 Bob Lefebvre I think is known by so many people it's a little embarrassing to introduce him but so I think maybe it's best if I just say this this very fine gentleman is I think known by most of us as a writer and a lecture and a founder of Rampart College Rampart Institute I guess in Colorado mountains I like to think of him as an electric speaker anyway please make welcome Bob Lefebvre thank you very much Earl I hope my speeches isn't that shocking to you but I am very pleased to be here again I was here in fact there have been so many meetings recently that I'm almost meeting myself coming home as I go out our discussion this evening is going to be well the title of it is instead of morality and I want to begin by stating flatly that I am a moralist which means that I have to go a little bit beyond myself in order to cover my topic I want to clear up what I mean when I say that I'm a moralist I'm very conscious of Mark Twain's observation that which I'm amending slightly I think what he said was nothing needs reform so much as other people's habits and then in another context nothing needs reform so much as other people's morals and in my own case I am I trust not that kind of moralist I am a moralist for the following reason I want to set that down so that we are that you are in communication not just with the words that I put out but with my motivation in putting them out when I first became a libertarian if I may use the term which now applies to so many things I don't know that it has any specific meaning but when I first became convinced let me paraphrase that there had to be a better way to organize human society than an institution built upon the concept of violence retribution retaliation vengeance and war we've got to do better than that and the consequence was that when I began to study this matter philosophically I realized that what I had to do for myself was to come up with a philosophy a system of thought based upon nature's realities which would be an improvement on what we had there wasn't any point in my mind and there still isn't of getting rid of what we have just for the joy of the exercise if we can't make things better at least to some degree as a result of this effort let's not make the effort so I am at once confronted in my thinking with the necessity of measuring something that is better than what we have and that means exploration into the field of what is right what is wrong what is good what is bad and that makes me a moralist because anyone concerned in this area is concerned with finding some way of getting through this extremely difficult and complex area so most of us have tended to think that morality is whatever the church has said others of us have tended to feel that morality is whatever the law says that is a matter of fact is probably the prevalent view in the United States as of this moment that law and what is right are two terms meaning essentially the same thing the law is presumed to be correct therefore a violation of a law is presumed to be a violation of a morally proper procedure I would have to challenge that of course there is the anarchist notion which I heard in unseated as recently as yesterday at a meeting that whatever the government law may say is wrong and consequently breaking a law is by definition a positive good I don't know that I care to endorse that in fact this was precisely the thing that happened to me in trying to think my way through as a moral philosopher I began to realize that there wasn't a single philosopher I could name or whom I had studied that didn't have parts of his or her philosophy that seemed to me to be either wrong or incorrectly emphasized that is overly emphasized where it should not have been or avoided or omitted altogether when I thought it was important in other words I didn't find any philosopher that agreed with me and of course I was right oh that was the thing that hit me finally and you I think you it took a long time before I was willing to really admit this but I haven't yet really found anybody that is perfect even me now of course I made up my mind quickly about everybody else but I finally discovered that everybody has clay feet to some degree and that made it possible for me to take a look at other people and become discriminating and ladies and gentlemen I reckon I recommend this as a primary mental attitude we have a tendency perhaps it's an American trade perhaps it is a tribute to our youthfulness as a as a people but we tend to go whole hog on people we either love them we adore them we adulate them we put them on pedestals or we despise them we have or them we ate them we detest them and we can't find anything in between let somebody be on a pedestal and then we find a flaw and you hear the water running and you know it where it went this is this is characteristic for example I know many people who have received great help some wisdom and some brilliant assistance from ran I know others who have found contradictory assistance from Mises which of them is wrong well let's not talk about who is wrong who is absolutely wrong absolutely right I found flaws in both and I found help in both and I have found this to be true with just about everybody I have known ladies and gentlemen this will come as a shock but I expect that even the Ayatollah Khomeini was nice to his mother he is not exactly a symbol of adoration at least in my book but at the same time I have tried to get rid of this idea of having some kind of a symbol people I think we do better I think we come closer to reality when we look at things as they are and we look at people as they are and we accept them for what they are realizing that none is perfect and at the same time that none is without some merit and then you discriminate and you select the people that have the most merit as you see it and you avoid those that have not enough merit for you to bother with as you see it and I think that's the best way it works anyway I think that is what I have to do when I take a look at the prohibitions of the church I have found some of the things in various religions to be helpful I have also found things in most religions to be a little bit ridiculous I have found some of the things in government to be things that I would hope we would have which we are presently now getting from government I would agree with the anarchists that there is something fundamentally wrong here because government whatever it may do that may turn out to be fairly