 Ladies and gentlemen, my name is Maria Gozhen and I would like to welcome you all at our debate, Stateless Society or Minimal State. It is my great honor and pleasure to introduce our today's guests. Dr. Jaron Brooke, a chairman of the board at the Anne Rand Institute and the author of several books in which he analyzes a variety of topics from an objectivist perspective. He holds a PhD in finance from the University of Texas at Austin. And Dr. Łukasz Dominjak is an associate professor at the Faculty of Political Science and International Studies Nicolaus Copernicus University and a research fellow 2016 and 2018 at the Middles Institute Urban. He holds a PhD in political philosophy and specializes in a libertarian theory of justice. Today we will deliberate over fundamental question. Do we need a state? Dr. Brooke will defend the minimal state concept while Dr. Dominjak will stand in the stateless state position. And I am usual, like Switzerland. But before we start the debate I would like to present you a detailed plan of our meeting. At the beginning each of you gentlemen will have 15 minutes to present their position. Then each of you will get another five minutes to refer to the words of the adversary. And we will start the discussion between you two which I will moderate. After that there will be a time for the questions from the audience. So if any of you have any question please wait till then. After the questions from the audience each of you will have another five minutes to sum up the meeting. Before taking up more time I invite you to listen to the speech of Dr. Yaron Brooke. One, two, three. One, two, is this working? Who is this connected to? Is this connected to the camera? Oh, it's connected to the camera. Okay. Both of you. Yes. Okay. Cool. All right. Thank you for inviting me. Thanks for participating in this event and in this debate and thank you all for coming. Let me just correct one thing about the description of my position. I am not for a minimal state. I am for a limited state and I think there is a big difference between a minimal state. I don't think this is an issue of size. I don't think it's an issue of how big the state is. This is purely an issue of whether there should be a state and then if there is a state what should it do? And I believe in a limited state, a state limited, a government limited to the protection of individual rights and that should be its only function and it should be of a size necessary for it to fulfill that function. When we think of living in a society, when we think of what happens when we come together in a social context, there are only two options. We can either live by the rule of gangs, we live by the rule of violence and force or we can live in a right respecting government state. There are many options in between. We can have mixtures of them. We can have some gangs and some protection of rights but damn today at the extremes, there is a right respecting government which I think is the appropriate way to live or there is gang warfare. Communism is gang warfare. It is one particular gang in the name of the proletarian inflicting its ideas on everybody else and monopolizing the use of violence over a region but it's about violence. Nazism is a form of gang warfare and I actually think anarchism is a form of gang warfare. Not the monopoly but it is a system of legitimizing force that force is something to be traded in, force is something to be negotiated. It is a system that places might above right. Most societies today are a mixture of those two. We have elements of organized monopolistic coercion. The state regulating the state, redistributing wealth and all of that. We have elements of relative freedom from coercion where the state is actually protecting our rights, protecting us from crooks and criminals and fraudsters, arbitrating disputes rationally and objectively. We don't have in my view in the world in which we live today which is a mixture of these two extremes if you will. We even have today a form of anarchy within our societies. It's called the mafia. We have different groups of mafia. They interact with one another primarily through the use of force although they sometimes have what we call treaties and arrangements on who gets the inflict violence against whom. Gangs in southern Los Angeles have very strong, you know, those kind of relationships where they inflict violence but they also have agreements about this area, I sell drugs, those area you sell drugs. Once in a while we fight and we kill each other but generally they have their own little governments within a new region in which the big government, the federal government does not protect rights. Those neighborhoods in LA are not, the government is not protecting rights. So to me this issue of anarchy or I don't know stateless society which I assume means no government is on the same category as authoritarianism because it is a system of legitimizing, a system of legitimizing force. Are you going to tell me how much time I have? Because I've lost track. Okay. So how much time do I have? Only spoken for four minutes? Oh, I have four minutes left. Ten more minutes. Okay. Cool. So that is, I consider anarchy a form of authoritarianism and I think it's inevitable outcome, the inevitable outcome of any anarchy, the inevitable outcome of any system that places might above right is that that who has the most might wins, that who has the most might inflicts his ideology, his ideas, his power over everybody else. What's much more interesting to me is what a proper government looks like and I think a proper government is necessary for human success, human flourishing, human production, human reason to be achieved. The fundamental, the fundamental means by which human beings survive, the fundamental means by which human beings thrive, the fundamental means by which we as human beings achieve success, including happiness is by the use of our reason, by the use of our mind, the enemy of the mind, the enemy of reason. And therefore the enemy of human life is false, coercion, authority. It is somebody else using violence against us. Violence is the enemy of thinking and therefore the enemy of human life. Therefore, to live in a society, to live in a community, to live together, which is an enormous value for human beings, there is an enormous value for us to be together, not to be isolated on desert islands. To live together, we must, we must extract violence from human interaction. One thing that is unacceptable is the use of force between individuals. One thing is unacceptable is to use coercion. Precursion, violence, force must be extracted from human society. That is why we form government. That is the role of government. To be the monopoly over the use of retaliatory force. What we don't want is individuals, based on their whim, based on their emotion of the moment, based on their ideas, using force on other people because they think they somehow have been wronged. That use of force has to be placed under objective authority. It has to be placed in the, in the, at the behest of that agency responsible for protecting our rights. Individual rights are the means by which we subjugate a society to moral law. It is the means by which we recognize the fact that an individual, individual has a right to his own life, is free, must live his life free from coercion, free from force. And the job of government is to protect that individual from criminals, mafias, gangsters, to protect that individual from the use of force against him. And to arbitrate disputes between us, even when there's no criminal involved. Sometimes good, rational individuals disagree. And there has to be a mechanism by which that dispute is resolved without us having to go into the street to duel it out. Peaceful resolution of disagreement is an important function of government. But all of these functions are complicated. They're hard to figure out. What is violence? What counts as force and coercion? How should disputes be resolved? Where are rights being infringed? And how does one protect against the infringement of rights? All of those questions, procedures about discovering who is, who did what? What are the procedures of evidence? What are the procedures of courts? How do you determine the guilt of somebody or the innocence of somebody? Do you use a jury trial? In that case, how does a jury trial proceed? The whole process of defending individual rights is a complex, complex process. It is not obvious. It is not simple. And it must be done objectively. It must be done based on ideas, based on rational ideas. Not based on whim, not based on, I'll do it my way, you do it your way. How do we resolve things if that is done? There has to be one ultimate authority that determines which way is right. What rules of evidence count? What rules of evidence don't count? What is legitimate? What is illegitimate when presenting facts? Or what are facts? How do we determine them? So the government's job is a complex one because it requires objectivity. It requires dedication to the facts of reality, but there is no way around it. Government is not a necessary evil as many menarchists would argue. Government is a necessary good because it is a requirement for human survival, human success, human thriving. Without it, we cannot, we cannot peacefully plan the long term, know what the clear rules and guidelines are for behavior, know where we violate somebody else's rights and where we don't. Without it, we have no certainty whether our actions are legitimate or illegitimate, whether we are going to be prosecuted by some legal agency or not be prosecuted by a legal agency. Government is required in order to provide that objectivity which allows us to plan for the future, to think, to act and to pursue a life, liberty and happiness. So government is a necessary good, anything that undermines, undermines the legitimate function of government works against the individual, his rights and his ability to live a successful life. Now the fact that governments today don't live up to the standard of what a good government should be is not a reason to abandon the idea of good government, the idea of individual rights. And to the extent that life in the world today is pretty good, to the extent that people do produce and build and create stuff, is to the extent that governments are indeed protecting those realms in which we are acting, protecting our rights in those limited realms. The fight needs to be to properly define individual rights and to bring about governments that properly understand the limited role in only protecting those rights, to get governments to stop violating our rights, to stop adhering to the gangs who advocate for redistribution of wealth or advocate for regulating this industry versus that industry, to eliminate the rights violating aspects of government and secure the rights protecting aspects of government. Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Brug and now we'll have an opportunity to listen to Dr. Dominiek and what he has to say about stateless society. Thank you very much. Does it work? Is it working? I think it works for the cameras now for the audience. It works. Okay. I see. Did you turn it on? Yes, I did. Right. So thank you for having me here. Thank you for the invitation. I'm really happy to take part in this debate. And my role, my job today is to give you an argument in favor of a stateless society and therefore against the institution of the state. And I'm going to do it in the following way. Basically, I think that there is one ultimate reason why the state is not justified and is an unjust institution and why we should be in favor of the stateless society. I'm going to present this reason and then I will show that there are only three possible answers that we can think of that can be presented against this reason and that neither of them is an answer that is justified. That all of them should be rejected on the logical grounds or moral grounds. So let me start presenting my case. So what is this ultimate reason, this principled moral reason in favor of a stateless society and against the state? Well, aggression, which is violation of people's property rights, of people's individual rights, natural rights they have or threat they're of, is impermissible morally, is morally wrong, should be rejected, should not take place in a free and moral society and should be condemned. This is what is in the libertarian circles known as non-aggression principle or private property rights of individuals that are protected by this principle. Now the state is an organization that violates people's individual rights in two ways. What are these two ways? The first way that the state violates people's individual rights is connected with the way the state is financed. So first of all, state is an organization which is financed through taxation that is involuntary payments handed over to the state by its citizens under the threat of losing their life, liberty and property. Second of all, the state is an organization that prohibits operations of any other organization that would like to compete with the state within a given territory on a purely voluntary basis and provide services, in particular services of protection and defence to willing buyers on, as I said, on a purely voluntary basis. For these two reasons, the state is necessarily violating individual rights and can't be justified. It's an unjust and unjustified institution that should not take place in a free society and that is inherently immoral. Now the interesting thing and I think crucially interesting thing is that against this principled moral anarcho-capitalist reason for the state and society we can think of only three possible answers. These answers exhaust the logical field how we can deal with the criticism of anarcho-capitalist or stateless society. What are these three answers? First of all, one can argue against what I've just said, against the principled anarcho-capitalist reason in the following way. One can argue that it's not the case that individuals have natural rights. That individuals don't have rights outside the statist context. The fortunate circumstance of the current debate is that my opponent shares the belief in individual natural rights. And therefore this answer is unavailable neither to Randian nor to Minakist. So we can basically forget about this way of arguing during this debate. So we are left with two more possible answers to the anarcho-capitalist challenge. What are these? Well, first of all, one could try to argue that it is not true that the state necessarily violates individual rights. One can try to say, well, we can think of some way in which the state can be organized and in which state can be construed as an organization that does not violate individual rights. What could be these ways in which we can think about the state as not necessarily violating individual rights? Well, from the history of political thought, we of course know about many such possible answers to this challenge. And I reckon the most common way is to refer to the idea of implicit consent or implied consent. This idea falls within the broader tradition of social contract. And we also know from the history of political theory that the tradition of social contract, the same as the idea of implied consent, is as discredited idea as possible. That's a really rare case in the political philosophy that we can find an argument that is obviously unsound and logically invalid. And this is exactly the idea of implied consent. Why is it so? Well, we can point out to the fact that the idea of social contract that is based on implied consent, and it's important to realize that the theory of social contract has to talk about implied consent, because obviously none of us ever signed anything. None of us ever signed constitution. None of us signed any contract with a monopolist provider of security. So how to justify this institution? Well, probably, we implicitly consent to that. Well, now the problem is that this argument is basically circular. It begs the question. Why begs the question? Imagine this scenario. Imagine that there is an area in which a racketeer, let's call him racketeer A, operates. This racketeer, this mugger, comes to you and makes you an offer. The offer is the following. Well, pay me $1,000 per month and I will provide you with protection against other racketeers and other muggers. But if you don't pay me, I will kill you. Now you do the maths. You calculate and you think, well, it's more expensive for me to leave the place, to leave the area and go somewhere else where the other racketeer, let's call him racketeer B, operates. It's more expensive for me. It also more expensive for me to be killed subjectively from a subjective point of view. The option that we were opt for is to pay the racketeer. Now what I'm saying is this. We decide to pay the racketeer A under a threat of losing our life. And if we do the maths differently and we decide that it's more expensive to pay the racketeer A and go to the racketeer B area, then the same problems follow. But now our decision to move from the territory on which racketeer A operates is involuntary decision made under a threat from both racketeer A to kill us and from racketeer B who operates on this latter territory. So if we assume that the racketeer A is not a racketeer, then that would follow that the state is justified. But we can't assume that. This is what should be proved. We can't assume the truth of a conclusion that is to be proved. And that's the problem of the limited government based on implied consent. So now we are left with the third possibility, the third way of how we can argue against the anarcho-capitalist challenge. This challenge I presented at the beginning was this way. Well this way was actually presented today by our former speaker. This way is the following. Well one can say it's true the state violates individual rights. But for some reason it is nonetheless justified. What are these two reasons? These reasons can be of two-fold nature. These reasons will always refer to the fact that the state allows us to avoid bigger violations of individual rights that would take place in the stateless society, in the anarchistic society. And now this argument can be formulated in two and only two ways. One way we can call normative way, moral way. This way would look like that. So that's true that state violates individual rights. That's true that state operations violate individual rights. But yet these operations are permissible, they are normatively permissible because they allow us to avoid bigger violations that would occur in a stateless society. Now I find this view internally contradictory. This view is logically contradictory and why is that? Well when we say that we have a right. If I say that I have a right that you don't assault me, that I have a right that you don't hit me, that you don't kill me and so on and so forth. What I'm basically saying is that you assaulting me, you hitting me, you killing me is impermissible, that you have a duty not to do that. This is how we understand the word right. This is what we mean in our language. And therefore the view that I've just presented amounts to a plain contradiction. On the one hand the view says individuals have rights but it's permissible to violate these rights. So what it means? That there are actions, invasive actions that are at the same time impermissible and permissible which is plain contradiction. This view must be rejected from philosophical and logical and analytic point of view. Now the last possible option is left. The option is this. Well let's admit state violates individual rights and it's impermissible to operate in a state way against individuals but it is necessary. And we heard this word today that is necessary for the state to exist. It is necessary because it allows us to avoid violations of individual rights. Now you can judge for yourself. This position is a defeat in a moral debate. This position morally speaking says well state is impermissible. State is morally wrong. State violates individual rights but it's necessary. That's a necessary evil. We thereby subscribe to an axis of evil and we're making a point on a purely utilitarian grounds. Thank you. Thank you Dr. Dominic. Now you have an opportunity to refer to what was said. Do you have any questions or just, you want to comment what was said here? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So this is the logic, right? States are unjustified because it violates rights and there are only three answers and all three don't make any sense. I agree. None of those three answers make any sense. If those three answers were the only possible three answers then yeah, there would be no logic to the argument. But those are not the only three answers. The state does not have to violate rights. Not because you imply consent. Of course social contract doesn't make any sense. But because, one, the state does not have to use coercion in order to tax and we can talk about how the state raises revenue without taxation, without coercive taxation. Inran has a whole essay in capitalism not known ideal for those of you interested in how a state would fund itself without coercive taxation. Certainly if there's coercive taxation the state, to that extent, the state is illegitimate. So less legitimate. It's a less legitimate state. And we would oppose all codes of taxation. But this is really the key. Prohibit operations that want to compete with the state. You can't compete on violence. There is no competition for violence. There's no competition for defense. That is not competition. That is what Inran called a stolen concept. That is warfare. You want to go to war with the state, okay? But there is no right to compete on violence. There is no individual right to have a set of different individual rights. What about a competing, a so-called competing security agents that doesn't recognize individual rights? At least it believes in communism. It believes that there is no such thing as property rights. And therefore, if you sign up with them, they will enforce your ability to take property from other people in the name of the proletarian or what the hell, in the name of anything. Right? You don't have a right to sign up to any random agency to use force against other people based on your random whim. That is exactly what you don't have a right to do. So you can't have a competition in the violation of rights. Rights preclude the whole concept of individual rights. And I don't use the word natural rights because I don't quite agree with that they come in a sense from nature, which is a religious source. But the idea of individual rights, you don't have an individual right to use force against other people in the name of whatever you think justice happens to be. To enforce individual rights, there must be a definition of individual rights. To enforce individual rights, there must be a clear recognition of what those are. There must be clear laws that have to be enforced. So anarchy is the rejection of the whole concept of individual rights. Stateless society says there are no such things as individual rights. They can't be enforced anyway. Because who's going to enforce them? There is no agency to enforce them. So I completely agree here. Once you accept the fact that the state violates rights by definition, then the argument's over. No, the state does not violate rights. This state is the protector of rights indeed. When a state is the only environment, it is the only realm in which rights are recognized and rights are protected. Once you allow for so-called competition, I don't recognize it as competition. I don't believe mafias and gangs compete with one another. Competition does not apply for that. Competition is a concept that exists in a marketplace in which force has been extracted by government, in which rights have been defined clearly, in which