 During the last decade, and particularly during the Reagan presidency, a number of issues have been raised that may indeed concern law students, such as fairness, justice, and the legitimate role of government. And I believe that these issues surface at a time when we have numerous problems that threaten our future as a free nation and a prosperous nation. And the symptoms of these problems are manifested by high real interest rates. And any economist's word that's soft will tell you that high real interest rates means that the future is not worth as much. High unemployment in some segments of our society, high unprecedented and growing deficits, growing national debt, and I believe a set of circumstances for the first time in our history for runaway inflation and, of course, runaway government. And note that I refer to these as symptoms rather than causes of our problems than if I can just say what I think are the causes of our problems in a summary fashion, and I'll talk about it and explore a little bit more. I think that the basic cause of our problem is a departure from the principles of freedom that made us a rich and prosperous rich nation in the first place. And these principles of freedom were embodied in our nation through the combined institutions of private ownership of property and free enterprise or capitalism, if you will. Now through numerous successful attacks, private property and free enterprise are mere skeletons of their past in our country. And Thomas Jefferson, he anticipated this, and he said, or he predicted, that the natural progress of things is for government to gain ground and for liberty to yield. And we see the government is gaining ground. One way to look at how government is gaining ground and liberty yielding is to look at what's happening to taxes and government expenditures. The only way you can look at taxes, or at least one very, very importantly, you can look at taxes, is to see taxes as government claims on private property. And indeed, if government taxes private property, 100% would confiscate private property. And indeed, taxes are going up. And spending is going up. Matter of fact, spending is a much more useful way of measuring the impact of government on our lives. Let's look at spending for just a second to look at, to see how it's growing. In 1902, expenditures at all levels of government, federal, state and local levels of government, totaled $1.7 billion a year. And in that year, the average taxpayer paid $6 a year, paid $6 in federal, state and local taxes. Today, federal expenditures alone are over a trillion and a half. Local governments spend more than a trillion dollars. And the average taxpayer today pays $8,000 a year in federal, state and local taxes. And what does this mean? Well, it means that as time goes on, you and I own less and less of our most valuable property, namely ourselves. That is, the average American must work from January 1st until May 8th, and is increasing by a day or two each year to pay federal, state and local taxes. And what does that mean? What's that under that? Well, it means that you work that period. And you do not have rights to decide how the fruits of your labor will be used. Somebody else decides how the fruit of your labor will be used. And keep in mind that a working definition of slavery is a set of circumstances where you work all year. And you do not have rights to decide how the fruits of your labor will be used. It will be determined by somebody else, and it will in fact belong to somebody else. So it turns out that we Americans, if you want to look at it narrowly, we might be one-third slaves increasing by a day or two every year. Now in the economic sphere, the founders or the framers thought that relatively free markets or what is called capitalism or non-interventionism was the most effective social organization for the promotion of individual freedom. And indeed capitalism is defined as a system wherein individuals are free to pursue their own interests. That is, individuals are not forced to serve the purposes of other people. There is voluntary exchange. There's private property rights held in goods and services. And indeed we see that much of the original intent of the United States Constitution and much of the debate about some of the principles of the United States Constitution was to bring about a climate in which this kind of social organization would occur. Now many times the virtues of the free enterprise system are demeaned and perhaps in that note here more demeaned than on college campuses. But the great benefit of the free enterprise system is that through private ownership and control it minimizes the capacity of one person to force another person. And additionally and just as important is that the coercive powers of the state are minimized. That is, the powers of the state are limited to what I consider to be the legitimate functions of the state in a moral society. And that is, the one legitimate function of the state is to protect you and I from international fugs confiscating our property. And we should have national defense. Another legitimate function of the state is to stop domestic bugs from confiscating our property. And so that says at some level we should provide police services. Then there is adjudication of disputes and forcing constitutional order and the provision of