 I was wondering if you could tell us how long you were in North Korea when you were doing research for your book and how you were treated and what that was like and then whether you ever see yourself going back there or whether you could go back there. Sure. There's Kinsella. Everyone give a hand to Stephen Kinsella. Yeah. Rockstar. I was there for a week. I wrote a piece about it for Reason Magazine. Please don't hiss, which I'm very proud of. And that kind of launched my TV career because that article was what got Kennedy who at the time was co-host of a show called The Independence with Matt Welch and Camille Foster who is a good and cap and has the Mises slogan tattooed on his forearm got me on that show. I was there for a week. I could go back. Don't ask me how. A friend of mine went after I did. He's from Czech Republic and I looked at his photos and that was like you know what once is enough because the reason you know sometimes I get sick of talking about North Korea understandably like Kinsella sick of talking about IP but the thing is and as maybe obnoxious this sounds everyone I've met is still there. So this has been six years and if you think about what you've done in your life for six years and realize that everyone person I saw in the street every grandmother every kid every teenager they're all still there trapped in one of things I didn't mention in my speech which I bungled at the timing of you don't have internal migration North Korea you're not allowed to leave your city and the place you are assigned to live is based on your family's loyalty to the regime. So the people who it's called Songbun the people who are disloyal to the regime or had an ancestor who was a property owner or a Christian or born the South were shunted to the Northeast and those were the last people who were sent food during the famine. So they use food as a mechanism of social control so I mean this is another layer of hell that these people are suffering under. I would not so I wouldn't go back how I did research for my book well all their books according to their mythology everyone in the world is obsessed with the Juche idea which doesn't make sense because it's only for Koreans but apparently we all want to study it somehow. So all their books are translated into many languages so I bought the entire library and I read all the Western books I read 60 books total to fashion dear reader and one of the jokes I have in my book which is true if you go in the bookstore you would think oh they only have books about buying about Kim Jong-il and Kim Il-sung that's not true. They have one book about Ri and Mo who is the North Korean Nelson Mandela who is held as a prisoner in South Korea after the Korean War for many decades. I have a question from Michael too. Your description of Korea reminded me a little bit of Eastern Germany in the 80s maybe same atmosphere but much more exaggerated so I was wondering is there possibility to escape from Northern Korea is the other people who try to get away and then maybe I could expand on the on the this theme rebellion escape trying to go against stupid laws against the governments maybe is a resource to try to enhance libertarianism and maybe it's an instinctive reaction to the world we're living in and maybe it's a glimmer of hope for for the future which seems pretty bleak according to your speeches of today. It is so again they have family punishment in North Korea so if you escape successfully your family is going to get punished for it and in fact anyone in North Korea who's a diplomat who's an ambassador their family has to stay behind the sausages to make sure no one gets any idea so this is a level of control of the North Koreans have. There's a very great book called nothing to envy by Barbara Demick and she talks tells this story one of the things they do like they'll bribe an official to get a death certificate so the person died a woman's family escaped or her daughter or something too and often you won't tell your mom or your child you know what I mean so no one will get in trouble woman is her daughter escapes and now she has to escape so she bribes the border guards with everything and now she's in the Chinese countryside wandering around and she comes across a farm and on the floor there's a bowl of rice and meat on the floor and she's stunned because she hadn't even seen meat in years and now it's on the floor for some reason then she hears a dog barking and that was her moment of realization the people in China eat better the dogs in China eat better than the people in North Korea so and then what they started doing the regime is brilliant in their evil so it used to be you could bribe the border guard and you escape now the regime said you can keep your bribe as long as you turn the people in so you try to bribe the border guard that goes in their pocket but now you're turned in and your family's in trouble as well so this is how they attempt to clamp down and I'll just add two more things very quickly if you're caught in China as North Korean and you're sent back you're gonna have very severe consequences so many women are caught into sexual slavery because they know they can't call the authorities in China and when they do get to South Korea and if every North Korean is automatically South Korean citizen they're treated very very poorly their accent is described as guttural that's like their hicks they're shorter their low status South Korea is very competitive country so it's a very dark path for them even in the best of circumstances yeah my name is Peter from Hong Kong I also have a question for Michael can you tell us more about the relationship between North Korea and