there is an agency that clearly protects property rights. You cannot have a market in force. The concept of market is the concept, the idea of what exists when force does not exist. So it's logically a fallacy to think in terms of force as a marketable thing. So in my view, Anarchy endorses the non-objective use of force. It rejects the need to make the use of force objective to all the participants within a society. It steals the concept of competition, the concept of free market, the concept of market because trade is voluntary. We talk about voluntary trade. Well, it's voluntary only when there is no force, only when there is that force is being extracted by government. So markets don't exist without government, not free markets, don't exist without government because only government makes free markets possible. And finally, I think Anarchy, because of this so-called competition in violence, in force, places the rule of law, the idea of individual rights as subservient to might, to force, to whoever has the strongest weapons, the biggest guns, the ability to inflict the most violence. By rejecting government, it rejects individual rights, it rejects the subjugation of might to right. Thank you. Dr. Deming, do you want to refer to what Dr. Rathore said? So the format now is, I respond and then I can ask a question. Yes. Right? Okay. So first I will respond. That was really persuasive, rhetorically, kind of attempt at rebut my position, but don't be tricked, don't be tricked. Mr. Brug was talking about competition in the use of violence, competition in the violation of people's rights. This is not what the Anarcho-Capitalist Society is about. We're not talking about competition in violence, we're not talking about competition in violation of individual rights, we're talking about competition in protection of individual rights. Protection of individual rights is a different thing than violating individual rights. And now let me refer to a few points that were made by Dr. Brug. First of all, it was mentioned in this rebuttal period, rebuttal answer, that it is possible to have a state that does not necessarily violate individual rights and it was identified as a possibility of financing state through different means than taxation and referring to Ayn Rand, a famous essay on that. Well, so what are possibilities that are given by Ayn Rand? Well, first of all, that's an idea that the state can be financed through state luxury, that people can voluntarily buy luxury tickets, that state bureaucrats can out compete private lotteries and that people for some reason will be buying the most efficient luxury tickets and luxury service provided by the state there is, which is the state service. Well, ask yourself, how state is efficient in production of cars, in production of suits, in production of any other marketable good? So that's the first problem. The second problem is, well, whatever thing of financing state we can think of, whether luxury tickets or whether another idea of Ayn Rand, which was an enforcement contract payment. Well, what about competition with the monopolist that operates on a given area in selling enforcement ticket and for, it is possible to finance these tickets by afraid that Ayn Randians are not able to think about the state, that the state is on a given area, because even if we agree that it is theoretically possible to finance state in this way, although I think it's really, really doubtful, then still what about prohibiting competition of other companies that would like to also either sell enforcement contract services or sell luxury tickets and so on and so forth. What I'm claiming is this, I have an individual right to be left alone. I have an individual right not to be assaulted, hit or killed and I can delegate this right to whomever I want. So I can delegate it to a private security agency and once we say that I'm not allowed to delegate this right to a private agency, I have to delegate it to a monopolist on a given territory by this, at this very moment this right is violated and that's why I think that's problematic to say that it is possible to have a state that doesn't violate rights. Then I would like to also, if I have stood sometimes, okay, so I would like to also make this point. I'm really happy, Dr. Brug that you said that, once we change definition of the state, there's no debate, right? So if we agree that the state necessarily violates individual rights, there's no debate between us, right? No, no, there's still debate, it would be different one. Well, there will be different debate. Well, as I understand, I'm at a capitalist position. This is exactly the position, right? We are not arguing against government. We are quite often a trick into a position or that there's a suggestion made that we are arguing against government. We're not arguing against government, which is a way of organizing people's actions. Well, for instance, as far as protection is concerned, people can associate to protect themselves. They can outsource protection services. There might be division of labor and we should expect that on the free market there will be division of labor and high division of labor. So therefore individuals will not protect themselves or at least that wouldn't be a major way of protecting yourself. Well, yeah, basically. So what we're saying is that government is absolutely justified institution. If we understand government as an institution that doesn't violate individual rights, and when is the case, when there's no monopoly status, when there's no compulsory monopoly, and when there's no taxation. Okay, so that would be my answer. Am I supposed to ask questions? Can I just comment on that or? Yes, yes, maybe. Let's ask each other questions, I think it would be helpful if we just comment. So let me first deal with this, how to fund a state. I mean, I actually agree on the lottery. I don't think that was her best suggestion in terms of funding a state. I don't think a state lottery would work in a state. And why lottery? Why not state cars or whatever, right? Well, no, I think there's a difference. But partially because I think that, okay, so my main point is that I think the way a state would be funded is voluntarily. That is that people would write checks. And you could imagine a state lottery as being more successful than a private lottery because people would want to fund the state and use the lottery to fund it. And that would be the competitive advantage, would be the voluntary, the idea that this money is going to fund the police and the military. And I want that. And I'd rather do that than provide profit to sans casinos, right, to the casino company. So even though they can do it more effectively in a sense that the prices will be bigger, there's an added benefit because I get to get my policing and my military at the same time. So that could be a justification. I just don't find the lottery a very appealing way to do it. Just sort of interrupting. But that, of course, presuppose that people want to have a state, that there's a particular state of public opinion. No question. A voluntary state, a voluntary, a system of voluntary taxation assumes that people want a state. That is, they want this particular government. That's one of the beauties of making it voluntary. That is, if they don't, then the society breaks apart and we get a disaster that is a stateless society and it would be horrific. But, and I think you can't ignore the consequences of what's being suggested. The consequences are horrific and I'll get to those in a minute. So, so yes, people will have to, if people, I always say, you know, people talk about a draft, right? Not from Israel, those of you who don't know I'm from Israel. I served in the Israeli army for three years because I had to, I had no choice. I was drafted, I know and completely understand the evil of a draft. And people say, and I say Israel shouldn't have a draft. Israel should have an all-volunteer army. And people say, well, how will it exist? And my answer to that is a country that cannot raise a volunteer army to defend itself doesn't deserve to exist. And it's the same true of a government that cannot raise, through voluntary means, the funds to sustain itself doesn't deserve to exist. What the alternative will be is a second question. I think the alternative will turn out to be worse. But, you know, if you can't raise the money, then yeah, everything will fall upon, everything deteriorates. So, I think the key is what Iron Man spends most of that essay talking about. And that is voluntary payments that people would voluntarily pay to have their rights protected. They would be happy to do it. People are generally benevolent and they don't like to get stuff for free. I actually think governments in this scenario would run surpluses because I think people would write bigger checks than the government could actually spend, which I think is a bad thing. So, I think that constitutionally they'd have to return the money. But I don't think there's any problem in funding a proper rights respecting government. But let me address the second point, which I think is, you know, I thought I addressed already, but I think just to think about what does it mean to say there are individual rights, and then you can have it easy to say, you can't hurt somebody, but what does hurting somebody mean? It makes these definitions that actually makes objective what it means to violate rights. Otherwise, the term of individual rights is meaningless. This protection agency defines individual rights in that way. This protection agency defines them in those ways. That one over there doesn't even recognize individual rights. It doesn't believe in individual rights. And you should have the freedom, according to this argument, to have competition where the individual rights come from. I mean, individual rights are a man-made concept, right? And what if somebody doesn't believe in those individual rights? Do they have a right to pursue their life, not believing in individual rights? And if they don't, who enforces individual rights against them? What if a majority of people don't believe in individual rights as a majority of people in the world we live in today don't believe in individual rights? And they sign up with a protection agency that wants to impose its will on all of us. Once you accept the concept of individual rights, once you accept the absolute nature of the concept of individual rights, there is no logical alternative but to have a monopoly over the application of those rights. In other words, the protection of those rights. Because there isn't two opinions or five opinions or 22 opinions about what individual rights mean. They have to be objectively proven, they can only be one. And how do we negotiate about which application of individual rights is right? Well, the only way to negotiate that in a system in which there is so-called competition of security agencies is who has the biggest gun. Anarchy, there is no such thing as a stateless society. All stateless societies would ultimately revert to authoritarianism. That is the only equilibrium solution which is the guy with the biggest gun takes over and imposes his will and everybody else. Thank you, Dr. Rook for his comment. Do you want to refer to it? Many points were made but I will refer maybe just a few of them. First of all, you've just mentioned that there should be a final authority to dispute. Final authority that would define what are individual rights. Where's the final authority between you and me? If we have a conflict, what's the final authority? American government or Polish government? If you really take your position to the logical conclusion, to the logical extreme, you should be arguing for the world government. The world government that would be final authority. Otherwise what we have, we have anarchy between the states. And between the states there is no final authority, first of all. The states define individual rights