certain public goods. Now for the past half century in our society the free enterprise and what it implies has been under unrelenting attack. Americans from all walks of life have demonstrated a deep and abiding, somebody's trying to get the door right there. Americans from all walks of life have demonstrated a deep and abiding contempt for private property rights and individual rights. And I believe that free enterprise is threatened today not because of its failure but because of its success somewhat ironically. That is capitalism has been so successful in eliminating the traditional problems of man the historic problems of man such as disease, pestilence, gross hunger and poverty that all other human problems appear to us to be at once inexcusable and unbearable. The desire by many Americans to eliminate these so-called unbearable and inexcusable problems has led us away from the basic ideals and principles upon which our nation was built. In the name of other ideals such as equality of income, sex and race balance, orderly markets, consumer protection, energy conservation, just name a few, we have abandoned many personal freedoms. The primary justification for the attack on private property and economic freedom and privacy on my day can be found in people's desire for government to do good. That is we all hear things like government should care for the poor, government should help the elderly, government should help college students become educated, government should help failing businesses. Well, it's all well and good to say that government should do this, but we must recognize that government has no resources of its very own and what I mean by that is that all these programs to help deserving college students or failing businesses, they don't represent congressmen and senators in Washington or legislators at your state capitol reaching in their pockets and sending the money out. That's what I mean when I say government has no resources of its very own. Moreover, there is no tooth fairy or Santa Claus giving them the resources. Now, so when you recognize that government has no resources of its very own that forces you to recognize that the only way the government can give one American citizen one dollar is to first, through intimidation, threats and coercion, confiscate that one dollar from some other American citizen. Now, some of you might say, well, this terminology that Professor Williams is using, intimidation, threats and coercion, it's just too loose. Well, you have April 15th to check me out. That is, you can tell the agents of congress, namely IRS, that you don't want your earnings going to bail out failing banks. You refuse to give your earnings to farmers, give it to them so they can give it to farmers. You'll see all the intimidation, threats and coercion that you want to see. And if you act too ugly, you will get shot. Now, a lot of people say, well, wait, you need to get shot. Well, that's like, I mean, I tell the people in Washington, look, you're not going to, I'm not going to give you any money to give to the farmers. And they say, well, we're going to take your house. I say, no, you're not going to take my house because I bought that house. And then they come around and take my house and I'm up at the window with guns. And they'll shoot me a little bit of your arm. Now, the government, the government does those things and many of us support the government doing those things for which if a private person did them, he would be condemned as ordinary common feet. For example, I could see some homeless lady in downtown Charlottesville or in downtown Washington. And I could walk up to Don who drove with a gun in my hand. I could say, give me your $200. I'd take his $200. And then, having taken his $200, I could go downtown and buy that lady on the grate some housing, some medical care, some clothing. If you were members of a jury, would you find me guilty of a crime? I'm sure you would. You'd find me guilty of that. Regardless of the disposition of Don's money, I'd nonetheless be guilty of that. Now, I ask you, is there any conceptual distinction between that act and where the government comes up to me and says, well, you know that tune it all you made last week, that you plan to buy some Lafitte, Rothschild, Bordeaux wine, or some Chateau de Chem, and so on. You will not do that with me. You'll give it to us and we will help the lady on the grate. We will give the money to the lady on the grate to buy her some housing. I assert that there is no conceptual distinction between those two acts. And if you press me, I would say that the only distinction is that the first act where I walked up to Don and took his $200 to help the lady downtown, that is illegal theft. And the second act where the IRS walked up to me and took my money or intimidated me, that would be legal theft. But nonetheless, theft all the same. Now, I know all of you are law students and you're somehow enamored with legality, but I'm not. That is, in a moral society, legality should not be our talisman. Because, indeed, many things in this world are legal but clearly immoral. A part date in South Africa was legal. Slavery in the United States was legal. The Nazi persecution of Jews, the Stalinist and the Maoist purges, they were all legal. But they were clearly immoral. Now, so we have to, we want a just society. I'm