 Okay, one housekeeping information. Tomorrow we will have some sort of karaoke singing too, so those people who are interested in that should make up a list of songs that they would like to have played so that the disc jockey can prepare for this. So all of the karaoke fans and great singers that we have among the people here they should just make a list, this song, that song and so forth and then things will work out fine, I'm sure. As far as the rules of questions and answer session goes, you can address individuals on the panel, you can address the panel as a whole, and all the panelists can comment on each other as well. And please wait always until the microphone arrives at your place before you ask your questions. You can ask whatever you want, whatever you wanted to know about sex or money or so, these are our competent people. Alright, so Jay will carry the microphone, point out that you are one of the questioners, and then he will arrive at you. Professor Gabb, thank you for your presentation. I spoke with you briefly during the break about this, but for people that are very interested in the private production of security and defense, I had mentioned of how outsourcing the Navy actually created a problem for the existence of the empire, and I was wondering if you had any further thoughts about that dynamic. Oh, thank you. It is a problem when you outsource what are called the core functions of the state, or it is a problem whenever you rely on somebody apart from yourself to manage defense. What we do is either we outsource our defense to the state, or the state takes away from us the right to our defense and exercises it for us, and equally if a state decides to outsource its defense, you are putting yourselves into the hands of some people who may have their own interests, or who will have their own interests, and those interests may not be entirely aligned with your own interests. The Byzantine state believed that if it outsourced its naval support to a foreign power to Venice, then it would receive exactly what it wanted and neither more nor less, and it got a great deal more than it expected. I don't think this is a problem with the outsourcing by a state of some aspects of its defense. It's a universal problem whenever you rely on somebody else who is not yourself for your defense, you are in a sense gambling that the interests of yourself and of your defender will always be aligned. The rather effete, the rather useless Byzantine ruling class of the late 11th century never really thought that the Venetians would have an alternative interest from their own. A degree of vanity, a degree of vanity which you often see with individuals. A question for Andreas regarding guns. Are there any historical examples you're aware of where the government demanded citizens surrender their weapons and they refused? Are you aware of any historical situations where the government demanded citizens surrender their weapons and they refused? As far as I know there have been in the last few years some attempts, especially for instance in New Zealand, to buy back semi-automatic guns after this event when some Muslims have been killed by a maniac. As far as I know it has been successful, a lot of people gave back their weapons, but in fact I doubt that you really can increase the security by buying back some special weapons. I think in Canada a similar program has been run, but I do not know about any details and what effect this kind of gathering weapons had. As far as I know not in the last time, I cannot imagine what would have been done by the American citizens for instance in the 19th century any president would have come up with a program to take away their weapons. So I think that could have been causing a revolution because the Americans have another site on their property especially on their weapons as the Europeans have. But in Austria as far as I know there has been 40 years ago or so, 30 years ago when they forbade the special kind of weapons, these pump gun shotguns. The dealers said that approximately 40,000 of these weapons have been sold until that point of time and just 10,000 have been given back or the people like me demanded a special permit and that means that at least 30,000 of these weapons are illegal now and I think not a single crime has been perpetrated with these now illegal weapons. But to answer the question that people did not really give a lot of resistance, they just kept it and kept secrets so they did not tell anybody that they own such a gun. Also a question for Andreas Turgel or anyone else who would like to answer. Will the 3D printing of guns or the ability for citizens to make their own guns with new technology, is that likely to change anything? I can do it in German. So in German I think the question was if people could make their own weapons, if that could change anything. So there is of course the possibility to produce your own weapons as soon as you have the equipment nobody can hinder you that you produce it. But it's not a big problem to get real guns available on the black market. Austria is located very close to the balcony and three years ago there has been a perpetrator who killed some people in the inner city of Vienna and he got an AK-47 from the balcony without any problem and the ammunition. So