 Hello everyone, this is Reben Weisenberger from the Mises Institute of Canada and After a brief hiatus we're bringing back the Austrian The Austrian AV club and just a little bit of announcements. I got this This document from my grandfather. He had purchased it a long time ago. It's called what is communism? It's produced by the Novosti press agency publishing house and we're gonna be releasing this and it's sort of scary how much the the rhetoric within this document reflects that of the Sort of modern social Democrats and the other thing we're gonna be releasing soon is Class struggle the board game Stefan, I think you enjoyed playing this. I'd love to Better than Monopoly It was produced by a Marxist teacher at Let me just read back here again By New York University and it was published by class class struggle incorporated 487 Broadway, New York, New York There you go. So it's a it's a very enjoyable game and it teaches you about how capitalists are evil and The workers sell triumph over capitalism So we're gonna be publishing that sort of just sort of scanning it all in throwing on PDFs Just so people can understand because I think in today's world when you're growing up You're like a millennial or you know, you're just getting out of university now We're just going into university. You don't understand sort of the background You know why your teachers are teaching Marxism why your 40 year old teachers still believe in Marxism well things like this There you go. That's why yeah If you visit the Mises Institute in Auburn the halls upstairs are just lined with all these old Communist propaganda posters. It's fantastic like on the toilet in the back There's the little red book and you know all the communist propaganda. So it oh for sure Well, they they spread it around and I think that's sort of largely. I mean, you know Let's sort of we're gonna be speaking about something else, but largely I think that you know for the last 150 years You know since sort of like the Paris commune or 1848 there's been this this grand push towards centralization towards state controls towards socialism And of course in night and and during the entire 20th century from about you know, well at least from about you know The 1917 on there was this sort of there was this guiding star that people could point to and that was a Soviet Union and of course in 1989 that fell apart but You know we here in the West were already on that that long-range push to socialism and You know, we continued on that way of socialism even though the Soviet Union fell apart And so now we're sort of you know when we look at what's happening in the in Europe right now Essentially what we're seeing is the destruction 20 years on Now of the social democratic welfare state, right? That was created within the 20th century You know sort of based on the ideas of Of this I mean if you look at this book Pretty much everything within it would be mouthed today by somebody on with an occupied Wall Street By somebody who calls them a social diss who calls themselves as a social Democrat You know all the ideas are right in here or some left libertarians Yeah, yeah Yeah, and and also So I understand just to begin eyes. Did you attend the the Austrian scholars conference down in Auburn, Alabama? I've been there many times. I haven't been I Think in a couple of years, but yes, I've been many times and I know you have one coming up is of your own so Yeah, we're actually launching because I think that this is obviously now We've got the situation where I think you know a couple months ago with Jeff Tucker posted a picture showing that You know Mises org was getting something like a million hits a month There's something like some ridiculous number and all over the world. We have Mises institutes popping up You know Rothbardian institutes Mises institutes popping up and I think in order to keep that going we need more scholars conferences, you know to encourage people within academia To sort of sort of step out of the woodwork because honestly, I've encountered here in Canada in the last couple of years I've noticed that people essentially I was just like I said just popped out of the woodwork all of a sudden they're coming out and they're saying yeah I'm a Rothbardian or I'm an Austrian where it's 20 years ago. They were teaching, you know They might be teaching philosophy or they might be teaching economics But all of a sudden they're like including on their resume or they're or they're showing up at the Austrian scholars conference down in Auburn and that's how I found out about a bunch of people was because they showed up in Auburn I had no idea that they existed no idea that they can show themselves either libertarian or Austrian or whatnot, but because There was this sort of guiding light. There was Mises.org You know, they were willing to step forward and and say yes, we agree with this point of view that is out there Absolutely, and that's exactly what I'm doing here in Canada By starting Mises Canada, right? I've put ourselves forward as this place where we can discuss Austrian economics and apply it to the Canadian context and I think the follow-on point to that is that as these, you know, especially, you know I get a lot of students coming to Mises.ca people in Canadian universities and I think that what we need to present to them is a Place for them in the future so they can say well look if I start studying in this I know there's a conference here in Canada that I can attend Where I can present my papers. I can I can share my ideas with like-minded people Also who are in with this is, you know, this ivory tower or whatever you want to call it up the academia that exists So yeah, I mean we'd love to have you up there I don't know if you'll be able to make it, but it's gonna be a November 10th in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, and if you just Google search Toronto Austrian Scholars Conference You can make it out. Yeah, I've actually looked into it and I'm studying my calendar now to see if I can make it I would love to make it. It sounds like it's gonna be great Yeah, yeah, I know it's excellent. I think you're certainly already we've got several Canadians again Like I said these people who have