 Well, good evening everyone and welcome to the Cato Institute and a special welcome to those of you watching and participating online on the discussion Hi, my name is Chip Bishop. I'm the director of student programs here at the Cato Institute I work with our internship program and host various groups for policy briefings and seminars And also seek just to find ways to to get Cato's message out to young people Many of you are familiar with Cato. I see several internal alumni and former Cato employees Scattered throughout the audience, but I also see some new faces so I'm going to give a quick overview of what we do here at Cato and Conveniently it bridges right into tonight's topic. So what is the Cato Institute? I mean, you're all here You all heard of it before but I'm going to give you a quick overview of that It's a libertarian think tank, which is a pretty packed sentence So libertarian is one who has the audacity to believe that people were born free and owns the right to his or her own life and pursuits and that the government while perhaps necessary at least useful for some cases, which some people debate ought to be derived strictly from the consent of the governed Tom's you know specifically gonna elaborate on this point a little bit more and yet We live in a society where thousands or even millions of people interact which both strains the do-no-har mantra Due to the existence of externalities and it causes people for many backgrounds and political dispositions to mix Which is a good thing, but it complicates the ability to order society around a consistent set of principles So the way that we handle those things is public policy namely the rules applied equally across the broad public By which society agrees to abide and strive towards or at least preserve some social order whether it's liberty economic prosperity egalitarianism some purpose some policy So Kato exists to contribute since sincerely researched and viable ideas You can call it intellectual ammunition if you'd like into the public policymaking process We do that through attracting the best talent to research write and disseminate ideas consistent with our core principles Grounded in the ideas of liberty clearly embodied in documents like the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution And built around four key pillars Individual liberty free markets limited government and peace the target of our efforts at Kato is to educate lay people Basically, all of you guys sitting here right now Because most of you here fit the description of young ambitious educated and accomplished Tonight's topic poses an opportunity to poignantly explore the positives and negatives Specifically facing our generation in civil society today We live in an exciting time in world history the world is much smaller than it's ever been International travel communications technologies the internet Study abroad trips and more allow us to interact with more people in more ways than ever before possible The world is is also a larger place than it's ever been you can get a PhD studying Algae the economics of culture the therapeutic use of color and art You can build and race motorcycles playing on an internet-based band or breed rabbits on a self-sustained farm Or you can spend your life pursuing numerous other things in highly specialized fields and career options that were never before available to earlier generations as The world has developed. However, all those positive things have been kind of offset a little bit by the government Which has also grown to occupy more areas in our lives than ever before Millions of people are arrested each year for consuming plants Young people are being taxed to pay for health care of older richer generations Busy body politicians are trying to regulate how big your sodas can be and how much you can get at your school cafeteria And we haven't even mentioned all the ways that the government is spying on you So while there have been great advances in the opportunities Available for individuals to pursue there are many affronts to the freedom to live self-govern peaceful lives These issues lead us to ask what is the role for government in society different answers to this and have important consequences And you know such agreements in fact recently led to the partial shutdown of the US government Which you know besides giving us more seats into the district every day for those of us who commute isn't necessarily that wonderful Thinkers from Aristotle to the American founders to Ron Paul have argued that a crucial role of government is to protect Individuals liberty to pursue happiness while other thinkers have challenged this view deeming it simplistic or unambitious in its pursuits The millennial generation has widely adopted the mantra to live and let live These arguments about liberty imply other questions. What are the benefits of a political system based on liberty? What are the implications of limiting individual liberty in pursuit of collective goals whether they come from the right or the left and How will the value of? Liberty to young people change the way that the world views government to help us wrap our minds around these short become the short But complex questioned. Why liberty? We've assembled a fantastic panel of scholars Dr. Tom G Palmer will introduce tonight's topic explaining the foundations of libertarianism Likely proving that you are more libertarian than you initially thought before you walked in here today And he'll also talk about how and why it's so it's vitally important to prize liberty in society The arguments for why liberty should be the guiding principle for civil society are very persuasive And yet I often hear a common refrain from people who are not quite sold on the ideas It goes something along the lines of yes liberty is great as an ideal in Principle but it wouldn't actually work in the real world the real world is too complex for such a simple Idea to apply therefore our other two panelists will address two different sides of the why liberty is the best policy coin First Aaron Ross Powell will address the positive case for liberty explaining why we should choose liberty if we want our lives to go Well and why good people will choose liberty Then Sloan Frost will address the negative aspects of not choosing policies based on the principles of liberty specifically focusing on her area of expertise us health care policy and Then after depressing us with the dismal state of the US health care system She will again raise her spirits by demonstrating that Millennials are in fact a generation primed to change and retake the future The format of tonight's event will be prepared mark remarks from each panelist Then a short segment of guided discussion between them and then we'll open it up for audience Q&A It's an honor for me to share the stage with these wonderful panelists this evening And I'll now introduce each of them one by one Tom G Palmer is a senior fellow at the Kato Institute and director of Kato University He is also the executive vice president for international programs at the Atlas Economic Research Foundation And is responsible for establishing programs in over 14 languages and maintaining programs for a worldwide network of think tanks He's published reviews and articles On politics and morality and scholarly journals such as the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy ethics The constitutional political economy as well as publications and slate the Wall Street Journal of the New York Times and many more Many people call Tom Palmer kind of the James Bond of Liberty parachuting into Countries all over the world spreading ideas to to lead to people's freedom He received a Bachelor of Arts in liberal arts from St. John's College in Annapolis, Maryland His master's degree in philosophy from the Catholic University of America in Washington DC and his doctorate in politics from Oxford University Aaron Ross Powell is a research fellow and editor of Libertarianism.org a project of the Kato Institute Libertarianism.org presents introductory material as well as new scholarship related to libertarian Philosophy theory and history and his writing has appeared in Liberty and the Kato Journal. He's earned a JD from the University of Denver Sloan Frost graduated from Cornell University in 2008 with a degree in policy analysis and management and a concentration in health policy While studying economics and the history of health policy in this country Sloan became interested in the principles of liberty and individual responsibility that seemed to be missing from modern policy initiatives Various experiences in the university setting quickly taught Sloan that her fellow students are also deprived of many freedoms on campus And she became dedicated at a student fight for liberty in 2007 She co-founded students for liberty and now serves as the chairwoman of the SFL board of directors After serving with City Year and AmeriCorps program. She saw firsthand how the negative consequences of an intrusive government public education system And she then she went on to earn a master's in public policy and a certificate in health administration policy from the University of Chicago in 2011 for those of you who will be tweeting during the event and afterwards and also to ask questions Feel free to follow and use the hashtag Y Liberty We will take some of those questions in the open Q&A following the program The remarks of this evening's panelists are based on their respective contributions to an excellent new book published in conjunction with Students for Liberty and the Atlas Economic Research Foundation called Y Liberty Here we have we not only have hundreds of copies available out in the foyer for you to pick up to read yourself to distribute to your friends But we also have some wonderful staff from Students for Liberty Here to talk with you about how to get involved in these ideas and advance these ideas in your workplace on your campus And just in your general life, but without further ado. I would like to welcome Tom Palmer to the stage Use this like sounds okay. Thank you very much Chip It's a pleasure to be here a little bit of background on this series of books we've now put out four of them and We conceived them with the leadership of Students for Liberty not as big heavy books You felt obligated to read they sit on your shelf and they stare at you accusingly you haven't finished it yet But series of short essays written in different styles with different voices from different parts of the world They would explain the ideas of Liberty. They're oriented towards young people, but not exclusively and