China are they real friends well you know people in the world might see the missiles may be threatening the US and the free world but is it can it also be possible is a it poses a threat to Beijing you know because I really want to know the real relationship between these two countries because I suspect they are not real friends and and of course so please tell us more about that yes so the auto on beer story which I'm sure many familiar with he was a tourist that went to North Korea he stayed in the same hotel I did in the same floor because in the North Korean hotel it's segregated by nationality so our guards weren't allowed our guides excuse me weren't allowed on our floor and in fact their floor was jet black I don't even know maybe the windows are blocked out so they step all the off the elevator into darkness it was it was very weird when he died and there's actually some discrepancy about his death because his family said he came back tortured mutilated and the person who the medical examiner said that's not true when he died this was a very hard thing for China to defend because if China is wanting to be a world leader and a rival power to the United States it's you can't defend a kid you know goes to foreign country and comes back you know as a vegetable and by the way when you're staying there at that hotel it's nicknamed the Alcatraz of Fun because it's on an island in the middle of the Taedong River in the middle of Pyongyang and you're not allowed to leave it so there is a very big misconception that China can end North Korea tomorrow if it wanted to the idea that you can end a country with nuclear weapons overnight is it makes no sense there has been this huge tension but at the same time yet we can understand China doesn't want a US ally right on their border China doesn't want 25 million Koreans who have never used a computer who don't speak Chinese crossing the Tumen River and setting up a camp in Manchuria so China is in a tricky situation and North Korea isn't making it easier on them and in fact towards the end of his life why Kim Jong-un the one who was killed was passed over for Kim Jong-un the youngest son of the three he said look we could be like Beijing we can liberalize and Kim Jong-il said according to Juche idea that will work for Chinese people it won't work for us and if you want openness open a window so that's why he was passed over for Kim Jong-un who promised to stay the course thank you question for Stefan very interesting overview I'm sorry you kind of ran out of time because what I was really looking forward to was what we can take from international law as libertarians and you kind of started on that with the anarchy the kind of similarity between anarchy and international law and how that functions I'd love to hear a bit more about what we can take away from it yeah and I think that was that was one of the things that had me thinking about this topic in general although it's just an interesting topic but yeah so the fact when when people say anarchy is not possible you say hello look at the look at the world I mean we have not only Cousins point that within governments there's a type of anarchy right because the government personnel are not governed by a higher government they they constitute it but the nations of the world are in a state of anarchy with each other as well and it seems to work not fairly well it's not always totally chaotic so that's just one example of it that's what you can use it as an illustration of of how anarchy could be conceived to work and then the treaties and the way law is formed right by custom and by agreements between these sovereigns is I think a sort of a model for how we could envision free people living together to just follow up to that the concept of sovereignty which is at the foundation of international law any takeaways we can take from that we're you know in the context of international law it applies to countries but we could equally apply it to individuals and of course that yeah so that's the idea that we're in favor of radical decentralization and individual autonomy instead of the nation state but it's just an example of a system that I think can give some insights and it's a fruitful field to explore I think it can also highlight the deficiencies of the municipal law systems right so legislation based and so welfare positivistic I mean if you think about the UN system it's more like the articles of confederation in the US because they don't have really the power to tax the member states depend upon voluntary contributions which is more like the US was before the current Constitution and you know most people think that was an improvement we libertarians would think that was retrogression hi I'm Frank and I would like to ask Michael two questions one would be well more or less serious on what you consider will Germany put up on the list of wait wait sir Germany what now what would you what would you think of the United States why do you think the United States wouldn't put up Germany on the list of terrorists supporting countries because as you you mentioned that Kim the current leader in North Korea was minister for propaganda and agitation actually two of our leaders in Germany now are secretaries of propaganda and agitation have been at least in East Germany and this includes Angela Merkel so I was wondering well this is a very very you know striking similarity and yeah that pointed out for me is the importance of information and education and how even bad ideas rippled through continents and time so I was you know I immediately recall when this this lady or someone asked about could you escape like you could have escaped from East Germany