 So without further ado, oh and by the way, if you're ever in the president, you must stop this evening. Marshall Griffiths. Thank you. Well done. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Is this microphone okay, working okay, or should I speak up? I'm going to speak tomorrow too, so I decided please mic me tonight so I don't lose my voice. We're going to be addressing, thank you by the way, for that splendid introduction. I'm so tired of writing those things for other people to say. It's neat to be working with a person who can go up and give one a cappella and keep you all interested. And so this is the kind of bright young people that are coming into the Libertarian movement as you look around. And there's also bright middle-aged people and bright grandfathers like me. I just joined the Grandfather's Club this last year and yes, I do have pictures and I'm sure you all will ask to see them. So look at that. I told my wife. I said, now will you please pick cute pictures so that nobody has to strain themselves to say oh. And nobody's so far. I haven't seen any problems there. It's really fun to be here. One historical footnote and then we'll move on. Jim, we seem to be getting a lot of, yeah, thanks. Thank you. This is approximately the 140th time this presentation has been given by me. And very likely it is the last time. I'm going on to some other things and starting the school. This is on videotape. We've shipped 700 or so copies of it. So if you really like it, you can replay it over and over and over again. I had to see it once. In fact, it was seven days in the editing booth trying to piece out parts that looked good and we could piece together and make you all think I just said it. And interestingly also one more data point. This was approximately 10 years ago, plus or minus a month or two. But 10 years ago that I gave the first one of these when I invited, Libertarian doesn't make so much sense. I'll invite five people over to my home and explain it to them one night. And that didn't work at all. So a month later I invited five more over to my house, different people. I wore out a lot of friends and acquaintances there. And every month I would have anywhere from one to ten people. One time it was one. And I would try to, and I would completely change the presentation or everything that didn't work last week and a month I would try it again. And it was a couple of years before, like Michelangelo carving David, I got rid of the marble that didn't look like him. And there was finally a presentation. So what we're going to do tonight is try to answer four or address at least four prime questions in about an hour, a little less if we can. And then open it up for questions and have some questions and answer. And we're going to finish at 7.30. One of the presidential candidates is right behind it. And I see no profanity for me to ever get in the way of a presidential candidate. So we'll finish right on time. The four prime questions I believe about Libertarianism is, first of all, and this is an introduction to Libertarianism. The second one would expect us to start with what is it? What are the basic principles? Are these principles that are any good? Are the principles my mom and dad taught me? Are they something else? You know, what is this thing? A second question is, how does it compare to the things I already know? I sort of know this left-wing, right-wing kind of stuff, liberal and conservative. Where do you guys fit on the political spectrum? The third question is, hey, if these ideas spread around the planet, this catches on? Is this going to be good for me? Or what? Is it going to be good for my friends? Is it going to be good for people in my industry? You know, if I'm canning tomato sauce, is it a good thing for the tomato industry? Is it good for poor people? Is it good for minorities? Is it good for tall people? Is it good for Chinese people? I don't know. But these are the kinds of questions that people would ask as they encounter something that is new and as big as Libertarianism. Libertarianism is good for me and my friends. And the fourth question is, hey, you Libertarian, can you guys prove this thing is actually going to work and is possible? You know, where is the evidence? I want to see the evidence. So those are the four questions we're going to address this morning. The first one is, what is it? We can answer that question any of a dozen or more ways in the sense of if we all had blindfolds on and we'd never seen an elephant and we were to go grop an elephant. It would take us a while to grop the entire elephant, assuming he was sedated, or with discussion with our friends to resolve just what an elephant is. It's that big. Is it a fan? Is it a pillar? Is it a wall? Is it a water fountain? Kind of a thing. And similarly, Libertarianism is quite large. So I'll be defining it more than once in the course of the evening. And in each time, as I say, what is it? I'm trying to help you to have that sort of total view of the thing. You know, I've got it. Kind of an attitude. So one way to define it is it's a combination of the liberty ideas of left and right. Liberals, people on the left, tend to like freedom of expression, freedom of speech. People on the right like freedom of enterprise. And if you combine free speech and free enterprise, you've got something quite old, it's the American ideal, but in a sense also quite new. There's many people that say, don't label me, I'm liberal on some issues and conservative on others. And maybe what they're saying is, I haven't heard a label yet that I like. I really don't think labeling is the problem. Handsome, intelligent, beautiful, 30 years old, balding, right? They don't even have to be particularly charming labels, but as long as they're accurate, we don't mind being understood. It's the way we are understood. So I don't think labeling is the problem at all. I think it's mislabeling, that way or is that? Anyway, that's just tangent. To get into libertarianism and into its principles, I'd like to kind of play with some people in the audience here, particularly if people are here for their first time. And John, you look nervous as all get out. Can I pick on you? Sure. Okay, thank you. First question's the easiest, you know, so it's not to fear there. John, if someone were to come into your house, he's wearing a ski mask, he's carrying a shotgun, gets the drop on you, and he robs you of a bunch of your stuff. In your opinion, is there something wrong with that? Sure. Yeah, sure. He says, yeah, that's an easy one. How many of us would agree with John? That's obviously saying, okay, good, all but one. Good group, good group. Okay, over here, you introduced yourself, but you didn't get a name badge just