differently. Some of them reject individual rights altogether. So I can't see how we can have your position, which is middle of the road, kind of stopping in the meantime and saying that, well, we have to have this final authority. But actually you're not in favor of final authority because I believe you're not in favor of world government. Actually this is what you said yesterday during your streaming, which was actually enjoyable and I recommend it to listen to everybody. But that you're not in favor of final world government, but you're in favor of 30 or 40, 30 would be preferable, 30 states in the world. So I find your position problematic for this reason, that is just stopping in the meantime, not going to the conclusion, and the logical conclusion would be, well, let's embrace world government as far as enforcement is concerned and as far as the definition of individual rights is concerned. Well, now the question of definition of individual rights, I'm surprised. I'm surprised that you're linking individual rights and definition thereof with the state. Well, I thought that the definition, what are individual rights, comes from reason. The reason defines what are individual rights and particularly for Ayn Rand, reason would be this instance, this ultimate instance that would define what rights we have and what rights we don't have. So I'm absolutely flabbergasted by hearing that you linked the definition of individual rights to the institution of the state. And the final point, and now the question because I haven't had an opportunity to ask you really any question yet. You mentioned public opinion. It's actually your answer to, apparently, to the justification of efficiency of other means of financing the state. You referred at that point to the state luxury. Presupposed particular state of the public opinion that people want to have a state, and I guess you would go even further. You would say that people want to have a limited state. Of course, they don't want to have any other state. So that's the presupposition. Now my answer is this. So as I understand the opposition, maybe not my answer. Maybe let me ask this question and listen what will be your answer. So my question is this. What are ways, how we can be, how we can assure that your limited government will not devolve into a big government? And whether, my question would be, that's the most important part. If you can refer to this, I would be grateful. Do you think that the ultimate check, that the ultimate way that we can assure that the limited government will never develop into a big social democratic government is the state of public opinion? People that are vigilant, that are freedom loving, that are free marketers, and so on and so forth? That would be my question. Thank you. So let me just address the one world government, so I don't want anybody, as you said, I'm not for one world government. And it does create issues, it does create problems, and I agree with that. That is, what are the proper jurisdictions? How does one deal with violation of rights in one country vis-a-vis another? And it's a problem, it's a problem that's difficult to solve. It's not easy and the way it's being solved throughout history unfortunately has been often has been institutions like the United Nations or going to war. I mean, this is why I don't want to multiply security agencies because it's such a horrible problem to have. These multiple agencies that then have to negotiate, it becomes a real horror. And usually, when the violations of rights are large or when there are offenses that are large, the consequence is warfare and that is a disaster. I think we can all agree that war is not a good thing for individual human beings. Yes, of course individual rights are defined by reason. But who gets to arbitrate if you got them right or not? That is, the application of individual rights is not easy, is my point. It's not obvious what is or is not a violation of individual rights. Again, these are complex issues. And who gets to decide whether you got it right or wrong? And again, if there are five agencies, and again, what happens if one of them and this is a question, what happens if one of their security agents doesn't believe in individual rights? Who imposes the will of individual rights on them? Finally, let me answer the question, what are the ways that assure that limited government will not devolve into big government? Well, vigilance, yes. Ultimately, it has to be vigilance. We get the government we deserve. We very much get the government to deserve, unfortunately. And if people are not vigilant, then the government will devolve into a nightmare. And I think the vigilance is primarily the responsibility of the intellectuals within a culture. I think they are the primarily responsible for it. I think most people don't really think about these things too much. And their views on these things are guided by the views of the intellectuals. And you can see this throughout history, the periods in which we have achieved some semblance of freedom, some semblance of capitalism, are periods in which the intellectuals supported these ideas. And the periods in which we have not is when the intellectuals turn against these ideas. So I think, yes, at the end of the day, it's an ideological struggle. At the end of the day, to secure freedom and maintain freedom, to secure limited government, to maintain a limited government requires the right ideas be held by the right people and promulgated through society. And to the extent that those ideas go away, I don't care what system you have. It will not survive people wanting something different if they want it strong enough and if enough of them want it. Okay, if I can refer to that, and particularly to the last part, let me try to put you in check. So that would be this. Well, look at that. Now we've just seen that the necessary condition for having a limited government is a particular state of public opinion, vigilance, freedom-loving citizens, and so on and so forth. Well, now, if you assume that the public opinion is necessary for having a limited government, if you, what's more, if you think it's possible and you think it's likely, I guess, right, that we can have this public opinion, then why do you assume it's unlikely in the case of Anarchy? Why do you assume that Anarchy would be war, gang warfare? Maybe the case for Anarchy also is based on the state of public opinion. We don't believe that people with a, let's say, a state of public opinion that is not of a kind of loving freedom, loving free market and so on and so forth would really develop into sustainable and justified Anarchy. We assume exactly the same what you assume, which is the state of public opinion. Now I'm asking, how is it possible, how do you square these two things? Saying that, well, that's possible and likely to have public opinion and then to form a limited government. But it's for some reason unlikely to have the same state of public opinion and to form competing, competing protection agencies and to form an eco-capitalist society. I find it contradictory and would love to hear what is the explanation for this position, which seems to me inconsistent. And maybe the second point, really short and the second point would be, yeah, I'm happy against the world government, but you didn't really give us any reason why against the world government in the face of your view that there must be ultimate arbiter, that there must be ultimate judge, that there must be ultimate gun, the strongest guns. So I acknowledge your position on that, but I can't see how you principally can have these two views together. All right, let me, let's start with public opinion. I don't think anarchy depends on public opinion and I don't think even a public opinion is for liberty, anarchy results in the same thing, it results in gang warfare. That is, all you need is a minority of people, a small minority of people, who don't respect the rights of other people. But if they have big enough guns, it doesn't matter because they, again, might makes right. It's not, we don't have rights that are dictating what happens in society because rights are just an opinion and there's nobody to enforce the rights. Right? All you need is a minority. Indeed, all of history suggests that minorities are the ones that have inflicted the most damage on human societies. The communist one minority in Russia, the Nazis in the beginning, certainly one minority in Germany, but they got big guns and once they got the mechanisms of using power and force against others, then it's not an issue. See, if I don't believe in rights, the issue is not whether I'm right or wrong objectively, by reason. The issue is, do I have the right military tactics to take over the other security agencies and impose my will on everybody else? It's an issue of military tactics. It's an issue of who is willing to be the most ruthless and you know what, the people who are most ruthless are the people who don't respect rights. So no, in a competition of force, which is what anarchists want, they want competition in force, the most ruthless wins, not the most just or the person who has the most people necessarily is going to win. So it's not an issue of public opinion. Once you get to anarchy, it's an issue of the biggest guns. And again, the whole concept of individual rights, it doesn't exist once you introduce competition into the so-called competition because I don't believe it's competition into the realm of force. What are you competing about? The only reason there's competition is because we don't agree on how rights are going to apply. This agency thinks rights should be applied in this way and this agency thinks rights should be applied in that way and we don't agree. And how do we resolve disagreement? Well, the way countries resolve disagreement, unfortunately, through, ultimately, through warfare. That's how we resolve disagreement, through violence and therefore by negation of the very principle of rights. So anarchy, if you believe in individual rights, then anarchy is self-contradictory. Anarchy is a system that rejects individual rights. It rejects the concept of individual rights and rejects the idea that comes from reason and it is objective. If it is objective, then there's only one interpretation and then interpretation needs to be enforced by a single government. Now, why then don't I support one government? Because I recognize, I recognize that mistakes can be made. I recognize that some, as you mentioned, that people sometimes lose an interest, they lose the vigilance and a particular state can deteriorate into a not limited state but into a mixed economy, into a bad state. So I recognize the fact that once we establish a free society, it is not determined that it will always be a free society, that it can revert towards the negative. And I want options. In that way, I am for competition among governments. Competition in quotes, because I don't think it's real competition. But on different geographic areas, not overlapping. So yeah, I'm not particularly enthralled with Poland having its own government, but something in Europe does make sense to have a government in Europe that protects individual rights in Europe and in case the United States descends into, let's assume all these governments are really free and they only protect individual rights and they're really good and wonderful. Let's assume then that one of them deteriorates and becomes unfree, you can escape. I want options to escape. Now maybe when we have something on Mars and their governments over there, we can have one world government on Earth. That bothers me less. As long as there's an option for when something fails, I can go somewhere else. Under Anarchy, there's no way to go. I can fire my agency and go to another agency, but I'm still in the midst of a war between the agencies. The Anarchy secures one thing. It secures fear. It secures uncertainty. It secures constant stress about who is