 We're live All right. How you guys doing? This is a Harrison Fishburg I'm here with Stefan Cancella and just some general questions. I want to post him regarding IP copyright general misconstruction, you know confusions within libertarianism and Anarchy so Stefan the first thing I have is I play guitar and I know that you and I are fans of Pink Floyd and Superb music so the question I have is For instance, when I go in I listen to a song that he wants me to listen to it so they can get They can you make profit or they can get to go on tour and all that stuff So when they play the song it goes down to the public domain so to speak You know, it's not really public. My question is when I go and look at these chords online I found a bunch of websites that have the the chords are taken down because the artist I guess is claimed That it's violating their copyright to know exactly what the chord structure is they're playing so basically My question is what they're really claiming ownership of is vibration of the strings and the rhythm That they're playing that certain song Now that that's the extreme that IP goes to in this sense because a Chord is simply just a certain number of keys being played in in a harmony together and that's just vibration of strings So how can they go to a website and say take this down? You're not allowed to have it because it's stealing away You know the profits from our artists and that's essentially what we're doing Yeah, so it's it's a it's a it's a muddy and complicated issue in today's age for a variety of reasons It takes a while to untangle this you have to have clear concepts clear understanding of the definitions and what what what justice and what Fairness and what property rights are all about It's taking me a while to untangle it So I'll just it's hard to go through the chronological history of how I think you could arrive at Conclusions similar to mine, but let me just kind of put them out there and explain what they are First of all, I think that Well, the the bear fact of the reason why they're able to do this is because there exists in our country in the US and in most other countries some kind of legislated Intellectual property rights laws patent and copyright primarily primarily copyright in this case So the reason they can get things taken down is because they can claim a so-called Property right in these patterns of information as you as you just summarized it To my mind, that's not what literally is going on. What's literally going on is that way of putting it is just the justification given for these laws but what but what the reality is of these laws is that These laws give to certain people the Legal right to stop other people from using their their own property rights as they see fit Okay, so The copyright idea the idea that you own the notes is just a justification for it So let me take a more stark example Let's suppose you believe in slavery as an Aristotle's day you think there are certain natural classes among people and Normally we have to treat each other with respect and you can't invade each other's property borders of their bodies You can't attack someone without a good reason So that's a presumption of self ownership or body ownership But they make an exception in the case of slaves Okay, so they have to have a reason for that exception and there's various reasons given barbarians have a different property mentality They're inferior to Greeks or whatever But that is just a reason or rationale or justification For the rule that they're actually supporting which they they don't want to make explicit because the more explicit you make it the more Obviously unjust it appears But the rule is I get to control my body and you don't get to control your body Or I get to control my body and I get to control your body or parts of your body or your life If you put it that starkly, which is what intellectual property ultimately is It would become transparently An unjust rule that no one would no one would agree to so in the case of intellectual property What we have is the government the state the federal government in the US case the United States federal government Gives creators of certain innovative works or creative works Like patterns of guitar, you know notes or whatever gives them the right to Go to the court and get an injunction or an award of monetary damages against someone who's using their own property in a certain way and this If you put it this way it starts to seem a little fuzzy to libertarians because it sounds contrary to libertarian principles Which it is contrary to libertarian principles the way it's normally couched is Hey, we all believe in property rights, right? Well intellectual property is a type of property, right? Copyrights a type of IP or intellectual property So there's a first argument by propaganda or semantics just kind of labeling something that's a state-granted monopoly privilege as a property right and then persuading people to accept it because they're already naturally in favor of property rights as they should be and Then there's the incentive argument You know people understand that there's a natural effect of having nice regulated property rules among landowners and property owners that It also gives people the right incentives to use their property in the most efficient way It avoids the the problem of the commons, you know the tragedy of the commons It in it fosters economic calculation these kinds of things so they naturally assume because the experts and the You know the institutional officials tell us this that IP is just another example of that Well, if if property rights in land give you an incentive to take care of your land then It makes sense for there to be an incentive structure that flows from Intellectual property rights in your creative works like you have an incentive to create works, etc So they sort of go along with it for good motivations. I think I think they're deceived And they're manipulated by the propaganda of the special interest But that's why most normal people go along with it. They are basically in favor of economic incentives economic coordination and Property rights and coordinate a cooperation among people and they sort of go along with the idea of copyright and patent because they assume That this is part and parcel Of this kind of property rights scheme But they're wrong in fact the origin and genesis of copyright is in state censorship in church control of heretical information and trying to prevent people from printing books They won't they don't want to print that the authorities don't want printed and ideas They don't