This particular volume is mainly written by young people either very recently out of college or still in university the previous books have come out in multiple languages the The one on the morality of capitalism is going to come out in Greek this week That's about 30 languages that it's come out on So if you want to practice your Persian or your other by Johnny or Armenian talk to me afterwards And I can get you copies in those languages The idea was to put together a kind of snack box for the mind again I didn't want some heavy big book that you just feel oh god. I'm guilty. I haven't finished this big book But something you could dip into and each essay can stand on its own you could read it if you get something from it That's fine Even if you don't read the rest of it you got something of value most people I think do find it worth going on and reading all of the others This group was a real pleasure to work with because it was my job as the editor to commission them To work with them and to help them to find their voices these two authors were very easy to work with But it was really a pleasure to do that and to help them to articulate their ideas and then spread them to the rest of the World this particular one has come out now, and I think about 370,000 copies the majority here in North America, but there are also issues being published in English in India and in Kenya and in Nigeria as well and Translations will be coming out soon Now one of the fundamental themes is that in fact more people are More libertarian than they think if you just think about your own life the fact is that Most people behave as libertarians in the course of their everyday behavior They don't go around hitting other people. This is something parents teach their children from an early age Keep your hands to yourself. That's something that is drilled into kids usually about four years old They're abouts they begin to understand you don't hit other people and you don't take the stuff that other people have also Other people stuff is other people stuff This is something that again can sometimes a painful Lesson that requires being sat in the corner and so on to learn that there's a difference between mine and not mine But that's something that civilized people incorporate into their daily lives If you want someone to do something for you You don't just go and kidnap them and tie them up and force them to cut your grass or wash your dishes You find ways to induce them to cooperate with you In fact, most people are so libertarian in the course of their everyday lives Even when they find them so strongly in disagreement with others. They don't kill them now that is a real advance in Civilization the experience of human violence is declining As a daily part of our lives because people are incorporating every day The fundamental ethical principles of libertarianism If you know that your neighbors are doing something you may not approve of you say we wouldn't do that in our home It doesn't occur to most people to break down their door barge in point firearms at them and threaten them with deadly force It's just not how we behave But then there's a question Why don't more people openly embrace the philosophy by which they in fact live their lives? And I think the fundamental problem and it's addressed in this book is that people see the state as somehow supernatural It's made up of some kind of entities who aren't like us They have all kinds of magical or mystical powers They can do things the rest of us are incapable of doing They're so much wiser than all the rest of us and think about the moral example set by our political leaders I mean men of the ethical caliber of richard nixon and william jefferson clinton These are the loadstones the stars by which we guide our ethical conduct. Well, of course not So why is it then that people don't see the government is just made up of people? They're like us. They're just like you and me They're no better and sometimes they're no worse than normal everyday folks It's our job to demonstrate that the rules that govern our lives are the rules of civilization Generally and they should apply to all if I don't have the power of the authority to smash down your door March in and tell you to put down that cocktail Or put out that marijuana How could I delegate that power to someone else? To government It's not a power I have over the lives of other people But we can also demonstrate in addition that those rules when consistently applied yield very very good consequences They yield societies of peace Of social scientific and ethical progress end of widespread shared prosperity Very wonderful libertarian book by richard eppstein put it very well just in the title Simple rules for a complex world Many people believe when you have more complexity you need the rules to be more complex, but it doesn't work that way In fact a more complex set of rules that people can't use to guide their behavior generates Not more order, but disorder and chaos or planned chaos as Ludwig von Mises put it Now one of the distinguishing features about Libertarians or classical liberals is not only that they hold up liberty as the primary political goal But I should be careful to add not the only goal in life are not even the primary goal of life There's love and art and all sorts of other things that motivate and make human life worth living But as a political goal, it's the primary goal But behind that is a different view about power and freedom. We believe in the presumption of liberty Put simply you should not have to go and ask permission from other people to live your life It's presumed you have the freedom to make choices about your own life Now it could be that those should be overridden you might be restricted in various ways But the burden of proof is on the one who would restrict not the one who would exercise freedom If you want to sing a song or bake some bread You shouldn't have to go to the ministry of music Or the ministry of pastries to get permission to sing or bake The presumption is of course you have the right and the freedom to do that Of course, there might be a reason to restrict it But the burden would be on the one who would restrict If you're singing is so loud that your neighbors can't sing asleep at night rather Or if the baking generated sparks that ignited a fire and harmed your neighbors Then there's a reason to restrict you But just as with the presumption of innocence the burden is on the one who would put you in prison Here the burden is on the one who would restrict the exercise of your freedom It's a fundamental defining principle of a libertarian the belief and the presumption of liberty There are three reinforcing elements to that tradition. I explained in one of the essays on the book The idea of individual rights individuals have rights by nature One could discuss and philosophers and theologians have argued and debated about this are they god-given Are they supervenient features of the human condition are they part of nature and so on But all libertarians agree That you have them they're not given to you by the state or the king or somebody else You have them prior to your involvement in politics Then mutually supporting element the idea of spontaneous order Most of the order in society wasn't imposed by government. It didn't come from president obama or president bush Although they always like to talk about how they're busy running the economy running the country A concept that when you think about it that would keep you really really busy If you actually had to run the country or run the economy They don't these things fundamentally run themselves That if you have well defined Legally secure rights and people can interact on the basis of the rule of law They will generate order more complex than any planner or dictator or commissar or president could ever impose But then there's the third element the third part of this tripod And that is what it what it is that helps us to define and enforce our rights And that's constitutionally limited government a system of the rule of law Each one of these elements supports the others You can think about them like a tripod or a stool there that Each one gives support to the others the idea of individual rights by itself may be Unsatisfactory to others because they think it'll lead to chaos And that indeed was the response of the advocates of absolutism Against those who advocated individual rights. There's got to be a boss But from social science we think about adam smith and others came the idea that when rights are well defined and legally secure You get more order not less. You don't need a boss to impose order on society Now in some sense as one of the authors in the book clark rupper points out libertarian is a is opposed to the extremes the forms of collectivism on what's called the right and the left If you think that you get to choose between communism or fascism that's horrific Is that really what holds down the extremes of a political system? If that were the case then libertarianism would be in the radical center It's about people who are modest the theme that Our colleague erin will discuss humble. We don't believe we have the big plan for everybody's life That requires humility Whereas the extremes of right and left believe they know How everyone should live and by golly you're going to be forced to do it Libertarians believe that every human being is precious every life matters All of us have the same fundamental rights And here one of the great figures in this tradition sissaro marcus tullius sissaro In his book on duties. We're all constrained by this by one in the same law of nature If that is true, we are certainly forbidden by the law of nature from acting violently Against another person No one was born into the world As thomas jefferson said quoting the great libertarian richard rumbold With a saddle on his back in another booted and spurred to ride him Every human being is born to equal liberty and no one Has rights above another But this tradition of spontaneous order that complements it we can think about not only adam smith But lousa the great chinese sage and the concept of wu way Of active inactivity that it is the proper role of government to set the rules actively and stand back and let the order emerge spontaneously in his great poem as he said The more prohibitions there are the poorer the people will be the more edicts are promulgated The more thieves and bandits there will be a sage has said so long as i do nothing This is this complex idea of active inactivity of wu way set the rules and stand back The people will of themselves be transformed