quite sure that all of you would say that you wanted a just society. We have to ask questions about morality. And the moral question I'm asking you to think about is, can one make a moral case for confiscating the property of one American and giving it to another American to whom it does not belong? That is the moral question. That's one moral question. Now, in a free society, we want transactions or lectures between people to be voluntary. And we want to minimize involuntary or coercive behavior. As a matter of fact, another interesting way. I like to look at it because a lot of people get hung up. They don't fully appreciate involuntary and involuntary exchange. I love seduction, but I'm against rape. What is seduction? What is the essence of seduction? Well, seduction is where it's a kind of transaction where we proposition our fellow man in the following way. We say, if you make me feel good, I'll make you feel good. Because both parties come out feeling better in their own opinion. And that would be an example of seduction would be where I walked up to my grocer. With the two dollars in my hand, I say, look, if you make me feel good, give me that gallon of milk. I'll make you feel good to give you two dollars. And we call that a positive sum game. Both of us are better off. Now, rape, on the other hand, is the kind of transaction that we proposition our fellow man in the following fashion. We say to him, if you don't make me feel good, I'm going to make you feel bad. Badly. Like at first. And that would be where I walked up to the grocer with a gun in my hand and I say to him, unless you make me feel good, give me that gallon of milk, I'm going to make you feel badly blow your brains out. And then, in a involuntary exchange or rape, it is a zero sum game. That is, in order for one person to be better off of necessity, somebody else has the worst off. Now, widespread private ownership and control over property is consistent with seduction and the minimization of rape. Widespread government ownership or control over property is consistent with rape maximization. That is, government, all the world including our government, is the major source of organized rape. And you just think of many examples, one that is especially touching. Maybe back in 1959, I was driving a taxi cab full of you, and I was making $4 a month. You get in my cab, I could give you information to buy anything that you wanted at any time. And I was getting well compensated for that. And I got a letter in the mail and the letter essentially said, Williams, you'll stop making $400 a month and begin to make $68 a month. And normally people don't switch in that direction. It requires some coercion or intimidation. And the letter said, unless you make us feel good by being in our army, we're going to make you feel badly by putting you in jail. You can think of many cases of rape by the government. Now, despite, I should add, that despite the bigness and the alleged power, I say alleged power of industrial giants like IBM, AT&T, Exxon, Chrysler, in a free market, what kind of power do they have over the United States? They don't have any power whatsoever. That is, ask ourselves, because there's a lot of college camps where they say these corporations have a lot of power. But ask yourself, now, for Exxon to get $1 out of me, what must happen? I must voluntarily get out of my chair, voluntarily get into my car, voluntarily drive down the street, and voluntarily drive to this man's life and give him $1 for a gas lane. Now, that does not describe our relationship with government. Government will get money from us, whether we want to give it to or not. Now, but however, I would not be responsible if I didn't say that corporate giants like AT&T, Chrysler, and Exxon, they can get dollars from us whether we want to give it to them or not, but first they would have to go to Washington. They'd have to give permission to take money from us by the United States Congress and the Senate. It would take Chrysler and Lee Iacoco was having trouble years ago. He's had similar trouble as now. Or take the farmers who are having trouble. Now, you know, the farmers and Lee Iacoco, they know where I live. I live in Valley 4. They can knock on my door. They could say, buddy, I'm having trouble. Can you spare a dime? Can you help me out, will you? Now, I'd probably tell Lee Iacoco or the farmers to go play in the traffic. And they kind of know that. So what the farmers do, they will go to Senator Dole. And the farmers will say to Senator Dole, if I ask Williams to voluntarily help me out, he's going to tell me to go play in the traffic. So could you use your agents to take his money? Now, so that's what I mean when I say that businesses can get dollars from us whether we want to give it to them or not, but they don't do it in a free market in a context. That is, they go and get the totalitarian, of course, the powers of the Congress. Now, the free market and voluntary exchange are randomly denounced by today's defenders of what I call the new human rights. These defenders of the new human rights, that is, people who you hear are human rights, most of the time. They are the chief supporters of reduced rights to profits, reduced rights to private property. They are anti-competition and pro-monopoly and pro-control and pro-corrosion by the state. Of course, these