want disseminated and the origin of patent lies in state and guild and monopolistic and cartelized control of industries Where there's no free competition and where some people have granted official government monopolies over certain practices and trades and Then this sort of over time Became our modern copyright and patent system now we get used to this because again It's been integrated into the capitalist Substructure of the basic structure of law private Western law that the government has co-opted and monopolized So they've added on to it all these other ideas which people Largely go along with But if you step back and think as a fresh perspective as a libertarian We are in favor of competition. We are in favor of the transmission of knowledge. We're in favor of learning Right and and there's nothing wrong when you can when you compete with someone who has a new product You're emulating what they're doing you might improve on it you might make a duplicate you might make a shoddier product That's cheaper You might make a worse product and then you go out of business You might make a better product and you succeed and you replace them As this happened infinite number of times in the history of mankind so the basic presumption is that the free market and competition Would permit people to emulate and learn from what others are doing and if you as a producer or a creator of some innovative work Choose to reveal private information that's in your head or in your studio to the world for whatever reason you want to do that It's just absurd to expect that people won't learn from it be influenced by it In fact, that's a good thing for most people for most creators and even compete with you and emulate you and maybe vary on what you've done and then Instead of running to the state to get a legislated law that protects you from these people doing that Which is the natural consequence of your revealing information to the world The better solution would be to have a totally free market where People can compete and learn from each other. I mean even as you just said though very quickly Musicians they're creative. I don't I think it's like the only statistic you could say for 100% back Every musician had a prior person that they were influenced by and they actually learned from and they're like wow that song has a great chorus to it or it has a Great chord structure, whatever there's a certain flow to the song that they like and that's why they picked up the guitar For the thing in the first place and sort of even learning so I mean by you and I even talking the act of talking and communication is sharing But again the main point I was getting at was if you were to say to someone, you know downloading a movie online They would say well, you know, you're taking away from the producers rights or the Actors money or whatever they would say but the but the thing with music that I found interesting or just even more asinine is that The only thing that the musicians doing is putting chords that are openly available to anyone who has the strings and They can manage to take those and say, you know, these ones are specifically mine and therefore have ownership over them. It's like I You know, you have the cameras and stuff the movies But a guitar is a vibration of a string and in fact they can somehow It just it just seems like it's very It's very simple that people would obviously recognize that operate ownership of chords doesn't make too much sense Well, I don't I agree with you. I don't think they do make I don't think they think it makes much sense Even the advocates of it don't think it makes sense. They just don't care I think most of them are They're not either they're either very not very reflective. They don't understand the system Or they're just totally for their self-interest. So like Certain software companies Hollywood certain patent lawyers these groups have a vested interest in Simply keeping the system going that keeps their monopolistic position going. So they'll they'll use whatever arguments they have to I think they're completely Almost completely intellectually dishonest and and just shields for their own self-interest Which I can almost admire in a shark-like, you know amoralistic sense at least they're just trying to Keep their peace of this pie with government help. It's you know A couple things you mentioned make Spur a spur a couple of comments number one You know, there's this comment saying that like immigrants want to come here and they're happy that we have Relatively open immigration, but as soon as they get here, they want to shut the gates, you know So they want to get into heaven and shut the gates to heaven's door There's something like that for artists because I don't know of any artists or inventors or creators Who would honestly and sincerely deny that they are They're benefited by and they build on and they're influenced by the work that human society and culture has produced So far Almost no one will deny that And yet they want to have it both ways. They want to benefit from the accumulated genius of previous People who've released their work into the public domain by one way or the other and yet they want to protect their own So it's sort of like these immigrants who come in and they they want they want to be let in but they want to shut the doors behind them You know, we all Everyone in this that we're standing on the shoulders of giants. I don't think anyone denies that The problem is these guys are just not sincere argumenters if you tell them well, you were benefited by Progress to date you built upon that and if you have a monopoly on what you do progress would stop and You know, you'd be like the last one standing. It's like a Ponzi scheme almost they really just don't care They'll change the subject or something like that now as for downloading you talked about downloading the complaint is often that if you download my music you're taking away Something from me now they're kind of vague about this but if you press them if you say if they'll say well you took my song and If you if you point out the very common sense observation that well I didn't take your song because taking something means I remove it from your control and you don't have it anymore and You still have a copy of your song. You can do what you want with it. You can perform it. You can Do variations of it you can build on it whatever so I haven't taken anything from you I've learned from you and I'm competing with you perhaps, but I haven't taken anything from you Well, then they'll switch subject and they'll say well, but you're taking for me the money