so long as i love quietude the people will of themselves go straight So long as i act only by inactivity wu way the people will of themselves become prosperous This is the natural complement to the idea of individual rights When people are left to their own rights can enjoy their freedom They will run the world Now sometimes people argue that libertarianism is a western movement I think it's a worldwide movement It's not just a defense of western ideas and sometimes i annoy A conservative friends. They say well, you're defending the ideas of the west. I said well, which ideas of the west We think of the ideas of toleration freedom justice and equal rights You could argue those are western ideas, but here are some others slavery domination war fascism communism carl marx was not chinese he was german My chinese friends say of all the crazy things that have happened in german in china They've never had to think are quite as daft as carl marx It was a foreign import socialism a european idea nationalism and so on Every society in every culture contains within itself at least two narratives There is a narrative of freedom and rights And a narrative of domination and power and it's our job to find those narratives of freedom those narratives of rights And restore them to their proper place So we think about what students for liberty is doing around the world. It is so excited I'm so proud to work with students for liberty. They give me so much hope Every time I dress one of their groups if i'm feeling a little bit down about the world The cloud goes away This is a global movement of young people who are deciding to stand up for liberty The groups recently from ecuador And then this was the west african students for liberty conference recently in nigeria Now libertarians though aren't just dreamy idealists with ideas about justice and freedom and so on yes We are that but also Fundamentally realistic because we recognize that knowledge is dispersed incomplete costly to obtain We focus unlike other political ideological movements On principles institutions and processes rather than magical thinking Most other political perspectives say we're just going to choose the outcome we want But you don't normally get to do that. You can't say all right. Let's choose prosperity and progress What we get to choose is processes And we choose the ones we hope or think will lead to the outcomes that we want And libertarians are at the forefront and social sciences of understanding incentives Institutions and social processes rather than believing in wishful thinking or fantasy one of the Authors in the book james pediglione has a delightful essay on classical liberalism or libertarianism as Abolitionism and he traces it through the american abolitionist movement the movement for equal rights the movement for equal rights for women And focusing on such great libertarian figures as frederick douglas. It's a very inspiring chapter I really encourage you to read it and one of the great figures in this tradition from brazil Joa Joaquin Nabucco Who made the point that what libertarianism is about isn't just my freedom? Me me me that's important my freedom matters It's about believing in the freedom of other people That is what distinguishes a libertarian not just I want mine But I believe in the freedom of everybody and Nabucco dedicated his whole life to the abolition Of the wicked institution of slavery in his home country And as he pointed out he said you should educate your children and yourselves and the love for the freedom of other people Only then Will you really understand what freedom is when you appreciate the freedom of other people? Not merely your own Sarah squire has a very nice essay on art We sometimes think of libertarian talking about economics all the time Because that's where a lot of the debate politically has taken place especially in the last century But art is a very important part of of life. It's disruptive It changes things like market economies and a lot of people resist that they don't like change But art demands freedom as Sarah squire and her essay points out freedom and art are Linked at a very very deep level. It's not just about who can produce more GDP It's about living lives that are themselves works of art So I'll conclude with just a little thought that is implicit in the book about the importance of freedom It's a life project Not just a little hobby that you undertake now or then as you go through life you acquire many projects Get married I should say the order would be you fall in love you get married sometimes you get married and then fall in love I suppose You have projects and art and science and commerce and all of these different things and commitments that you Take on in life But among those What this book is about among all your many commitments There'd be one just one that is a lifetime commitment and that is a commitment to liberty With that I hope that you enjoy this book and that you'll share it with others. Thank you very much So chip had asked me to give the positive case for liberty to answer the why liberty question by saying this is what's good about liberty And typically that sort of question gets answered by libertarians in one of two ways and We got or a combination of both and we got some of that from thoms There's the consequences approach and the rules approach The consequences approach is the free market economics approach. So if we Free up markets. We produce these great things great goods and services and improve our lives It has good consequences and philosophy. It's probably most familiar in utilitarianism. So The morally right action to take is whichever produces the most happiness has the best consequences There's also the rules approach which shows up in natural law In categorical imperatives and divine command and so on But what I want to offer is A third approach one that doesn't get used as much and particularly by libertarians that that looks more at Not the sorts of actions we should take or the consequences that they create out in the world But in questions of what it means to be a good person and what it means to lead a good life This is approach that's known as virtue ethics and it Traces itself back originally to Aristotle and ancient greek and a student of plateaus So virtue ethics starts big with the purpose of life. That's it's it's central question And the purpose is to lead a good life To to thrive and to flourish But good is a little bit ambiguous here And it it has two meanings One is a good life is a life A good life is one that goes well for the person leading it So it's a life that when all is sudden done we look back on and we're happy with we're satisfied with we're proud of But good can also mean a good life as a life lived by a good person Or a virtuous person and so someone who has the right sort of character will lead a good life And I think both of these senses of good tie in well to liberty and both of them give us reasons to Cherish and respect and champion liberty. So but let's start with leading good lives Even if all of us have the goal of leading a good life, that's what we all want And that's what we all ought to want That what that life will look like is going to vary quite a lot the the perfect life for me If I have all my options on the table and I can do whatever I want Is going to look rather different in many respects from the life that you would choose and the person sitting next to you would choose and so to agree that we choose liberty because Liberty gives us those options that the less liberty we have the fewer options We have for pursuing the kinds of lives we want for defining the contours of life the way that we want and that means that Some of us may luck out and these liberty restrictions won't Impact our lives, but other people aren't going to reach the sort of potential that they dreamed of reaching So in that sense we choose liberty because we want control over the path that our life takes And liberty is the environment liberty provides this environment that's necessary for sculpting our life But it's it's also it's a it's an environment where our Our liberty is protected. I mean we can't just simply kind of all say we want it We need we need to be enforced in some way And so that's what we get to this notion of rights that we have this this basic protection of our rights This protection from violence and the threat of violence That's necessary for us to then have the bedrock upon which we can build these various paths But a state that goes beyond that a state that goes beyond protecting rights Begins cutting off options and this isn't always I mean this isn't done maliciously It's it's often done with the best of intentions. You know, we think that if we restrict liberty a little bit here then By and large things will go better It's it can all this can often be because we're not as humble as we need to be that Our reach exceeds our grasp that we don't recognize the limits of our ability And so we go out and we try to muddle in the world and end up doing more damage by restricting liberty than whatever good we hoped to accomplish And and in in Aristotelian sense, this means that it's not it's not that we're evil It's not that the state is evil when it does this but it's just behaving unwisely It's taking these good intentions and not applying them well so that's that Our life should go well argument for liberty But there's also the good people will choose liberty version of this Because it's not just enough to have options open for us, but we have to choose well in those options Because even a free life if conducted poorly will not be a good one so If so the best human life According to Aristotle is is one that goes beyond mere survival It's one that goes beyond just exercising our animal functions Instead it's one that reaches the heights of our human potential and And embraces those characteristics that are are central to what it means to be human And for him that was intelligence and rational understanding And so we have to live our life through intelligence and through rational understanding And that means that we engage with the world through that and we engage with other people through that So the way that we interact with others As as the best people that we can be Is via reason is via discussion and persuasion and cooperation and discourse And I think this makes a a degree of intuitive sense. I mean when we when we think about how to lead a good life It's it's generally a life that is Filled with decisions that were made intelligently that were considered that weren't rash and they weren't made in anger But were thoughtful and