good in the end is nonetheless done in the worst possible way and but I can't say that every achievement is in itself wrong for example we have government libraries I don't think a library per se is a bad thing however I do not agree for with socialized housing for books there are are other ways to have books I'm not against books so if the government has books that doesn't make books bad the same is true with hospitals there are government hospitals I don't favor government having hospital but a hospital isn't all bad of course there are doctors and doctors and doctors bills and doctors will I understand all this but people if we stop painting each other in total colors and accept the concept of discrimination selection and use it keenly I think we will begin to appreciate just what we have in life and we'll begin to appreciate our friends even more because we will know that they are not perfect and we can love them anyway that's a breakthrough well I was not satisfied with the morality of the church and I certainly was not satisfied with the idea that government and law that there's government and rightness are the same thing clearly not so I tried to turn to what I call natural law to find a source for what is right and what is wrong for human beings to do now I spelled this out a little bit at the last meeting that I attended in this room sponsored by a different supper club and I think I was so keenly interested on that occasion to simplify and say no more than I intended to say that I think I oversimplified it and didn't sum it up as well as I should have because in point of fact the concept of natural rights and the concept of a natural morality or if you care to go with this a concept of scientific morality is so blame simple that you can't you can hardly believe it and I recognized finally of course after the meeting was over the last time that what I should have said so often this happens you you think of your very best stuff while you're asleep you know in the weeks you anyway that is what happened to me why didn't I say that at the time almost everybody looks at natural law as though if it existed the forces of nature would themselves enforce the law like the law of gravity and of course the law of gravity is one that nature doesn't force if you jump off a place that is too high for you whatever your wishes may be or whatever your ideas may be law of gravity will work and you will come to the next resting place however far down that may be if it's a long way down you may not arrive in good shape but down you'll come and I think people in fact one of the one of the guests at that meeting sort of challenged me with that idea where could I demonstrate that nature enforces this concept and people and nature doesn't enforce mathematics either mathematics is a an abstraction it's a code it makes it possible for us to deal in what we call a science of numbers but is it possible for you one to make a mistake and if you do make a mistake does nature hit you no you just come up with the wrong answer well I think that's the same kind of thing that we have here nature doesn't hit you in this case but if you don't understand scientific morality or the concept of natural rights your own mistake gets to you it isn't nature coming along and hitting you lightning doesn't come out of the sky and strike you and say naughty naughty you shouldn't have done that so if you're expecting that to happen I'm going to have to disappoint you I don't think it will but that doesn't mean that there isn't a natural law that can be observed you see there are no guarantees you can go right ahead and add up your column of figures and get a wrong answer every time and nature doesn't care there will be no weeping of the willow because you get come up with a wrong answer you just don't have the benefit of the right answer okay I hope I've made that point so what I felt was needed in this area was an understanding of human nature as well as the nature of the world we're in because it seemed to me that man quaman has a real nature it's a fact human nature is a fact of course I have been influenced on this point considerably by Mises and the concept of human action and the concept that human action can be examined from a scientific point of view not from a scientific point of view where you have to count and measure science does not require that except in certain types of experiments you don't have to quantify everything and still you can be scientific you can observe how things work and you can observe that if they are put together in a certain way benefits a crew that do not accrue if they are put together differently so this is what we all do we exercise the faculty of judgment we learn to discriminate and we learn how to put the pieces together now having reached the idea that this was the problem I had to get into this area to see if I could find some something to guide myself so that I could offer something that would improve on the situation it became quite clear the more I read history and the more I studied this whole area that almost without exception the conflicts which engulf human kind are conflicts relating to this ultimate question who gets to control how much of what in other words the questions that be set us and be fuddled us are questions relating to property who owns what how does he get to own it how much does he own what is ownership well what is property how do these things work well I'm not going to deliver you may relax on this one I'm not going to deliver a dissertation on property tonight though it might very well be appropriate I'm going to cut right across it to say that to reach a conclusion which I'm not going to attempt to illustrate because it takes much too long merely to tell you that I finally after working it over came to the conclusion that there are two ways that human beings relate to property one they can own it to they can possess it or three they don't either own it or possess it so when it we come to we come to a relationship we either own or we possess or we don't now then the difference between owning and possessing I saw very quickly both in terms of the chronology of development and the chronology of improving standards of living for human kind related to the discovery and the development of what I will call the moral law and it was based on property and it emerged here so long as property was merely possessed then the party having the greatest property the greatest amount of property