sort of started to come out of the word work. We've got Glenn Fox teaches at Guelph Lloyd Gerson who teaches at University of Toronto Prajag Ratsik and I think we're also gonna have Art Cardin up And I think you know Art Cardin. I do know Art Yeah, a great guy and I'm funnily enough about art as well. He's been on the CBC a number of times Which is CBC, which is the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation our state-run Sort of propaganda unit or news unit And it's funny funnily enough though also in the last couple months. They've they've created a whole Audio series called the invisible hand. So they're actually discussing economics in a fair way on The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. That's that's promising Do you find I've noticed in the Mises America circles in the last say 20-25 years it's moved pretty substantially in the Austrian anarchist heavily Rock-Barty and libertarian direction Do you what do you find in your Canadian? Sort of Mises Austrian circles. Is it sort of menarchist or classical liberal or Utilitarian or what is it dominated by? Well, I mean we've had a few I mean well, I'll tell you I mean a lot of people who we have speak at our events Are definitely, you know towards menarchism towards anarchism Yeah, like Lloyd Gerson came and spoken and he was you know, I would say He would he would say it was Gersonian But you know essentially the ideas he was talking about were very much Rothbardian ideas, you know In this in essence. He was discussing ideas that you know quite clearly the state does not exist I mean the state is an artificial construct, right? and yeah, and we're definitely I would say we're definitely sort of trending towards or at least I mean our Editorial content is definitely trending towards the Rothbardian anarchist right or you know our narco-capitalist point-of-view And I mean, you know when you have your crowds I've seen some of your your videos with your show like in the bars and Restaurants, and they're heavily attended. It seems like you have a great turnout Yeah, it looks like even if not everyone's on board. They're not turned off by the sort of radical Principled positions you put out. Oh No, not at all. Um, yeah, and we've had and oftentimes we have You know easily at every one of our meetings we at least have 30 to 40 people out You know what I mean, and they're all very interested in it We have people traveling in from you know smaller towns outside of the greater Toronto area to attend And yeah, definitely We certainly don't occasionally we get I did have one discussion with somebody about environmentalism So sort of had some issues with that. We had generally people are very accepting of the ideas It's more on Facebook where I where I where I noticed sort of neocons or I or I think me put maybe some people who might be more termed as Sort of objectivists in some way, right? But yeah, I know generally people don't have a problem It's kind of interesting too because we do have within Canada our own sort of push for what you call green backerism You know what I mean when Gary North sort of took on Ellen Brown's Web of debt, do you know about that the above debt and the green backers no the ones who sort of They want to get rid of the Fed, but they wanted to have it sort of completely You know government run essentially Congress should decide how much money printed Yeah, so we have in Canada our own green backers and and just a little while ago a Canadian a 12 year old Canadian girl basically gave Sort of a green backer speech and it went viral on YouTube. It sort of had like a million hits or something Yeah, so so we we had a post on on on Mises Canada called calling out a Canadian I call out a 12 year old green backer Which which some people yeah, I mean it's kind of funny when you when you ask a 12 year old to sort of spout these ideas I don't know that I don't know. It's that they actually understand what I mean Maybe she maybe she perfectly understands what she's discussing, but at the same time I do sort of question the sort of indoctrination that she received Leading up to this and and at one point she sort of said that she wanted to throw the money changers out of the temple Okay, good throwaway line fine. Yeah, you know like which is which is kind of funny because you know it There was a Dan Simon at our our last Mises Canada meetup was discussing Rothbard's book on I guess the panic of 1816 or you know the one of these first panics after the war in 12 and some of the rhetoric that they used was throw the money changers out of the temple because At that point they had a problem where money changers Would take the sort of this fiat currency and they would they would exchange it for their local currency And then would take it back to these banks in the east and try to exchange it for gold Right, so they said the the US government actually passed a law Saying that specifically money changers couldn't They weren't allowed to exchange their money for gold right and then I and then I asked them a legitimate question I said do you think that Jesus believed in central banking? But anyways, but more to the point let's so we're here to discuss net neutrality And I guess what it's all about because I understand there's been a recent I guess there's an ongoing court case around net neutrality and And so what is net neutrality? So if you think about the internet, which is the network would that we all use that you And are using right now for this discussion The idea of network neutrality is that there should be rules in place that prevent content providers like the cable companies the telcos etc from Doing something with the data that goes across their pipes even though you're paying for it So for example, there are different levels of net neutrality. So for example Some types of service providers will charge more for a higher level of bandwidth or speed And some people say well, that's Discrimination you shouldn't be able to do that. Well that type of net neutrality that would prevent you from doing that kind of regulation of you know metering of Broadband is not that popular because people sort of realize that you should be able to get more broadband The more you pay for it or people