 Hi again. Let me rephrase the question from yesterday. I just popped up on Bloomberg. Turkey seeks to be the first NATO member to join the China-Land SEO. The market signals, I loved your speech, but it was wonderful, but the market has clearly been confirming everything you've said so far. What's it going to take for Europe to flip sides? For Europe to what? To flip get away from its vassal status and look east. Yes, difficult to say. Initially, you know, when when the whole thing started, there was a celebration of European unity. This brings us all together. Because now we are all in that same sort of war, and we love each other all as opposed to them. In the meantime, of course, you see that the European Union is on the verge of breaking apart. The Hungarian stone co-operate there in different countries. They are no longer willing, for instance, to send gas or oil to Germany, because Germany is obviously the most idiotic country right now in Europe. And the Germans, of course, there should be inner European solidarity. So if the European Union breaks apart, which I can imagine would be possible if that war drags on for another year or so, then that might also initiate some sort of break with the US. They are also celebrated, for instance, that NATO has, again, been expanded, including now Sweden and Finland. But I think Sean Geb yesterday talked about these types of problems, too. That all of this increases conflicts, because you have now lots of small countries that are in a position to provoke major wars. I think Lithuania has behaved in a way that I think is just absolutely stupid. That is, trying to escalate the whole thing, even though you must know that even if the United States would come to your help, which I doubt very much, there would be nothing left of Lithuania. I mean, that takes one day and the whole country is finished. And that other countries like Germany and so forth do not realize that even support Lithuania in these extra provocations that they do. Yeah, how can I say? A situation that I never imagined would be possible. But may I add something especially concerning Europe? I can imagine that from a very general point of view, you know, Google Earth view, also historically, that we have areas of concentration, like US, like China, like Russia, more or less maybe. And Europe was something like the rest of it decentralized. I do not speak now about Africa and South America, that's not the story. But among these, I think Europe is sort of area of still living decentralization. And the typical character of Europe during history was decentralization. With attempts, of course, decentralization, with these empires, different empires, but in principle that was decentralized. Now there is a next attempt going on towards decentralization with the EU toward the United States of Europe. And let's hope that that won't work, that the decentralized aspect is perhaps still living. There are diversity, many languages, many cultures. So that could be maybe the place where decentralized could start worldwide in the end, perhaps, and such problems like Brexit and problems with Poland, with Hungary and so on. These could be signs that something is going on in that direction. I hope so, at least. What I find most extraordinary is the degree to which history has been wiped out of this perception of conflict. In the few you talked about is that until a year ago, everybody knew that Ukraine was a corrupt concoction and the remainder of the policies of Lenin and Stalin and Khrushchev. The country of Ukraine is not older than the communist takeover in Russia. And all these historical dimensions which are very pertinent to what actually happens, never make it into the media. So everything depends on whether the narrative in the media will ever break down or erode, because as long as this narrative is kept alive by the professional tabulated class, not the PFS, but the media societies, the global media societies which dominate the perception of everything. I noticed when the COVID pandemic struck, there were a few people that contacted me and said, this cannot be true. And the story was, the media are lying to us and then the moment COVID disappears from the front page and Ukraine was there, they were fully embracing the media narrative of the Ukraine war. And you were always on the defensive as long as this idea that truth is coming from the media, because it's direct from television, because it's direct because CNN has reported somewhere in a hotel telling you something. As long as this perception persists, I don't see what else to expect except one crisis after another, a fabrication of crisis, and it will always be the same players behind it because only a few interests are capable of mobilizing all these people at the same time. And that is perhaps the biggest challenge not to give in in the first place and second to spread doubt and skepticism. Otherwise, I don't know. Maybe. Ukraine in the current size has never really existed. The large parts were part of the Austrian Empire. Poland ruled large parts of the Ukraine for a while. The Crimea has always been a Russian place, even Odessa. So to pretend now that this is some sort of historically grown nation that has always existed in the current composition is just plain nonsense. But the media, as you said, they presented Ukraine as obvious like this. There are always Ukrainians and Ukrainians. No, that is not even... All of these people currently living in what is now defined as Ukraine consider themselves Ukrainian. Professor Hoppe, I have a question for you about the process of centralization with the globalization and also we're coming from the centralized Europe. But recently the pandemic war was supposed to centralize. The European nations would say also centralize it with the USA. There are processes of harmonization of the law, unification of the law. Even in America, you need to apply some regulation in terms of financial markets into European Union. So the question is, does it stop and actually we start the process of decentralization once again because of the war and because of the energy crisis and everything that is happening and the centralization maybe will it move to digital space like CBDCs, single, some currency areas that can be brought from the CBDCs, first national CBDCs but then worldwide one currency, central bank digital currency. I'm not saying that Bitcoin would be... they're not pushing for Bitcoin obviously, but is it the process will start a stop on the institutional level and move to more decentralization and centralization would be in digital space. So what do you think about that? Now there are processes of centralization that are good. I'd say if we would have a one-world money as we did have under the gold standard that is an eminently reasonable centralization because just having one currency is more efficient than having multiple