would be the biggest bully in the block possession in fact we have an old saying dating from this possession is nine parts of the law well it became virtually ten parts of the law because there was no law if you are a 600 pound anthropoid and the well you know the old question where does a 400 pound gorilla sleep and the answer is anywhere he wants to of course when we live at a time when possession is the only rule the party with the biceps makes the choices and the rest of us say yes whatever but that isn't satisfactory when we once begin to acquire significant amounts of property and you know who it isn't satisfactory to is the guy with the biceps because he suddenly finds himself confronted with a dreadful problem and this certainly occurs when we begin to acquire land you see his possession depends his upon his physical presence because if he turns his back and walks off the property left behind is up for grabs but when he begins to get a lot of property he can't carry it all with him and if he tries to acquire land he can't carry that with him at all so how does he make certain that it is still his property during his absence ladies and gentlemen that question and the resulting experiments that were done in little islands of human experience called tribes and clans and villages and so on are the scientific laboratories where we have worked this whole thing out and we have realized that we have a kind of conduct which benefits by far and away most people and that is a recognition that even though a person might be capable of taking the property of another it's proper for him not to not because he might be punished by the gorilla type when he gets back but because in the final analysis he hopes one time to have property to and if we can build up a concept of leaving each other's property alone and letting people continue to own even during their absence then and only then do we have a rising standard of living because without it each of us has to sit there and stand guard over whatever it is that we own and we never have time to produce enough to be worth much in fact we don't produce enough to be worth stealing it's only when we can put it down and leave it alone and walk off and are yet secure enough to come back and find it where we left it that mankind civilization begins to take off so this is where we make the discovery concerning the difference between correct and incorrect conduct correct conduct and this has been stated in many ways I'm not going to attempt to state it in a way that runs counter to whatever you find attractive but I'm speaking of the thing itself this has been stated as the golden rule it has been stated in at least five of the ten commandments it has been stated in the code of Hammurabi some I don't remember the exact amount something like 130 of Hammurabi's laws ended in the death penalty and most of them were merely repetitious describing what would befall you if you stole something more or less an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth which is where that saying comes from so but in the end it works out that when we begin to teach each other through our habits we don't form schools and sit down and learn lessons with homework and so on we learn through doing and we interact with our fellows and we learn that when we practice moral restraint that is to say we are in a position where we could injure our neighbor but we don't we are then in the moral theater we could perform badly but we'd perform well instead just as we are doing here tonight this little lady is trying to collect money and she's doing a good job of it but if she failed to leave someone a check I would anticipate that thanks to your training and your background you would go out and before leaving you would go up to her and say I didn't get a check could I take care of it now or some such thing why do we do that we do that because we have been inculcated with these ideas these are the moral notions that we operate from and they are predicated predicated upon boundary which is a fundamental of all property value which is a fundamental of all property and control that is to say the ability of the possessor to take control of his property in such a way that he becomes the exclusive decision-maker over that property even in his absence and other people respect it not because of the force that he could bring to bear but because that is the proper way to proceed and I might point out ladies and gentlemen that when you have a reversion that is once you take a civilization that has advanced along the moral line to a point where preponderance of moral rectitude exists over property and then you begin to go the other way as is happening in this country now and has in fact been happening in a major way in this country since the 60s we started into a decline in terms of property there of course intellectually we began a decline with the emergence of communist theory which theorized in this direction but we have been practicing it more and more our own government as you know is very largely communistic they adopt communism in order to fight it which you're well aware of we are entering into this period or well into this period of decline now when this happens we don't swing back the way we had been before what happens is that we rely more and more upon theft and of course we use the government as our model but we end up with more and more people stealing more and more things and the moral position declines and finally vanishes and your civilization collapses so actually civilization ladies gentlemen is built on a moral law relating to property now the church has led you to believe that morality has to do with sex or that it has to do with diet in fact the earliest church laws related to diet and to sex which by the way is the only way to get a good church going if you want a church because what you want to do is find out what people like the most and prohibit it and then they will turn to you for permission to do what they normally would do and then you've got the power to grant it or withhold it you see and that puts you in the driver's seat so if you want to start a religion begin by prohibiting the things that you know people who want to do anyhow and then you've got the guilt trick you can lay on them and you know and you can get money for this is you know that's practical procedure but I don't I'm not talking about that that's ridiculous real morality relates to property and of course the