yet. Edgel. Edgel. Two people come into your home. Again, they're wearing the ski mask, they get the drop on you and all that sort of stuff. They're cleaning out some of your stuff. You've got this great big built-in television set, and there's this argument that ensues, do they have enough time to get the TV set out of there? Okay. And you bring up that your brother-in-law, a highway patrolman, is due over any minute to watch the game. It might be best that there isn't time. And they sort of decide to vote on it. And it turns out the vote is two to one. And they take the TV set. Edgel, does the process of taking your stuff become morally okay if you're allowed to vote on it? If they employ democratic principles and allow you to vote? No. How many of us think that if you get to vote on it, it's okay if people take your stuff? Only if you have a big family. Only if you have a big family. Oh, dear. Let's see here. Martha, three of them come into your house. This time they're not even wearing, they're very brazen now, they're not wearing ski masks, they're dressed in suits and all that sort of thing. You can see that they're carrying guns. And they're prepared of a list of things that they want you to give them, including your Mercedes. But one of them comments, he says, you know, Martha, young, delightful people like you should be in an exercise program. And while we are going to take your Mercedes, we're going to give you this nice Schwinn. And we encourage you to ride to work and ride to play and whatever. And so they leave and all. Is it okay if someone takes your Mercedes as long as you get something, some return on your investment? You got the Schwinn out of it. Is it okay now? Not a good return. But does the morality of their taking your car change because they left you something behind? You got something good out of it? You got the Schwinn. Did the morality of the theft change because you got something? No. How many of us agree with Martha that the morality did not change? Okay, good. One sort of last question, I want someone, Bill, there you are. I took off his name badge and everything but thinking he could trick me. But that's okay. I couldn't read it from this distance anyway. They didn't use the big pen. He's not a true libertarian. He likes to put on a name badge. The rest of us have to be practically coerced into it. So good for you, Bill. Four of them come into your shop. Same thing with the Mercedes and the list and all this kind of stuff. But they do one more thing, Bill. They're going to not only give you a Schwinn, but they're going to give a Schwinn to a poor person down in Paraguay who needs a Schwinn in order for her to get to work and all and support her family. And let's say a couple of things here. One, you have not only a generic belief and value in helping disadvantaged people, but you have a very specific burden on your heart for the people of Paraguay. You live down there as a kid. Your mom was the ambassador. You went back in the Peace Corps and you've got this great sense for the people of Paraguay. Bill, is it morally okay for someone to take your Mercedes if they do something that you consider good with some of the proceeds? That does not become morally okay in your opinion. How many of us are good with Bill that even though they're doing something sort of nice that we approve of, the morality of it doesn't change? All right. Let's see, what are we up to? Four, Chris. What if we had 14 in the group? Would it be okay then? No. Richard, 40. Philip, 400. Linda, 4,000. Four million, Phyllis. 104 million. Hey, watch it, guys. You're wrecking the carpet. 104 million people. Yeah, John's saying, I don't know. It's a lot of people to crowd in the house. The question is, how many people does it take in a gang of robbers to somehow transform the immorality of robbery, somehow transform that into the alleged morality of taxation? Fairly simple question. I'll repeat it. How many people does it take in a gang of robbers to transform the immorality of robbery into the alleged morality of taxation? Yeah, shaking his head. And that's the libertarian sort of answer. Is golly, there isn't sort of an answer. I mean some guys get cute, okay, all of the world, kind of a thing, every person. Which means maybe it wasn't coerced if you wanted to do it yourself. If you just gave somebody your Mercedes, that's not coerced. Libertarians can't seem to find a difference between taxation and other subsets of theft. There's burglary. There's embezzlement. There's, oh, there's another one that starts with any extortion, robbery, arson are all subsets and even fraud and trespass, in a sense, are subsets of a general area called do not steal. And libertarian view of things, libertarians are folks that can't see a distinction. Even if the theft or the confiscation is performed by a large number of people, who claim to be doing good, and maybe doing some good thing, I'm not saying the poor person in Paraguay couldn't use the bicycle. Now, lest you think we're tax protestors, let me, oh, there's occasional one now and again, and then go to club fed and come back out and say, well, it wasn't such a good idea after all. It treated me okay, but it was a year out of my life kind of a thing. Lest you think we're tax protestors when my son, and I'm sure the same thing would happen to you, if your son were to go to work in an all night gas station and he asked the question, what do you do, dad, if a robber comes in? What do you suggest I do? And guess what dad suggests? You give them the money. You give them the money. You give them respect, right? You give them what they're asking for. When they've got the drop on you, they're dangerous. Now, is dad saying that robbery is moral and good? Is dad anyways? No. He's just saying those folks are dangerous. Don't provoke them. Give them their money. And I think that's the basic libertarian stance towards taxation. Those folks are dangerous. Give them their money. So we're not anti-tax in the sort of different ways that there are to resist, you know, we're not in the tax resistance movement, the vast majority of libertarians. But they carry this opinion that it is an outdated, immoral concept and in the same sense that we today look back on slavery as a poor employment technique, an immoral employment methodology. And yes, we still have cotton, isn't it nice, right? Libertarians predict that in 50 or 500 or five years, sometime in the future, that human beings will look back on the whole concept of taxation with the same attitude that today we look back on the concept of slavery. And they'll say, isn't it barbaric? They would threaten people with guns to take their money to help each other and to do things that they needed. Isn't it barbaric? And we'll still