that use it more should have to pay more But then there are other types like for example, let's say that I'm using 18 tu verse for my connection and I can purchase a telephone plan from them over my Data connection and if I use Skype, I can circumvent that so they could technically sniff the Skype bits And they could prevent that unless I want to pay for it or whatever So that would be they would so the type they would they would say Selectively be choosing the type of data that goes over your internet connection Yeah, or they'd be blocking it unless you pay a higher rate. So for example, there are some rumors that the new iPhone 5 that's supposedly coming out Which will have this FaceTime video connection Which goes over the data connections on the network. Yeah, which right now can only go over Wi-Fi Excuse me. We'll technically be able to go over the 3g or 4g connections over say AT&T But AT&T may require you to pay $10 a month extra for that connection And if you don't pay it then they will detect that connection and block it. So some people say they shouldn't be able to block it Now but but theoretically I mean I mean on a technical point something like FaceTime would use higher data Would use would use more data because it's video over Wi-Fi 3g if you use the first You know the first tier of objections to net neutrality and you assume that we're going to get over that that you can charge more for more data usage Then that would solve that problem because then AT&T could just you know charge you more for more data usage But they don't want to just do that. They want to do more. So the question is Should they be able to do that and you have this sort of two-tiered argument and one is the libertarian argument would be that private companies should be able to do whatever they want as long as they don't violate your rights and then it's just supply and demand and competition on the market and but then the sort of controlling argument would be that Well, these companies have a neom a quasi monopoly position. They shouldn't be able to abuse it So they can't discriminate they couldn't discriminate based upon type of data or the content for example let's suppose they were sniffing your data and They don't like your religious messages being shared with your friends even on email They could block that and so should the law prevent that? So that's one question, but then the reverse is Which is the the email or the blog post you and I started talking about There is an FCC ruling that would force these telecoms and data providers to Not block certain types of communications over their networks Even if the company disagrees with it like if it's you know racist or terrorist related or whatever And so their argument is that if they are forced by the government to Not block content that they don't want to carry then it's the same as forcing them to speak on these topics So it's a free speech violation Okay, that's the debate right now so because I think that I Because turning back the clock a little bit we have to look at I think what was going on with say cable networks or Telephones I mean theoretically were these types of arguments being made when telephones were first going across the United States Right. I mean would could a could a telephone company blot listen in on the conversation if they didn't like the conversation It was being held. I Mean did that issue even come up? I mean could a what a would you ever had a situation in say 1930 or 1940 or 1950 When telephones were being spread across the United States Did this discussion ever come up where? You know the the government was afraid that a telephone company would listen in on the conversation It was being had and they would blog they would hang up the phone Based on the conversation that two people were having but essentially that's the sort of the same I send an email which has religious content in within it. I Personally, I don't understand why a private company would would address that issue and then did that I think of course the reason why is because the government is trying to get them to there Or there's a reason for them to because the government, you know Incentives are pushing them to do that I think early on it was in its infancy and plus it was analog So right now everything's digital when it's analog it disappears. It's not recorded It's not searchable now things are digital There's they can be stored and they can be searched and you have NSA NSA wiretaps CIA wiretaps all over the place So you have this sort of merging or melding of the government with these private companies So, you know the problem is that the The government has created these companies that have a quasi oligopolistic Presence Right, and they don't have free market power They have more than free market power and that is true It is probably true that AT&T and these other companies would not have the size they do and the market would not be structured Like it is if the government hadn't been messing with the market for the last 50 years But but the solution to that is not to get the government to come in and impose more rules To sort of curtail the power of the monopolies that they've created is to get the government out of it Because the government has created the problem in the first place And if you think about it in the beginning the dawn of the radio era and say a hundred, you know, roughly a hundred years ago There were common law rights being developed in the FCC and in the radio spectrum This was developing naturally without government really involvement without central legislation But then in the US at least the FCC was created and they came in and they just monopolized the whole field And they said look we're gonna just Stop this organic spontaneous development of rules of who can transmit which which which you know signals on which Wavelength over which geographic region and the government just took it over Yeah, and now the government claims that they are the ones that have the right to grant this privilege for you to broadcast and If you do it, you have to pay a little fee and you have to comply by the FCC rules and they've extended this to the internet and To television and radio Yeah so well, but in terms of the internet