government's idea is that legislation is moral you know the the government I'm afraid would not understand morality if it were a bear and walked up and bit them if immorality were an alley the government would be a boulevard the the government is simply engaged in saying whatever we say is right is right because we said it was and of course you now find the what is particularly amusing every time we step off the earth and look back if only we weren't here now we could see it with greater detachment the the courts themselves are now reversing themselves sometimes almost in the same in the same week they're where they used to uphold the moral concept they are now fudging on it and finding ways and means of explaining that well what is called I think among some attorneys and there are many of them here and I'm sure they will hasten to straighten me out I have many friends who straighten me out all the time and I need it anyway they is called the deep pockets theory they find out when something goes wrong who around the geographical location where went wrong has the deepest pocket and you find that party guilty now this works out and it's the current theory that they're working on which does of course pay off but it's kind of an unhappy one okay now what I've talked about is the concept of morality and where it came from very briefly I haven't done a thorough job I understand that because we I'm now ready to cross the barrier to say instead of morality there is I'm I'll wait for my friend sigh I know he wants to do this ladies and gentlemen instead of morality once the concept of non-theft has been recognized I am not at all certain but what there is a simpler procedure though I don't quite know how to get to beyond the teaching of the boundary somebody approached me before my talk and said morality is as far as I'm concerned relates to the end of my nose I am this is me and if anybody violates that they're they're wrong and I agree that's true but what I'm getting at is called manners morals and manners have always been closely associated in philosophy partly because many philosophers view manners as simply another way of expressing morality because many philosophers don't believe there is such a thing as morality and consequently they merely turn to custom the more rays of the people and say well that's it and that's merely the manners the the usages whatever and they drop it at that point they have not come up with what I have just run through for you so that's one of the reasons the concept of morals and manners have been closely tied together but I see manners as going beyond that and let me make this clear at the onset I am not talking here about etiquette there's a difference between knowing which fork to pick up and good manners you see a person of good manners could probably pick up the wrong fork and nothing would be made of it and if the people sitting next to him or near him all knew that he had picked up the wrong fork it still wouldn't make any difference because if they had enough good manners they would never reveal that their neighbor had made the error because they have too many manners to give it away well what then of do I mean by good manners well you know the concept of ownership and the concept of possession depends upon boundaries and it gives us moral absolutes I agree this is my nose and I'm the only one that gets to blow it and if anybody punches it I'm going to be unhappy about it what I may do beyond that to show my unhappiness is a matter of judgment on my part and I hope under stress that I will be wise being French I cannot assure that I'm not always wise so please watch it when you see my nose but manners goes beyond this you see ladies and gentlemen there are properties and I'm using property now in its second important point we use the term property to denote anything that is subject to ownership but we also use it as revealing the characteristic of something we say that the property of these ashtrays consists of glass and your tumblers are have the property of glass and we use the term property in that respect as well as to denote something that is owned or could be owned so where we there are many properties there are many things that exist where the boundaries are either indistinct or undetermined or possibly even indeterminate at the present time in terms of our existing technology a good case in point is a very very hot issue at the moment where the people in Los Angeles have just made us more moral by passing a regulation demanding that all businessmen employing what is it three four five people provide a non-smoking area and the the reason is because we have not yet been able to figure out who owns how much of the air in a room the air in the room doesn't have specific boundaries we've got 40 people in this room or thereabouts and how much of the air in here is yours I don't know so far there's enough for all of us I'm happy to say but maybe my piece is over there and I'm breathing somebody else's I don't know we don't know because our technology doesn't tell us so the air in this room is either owned by the people that own the building and I don't know who that is could be a holding company could be a hold-up company I don't know what it is I've there rumors but it it's a cinch that I don't own it in fact that's the one thing I do know about property I can tell what I own I don't know what you own I don't own the building but somebody or something some agency organization corporation partnership something owns this and because they put a boundary around the air I guess they own the air in here but they're nice about it they're letting us use it so okay fair enough well that's one place how do we get along with smokers if we don't smoke how many of us have good manners in this regard I might suggest ladies and gentlemen that when you find an individual who happens to have impeccable manners that individual is not going to be giving you any problem about violating boundaries that's not the kind of fellow a girl that goes out and becomes a thief a rapist or a murderer I would think as a rule not if they continue to exercise good manners they they just isn't there line of tricks so what do we do in this area and you can think I'm sure of many other areas a person with good manners allows for the possible ignorance or weakness of the other party maybe there is a boundary there that we have not yet discerned but a party having good manners recognizes that everybody doesn't