have roads and we'll still have police departments and we'll still have rules and laws and these kinds of things that we need. It's just that the funding will be not coercively done. And there are people here in this room, I'll bet, who have government provided garbage collection and there's people in this room that have private garbage collection and my garbage gets picked up on Wednesday by a private garbage company. And if I want to, I can switch to Friday's service and there's a different, you know, competitor. We want customers and their phone number right underneath it. That doesn't need to be a monopoly. And garbage collection privatization is a fairly easy one. Some are tougher. But that doesn't mean they can't be done. Not by a long shot. So when we get to the question, what is libertarianism? What is it? I think, hi, that's good to see it. What is libertarianism? I think libertarianism is the basic principles that your mom and dad, in all likelihood, taught you. They're the principles that my mom and dad taught me. And that morality does not come from what the group decides. How many of us tell our teenage children, well, you just find out what everybody else is doing and then you do that. Oh, no. That's not the way we decide morality. We say, oh, you considines, we're different, right? You don't have to do that. Everybody's doing, you know, there's some standard that's outside of just all of us kind of guessing as to some majoritarian approach. A personal note and we'll move on. I was about 11. I jumped off a roof. I thought I was fairly well prepared. I'd put a towel around my, a beach towel around my neck and I hollered Superman. Some other people have used similar preparations and my father found out because of what happened to my ankle and he said, you know, why did you jump off the roof? And I said, well, because Denny and Chuckie did. And my father said, monkey see, monkey do. How many of us have ever heard that expression? Nothing my father ever said to me hurt as much as him somewhat accurately calling me a monkey. I didn't like that a bit. And from then on, I always jumped off first. And let Denny and Chuckie explain to their dads why they did it. A basic principle of libertarianism is that you own yourself. It's an axiom. It's a fundamental sort of thing. The alternative becomes absurd. The axiom you own yourself has difficulty. But it doesn't become absurd. The opposite becomes absurd. I own you. You own me. We own him. I'll decide what you wear. You decide who he marries. He decides what I eat. You see what's happening? We go crazy. If each of us thinks of the others, you know, we can own them in the sense that you can own a parakeet or a lawn mower or something. And then of course they reciprocate. It becomes insane. If we really take it to its full extent, you know, we're in fist fights or something within 20 minutes. Now there are difficulties with the axiom. How many of us in here know someone who's not very good for perhaps terribly incompetent at running their own lives? May I see a show of hands? How many of us are sick and tired of those people trying to run ours? See, the difficulty in the alternate axiom, you know, I own you and you own me, it's not that the bright and nice and wonderful and decent people, like Bill and Chris and Chuck and me and both of you, I don't even know your names, but you just look so nice and decent, right? We're not. Somebody went to central casting and said let's have a couple of decent people in the second row, okay? See, the problem in that whole alternate axiom is that the decent people don't actually get to be in charge and run the world. You know, it's not the mother Teresa that says, elect me, elect me. It's the Gary Hartz. He can't run his own life. He can run yours, right? It's the Stalin's, the Nixon's, the LBJ's. The Brezhnevts, the Mao Zedong's, the Idi Amin's, the Papa Thaks who rise to the top. It's not Tom Dooley, Schweitzer, Mother Teresa. They don't want to get into that stuff because it's corruptive, it's corrosive. Lord Acton said, power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. What is it? Libertarianism is in all likelihood the principles that your mom and dad taught you. It's the principles that the America was founded on. And if the founding fathers were able to come back today and shop around for a political ideology, there's no question as to which one they would select. No question. Question two. How does libertarianism compare to left and right? I mean, we're all used to this left-right spectrum, aren't we? Although oddly enough, we never see it with tick marks. Makes you wonder what they're measuring if they don't have tick marks. But we'll put the liberals on the left and conservatives on the right. Everybody comfy so far? Okay. We've got to put people in various places. Some people put Stalin on the left. They put Hitler on the right. Lisa, if Stalin is on the left and Hitler is on the right, who do you feel closer to? Woo, tilt. All of a sudden, we've got around five billion people in the world trying to stand in the same spot in the middle. Well, what good is a spectrum measurer, right, that can't differentiate? There's something basically fishy with this left and right. David Bergler invented this way of debunking, I'm about to say debunking this left-right spectrum. You're going to meet somebody and he's prattling all the time about free speech. Would you think he was a leftist or a rightist? Left? Okay. You mean another person? He talks up all the time about free enterprise. You're going to guess he's on the right or the left. Now you mean another person. He's against both those ideas. Where are you going to put him? In the middle. Okay. And now you find somebody else. Fourth person walks in and says, hey, I like both those ideas. Where are you going to put him? Huh? In the middle. Right next to the person, it doesn't like both ideas. There's something fishy in a two-point political compass. Right? It ain't got no north and south. We're in the same mapping pickle that we as a human race were in four, five, six hundred years ago when we thought the earth was flat. And it's fine as long as you're making a map of downtown Madrid or all of Monterey County, but when your concept of the planet starts to include Africa, India, China, North Pole, South Pole, how do you get the thing on a flat? If your model is flatness, how do you get the thing on the map? You're in a pickle, and you need to have a shift in your thinking. You need to go, and not just to a teacup, you need to go all the way to something that's kind of round. A globe, a sphere. And now you can better understand the planet earth. And we're in the same sort of pickle with this blasted little simplistic two-point political