mindful decisions that That embraced this rationality and intelligence that all of us have And this this gets back then to that question of liberty Because to live intelligently and thoughtfully and mindfully Is to live without violence violence is the opposite of mindfulness and intelligence and discourse and persuasion And so if we are to live up to our potential as good people if we are to achieve these heights that we're capable of Then we will treat other people as human beings because that's what it means to live as a human being And so we will not treat them like animals and we will not live like animals But violence represents Not the human but the animalistic and as as tom said Politics is really politics when it goes beyond this protection of basic rights when the state reaches beyond these basic rights Is is a form of violence? It's a violence several steps removed and that's often the reason that we feel okay about it that we don't really mind when Other people are thrown in prison for our preferences But it's violence nonetheless just because you're not clubbing your neighbor over the head It doesn't then be okay when you have someone else doing it or when there's three or four levels of people between you and the guy Who's clubbing your neighbor? It's still violence and so it's still not okay And it still is inhuman Further politics doesn't just make us worse because of this violence that it encourages us to engage in But it also Hurts our moral character in other ways. It makes us hate each other. It makes us see each other as enemies instead of Friends or companions or partners in These lives we're trying to construct people become Agents who are looking to hurt our path in life So Is is young people are in this great position because they're at the beginning of defining this path But all of us Constantly have the opportunity to choose Who we're going to be and what kind of lives we're going to lead And we should make them good ones Which means that we should choose liberty Thank you, Erin and tom and thank you chip for having me today It's really exciting to be the negative person at a libertarian panel because the government gives me so much fodder to do that So i'm going to try to to scale back on that also and highlight some of the positive things that We get to experience as young people today in america. I think we really are a very exciting time to be a libertarian generation So some of you may have heard health care is in the news lately a little bit It's a very complicated thing and it's certainly nothing that I can discuss in about 10 or 15 minutes But what I'd like to do is first discuss how we got here What are the things the major events that happened in the course of history that brought us to where we are today? In the current state of health care policy as it relates to liberty and as it relates to those of us in this room trying to forge our lives today The major thing that happened in the last Say 75 years of the reforms that occurred during world war two So most people who have health insurance have it through their employer Sure, a lot of you in this room have it either through your employer A lot of us had it through school as well as students The reason that that occurred in history is because during world war two The government decided to change the allocation of resources Away from employers having choices over the wages and instead wanted to steer people towards this war building industry And so what they did was they froze wages. They made it illegal for employers to rage wages above a certain level Well, if you're an employer, you're trying to attract new people to your business What are you going to do when the government tells you you can't raise wages anymore? Well, there are alternatives to offer benefits and one of those became health insurance And that over time became codified to the point where health insurance benefits are not treated as wages They're treated as tax free dollars that you can spend And that causes you to want to spend them on health insurance And so now today we think of it as a given that our health insurance is going to come through our employer Instead of on a market-based system So when people talk about how in america, we have this wonderful market-based system. Well, that's quite to the contrary In the 1960s we had reforms that led to medicare and medicaid A lot of people get them confused So the trick that I first learned when I was an undergrad was that medicare ends with an e and elderly starts with an e So if that ever helps you when you're trying to talk to people on campus, it's a little mnemonic we can use Medicare takes care of people who are over the age of 65 And medicaid for the most part takes care of people who are of lower income levels It also has some exceptions for people with certain common chronic conditions such as end stage real failure But what happened when these programs began is that they were funded through payroll taxes So medicare for example has a trust fund and that is not in a lockbox But it was used to fund hospital payments doctor payments all sorts of things The medicare trustees who guard this medicare fund have said that it is it's led to expire as and lose its money by 2016 So for those of us who are not going to be 65 by the year 2016 That means our payroll taxes that are going into this system are probably not going to be benefits for us Our generation is coming around to notice that a lot of these times and government taxes us to provide for things They're not actually providing these things for us And then s chip which is a state children's health insurance program was an agreement reached after Hillary care failed in the mid 90s in this country And it was a way to provide health care health insurance rather for children who have Modest incomes, but not hot not low enough to qualify for medicaid So we've been inching toward this system of more and more government control of health care and health insurance in this country We do not have a free market system by any means Then in 2010 even if we weren't alive for medicare and medicaid and may not remember the s chip debates We were around in 2010 to hear the uh debates over the aca Which is also obama care. Don't let that jimmy kim will skit fool you What happened when nobama care was passed that we have these wonderful promises of affordability and everyone's going to be covered We'll all have access to phenomenal health care and everything will just be dandy The unfortunate reality is that we don't live in a utopian world. There are scarcity of resources There are incentives at play and a lot of these incentives that have been put in place by government do not actually lead to better care Insurance lobbies for certain products to be covered Doctor and other special interest groups that lobbied for their services to be covered There's a huge issue of what we call crony capitalism Or when certain special interest groups lobby to get their interest put into law and the rest of us pay the price for them It's classic public choice economics. It's driving us to a system of unsustainable health insurance and health care in this country Well, you may say why are you talking about health insurance and health care in two different ways? Well, health insurance is not necessarily the same thing as health care Our insurance system is a third-party payer system It's this really convoluted way of individuals paying taxes to the government who then provides some insurance Who then also pays the provider and then you pay the provider when you go with something called an auto pocket or a copayment or a deductible And there's all sorts of these buzzwords No one really understands exactly how the dollars are spent in health care. Try doing this sometime Next time you're at the doctor's office ask them how much it actually costs for a service You either get this befuddled look of the person saying I don't know or they'll say oh, don't worry about it because your insurance will cover it We don't have those price signals when we don't have prices to shop for goods and services We consume them at disproportionate rates to what we actually need I actually had knee surgery a few months ago I went in and I said, you know, how much is this going to cost and they said You know, why do you ask that? That's such a silly question And then they said don't worry your insurance will cover it and I said, okay fine I get the bill for it. It was an 11,000 dollar procedure I paid zero dollars I never even saw any prices I had no incentive to shop around to see if there was a different doctor who could have performed the surgery If there was different treatment options to have none of that because there weren't price signals to communicate those needs When we don't have those price signals, we get resources misallocated We also have this funny thing called mortal hazard, which is when you're covered for something You don't necessarily access it in the same way that you would if you weren't covered for it We have distorted incentives as well for providers who instead of getting paid based on the quality of care They administer they get reimbursed for procedures So they have these incentives to say Issue you a CAT scan or a CT scan which costs a lot of money for the hospital But they get reimbursed at a really a higher rate and you don't pay any money for it You don't see it So there's all sorts of transactions happening that we don't see when we actually access health care Which drives up the cost drives up health insurance and prevents us from getting the care that we need All of that confusion has led to a lot of malaise against those of us in the those of us in the millennial generation It's interesting that when uh president obama ran in 2008 versus when he ran in 2012 The margin of youth vote for him decreased by 11 percent. We saw more wars more government intrusion We saw broken promises all over we saw less access to the kinds of health insurance We thought we were going to get and the average student debt tripled between 1989 and 2010 All of these different factors led to those of us thinking what's happening to our money and what's happening to our government They're not representing what we want anymore and particularly for those of us who want to try to access health care We're seeing a huge discord A lot of millennials responding to this kind of discord have turned to libertarian ideas as tom pulmer said What happens when you think about the very core nature of us is not to hit each other or take each other's things We really just want to be able to live our own lives. That's what our generation