think the same way a person who smokes may have compulsions that are totally unknown to the person who objects now if the person who smokes has good manners that person will be concerned with the fact that he conceivably might be making someone else unhappy ill or at least billions and so he might be very careful about it but if he weren't the party that is being injured if that party has good manners would probably just excuse him or herself and move away rather than having a confrontation in which I demand that you stop or you demand that I start or whichever actually I do smoke I would rather do that than burst into flame I I usually smoke when I'm writing which is exactly what people say when they read my stuff they say it's you can tell what the product is but that's the point that I'm making we can think of other places take take sounds as another case in point where are the boundaries to noises and what is a noise to you may be music to someone else my father was tone deaf it was all noise to him you could play a beautiful piece for him and it was just noise it wasn't beautiful at all so the important thing for him was to keep the decibels down whatever it was with other people today the important thing is put the decibels up or they can't even hear it of course after a while they're impaired and they can't hear it at all I don't know that though I have seen growing tendency that way it may be true anyway where's the boundary well it's not discernible we know we can find the origin we know where that where we can find out where the noise originated but what if a person is deaf and doesn't hear it there are no boundaries for him nothing bothers him there may be advantages there but someone who has very very acute hearing and who finds that even music is just noise boy playing a beautiful melody to him is like you know running your fingernail perhaps over the black board and really giving him a shock how do you deal with this the moral law won't tell you but manners could tell you you don't intrude if you like music be sure that others like it too or be sure that as you play it you are not intruding on others who may have other things to do don't want to be jangled at the time and so on there and if you do like it then you can let people know that you do and you can work in that area and and not just music but various sounds there is a kind of noise and it's noise I know it's noise there's a kind of noise that I like I warm up to it I wouldn't tell you this but my wife isn't listening so I'll let you know the sound of her in the kitchen and all she's doing is making a little flatter and you just don't know but that that will actually cause me to salivate it's a marvelous sound now if I heard it someplace else I probably wouldn't like it at all but anyway you see where's the boundary to that well in my house I hope there isn't any but in somebody else's house it might make me nervous I don't know that people are different we're all different in things of it and what about odor here's here's something else again we can probably trace down an odor and find its source but who well we know the the source of the odor whoever owns the source and perpetrated the odor but what is your sense of smell how acutely do you become aware of odors and what do you think of them anyway do you like them or don't you well I guess there are pleasant odors and unpleasant odors I as a pipe smoker I found after I'd smoked a pipe for some time I virtually lost my sense of smell which is too bad because I now have to depend on my hearing to know that the food is being fixed so I don't smell the food I'd love to smell the food but I get my salivation out of the out of the clatter which is marvelous so you see nature compensates but others have great oh great ecstasy and various aromas which they admire and love the roses the perfume the this that and the other and then there are of course unpleasant odors and I have a memory I can remember them too but where's the boundary and how do we deal with them well the same rule applies ladies and gentlemen where the question of morality may not provide an answer the question of manners always can now if you think a little bit beyond this you're going to see something else ladies and gentlemen if you really have good manners the question of where the boundary is even when you can discern it isn't really all that important to you because you're not taking things down to the wire you're giving the other party the benefit of the doubt when he says this is my property you accept it provided it isn't your property and you don't accept it by saying okay show me your boundaries you just accept it and you respect it even though if you were to examine it you might discover that he's exaggerated a bit and he's told you that he has more than he has I have believe it or not detected that tendency in a large number of people we tend to overstate our own significance either in terms of our personalities our achievements or what we own so we sometimes this is my house but actually the bank owns it I have an equity in it but other people really own it if you want to be truthful about it and so on so again I think you see my point if we had or if we could develop a society filled with people who had good manners and who recognized with the arts of discrimination where the boundaries are when they are visible and determinable but don't let that hang you up when they nonetheless practice good manners anyway I wonder if we wouldn't have a much happier more gentle more constructive kind of social arrangement be fun to try thank you very much are there any questions sir I hope so yes maybe let me say it a different way I consider good manners consideration for the other party and consideration express in these scientific terms if you like when I find where the boundary is between my property and my neighbors it turns out that that boundary is a line on the map or a fence but I it is good manners for me to presume that my neighbor even has an interest on my side of the fence now legally he doesn't morally he doesn't morally I can be precise I own to that fence period but from a standpoint of good manners it might be very nice for me not to stack garbage on my side of the fence I'm at liberty to do that it's my property but I'm quite sure he wouldn't like that and if I have trees along that line it might be a good idea for me to communicate with him about the leaves that may be falling in his yard or the