this came to my mind now to a more serious question it's you talked about nuclear and that North Korea has atomic bomb how sure are you about this because I am very sure and here's how several reasons how we know besides I don't think it's regarded largely in dispute the question is how far those missiles can strike but Kim this there's a book that Kim Jong Nam the eldest son wrote it was a series of interviews he did with a Japanese journalist I'm probably the only person in the West who's read it and he talked about he wanted to denuclearize North Korea and this was a big source of contention between him and his father and another reason why he ended up being passed over and as you know he was recently killed so I think if he's even saying this I don't think it's really any question now the question is the size of the capability you know all these other things but I don't think there's really any dispute of their nuclear capability and I also think very importantly two more points there's no dispute that they would strike if they needed to and even if they didn't have nukes Seoul is just south the border it's a city of skyscrapers so if you're not hitting them with nuclear missiles but with the regular missiles the visuals alone is something out of a horror movie or like independence day or something so that's something you absolutely have to take seriously Jeff thank you for your speech and I appreciated your relatively empathetic tone towards zeitgeist libertarians and that we have to understand where they're coming from in the environment that they're operating in but I'd like you to expand perhaps on a comment that you made at the end of another presentation that I heard you recently give where you indicated that it's time to give up the remnant mentality for those of us that are seeking truth and the implications thereof no matter what so perhaps you could expand on a engagement a strategy yeah it's very very tough you can go back and find a I want to say maybe 1998 talk that Hans Hoppe gave at a Mises event in California called what must be done and I can send you that link or whatever so I think he gives a few prongs there and it's it's the eternal questions always very very tough everyone's got their opinion but my own opinion is that libertarianism as we know it is is dead we shouldn't kid ourselves that Trump and other things have come into the room and sucked a lot of the oxygen up versus 2012 we shouldn't kid ourselves that a few million people online can feel like something much bigger than it really is when you see Iran Paul go into let's say New Hampshire and get two or three percent of Republican primary voters in New Hampshire not you know some sort of generalized electorate so you know I believe in never confusing motion with action and I think libertarianism is in bad shape as a political movement and thus it's time for a realignment towards issue coalitions and more importantly really pushing breakaway movements and a lot of people don't like that because that smacks of some sort of nationalism but I'll take subnationalism over over the nationalism we've got now so I think the idea that we're going to convince 70 million people in America to vote for some national candidate is a is so daunting that it it's it's wearying and that we ought to be thinking more in guerrilla terms you know the you know moving around this force rather than trying to to meet it head-on it looked it sounded to me like France is nothing very special when the right parties are in or in power we are slowly progressing towards socialism and where the left ones are we were fast fastly progressing seems like sounds like at home what do you know the next elections in France and how should what should we look forward to is there any hope and and how where is the marilla pen fitting in to the picture I am sorry but I have to confess that I have some hearing problems and especially with English I have been told that the frequency of English is larger than for the French one so maybe asked by neighbor or whoever he can translate into French because I couldn't catch everything of okay okay thank you yeah about Macron or first let me begin with a anecdote recently I met in a in a meeting my my friend Vaclav Klaus who has been a president of the Czech Republic and he told me oh what do you think about your president micro and I think he he's right I have always been opposed to him it is he's a very ambiguous man very pragmatic opportunist he has no real convictions but we must not forget that he has been a minister of finance of one of the worst socialist politician Francois Hollande and certainly mean something and I have the feeling that he has some socialist reflex but when he was a minister of finance of Hollande he decided to to accept competition between buses and people said that it was it was purely utilitarian but people said that he was a liberal a liberal socialist and he has been presented as a liberal politician and he won the election maybe because the election has been manipulated the one who had to be elected was someone of the right was a real liberal and I was very sad that he could not succeed but there was a campaign against him which has been maybe manipulated by Macron but we do doesn't know anyhow I remember that even before he was elected I wrote an article in the French magazine the Figaro magazine in which I explained that Macron was not a liberal and I'm surprised that right now people still say that he's a liberal just because it is true that he made some reforms which can be considered as more or less liberal for instance on the labor market things that ought to have been done for long but there is a sentence