I think it's not worthwhile to do a lot of effort to create your own weapon because you can buy whatever you want if you just look around and get the connections. I have a question for Mr. Model. I was wondering because you said that there was a lot of obviously neglect of the psychological aspects of governing people as such by the government and then somehow they switched to now use exactly the human psyche talking about fear during COVID. Do you think one could argue that in fact they use the psychological psyche of the individuals all the time by talking about being altruistic or by talking about having to help each other and being as you mentioned yourself you know using the solidarity curse word as such towards the individuals maybe even just talking about Switzerland. Yeah that's a good point. It has a certain dramaturgy in my speech to let's say show the tipping point between ignoring and overstressing and I can only agree to what you say in a way it really shows how there is a lack of line. The whole policy is full of contradiction and the moralization for example is not really I mean it's not a heartfelt thing basically because this being I tried to describe has no heart and the more we should not listen to the moral arguments because they are fake and what is interesting on my point is to see in the process of time a certain degeneration and a certain acceleration at the same time and my wife just told me I haven't given you so to speak my point of the forecast I thought I did say but I didn't elaborate on that and maybe just one sentence saying that within the next three to five years what we see I think we will see a falling apart of institutions. Of course you can say we already see it. If you observe it closely we see a falling apart of institutions and that is quite dramatic and I think you can now do your own forecasts regarding what kind of institutions and where it starts first. I think a very interesting phenomenon is the United States. There are people who are more in the Anglo-Saxon world specialist but what I see is we have there at least an open civil war and we have an abuse of institutions and that is very interesting and it could again be the leader of what is happening in Europe for the next coming years. I'd like to add to that thought that if institutions break down and are likely to break down that is a chance for others to go into that vacuum because the institutions are there for a reason. They've grown over long history and were then captured by the state and so when they break down, when they break apart, when they disappear that is then a time for people who are aware and know what's happening to build these institutions or replacement of these institutions from the ground up. Following up Robert, thank you for your speech and you mentioned at the outset about the aspect of being ingrained in our nature that when you withdraw from one covenant you immediately seek another. Can you elaborate on the ingrained in our nature aspect? Okay, in terms of how North would say that we're made that way, so we're created that way, that we recognize we need a sovereign, we look for authority, our actions have to be, because we're imperfect, we need some guidance through the laws and the sanctions belong to that like two sides of a coin and we have an outlook. We always think, well we're not always, but we are working, we're thinking about the future. What are our plans? So I'm simply observing that. I'm not founding this on any other philosophy. It's just an observation that this appears to be ingrained in us and so the only way to get away from one sovereign is to find another and as I then explained, well if you think you don't have one, you think yourself is, you are the sovereign of your own making and ignore everything else that other people are saying or doing or think you can rule yourself and well that's probably an error. Looks like it at least. Question for Doug. Do you think there exist also movements that did not turn into rackets? Sorry. What was that? You talked about how movements are turned into rackets. Are there also movements that did not turn into rackets? Well thank you, Dr. Hoppe. No, it's hard to imagine, even with the best intentions, you'd need angels who are running these organizations and there was a wise man who once told me, for instance, no tank, no think. In other words, if you want to think tank then if you want anybody to do any thinking then you have to go raise the money to do it but then the money becomes the sole mission. Again, it's not altogether too different than the private sector. Probably the private sector is since you are providing a service or a good where people pay directly for that good then that is not a scam. Whereas in the nonprofit sector and the political sector you raise money from one group of people and give it to another and give the service or the funds to another group of people and that's always the issue with nonprofits in general. Your customers are not the same as the donors. You have one group of people who give you the money and another group of people who use those resources. So I think it is only in the private capitalist society that a movement or a need for a good is a case where it wouldn't turn into a scam. So that means the PFS is not a racket. But