wants to do We look at health insurance and think okay I bought auto insurance because I probably a lot of people have a car when you buy auto insurance You can usually go online and shop around you can call people there are advertisements for different kinds of insurance companies But why don't we see that with health insurance? Those of us who grew up in a technology driven society who've wanted to tweet something or looks a social network status For example, if you want to find a doctor or someone who may be really great at making a t-shirt that you want We don't have that ability with health insurance And the reason we don't have it is because the government doesn't want us to you see It's illegal for health insurance companies to offer the same plan in different states because state governments have regulations on What's necessary? It's we're it's illegal for us say if you live in uh, Princeton like I do and you then work in philadelphia You work across the border. It's very short distance But it's illegal for you to try to shop across state plans The government has created all of these incentives that steer us away from shopping for health insurance that fits our needs And towards this bundle of goods that they want us to have it drives up prices It prevents us from any access to the care and it's incredibly frustrating Kathy Ryzenowitz had a piece uh in forbs She's an advocate for young voices and she was talking about how a lot of us that aren't in touch with A lot of us who aren't on board with the system Are against it because it's not really insurance Obamacare the aca Says that we have to purchase a set bundle of goods based on what they think is the right thing for us to offer We get penalized if we don't buy it And then if we want to try to access health care the way that we do i.e. For certain services that we do need or don't need we're out of luck because the government has told us what we need And we just have to listen to them For our generation that's incredibly frustrating And it's led us to have the ideas that we are We are lucky to advocate in students for liberty to have a broader growth in this entire world Because people are realizing that the government is overreaching that it's telling them too much about what they can do with their own lives And i am very excited to be a part of a generation that says no more that we are going to pursue a free academy and a free society Thank you very much All right So now i'm going to pose a couple questions and that the panelists Communicate back and forth that they want to expound on something the other person said something peak something they've done research on but i'll i'll lead off with a quick question for Tom Palmer I read a study earlier today that there are over 21 million millennials currently living with their parents Some of them like it but i'm assuming not all of them do Uh An unemployment among 18 to 29 year olds is between 11 and 16 percent depending on how it's calculated You talked about incentives and institutions social process What would incentivize young people to push for more liberty in society rather than taking that energy To lobby the government for a jobs program so that they can get their feet under them Well, I wish I could answer that definitively and give you the the answer I'm kind of interested also the question you said presumably most of them don't like it We talk about the parents or the millennials I suspect that's uh on both sides to shea the um There is a very serious problem around the world and it is rising it's rising in this country But it's much worse and many others of persistent youth unemployment And one of the reasons is increasing state intervention to labor markets to give us more job security Which sounds very attractive makes it more difficult to fire people and one of the consequences is if it's difficult to fire It's difficult to hire And in europe for example, this is a very very deep problem where young people face a staggering rates of unemployment because They if you hire someone it's almost like getting married. It's very very difficult But that's actually more difficult than getting a divorce To break that relationship with an employee. It's staggeringly costly and the consequence is this persistent youth unemployment I do think though that i'm actually quite optimistic about this younger generation So people Sloan's age and younger I think it is one of the most responsible generations in american history Partly because they realize they're going to get stuck with the bell And I have to say that I am ashamed of the performance of people in my age group of my generation to stick Young people with trillions and trillions and trillions of dollars of official debt and unfunded liabilities I think it's simply shameful That we have Either actively participated or in my case failed to stop What I think is a gigantic Train robbery that's going on right now. It shouldn't be that way Older generations should think of leaving something for their children and not looting them and leaving them with mountains of debt Australia is one of the few countries in the world that has an official annual Measurement they release of the intergenerational transfer How much money is going between generations and the fact is there is a transfer from young people To older people and i'm not talking about people who are 95 or 100. I'm talking about people my age We are in effect looting young people at a rapidly increasing rate And I think they're catching on That this is unfair and unjust And so I think that they actually are going to be the generation that stands up for some principles of responsibility Well those in my generation are driving the country over a cliff In terms of indebtedness over a hundred trillion dollars and unfunded liabilities and so on so I'm pessimistic in the near term about the future of the country But i'm optimistic in the long term because I think that The younger people who will be replacing us are more responsible Than people in my age group I'll repackage a little bit of that and pose it to questions both Erin Sloan Every generation thinks the young people Are something special And yet in american history every generation Tends to take how much their parent generation screwed them and double up and screw the following generation even more Compared with what tom just said What's your over-under on young people's? potential for revolt versus their propensity to just screw their kids and kick the can down the road Well, I think this can be I mean we should acknowledge that this is a it's a difficult problem That it's I mean it's asking a lot to say to someone who is without a job or in some other way really hurting that You know this you should ignore the politician who's telling you he can help you right now in favor of Markets because what we're asking them is that the politician is Is concrete he's standing there in front of you or he's on your tv And politicians are I mean are very persuasive or they wouldn't have gotten Where they are and we're asking them to ignore that person and instead Trust in something that's much more abstract these spontaneous orders markets and we can we can say you know that If we free this up then the situations that are creating your unemployment or whatever else will Go away that things will get much better that many more jobs will be available But we're always left saying that's That's going to take some time and this guy standing here right now and he's saying look I can pass this legislation if you vote for me and I'll get you a job And I think that the hurdle we have to overcome is he's not going to get them a job I mean as tom said these sorts of regulations make things worse but That's often a difficult lesson to really take to heart in the moment And so I think the only thing that's going to help is to just internalize the the repetition of these promises coming up empty That young people have to see that over and over and over again these policies fail and When markets are freed up and when spontaneous orders can emerge and when we have more liberty Things get better, but it's not it's not an immediately easily easy sell Yeah, I agree with that I think one of the most difficult things in particular about health policy is that to argue say for Purchasing interstate or changing licensing laws to open it up to physician assistants or nurses to perform our procedures Is that it's not a very immediate reaction? I think our generation wants an immediate reaction I think one of the best ways then to talk about that is is real life examples So a lot of us who have had part-time jobs See under obama care where the penalties are imposed for individuals who work 30 hours or more So employers are docking the hours of some part-time and hourly shift workers to be say 29 hours So they aren't responsible for the penalty. Um, there are a lot of people and uh, who You know people in my generation and our parents who are affected by this directly And so it's very simple to say you know people who are in this situation You know people who have had to answer to these policies And it's and it's hurting them. Um, there's a phenomenon in health insurance Known as job lock where people will stay in a job because they have some employer sponsored insurance That fits what their needs are If we didn't have this government incentivized structure If we didn't have the tax system that was imposed during world war two People would be more ease a more able to buy insurance on a market system Or they wouldn't be beholden necessarily to their employers anymore Those kinds of very concrete examples. Yes, they don't happen immediately But I think they're very easy to understand for those of us who are who are entering the workforce Um, Erin you talked about goodness right being good people living a good life A lot of people claim that the state right we you didn't address specifically the economic arguments of economies of scale and you know the pursuit of profit Uh, a lot of people argue that the state can be used as a tool for good and in these hard times Why not go that way? How does the state does the state reinforce a good society does it undermine it? Well, I think that as as the state grows it has a tendency to Course in us to to undermine a good society that a good society a flourishing society is one of Voluntary associations people coming together peacefully organizing around common interests helping each other exercising these these important virtues and the state Gets in the way of that it places stumbling blocks. So That when the state comes in and promises to help, I mean, it's you don't