trunks of the trees that may enlarge and end up being apparently partly his technically I suppose he could come in with a rip saw and saw the trees in half I would hope he wouldn't and I would work or try to I think good manners would say why don't we work this out that's what I mean by good manners you communicate you give the benefit of the doubt to the other party and if he has good manners to he'll give you the benefit of that as well that's what I mean does that help okay sir yes but it is tolerance spelled out particularly as an extrapolation from a moral position I think I haven't thought about it enough yet but it seems to me that this goes beyond morality because it solves or it offers it doesn't solve precisely but it offers possible solutions where morality has virtually nothing to say so in that sense it does go beyond instead of morality works where the boundaries aren't there or can work but then of course when you get right down to it nothing works absolutely anyway so this will work as well as anything else and I'm quite certain that if we had people who would practice tolerance to use your term and who would reckon who would recognize that other people make mistakes and that does not make them into villains it makes them into human beings like ourselves because we do make mistakes and then if we find that we are rubbing there for the wrong way we can find that out and correct it and or try to I think it's so it's the way to go I recommend the procedure sir in boundaries yes that type of thing yes now tonight you took that a step further and to find it in terms of not only the ownership but going to step earlier in terms of the golden rule which I think is fantastic if you really step back and take a look at it though once I get down to the point of the golden rule do I then still need the concept of ownership and well that's why I haven't done enough thinking here yet I don't really know it strikes me that in the world that we have given human development to its present state that morality is a precursor to manners not the other way around I wouldn't have tumbled to the concept of good manners had it not been that I had already found what I thought was a scientific morality and then I continued to be confronted with a problem how do I deal with this place where we cannot find the boundary and I realized well the golden rule doesn't quite satisfy me either all by itself it it depends on how it's interpreted it seems to me maybe we should talk about this some other time yes it seems to me that what you're talking about more than morality is common sense this isn't really a question but just some ideas I'd like you to maybe comment on I'm always curious whether common sense is something that people are born with or something or whether common sense is something that can be taught or acquired in some way and to me that's something that we have to you know wind up all these things the manners property rights go that's all common sense why isn't there market going around what can we do to increase the level of common sense which seems to be lacking in the race well Dagny you know that's the reason I became a libertarian is because it seemed like common sense to me too when I sat down and thought about it but I suppose the real problem with common sense is that it's so very rare so it really isn't common so I think maybe some people have a predilection toward it but some don't seem to and this is why I think it's so vital for them to understand the nature of human liberty because of course liberty also falls into this same category liberty is a word that arises for use in the moral theater it's one of the things that I find vital so I can't I can't answer your question I really don't know why there is common sense is so rare but I agree it is yeah oh yes indeed sure why not whatever term seems comfortable for you I am not a pit ladies and gentlemen I have great respect for those who are but I like people to use the terms that they find accommodate their thinking I use the words that fit myself and I try to make myself understood and I'm sure that each of you will could say what I've said and in your own words say it better than I've said it only I've tried to communicate with all of you and probably I wouldn't understand some of what you would say to me I've tried to reach a common denominator in my words so that you would all at least get the meaning that I intend to communicate that's what I tried to do any other questions in the back well the manners breaks down just about where the morality breaks down in other words what you've expressed is that you wouldn't like it if an alfalfa plant went there even if they had the moral prerogative of putting it there so the matter of manners wouldn't help you and the matter of morals probably wouldn't help you you still wouldn't like it I might can and I can sympathize for that the one of the difficulties that we have here is I suppose a failure on the part of our educational system to correctly inform us of the nature of reality the fact is that you cannot control the actions of other people you could kill them and if they wish to be influenced you might be able to persuade them and demonstrate and etc. and get them to change their minds but they have to change the mind you can't change them you can change your own mind but it's the only mind you have dominion over so if somebody owns the property next to your place and wants to put up some kind of a factory on that property gully they'll do it oh I know the government might stop them today but then the government will turn around and they'll put their factory there you know and then there's no way to stop them because they got bigger tools you know they've got the guns so they'll do it what you should be what should be explained it seems to me when you have acquired your property in the first place is that when you bought your property you didn't buy the whole neighborhood your property is bounded by these boundaries and within those boundaries you are sovereign but if you want to be sovereign of the neighborhood you got to buy the whole neighborhood and if you can't do it then find another neighborhood or go out in the country and and buy up a hundred acres and put your house in the middle and then you own all around you they can't get closer than that than the periphery that you own or the other thing and you could use manners here I suppose you could go to your neighbors and say look here's what