currencies. On the other hand if you have fiat currencies then you would rather want to have competition between them because that curtailes the natural inclination of every fiat money producer to produce more fiat money because then the exchange rate of these currencies would continuously decline and people would go someplace else. We see that that's why we have this tendency of Bitcoin people try to avoid fiat currencies. As far as the question is concerned whether this type of tendency will also lead to... will be completely independent of the territorial concentration. I'm not so sure about that because again there will be always a tendency to enlarge your turf and then regulate even the different types of currencies that might exist before. It's hard to say what will result from all of this. I mean as David Durst said I hope this will initiate a process also of territorial decentralization which then automatically also implies some sort of monetary decentralization but does not take away the incentive to create some global currency because economic reason speaks in favor of a worldwide currency except not the fiat currency. But I'm not sure if I address the question that you asked or I missed some of your points. And also something that theory or that approach that maybe on the certain condition one currency could be an advantage. I'm not the economist or the specialist in this but I just asked you points already that why not to have several currencies good currencies in neutral competition but they do not fit for everything. One currency does more fit for small payments another currency for treasuring and so on and that they're like car competition car is more fit for you know countryside the other one for the cities smaller big accounts and so on why not having different currencies for different purposes and apart from that I think that a dominant currency like the U.S. dollar is not covered by gold anymore that's not by coincidence that's because they have a no no they're legal but they fucked up monopoly and monopolies are always abused and that's why they have the arrogance to drop the gold standard. I have to contradict that a little bit from a purely economic point of view a single currency offers tremendous advantages if you have multiple currencies you are in a system of partial barter so it is precisely the purpose of money to avoid barter trade so under the gold standard we did have an international monetary standard the entire world more or less the entire world used the same commodity as money and you can have that in any denomination that you want I mean for small transactions you can also sometimes have tickets that entitled you to a certain amount of gold and so forth but you want to facilitate trade it is always an advantage to have a single currency that we have so to speak a dollar standard is simply due to the fact that the United States is a supreme military power the United States was in favor of the introduction of the euro because this way you only have to go to the central bank in Frankfurt and give them orders before you had to go to Bonn and then you had to go to Paris and then you had to go to Madrid and all shape them up and then the euro was introduced to weaken in particular the German mark because the composition of these central banking committees now there is one German in it or maybe two if I am not sure about these details anymore when I was still teaching that stuff I knew these things in the meantime my interest in those things has somewhat declined but the German guy is now surrounded by a Spanish central banker by a French central banker by an Italian central banker and one of these people is more incompetent than the next Mrs. Lagarde is a typical example of what's saying when it's inflation we don't really understand the phenomenon of inflation really what kind of statement is this from the head of the European central bank we understand the nature of inflation for hundreds of years and that woman she has I don't know what her background is maybe she runs a suntan salon I mean she must spend plenty of time in the suntan salon to look at her so Dr. Hopper I completely agree with you that we should weep so when I asked a question yesterday saying inflation is rampant and people in Turkey seem no I didn't say it's okay I am saying that given over the Covid crisis for the past two years people were okay were okay by the government locked them down closing their business injecting something into their body they don't like but they can put up with it so I mean for the inflation debt to Germans or the Europeans that they are going to experience or the war that many people will be killed if they can put up with what they experience in Covid which is already so bad and they can still support the government then what else can stop them from stopping the craziest thing that's going on in Ukraine what else can stop them and except weeping what else can we individual do and also I doubt if the Ukraine or Russia what they do may not be so much matter but I am thinking about whether the financial market in response to the high inflation or the anticipated higher interest rate would there be a scenario that the collapse of it may stop all the crazy things going on please vote for everyone on the panel yeah of course in a way you would want to hope for some sort of economic collapse in order to shape up the governments on the other hand the economic collapse sometimes lead to even worse results I mean then the call for a strong man usually arises somebody that gets us out of the trouble I don't see any I'm pretty sure that there will be an economic collapse what comes out of this economic collapse that depends of course to a large extent on the state of public opinion but currently all voices like mine or most of the people here have no hearing there are very few people who can break through to the mainstream media appear on TV that are not to say these things on the other hand I have not lost all my optimism I appeared on some Austrian TV shows for a few times and said these sorts of things and based on the number of letters that I get then I would say hey what I say there are lots of people think the same way there are opinion polls in Austria my impression is a sort of the Austrian people agreed with me when I said you have to immediately stop the sanctions and then you can have warm showers again but as I said there is only one TV station in the entire German speaking area that once in a while admits crazy people like me to say a few words the rest of it they would never touch me on German TV for instance they would not dare to invite me because as you know I am not all that friendly towards these people do you? Well I would like to remind you that when you think about these questions you ask these questions and they all have the setting of society and the answers all go in the