of Macron which is which is very symptomatic he's used to say at the same time so he says one thing and the contrary and he believes both of them so he's doing some liberal reforms but mainly not liberal reforms and he has increased taxation he has increased regulations and so on and we we need some very deep and the rapid reforms and he's no doing nothing of what would be necessary so I'm very pessimistic about about this and I'm also also pessimistic because I don't see someone on the right we could be elected in the next election and we could do a real liberal policy as regards Marine Le Pen she it is said that she's from the extreme right just because she's against immigration but she has an economic program which is very close to the program of the extreme left and so I'm always annoyed when I hear that she's on the extreme right in my opinion she's on the extreme left or from this point of view she could have some success as a public opinion is on the left and I think that it's also because she is pragmatic it may be that many people who are confronted to immigration people are people from the from the left and so she gives them this possibility but anyhow there is no no probability at all that Marine Le Pen be elected and we may we may come back to the traditional distinction between the left and the right it is true that some people on the right try to get closer to Marine Le Pen maybe because the immigration problem do exist in France but there cannot be a coordination between the right and the extreme right for the reasons I just said my name is Michael McKay my question is primarily to Jeff but also to Professor Salon and Professor Stone my concern is how can we frame libertarian ism so it can be heard and I would welcome your comments about that to know if you forgive me I I've nothing very serious to say about this if you forgive me oh it's very difficult to answer because we have hopes that could be the avenir the future but I fear that it will be difficult for libertarianism to succeed anyhow I struck by one fact whenever I meet a young man or woman who says that he or she is liberal I ask how did you become liberal because it's difficult to become liberal in France I don't know if it's the same in other countries in Europe but anyhow in France and the answer in general is the following I had by hazard I had the opportunity to read an article or a book of liberal inspiration and I discovered that it was so coherent so logical rigorous that I was fascinated I became liberal and I have the feeling that it is true and that liberal ideas are so coherent that all people all ought to be liberals and why is it they are not it's real question I also remember that the Frederic Hayek said that whenever if someone is not a liberal it is only because he had not the opportunity to meet liberal ideas because he thought also that these ideas are convincing so we may wonder why these liberal ideas are not more successful it may be because their personal interest and people what we in our democracy is not only in France but in Europe the state is distributing privileges and subsidies and so on and people are fighting more for that and for ideas the first one who tries to fight against the state is not certain to to be successful so he has a cost and he may prefer to try to get some privilege that may be a reason and because of this vicious circle of statism it may be difficult for a real liberalism to to to exist but I may be wrong I hope I'm wrong was that interesting he mentions the intellectuals you know Murray Rothbard talked about this we can't just assume that the intellectual class has no self-interest that if they come across something they regard as the truth that they will you know loudly and vociferously go out there and promote it regardless of whether that affects their own employment or tenure or status within their community or whatever so that you know that was one of his critiques of Hayek's sort of top-down intellectual approach but I think at this point that the the best promoter of libertarianism will be competition you know some sort of breakaway movements the kind that Prince Hans of Liechtenstein is writing about and saying you know government wreath read thought of as more of a service provider and and subjects being thought of or citizens being thought of more as customers I think we have to see some success but I don't know there's there's some pretty horrific examples of why collectivism doesn't work in the 20th century you think that we could sort of point to that and say well maybe we should go in the other direction but it's this lesson that seems to be that we have to relearn every generation so I do think that single issue libertarianism is a lot easier sell than the whole package and I think that we should we should promote breakaway and secessionist and localist movements and and if somehow Trump manages to win in 2020 I think the left in the United States is going to go out of their minds and I think they are going to start saying no you know and I suggested this to someone I think it was last night at dinner with with Karen we you know take the take the nine counties that comprise the San Francisco Bay Area that's about eight million people all very very left-wing vote for Nancy Pelosi and let them let them do what they want let's take those nine counties with that's that's bigger than Norway they could have a single payer health care system collectively within those nine counties they could have absolute gun control they could have abortion on demand they could make Berkeley and Stanford free they could have steeply graduated income taxes they could have a wealth tax they could have the