going to attack whom, when, and where. It is a constant state of war. And that's what I want to avoid. That's what I wear. I think individual rights don't matter under Anarchy because they're not being protected by anybody. Thank you, Dr. Brook. Do you want to sum it up? Yeah, shortly before we go to the audience, may I have some short... Yes, if you want to sum up it in any way, then... I wouldn't like to sum it up, because I guess we will have some summary... After the question from the audience. I just wanted to say one thing. From my point of view, a limited government is a contradiction in terms. Limited government, because I guess we both agree on this proposition that individuals have rights, and amongst these rights, are right to life, liberty, and property. And government, even limited government, is nothing else than expropriating property protector. It's a contradiction in terms. So I just wanted to state my position one more time before we, I guess, go to the session of Q&A from the audience. Do you have two sessions? I'll just say, I think there's only one right, essentially. I mean, other rights are derivative, and there's the right to life. And I think the only way to protect that right to life is to have an agency responsible for objectively defining how that right is applied. Again, it is massively complex. And that agency, if you don't like the wood government, call it something else, but government's a pretty good word for it, that has the monopoly over the use of force, which means has the monopoly over the protection of that right, of the individual right to your life. Thank you, gentlemen, for this discussion. Very interesting. So I hope there will be a lot of questions from the audience. I have only one kind request to you, to ask specific questions about the debate. And it would be best if you say who you want to answer. Dr. Brook, Dr. Dominiac, or maybe both of them. So I think it will be easier for us. Shy, shy cold. Hi, I have question. I have question to Dr. Dominiac. I assume that in the stateless society, these agencies will be working in parallel. So for example, I will have one agency, and my neighbor will have another one. And if I believe that my capitalist view is the proper one, and my neighbor will not believe that, so it will go into conflict then. And we have the concrete examples, for example, like Dr. Brook said, ganks in the LA, or maybe the Nogon zones in the European cities, where there is the sherry yellow. So is it not the example that this way doesn't work? Okay, so let me make three points, as a part of the answer to your question. So first of all, I was trying to present a case in favor of Narko Capital Society, and this case was purely moral. Why it was like that? Because I believe we are not really able to predict the future state of the free market. So it's really impossible to think about how such private organizations would work in a free market. We couldn't predict how would telecommunication look like in 1990, right? We couldn't predict smartphones. We couldn't predict things like that. And by the same token, we can't predict exactly how these agencies would operate on a free market. Having said that, though, I would like to point out the second thing. The second thing is, how is it done between the states? We have two different states. They have two different legal systems. And citizens of these states coming to conflicts, maybe not so often because usually these are peaceful citizens, but sometimes it happens they come into conflict. And there's no higher arbiter above these states. So how is it solved? Is it solved by some agreement between these two states that you can also think of as two different agencies? So now coming... Just a second, let me finish, and then we can go back and forth. And then coming back to your point exactly, well, I would say talking about a possibility of having a gang warfare between private agencies, of course, is an empirical question. And again, I think this is impossible to give any scientific answer to this question. That would be exact answer because we don't have any data to support this or that answer. But we can resort to a common sense. And this way of looking at things would, I guess, give us this kind of answer, this kind of approximation to an answer. If you look at the history, then you will see that only in the 20th century, 200 million people were killed by their own governments. 100 million people was killed by the communist regime. And now you can compare this number if the death toll counts to anything. You can compare this number to the private crime and the level of the private crime, the amount of private crime in societies. So it's important to put that into context. And the context is exactly this one I've just provided, which is the amount of people being killed expropriated and so on and so forth by the states. Coming back to this point, just last thing, last thing. If you have this disagreement, there is such a thing and repeating or repetitive dealings between market actors. If you have any repetitive dealings between each other, our incentive structure changes into this one which would make it possible for us to deal again in the future in a profitable way. So what we can intelligently guess, that's just intelligent guess, that's not any bulletproof statement, we can intelligently guess that these companies would come to an agreement, how solve such disputes between individuals representing different legal systems. And we can suppose that there would be an appeal court or an appeal entity that they would refer to and that would be also included, I guess, already in the contract signed between these individuals and their respective agencies. Let me take a shot at answering some of this. Particularly this issue of how is it done between states? It's a disaster between states. It's exactly a good example of... So Egypt in 1956 decides to nationalize the private property of French and British companies called the Suez Canal. And the consequence of that is a short-term war where the French and the British paratroop into to try to protect the property or imagine in a different world the private agencies that protected these companies with paratroop troops to protect the property. And then the United States, which has a much bigger gun, says, we don't like that, go back home, let the Egyptians have it. That was the resolution. Is that a just revolution? Was it the right resolution? Who gets to decide? Who got to decide? I tell you who got to decide. The biggest gun. The United States had the biggest gun and therefore it got to decide what the resolution was. In the 1940s and 50s, just I'm picking on the Middle East because I guess I'm Israeli, these countries nationalized the oil of American, French and British oil companies. What was the resolution? Well, the resolution was, okay, you can have it. That's fine, go ahead. Stuff like this happens all the time. Massive injustices between states happen all the time. Sometimes they're resolved by war. Sometimes they negotiate and they come to a deal. Sometimes one party just backs off. But there's no objective standard. There's no actual practice of individual rights. There's no, this is your property, we will protect it. That is all out. And it's exactly this kind of foreign policy that suggests that if you give multiple now security agencies, not just in every country, in every geographic area, there are multiple of these, take the United Nations that horrific immoral stupid organization and now killed my daughter as a response. So I got my family together and we killed your sons. And then we get in front of a tribunal and they said, stop, this is not nice behavior. Pay him some money and go away. Okay, so we paid money. But then I thought about a five years later and I said, no, no, no, that wasn't right. So I go and kill more of your sons. So you get your family together and this goes on through hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of pages. This is, it's exactly why Iceland's state primitive, right? So God, I don't want to live in that world. I don't want to live in a world where we get to shoot each other and kill each other randomly out of whim. Sure, you can use the communist government and the Nazi governments as example of what government is. But of course, nobody thinks that's a good government, right? So yes, there is evil done in the name of evil government, in the name of gangs. I consider anarchism to be in that same spectrum, in that same world. It's a world in which violence is legitimized by providing competition and violence. You are legitimizing it and communism is bad, fascism is bad. And certainly so is this idea of anarchism. And I never call it an anarcho-capitalism because I think it's a contradiction in terms. Capitalism acquires government. And then you see it in the mafia, right? You see the same thing, right? You have competing security agencies. And how do they resolve their disputes? Sometimes they negotiate, right? Have you ever seen the Godfather? Right, sometimes they get into a room together and they cut a deal and they say, oh no, this repetitive, the exact argument. We have repetitive dealing, so we better not turn this into a war because there's repetitive dealing, so we want to make sure that we have a good relationship. And that works sometimes. And once in a while, one of the families says, to hell with this, we're just going to kill you all. And that's what you're putting your reliance on. And again, it's not up to public opinion. It's up to those particular leaders of those particular security agencies because they have the guns and they have the ability to inflict this on people, whether the people want it or not. Okay, there is a question from the chat, our live streaming, asking Radio Żelaza, question to Mr. Dominjak. Nozik concluded that competing security agencies would eventually form a huge dominant agency which would effectively monopolize government in a given territory. And there is a little argument that this would not happen. How are people supposed to resist the dangerous outcome? Why not settle for a republican government then? Okay, if I understood the question, well, I would say that Nozik's argument, that was really ingenious argument. And we all know that the author was an extremely intelligent person and an amazing philosopher. He was, unfortunately, unsuccessful in a sense that he didn't prove that it is possible for the state to develop in a way that does not violate individual rights. So that would be the first part of my answer. The second part of my answer, well, I think, as I understood the question, the second part of the question was about how can we assure that it doesn't develop into warfare or monopoly? How we can be sure? Well, we can't be sure. I think we are really, at this point, we have to count on what's more likely, what's less likely. And what would be the circumstances needed to make this devolution less likely? And I guess we kind of both agreed here whether we're talking about a limited government or we're talking about a stateless society to make sure that these arrangements don't devolve into a monopolistic rights-violating government, and especially a government that is a pretty big government, we have to have a particular state of public opinion. So I think that's the only and ultimate check for this scenario not happening, basically. So that would be my answer. Maybe it's kind of boring, but I'll repeat myself again that the main argument in favor of anarcho-capitalism and against the state is a moral argument. I'm not making cybernetics here. I'm not trying to predict what would happen in the future. It's not futuristic argument or science fiction. We can't really predict that, but we can point into things that are likely to happen. That would be desirable to protect us against such bad scenarios. And ultimately we just resort to a moral argument showing that a government expropriates people, and therefore