spectrum of left and right. A metaphor hung over for 200 years, actually this year I would guess, or last year it was the 200th anniversary of the use of this metaphor. How many of us know where the metaphor even comes from? Show of hands. France, that's right. After the French Revolution, you had the monarchists who wanted to restore the monarchy, and you had the Republicans who say, you know, hooray for the Republic, and they would have sword fights in Congress. And that looks bad to the people. I mean, how are you going to like these politicians killing each other in Congress all the time and look stupid, right, bad PR? So somebody thought, hey, I got an idea. Let's put all the monarchists over here on the right, and we'll put the Republicans over here on the left, and we'll have a police march up and down the middle, shun-darms, and then we won't be killing each other so much in Congress. And that's a good idea. That's the way they did it. And now this, and now let's hear from the left. This profound system that political scientists and journalists use all the time. There's just nothing more than an outdated 200-year-old overly simplified metaphor. And what we need is really a four-point political spectrum. Like to propose, if we can get it right side up, a chart that actually has two measurements on it, it measures on its right scale economic self-government from zero to 100. I will admit to those precisionists that yes, even the numbers here are metaphors, but we have some societies where we have a very low degree of economic self-government. You know, if Tom Hayden got in charge, he knows so much about economics that he can run your life. He's just real good at that, right? And he's got lots of pals that will join him and run your life in the economic field. So he would like a low amount of economic self-government. Milton Friedman, Jim Buchanan, George Stigler, Friedrich Hayek are all four economists that have won the Nobel Prize and they're all very bright chaps. But none of them thinks he knows enough to run your life economically. And if they were sort of in charge and the power hadn't had too long to corrupt them yet, because they'd go just like anybody else. But in the beginning, they would very much prefer a high degree of economic self-government. They'd be out here somewhere in the 80 or 90 or 100 percent. Likewise, in this clever division, by the way, of human nature, was devised by David Nolan, a political science major, a graduate of MIT about 20 years ago. And on the left, what we have is human actions that are not measured in monetary terms. On the right, we're measuring economics. On the left, we're measuring personal matters. It would be ludicrous to say, could you give me a $100 poem, please? All right? Would you give me about $50 of Hail Marys? All right? I need about a $2,000 friendship. Our relationship to God, to each other, the way we express ourselves, we don't quantify that way, do we? We can quantify time in dollars sometimes. I'll pay you $2,000 to go downstairs and wash my car. Yeah? Oh, never mind. He said he'd do it for $1,000. I could wash your car. We can measure some things in dollars, but other things we don't. They just don't make any sense. Now, using these two, what we have is a whole field of people over here called left liberals that tend to like a high degree of self-government in the expression area, this free speech, but sort of low in the economic area. Juxtaposed to them on the right are the conservatives who like in America a high degree of economic self-government, but a low degree of personal self-government. Jesse Helms would be glad to type up a list of things that he considers naughty and that you shouldn't do. We'd like to enforce community standards in this neighborhood. We don't look at pictures, books with pictures in them like that in this neighborhood. So conservatives like economic self-government but not personal self-government. The third person to walk in the room, the authoritarian, the Marxist, the fascist, the mercantilist, the just general purpose, I can tell you what to do, my gun's bigger than yours is, kind of dictator, agrees with the left, people shouldn't be allowed to run their lives economically and agrees with the right, people shouldn't be allowed to run their lives personally. The group, or me and my buddies is probably a more accurate term, should be making all of those decisions. There's the great mugwumps, the people in the center, but interestingly, the flip side, the people who agree with the left in terms of free speech and agree with the right in terms of free enterprise are up here and that's where a Milton Friedman, for instance, is or a Buchanan or a Stigler or a Hayek is they believe both in free enterprise and in free speech, freedom of personal affairs. When Buchanan was awarded the Nobel Prize, he was asked, you know, how does it feel as a conservative to receive the Nobel Prize? I'm not a conservative, I'm a libertarian. Oh, well, we'll write about something else, I guess. There's a chap here you may get to meet him. I always give him credit just on the off chance he's ever going to listen to one of these tapes and make sure that I haven't swiped his stuff. Bill Evers, and I know many of you know Bill, but part of this next concept I got from him and part from Joe Dean, who's now in Colorado and you may know him. Others may have had this, but those are the people I'm swiping this next segment from. And that is this. That map, that diamond chart is just the stage. Here comes the play. What we love about America, those of us who love America, isn't the amber waves of grain. They've got Lotson, Canada, and Australia, and Argentina. And it's not the purple mountains. They've got some of those in Russia, some other places, Chile. What we love about America is our history of our heritage, our tradition of whatever brand name you want to call it. Libertarianism, self-government. The brand name isn't particularly important. But those of us who love America, I believe that really is what we love. That's what we feel down there. And those of us that are feeling a gut level kind of concern that something's not right and I think it's more than sunspots. That something's wrong. Just a quick data point. Folks most of our age, not counting Martha and Phyllis here, a couple of the other youngins, but folks our age are the first generation of Americans in a test that I think Gallup has been doing for a number of years, the first generation of Americans to believe that our children will not have as much opportunity as we have. And the youngins, Martha's age and younger, coincidentally perhaps, don't think so, are the first generation of Americans to ever say on this test to give them every year, they believe