people have what they call reasons for their behavior. But every tyrant that has existed in history has had what he's considered good reasons for restricting the freedoms of others. Many of these people in our country who are pro-control, pro-corrosion, they, you hear them calling for industrial planning, economic planning. Now what is economic planning? What is industrial planning? I'll give you a definition of economic planning the way actually you like. Economic planning is nothing more than the forcible superseding of somebody else's plan by the powerful elite. That's all there is. I mean, for example, I might plan to buy a Honda automobile. The powerful elite will say, Williams, we're going to supersede your plan through tariffs and quotas because we think you ought to buy a Chrysler. Or my daughter, my plan to work for the hardware store guy for $2 an hour. He thinks it's okay. She agrees to it. I as her parent agree to it. And the powerful elite will say, Williams, let's plan unless it transpires under the terms that we select. Now, they do all this. The do-gooders, they do all this in the name of good. At least they say they do it in the name of good. But do-gooders fail to realize that most good in the world is not done in the name of good. In fact, if you were to ask me, if you say Williams, what's the noblest of human motivations? I'd say greed. Greed is wonderful. Now, people say to me a lot of times, Williams said, since you're talking young people, can't you temper that a little bit? Can't you say, instead of greed in life and self-interest or something like that? Now, like greed, you can use in life and self-interest. But when I say greed, I mean the noblest of human motivations is people trying to get more for themselves. I'm not talking about robbing and stealing from people. I'm saying people trying to get more for themselves. Let me give you an example of virtue of greed. You see it all over, but let's make it explicit. That is, you know, you see Texas ranchers. Texas ranchers, they're going out, taking risks, having cold weather, trying to bring feed to their stray cattle in the snow. You find Idaho farmers getting up in the morning to, you know, and it bugs biting them and playing with potatoes. And the Texas ranchers and Idaho farmer, they're doing all these things what so that people in New York City can have beef. So that beef will get in New York City. And the Idaho farmers, they make these sacrifices the other morning so that New Yorkers can have potatoes on the shelves. Now, why do you think they do that? Because they make these sacrifices because they love New Yorkers? No, they may hate New Yorkers, but they get that beef and potatoes in New York. Now, I would surely be worried if I were a New Yorker, if the beef and potatoes coming from New York depended on love and human kindness on behalf of the Texas ranchers and the Idaho farmers. Let me give you another example of greed or self-interest. I often said, you know, during the energy crisis in our country, as a matter of fact, government manufactured energy crisis in our country, now you had little advertising, little kids on TV saying, don't be foolish, save some energy for future generations and things like that. When I used to see these advertisers, I felt like throwing my ash tray in the TV. Now, I've told a lot of people this and they say, Williams, don't you care anything about future generations? No. Now, you know, I don't care anything about future generations. And so, a lot of people are disturbed like you might be. They say, well, Williams, how come you don't care about future generations? And I say, what have future generations ever done to you? I mean, let's look at it. I mean, there's some kid who's going to be born in 2050. What has he done for me? Now, if he hasn't done anything for me, how then am I obliged to do anything for him? I mean, where's the quid pro quo? Where is the contract? Where is the consideration? As you guys would say. Now, however, if you watch my behavior, my behavior would be lie that sentiment. That is, if you came to my house in Valley Forge, I'm a nice bread in Valley Forge, several acres, you were seeing several years ago, maybe six or seven years ago, I took $200, $200, instead of spending that $200 on, let's say, three or four bottles of Chateau de Chem, it's alternative wine, that I could have fully enjoyed by myself, selfishly, consumed totally, I bought little seedlings, planted trees around my property. Now, when those trees reach their full maturity, I'll be dead. There'll be some 20, 50 kids swinging in my tree. I made extensive repairs on my house, additions on my house, that will outlive me. The guy who put on the roof said, my out, that the roof is going to last until 2035. Now, I'll be dead. I made extensions, my wife has made extensions to our house in the deck and kitchen, and there'll be some 20, 50 kids tracking mud in my kitchen. Now, why did I do these things? At least part of the reason is, the nicer my house is, the longer my house will provide housing services, why? The higher the price I get for my house when I go to the cinema. By pursuing my own selfish interest, I ensure the availability of a house for some kid in 20, 50. Now, ask yourselves, would I have the same incentives if the government owned my house? Or would I have the same incentives if there