it's a contradiction in terms and necessarily involves violation of individual rights because it's monopolistic, as was suggested by the question. And because usually it taxes people, that's it, I guess. So let me just say I don't buy the moral argument. I don't think it's right. I think it's flawed dramatically because it views violence as just a competitive, something you can compete about. There is no moral argument for anarchy. The moral argument is a bloodbath. But, well, isn't that exactly the case with the states? The states being racketeers, the states at some point say, okay, so we're going to kill all these people of this nationality, of this race, of this religion, and so on and so forth. What's the difference? What's the difference between these two arrangements? And, well, of course we've discussed it, so I will not repeat this again and again. I just wanted to pay your attention to some maybe a bit funny circumstance that actually mafia taxed about 10% and state taxes about 50%. Yeah, I'll take the 50%. I'll take the 50% over the 10% because I get something for the 50%, and at least I don't have to worry constantly about somebody shooting me in the back, in the back of the head. So I'd rather not, I'd rather take the 50% and have security than behold into the mafia and only pay 10%. The other example is David Friedman gives a Somalia. Oh, my God. I mean, you should travel to Somalia sometimes to see the wonders of anarchy and Somalia. What's his name also? Pete Leeson writes about Somalia. I mean, what a horrible place. And talk about private law. Private law that basically enslaves women. A private law where you can be stoned to death. Private law that has no concept of individual rights. And indeed, David Friedman doesn't have any concept of individual rights. That's not a basis for his arguments for anarchy. But no, I think the difference is this. I have a model for what a state looks like, for what a proper state looks like, for what a rights respecting, individual rights respecting state looks like. I believe that the mafia is exactly a model of competition in force. I think competition in force inevitably results in a mafia because there is no standard that dictates how you should compete in force. Because individual rights become irrelevant once you accept different agencies defining individual rights in their own different way, defining the law in their own different way. There is no law. There is no individual rights. They're just mafias. That's all that's left. Inevitably, under anarchism, no matter what people public opinion is. Well, I think as the question from the chat suggested, actually what we can expect from a limited government is basically the evolution into a bigger government and the violation of individual rights. In a word, what's the worst scenario we can think of as far as the anarcho-capital society is concerned is that some of these private agencies would basically devolve into the states. So the state is the worst possible scenario and, well, we can at least give it a try and we can at least have 500 years of freedom before the state develops. Because as we know from history, state doesn't develop quickly. It took a bit to develop contemporary states. Actually, we can say that the beginning of the institution of the state is 1648. I mean, it's logically just false, right? The devolution of anarchy to a state is through violence. It's through the violation of individual rights. So yes, the state such a society will create is the worst of all, is the worst of all. Although I think the process of getting there, that is, anarchism is worse than the state that evolves. And then if you look at the bloodiest periods in history, they are not periods of the nation state. They are periods of warring religions, of warring tribes, which where the state doesn't exist and the concept of individual rights doesn't exist when everybody is fighting everybody. That is the worst case scenario for human existence and it's what anarchism ultimately has to lead to, logically. No, I think there's some... There's no standard, there's no objective standard for what is true, for what are rights, for what is the law, for what's a violation. So we can only fight it out. That's all we're left with. That's basically mistaken as far as facts are concerned. This is a Hobbesian myth that in the state of nature, everyone will fight against everyone and our life will be short and perilous. But the facts are that the biggest amount of victims, both in deaths and in expropriations, in thefts, in mutilations and so on and so forth, are actually peculiar to the states. Are peculiar to the statist century, the 20th century where the states were the strongest. You're not going to tell me, I suppose, that tribes killed more people than the communist regime in China or in the Soviet Union. You're not going to... I actually am. So I'd recommend reading Steven Pinker's... Of a world span of time. Of a better nature of our angels. I'd just recommend reading the book. 50 years? The percentage was high. The percentage was high. I'm talking about the percentage, not the total number, of course not. The percentage was much higher. And that we live today, in spite of all the states that exist, and in spite of my criticism of all the states that exist, we leave in the least violent... Now, there's nonviolent force being inflicted on all of us. But in terms of violence, we live today in the least violent period of all of human history. And if you think that has nothing to do with the existence of states, of course it has everything to do with the existence of states. States would use violence. Now, they inflict other forms of force, regulation, redistribution of wealth, all this other stuff that I want to eliminate as well. But no, tribes were much more violent than even communists as evil and as nasty as communists were. They were much more violent. Well, it depends how you look at that, right? So you talk about percentages. Well, if we have two people in the world and one person is killed, that's 50%. But if you have 100 million people killed, well, I find it worse, basically. So you can opt for a percent. I will opt for the number of people killed by the state. Thank you, gentlemen, for this very complex answer. Are there any more questions? Yes. Yes, I have a question to Dr. Dominic. You said that the limited state is full of contradictions. Would you be ready to accept the limited state as a step towards gaining the anarcho-capitalistic society? Or would you say that there is another way to achieve anarcho-capitalism? Okay, thank you for that question. I think it will just cool us down a bit because, well, we have this form of the debate and we're supposed to argue for the opposite positions. But I think that should be stated that we both come from libertarian, although you're not willing to use the word, we both come, so maybe let me change the word. So we both come from the respectful individual rights and we want to analyze the possible systems, the political systems or social systems that can consistently and to the high extent, I guess also that would be important consideration, provide protection for these rights. So although there is some disagreement between us, as you can imagine, I guess, this disagreement is really insignificant in comparison to how many things we share and how many ideas we share and in how many concepts and the rights and liberties we believe in. So, well, let's say outside the format of the debate, I would of course say that limited government is highly desirable. Let me maybe quote a friend of mine, Walter Block. He has this really funny joke when a person asks an economist, how is your wife? The answer is compared to what. So how is limited government compared to what? Limited government, of course, compared to what we have currently is an amazing solution. So I would say, well, I would absolutely welcome that. I would even welcome a limited government as not leading anywhere else. But as far as principles are concerned, I think that the right is on the side of anarcho-capitalist position. The right is on the side of four respective individual rights. But this is comparatively insignificant. I mean, in comparison to how many things we share, I guess. So I'm going to disagree. I think it's a big deal. I think the disagreement is a big deal and it's one of the reasons I won't call myself a libertarian. And I think at the end of the day, we haven't talked about this, but it probably results in the fact that we don't define individual rights correctly the same way and that we don't apply individual rights the same way. And that they are deeper, much deeper philosophical issues at bay, where we disagree on, because I don't think you can come to the anarcho-capitalist position or the anarchist position without, I think, making deep philosophical errors, for example, in the role of violence in human life and what individual rights actually mean. I mean, since you mentioned Walter Block, I will ask the question, you know, is it okay? Is it rights violating to have sex with a five-year-old child? Now, I would argue absolutely it's rights violating. It's a horrific rights violation and that person should spend a big chunk of their life in jail, if not forever. But they are libertarians, they are anarchists, who say, well, why? It's consensual. The child might have said yes, but that's meaningless, right? And there might be a protection agency that will protect your right, right, in quotes. To have sex with that five-year-old child. Now, what does one do if there is a protection agency? Let's say I'm offering services to pedophiles. I am a right to protection agency that protects the rights of men to have, or women, doesn't matter, women are taught it, but to have sex with a five-year-old child. What do you do with that? How do we solve this issue? How do we combat it? How do we get rid of this agency? People voluntarily are signing up. People voluntarily are willing to participate. Maybe even parents are voluntarily willing to have their kids participate. It's all voluntary. How do we deal with it? Well, I mean, I've got creepy crawlers down my spine just thinking about that, right? Because they are sick parents, and they are sick people who want to have sex with five-year-olds, and anarchism would legitimize that completely. Now, that means there's no such thing as individual rights. That means the negation of individual rights and the negation of what even means to be voluntary. How can a five-year-old be voluntary or anything? And how can a parent abuse a child and get away with it? So these are complex issues that anarchism defaults on and ultimately has to lead to massive injustices of these individual rights that supposedly we agree upon. But I'm not sure we do agree on them. And I certainly don't think we see them as coming from the same source and applying in the same way. So I think, and this is my resistance to saying we agree on a lot of things, I'm not sure we do if once you start peeling away the rhetoric into what it actually means. Okay, so I have a question to Dr. Brug. So what are your last comments based on what? On this taste, would you be equally moved? What was your last comment based on, I don't know, moral distaste or repugnance? Would you be equally moved? I don't know, if I just come back home now and enjoying my property and all my liberties, I masturbate watching pornography? I don't know, would you call it unjust or? I don't know, are you against effectively principle of voluntariness? I don't know, does your position imply that if... I mean your masturbation is not violating anybody's rights, I don't care if you masturbate, why would I care? Yeah, because I'm trying to test your approach, like is it based on distaste or repugnance? So let's assume that... I mean, my point is this, my point is that application of individual rights is complicated and applying it, for example, to children is very complex, but children