only to be used for other conferences where the same people come who give the money. So in that sense we do exactly what private business does. The consumers are the payers. Correct. In the case of PFS if that is what you are referring to. So that means we are angels. Yes, you are. And I assume that is what you would have taken that from my comment. Yes, the doctors are angels and they take the money and they only reach out for your funds when they have a fabulous product to provide you. And it's not a situation where haunts and gulchins are constructing pyramids so to speak in downtown Istanbul or here in Bodrum for underemployed academics to stand around and do deep thinking. We are offered something. We provide funds willingly. And we come and enjoy the fruits of that. And as 16 years has proven, that good is well worth it and is certainly not a scam. And it wouldn't have lasted 16 years and hopefully 16 more or 32 more or 48 more. How long are you going to live since you are an angel? I haven't decided yet. I have a question for Daniel Modell and Dr. Grötzinger. Both your speeches reminded me of a famous speech of Jesus Huerta de Soto, God is Libertarian. And he made a very funny parallel between the story of Samuel, the biblical story, the one who was the first giver of the first king to Israel, the king Saul, and the temptations of Christ. And at the end the devil says to Christ, I will lay all the governments of the world on your feet if you accept to serve me. And so Huerta de Soto concludes that governments are the incarnations of the devil on earth. And this reminded me of your conclusion that what we would look into the eyes is too ugly to look and it reminded me of the idea of the devil. So I would like a comment on this from both of you. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, the Samuel story is interesting in that before then the Israelites had no king and they wanted a king because the others had a king. It doesn't quite clear why, but that's the reason they give. And Samuel warns them and says, the king will be dreadful. He will take taxes, I'm paraphrasing, he will take taxes. He will take, believe that, 10% of your income. And so, but they go ahead anyway and in that passage God says to Samuel, let them go ahead, they'll see what they'll get from that. And it seems that what he says means there won't be any turning back from that. There won't be any going back to a phase without kings. Now with the temptation of Christ, I'll quote from memory north. He doesn't think that that means that the governments are essentially and always from the devil. But because the devil is a liar, he's saying I'll give them to you but it wasn't his to give. He says the governments are still from God. From Samuel's time, God has permitted or allowed that to happen. And as a kind of way of disciplining and punishing people who want the king really and don't want God as their king. But it seems from Samuel's time that he said, okay, like he said that after the flood that's not going to happen again. In the case of Samuel, he says, well, if you want kings, you're going to have kings forever until the end of time. Well, first of all, it's nice to have some kind of confirmation by people you don't know. I would say governments are also a hierarchical, hierarchic structure than, for example, in companies. So here again, I would make, first of all, a big difference again in another context like Doug French said. In the private sector, you have leadership that is incentivized to continue and actually accumulate capital. And the accumulation of capital is a picture for developing, for increasing, for wealth creation and so on. So there is a possibility, obviously, and an ability I would even say in the human being to be able to do that. Now, of course, then on the government side, you have this evil influence by, okay, power corrupts, but we also know big CEOs of big companies are also under the influence of corruption. Now, that is why we have the next evil step is, of course, the collaboration between big companies and big governments. You see, that is not by coincidence. It's a kind of a logic behind it because they are both corrupted and impressed by their big power. So there you could, we could go into the question, how can we develop as a human being that we are one day not corrupted by power? So that is one, I think, very interesting and also kind of spiritual question, of course. How can you be powerful? I mean, this inner or outer authority question. And the second element that is particularly dangerous for government is this damn monopoly situation, which is not true for most of the companies. So there, the big CEOs are a bit in a better situation. So from a spiritual point of view, I would say, my dear, if in this room are people working for the government and not being corrupted by that power, I'm really full of respect for that person. Tim, I don't know. So we have two corruptive powers, power and monopoly situation. And so that's why my criticism is never personally. I would never recommend my son, even if, I mean, if he asks me, hey dad, I'm considering a criminal career. And I would ask public or private sector. I would actually recommend him the private sector. Because there is a bit less of corruption in that career. I