whole panoply of progressive wishlist right here right now and and as someone I'd be perfectly fine with that I wouldn't object to that in the slightest now some people in those nine counties would be harmed but presumably it's easier for them to move out of the bay area than it is to move and get a foreign passport so so why not let an experiment like that happen and I think what would immediately happen is a bunch of rich a bunch of limousine liberals in marine county if any of you know marine county would immediately leave with but nonetheless I'd love to see it I would absolutely love to see it and if Trump somehow wins I think they're going to be our progressive friends might be a little more willing to listen to that sort of thing I certainly agree that competition is important and that's why I have always been much much critical of harmonization in Europe harmonization of taxation of laws and so on we we need competition and maybe the ideal will be competition between small very small countries and let me ask something about North Korea but it's directed to the whole panel and Michael told us all of all things about North Korean regime and I see there there's a difference with the rest of the world just in degree not in kind like as he said the war narrative there they they have their own narrative it's like other countries in the world the personality quote is like we can see here in Turkey or even in the US with Obama as a hero and the state propaganda there in North Korea we have it in Hollywood as well and but as we don't have the free market option on the table and it is between nationalism and globalism and with globalism it came as the mass democracy and multiculturalism and it came as the and the North Korea I see a place of course with a lot of huge problems but it's not to surrender to the American imperialism that comes with the patent laws and everything that it comes with the US imperialism and my question is can anyone see or say something positive about North Korea yeah pays my rent which I think the people in this room would approve of I disagree violently with comparisons that the personality cult in North Korea is in any sense comparable to how Obama is being treated in America I mean you can regularly attack Obama you don't have to have his picture on your wall and your family is not going to be executed if you say the most virulent things about him the propaganda out of Hollywood which I'm certainly not a fan of is is not can be immediately challenged online and can be pirated and there's all sorts of different alternatives and besides propaganda from Hollywood they also make comedies so if North Korea had a few funnier movies I think life there would be a little bit better so yeah the root of what you're saying which does have truth to it I think is that and this is very much a libertarian concept is that human beings are human beings and that there are certain you know I don't want to call them urges or drives or tendencies that we all have and that happened throughout the years and in many ways the North Korean regime you know harkens back to Pharaoh and this idea of the god king but if you want me to say positive things about North Korea I mean the scenery is lovely they are very looking out for one another on a personal level which is something that the government fosters but which something refugees talk about regretting when they move to Seoul it's a very cold city in an emotional level so there's a few couple things you could say but you know the obvious answer is I'm sure you know as everyone else in this room knows if it was this it was a question that was asked of all the communist states if it's so great just open the borders and see what happens and I think you know the answer is a very clear what would happen in North Korea if anyone else wants to chime men feel free you asked one already that's cheating oh sorry I'm being racist okay sorry I didn't see him in my defense professor stone you touched on the the the parallel between the european union right now and the havesburg empire and you also mentioned that there is a possibility in which the nationalists of various countries would elect a majority of members of european parliament next year making victor orban the president of the european union um what will actually happen I mean is would this be the hope in which the european union will finally be reformed in a way in which say a typical moderate brexiteer hopes it will be reformed into or it will actually be the bureaucracy will fight back and even if all these MEPs were elected by these nationalists across the european across Europe nothing will change um yes um I mean I must say I was pretty incensed when I read that the european parliament had by very substantial vote condemned victor orban and it's obviously just done out of spite because you'll remember um you know three years ago when these refugees arrived I mean I saw them in the boat room and then I was on the boat and I saw them on coast the big island opposite and then I saw them in the station in Hungary trudging all that way to Germany where it is uh is that is that better thanks I mean I just thought this was utterly surreal this business of refugees now victor the we all know how the europeans respond to this kind of thing they have a dinner and then they think they'll make a decision in about six weeks and trudging on trudging on trudging on all these young men not from Syria one was actually from Haiti of all places and trudging in creating this this havoc in Germany and Austria on the way and victor orban responded but put up a wall which has done more to solve the whole problem than the europeans I mean they