I could have earned and That's where the rubber hits the road. That's what their real dispute is They really think they have a property right in the future potential money They could have earned if the government had granted them a monopolistic control Over this pattern of information Which is money that would come from consumers or customers, right? so their argument basically saying they have a property right in the Future dollars in the wallets or bank accounts of future potentially non-existent customers now I Don't know this is maybe a crazy idea for a libertarian and free market advocate But it seems to me that if you have a customer out there They own their money You know and and they have the right to decide whether to give it or use it for a purchase Or not So there is no property rights claim whatsoever on a future income or royalty stream by an author Because that would mean you have a property right in the future property of customers that you don't even have a contract with yet Which is absurd and makes no sense whatsoever so So when artists complain that they're being stolen from they're really saying that you're taking from them money that other people own Which they don't have a right to which is basically some kind of bizarre welfare scheme, which is what the IP system in fact is Even even more so you could you could even hypothetically buy the CD So the artist gets her his her royalties But the second you hear the music and if you know how to play the song and you can pick up what chords they're playing You could hypothetically never listen to the album again and go around playing the song and just know the lyrics Of course they would be left out. So I mean, it's like again It's the thing that it comes to the this is what's going to be my next question It comes out into the market and once it's out there, that's how they get their recognition They want people to see it so in order to see it that they put it out there and once it's out there There's no claim anymore. It's gone. I Mean they can do stuff like touring and people want to see the legitimate artists. They don't want to see cover bands They want to go see the real pink void Or the real Led Zeppelin or whatever so they have the name claimed or the you know trademark in a Authenticity but well good well what I was going to say is I Think your first point is is correct. I mean look my mom a simple country woman Used to sing the song hey Jude to me the Beatles song now. I don't think she ever bought a Beatles album ever How does she know the song hey Jude because she heard it on the radio she heard people singing it she was singing now So she learned that song by cultural osmosis There's no possibility of an argument that you could have a contract which the reason I'm getting to this This is the fallback argument of the IP advocates. They say well if you sell a CD, which is another example You gave which by the way is 2014 which so this is getting a little bit anachronistic at this point, correct? I mean I Don't know anyone who buys songs through CDs anymore No, but physical media is going away and that is a sort of brief Temporary mechanism we used which you could argue There's a contractual connection between the seller of this medium and the buyer Although I think that's a ridiculous argument as well And it would only bind the actual buyers not all these third parties So even that contractual argument for IP would make no sense whatsoever But even that's going away people get music by streaming or by hearing it or by downloading an ephemeral mp3 file Off of some random website on the internet. There's no contractual aspect to this whatsoever So you couldn't pin an IP claim on contract anymore Anyway Now but what you're getting at with this talk about how art of musicians might make money from Performances etc That's just one case of the question Which often arises? Listen, if you want to change the way we're doing things right now in society like if you want to get rid of copyright law, which purportedly is an incentive structure and lets artists make money and patent law which apparently are supported purportedly induces innovation Technological research and development etc. If you want to get rid of these things the burden proof is on you to show us Why that would be justified? Now I actually don't agree with that I think the burden proof is on anyone supporting a state measure and patent copywriter clearly state measures I mean there's the patent act and there's the copyright act. These are United States Congress legislative statutes I don't know. I don't know why libertarians think that you could have a private Somalacrum or version of this Especially when the contract argument fails so miserably So I think the burden is on them, but even and then not only that their argument is the implicitly utilitarian one they're assuming that Here's how we justify what the law should be we have a panel of experts distinguished law professors and scholars and politicians and They decide in their infinite wisdom How we can adjust the rules that Congress can legislate that covers 300 million people To tweak incentive structures to get the results we want So right away, that's something that should be a red flag We don't agree with that way of making law law should be about justice and property rights and cooperation and how we get along with each other Second of all if that's the real argument they need to have a they need to have evidence if you're gonna say we're going to Provide this company a temporary monopoly over their new drug for 17 years, or we're gonna provide this artist a monopoly over their Movie or their novel for a hundred and thirteen years Because we think that that will overall incentivize innovation creation in society the value of which is much greater than the The the undeniable cost of such a such a federal legislated bureaucratic scheme Then they need to show us what the numbers are and they never ever do they don't even try and the economists that have tried over the last hundred or so years Pretty much universally conclude that this is all nonsense. I mean, there is just no evidence that the IP scheme Actually does increase innovation So I'd say the burden proof is on them and they failed it and even if the burden proof is on us We can produce a hundred studies to their one or to their zero That show that it the system just doesn't create overall wealth gains for society in an innovative fashion And it's common sense as well if you just think about all the distortions first of all the government's inefficient It's incompetent and it's corrupt and the