 Last night at the opening reception someone made a very interesting comment And that is that although it was a year since we had last all been together It is easy to pick up your conversations at the pool Exactly where they left off a year before It is increasingly when we come to Bodrum as if we had been away just a few weeks or even just a few days And so you can have a conversation which started in 2010 and it will continue year after year after year it not a circular conversation money means but a progressive unfolding series of conversations However, I As Hans said I was one of the first So I attended the very first conference of the property and freedom society in May 2006 and That first conference was entirely unlike any other conference Here since let me say something about my recollections of it I'm very grateful by the way to Gulcham because she has told us so many things about the early Stages of the property and freedom society that of which I was completely unaware It also means that I don't need to scratch my head and guess what was going on because I now have a better understanding However, let's go back to May 2006 I turned up in Bodrum on the Tuesday before the conference started and in those days the conference started on Saturday because they were not that many attendees I was one of the first people to arrive in the hotel and What I remember is getting out of the Transfer vehicle from me last to Bodrum. I got out. I stumbled through I Stumbled through blinding sunshine Into the hotel reception my bags were taken downstairs And then I was taken out to the pool where I met Hans and Gulcham And sat for them drinking Coca-Cola I Was far too polite to ask well, what am I going to do here? Why have you brought me here? I've never wanted to ask direct questions Especially when it's so long to go till the actual conference Anyway, the next day we were put into a Vehicle, I should say that a few other attendees turned up on that day May and Olivier were there Frank van done turned up rather later Don Prince turned up late on Tuesday as well and We made a little party for dinner. We didn't eat outside. We ate in the dining room Or that first time but anyway the next day There were so few of us that we could all fit into the usual transfer vehicle and Gulcham took us on a tour of the Archaeological sites on the Bodrum Peninsula There was There was Milas there was Euromos and then we went up into the mountains to the great temple complex at Didema and I really enjoyed this because that is the sort of thing that I like and If I were to have come to this region for a holiday Those are the places that will be on my list of things to do and so yes It was wonderful Sitting in the vehicle going around looking at looking at inscriptions Testing how good my Greek and Latin still were Looking at these Remarkable remarkably preserved ruins much better than anything you'll find in mainland Greece or on the Greek islands indeed and The next day we went on another long excursion into the mountains This time to the carpet factory and by now Paul and Sandra Bellin had joined us and Later that evening Paul Gottried turned up and so what you have between Tuesday and Friday is a slow coming together of a group of people who are by no means agreed in their opinions and Who often sit around at dinner and at lunch arguing over Who is right about this and who is right about that? but very enjoyable and still I was wondering so this is a conference, but When are we going to start doing the usual conference things? but it was only Thursday and so We carried on with Friday not doing anything particularly Conferency and then Once enough of us were all together There was no actual agenda no actual schedule Published, but we came in here There were only about 20 of us. I think I'm sure that Hans and Gulch and will have the attendance List, but my recollection is that there were not more than 20 of us we did not fill this room and We didn't start at 10 o'clock either because there were not many of us speaking We also had monstrously long lunch breaks. They went from about 12 o'clock till 4 o'clock or something None of us prepared speeches we came up we set our piece we sat down Hands was experimenting in those days with small panels Half-hour panels that those have tended to die off since then, but they were interesting at the time and then on Saturday We went off to the fishing village and then on Sunday We had the belly dancers and what I most remember about the belly dancers on Sunday Was how Paul Gottried became somewhat inebriated and he stripped off many of his clothes and joined in with the belly dancers I Do have it on video somewhere and a most entertaining video clip it is By now the conference was over so far as it had been a proper conference and we went on the boat trip and That was very enjoyable as well Now what I'm saying is that the first conference was entirely unlike any of the other Conferences and although I kept on asking at the time. So when are the main proceedings going to start? It was only afterwards when I was in the airport lounge ready to catch my flight back to London But I realized that there had been a perfect integration of the normal conference proceedings with the Preparatory stages the trip to did enough for example the trip into the mountains the trip to the carpet factory Paul Gottried taking off all his clothes and dancing by the pool that That was the conference And although ever since then we have had a much slipper approach to the speeches and Because I don't want to pick out any one particular speech and say how wonderful that was I will simply say how impressed I was by Rahim's talk on the Lebanon earlier It's it cast a pool of light on the subject of which I had so far been Entirely ignorant and indeed in which I didn't even know that I was ignorant however Going back to the point I was making There is a perfect fusion at these conferences of the actual proceedings in this room and of the Preparatory or accompanying stages Outside this room in the hotel lobby around the pool on the boat trip The fishing village and all the other things because this is not simply a conference where you come with a prepared text Say your piece sit down listen to others and then go home This is what hands called some years ago a sound and what the property and freedom society has achieved over the past nine years is nothing less than an Attempt to impress on our movement what you could call grown-up libertarianism The conference speeches are very important, but the unrecorded Unscheduled conversations outside the conference room are of equal importance to the Achievement of this grown-up libertarianism. No, what do I mean by the phrase grown-up libertarianism? Let me say this Even in 2006 There were still many libertarians who believed that the real enemy of bourgeois civilization to use a poor gotrid phrase Was old-fashioned socialism There were libertarians who spent the entire 1990s insisting that Bill Clinton was a socialist and who then insisted that Tony Blair was a socialist By 90 by 2006, I will agree that most people had accepted that Neither the American Democrats nor the British New Labour Party were socialist in any normal sense And that these people had absolutely no interest in trying to control the price of bread or nationalized the telephone network, but the The assumption remained that the enemy was socialism and this was what we had to guard against The truth is of course that the enemy is not socialist The enemy has given up on socialism it gave up on socialism many