 It's an honor and a privilege and a pleasure to be here among some very heavy weights and I'm just delighted to be here with you all. The title of my talk is War, Peace and Statism and for those of you who are paying attention you'll note that I took this from War, Peace and the State by Murray Rothbard which is a gem of a short article. I used to be an anarchist before I read this and now I believe that the government should exist and it should have one purpose to force everyone to read this article. Murray starts with a non-aggression principle which I regard as the bedrock of libertarianism. Keep your midst to yourself. Don't grab other people or their property without their permission. I mean if you ask the next hundred people driving by the highway, do you agree with that? They'd say yes. I mean most people aren't favoring murder and rape and theft and fraud and stuff like that. The difference between the average person and Murray Rothbard and us libertarians is that we mean it seriously and we apply it to everything not just to other people but to government as well. Murray says in this magnificent article, War, Peace and the State, that you can use violence for defense only when not pacifists or some people are pacifists but you don't need to be a pacifist. There's nothing wrong with violence in response to or in retaliation or in defense against the prior initiation of violence. And you also need a theory of private property rights because if I come down there and grab your shoes, have I committed violence or not? It depends upon whether you're the rightful owner of your shoes. If you stole them from me yesterday and I'm grabbing them from you today then you're the bad guy, I'm the good guy. And for that we have the Lockean, Rothbardian, Hoppean theory of homesteading and a legitimate title transfer theory that any property title is justified if it can be traced either to homesteading or to voluntary interactions such as buying and selling and renting and gambling and gifts and things like that. Murray says that if A attacks B, B may fight back against A but he can't go through C to get at A because C is an innocent person. Murray says that rifles, pistols, spears, things like that are legitimate weapons because they can be pinpointed against guilty people. Now they're not always used in a proper way but they can be used in a proper way whereas nuclear bombs, atom bombs, things like that can't be pinpointed through the guilty and therefore they are per se out of keeping with libertarian theory. He says it's now time to bring the state into our discussion, it's not just A and B and C but there's a government and he says that any other group that would attacks people we would know what it is, it's theft. The idea here is that the government is not a legitimate institution, it's not a taxes are not equivalent to golf club dues, you want to join the golf club fine you have to pay taxes or dues to the golf club or the tennis club fine but you agree to be part of it. But who of us agree to be part of this club called the United States government? None of us did. Therefore when they come after us demanding money from us this is highly improper. What he says is that possibly intrastate war can be legitimate as in the case of revolution because nobody's going to use an atom bomb intrastate because you know we all live in the state but interstate war is highly problematic. Here's a quote from him, all state wars therefore involved increased aggression against the state's own taxpayers and almost all state wars all in modern warfare involved the maximum aggression murder against innocent civilians ruled by the enemy state. On the other hand revolutions are generally financed voluntarily and may possibly pinpoint their violence to the state rulers and private conflicts may confine their violence to the actual criminals libertarian must therefore conclude that while some revolutions and some private conflicts may be legitimate state wars always to be condemned. Now I could go on explaining and summarizing this article but what I'd like to do instead is to defend the Rothbardian vision against a person that I think is not a straw man but a good critic of Rothbard and it's Stephen Pinker and here's his book Stephen Pinker the better angels of our nature why violence has declined. Before I go into it I want to build him up so that no one will accuse me of dealing with a straw man. I have a personal liking for this guy first of all he was I won't say the only one but a preeminent person who defended Larry Summers President of Harvard when Larry Summers postulated that possibly the over representation of men in things like physics, chemistry, mathematics is due to biological background. This is anathema you're not supposed to say this he lost his job for that one of the MIT professors in math said this made her sick to her stomach all I can say is lady if you get sick to your stomach with ideas maybe you shouldn't be a college professor but also I have a personal debt of gratitude to him in his class that he co-tort with Dershowitz he used my book defending the undefendable which is a feather in my cap but defending the undefendable gets to Harvard. The third one is I'm a big sociobiologist or a fan of it and he is a contributed to this theory. Let me build him up a little bit more he was named as one of Time magazine's 100 most influential scientists and thinkers in the world in 2004 and one of prospect and foreign policies 100 top public intellectuals in 2005 and 2008 and I've got a whole paragraph of all the awards that he's won you don't get to be an eminent Harvard professor without winning some awards his books of language instinct how the mind works words and rules the blank slate the stuff of thought plus this book I in my view Stephen Pinker is at least the intellectual equal of other critics of Rothbardianism such as Robert Nozick, Richard Epstein, Milton Friedman, James Buchanan, Gordon Tulloch, Ronald Coase so I've now built him up let me take each of his thesis in turn and say why I disagree with it first of all the first thesis is that death due to violence is less in modern times than it was in earlier times we're living in a more peaceful society where fewer people are killed more innocent people live a full life than ever before and what he's got and and what what he does is he does it per capita he looks at numbers of deaths and when I first read this thesis I thought you know surely this guy is you know using some controlled substances because you know World War one World War two Mao Zedong Stalin Hitler the boys you know they killed masses of numbers of people but what he does and this is brilliant what he does is he does it