direction of society all these structures these are structures behind your question and structures behind the answer but there are other ways of survival I discussed the convivial orders and the community orders apart from societal orders because societal orders are by definition governed orders they have a need to government or they cannot function but community orders and conviviality orders they are not governed they have a very different political philosophy now for lack of time I did not go into the political philosophy aspect but the traditional even the language has disappeared I make it clear the traditional way for speaking about the governance not the government but the governance of community orders is in terms of rulers rulers are the judges and at one point someone mentioned I think it was I don't remember who it was the biblical book of Samuel so the reference was to people want a king in the Bible and this was despite the advice of the wise man the ruler the judge Samuel now the ruler advises people but he has no commanding power and when the people ask for a king they wanted someone the strong man who would be able to do great things just by speaking them into existence or the commander and if we speak to other people we know we cannot command them that's the experience of daily life but nowadays everything is projected onto a societal scene which is majestic it has many rooms and nobody has ever seen all the rooms and we are easily impressed with the things governors say later this great politician in my country he was at that time the economics minister and he began his speech with saying I am so busy I hardly see my top functionaries except at the weddings of their daughters and then he ended his speech two hours later saying while somebody has to have a good overview of the situation to make the final decision so he doesn't know what happened but he claims to have an overview of everything and he gets away with it because nobody else has an overview of everything and the whole language of centralized control is really bluff but as long as the bluff works the centralization seems to work but it's a house of cars and this can collapse at any moment but to accomplish what you want you need in a way is a session right? yeah no the session is movements I mean a start of that would be the dissolution of the European Union and maybe then it continues and smaller units are breaking away and you have then again communal relationships instead of what you call society or relationships but whether that is in the cars I'm also not so sure I like very much when you said it's a house of cars and actually it's not a stable situation maybe this was my approach would be this is a very fundamental question how should it go on and how is it possible to communicate this way of thinking and looking at to see how it is I sometimes compare it with what happened to the church namely the Catholic church there were times where the church was absolutely an authority everybody obeyed to it they were very strict against heretics that were the very big danger for the structure because the belief in the system could be challenged and I think that is an interesting approach to challenge the belief in this crazy statism that in truth these are violent gangs which is just true these are organizations they have money from the people and to show that and to speak about it to communicate this way of thinking and if this works beside many other things maybe some specific c-session programs things like that this happens to the state the same what happened to the church the church was never abolished the church was forgotten of course yes there is a church that's true some go there and that's fine if they are convinced of that system but it's their church and nobody dares to force somebody to be a member and it could be that way I remember on a very small basis in Switzerland when people began to withdraw from the church the church and in Switzerland there is a tradition that church taxis depending on the official taxis a certain percentage they're very crazy but that's the system in many cantones in Switzerland and in that time when many people went out of the church they declared their exit of the church the church came to them and tried to negotiate the rate of the tax would you remain a member when you just pay half of the usual and maybe when it goes in such a direction that people are not interested anymore in these crazy structures that they do not believe in it maybe that could be an approach to work on to think about these crazy structures thank you very much for your presentations the next few days we will leave Planet Bodrum and turn through the real world so we need some practical advice starting from the conflict between Russia and Ukraine how should a person from a libertarian point of view deal with a superior bully could you develop each of you how should I deal with my own state and how should I deal with foreign bully states what's the right attitude is there anything general that we can say you didn't understand do you hear me is there anything general that should deal with a bully his own government and a superior foreign government wisdom that's all I can say you have to assess how dangerous is this bully how many allies would I have if I go against him how much should I tolerate when should I give up move some place else I think you do you have an answer to that question no but you are the expert I'm no more an expert on these types of questions than you are I mean this is this is just you have this problem on one to one level if you have a really nasty neighbor what can you do about this nasty neighbor sometimes it's easy you get your friends together and give them one on the nose unfortunately that's not so easy with places like Russia I guess I can't go to Putin and give him one on the nose I think making fun of one's own gangsters is probably an advisable strategy it will be difficult for them to attack you if you only make fun of them because in order to attack other people you need a certain amount of support from on your own side all people around me he just made a joke about such and such you cannot possibly dare to kill him or jail him or so but when that point is reached how many jokes you can make and how drastic the jokes can be there's also a question of wisdom you have to understand the method of the social sciences we must understand our enemies I mean people like me are criticized for putting understanding but understanding somebody does not mean that you agree with this yet to find out what their motives are what their goals are and then you have to adjust to this I don't think there is a general rule that applies to this there can be thousands of different situations that require thousands of different answers to it but you give me the answer tonight why do you make difficult questions like this still