I would hope you'll cooperate with me and I'll cooperate with you and you do that but I think one thing that does happen to in our particular society I think we we get so involved with the government and the government is always telling us how they're going to guarantee all these things and my dear when you when the government says you now this makes you safe or this secures you this guarantees duck because they don't make anybody say you know that's ridiculous when they start saying that you head for the cyclone seller because you're about to be wiped so the answer and the only answer I know of relates to and you raised a good question before you got into this factory next door to you because I think there are places where you do have to be precise and this deals in places where you are working with particularly with other people's property for example if you are a trustee and you are looking after another person's money or land or whatever as a trustee you really can't be too gracious you cannot be too tolerant of people that might unbeknownst to you commit a trespass you they just better not and consequently it seems to me that in a case of that sort and I can think and it's not just being a trustee let me include here if you're running a business you can't be called a namby pamby about your balance sheet oh wouldn't it be nice if you had enough money to pay your bills I'd be real nice but you better have the money to pay what you promised to pay and that isn't a beguess and a beguash it's a right here and it has to be precise so there is a place for the moral approach and where you have to be specific and write down to a specific point as with a trustee as with a businessman as as with the an employee who is working for wages and who has specific chores to perform he must perform those chores so it should be however that still doesn't eliminate altogether the the consideration you can show using a size term or the tolerance that you can show accepting on matters of precise property lines and ownership of valuables that's and so on so there's a place for both as I at least in our current society and I don't see any way out of out of both at the present time dick seems to me that you shifted your ground sort of radically in that answer and distressingly so when we began when you began talking about morals you were giving one-to-one personal examples in areas where property boundaries were big or undefined and I thought you made a very good case for the civilized necessity of working these things out with our fellow man now as soon as an economic entity above the individual enters the picture you know the alpha alpha plant in the way is example they bought the property next door presumably they didn't buy the air that I breathe okay you've still got exactly the same problem you've still got the undefined property boundary now the the offense to my nostrils and the invasion of quote my air is much more acute like so and I was when we just had one individuals quite so table right and yet now you seem to be saying well now it's a balance sheet problem now it's the bottom line so so manners are out of the window so thank you dick no I didn't mean it and you're quite right I'm not trying to suggest that manners are either out the window or the morality is in fact I was trying to say that there is a place for both of them in our culture I think obviously I would have to agree that if pollution comes from a plant and it comes across the boundary then a something has come onto my property and consequently that is an intrusion and from a moral point of view I have a a right I would contend to ask them to desist in putting it on my property not to desist in doing what they're doing but to desist in putting it on my property now how they have to do that I don't know that's their problem but they would be engaged in a trespass in a violation of my boundary I didn't mean to suggest anything else in fact going to the concept of morality right here the people putting in the alfalfa plant if they were well versed in manners and not too adamant about their right to do as they please on their boundaries they might realize that as an individual where I would not want to stack my garbage against my my fence even though my side is mine because the other side could offend my neighbor they would not want their garbage to violate my boundaries if they're thinking manners and are are being considerate of the people in their vicinity and so I can I can see an application there for manners I didn't mean to throw it out the window nor did I mean to throw the other out either I think we we need both if the the usefulness of manners is particularly viable right now in those places where we cannot determine the boundaries with ease and hopefully we'll be able to do a better job as our tech techniques technologies improve but at the present time that we are really in limbo there and the only thing we have is manners Wayne I believe where morality dictates bad manners and it may just be a symmetrical problem I don't know suppose you're on the freeway and for whatever reason it's heavy traffic but it's moving along fast someone is riding right on your bumper and it's either inconvenient or impossible for you to pull over into another lane so that he may pass you you know the traffic stacked up in front of you familiar with he's not going to get there any faster by you pulling over what I find myself doing as a survival tactic is hitting my brakes to scare him up because if I don't do that sure enough if there's an accident ahead and I have to hit my brakes in an emergency he will be slamming into the back so I'd rather give him that warning which could be interpreted as bad manners and surely we'll get him upset with that's a survival tactic it's a moral thing to do but it's bad manners I don't know that it's bad manners so you are acting it actually in consideration of him you're helping to keep him out of an accident aren't you well I think it's I'm not so certain you know sometimes the best manners you can show relate to giving somebody a good tongue lashing that they have coming it's not necessarily bad manners it's how you do it see it I'm not trying to suggest that good manners are nothing but sticky syrupy you know it's good morals and good manners sometimes to let somebody know exactly what they're doing and but do it in a nice way you don't you know you don't have to refer to their ancestry you can you know just keep it