they could have solved it frankly quite easily another great achievement the european union is the euro 50 unemployment in Greece we all know that why not say to the greeks look you have a lot of empty islands in the aegean particularly southern aegean particularly a place called karpatos if you lease to us karpatos will pay your debts and then you do the australian solution to the to the migrant problem you process them of course as decently as you can but you can't have this kind of thing going on in every european country it's crazy now the european parliament and its wisdom condemned victor orban for that and so all terrible fascists and so forth which is nonsense and it um it teams up with look i'm sorry to go on about this but it teams up with another problem in hungary which nobody mentions and it's the gypsies rumour it's about 20 percent of the population in the east they used to get on tolerably well in hungary but one way or another it's turned out rather badly and the last thing you want in these circumstances is um norwegian indios paid for by George Shorosh turning up um causing trouble with the gypsies and we've got these rights and those rights and it's it's in response to this kind of thing that uh victor orban's got to get his gets his immense popularity he's not doing too badly i mean i think uh no you have to put it in perspective that hungary should have been the one that led from post-communism instead it's rather lagging behind and it's this is a situation which victor orban inherited now what does the wretched european parliament in its wisdom do it condemns him and uh i think the the the um shot of this is it's quite possible that the that group of mps will set up we know straightforwardly nationalist secessionist group in the european parliament and my point really is that the european parliament should not be operating at this kind of level if it were left as a kind of assembly of something like a council of europe it would have been all right but leave power with the national parliament this is where it this is where it really belongs and have delegations from them to some kind of european thing then the final thing is you know for the european union bless it to complain that hungary is a corrupt country i mean for the last 10 years or thereabouts the official accountants of the european union have refused to pass the accounts because they say there's so much money stolen and again decide Greece the greeks are wonderful really imaginative about it they have um you know i think they've invented a greek banana um so that they can get the sort of subsidies that the french give to the banana producers in martinique and this kind of thing everybody knows this about europe and for them to say you're corrupt hello now my point is i that you know europe when it was created uh was um i mean it's a 50s construction like the atomium in brussels if you remember it uh and if you just wouldn't start from here now uh you know um has valérie jisgar destin ever got anything right except stealing diamonds and he set up in his european constitution i mean it takes political science would tell you keep a constitution short you see paragraph one there's a country paragraph two it's language is the following um paragraph three you're sincerely the ideal constitution is the west german one of 1948 which is quite short it doesn't have many volumes and volumes about rights the european constitution when it came up actually has i think it's five pages devoted to the rights of the laps the samis were no supposed to call them now i have nothing against the sami the swedes too um the swedes uh blessed them right up to the 1970s were sterilizing about 100 000 laps on the grounds that they were rather small drank too much and made too many babies no so i'm in favor of the the the the old sami absolutely nothing to do with the constitution of europe and it's this is characteristic of what goes wrong with that organization i think there's going to be a backlash there already is i mean we can see it with theft of the electorate in pretty well every country obviously coming up we're going to be electing people who are objurets probably rather nasty some of them and and we'll see we don't want this to go on and they'll set up a block in that european parliament and the results will be quite ugly and the final joke is and the the results might be quite ugly and the final joke of course is that for uh uh victor orban himself they'll no doubt in their wisdom want a president of europe and will no doubt come up with some empty figure like yunkar expect him to win victor orban will be the president of europe if this goes on they're crazy have i said enough that's still on the question of the european union but to professor salin if we look at the history of the european union then we come to the conclusion that the whole mess in which the continent is working now is the effect of a combined action of two nations of the french nation and of the german nation or their politicians without mitera and call we wouldn't have had the the treaty of mastricht and the transformation from the european union to a political union without the french pressure to the trip against the germans after the unification we wouldn't have had the introduction of the euro we wouldn't have had the mess in the in the immigration policy if not for this lady godzilla and and berlin so i mean what uh what what really what what really is interesting now i think is is there any chance that the uh increasing differences between germany and france as an effect of the multiple crisis of the european union could bring to a glorious day where this whole socialist empire could