didn't understand fully the bully is that now Putin or is that just once you have a problem with some gang leader so to speak so I mean maybe it's the same question we had before how do we approach this problem altogether so just how to deal with the realities of these status structures and I think then again we have this problem of that people believe in it and then it's very difficult to convince them or to inform them that it's not worth believing it anymore in these structures and I think it's always a big dilemma when you try to position yourself within this scheme shall you enter into these structures in order to change them from the inside there are approaches like that that people libertarians they compete with being elected in some parliaments or so in order then to try to change the whole system but I think that won't be a consistent way because maybe on a psychological level you will become part of that system earlier or sooner or later like the green party in the parliament in Germany many decades ago already they said we are only for two years then we change and I think the first change did not take place these are illusions I think maybe it could be a program I thought about once to compete with the program to liquidate this organization so you won't be elected as the CEO or so in economic terms but the liquidator and the job is to liquidate there will be no actions anymore concerning going further but liquidation that could be a program I do not know that at this moment you have much success with it but that could be a consistent way to try to do it from the internal approach Frank is the oldest here even older than I am so he has accumulated more wisdom so maybe he knows the answers to this complicated question it's a complicated question but if you project it into the societal background then of course the bully the man with the tattoos will smash your head in and things like that you do not have to fear him because he will just pass and go away the real bullies are the administrators the people at the top who will revoke your license to do whatever and people do not have rights that does not exist in a society we talk about a rise in society but that is a memory of earlier times when societies were small compared to the communal convivial order the Christian world was the ruling idea and it imposed order and ideas of right and wrong on the world but the moment societies rise above all these ingrained sources of value and normativeness you lose the possibility of arguing for right and wrong because it is decided for you and it is not decided in terms of right and wrong this is the efficient or the effective policy that we are pursuing and you are permitted to join it if you do not then we will revoke your license or you pay more taxes or whatever this is the kind of bullying that is most effective because it can be started and propagated with a single word at the top of the social hierarchy we saw that in the Covid period why did all these independent or self-employed people suddenly put on masks or close their doors and do all these silly things not because they were so afraid of the virus but they were I am going to lose my license I am not it is not a free profession as they sometimes call themselves still they are functionaries of a huge machinery and that is the bullying power but you can as an individual you can oppose it at the lowest level you can oppose it at the lowest level the man at the desk not the higher ups but the man at the desk you can still talk to him it is not very easy to do so but you can always bluff him down so I remember one occasion when for some silly reason he refused to accept my photo for my passport because it was not recent enough and then he turned it around and said see it has a blue background so that proves it is too old I said you shouldn't get excited and he said why should I not get excited I said you didn't make these silly regulations did you and he turned away and put a stamp on it but these are very small consolations you do not defeat a bureaucracy in that way defeating a bureaucracy is almost impossible unless it defeats itself when it makes itself so hated or so incompetent that it collapses as another house of cards as long as there are cards available they build another one I have a question Hans I do agree with your analysis of the current situation but I still have a doubt given as the world has been going in lockstep during the last two years I think I am afraid that the push towards one world government is way further ahead than we think and so I have a doubt is it possible that it is all a great show like David Durwood would say and that Putin is part of the show and it is very useful to have this war going on because this is useful to do what they are doing destroying Europe destroying little businesses and so on so this is my doubt maybe it is all part of a great scheme of a great representation they are pushing forward to our disadvantage you are revealed now as one of the biggest conspiracies that I have thought in a while that might well be true I would like to see a little bit more evidence of it but again we are dealing with extremely evil people on all sides who knows what they have done and arranged in the back rooms of which only very few people have an idea I doubt it however because any type of conspiracy obviously but conspiracies are difficult difficult to organize somebody has obviously an incentive to spill the beans that's all I can say I wouldn't rule it out currently I don't see enough reasons to think that way for the reason that conspiracies very small conspiracies are easy to do 3, 4, 5 people can do something like this but as soon as more people are involved they have to be quiet nobody should spill the beans the larger the group is the more difficult it is not to have somebody who does spill the beans well there is a remark by Marshal McLuhan the communication specialist who was very famous when I was younger and he said remember only the small secrets have to be protected the big secrets are protected by the mentality of the public they will not refuse it they can't be that bad that's a factor you have to reckon into the equation and of course the notion of the open conspiracy which was launched towards the end of the 19th century in the circles where H.G. Wells was active that's basically the same idea you conspire but you do it so openly that people think that must be ok otherwise they would not be doing it that's open conspiracy is that going on that Z and Putin and Biden are all working on the same project I think that would be a rush conclusion but it is true of course that even Putin was once a member of the Young Leaders Program of the World Economic Forum but I think he is not the best pupil in the class oh come on now that's enough for today I thank you all for listening and we will see each other at dinner time