would like to ask a question to Sean. You talked about the outsourcing of, the problems with outsourcing of national defence. And to use a more contemporary example, since the Second World War, basically the entire NATO architecture was outsourcing naval power, for example. To the Americans. And perhaps we're seeing now a misalignment between some of the NATO members' own national interests with the American national interests, or whoever holds the power of levers in America. So what do you see happening when, in modern day terms, when a country's leadership, who's part of an alliance, who effectively outsources national defence to another country, feels that all their own national interests is no longer aligned, how would they correct it? Especially if they are a small state, say, Hungary, or they could be a bigger state like Germany. That's the first question. The second question is to Daniel about the psyche of governmental actions. Could there be a silver lining in the entire COVID pandemic whereby all the institutions hijacked by the government, say the media or the so-called medical expert class, the public health expert class, they now have destroyed the credibility so that the people would be less susceptible to have their psyche changed by the government, or at least non-coercive government actions? If the government of Costa Rica outsources its naval defence to the United States, it can probably rely on the Americans to provide such naval defence as may be required because any hostile power which will try to take over Costa Rica will be a threat to the United States. But the wider problem with NATO has existed since its very beginning. The Americans placed the whole of Western Europe under its so-called nuclear umbrella, but everybody knew perfectly well that if the Russians, if the Soviets rather, were to invade, shall we say, West Germany and then to proceed any further into Western Europe, would the Americans seriously consider a nuclear wipeout of the continental United States in order to protect Germany or Western Europe from being invaded? And the answer was, well, we never had to find out the answer to that question, but the answer would probably have been that the Americans would negotiate. And so if you outsource your defence to another power, you need to ask yourself, what is the likely interest of that power if we ever need to call on that guarantee, or if the other power does provide that defence in certain circumstances, what is the particular agenda of that other country? It's a universal problem, and as I said to Tim, if we live in an anarcho-capitalist society and you outsource your defence to a private company, well, for most purposes, that company will have an interest in a competitive market to provide the contracted defence. But there is no necessary alignment between your interests and the interests of your defender. And this is something we see everywhere. We see it in trusteeship arrangements for children. We see it, you see it in almost every situation where one person or one institution is given or undertakes an obligation to defend somebody else. Indeed, that's the whole foundation of trust law as far as I can tell. So the problem faced by the Byzantine state in the 11th and 12th centuries is by no means unique. It's just that the, as I said, the Byzantine ruling class preferred to risk giving its naval defence to the Republic of Venice rather than undertake the very unwelcome task of rebuilding its own naval power because that would raise an internal interest which might be hostile to the actions of the central government. It's just something that happens. Yeah, I will not comment on this. Yeah, certainly, I mean, if the question was if they have lost credibility by these measures, the governments, they definitely did. And so one example is in Germany, we have this famous health minister who is really insisting on COVID and on wearing masks and all that. And he was about, I think he already did, buy millions of vaccine doses. And I think it's an easy forecast that they will not be used and at the end of the day will be thrown away if not sent to somewhere else after expiry. So yes, credibility is lost and in a way that is also good news, you could say. Well, if I was a government consultant, yeah, funny, I would recommend to go into learning and regain credibility because that is basically what you normally do when you lost credibility. But I think as I think in my model, I mentioned monopoly tend to create their own illusions or own, how do you call that? Disablasen, yeah. Bubbles, yeah, exactly. They live in their own bubbles and I see the psychological element of it as well. I mentioned to you, I think, in the lunchtime because she is customer of mine. And I also am in the danger of living in a bubble because as a CEO you have a very biased information stream and you actually have to create your own methods to not live in the bubble. It's the most difficult thing actually because this hierarchical filtering of information and so on, basically the tragedy of every hierarchy is that the guy on top with the most power is the most stupid person. I mean not stupid maybe in intellectual terms but stupid in the sense of information, lack of information, wrong information. Now, I start usually my meetings with