want to say like If the state's going to do good, why wouldn't we accept that because the state's In most cases is simply not going to do good. It's going to say it's going to do good but It may have other motives or it may be unaware of how difficult these questions are So I think I think we need to we need to not grant the state to do good and Then argue from there. We need to say wait a second Like what does it mean for it to do good and where does that good actually come from? All right I'm I'm going to ask one more question. So those of you out there be thinking of something good to ask next This is you know addressed to Sloan specifically on the content And also Tom based on you know your your expertise in history You know Sloan you talked about kind of the origin of the wealth of the of the health care system in America, but What caused people to think that the government would be a good way to give very intimate Services in the first place welfare health care, etc And and Tom I know you've done some work on this in the past and you guys students for Liberty and Atlas published the book after the welfare state so What caused people to think that government would be a good way to do this in the first place? So this is actually one of my favorite stories from health econ history In the 1880s when Otto von Bismarck was leading germany and he decided that he was going to institutionalize a social safety net and insurance benefits weren't going to start until the age of 65 The average life expectancy back then was 55 So it was posted today when the average life expectancy is in the late 70s And we have programs like Medicare and Social Security to kick in at 65 and everyone assumes that they're going to get them So we don't save in particular my generation were terrible at saving for for later on in life because we assume these government programs Are going to be there to take care of us and the reality is that they aren't I mean the economics are very unfortunate And that it's very clear that that those funds just won't be there for us I think our generation in particular is defined by our memories either where we were on 9 11 When the war is in afghanistan iraq of the drug war that we've seen of the nsa and spying and surveillance technology and that sort of thing We've seen the government intrude so many times when they turn around and say that they're going to take care of us And I think we're finally wising up to the fact that They don't do the things that they say they're going to do that they they Pretend to be these wonderful benevolent people And then their programs don't follow suit and I think we're we're realizing that that's a reality and Unfortunate as it is that those programs exist I really do have a lot of hope that our generation won't take for granted anymore that the government's going to provide things for us Because we realize that they they haven't been doing so Well that that was the Primary theme of the previous book after the welfare state and if you're interested in it you can get that you can also download these books as pdf so You don't have to just Read it on paper. You can put it on your kindle or ipad or whatever um, and the work that I did reading a staggering number of really boring histories of social policy Was that these were about the imposition of social control? Fundamentally the welfare state is about controlling people's behavior There was a growing movement in the 19th and very early 20th centuries of what we're called friendly societies have many different names in different countries Of groups of people who organized voluntarily often working class people They provided their own medical insurance. They built hospitals And so on go to the national health service hospitals in britain Which we are told are built by the government. What a wonderful thing Go look at the cornerstone Of the building and see who built it and frequently it says a friendly society A philanthropic association or some other part of civil society. They were nationalized. They were not built by the state Those institutions were very libertarian in their orientation. They were much larger than trade unions. It's a very interesting history David green and the united kingdom on australia has documented these in his books And I put an excerpt from one of his books into that after the welfare state I had commissioned it in 1990 To be published in russian, which is when we published it in the russian language I thought english speakers should be able to have access to it as well And then also david beto who's an american historian who had a wonderful book from mutual aid to welfare state That looked at how these institutions were systematically displaced by coercive institutions There's another element to it as well though from the story that slone indicated They were broke the minute they were set up and this is something that is very important hennick and his history of the Bismarck's accomplishment points out that the great advantage of pay as you go systems is they're very popular initially Because people are paying the number of beneficiaries is very small And they get something without having paid in so when social security was set up There were some people who got social security without having paid into it They thought it sounded pretty good and most people said well, isn't that nice? They're getting social security now But they were started they were broke from the day they started because they began to accumulate these unfunded liabilities Bismarck pointed out it was a great way to fund the state because more money comes in than is going out You can use that for his process of state building and this was also true with social security Now those systems they went cash negative in germany and that's one of the reasons for the collapse of the german economy There's a very fine book by good's alley called hitler's folk start the english title was Hitler's beneficiaries on the rise of the nazi welfare state That this bankrupted the german state and really brought hitler to power and who then created the most malicious welfare state In the history of the world as they looted all of europe starting of course with the jews Conversion of jewish property to folks from urchin or or national people's treasury And then the looting of all of europe as they invaded and sucked the resources out of it All of these systems pays you go systems are broke the day they're set up It's just a question of when it becomes evident That is where we are now in the united states greece passed that point already The greek state is totally broke. They cannot fulfill their obligations No matter how much they suck money out of the german taxpayers. It cannot be done We are now approaching that point very very rapidly as well There are not enough resources to fulfill the promises that have been made Already social security went cash negative. That is to say that more money is going out than is coming in There's a fiction. They have this investment Which is entirely in government bonds, which are just iou's. There's nothing no investment there And these systems are rapidly growing broke So now we are in the stage the late stage of mature welfare states as they collapse And the danger is when they collapse There can be very serious frightening political consequences as we have seen in greece And other european countries the rise of extremist Scary frightening movements like golden dawn and syriza party In greece. This is a Stalinist and the hitlerite party are now Serious players in the european political scene. That's scary We need to act more quickly to bring fiscal discipline to begin to cut back these institutions Before they destroy the remnants of democratic self-governance All right, that's a cheery note. Yeah We'll bridge from that happy note to asking you guys if you have questions, you know on why liberty your life your choices your future Okay, we'll take the back there And when you when you receive the microphone, um, please state your name Clearly wait for the mic and then give it back to the attendant and your nsa id number just for convenience They're already listening Hello, my name is akhil elin and i'm currently an intern here at the kato institute. I had a question for slone. Um, I was actually reading attracted to about health care policy recently And um, it stated that one of the reasons why per capita health care costs are so high here in the united states is that private health insurance companies spend a lot of money and um, a lot of resources bureaucratically trying to identify Perspective policy holders who will be too expensive to ensure because they're already ill or what have you and trying to exclude them So I was just wondering how much of a factor your research indicates that is that's a really interesting question because I don't know the answer numerically, but I can tell you that I can tell you that one of the most interesting things about Money spent by private health insurance companies If you think about the way they interact with potential clients as well as the government Is that they invest a lot in making sure that the government puts into place policies that will reinforce their preferences, so Programs where you want to invest your money and say a health savings account or a future savings account Um, you don't get the same tax treatment. So people get different preferences That health insurance companies don't necessarily want and I think we need to be just as afraid of big businesses Preventing us from getting in the market as we do big government A way to get around that is to allow people to pool risk voluntarily So the way insurance works is they pool risk, right? So insurance company makes money because they have more people paying in premiums that are higher than the money they take out So a way to get around that would be if people were able to legally join together and say hey, I'm interested in buying a Policy with you, you know We do these a lot with groups that we formed online or you know In person say support groups or people with common chronic conditions Would you like to buy insurance policy? We can drive down the premiums because of that Because those policies are illegal. We don't have the opportunity to do that. So yeah, I'm sure that private health insurance companies do that I wish there was an alternative that was legal for us to pursue In the back right over there. My name is Dominic Cardella. This is for uh, mr. Palmer Um, you mentioned the collapse of the social security system Aren't there simplistic solutions to a lot of these problems like raise the age from 65 to 70 and