have rights and those rights are held in trust by parents. But somebody has to supervise their parents to make sure they don't abuse that trust. And that, for example, is one of the roles of government, to protect the rights of the child from, often, his own parents. And there is no way to... I just gave that example as a way in which Anarchy cannot deal with that and indeed Anarchy would encourage the creation of societies of pedophiles with parents who want to abuse their kids to join together. Now, I consider pedophilia a capital offense. It's as close to getting, you know, shot as I can think of. Now, you masturbating, I mean, good for you. I mean, I'm actually very much pro-masturbation. I think masturbation is wonderful. You should all do it if you're not doing it and do it often. What does that have to do with molesting children? It doesn't have any relationship to the two. So what about gays, then? What about what? What about gays having consensual sex? It's consensual, right? They're adults. They get to make their own decisions. Again, a child is not an adult and there has to be a differential between children and adults, which again, my argument is Anarchy cannot embed. You have to have a government that protects children. Okay, let me just push you a bit more. There was this anecdote by Walter Block, like just to follow Dr. Mignac's style. He used these anecdotes. There was a conference. There were two neo-Nazis in the audience. And he was cullily keen on sort of converting them to libertarianism. He said, you would have a really good deal with us with libertarians, you Nazis. You would have your goose marches. You would sing your Nazi songs in your properties. What's more, you could get some juice to the gas if they willing, if they volunteer. That's disgusting. That is absolutely disgusting. But that's voluntary. No, you don't, it's not, if you want to commit suicide, that's fine. You cannot voluntarily, this is exactly the point where you guys don't understand what individual rights mean. You cannot voluntarily assign yourself into slavery. There is no such thing as a contract. Contract means something. It is a legal document that assigns certain rights and certain responsibilities. You cannot assign yourself into slavery. If you want to commit suicide, you have every right to do that. You can commit suicide. You cannot have a right to contractually assign some Jews to come and get gassed. You can goose march. You can do all the paraphernalia of Nazism. You have every right to do that. You can exclude from your property anybody who is not blue-eyed and blonde. But the idea that you can voluntarily gass people is sick and disgusting. And this is why, I mean, I'm disgusted by Walter Block and why I find him an enemy of liberty. Not a friend of liberty, but an enemy of liberty and on the side of the Nazis and the Communists. And that's why I view gang warfare on that side. I don't view that as being consistent with freedom. Contracts mean something. That's not whatever you want. It's not whatever you whim. This is exactly what individual rights are trying to get away from. It's to get away from the idea that whim is primary. Whatever you feel like is primary. By the way, those Nazis, even if all they do is goose steps, I'm still going to call them evil. I still think they're a threat. I'm still going to watch them because I think they're a threat. And I still think they're evil, morally evil, for holding those ideas. So, there is such a thing as... I'm emitting, but I'll be moved by Nazis. Because I don't think you masturbating is illegal. Sorry, it's immoral. I think you masturbating is moral. I think, I mean, it depends why you masturbate and how you masturbate and all that. Maybe it is immoral. But generally, masturbation, I think, is a moral activity. I think that holding certain ideas, holding certain ideas like Nazism, holding certain ideas like Communism, is immoral. Morality is not about whether you violate rights or not. Morality is about how you live your life. This is exactly what I argued before. We don't agree on a lot. We disagree fundamentally. Most anarchists are moral subjectivists. Most anarchists don't believe in individual rights. Most anarchists don't believe in an objective morality. We disagree on the most fundamental questions about human engagement. And this is why I don't think, oh, we agree on most stuff. We disagree on just this final outcome. No, for most, not everybody. There's some anarchists who I think we do agree on a lot of stuff. But for most anarchists, we disagree on a whole slew of philosophical questions. And that disagreement is reflected in the fact that we also disagree in this political issue. If I can jump in for a second. So, well, I think that was quite important what you said. Because I agree that this is what distinguishes us or what divides us. Because libertarianism and well, anarcho-capitalism as a form of libertarianism is a view that can be called a thin philosophical view. So we don't really try to impose on people any so-called objective morality. You just pick and choose. This time you picked and choose. Masturbation is actually okay. And marching Nazis is not okay. We're not doing this. What we're doing is we try to distribute spheres of freedom between individuals. And provided they don't violate each other's rights, each other's domains, borders of jurisdictions, they can do whatever they want. So we are respectful of freedom. Whereas you've just shown, in my opinion, that there are some limits to freedom for you. The limits being that there is some particular so-called objective. I can't see why it's objective. It's just particular morality. You pick and choose some things and you call them unethical. And not as a libertarian, as a libertarian, not as a human being, but as a libertarian. We basically are not judgmental. We don't try to impose on people any particular morality. And we see the distinction between right and morality very, very clearly. And to this point, actually referring to the problem with children that we refer to. I guess, as a libertarian, we can't say anything about morality of having sexual acts with children. But I guess as a human being, of course, we would condemn it. But as libertarians, we would basically point out to the difference. The difference between a right as a protection of interests and different sorts of protections of interests. There are different sorts of protection of interests. There is morality that you mentioned. There is ethics that you mentioned. There is repugnance that was mentioned by one person in the audience. And of course, we would refer to these elements as human beings as protecting children against these kind of abuses. So basically, I can't see the problem here. I think that there is, of course, some disagreement between us about what rights, in this case, we would like to assign to children. I guess there are some rights you wouldn't like to assign to children. For instance, you wouldn't assign a right to a child to sell a real estate. You wouldn't like to assign a right to a child to perform any other legal actions. The only right you would be willing to assign to a child, I guess, would be a right to be protected against physical violence by other people. As far as I'm concerned, I think libertarianism has resources to do exactly the same. Although we wouldn't go further. We wouldn't go into thick theory. We wouldn't tell people what to do if they don't want to. We wouldn't pick and choose this and that as moral or immoral and refer to so-called objective morality. No, this is good, because this is exactly why I do not call myself libertarian. I find much of that repugnant. And the fact is that I don't want to impose my morality, but I do think there is a true morality. I do think there's a right morality. And that morality... What if I disagree? Then you can live your life, as long as you don't violate other people's rights, do whatever the hell you want. But don't claim them. Don't claim that we agree in individual rights, because we do not. And this is why this idea that libertarians believe in individual rights, we just think this is how we arbitrate them. You don't agree on individual rights. That is, individual rights are not random. Individual rights are a particular moral perspective. Individual rights are a moral concept. They're not even a political concept. They're a moral concept. They're a concept that bridges morality with politics. So let's be philosophical, right? We want to be philosophical. The whole idea was a moral defense of anarchism. Well, if morality is completely subjective, if morality is whatever you want it to be, then there is no moral defense of anything. It's whatever you happen to agree with, whatever you feel like. There is no truth. There is no one moral truth, right? It's random. It's whimsical. It's whatever, right? So I believe that there is a moral truth. I believe that some systems are moral, and some systems are immoral. But you say, you can't say it's immoral. It depends. Some people might like it. No, there is an objective truth here. So the concept of individual rights and how we come to it and how we apply it and how where it applies depends on having a proper conception of morality. And if we do not have a proper conception of morality, as I think most libertarians do not, then the concept of individual rights is flawed, and therefore their security agencies are all going to be flawed because they're trying to protect the wrong thing, the whole thing, the whole agenda. Is logically false and logically cannot stand because you won't accept the existence of an objective morality on which to base your moral case for X. Well, just one word if I can, because that's really interesting. Well, you know, I said that we share many things. I said that we share belief in individual rights. Yet I agree with you that in some respects, our definitions of individual rights are different. One of this respect, of course, that I identified during my speech is that you think that there is no right not to be expropriated by the state. There's no right, individual right. So what I said, and you know that. There's no right with the protection service on a given territory if there is a monopolistic, compulsory monopolistic agency called the state. The second thing is that, well, libertarianism is really respectful of the fact of, which is usually called moral pluralism, that people can reasonably differ as far as the moral doctrines are concerned. We have Christians, we have Catholics, we have Jews, we have various reasonable moral doctrines that differ. And because we have this moral pluralism, exactly because of this reason, libertarianism is a preferable way of distributing between people domains of freedom to decide for themselves which moral doctrine they want to follow and not to impose on them so-called objective morality that they can disagree with, basically. So one quick comment. Most moral doctrines, most moral doctrines, almost all of them, almost all moral doctrines think that using force on other people in order to make right is a good thing. Most moral doctrines do not recognize individual rights. Certainly the Judeo-Christian Islamic moral tradition has no respect for individual rights and believes explicitly that it's okay to use force on other people in order to straighten them out. So I think moral pluralism, great, right? But as long as the morality of individualism is not the dominant morality, then you will not have freedom. And as long as you advocate for moral pluralism, you will never have freedom. Moral pluralism is the way to go down in flames to the Christian status, to the Jewish status, to the Islamic status, and the secular status to use their moral code in order to justify their rule. It is a way to fail if you believe in liberty. Okay, thank you gentlemen. Now we will skip to the final, the last question. And after that, you will have five minutes to sum up the whole