they are not going to have as much opportunity as their parents had. Something's changing. And I believe one way to see it would be to play with that metaphor of the pendulum. And we've all heard it, right? Not to worry, Mildred. The pendulum will swing back our way soon and our guys will get in charge and Bill's nodding. He's heard the pendulum argument a few times. Right? Well, let's look at this. The pendulum swings to the left and our friends on the left say let's raise taxes and get into income redistribution. And it swings to the right and our friends on the right say hey, let's have a war on immorality of some sort, drug abuse or what have you. Swings to the left, war on poverty, swings to the right, war on drugs, what have you. What's really happening is that that pendulum when she swings back and forth is going ever lower and lower and lower in an Edgar Allen Poe kind of scenario. Because as the left gets control they do not put their energy into increasing free speech. A friend of mine says it's getting increasingly difficult to be a conservative because all we've got to conserve is the socialism of former liberals. Right? When was the last time you heard a conservative getting up and railing that we got to sell the TVA? No, it's not. It's our TVA. It's part of the American dream to have the government producing electricity. Right? That's going to be a good America unless we're sort of like the Soviets. What? Heck, a few years ago you heard him switch on the deficit well at least it's our deficit. Right? It's just a horse race to see who gets to be in charge. There's two teams left and right and my side will get it for a few years and your side can have it for a few years and it's just a tag team match the Hulk Hogan's of political world. How does it compare to left and right? When I'm asked where do Libertarians fit on the left rights agenda spectrum I say we don't. We're above the line and the Marxists aren't really on the left they're below the line the fascists aren't really on the right they're below the line. Stalin and the whole ilk are just kissing cousins right down there there's no real difference of what they were going to do to you once they get their hand on you. Who would be better off? Question three, who would be better off? Would I be better off? Would people like me? Would my friends be better off? What would happen there? Well let's look at the nature of man for a few seconds and I believe that the nature of man and woman nature of humankind is that we want to govern ourselves. It's real important to us. Mom let me do it myself. It's just and we're so happy as parents and grandparents when we see children doing things themselves you know that first step that first you know no matter what they babble it sounds a lot like grandpa my best of me but the nature of man is that we want to have self-government both in the social and the financial aspect of our life. Now a nice thing that happens in a society if we allow social self-government because from allowing people to govern themselves in the social or the left or the personal side comes tolerance and from tolerance comes a harmony in society when I tolerate you being a Protestant when you tolerate me being a Catholic when most of you tolerate me being a Christian and I tolerate you being an atheist excuse me I got my audiences all goofed up there for a few seconds and we say well the inquisition wasn't such a good idea we'll have to try something else and that didn't work out and when we get rid of that kind of nonsense we can build a harmony in society and we can live next door to each other and not have to have a replay of the 30 years war. Similarly if we allow people financial self-government if we allow them to own their farms for instance what we see is that they become personally responsible for their productivity and then we see an abundance I think we'll be hearing from Mr. Chen tomorrow afternoon and his remarks on what's happening in China but when people have personal responsibility they tend to be productive just a quick story on an early communal living attempt when a group of people in the Europe wanted to come to America they needed a boat this was quite some time ago there were some social dreamers in England that said we'll pay for the boat but you have to agree to a compact where there is a common storehouse and everything you produce goes into the common storehouse and then each draws according to their needs but we social dreamers have this plan and these wealthy folks bought the boat these folks slept all across the sea came to America and the first year half of them died the second year half again died the third year the leader Governor Bradford said enough of this social compact idea everybody's going to have his own corn crib, his own barn and what you grow this year goes into your barn and you get to eat it next winter because if we keep dying half havesies like this this isn't good and that fall they celebrated a bountiful year because the prior two years you say well I feel it on my heart that I should pray today I don't really want to go into the fields and work or my child needs me I'm not going to go into the fields and work so there just wasn't much work done but when it was personal responsibility then all of a sudden there was a bounty and they celebrated that fall does anybody know what that was called? Thanksgiving that's right we've just been talking about the pilgrims in the Mayflower Compact an early attempt at communal living that they figured out in two years it's taken the Ruskies 73 years figure out this communal stuff doesn't work out all that well if it's a family or something as intensive as the Franciscans you can accomplish it but that's in very small groups that voluntarily want to stay with each other it's not compulsory what happens if you have both left and right what you have is enough to eat and nobody's shooting at you trying to take it away and if you can feed your family and nobody's shooting at you that's sort of a basic Maslow first level kind of slice of security from which you can start to build some other things in terms of maximizing human well-being but you've got to have them both you can't go havesies on this thing if you try to build a society in which you respect the economic self-government but not the social self-government and not that South Africa is very good over here on the economics it's not but it's a horrid mess with apartheid and everything on the social side and you have a society that's got some major cracks in it put it mildly if you do it the other way you've got to build a Sweden and you've got a relatively high degree of social freedoms but economically you're a mess and once again you have a society that's crumbling