there are no Within the United States and I know here within Canada. There aren't a lot of I know in Canada We have sort of like hate speech laws. Yes, right? I wish I don't believe you have in the United States I hate I hate speech laws Is that okay to say yeah, that's fine, that's fine, okay, so So but to some extent there aren't any laws describing what you can Publish on the internet, right? Beyond I guess intellectual property or copyright laws, which is which is a big caveat I mean that is becoming a huge issue. I Mean, yeah, I think think about so pa Pippa act I think there's a Canadian law professor Michael Geist who's been heroic. He's sort of been like the you know He's been the what's the Steffan cancella? No, no the Kim calm. I'm thinking that you know the Jewel the Julian sent the same, you know the guy with the white hair, you know Yeah, he's been the wiki leaks of this kind of stuff Yeah, yeah, he released the act of treaty and he's exposed the government machinations on these issues The the the intellectual property excuse has Been huge the government is using it to regulate the internet in a huge way So I agree you could say other than that there's no regulations, but that's a huge source of government regulation plus we have child pornography gambling Terrorism money laundering It's pretty huge the government has a lot of tools in their toolbox now that they can use as an excuse to regulate the internet To shut down specific websites and all that kind of just have their in terms of takedowns Have there been a lot of takedowns? There there have been hundreds or maybe thousands of takedowns like in the US alone You can find these Sites that you go to and you see this big seal this big ominous Nazi like seal, you know a big government I CE ice is taking it down immigration to custom enforcement taking the site down or some other some other federal agencies taking it down Yeah, it's horrible So we're not we're not like a pristine country. I don't know if we're the worst But a lot of countries are trying to censor what's going on the internet. Yeah, well well actually in fact I know in Australia they've actually started to put together. They're trying to actually restrict political speech Not only and essentially they they put in I had a conversation with a woman named Joanne Nova Who runs a blog see sort of a global warning being skeptic and also she's an advocate of sound money and It's very interesting. She's essentially in Austrian as well But she she actually said that the Australian government was trying to put in these laws that would say if you get something more than You know 1,000 hits a month then the government can come in and look look at what you're writing Yeah, I'm surprised because you know the government is bugged by all these decentralized Little blogs that are popping up because you can do whatever you want, right? And so they they want to find a way to classify you as something someone that is doing something that needs to be regulated right, so you're a journalist now or you're you know, you're You're you're someone they could they can regulate if you have a thousand hits we can regulate you Yeah, well, which is interesting because it's sort of funny where we're approaching this point And and I think this is interesting too because You know in the world you and I grew up in I mean I was you know born in the 1970s and whatnot We sort of entered into this world where say in Canada there was Bell Canada There was this sort of government agency that controlled all the phones, right? We grew up in this world where pretty much we had come to this point where everything was controlled by the government Right to some extent right like we have our own sort of Canadian broadcasting standards organization that would Sort of govern what was published on the airwaves of radio, right? and in a little while they struck they struck out at dire straits because Somebody complained about the word faggot being used. I heard about that. That's right Yeah money for nothing and chicks for free. I remember I think Pete Floyd's You know, we don't need no education song, right? was actually banned in Britain in the you know, 20 years ago because it you know, it cast aspersions upon the You know British industry and in my hometown of Baton Rouge, Louisiana when I was a kid I remember Monty Python's life of Brian Was banned from Baton Rouge by the district attorney Just on Christian grounds. I mean, I don't think they could get away with that now, but it was incredible So we had to wait two years for it to show up on the midnight movies Which is apparently dangerous now, you know Yeah, yeah, so So which is what is funny is though is is that we're seeing the system now where you and I sort of grew up in these These places where everything was controlled, but then sort of the the internet exploded and I think because it wasn't Classified by the government. They didn't know what to do with it. I agree and now You know 10 years for the last 10 years. I think they've really been trying to play catch-up. Yes with the internet Yes, I agree completely and And the worst nation of all is the US of course the most powerful and the most controlling and The most hypocritical because you'll have Hillary Clinton Saying that the America wants to defect, you know, but defend internet freedom while we're the country that is cracking down on all these uses of the internet for Exporting secrets and child pornography intellectual property Etc. Gambling so it's completely hypocritical. So yes, they are scrambling to try to find it and plus imposing taxes on it sales taxes other other kinds of taxes, so It's under it's under siege because it's a free enclave outside of the government's control largely But I think it will stay outside of the government's control because it's digital. It's a realm that they can't understand It's free. It's asynchronous. It's spontaneous decentralized and And there's encryption if you need it People don't know because it's inconvenient, but they will use it if they have to Well, what I also think is interesting is that What I think is what is sort of good about it is that it's come to the point where You know since late say 1995 to here to 2000 and 