laws are manipulated by special interest groups And the borders of the statutory Schemes are unobjective and they don't conform to justice And they're not consistent even with each other or even internally. They're almost completely arbitrary vague ambiguous Statutes that have nothing to do with justice. They are almost admitted to be deviations from natural property rights They're legislated at the behest of special interests. They distort and skew the culture creativity research and development they Hinder research they penalize people they give the government an excuse to Regulate the internet and to invade Kim comms home in New Zealand with American police state officials it is just an an unending relentless trail of misery and Devastation and a huge drag on freedom of speech internet freedom and innovation and growth and even the free market Ever since and especially has been exacerbated since 1995 or 1998 or so since the advent of the internet It's getting worse and worse. It is one of the worst things the state does in my opinion It is completely anathema to the free market private property and libertarianism And we need to stop falling for the state propaganda and the propaganda of the special interest groups Sorry, that was a run-on reply, but I think I didn't leave anything out So what I mean by that is I've seen many podcasts with you and especially Jeffrey Tucker Where they talk about you guys talk about the wonders of the marketplace and Jeffrey talk always talks about You know McDonald's and how it's providing all these goods and services at such low prices and You know look back just two or three hundred years ago the average person The average king was you know our poor person now or whatever You know the standard of living has gone exponential and there really is a lot of I Mean look what we're doing right now. You've never met Rothbard in person. Am I correct? No, I did I did November 1994 at the John Randolph Club meeting About three months before he died. I did. I had a great talk with him and it was it was a I'm glad I did So you met him once but I mean just the fact that I am I Can meet up with you now and do Skype and you and I can do these conversations. Yes, I mean This is like an unbelievable thing for Education but for just general networking and general You know the human experience of just being able to meet people that you look up to and have these conversations This is going big time with it. But the question I have is There's a lot of the standard of living is rising in certain aspects And I wouldn't want to be alive at any other time But the thing that I'm coming to is a lot of the times when you get into discussions with people and you start bringing in The moral arguments the ethical arguments economic arguments We're very open in terms of libertarian ideals of being like live and let live what people do what they got to do without But then it somehow manages to get pushed back that Seems like there's always a negative connotation that comes that somehow you're co-op you're helping special interests or you're only a corporate person or You only care about people making money and you're evil. You know, you don't understand. I mean it somehow goes from Actually our general love for humanity and what it can bring To the table and people will somehow skew it to being like you're just a profit-seeking Parasite or something like that. I don't see how those two they always seem to complete. I don't know if you see that No, I think I know what you mean. I think There's a tension or a murkiness in discussions among Liberty-minded people about tactics and strategy and personal life choices versus Truth and substance and they get intermingled and I think it's okay to mix these things up because we're complicated people. I mean, I'm up I'm sort of host. I'm sort of skeptical of this the coherence of this thick this thick idea this thick libertarian idea and the thick Then debate, but I think I see why it's being driven And of course I acknowledge that and everyone knows that we're not just we're not just libertarians We're people who live in the real world And some of us are more interested in different things. We have division of labor. We have different interests, etc So I think one thing that happens is you have different levels of people that are just new into libertarianism they come in through say Ron Paul or politics and so they may be more into strategy and tactics and some of these people are hard to talk to because if you say something like I Don't think the income tax is going to be meaningfully reduced in the next 30 years in my life Then they'll just throw their hands up and say well, then what's the point? well Because they're fixated on making change now and when you're fixated on making change now usually through politics Then you're gonna get disillusioned really quickly if that's your goal Then you're gonna give up on the whole movement pretty quickly. I've seen this happen many times If that's not your goal and you're more realistic about it, then it may be harder to motivate yourself But then you have to step back and think I mean this is part of the Socrates called it the examined life in my opinion Look, I see no personal obligation for people to be obsessed over politics or economics I think there's nothing wrong with just living your life and just being a decent person. I Think there's some value at least to some people of being reflective and getting interested in this stuff to my mind what I Think is valuable about it and is valuable not just for me, but for lots of people is just the general Sense of being part of being on the right side of history You're part of the struggle for liberty against evil or good against evil For me, that's enough for some people. That's enough Maybe it slows down my fervor a little because I know that I'm not going to change the world in three days But I'm not gonna burn out either So everyone has different approaches and I think that is That's fine. As for the time this better to live in I Think I've heard people say they'd rather live in the 50s in the US, but I don't know if you'd want to be a Prosperous young black male today living in the 50s as opposed to now So everyone's situation is different all the although the other hand the black families have been decimated Repeatedly over the generations in the US by various artifacts and fallouts of slavery and state control of Systems and you know artificial racist laws and things like that So I think some people are better off now Some people would have been better off a hundred years ago or 50 years ago Overall, I think