if you so much ignore the nature of government that you allow self-government on neither right or left if you build a Soviet Union you quickly have a rubble and I used to give this presentation in Europe kind of a thing and we used to draw comparisons this is still a can I guess between East Berlin and West Berlin that's going into the memory hole now and we won't have that same vivid play of the Berlin Wall in a few more years who would be better off you would be better off your income will go up by 50% or more in a libertarian environment than anyone else's on the planet even as libertarianism spreads to their area I'll show that in a few seconds and that's before you start the 4% compounding annually of the increase in productivity that happens above even the increase in people population and what you have is the capacity in a society like Ethiopia India, Pakistan Bangladesh you have the ability to quadruple the standard of living in 35 years that's how productive people can be if you remove the shackles they can grow the food they can feed themselves if you remove the shackles in the Hong Kong, Singapore South Korea the list goes on and on more and more data points that are adding up that if you remove the shackles people will produce abundantly so that's what's in it for you and by the way, not only will the poor people be able to quadruple their standard of living in 35 years that's a lifetime but middle class and wealthy people will go up by a near almost the same amount perhaps they may go up by two to three times in 35 years so that's the kind of potential I'd like to show you just a little bit of arithmetic here those of you who rate hate arithmetic can take a short snooze this is not necessarily a typical family it's just a family but we have a family whose income is $40,000 we probably all of us know somebody like that and they get some benefits they get medical insurance and that sort of thing but we really make $50,000 a year now the government is taxing the folks in America right now anywhere 44-45% and that's not counting the hidden taxes where the government says you businessmen keep track of all of this stuff for us and the businessmen has to hire somebody to keep all of these books for them just so they can pay the taxes it's not even counting that kind of of drain on people but I'm just going to even use 40% here just because it makes the arithmetic easier so the government's portion of the $50,000 that you're earning is about $20,000 and your take-home pay in your pocket is actually $20,000 because $10,000 you've gotten benefits or the other $10,000 is now we're going to look at your take-home pay for a few seconds and we're going to analyze the government's portion first and we're looking at about $20,000 each year from this family now if you were to identify the things that the government is doing and line that up with that particular family and say which of those things do you think ought to be done it turns out that most Americans say well about half of those shouldn't be done you know I don't know why they took $85,000 of my money and sent a college professor to Peru for a summer to study in Peruvian brothels if they'd come door to door with the American hard to red cross or something like that fund if they'd come door to door and said it's the study of brothel and Peru fund I would have said I'd rather have a pizza and if that guy wants to do it let him go mow lawns for a couple of summers save up the darn money and then get down there right let him fund his own studies okay not just a silly example but you know there's various wars and other things that some people aren't keen on that they might say I wouldn't spend my money on that I'd spend my money on pizza something useful to me so you take a list any average American come up with about 50% he'd say that's stupid I wouldn't spend my money on that if you know I had my chance druthers on it so you can stick in your pocket one $10,000 right away because if this is all privatized you wouldn't be spending your money on that stupid stuff you'd have the 10,000 left you're earning it and if you wouldn't spend it you'd have it well now let's look at the other 10,000 that's being spent on things hey I want a court system I want roads I want national parks I certainly want schools and I'd like to have education that'd be really nifty so there's lots of things that I want there about half of that money they're spending they're spending on things that I would actually like that turns out that when things like that are done privately they cost about half as much as when the government doesn't and the ratio changes that the government's had it for a long time like the post office they've done for about a third that much but most things you can figure at least a half you can cut out just if you let private people do it for a profit motive which means that if we privatize the stuff that you do want done Phil you'd save another $5,000 each year if you were a $40,000 a year guy quadruple that in some cases so you get back in pocket one $5,000 pocket two, $5,000 you can add that up turns out to $15,000 a year for this family that comes to a $1,200 a month increase that works out to around $300 a week now what would you do Martha with an extra $300 a week well I'd bury it I sure wouldn't want to spend it alright how many of us have we had another $300 a week would put it into either vacation studies health care investments homes hobbies generosity home improvement or something else show a hand well we wouldn't burn it we wouldn't destroy it alright got a typical American group that could handle another $300 a week the reason I make that funny point is one of the things they love to talk about is how they're helping the economy we're helping the economy look we're look at the number of jobs we're creating as if oh yeah that's good because if the people had all that money themselves you know wouldn't create any jobs over there boy I'm sure glad the government's creating jobs how many are you creating there well almost as many as we're taking away turns out I know my wife would get into the home improvements part who would be better off you would be the person sitting next to you would be your children would be your mom and dad would be poor folks would be better off if you got a darn much envy corroding your soul that you can't stand for rich folks to be better off don't laugh there are people that way there are people for whom harming rich folks is more important than helping poor folks Wisconsin has a law in the books it's spreading other states are getting it that no county or school district in Wisconsin can tax itself higher than 20% higher than the average because that means you would be spending more on schools than