2012 It has so now dominated the economy that I think if they were really to try to shut it down You would seriously damage. Yeah, what is left of the functioning sort of capitalistic economy within the United States and even within the World, yes, I think I think they see that You know and because I have you know, I have friends who work in China You know friend of mine he lives in China for six months of the time working on various product developments And you know, there's this great firewall of China, right? But basically he said it's fairly easy if you're in China to get a VPN virtual private network, right and anybody who works in a company that has a VPN can access the entire Internet, right? completely unblocked right, I'll accept I Would agree with that except you have to tunnel to somewhere So you tunnel to the US, but if you're in the US, there's some I mean a friend of mine sent me a video from the BBC on the Olympics The other day and I couldn't watch it, right because So I've got to have a VPN back to you know UK or something. So no, but I agree. There's ways to get out Yes, yeah, well you have now things like tour You know, I mean like these anonymizer services and whatnot and to some extent I think that That the private organizations they don't necessarily They don't necessarily have the interest in really Trying to actually sniff every single packet. No, you know what I mean, right? They get they I mean if you would if you look at organization like, you know here in Canada We have Rogers say, you know Rogers or Bell communications or something like that And we we here in Canada also have that same situation where we had a you know, these virtual Especially is these virtual government sort of created monopolies over certain types of communication But to some extent I mean, you know, you know, their main business is providing Communications technology communications abilities to their customers, right? You know, they don't necessarily want to be involved in You know, it's you know creating the manpower creating the The technology necessary to sniff every single packet, right? That's not that that actually goes against their Their actual business interests, right? I agree. It's against their basic business model But they also live in a world where there's The government they have to please the please the local officials, right? So If the government insists they put in a sniffer or system They have to do it a calculation to decide whether it's worth it or not and too often they do I believe Yeah, and then so but but back to net neutrality Who was so who's sort of attacking so net neutrality is being passed or it's a bill That's being passed by the Congress or the Senate. I think it's an FCC rule that's being proposed So it's it's inside baseball. It's complicated, but So the FCC has a certain jurisdictional mandate because of given by congressional legislation and The the argument is whether they have ancillary jurisdiction to regulate things that are not quite given to them directly so and then the the secondary argument is whether Or maybe the primary argument is whether this rule whether it's Given to them or not the power to do it is constitutional in other words The primary argument of the Kato Institute and the tech freedom groups and the other amic e amic e parties on the on the brief is that For the federal government to tell a provider they have to allow certain content Would be number one a violation of freedom of speech because they're being forced to carry things they don't agree with Number two It's a taking under the fifth amendment in other words You're telling them how they can use their property or rather you're giving someone else of basically an easement Saying someone can use their pipes their cables Without the permission and you're not compensating them. So that's a taking a private property without compensation So there are two constitutional arguments that they're arguing. I have no idea whether they're gonna make it or not I think there are some chance they'll succeed but Given the history of regulation in this country. I'm not confident that they'll win Yeah, and what I also thought was interesting is that one of the I guess, you know quote-unquote the founders of the net I mean apart from Al Gore Obviously Was a man and he sort of was for net neutrality And I think I think we were we had a brief conversation with us talking about sort of utilitarian arguments about this I think it's ever I think it's vent surf and he's one of the founders of the IP TCP protocol that is a backbone of the internet and Yes, of course, so his opinion is that this is not a big deal the government has the right to come in and do this But I don't see the point. I mean so so what the opinion of one guy who's good in technology So he's a quasi socialist. So what I mean, so he's supposed to be an expert witness or on what's legitimate So I Just think he's wrong. I think he's he's he's value. He's he's he's estimating the things on ad hoc utilitarian considerations and he's assuming the government is there to help us and He's wrong. I mean the government is there to regulate us and to control us and I Think it is an affront to human dignity and Liberty and it is a threat to the most important tool humans have ever had to fight the government, which is the internet Mm-hmm. I mean it is communication and knowledge and awareness and being connected and spreading ideas That we can shine the light on these cockroaches that control us And that is why they want to shut it down or regulate it So I think this is the most important fight we have and so I disagree With anyone who thinks that the government has any role whatsoever Justified role in regulating the internet Yeah, the government should stay the hell out of it and leave us alone Yeah, well, and this is this is kind of interesting too because we're at this sort of turning point again You know goes back to the original printing press Yes, it goes back to the it's funny because it we're sort of reliving These fights all over again You know that happened when the first printing press was created when all of a sudden knowledge could be spread Yeah, yeah. Yes, you're and what happens The parallels are actually