were a 75% transfer tax when I went to sell my house? In other words, anything that would change, that would attenuate my private property rights of the house, would create disincentives for my doing this socially responsible thing, namely conserving on society's scarce resources. So, what you want to always do, if you care about future generations, you want to enforce and strengthen private property rights. You know, I'm looking at the audience and I'm looking at all of you, look like nice people. And some of you might be concerned about the extinction of the elephant of Bald Eagle, the whale. Think about this, you know, I was 35 years old. I'm 56 years old now, I just know I don't look at it. But I was 35 years old when I saw my first Bald Eagle. And I was looking at the critter in the cage and I was asking myself, could I have gone another 35 years without seeing him? And I said yes to myself. But there would be quite different values. But many of you know, here are clubs, people have clubs to save the eagle, to save the whale. They're worried about the extinction of some duck, worried about some extinction of the owl, spotted owl. And so I was sitting in my office one day and I was listening to this commentary on the people worried about things becoming extinct. And by the way, 94% of everything that has ever lived on earth is now extinct. So what's 94.5 or whatever. Anyway, I was listening to all this concern about people even having clubs, whale clubs, duck clubs, things like this, to stop the extinction of various animals. And I said to myself, how come there's no pig club? I mean, I was listening to some animals that people don't care anything about. But they're very bad animals. How come no chicken club? When's the last time you've seen people in the Tizzy about chickens becoming extinct? I mean, there's an estimated, I believe, something like 5 billion chickens in the United States right now. There's no cow club, no sheep club. Now what's the characteristic about these animals where nobody's worried about them becoming extinct? And these animals that people in the Tizzy about. Well, it turns out that the animals that people are worried about becoming extinct, they belong to somebody. It is somebody's private, vested interest to make sure that the chicken survives. It is in nobody's private, vested interest to see that the whale survives. That is, nobody's wealth is at stake with the whale. What people's wealth is at stake with chickens. So if you care about the extinction of various animals, you want to promote private ownership of these animals. In other words, what I'm trying to tell you is that in a free market one's personal wealth is held hostage to his doing the socially responsible thing. Conserving on society's scarce resources. Now, despite the virtues of the free market and never mind the fact that it was with the rise of capitalism that brought better treatment to women, better treatment to racial minorities, better treatment to the handicapped, better treatment to the criminals, better treatment to I'm down here insane, I should be politically right. Correct. The mentally handicapped or the mentally challenged. There is considerable hostility towards the market. Social reformers say that the market does not work. Well, maybe one of the reasons is that the market does not work because it's not allowed to work. Because there's government intervention in the market. And most government intervention is either the form of taking the property that belongs to one person and giving it to another to whom it does not belong, or it is in the form of denying privileges to one person and giving them to another. Governance granting is an activity by government that dates back far beyond the dark ages when guild and mercantile associations with a payment to the reigning lord could get the right to live at somebody else's expense that is how it not believes. Well, in modern times, we have the equivalent of the guild and mercantile association. There's just not a payment to the reigning lord, we just give what? Political contributions. Almost every group in our nation has come to feel that the government owes them a special privilege or a favor. And so-called conservatives in our country are by no means exempt from the practice. Matter of fact, that's what you work on all the time in your law courses. That's what you're going to come out as law students and as practitioners, you're going to specialize in privilege granting and confiscating the property of one and giving it to another. Manufacturers, for example, they feel that government owes them protective tariffs. Farmers feel that government owes them subsidies. Organized labor feels that government should keep their jobs protected from competition with those who are not union members. Intellectuals, college professors feel that government should give them funds for research. Farmers love to get to poverty funds to do, you know, $500,000 grants to studies on poverty and have meetings in Miami at Nice Hotel in the winter to talk about the poor. The unemployed and the unemployable feel that government owes them a living. Almost every occupation, profession or trade, including, I might add, law feels that government through licensing and other forms of regulations should protect their homes from competition that would be caused by others entering