many years ago what we face is a new unified ruling class which consists of politicians administrators Lawyers educators and associated business and media interests which all draw status and income from an enlarged and activist state and that enlarged and activist state May deliver certain welfare services to the people or it may pretend to deliver those services and prefer to concentrate on various kinds of special interest Proverging and foreign wars, but the point is this ruling class is at war In a way that the old-fashioned socialists broadly weren't it is at war both with freedom and With tradition We need to see the enemy for what it is anyone who thinks that the enemy is old-fashioned trade union leaders and I was in a In an email conversation with my young colleague Kier Martin a few days ago in which we were laughing at those Conservatives and British Libertarians who are looking forward to having Jeremy Corbyn as leader of the Labour Party Because it means that suddenly they can drag out of the backs of their minds all those arguments about economic calculation Jeremy Corbyn will allow a number of sad old men to die happy because suddenly they will have become relevant again But you see the enemy isn't Jeremy Corbyn the Jeremy Corbyn may cooperate with the enemy, but it's not old-fashioned Socialists it is people who wear business suits it is people who are quite happy to allow markets to clear in ways that Old-fashioned socialists either would not have understood or not have wanted to permit to permit One aspect of grown-up Libertarianism another aspect is that Because this new ruling class is at war with freedom and tradition We cannot be so arrogant as to assume that the Resistance to this ruling class can be a monopoly of the Libertarian movement And certainly not a monopoly of the Libertarian movement in America or in America and Britain we face a Large and powerful enemy that operates at the national level and at the international level And as I said that is at war both with freedom and with tradition and if we are to Resist this enemy with any effectiveness whatsoever We must accept that the world has changed and that we should not look for allies in the usual corporate economy We should reach out to other intellectual traditions and see To what extent we can set aside or compromise our ideological differences And to see how we can cooperate in resisting this enemy And we also need to reach out to our colleagues our Libertarian colleagues outside Britain and America We need to look at Libertarians in France in Germany in the newly liberated Territories of Central and Eastern Europe. We need to look to Turkish and Iranian and Lebanese Libertarians we need to look at Libertarians or people who are inclined to Libertarianism from all over the world and again Bring them here sit them around the call and see what emerges from those conversations a lack of arrogance a willingness to listen and to some extent a willingness to re-examine old assumptions Now The last aspects of this grown-up Libertarianism I wish to discuss is certain policy matters we've I Think that the issue of immigration has been done to death and there is really nothing more to be said about it but During the 1980s and 90s and indeed even during the present century There are there have been Libertarian organizations, and if I must name names, I'll mention the Adam Smith Institute in London Which has promoted Libertarianism in a somewhat perverse manner For example The Adam Smith Institute has published a number of policy documents on Why the British government should privatize the police force and why it should privatize the prisons and I will I will repeat the word perverse Many of us in this room are anarchists or we believe in what is called a natural society which will be shaped by the Voluntary interactions and preferences of its members Now in such a society where there is no government There will still need to be law and order property will still need to be protected murderers and thieves will still need to be punished and These functions will be left to voluntary associations which draw their legitimacy From how will they conform to the hegemonic values of that society? What I'm saying is that in a free or in a stateless society There will be police forces. There will be prisons. There will be courts and these will by definition need to be private To say that is entirely different from suggesting that in 1995 the British state should privatize the Metropolitan police or should privatize Wormwood scrubs prison What you are suggesting when you want to privatize an actually Existing function of the British state or the American state or any other state is a transfer of the coercive power of the state to a corporate body Which is Unaccountable to the taxpayers which is unaccountable to the people But that is entirely different from suggesting that in a free society There would be private police forces and private prisons. I'll repeat myself What you are suggesting is a transfer of the state's coercive power to unaccountable private corporations That strikes me as Lunacy No, I'll go back to the word perverse This is not the way to advance the libertarian argument This is not the way by which we will proceed to a libertarian society group If you are a grown-up libertarian, I suggest you will say that any Authority in a stasis society which has coercive power over people Should be fully accountable via the state It's one thing to downsize the state and in the course of that various core functions will spin off into the voluntary realm It's another thing to privatize parts of the actual existing state and that is something that I Don't believe is often discussed around the pool It's taken for granted that the way by which we move towards a natural Society or to a stateless society will be other than simply Simply getting the city of London to float to various institutions on the stock exchange So that they are owned by rather faceless holding companies I don't believe I Don't believe that hands really knew back in 2006 What he would have achieved by 2015 I'm not even sure he knew what he wanted when he started the property and freedom society It may be that he wanted He wanted to have a jolly time in Bodrum in May at the end of The end of ten years at the end of nine years rather After after ten conferences what we can say with reasonable surety is that the Frequency and the general tendency of these conferences Of the property and freedom society have had a profound impact on the wider libertarian movement New ideas and new approaches That were unthinkable in 2006 are now matters of mainstream debate It's always impossible to say exactly what has been the influence of any kind of intellectual movement But I do very strongly believe that if hands have decided not to go ahead with that 20 a 6th conference And that the property and freedom society had never been brought together in Bodrum That's the modern Libertarian movement in Britain America in Europe and in various other parts of the world would be a much impoverished movement and So with those words I normally begin with these words, but I will now end with these words I will thank Hans and Gulchin for having had the goodness to invite us here again for a 10th conference of the property and freedom society and I very much hope that these conferences will continue for the foreseeable future and I do very much hope as well that the positive the entirely benign Effect that the property and freedom society has had on the libertarian movement will continue Thank you