things are getting better, but some things are getting worse. I mean as technology improves We have a better chance and this is one reason of why I'm so fervent about IP is because I do think the advent of the internet is one of the Unexpected tools that's emerged that is a huge Tool in our arsenal that we have against state control and the state started starting to glimpse this and It's almost too late for them to shut it down. I believe they probably would have shut it down if they'd realized this in 1995 but they haven't so But now they're using copyright as one of the excuses to start regulating internet freedom So this is one reason I'm in favor of or opposed to IP controls and IP extensions is because I'm so much in favor of technology as a tool of freedom and I think the tools of freedom the tools of technology Sorry, the tools of technology help the state as well as us, but they help us disproportionately I hope I think I'm trying not to be polyanna. I want to I want to recognize there's a possibility of disaster coming You know the gray goo syndrome or whatever You know the idea that there's a reason we haven't Detected life and outer space and that's because every society gets to a certain level of intelligence destroys itself by one way or the other Probably because of some kind of state So I'm hopeful that that's not the case. So I mean Jeff Jeff for example, so back on the optimism thing Jeff Tucker Who's a good buddy of mine? It's very optimistic. He's very cheerful. That's his strategy. That's his demeanor And to me that goes a little bit more to the tactic strategy side of things and that's his approach and that's fine I try to be a little more cautious and a little bit more aloof. I Am hopeful and I want to push for the things I think have some hope even if I ultimately lose And I just want to be on the right side of things when if things go bad But I do think that there's a chance for the market and technology to finally Overcome the I mean look, I think what's what's there a greater chance of? If we're gonna have some kind of radical advance in liberty and freedom in the future, let's say in the next 2030-50 100 years is it that we persuade the masses by Mises's books and lectures to Gradually increase their economic literacy and to persuade the legislators to start voting for libertarian policies Or is it something else? I don't think the first is very likely. I don't think it's a waste to try it But I think that something else has got to happen for us to start achieving more liberty And I think that's going to be more prosperity because of the market despite the state's interventions It's going to be a greater technology that allows us to fight the state at an ever Greater rate than the state can surveil us Um So I'm hopeful that To me, it's like a tipping point kind of thing. We have to or it's more like a What do you call it when you escape the gravity well of the earth when you get into orbit? You have to you have to reach a certain Escape velocity we have to reach a certain escape velocity in society and I am cautiously optimistic that Technology plus three markets can can do that Um There's gonna be a lot of tragedy between now and then a lot of wasted lives a lot of Stunted lives because of the state But that's just a numbers game, I don't know what else we can do about that so that's kind of my overall You asked something about McDonald's and corporate, I don't know if that's really relevant now I think that this is an example of what your strategic focus is you're trying to point out the Examples of Beneficial effects of the relatively free aspects of the market like how McDonald's can serve so many people and give them nutrition Yes, not ideal the paleo diet people might not like it The the the car sonans the left libertarians might point out that McDonald's benefits from corporate subsidies or tax breaks or government roads Or the corporate structure itself and I don't disagree with all that but to me At a certain point this bleeds into predictionism Like we're all trying to predict an alternative You know an alternate history or counterfactual history What would the world look like if x wouldn't have happened or what should it look like or what do we predict? It will look like in the future. These are all speculative. I believe you can have your opinions You can have your preferences. You could prefer a world of more self-sufficient smaller Family businesses and less employment less bosses You could prefer a more efficient world of even bigger corporations or think that's going to happen in the absence of the state But the fundamental thing is we're opposed to the state and we want whatever the free society produces To happen so I'm willing to take the experiment and see I'd be happy to Release the shackles in the economy and see where there's going to look like the left libertarian world or the Kind of right libertarian capitalist industrialized society vision to me these are just interesting Predictive differences. I might predict this you predict that And we can talk about that and they're interesting But I don't know if it proves anything in the fundamental sense So Uh, this kind of links up in a way like this is off topic But to what you're speaking on in terms of McDonald's thing and if it's a corporate structure or the the federal road that obviously plays a huge part The fact of the matter is though is that humans act towards, you know, rational ends And regardless of what the structure is in place people are going to do what benefits them best So I mean is there really that's the things like the stock market The 2007 crash with the real estate bubble in the last jazz The reality was is that these people on wall street were really just taking what was The mark what was you know, they were taking what the environment has given them and they ran with it And they caused a lot of haps and there was not there was not a need for it in a sense But it's like if you were to find a lottery ticket on the ground, I guess Would you take it or if you were to be given, you know Unlimited funds at a casino or if you you know went bankrupt they would they refill your your coffers I mean humans act towards those rational goals or those ends So I mean there is a aspect of regardless of where the society goes Well, okay, so so that's that's a good set of Of launching points Well, first I would say that this is one reason why libertarians tend to oppose a large state And the radical libertarians among us including me oppose the state at all But the idea is that the larger the state becomes and its control of things the greater