the trade or factory. Now, conservatives, you know, if you ever see a group of conservatives arguing, you can bring instant peace and tranquility along the conservative. Just start talking about food stamps. Now, conservatives rail against food stamps. They rail against aid to families of dependent children. They rail against legal aid. But they come out in support for aid to dependent farmers, aid to dependent banks and aid to dependent motorcycle companies. And as such, conservatives don't have a moral right to stand on. That is, conservatives as well as liberals prove H. L. Minkin's definition of an election quite correct. Those of you who forget, H. L. Minkin was a political satirist of Baltimore Sun. And somebody asked H. L. Minkin what was the definition of an election. And he said, quote, government is a broker in pillage. And every election is an advance auction on the sale of stolen property. That indicates the nature of our problem as a country, as a nation. That is, we have a political system whereby strong interest groups can use the course of power as a state in a pursuit of their own goals. Many times the pursuit of their own goals makes everybody else very slow. So let me close by kind of suggest that a lot of people say, Williams, you talked about the problem, but you haven't come up with any solutions. Well, that's not necessarily my job. But let me just talk about some solutions I think that it would be very interesting to get your opinion on it, particularly since you are fledgling scholars in law. I think that right now the major problem with our country is that Congress has no bottom line. That is, Congress can do what a sufficiently large enough or strong enough interest groups allow to do, so far as economics is concerned. That is, there is nothing in the Constitution of the United States that I see that protects our economic liberties. That is, clearly the frames of the Constitution through things like the First Amendment there are protections of our rights to free speech, rights to assembly, rights to coercion. But there is nothing there that sets a limit on what Congress can do to our future. But there are things that sets a limit to what Congress can do with respect to our speech. So what we need to do, we need to give Congress a bottom line. We need to restrain the power of Congress because freedoms depend on our ability to restrain the government. So far as protecting our economic liberties, we need an amendment to the Constitution that will limit federal spending. And I've worked along with my colleague Milton Friedman and a number of very eminent economists some years ago, back in late 70s, and some constitutional scholars like Bob Ork and Paul's name and some other people. And we wrote the Spending Limitation Amendment to the United States Constitution. And what it did, it says that percentage increases in federal spending cannot exceed percentage increases in the GMP. That is, our political people told us that we could hold the line, but we couldn't cut back. And at that time, the federal government was 20% of the GMP, 20%, 21%. Well, and we had the appropriate emergency clauses and we had a super majority to change it. And indeed, the so-called balanced budget spending limitation amendment passed the Senate in 1982, but Tip O'Neill played games with it in the House. And it didn't even get to the floor in the House. And it was reintroduced in 1986 and it didn't even pass the Senate. But as long as we don't have something that will give Congress a bottom line, limit the amount of spending that Congress can do, Congress is going to increase spending. And as Congress increases spending, as I suggest earlier on, we have reduced freedom. Well, let me just close by saying that one of the problems in our society is that we're not losing our freedom all at once. Or there's no major threat of our freedom in one big chunk. That is, we're losing it little bits at a time. You know, my colleague, Leonard Reid, the founder of the Foundation for Economic Education in New York, he said that if you want to take freedom away from Americans you have to know how to cook a frog. And he says that you can't cook a frog by putting a pot of boiling water on the stove and then throwing the frog into boiling water because the frog's reflexes are so quick that as soon as his feet hit the water he would be out of the pot and on his way towards freedom. He says the way that you cook a frog is to put a pot of cold water on the stove put the frog in the water and then heat the water up a bit by a bit. And by the time the frog realized he was being cooked it was too late. That's what's happening in our country. That is, nobody, Americans would rebel against any tyrant coming here taking our freedoms all at once. But we're we sit silently and watch them be taken bit by bit. So, our problem is that the founding fathers, although they produce a brain document there's nothing in the document to protect that economic freedom. And as my friend Richard Epstein suggested as outside his office door maybe the founding fathers would have bequeathed us about a nation if they had stopped the Bill of Rights at its first sentence. That is, Congress shall make a no-go period. And that's Richard Epstein version of the Constitution. Well, that's all I had to say and I'm going to answer any question or respond to