be blown up first i would like to say that i do regret that it has been considered that the european union had to be had to to follow what was decided by france and germany because i think that french governments mainly tried to export to european union the bad policies that they were doing and and happily germany more or less agreed with that but i must say that in my opinion germany is not that far from what exists in in france and i do regret and i should say also i don't understand why the other countries in europe did accept this situation did accept this leadership of germany and france and especially especially i i would like that central and eastern countries of europe be more efficient in fighting against this leadership of german french leadership and frankly i don't really understand why it is so and ideally i am in favor of european union but not the one we have but what i call europe of freedom it is europe of competition of freedom without harmonization and i think the best integration is made by competition because it is the way people can coordinate one to the other so i don't want to to make a guess on the future because it is very difficult to to guess what politicians will do will there be a discrepancy between the the targets of germany and france i'm not certain of that not certain and because i think that the politicians both in germany and france are proud to give the feelings that they are the leaders of the of the european union what would be necessary would be that it change in the public opinion in all european countries in favor of this europe of liberties and i am not in favor of of a explosion of of europe i am once more in favor of european union because i'm in favor of free trade free contracts and so on and but i fear that it will be difficult to to get this sort of of europe so it's difficult to to guess and one specific point when there was what was called the greek crisis it was interpreted as a european crisis and it was said that european solidarity meant that other countries had to to help the greek government and people also said that the solution for for greece would be to go out of the european union and so there are several pressures in favor of this sort of policy in means in several countries in fact the greek problem was not a european problem it was a national problem with a bad public policy and there was no reason for other countries to to help and the solution for greece was certainly not to go out because i think that implicitly people who were in favor of the fact that greece goes out of european union were thinking that it could devalue but i consider that devalue is not a solution it is a bad solution and it cannot solve the problems such as the problem of excessive public expenditures so once more i don't want to to to make guess about the future of europe i can only have some wishes and wishes free europe my question is to jeff um considering the conquest second law how should we handle the site geisters and specifically those who are actually within our own institutions well i think we have to handle them by by boldly opposing them we have to never shrink from the the vision we have or from the truth as we understand it and and be bold i think compromise has been a one-way street if you look at the 20th century it seems to only go in one direction so i i don't think that's working and i think boldness is easier on the smallest possible level so hopefully that's where it's going to happen and maybe some of it will happen simply because large governments can can no longer do what they report to do they can't pay entitlements they can't keep the roads they can't prevent crime they can't prevent or they can't prevent unemployment so so maybe it's going to take some sort of unpleasantness to to force people into more local solutions but i think you know my particular focus day was on the zeitgeist libertarians and in that sense i think we should we should view them much like we view progressives or or neoconservatives or old conservatives which is that we're friendly we are but and we're willing to join them on single-issue bases but we're not willing to cede the the terms of the debate to them and and libertarianism is not about some jack kemp tax enterprise zone or something like that it's about something much more fundamental so to me that's not only better but it's a lot more fun and and and what you know why why be halfway well Stefan i'm looking for trying to look for some optimism here so i'm referring not to your talk but to a topic in your in one of your podcasts what about the chances for for some more freedom via technological solutions bitcoin or crypto contracts or i don't know self-driving cars stuff like that it's actually to the whole panel if you have an idea optimistic um well yeah i i try not to opine too much on bitcoin because there's people who are big experts on this um i do see hope in in that it's a challenge to state money uh the example of uber is a really good one i believe yeah and what you're talking about i've argued before that i'm skeptical of the libertarian strategy of winning by handing out pamphlets to your uncle or Thanksgiving dinners and you know it's just some people it's not going to work that way but we do have to have some larger consensus and how does that happen i think it can only happen somehow naturally or gradually my impression is that most of the people in the world now uh or more significantly more or aware of in general the dangers of centralized planning because of the fall of the soviet union and communism so that was a teaching moment we didn't have to go to school to learn that we saw it happen okay so we learned our