clean I think it works like this for me anyway if I can keep my feelings out of it I'm okay on the manners part of it I I'm I have to watch this very carefully myself and I'm not getting any better as I get older I'm sorry people I really thought I was getting this thing under control and that by the time I got to be my present age I would just be purring like a kitten and there just be no way I could get upset and I tell you I'm a disappointment to me I can get just so riled up you just wouldn't believe it I I don't believe it myself I I get riled up and I I hear that echo in the room did I say that I did and I said it that loud and I meant it that way too by going no so I hope that's not bad manners it's just well as I've often said if you'd taken my course you would know I've often deplored the probability that the French can never be truly civilized yes indeed more times than not and would certainly be a guy or that which you refer to as manners let us take an example of my neighbor and myself what we do the woods and I'm aware of a bear trap just around the pin behind that big tree but he is not and it is certainly my right under your moral definition property that I say nothing depends on whose bear trap it is well it is not mine it's not you I didn't know and it isn't on my line right it is my right to say nothing and he winds up with an amputated leg that is not really arguing for the species certainly it is my right morally you would say I'm in the correct stance but morally I would say I'm not that if I were to argue for the as a matter of fact I have no problem with that done and I would like to subscribe to it it's an excellent illustration of good manners yes but no because I'm afraid of it done for the reason that so often once you broaden it then you are told that you have an obligation and you have to do it and that you are reprehensible if you don't now and then suddenly we become our brothers keepers and we go down that train thought again and your position is extremely attractive and I in terms of the illustration I'm hardly for it as I I presume you know I would be but I would like I would prefer to continue to define that as as good manners rather than morality because and there has been so much made of this other and I have to at this point agree with Rand about it I don't agree with her on several points but this is one where I do agree with her I think that the in trying to say that morality requires well you see to me if it is morality there is there is a must here just as with the boundary I must not violate that boundary there's a requirement there's a moral yes and no it's a precise line so if I am morally involved in the bear trap then I'm under obligation to say to my friend you must stay out of that bear trap or whatever if he is my friend I'm sure I would do it in any case and certainly if I have good manners I would say it but Don what about a man that isn't my friend and I don't just mean an enemy but what about someone I don't know how responsible am I for that trap can I let anybody go down that thing without telling them it's not my trap it's not my land and yet I know that that hazard is there suddenly if I am morally involved here then I have to become a busy body and stick my nose into other people's affairs sooner or later I think and I I'm I love it as you've offered it but I hesitate to say that it is a moral obligation for the reasons given I was simply saying that as my action I can argue for or against the species and that would seem to be a case where I should argue for the existence assuming whether I like the man or not I would not want to be I'm not going to have his death on my doorstep and I feel the same way and as I think I used in the class that you attended the illustration of the of the house that I discovered was burning and of course I ran to the fire department not realizing that water put out fires and thinking only the government could do it but then my father letting me know that I really didn't have an obligation there because if the man was trying to get rid of his house he had a right to burn it and of course my mother had seen fits at this time but then I had to go back and talk to the fellow and he was very grateful that I had I had gotten the fire department for him but the I feel a lot more comfortable with the idea that more morality by definition is compulsory there is a do and a don't and not a maybe but a manner permits you to go over that it goes beyond that point and under certain conditions especially where you can't find the for sure it would be very nice to go over that boundary and say why not try this I feel better about that done with all due respect yes for example let's say I want to get up and talk about evolution I know I'm gonna fan the hell out of some fundamentalist Christians now maybe I would I wouldn't go over and shout across their property lines but I'm talking someplace I know they're going to present would you would you I don't think you would but would you look for how would you stand it well I would I would not extend it into the field of communication I would say of course that no one owns the words and no one owns the ideas and the consequence is that if you don't want to hear something that you the if certain words offend and certain ideas disturb you go home you know the minute you get out in a meeting with other people somebody's very apt to say something that you know could turn your stomach I suppose or do worse but if you don't want to run that risk it's it's like while no one has the right to jab their elbow into you don't ride the bus if it's going to bother you because if you ride the bus you're going to get jabbed not because anybody wants to jab you but because that's the nature of bus riding and if you don't want to experience ideas don't attend a meeting because it's usually at meetings ideas are going to be tossed around and if you're you've got a delicate stomach about some of them you better choose your meetings with care or stay home I'd have to look at it that way oh yeah oh correct correct and by all means discriminate don't sell people short because they make a mistake or two don't write them off and because they do a couple of good things don't elevate them to sainthood play it cool but if you're game to stay for a while people may want to ask you questions or continue the discussion informally not only in my game I'm fair game providing none of your arm thank you very much my pleasure