Uh, perhaps, you know similar simplistic solutions to other problems that uh young people will be facing Okay, that that's a well formulated question. Uh, it's not particularly simplistic when you're actually Removing something that was promised to people as a matter of statutory law It's not a legal obligation. You have no right to social security, but we should recognize it's a kind of a default But remember that means that all those people who anticipate this the majority of them are going to fight you on it It's going to be a very difficult problem And it's actually a bit more difficult in america than it is in some other countries because we have a strongly rights oriented political tradition A legal culture that focuses on rights something that i very strongly embrace But when these benefits are from the state are characterized as rights It makes them much more difficult to reform because people say i paid into it. It's my right So it's not that easy to do this and these are actually political approaches that are quite difficult Some countries have addressed this australia Is in much better situation than the than the united states by far canada is also by the way They're moving more or less in the right direction by fits and starts. I think the u.s. Is moving in the wrong direction In the australian case they went all the way to means testing all state benefits Now in other words, we have to demonstrate you need it. You fall below some income level in order to qualify whereas in the u.s More and buffett get social security, right? That's not means tested at all That's a political strategy in the u.s. Because they want everyone to feel it's our investment It's my right to receive it and not to see it as a welfare program On the grounds that it would probably be less popular if it were So you have to deal with the political struggle I don't think it's a simplistic or easy thing to push that through particularly in the u.s Germany was somewhat different. They could do it more as an administrative matter People didn't complain that their rights were violated, which is what's going to happen if a arp Over here is your discussion Of this of this proposal Second thing is social security is the smallest element of the unfunded liability. It's a very serious problem Medicare dwarfs it. It's much much much larger And the medicare problem is a much more difficult problem not to crack So we could move to the australian type approach and means test everything I think that might be a wise thing to do political struggle behind that would be really gargantuan Because you'd have arp and a whole array of quite powerful lobbies and interest groups against you So not not not a reason not to try it, but it's not easy to do It means however that you have to have a discussion among the numerate and this has not yet happened in the united states in other countries such as canada and germany And australia that have begun to grapple with these problems Inadequately in my opinion, but they're doing it. It's not being done here There was a discussion between what we would call the center right and the center left So in canada it was the government of john cratien and paul martin as the finance minister who began first to To grapple with these hard problems leaders of the liberal party and then With the support of the conservatives and then the harper government has continued that There was a discussion around let's call it the center of the political Debate among people who can do arithmetic. This has happened in germany And other countries as well. It has not yet happened in the united states. I do not see this On the scene right now, but it is what has to happen center left Numerate democrats and center right numerate republicans who understand arithmetic have to sit down and say This system cannot continue We have to do something about it and make those hard difficult choices I'd be happy to go the australian route And means test everything But that would would be a very serious Political struggle in the united states. I think it'd be the right direction. So long in the short There are some solutions They are not simplistic or easy to implement and even so you still have to deal You could have to raise the retirement age quite high to be able to really bite into even social securities unfunded Liabilities on the old age survivors portion Disability insurances already broke absolutely broke And what we're seeing now of course is the rise in disability claims. It's it's a kind of moral back Breakdown in the country more and more people claiming disability But no evidence that there's any increase in the actual experience of disability My facebook page every day. I get lawyers trolling saying are you over 50? Think you might be disabled could be call us Right And and it really makes me angry to see that this trolling for cheating the system in effect That's the situation we're in right now and it's going to take a moral regeneration and that's why i'm counting on slown To lead this debate and call people to a culture of some responsibility It's one of my yeah I'm just gonna say really quick one of my favorite Milton freeman lines is that there's nothing so permanent as a temporary government program And I think that's probably addresses. It's a little too well. There's poignant All right another question out here sir in the middle Good evening. My name is david avalan. I am currently interning at the center for american progress um And I have a couple of questions as a millennial What where do libertarians stand? Where will millennials who identify themselves as libertarians where will they stand when it comes to a political party? Do we see a strong libertarian political party coming into effect? And if so What can millennials do right now that something tangible that they could possibly do? And another question I had it was for mr. Powell. What how do we define goodness? I think that's very broad, but how do we define that? I will take the first one the slown director sure It's very difficult because there is I don't think there is a sort of straight libertarian answer to where people fall in politics There are people in sfl who fit all sides of the political spectrum because in sfl We don't we don't define liberty from a political standpoint. We say that liberty is an umbrella principle We don't care how you define the philosophy of liberty so long as you embrace pro liberty So that's everything from free markets to peace to The ability for an individual to do is he or she pleases so long as it doesn't you know hurt anyone else So it's a very broad perspective and from that perspective you get people who are Either democrats republicans libertarians green party, you know the the whole mix and I think that's wonderful I don't think libertarians necessarily should be in one particular party or another I think there are inroads that we can make on in both major political parties Because we agree with some ideas theoretically from both sides. So for example Democrats who actually are anti-war where they exist We you know should definitely do things with them republicans who are Pro free market and allowing people to say have a market for health insurance We should definitely work with them and I think that the more we can do in broader In both major political parties as well as perhaps starting To grow a third political party. I think anything we can do in that realm would be wonderful But is needs to be based founded on the idea. So one of our guiding Documents is an essay written by Friedrich Hayek on the intellectuals and socialism that the ideas need to be the foundation For us to build a free society Pitch it on over to erin sure. So that's not an easy question Particularly not an easy question to answer in 30 seconds so So for for Aristotle for goodness meant If what we're aiming for is what he called eudaimonia, which is flourishing a which is not moments of happiness, but as a life well lived And goodness is the the character traits that are most conducive to living that kind of life And for him it was a a life that's fully human that lives up to all of our capacities and particularly those capacities that are uniquely human so rationality introspection And and so a good person possessed Possesses the virtues and the virtues are again their their character traits that lead to living A life of flourishing and these were again subdivided into moral virtues and intellectual virtues. So when we Talk about virtues typically what we have in mind what people think of are they Are the moral virtues. So these are kind of character traits that are admirable so Courage beneficence charity kindness Sense of justice we can you can just list these things and there's not there's not going to be a set list of them Um, and so you have to possess these things. They they have to be kind of part of who you are they have to motivate you and Be fully internalized And then there's the intellectual virtues which are the skills in living well With these traits which kind of is easier to think of as as wisdom. So You may be acting out of a sense of kindness or generosity But you can do harm in the world if you don't act well like you just screw it up. So you need the Practical wisdom or frenesis as he called it in order to apply these Virtuous traits well to the world to Then actually live well so that's and and it goes On and on from there. So it's a very big question But I think the the best way to think about it really quickly is that most of us I think do have a sense of think of like role models, you know, so there are people we can imagine who we say You know that person represents What's really good and I would be a better person if I behave more like That person and this I mean there's going to be cultural variation. There's going to be variation over time but there's also these Kind of core pieces of that that I think caught across time and culture, you know, when you read stories From very long ago or from other cultures We can most of us can very quickly identify the heroes and the villains and those traits that we admire and those that we don't And these are I think just deeply embedded in what it means to be human For me, it's you know Fred Rogers So, you know, I fred rogers mr. Rogers. There's there's an easy one like that guy represents I think we'd all agree that's a good. He's a good person and most of us the more we could be like him The better we would be and so You see think of think of a role model and I think there's going to be a large amount of agreement on that But there's there's going to be some disagreement too. Can I add a word on that about erin