discussion. So the last question. This will be the question for Aaron Brook. And I want to ask you that why in this discussion you think that the force is the, the force is the need of the people, yeah? Because when we are talking about the private... Forces, what? I'm sorry, I didn't understand. The force is people need, because when we are talking about the private agency which should protect people, because force is not a need. The true need is to be protected for the force, yeah? So the agency will not create the war or the constant war with each other, yeah? They rather want to to stop the wars, to stop the violence, because the people will pay them for that, yeah? So they work like a company, not like a government. Government has got money in any way, yeah? It's good or bad government. Company can earn money, achieve money and people, only when it's good on their own way. So that's the question. There is a... Thanks for asking a question. It's a good question. The fund... There's a fundamental difference between economic power and force or what I call political power. The difference is the one embodies a gun and the other one does not. Economic power is truly voluntary. Economic power is about the gaining of values and constant progress and constant competition and constant improvement in win-win transactions and win-win relationships. Once you have... Once you bring in the gun, once you bring in force, protection, you call it, but protection is very naive. It's a very nice word, right? Because what is my protection might be force against you. I need to protect it against you. You're doing stuff economically that I don't like. I want your stuff. And my protection agency is now... I've paid it a lot of money to go after you and go after your stuff. And if my protection agency has a bigger gun than your protection agency, then who do you think is going to win that one? It's all about guns. It's all about the size of the weapons. It's all about force. It's not about value creation. It's about guns. It's about the bigger gun wins, right? So... Political power, the power of the gun, is about coercion. It is about force. Whether it's held by the government, it's power, it's the same kind of power in government, or it's held by private entities. Private entities that are supposedly motivated by money, but they still have a gun in their hand. And a gun in their hand allows them to inflict their power over other people. Without it being voluntary. And their whole purpose is not to be voluntary, because they're protecting me. They're not protecting you. You didn't pay them. You didn't pay them. So they're there to protect me. So if I have a conflict with you, they represent me. And if they can inflict their power on you, they're not violating any voluntary agreement they had with me. I say, cool, go after him. Now you have a protected agency responsible for protecting you. And they have to negotiate, or they have to war, or they have to do whatever. And what if their negotiations break down? And this is why it was brought up that states functions like this. Yeah. And exactly what we get. We get wars. We get World War II. We get even stupider World War I, or both are equally stupid, I guess, World War I. We get because there's no final authority. There's no way to arbitrate disputes. And they have big guns. And I can inflict, you know, I'm Germany. I can inflict my bigger gun than on Poland. I'm going to take you over. Well, the protection agency is going to do exactly the same thing. And there's no way to stop them. And the will of the people doesn't matter, because the people, unless the people are all armed, and that's fine. I mean, the one solution I can imagine to all this is, we're all armed. We all carry. We all have the machine gun ready. And we're all constantly, all the time at war. But nobody wants to live like that. Nobody wants to live like that. Nobody should want to live like that. Nobody should live like that. Again, I consider the anarchist position on the same, in the same place as authoritarianism, because I think it leads the same state of mind, the same kind of life. Which is a life of fear and oppression and constant fear, constant inability to use the one tool we have to produce, which is our mind. If I can jump in to this question also. Yes, yes. Okay, thank you. The one that the last two said is this. Okay, all right. So first of all, I would say, maybe that would be worth mentioning today, something that we haven't mentioned yet. The difference between the operation, between the states, and as you mentioned in your question, between private security agencies, which by the way, I think we can expect would be actually insurance companies working on a free market. Insurance companies provide service to people. They insure them against catastrophes. These catastrophes can be natural catastrophes or social catastrophes. Social catastrophe is nothing else than being a victim of a crime, being a victim of a mager. And therefore this kind of imbalance that you should suggest that your defense agency represents you against another person. And the only thing that the agency wants to do is basically to respect your rights is also that doubtful, because in the case of insurance companies, these interests are not so easily distributed because the insurance company considers a person who actually is a victim of a catastrophe, a winner against the insurance company. So the incentive structure wouldn't be so straightforward as you're suggesting. But then another, so that's the one thing. And now we can compare these two models that we haven't yet. It was the ultimate, was the crucial difference between these two organizations. The crucial difference is that the state can externalize costs of its aggressive behavior on the taxpayers, on the people that involuntarily have to hand over the money to the state because they are threatened with death and loss of the life, liberty and property. Whereas organizations such as security agencies in particular, insurance companies operating on the free market, they operate on a different basis. They cannot externalize costs of their aggressive behavior on their customers because as you suggested, and as you suggested rightly, they are financed through a voluntary purchases of the service they provide to the customers, to the willing customers and therefore the incentive to start the war, to have a war between agencies is a different sort of incentive. And I claim is a smaller incentive than there is between the states. We can ask ourselves this question. Imagine two organizations, Ceteris Paribus or other things being equal. Cantifactually or other things being equal. Organization A and Organization B, they equal except one thing. Organization A can't externalize costs of aggressive behavior on other people through taxation. Organization B can do that. And now ask yourself, which of these two organizations will be more aggressive? Where will be the bigger incentive to start violence, to initiate physical force against innocent people? So, and my last point about, you know, arming to teeth, having guns next, you know, with you all the time, machine guns and things like that. Well, I basically as a free marketer, I believe in division of labor. And I don't think that we would have to defend ourselves individually. I think we would outsource it. We could outsource it. We could have a division of labor and professional agencies specializing in this service would basically protect us. In particular, that would be insurance companies as they protect us now before something happens to us, not afterwards as it's the case with the police. And actually, that was also surprising for me when you mentioned that you're not afraid of the state. Taking into consideration how many violations are committed by the police in the United States is really surprising. We at least in Poland don't have this problem because our police is really not so strong and doesn't have such powers. But it's surprising to hear it from someone from the United States where you really have a big problem with the police and the violence of the police. So, yeah, that would be it on my part. Thank you very much. Well, we are running out of time. So would you like to say at last few words to sum up today's meeting? Well, I'll just say just to correct this. If I said I'm not afraid of the state, then I'm a spoke. Of course, I'm afraid of the state in its current manifestation. Of course, I'm afraid of the direction in which states are going because they're only going in the direction of infringing on individual rights more. So what I'm not afraid is afraid of a state that protects individual rights. I'm not afraid of a state that is structured around the principle, the principle, which has to be well-defined and clearly defined of individual rights and individual sovereignty. Where I am really afraid is of the anarchist solution, the anarchist world, the deliverance of anarchy. I think it's scary. I think it's destructive. And I think that the arguments are inherently unsound and unreal. And the solutions to the real issues are detached from all reality. If you want anarchy, Somalia is waiting for you. You can go back to the Middle Ages and live in the Middle Ages and enjoy that. That is anarchy. It's not a distortion of anarchy. It's anarchy. It's exactly what anarchy is. It's not that it hasn't been tried. It's been tried many, many, many times. And it's tried, as I said, in our inner cities among gangs. There is anarchy all over the world. You can go find a place and go live there. It's a horrific existence. It is not an existence worthy of human beings. And I think it does us a disservice as defenders of liberty, those of us who want to defend freedom, to advocate for a system that is so destructive to human life. Thank you very much. Last few words? Yeah, absolutely. So, what I wanted to say is, well, we could hear that if we want anarchy, we should go to Somalia. What I'm saying is basically, we should compare apples with apples and oranges with oranges. We should not compare Somalia with the United States. We should not compare Somalia with, well, Liechtenstein or societies or states like that. We should compare the same with the same. And if we really compare the same with the same, I can say the same against you. Well, I can say, well, if you want to have a state, go to Nazi Germany. If you want to have a state, go to Soviet Union. This is the lot that is awaiting you, right? So, by the same token, as you're saying that Somalia is the ideal of anarchy, I can say, well, the ideal of the state is the Soviet Union or is Nazi Germany. Now, the main point I'm trying to make here and I've been trying to make throughout the whole debate is the following. The idea presented by Dr. Brug that there can be a state protecting individual rights is a contradiction in terms. The state is an expropriating property protector and therefore it is a contradiction. We can't think about the state that defends property rights. What's important to notice is that expropriation, don't think about expropriation only in terms of taxation. Expropriation can take different forms. One of the forms that I've mentioned is prohibiting willing individuals from contracting their defense in organization firms and other entities that operate on a voluntary basis. Therefore, I will just stand to what I've been presenting here during the debate, that the state is a contradictory institution, morally speaking, that it necessarily violates individual rights and it has not been disproved that it is possible to exist without such violations. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, gentlemen, for accepting our invitation for this very interesting and very intensive discussion for answering all the questions. I think it was very interesting too. I think it was a quite interesting way to spend a Sunday morning. Thank you very much. Thank you, the audience, and have a great rest of the Sunday.