is the incentive to gear your life towards Being part of the state manipulating the state doing things that are inefficient You know, I've heard a common observation that you know, if the income tax was 1 instead of Roughly 30 40 percent on average Then you know companies wouldn't spend as much time trying to avoid it that would just pay it It'd be a fairly trivial fee. It wouldn't distort the structure of the economy as much. It wouldn't lead to as much corruption It's much bribery as much Inefficient government programs as we have now So that's one reason just to oppose the size of the state You know as for things like, you know The roads that serve companies I mean by and large the state is is a minority group of people that that are Parasitical off of the productive economy And the only way that arrangement can survive is if they're relatively small compared to the productive class And if the productive class Goes along with it because they're bigger, right? So they have to voluntarily go along with it The smaller group can't easily by force enslave or control the productive class So the way they do it is by propaganda and other institutional state measures And those largely have to cater to Some common sense ideas and needs. I mean everyone knows that roads are in general Unnecessary and good thing So the government co-ops or education public education Or even having social security at the end of your life people kind of vaguely sense These are things that they might want in a private way or that are necessary And so the state co-ops these things so the things the state tends to do often Are just Inefficient or corrupt simulations of what would happen on a free market You would have ways of ways of dealing with criminals. You would have ways of Defending yourself from an invading army You would have some kind of a medical insurance or medical protective system Um, so the government co-ops, you know, you know people would want to mail letters to each other So it's not outrageous or crazy that the government has a post office. We understand why You know if the government tried to establish a bureau of administering poison to people on a daily basis It wouldn't fly with the voters, you know So these things tend to approximately draw on the common sentiments So that's one reason why these things I think survive as well because you know libraries are not an inherently bad thing So if you make it public then people might accept it Etc Um as for things that and I already mentioned the benefit the benefit part I think that people do well, let me let me mention one other thing There's a common expression and I think we should distinguish here between the austrian and sort of the The the classic the the mainstream economic point of view A homo economicus the idea that we're all economical actors Um in the mizizi in sense, I think it's true. I think that in in a sense, which is almost trivial Okay, because it's almost tautologically true Every action you perform is in your self-interest In the sort of standard economic model all we care about is monetary profit now I think they think that's an approximation But that's obviously not true if all you cared about was money Let me just give one simple observation. No one would ever buy anything You would never give up your dollars to make a single purchase. I would never buy a can of coke coca-cola for my dollar because I value the dollars more than anything in the world. Well, obviously every time there's an exchange a monetary exchange The person that's the purchaser is valuing something more than money So people all the time value things more than money So that's the first insight. So we're not always homo economicus And we don't always value material goods more than other types of goods Now the mizizi in point of view the austrian economic point of view I think handles this easily because miziz just says that humans act in a framework of the ends and means Basically every time you act you are trying to achieve some kind of goal some kind of end in the world And you use means Including your human action and your body and your labor and your effort and your thought And other things that you own or you can possess other tools To achieve that end. So that's the structure of human action You're always trying to change the course of events To make the future be different than what you expect it to be To be what you would prefer it to be Okay, so the ultimate end of action for for austrians is not a thing Is not the ownership of some scarce resource necessarily it could be but that's just one example of the end um The ends of human action are almost never an ownable things It's just a state of affairs that's different than you would otherwise choose So it's not this materialistic It could be spiritual. It could be mental. It could be psychological. It could be Undefinable. I don't know but it's whatever your goal of your action or whatever you want to achieve As long as it's rational and for miziz rational means The means you select to achieve the end Um, you have a reason to believe that they are causally efficacious That it means there's they can help cause They will help you achieve your end, you know, if you want to live 15 years longer and you have cancer and you choose arsenic as your drug That's irrational You know, unless you know unless you somehow believe the arsenic will cure cancer in which case is just a failure Okay, but that that's the structure of human action so I don't think we need to think of people as only benefiting themselves and so the reason I say this is because I don't think that everyone values only money or political influence Okay, so even if we have a system like we have now where there's more massive opportunity for people to Use their special interests or use influence or bribe legislators In a legal way, maybe but bribe them nonetheless I don't think everyone votes according to their narrow Self-interest as the classical economists would call it They do as caught as Mises would say but those interests might be spiritual So you have people quite often. I mean, I think uh, David Koch I'm sorry, Charles Koch wrote a great op-ed a couple days ago Where he explained that Koch Industries Has lobbied against certain federal government regulations and measures that in the short term or narrow Self-interest of that company would have benefited it because they really have a deeper value Which is the free market and freedom And a free economy and free competition So they have pushed for things that in the homo economicist point of view would be against their self-interest Why do they