rogers? Just throw it Stay in the rogers family. I didn't know erin was Looked up to mr. Rogers in such quite a way grew up with them, so I would add something to that though that There's something about moral virtue that requires an environment of choice and freedom If you do something just because you're afraid of being beaten Then you didn't make a moral choice in doing it That the things that we do that we own this is one of the interesting things John Locke writes about in his metaphysics of the person not just his political writing. He says we own our acts We think normally we own stuff But fundamentally what we own is the acts. That's how we instantiate our Life and the world is what we do we own those things and if we act merely out of fear If sobriety comes about because you're just afraid of being Arrested by the dea For example, that's not a life of virtue That there needs to be the freedom to choose that and that a virtuous life requires a life of free choice And not merely acting out of fear now totalitarian states So take extreme for they always told us we will make you good people What they did was they made people afraid They didn't make them Good people And that is a very important part now the last point is we can create societies of justice through our actions politically We cannot create good societies that way the goodness of a society Reflects the behavior of the persons who are in it and those are fundamentally things outside of the political domain But we can be responsible for creating societies that are just A just society is likely to be a good society But it does not necessarily follow that it will be But we can be pretty sure In fact quite certain that unjust society will not be a good society So that's it's a we have a more constrained view of the role of political life Of law and of justice Uh, you can't just say poof. We're going to make a good society through the exercise of coercive force All right, we'll take one more question Sir in front John solid an independent economist That's just i'm struggling a little bit with this question, but It seems that the there may be moral foundations for the libertarian case beyond the absolutes of do not steal and kill of you know, not taking somebody and and i'm thinking in terms of civil society and Social capital that's in some sense in the back of my mind I'm saying you guys can't get away without the 10 commandments You may think so for a few centuries, but there needs to be a social capital that really aren't that will get people to honor those rights of Individual freedom and property And I don't think just saying and I believe I agree with you But I don't think we can I I don't I do think it requires more social capital I'm thinking I don't think you can get away without the 10 commandments and family structure and a whole bunch of social capital that we have And that without recognition of that those moral underpinnings. I think libertarianism will go poof quick And you know, I'll be a get a little kind. I mean it gets a little tough because Questions like abortion. That's the hot number item and and uh drugs I know and that interferes with this idea of libertarianism as license, you know Anyway, my that's it's enough out of me All right, we will go down the line and let your response to this question also serve as your final word for the evening You ready to start us off Aaron? Sure. So I think this gets I mean one way to answer this is to get to what tom had mentioned in his talk about Um liberty being if libertarianism is a is a political philosophy And it's one of liberty is the ultimate political end But that leaves open. I mean That leaves open all of these other Questions so we can say look the state shouldn't be involved in these things But that doesn't mean that it's morally permissible for people to just Do whatever they want or that we shouldn't look down upon people who behave in awful ways Even if there shouldn't be laws preventing them from behaving in those awful ways So they're I mean, they're going to be tough questions Of course abortion is a very difficult question to answer and there are powerful arguments on both sides of it Um, in fact, I think it's probably the most difficult moral question There may be but that doesn't That doesn't mean that libertarianism has a problem that just means that The whole of morality has a problem in their hard questions. We have to answer but The state should still aim at liberty because by aiming at liberty It's going to give us the framework for then answering those other questions to the best way that we can and being the best people that we can Just One small point. Thou shalt not steal and thou shalt not kill are part of the decalogue so that It's not a question of abandoning the 10 commandments. I don't think that I would endorse as a matter of policy Thou shalt have no other gods before thee However, that's a matter of freedom of religion and Polytheistic religion should have the same freedom as monotheistic The question though is what are the sources of the social order That leads people to behave in such ways that they're sustainable good lives And I don't think coercion is well suited to that overall Except in establishing certain rules of justice thou shalt not steal and thou shalt not kill And so on that would be enforced ultimately with force if you had to go to that level But the question of what constitutes a good society is much more difficult and complex and admits of much more variety There are a multitude of different social orders in the world and different cultures that that are compatible With the society of freedom think about the japanese They don't japanese religion isn't very much like abrahamic religions So people in america are more accustomed to thinking about abrahamic face Judaism christianity and islam And they think all moral order has to come from that the japanese Are by all objective Criteria the most honest people in the world every year these surveys of honesty of japanese are at the absolute top And yet their conception of religion is not abrahamic at all they have a very different approach To virtue and religion and the relationship to the ancestors and so on So I think that social order and a good society There are many routes to it But we know that none of those routes are on the road of socialism fascism or even extreme state coercion to think about our Thou shalt not take drugs laws that we have today as we know because it's illegal no one takes drugs in america There are no drugs we found in high schools or prisons But actually we all know that's not true if you wanted to score some drugs The two places you can be really sure you're going to be able to do it. Is it american high school or a prison? So those are just not working It helping to create societies in which people govern themselves in sober and responsible ways Even the netherlands with their very modest Semi hemi demi semi legalization. It's not really a legal market They're just less likely to bust you for smoking something in a Coffee shop they call the Um young people in the netherlands are much less likely to experiment with drugs and young americans where it's illegal And I think there's the forbidden fruit element as part of it. It must be exciting if it's illegal so Social order will instantiate itself in all kinds of different ways and your concern I think is exactly right on about having a good society What we need is the growth of the institutions and practices that make that possible family culture religion These are all part of that But I don't know that there's any one recipe. That's the only correct one for every human social order Completely agree with what um erin and tom have said to add to that. I think As my role on this panel was originally to talk about all the things that governments done horribly I think they've done a horrible job of even trying to Enforce any values on our society. I think they are not the bellwether of good values They are not the people to whom we should look for inspiration And to say that then they should be able to legally enforce at the point of a gun those codes I think makes there's discord to me. That doesn't make any sense I myself am a very religious person. I go to services every week I try to pray every night But I would never in a million years say that that should be the law of the land because I believe it is up to Every individual to pursue the ideas that are the best to him or herself in whatever way he or she lives And I don't think that our generation is is Is set on there being one set of laws because I think we are able to experience the Cultures and societies that are all around the world in ways that previous generations never had the privilege to do And in knowing other cultures and other societies the way they live their lives We've seen that it's absolutely Not only viable But beautiful way to live that doesn't necessarily fit the same codes that we may have originally been raised to think We're the only ones and through those values through that respect for each other through that respect for liberty I think that's the way that we're going to get to a better society And if we're able to Make that the way we live our lives that I think we'll be able to have a just and And wonderful world that is embraces humility as well as the path For for goodness as long as we can respect liberty in the way it works All right, so there you have it. We've made the case for why liberty I hope we haven't made the case entirely in your mind because then all of us would be out of a job But I hope that we on the margin increased your understanding and your curiosity to learn more It's been a pleasure for me to work with these three fine panelists If you want to learn more about what they're up to Aaron writes a lot and manages libertarianism.org Which is a really wonderful site for digging into the the philosophy and ideas behind a lot of the policies that we work on here at Kato and he has his own insights on there, which you know, as you've seen today are quite insightful Sloan, it's great. She she interned way back when here at the Kato Institute So this is kind of like a wonderful homecoming to have her back on stage as an expert when she was formerly here as an intern And then to hear more about tom You know, I mentioned in his bio that he works with cater university All of those cater university lectures if you've enjoyed some of the insights that you shared here on the panel You can watch hours and hours of them At home on your computer, so I encourage you to do that And I want to ask you all to just join me in thanking these panelists today. So