amazing because what's happening now is that the government is using intellectual property law primarily copyright As an excuse to censor speech on the internet Which is this tool that they fear and copyright arose from The reaction to the printing press in the first place The printing press arose and it was a big threat to the church and to the state because they didn't want people Reading things the government didn't control So the government, you know gave authority to these quasi authorized institutions the church did to the scribes, you know the And then the printing guild was established with the stationers guild And so basically you had the government and the church collaborating to establish a monopoly over who had the right to publish books And that is what copyright came from but what is a little bit perverse is that The reason that authors were in favor of copyright with the statute of Anne 1709 was that It was a way to give them the right to decide who got to publish their own works instead of the you know the printing guilds The authors could decide So they didn't want this right the copyright. They didn't want the right to prevent people from reading their works They wanted the right so that they would not have anyone else veto their right to publish their own damn books So If you think about it copyright was originally popular among artists because It liberated them from government control and censorship It liberated their works to spread them out to everyone And so nowadays copyright is being used to stop people from being reading what they want to read or publishing what they want to publish Interesting, but what wasn't the right of copy like the king would grant the right to copy a work? Yeah, yeah, or well, well That's more of a patent thing. So the king would grant like an exclusive monopoly over a given product in a given region The right to copy was more of a of a guild kind of thing In other words the scribes control that only this well, it wasn't easy to print these things out The scribes are doing and then the Gutenberg printing press came along right and so you would have these guilds would authorize I mean what books could come out? This is why you know Galileo had all of his problems Otherwise he I mean he was smuggling manuscripts out to people in Amsterdam and things like this so they can get get it out there um, so it was Uh, I'm sure the the crown had some influence over it, but it was more of a guild Control thing. What do we want people to hear? Okay, and now we we have that same issue today with I guess I guess a place like WikiLeaks or something like that. Why do people not have the right to view certain materials Right, and so the so the government comes over that, you know, the government has been forced to recognize that people have this Right to freedom of the press or right to freedom of speech Or right to freedom of religion or right to conscience They recognize this in abstract, but they come up with all these exceptions, right? Like if there is national security on the line or if there's copyright being violated, etc Or if there's child pornography or if there's being crimes being advocated So they have all these exceptions that give them the right to come in and say well There's no freedom of expression here And so, you know, uh Yeah, well, it was kim.com site the guy in uh in new zealand or australia. It was a mega mega upload, right? Yeah, just shut down. Let me just This is I think it was new zealand Yeah, it was news. He was well, I think his servers were in hong kong And he lived in new zealand, but then I guess new zealand police or whoever went to his compound No, but that's the point. It wasn't new zealand police. It was like this huge operation of like 49 You know personnel most of which were american like fbi Hong Kong people and some local in some some local new zealand bootlickers And uh, they invaded this guy's estate And I mean look, there's this guy richard wire, which is a horrible case this this english college student Who's being extradited to the united states by the british courts? On criminal fines for having a website in england that was legal under english law british law Um because it had links Links to other sites that had copyrighted material stored on them So this guy may be he may lose his his life His whole education is going to be ruined. You know, maybe go to jail in the us For having a website in england. So these laws are being used in a police state fashion. It's it's truly horrific Yeah, as I understand the canadian government itself had uh, I think also incorporated one of these things Uh, which would include links to copyrighted material, which of course basically, um Which enables them to get you to just about just just about makes everyone a criminal Well, not only that it's it means that a court case Discussing this would be criminal because you know, you have to Put in your court pleadings the links You have to explain what the crime is, right? You have to get evidence So that means in the public record there's so the public record is now A criminal accomplice to this because you're explaining How to do this so, um It's totally hypocritical Yeah, well, well from a from a broad perspective, um, you know, I think a friend of mine Uh, pre-drag ratsik. He said he grew up in uh, uslavia and he said there was a saying for everyone. There was a law um, you know, and uh You know here in here in ontario our official Highway speed is 100 kilometers an hour, right the average the average speed is let's say 117 Kilometers an hour or something like that. What what's your? Oh Well, yeah, no, well it is. Yeah, no, it's nothing. What's your average speed? Close to 120 I'd say there you go But that's what it is, right? I mean everybody the average speed is 120, but when everyone drives 120 That means that any Individual can be pulled over at any reason, right? You know, they're the the basic reason is that you were breaking the speed limit Um, but the the real reason might be something else Yeah, it gives the cops discretion to pull over whoever they want and then they can use that as a pretense Yeah, and that was the class that was a classic, um Uh, there's the book. I guess it came out a couple