lesson that way so my hope is that as we get richer and we are getting richer i believe uh as technology improves uh and as freedom maybe becomes more possible because of technology right i mean not to get too science fictiony but in the future you can imagine people having little nano swarm robot armies protecting the who knows i don't know so i just hope that over time people are richer and they see the benefits of living in in liberalism right in a freer society and so that it becomes a sort of gradual teaching moment sort of like the fall of the soviet union did so i can only hope that the the sort of stallion the horse the steed of the market that's underneath the little biting dogs of the state trying to slow it down i hope that it can outrun them finally i think it's a race and i hope the state doesn't destroy humanity right but humanity seems to keep progressing because knowledge does keep in uh increasing right we keep building our technical knowledge base technology seems to keep improving so our wealth will keep improving our ability to communicate will keep improving so that's my sort of optimistic view of things but it does mean that we can't really do it we just have to ride the wave uh we can keep the remnant alive we can keep championing ideas we can keep the understanding alive but i don't i don't see that if we have a much higher degree of liberty in 30 years 50 years that it's because libertarians were activists advocating for it or trying to start the libertarian party i think it will be because of a natural natural causes it has to take root for natural reasons i have a question to michael and maybe others too um concerning possible uh economical transformation of north korea especially regards uh res and a special economic zone uh earlier called rajin son bunk um do you consider it a purely experimental project to get a taste of western economy or more a potential basis to transform north korea's economy well i i mean what he's asking about is so there's a zone in north korea it's near the c of k song it's basically built by the south koreans uh to get to work there is highly coveted although i think the tax rate is something like 95 percent but even with that 95 tax rate that people who work there are doing very well for themselves it's extremely regulated because you don't want the north koreans or they don't rather the want the north koreans to have access to so much south korean information they they open these zones down they shut them down um every so often because they get too successful another example some of you might have heard of is with the vice magazine how these logging camps in russia which families go and or not families like men go and work there for pennies but they send all their money back to north korea and they still do well well by north korean standards even though they don't uh see their families for a very long time so the thing with what's happening with north korea now is you have these black markets in these different towns and they are effectively acting as proof of concept of the free market or quasi free market and how it works and what's it's what's interesting for north korea is that this is inverting the gender hierarchy these are often run by women and they'll have rice or whatever for sale and you'll have the cops the cops get a bribe which basically works like a tax and the the goods get to the consumer everyone knows where to get them although it's not officially stated and this black market system is you know throughout the entire country and it's a very effective mechanism to demonstrate capitalism now what i'm fine with and i'm sure most people in this room are fine with and it kind of touches on what jeff said earlier and what cancel us that earlier is uh i don't have to have someone say i'm a liberal or i'm a libertarian but if they intuitively are for free markets and they don't have a philosophy behind it and they're feeding their families and they're you know have a measure of limiting their lives that to me is someone who is converted enough that they don't you know what i mean and that's a very real accomplishment and that's a very real goal the goal for all of us i'm sure who are for liberty is to make sure people are secure in their person make sure people have access to food access to sell their labor and access to you know human rights including proper rights at a very fundamental level so the thing with the those economic zones yeah these are wonderful because first of all if the argument from north korea is that we're so wealthy well as i was saying earlier somebody south korea is so wealthy that they're exporting factories i mean the idea of a communist country you know you want to build as many factories in your country now that they're exporting factories and you could see how the machines are you could see they have electricity north korea does not have electricity for the most part so anytime you have a there's a big asymmetry i'll leave with this point between lies and the truth if someone tells you 10 lies and 10 truths this is not an honest person but if someone tells you you know 50 truths and 10 lies that's still not an honest person so when you have a government that's told you information from the time you're born until you're an adult as soon as you see two or three things very quickly until actually this edifice falls and once you lose the souls of the north korean and their belief in the state and its efficacy and the the leadership it's almost impossible to regain it and this cynicism which helps so much to bring down the soviet union and and eastern europe is really in my view what is currently bringing down the north korean regime