per capita per capita on the basis of the world's population so what he's got here let me see if I can do this can everyone see that in the back okay what he's got is he takes the second world war 55,000 55 million people were killed in that but it's only the ninth worst episode in human history in terms of numbers of deaths the mayors a dong in the 20th century what I did is I underlined the 20th century and Mayo Mayo and the midi slave trade number nine down here and First World War 20th Russian Civil War mass numbers of people were killed during those times but if you look at what I've circled what I've circled is the Ann Lucian revolted the 8th century where only 36 million people were killed but that's the the number one in terms of divided by the world's population in other words there were very few people in the 8th century and therefore a modest amount of killing pardon me for saying that doesn't really rise to the 4 and if you look at the 20th century things it's the 9th place the 11th place very low levels of killing compared to earlier years when the number of killings per population was much higher so that's an interesting theory and let me give you another insight as to how he deals with this relativist stuff take the case of drones the drones that kill people I'm reading from something that was just on new Rockwell on October 22nd CIA chiefs face arrest over horrific evidence of bloody video game sorties by drone pilots and the quote goes as follows the mail on Sunday today reveals shocking new evidence of the full horrific impact of US drone attacks on Pakistan the damning dossier assembled from exhaustive research into the strike's target set out in heartbreaking detail the deaths of teachers students Pakistani policemen it also describes how bereaved relatives are forced to gather their loved ones dismembered body parts in the aftermath of strikes how does our man Pinker deal with this he deals with it in a very different way and in my view he deals with it in an intelligent way namely he's a worthy opponent we got a smash this guy but but he's a worthy opponent here's what he says it's actually a quote from someone else that he's supporting quote where an army previously would have blasted its way into the militants hideouts killing and displacing civilians by the tens of thousands as it went and then ultimately reducing whole towns and villages to rubble with inaccurate artillery and early aerial bombing in order to get at a few enemy fighters now a drone flies in and let's fly a single missile against the single house when the loadings are gathered yes sometimes such attacks hit the wrong house but by any historical comparison the rate of civilian deaths has fallen dramatically that's a continuing thesis of his book so far has this trend come and so much do we take it for granted that a single errant missile that killed 10 civilians in Afghanistan was front page news in February 2010 this event a terrible tragedy in itself nonetheless was an exception to a low overall rate of harm to civilians in the middle of a major military offensive one of the largest in eight years of war yet these 10 deaths brought the US military commander in Afghanistan to offer a profuse apology to the president of Afghanistan and the world news media play up this event as a major development in the offensive so what he's saying he's certainly not favoring drones but he is saying compared to the previous way that we go in and get the bad guys the drones are surgical precision instruments whereas the old way we just bomb everyone and it's got a certain low cunning I mean you have to give this guy credit okay the the second thesis of of pinker is something that Rothbard would be turning over in his gray that pinker is a Hobbes in and he says that the reason for the diminution in deaths relatively speaking and he goes into per 100,000 people per year the reason for the diminution of deaths there's two things that Murray Rothbard stood for square against one was democracy in the other was the state so what pinker is saying is that the reason for these reduced deaths the first thesis is democracy and the government and you can imagine what Rothbard would have thought about that okay now for my criticism of pinker first of all he does not confront libertarian critics this book is about 900 pages no it's only about 800 pages a very small print it's a very intense scholarly book it has about 900 citations to the literature I didn't count them all but it was 30 pages on the average page with 30 so 30 times 30 is 900 900 citations he had a in a bibliography he had nineteen hundred and fifty five footnotes and this was added easy to count because I just added up the end of the footnotes at each chapter and they were four for his introduction and 55 82 182 162 257 291 308 298 293 and 23 for his last chapter nineteen hundred and fifty five footnotes and yet he mentioned the virtues of democracy scores of times democracy we're always democracy is great democracy is wonderful does he have room to even mention Hans Hoppe's magnificent book democracy the god that failed the economics and politics of monarchy no he know where it mentions that that's not the the work of a reasonable scholar and he does mention libertarianism and he actually accurately understands libertarianism but he doesn't mention Hans magnificent book he mentions the evils of anarchy scores of times let me just read one very quick one sort of a throwaway line to be this is on page 266 to be sure the American led wars in Afghanistan Iraq in the first decade of the 21st century showed the country is far from reluctant to go to war but even they are nothing like the wars of the past in both conflicts the interstate war phase was quick and by historical standards low in battle deaths most of the deaths in Iraq were caused by the intercommunal violence in the anarchy that followed I mean it's just sort of a throwaway line I remember Buchanan I once invited him to speak at Loyola University by the way let me put in a plug for Loyola University five out of five ecomics people are all free market Austrian people so if you have children or grandchildren sent them to us we discussed Marxism and Keynesianism too but we criticize it whereas at most places they just give them Marxism and Keynesianism and you know in our sociology department we have the you know the usual pinko so they won't be bereft of that if they come so send your kids down he mentions evils of anarchy scores of times can you find the name Rothbard in his book no I mean Murray Rothbard is the Dean of of laissez-faire capitalist anarchy or anarcho-capitalism and he has no room to even mention him now I wouldn't mind if he mentioned