years ago in the united states called three felonies a day Where it describes the idea that uh, pretty much every american is committing three felonies a day whether they know it or not I I should be surprised if that's I mean that seems Look, I've read studies. Um, if you just look at copyright alone There's a study by civil law professors Which estimates the average amount of fines that the average person Who uses the internet on a daily basis like you and I do How much Are you liable for under copyright law and it's like four billion dollars a year a year per person Literally and that's just the civil penalties god knows what the the criminal penalties are so I agree with you that these laws Um, look, there's a great book a classic book by bruno by bruno leone you call freedom in the law I don't know if you read it, but um Back in the 50s or 60s from italy and this guy's talking about how when you have Legislation this is basically the problem is the idea of legislation The idea that we make law by a group of people just pronouncing edicts And that becomes the law. It's totally artificial. It could be anything that they say And when you have that way of making law as opposed to the common law Or a decentralized or a spontaneous Or a traditional or a custom based or a natural way of making law You just have a group of people who can announce what the law is which is what legislation is Then you have Um a proliferation of laws You have so many laws that no one can avoid being a law breaker He talks about this in his book about how Not only is the danger that the government now has the power to pick and choose and you know Focus on whoever they want because everyone's a law breaker now Right, but not only that but the entire idea of being a law abiding citizen becomes discredited I mean everyone starts laughing at it in private because they know it's bullshit Yeah, right because they know that if you're a law breaker All it means is you broke a law that the government said you shouldn't break it doesn't mean you're a bad person Where it's in the old system law tends to be correlated with being bad I mean worth being good or bad, right? I mean if you're a law breaker, you're evil or you're wrong or you're bad. You're dangerous Um, so the entire idea of the government Legislating law is really the fundamental problem here Mm-hmm. Well, yeah, I mean and for myself. I mean from a very early age I think I think that's what me that's what made me sort of like Either disrespect the law to some extent or or just understand that it really was a farce You know what I mean for the very fact that you're a you're a teenager and you're smoking pot Right. Yeah, the rules are arbitrary right or statutory rape like if you're 17 If you're 18 years old and you have a 17 year old girlfriend or 16 and you have sex then you're statutory rapist Where's your where's your warrant a month before? Yeah, or even something I think to some extent I think in in you know, sort of american history and canadian history I think the most obvious one was Alcohol, yes, you know alcohol prohibition. Yeah, which was just you know, it's just ridiculous Yeah, like just on it's on this ball face and this is why sometimes I call America Iran light Yeah. Yeah. No, I agree. It's insane You know like literally like like honestly like the idea and this is what I would say to people I said imagine, you know 70 years ago Or 80 years ago that alcohol actually was illegal No, well, imagine Right now marijuana is illegal. That's that's the point even in canada Yeah, absolutely. So, I mean, I agree. It seems like barbaric time is people think of america and you know The western hemispheres is and you're you know western the west basically is this enlightened sophisticated your you know society but We had a civil war here that killed 500 000 people Right. We had slavery here We nuked japan Yeah, I mean and I say we I don't want to join myself in the we but the americans did this Um, they the american well the american ruling class whatever you want to define They put the japanese americans in concentration camps Yeah, right and and we had prohibition. It was ridiculous and everyone forgets this Yeah, they just forget it. They think oh, no, that's all in the past. It's the old days And yet we still have three million seven million people in jail today For from for drug crimes. It's it's obscene Yeah, well, that's that's what I sort of said. I said well, I I thought the one the one uh, the one Sort of positive point was somebody I guess the new yorker had had sort of a piece where said, you know There's more there's more people in american prisons today than there was in the soviet gulags, but You know to be fair in the soviet gulags. They were executing them on a regular basis. So, you know So the so the roll through in soviet gulags was a lot more The american prison system, but yeah, no, I fully agree with you So I guess the question is when are you leaving the united states of america? Tell me a better place to go to I've heard singapore is pretty good. Yeah, you know, I'm looking around we'll see we'll see I'm not stuck here. You know, I'm from Louisiana and I live in houston now and houston actually just got voted the coolest city in america by forbes Right, which is not is it's the total nonsense, but Yeah, uh, I happen to live here now. I have a career here and people say, how do you like houston? I say, yeah, it's a place to live Yeah, I mean i'm not stuck here. I don't I don't love it. It's just a place to live and I actually view the us like that Yeah, and I view the west like that. I mean, it's just a place to live, but they have their hooks in you um But you know, I'll get out if I can when I when the time is right. We'll see Yeah, for sure. Well, I'll tell you um to be honest, we don't really enforce our marijuana laws all that much here in canada so uh well, you know That's something Yeah, yeah, I know it's uh, but I hear you have a hell of a waiting time for hip replacements Yeah, well, but of course you you can't leave, uh, you know, you can you can smoke marijuana while you're waiting 18 months for your hip replacement surgery Yeah, yeah, but but you're free to you're free to leave the country to get a