the average and we wouldn't want that not that I want tax supported schools but here you've got envy on the books if your little school district wants to tax itself and spend $10,000 on schools and the average in Wisconsin is $6,000 you can't do it even if it's 100% unanimous vote in your town oh that would be naughty because you'd be spending more on your kids and than the other kids and that wouldn't be fair well it's true from a different standpoint because of the way the funding is done in California they did it I never thought of that before you're right they snookered me we're all snookered ladies and gentlemen thank you for de snookering me on that issue you're right everybody see it in California the funding for schools used to be by the local taxes and the local school board so if the folks in Phil's town wanted to have a higher property tax they could have that and have better schools and the folks in your town were real cheap skates and wanted to have poor schools and hurt the kids and they could go ahead and do that and Phil's homes would get worth more because nice people would move to his town where they really were nice to kids and had good schools right he's in Los Angeles so so so to make sure that it was even everywhere almost in California they changed the taxing so all the money flows to Sacramento and then gets spread back out more evenly and they have a better they did a better job of it than the folks even in Wisconsin have and the aspects of it had escaped me from it's equally bad oh dear we'd all be better off now how can we prove it works two ways we can prove it works we can prove it works with the evidence of the little picture and the evidence of the big picture I'm going to get through this real quickly the evidence of the little picture I'm going to play a game here for a few seconds mental game we're going to write the names of everything that you like that you use on three by five cards so eyeglasses blouse belt necktie haircut sweatpants chairs Jack Daniels pizza okay roads, schools, police protection all this sort of thing and we're writing all this stuff down on little three by five cards takes us all Saturday and then we put them in as we write them down we put them in two big stacks one stack is stuff we get from the coercion sector and I'm going to rename that the intimidation sector because coercion is not a dinner table word oh yeah I got coerced today and wrote my text now but intimidation is and then the persuasion sector and the intimidation sector is made up of those people who sell you their goods and services through intimidation they kind of force you to pay for it and taxes basically and the persuasion sector is folks who appeal to you your self-interest and appeal to you persuasively your Ford or your Toyota salesman basically that doesn't come at you with a gun and say buy my Toyota the government may come at you with a gun and say don't buy that Toyota because we want you to buy a Chrysler hey look that provides jobs for people to fix the transmissions do you believe in joblessness? what's the matter with you? I've got a trouble maker here in the front row ladies and gentlemen anyway we separate the thing into these piles okay called the intimidation sector and the persuasion sector and then we play a game remember the kids game called war simple card game you pull them off inside which one wins it's a very simple game good for their counting and a sense of gamesmanship learning risk or risk aversion what we're going to compare is harmony versus strife and we're going to compare abundance versus shortage for instance gasoline right now is coming primarily out of the persuasion sector but there have been two times in memory of all of us when gasoline pricing was moved to the intimidation sector remember when we had the gas shortage and the government helped out by controlling the prices now what happened to people's attitudes when they were in gas stations did we have harmony or strife yeah strife we had shootings in gas stations folks you remember that alright okay we moved gasoline from persuasion to boom we moved from harmony to strife by the way what happened between abundance and shortage all of a sudden we moved from abundance to shortage 90 days later when we allowed the free market to control the prices what happened we went back from shortage to abundance okay because at 79 a gallon there wasn't enough at 99 a gallon you know and now the because prices are working prices are very compact information nodules prices do work for us they're crucial transmissions of people's wants and needs and availabilities and the supplies and where it ought to be it's why the socialism fails as it doesn't have those little information nodules called prices no I'm not going to pay that for a pair of pantyhose oh really a three pair for a dollar okay I could pay that but see that little pricing nodule is information to you now we're going to play a game I go over here blindfolded you could actually come up and blindfold me and I pull off two at random we've already shuffled them and then I look at the two cards same ones as last week what do you know human blood plasma and we'll just talk for a couple seconds about it human blood plasma in the whole blood in America is pretty much in the persuasion sector there is nobody in jail for failure to pay his blood tax you know there is no give a pint or go to jail it's all given voluntarily either by nice people how many of us are nice people and have given blood may I just show my hands for all the nice people you just had diseases that don't allow you to and some people sell their blood in college or whatever poor what have you but they went in of their own persuasion and how much blood do we have in America oh about this much how much do we need oh about this much then what happens there's a big problem somewhere there's a flood a flood or a fire there's a catastrophe somehow and the need for blood shoots up what happens that week what happens that week the supply of blood shoots up people respond completely voluntary and then after a couple three weeks the need for the blood starts coming down what happens then the supply comes down you never read about a blood glut because it's free market now let's talk about the post office well I shouldn't I shouldn't have telegraphed what I was talking about you probably would have guessed there's a girl I think she was about 11 or 12 years old middle school anyway in Portland New York and they were given an assignment to interview some businessmen and there's a way to get them out in the community and do some interviews okay so this this girl decides that she lets it go to the last minute this thing is due you know before Christmas vacation she lets it go