Hoppe and Murray and criticize them fine that's fair game but to just ignore him it's in Yiddish there's a word shvaha crap I mean that this is this is this is not kosher this is and pinkers Jewish as am I as was Murray so we can use these words I guess that this is not good scholarly behavior the third one he mentions the Wild Wild West in the US dozens of times I'm not going to read any take it for me he mentions it all over the place there was an article by Terry Anderson and Peter PJ Hill in the journal libertarian studies quote the title an American experiment in anarcho-capitalism the not so wild Wild West which is a 180 degree contradiction to what he's saying does he mention this does he say why Anderson and Hill were wrong no he just sort of ignores it that's that's not cool another problem I have with him is he doesn't like our man Adolf okay fine I don't like Adolf either but he keeps supporting democracy and Adolf Hitler came to power through a democratic process Dagnabbit I mean it wasn't a coup d'etat Hitler didn't come to power through a coup d'etat it was a complex thing where he didn't have a majority had a plurality it was a complicated thing in 1936 I guess it was when he took over but that was a democracy Germany was a democracy and he keeps talking about how great democracy is and he keeps putting the deaths in the bad in the bad group and he merrily goes along saying democracy is great well if democracy is so great you got to put Hitler on the other side of the ledger he doesn't that I think is problematic it's not that he has his thumb on the balance he's got his elbow on it Peter just mentioned before me Peter Klein mentioned the interstate highways do you know how many people die in the interstate highways or all the highways the government highways the socialist government highways it's around 40,000 a year for many years it was 40 it was 38 36 if you take 100 years of that you get 4 million people roughly which would be equivalent to the Napoleonic Wars 4 million people died there just that alone would be equivalent to the Napoleonic Wars does he count highway deaths give me a break of course he doesn't count highway deaths I have a book out on that it's a very lovely book it's for sale go get it it's also available for free on the web thanks to the Mies Institute which does that sort of a thing and what it does is says that you know we could have private highways and if we had private competitive highways people would compete among other things as to how to reduce deaths you know maybe for example the problem with highways is not speed maybe it's the variation in speed who knows but when you have one rule of the road emanating from Washington DC you don't have the I-10 or the I-55 corporation making slightly different rules so that we could see which way will reduce deaths more you just don't have that another one of my favorite things to say is that the government is responsible for everything bad for example hurricanes we just had Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans and I was roundly condemning the government how because they take half the GDP and they frown away on wasteful things and as Peter was talking about alternative costs or opportunities foregone if we had that half of the GDP back maybe we would have solved hurricanes who knows now this is speculative we can't tell for sure but it's entirely possible cure for cancer well if we had half the GDP back maybe we wouldn't have to have these pink ribbon things for breast cancer or other things like that maybe we could solve that problem speculative we don't know I can't say we would have but we would have had a shot at it whereas now they take half the GDP and waste it the FDA the food and drug administration kills people on a massive scale now there are two kinds of errors that they make first is the full of my kind of error they allow a bad medicine through and in the case of full of my it didn't kill people but it created birth defects but they were stung by that and now they create the opposite kind of error namely not allowing good drugs to get through the estimates are it costs I don't know 800 billion dollars to get a new drug through and it takes 15 years there's this guy Sam Peltzman who I'm not a big fan of since he's University of Chicago type economist but on this he's magnificent and what he does is estimates the number of people killed by the FDA not allowing drugs to get through I mean how can the FDA help all it does is it prevents things what the FDA could do if it had any any sense of morality would say well we don't approve of that but if you do it you're on your own I mean there are people on their deathbeds and they want to try some drug apricot pits God knows what and the FDA said well you haven't proved that it's beneficial and you haven't had these tests for 22 years therefore we're not going to allow you to throw the dice for your own life that's despicable does my man pinker does he talk about the FDA that's no he doesn't talk about that and yet there are estimates that something like what is it done 10 doubt no 80,000 deaths there are various measures Peltzman and others are measuring how many people die as a result of the FDA and it's into the tens of thousands there's another one markets and use body parts this one I don't know why it concerns me but it really does you're not allowed to have a market in kidneys in in hearts and livers and blood and eyes and in all sorts of things why because you know it's evil to have markets I mean it's okay to give but you can't give for money because money is evil so as a result this really infuriates the economist in me because you have people going to their graves taking perfectly good body parts with them and other people are dying over here because they can't get those body parts and then the these doctors are making rules as to you know who can get them well if you smoke you can't get or if you're too old you can't get them and they have all sorts of rules if you vote Republican you can't know I'm kidding about that you know what they call motorcycles donor mobiles what are they called motorcycles donor mobiles because the people that ride them are usually 22 now I'm 71 so my my innards aren't gonna be lasting too long you don't really want my innards you want somebody and especially if an old person dies of some sort of debilitating disease then all of his organs are you know compromised but you get a 22 year old kid on a motorcycle who smacks up and now he's got perfectly good organs but you can't get them because he couldn't sign a contract my time's up you run okay well I I guess Peter is bigger than me so he's gonna pull me off the stage thanks for your attention