do that and they do so people do this all the time? Um, they sacrifice for their children. They save up. They will they will vote What what they think is morally right even if it it wouldn't Narrowly benefit them. I mean, there's a reason the republican party Is popular among joe six pack even though if you think about it Um, joe six pack, you know, the union worker kind of guy is kind of a lower middle class blue collar worker Who's narrow interests you would think were aligned with the democrat party, right because they are going to get minimum wage protections and Various redistributive measures that control interests, but why do they vote republican now? I'm not saying they're right to be republicans, but I'm just saying that people do things all the time That are against their narrow monetary Self-interest because they have values other than just money Again, which is demonstrated by the simple fact that people sometimes spend money so I sent you in The I know you haven't read it, but uh, you see Alan Moore, you know who Alan Moore is the author for V for vendetta. He did the oh, yeah, sure Called watchmen. Yes. Yeah, I've read watchman. So he's got this quote about anarchy and I will just uh paraphrase the last part he says Um, I believe that all other political states are in fact variations or outgrowths of a basic state of anarchy After all when you mention the idea of anarchy the most people they will tell you it's a bad idea Because the biggest gang would just take over he then goes on to say This is pretty much how I see contemporary society We live in a badly developed anarchist situation in which the biggest gang is taken over and declared it to be an anarchist And declare that it is not an anarchist situation that it's either capitalist or converse But I tend to think that anarchy is the most natural form of politics for a human being to actually practice So what he's essentially saying is that Anarchy so to speak is the soil of the human the human world and these outgrowths that we see really are just You know poison soil or you know, they're they're they're it's bad soil that has just grown these these bad trees But do you have any take on that because I do see and this relates to let me just jump into this one real quick This relates to the idea of the market and I've brought this up with you before When Stefan Mahon knew or some other characters say something along the lines of like In the 1950s the market was more free I don't see that as the case because to me The Rothbard statement, which is that the market is simply the social array of the voluntary exchange of goods and services That means the market's always there regardless In the sense that you can have a you can have a uh, a holocaust camp There's technically a market within the camp. There's individuals interacting and trading with each other and trying to Better their situation for tomorrow So it's like it's a very general widespread open view But is it really all anarchy in the sense that Even if someone's imposing on you saying don't do this you still have the choice to do so There's gonna be consequences that you may not like What we're seeing is If you get the gist I think but I think that um, this is an example of why It's important to have precise Terminology Because you can throw these terms all around and then you can start getting into confusion, um Not you and I don't know about Alan Moore. I I had a vague impression. He was um Some kind of quasi I want to say status, but he wasn't like really with us in the true anarcho libertarian sense Um, despite the despite some of the themes in watchman, um In in some trivial senses, so there's a famous essay in the jail journal libertarian studies by, um kuzan al alfred Alfred or albert kuzan Called do we ever really get out of anarchy? Um, and so in I'm not saying a trivial sense But in in a trivial sense We are always in anarchy number one in the world today We have 200 roughly nation states which are roughly in anarchy with each other. There's no overlord state and yet They get along with each other if you really believe that anarchy was unstable or that Um, you need a monopolistic control of law and order Then you would have to be in favor of a one-world government Which is one of my arguments against some of the objectivists and they've kind of admitted this But they sort of brush it off and they say well in today's culture That would be a disastrous mistake. I don't I don't know what they mean by that um, but what kuzan argues is that Within a within a government or a state you could call it like the united states government There's no central overlord power that forces them to comply with all these internal rules that govern the structure of the state In fact, I've been more and more impressed with The sort of overall perspective on the state by creveled martin van creveled Who views the state in its modern sense as a modern entity? like he doesn't think that the roman empire was a state in the modern sense because In the last roughly two three hundred years We've had the modern state arise which which he views as as an institution or like a corporation With a life of its own in a sense whose identity doesn't depend upon the particular People who populate its bureaucratic roles or it's it's actually political roles So he would view the state in the u.s. As this central kind of Leviathan that exists in a way independent of say barack obama, which is just the current administration Which in a way shows the the futility of politics. I mean The current politicians that are elected come and go um And so the idea that we can vote the right ones in is futile because they're not even the ones that control things I don't think barack obama can come into the government. I don't think rand paul can come into the government as president And just have an edict on day one and bring about a quasi libertarian society You would have rebellion by these various institutions lots of viscosity lots of friction Lots of pressure to stop it and I think it would be stopped Um, so I think the state is sort of like a problem unto itself Anyway, what kuzan points out is that within this government. There's no overlord that oversees them It's just an interlocking set of rules So his point in a way is that we always have anarchy because there's no god above us At least one that is interfering Like an overlord who who makes us comply with some kind of constitutional scheme or some kind of rules It's an interlocking set of rules. There's a complex interplay of different layers of of checks and balances and Powers against powers and things like