that statement. They stopped laughing about it because the joke has wearing out a bit but they know that at least that I am aware. So I try to create almost desperately a culture or an atmosphere of bring the problems on the table. Now, because I want the well-being of my company and everybody believes me that this is my interest. And that's of course a different story in governmental positions. There you have other interests. And that's why I mean basically I would consult these governments to let go their monopoly situations and to create an atmosphere where the facts and figures come on the table. Now, concerning COVID we all know that the cheating of the figures and facts is amazing. I mean that's new record highs and there is an unbelievable fight for these facts and to get it. So almost everybody now knows that the figures are either not correct or have to be second proved or so on. So I would say we are learning a bit even. Even in the bad news this loss of credibility has increased the debate and now the legal working out of all this. I mean it was a criminal act against civilization. Now, how do you work on this? And the courts are full of cases already and they are working on sammelklag and so on. So for me a very decisive question now in the observation of what's going on is how is this legally digested? That's a key question. If it's okay and there are responsibilities and so on and consequences my forecasts of three to five years tumbling down of institutions I would have to prolong. But I'm afraid I don't think I have to. Sean you promised that you would say something about the parallels with Trump and you didn't deliver on the promise yet. I didn't deliver. No one historical event is a perfect analogy of another. And you could try to compare the Venetians with multinational corporations which seemed a good idea in the early age of globalization and you could try aligning the various actors in Byzantine history with the various actors in our own time. I suppose the best alignment would be between President Trump and Andronicus. And here it's rather depressing. Donald Trump failed because he never understood the nature of political power. He surrounded himself with completely worthless and indeed hostile servants who did their very best to frustrate his wishes. He seems to have believed that simply winning the election in 2016 was the revolution where it was simply a green light from the people to begin a revolution at the top. He did not shut down all of the hostile institutions. He did not put his own people in charge of the remaining institutions. He did none of the institutional trench warfare that would be needed to keep his promise of draining the swamp. On the other hand the emperor Andronicus was ruthless. He did purge the institutions. He tried to clamp down on corruption within the bureaucracy. He tried to reduce the size of the bureaucracy. He tried to stop the nobles from appropriating the land of the peasants. He took a very hard line with what you could call the multinational corporations of the day. He oversaw a massacre of about 60,000 Italian merchants in Constantinople. And still he failed as well. And so I suppose the overall lesson could be that when a civilization sets itself on a crash landing there's not much you can do to change course after a certain point. It may be a rather depressing conclusion. A bit obliquely to that but related. I was struck by what Andreas Turgel told us about Machiavelli in that regard because it tied up with what Sean had said. Machiavelli, if I understood you right, he said the leader of the prince should give the people arms because that would endear the prince to the people. So basically that describes a populist, doesn't it? And it is what Andronicus did. So he made himself popular. I was surprised by that because for me Machiavelli was always the baddie. And here he gives some interesting advice that would weaken the bureaucracy and the other institutions of the state. Just as an oblique point to that. Something I didn't mention earlier was that Andronicus also oversaw a realignment of Byzantine foreign policy. Part of the diagnosis of Andronicus was that the Byzantine state had aligned itself unwittingly to what was turning out to be a vastly more powerful civilization. And that if the Westerners wanted something they would always be able to get it. And Byzantine society at the top was entirely permeated by Westerners. Quite often princesses from the Crusader states or sometimes in case of Andronicus himself. He was married to the very young 12 year old daughter of the King of France. And part of the Andronicus revolution was to realign the pattern of Byzantine alliances away from the West which was too large and too powerful to be trusted and controlled. And towards his Islamic neighbors he sought a much better modus vivendi with the Turks for example. And he saw his own empire as part of a general Near Eastern civilization in which Byzantine Greeks had far more in common with their Islamic neighbors than they had with their co-religionists from the West. And he seems to have started a trend in Byzantine thinking that would end with the statement better the sultans' turban in Constantinople than the Cardinals had. The Greeks seem to have made their decision in that respect.