hip replacement There you go So as long as you view the world as this sort of like this is one sort of one world government You know, there's there's lesser jurisdictions of uh of pain and greater jurisdictions of pain true true, but um But yeah, so net neutrality, uh, I guess is there anything you want to sum up Is there is there any particular point of view you had from I would say that The the the basic idea is that you cannot side with the government Which has created the problems in the first place to solve these problems the fundamental free free market position is that you have to Get the government out of it as much as possible and let competition operate Yeah, well that and and just to sum up. I mean there was there was an interesting fight a little while ago here in canada because um What what is what is actually kind of interesting is that we had a we had basically a government monopoly on phone service Right, so there's bell canada, which was you know owned by the canadian government and provided phone service across Across canada and in the 1990s. They actually started liberalizing it, right? We started first. We started to allow other other organizations to um Sort of use and and this was and this is the interesting thing about Um and and just actually to sort of touch on another point Because when you when you've got these situations where the government says created a monopoly And this was sort of the problem in the old soviet union, right? How do you unwind this situation? Right, right and and the thing that the uh that the canadian government had done Um was they would say okay Okay, we've got this government monopoly system of of phone lines, right? And so they said okay, we've created this problem. We're gonna help solve it And so what we're in part of what we're gonna do is we're gonna allow We're gonna force this essentially government company to rent out its lines To other companies at a certain rate right for a certain period of time In order that they can actually get to the point where they can compete, right? Right and and they actually had that here and and and most recently what they've been doing is now they've been doing it and and of course With cable we had the same problem, right? Where certain companies were granted monopolies over certain geographical areas And uh and we had this issue recently where the government was going to repeal this system where Um say rogers or bell would be providing Bandwidth for internet service, but then the government would force Other companies would force them to provide other companies with bandwidth at a price lower than the market rate And then they would then charge and the idea was that these companies would eventually gain enough capital that they would either install their own lines Or be able to compete Uh and you know 10 day 10 years down the line the government's going to repeal it and To my mind I had some problems with it right because I sort of had this issue where Okay, well imagine if there's a uh a gas, you know, there's a there's a gas company, right? That provides gasoline to cars And they have a filling station and then the government forces them to take one of their filling stops and Forces them to sell the gasoline that's in that filling stop that one little thing To somebody at a price lower and then they can then undercut the price of the person who originally had to rent Who had to originally sell that gas to them, right? You know what I mean? And That law was about to be repealed and it'd been a number of years So these companies could have had a chance they would have had a real chance to actually produce you know to actually save some capital and invest and whatnot and And I sort of said well listen, I mean At a certain point why should these companies have to Be why should these companies be forced to provide this bandwidth at a lower price? Do you have any thoughts on that whole like it's sort of a problem of how do you unwind these government monopolies? I mean we actually have Things like that here in the u.s. Uh with energy for example energy electricity companies, you know, I mean this is common with these Public utilities that the government right look the way to unwind it. I mean Murray Rothbard's written on this before for new liberty and I think ethics of liberty If you really want to unwind it you just privatize it and the way to privatize it Actually, the argument is that it doesn't matter how you privatize it. Just get it out of the government's hands But I don't think these are serious privatization plans. I mean The right way to do it is just to give it up to the private market somehow Auction it off give it to the current people using it. It doesn't matter But just let it go and even though there will be a quasi monopoly for a few years because you help to set it up Just get the hell out of the way and stop making the problem worse There is no way you can look my view is i'm very cynical Or realistic whatever you call it the government is good at only two things destruction And propaganda I used to believe they're good at destruction only but they're actually good at propaganda because If they weren't good at propaganda, they wouldn't exist Yeah, because they delude people into believing that they're necessary Right. So the government is only good at destroying things and propagandizing people That's it. That that means they're not good at deregulating things or not good at setting up the new alternatives They're not good at privatizing. They're not good at anything. So get out of it as soon as possible The problem is the government So I would say whatever strategy you can come up with where you get the government out of it as soon as possible And just let the free market finally Reassert itself even if it takes 10 20 years for these Monopolies to kind of lose their power and reorganize and merge and split up or whatever Just do that Yeah, okay Okay, thank you very much to then um or stephen I should say Uh, this has been very enjoyable. It's uh, it's been a little while since we've chatted But I think we're gonna do this again. Absolutely. Yeah, anytime you want to visit Toronto come on up I'd like to do it. Okay. Thanks again. Thanks Rodman. Okay. Bye. Bye