that So his point is that the question is what flavor of anarchy do we want or what type of anarchy do we want? And that sounds to me a little bit like what um, allen moore is saying And that's fine as far as it goes, but I think it's a little trivial because it it doesn't kind of get us to the the nub of the issue um Well, what's the nub of the issue then because what he's saying essentially is this that again, it's just it's just the state of You know the human beings go away tomorrow the globe's still floating doing whatever it's doing We come back. We're just going to impose whatever values or ideals we have But that just comes naturally if people want to be aggressive And impose their will upon people and there's a apparatus so to speak of the state They're going to go there and just do it anyway. It's not like Well, that's so that leads to another so okay. Give me a second So what I would say is an analogy I'm thinking of is is is is uh, the question of property rights So libertarians quite often say Well, what we believe in is private property rights and everyone else believes in communism or something like that um, I think that's The better way to look at it is that Every political system almost every person has some perspective on what property rights are appropriate Because a property right is just illegally recognized, which means a widespread institutionalized Systematized way of recognizing what's going to happen. What rules will be enforced It's a way of deciding who should have the right the legally the right to control a given scarce resource So in that sense every system recognizes property rights So then if you step back and say well, then what makes libertarians different than others because they all we we all believe in property rights um And the difference the difference is we believe in assigning property rights in a particular way Which is basically locky and first homesteading rules combined with contract In order to achieve social peace cooperation and society that is what our goal is Informed informed by economic analysis. That is we understand the role of property rights We understand scarcity. We understand basic at least basic economics And all these insights come together to inform Our vision of what the property rights allocation rules should be Every other group from the libertarian. It's almost like atheist versus Religionist from the atheist point of view Not to say every libertarians and atheists, but from the atheist point of view you're either a theist or you're not a theist that's why atheist and From the atheist point of view it's There's a difference between jews and muslims and christians and buddhists, but it's not An important difference. It's just a flavor. They're basically all theists of a certain type Likewise from the libertarian point of view Um, we are the only one that believes strongly in a consistent principled Self-ownership, which means we're the only political philosophy or political theory that opposes slavery Basically every other political theory you can come across Will end up endorsing one form of slavery whether partial or complete whether temporary or permanent Over full self ownership Now they give different justifications for it. The conservatives will say Well, we believe in liberty, but it's not our only value Now whenever you hear that hold on to your wallet because they're coming after your wallet You know or they're coming after your body because they're going to say well, we believe in liberty But we also believe in stopping pornography. So Our drugs, um, so we need to have a balance, you know, they all say this kind of thing So they're all basically advocates of slavery in one form or the other So to me the fundamental difference Now let's go back to anarchy. So the fundamental difference of anarchy is the reason we call ourselves anarchists Is not because we hate authority It's not because we bristle at the nature of social reality and the fact that people are different or not egalitarian It's simply that we prefer interpersonal peace Social cooperation. We have some empathy for each other We want a society where everyone gets along and can use resources peacefully And therefore we prefer these rules that the Lockeans and the libertarians Suggest and therefore we oppose aggression And therefore we oppose the state because we recognize that the state Necessarily employs aggression. So for us, we oppose the state just because it's a species of aggression Which is a species of um invasion of the property rights That are necessary for flourishing and cooperation and prosperity and human society and peace So for us, it's not a rebellion against authority. It is it is a consequence of our Our pro society pro cooperation Values and I think if you are in favor of just general civility And cooperation and human prosperity and you have a little bit of empathy for your fellow man And you have a little bit of economic literacy You're going to tend to start being more and more of a radical libertarian and a radical libertarian anarchist in the end Yeah, I mean just in terms of authority. I'm giving up, you know, I'm not giving up But I this is a this is a position of you giving information to me. I'm a subject I'm a student of you I'm more than happy to be under an authority in a sense of Enlighten me with your knowledge and I'll compare it to how I see reality, etc I speak to other so I mean Yeah, again, that's that comes back to the misconstruing of that we're against all authority and then that's what they throw it at It's just a very odd dynamic that ends up breaking down. Are you have time or you need to run? Um, I gotta go shortly, but we can talk, uh, maybe five or ten more minutes if you like Okay, let me see. Um So And I don't mind having a part two if you want to that might be better anyway to break it up for people So If we have more stuff because it always takes longer to cover these things then Then you think you can never do it in 25 minutes Because you have three three things to take 45 minutes It's just the way it works because it because I'm long-winded and it takes a long time to explain these things No, this was great. Uh, yeah, we did it. We did a whole hour. So I will um, I'll clean up some of my questions and At least we got a few of them out of the way And again, I'd like to do another discussion. So I appreciate your time and all the knowledge Yeah, let's do that. Why don't we do this? Um, well, let me say goodbye and then we'll talk for a second so, um, I appreciate this I enjoyed it and um and For listeners, we'll probably have a part two coming up. Okay, great