to the last minute finally she goes out and interviews two people a Kmart manager and a postmaster and the first one I'm not going to tell you which one she interviewed first you're going to have to guess okay so listen carefully she goes out and interviews this one and she says I guess her survey question was she had one survey question how's business that was her survey question so she said to the Kmart manager how's business oh business is fantastic this year we're staying open extra hours we have extra lanes we've hired extra people this thing is just fantastic you know business is great okay now which person was she talking to wait a minute I telegraphed hahahaha why do elephants get flat feet when they jump out of trees it was funny you're 12 years ago you're right it's Kmart she was interviewing we're rewinding the tape so we can not telegraph the little punch line this next time okay thank you you would have laughed if I'd said it right it's true alright thank you other audiences have right then she interviews this other guy and says how's business oh we told everybody back in September hahahaha to mail early it's not our fault the lines are so long you laugh I visited University of Oregon or something what is the one in Corvallis which one is that Oregon State I visited Oregon State and I know it's in September because I remember that vacation we drove up to Oregon went by there to get a sweatshirt for my daughter and she's in a different college but they like to wear each other sweatshirts and we were walking out of the student store and this was September the 20th a couple of years ago there was the sign mail early you know Christmas is right around the corner and that's not our fault I mean how were they to know Christmas would come this year now my point is this if you play the game with or without the cards but if you play the game if you're right down on three five five cards the names of things that you like that you need that you want you put them in the two stacks and you compare them and you say to yourself which one do you get with harmony which one was strife America's got this fantastic pizza system and there's lots of harmony what about our education system is anybody saying it's fantastic no strife shortage and when you've done the first ten you say ten to zero I think I'll do a few more twenty to zero hmm pattern is beginning to develop fifty to zero I wonder if it holds who's winning on the harmony abundance question and I contend that everything that you're getting in your life today that you're getting with harmony and abundance is being provided by the persuasion sector which by the way is open to the public that's why I don't call it the private sector and the things that you're getting today with strife and with shortage well we can't expand north of town can't get necessary government services you're getting from the coercion sector which I refuse to call the public sector because people are sometimes arrested for trespassing on public property this is the evidence of the little picture the evidence of the big picture a little bit different if we were to take just a vertical scale if we compress that whole diamond chart down to just a single vertical scale and we measure the percentage of self-government admittedly the numbers are metaphors on something like this and this used to work so well before the Berlin wall because we could plot some countries and we could say alright here's East Germany at 33% and here's West Germany at 55% and then we could ask the question which way does human migration flow how many people are rushing out of Hong Kong today trying to get into mainland China let me in let me out how many people are ready to go to Vietnam come on come on February the 15th 1991 7.30 at night next speech is about to start how many people are on a rubber raft right now paddling toward Cuba I mean it's time for metal floss right where is the proof that self-government works it's in the experience of human migration and people migrate toward more freedom ladies and gentlemen thank you very much for your kind attention we will take questions there will be no time for answers I'll take them real quick Bill that I was opposed to the use of force to the investigation of force right and I haven't heard anything about that I kind of expected something as I say there's 101 ways or a thousand of one ways to define libertarianism and I too have signed the pledge how many of us have signed the pledge may I see a show of hands and it's just a different way of describing it in a perfectly wonderful way some day I hope there's a book of one-liners on describing libertarianism so I didn't mean to leave something out in that you had a quick question Martha you had a long one it's an anti-freedom attitude the whole thing is a form of authoritarianism and it's more and more towards the authoritarian corner people that are somewhat left liberal but are really more authoritarian they're only considered I think most of those people that insist on that they're only considered left liberal and they're thinking in terms of this two-dimensional scale and if you were really to go out and test them very far I think most of them would fall down and they'd be high left low left far left they're just closer to Marxist and fascist than we are new thing new thing for you yes one last zinger from the last row I'm always careful there well what a shame we didn't have time for her go ahead good and loud yeah the free rider question there's two questions the free rider question is are they using my my dollar and there's two ways to ask that question and I do not wish to offend you and I'm sure if we got to know each other better I would I would find that what I'm about to say applies to other people who ask the question the way you did and not to you there's two ways to ask the question one way to ask the question is would there be enough roads would there be enough blood would there be enough whatever the question and I'm glad to address that because it shows a concern for human needs there's a different question though what if I were to give blood and others weren't and then they were the free ride on my blood what if I were to be so nice as to pay for the roads and then the other people use my roads to go buy pizzas right and that ladies and gentlemen is covetousness a word that almost isn't used I mean the old fashioned sins are gone sloth lust covetousness can't pronounce it anymore right the new sins are poverty injustice greed these kinds of things so I'm afraid that if you study your motives there you may find that the motive is covetousness you want that ten dollars and you don't want them using your road and I do not mean to offend thank you very much take it away Patrick