this Bob. I think the burden of proof ought to lie with those who want to radically remake our entire economy based on this theory. Don't you agree that, I mean, what we're talking about is a really radical deconstruction of American society and really Western industrial society. Now the left has always wanted this for lots of different reasons over many, many decades, but now they've got a new bright shiny object. And the idea that we should, that those of us who are a little skeptical about this ought to bear the burden of proof seems to me upside down. Exactly, and that's unfortunate why there's rhetoric, they've done just such a great job of claiming there's this consensus and labeling people deniers and then of course you get some GOP politician who comes out and says something that doesn't sound like the most nuanced thing of all time in terms of just making some, and then they can grab that and make it look like, oh, anybody who opposes us, it's because he thinks just like this GOP senator who obviously it's not up to speed on the latest IPCC report and that kind of stuff. So it is, they do a great job of marketing and framing the issue. I mean, even things like they'll call it dirty versus clean energy. And I've seen other people who really don't have a dog in the fight, they just adopted that terminology. I mean, so now imagine, oh wait, I'm gonna make the case for dirty energy. You know what I mean? Or CO2 is now a pollutant. When, no, this is, it's odorless, it's invisible, it's what plants breathe. And all of a sudden now people are thinking of it like it's like dumping sludge in the river or something. Yeah, it really is incredible how the status control the narrative. And that's really our challenge is to seize that narrative or at least chip away at it. And Bob, I hope, why don't you and I revisit this in a year or two? We'll see how Trump does opposing his own administration's report and we'll see whether this plays a big role in the 2020 presidential election. So that said, ladies and gentlemen, have a great weekend. And Bob, we thank you for your time. Thanks for having me, Jeff. Subscribe to Mises Weekends via iTunes U, Stitcher and SoundCloud, or listen on Mises.org and YouTube.