 This is Free Talk Live. It's your show and you can take control of the airwaves via our toll-free number 1-800-259-9231. That is the Seychelles CAI toll-free line. That's 800-259-9231. It's Ian here with you. And Julia. And Mark. You can join us online. FreeTalkLive.com is the place to go. The features on our site, we give them away. So enjoy those on us. That is FreeTalkLive.com. On the way, I promised we would talk a little bit more about intellectual property. That's coming up perhaps maybe global warming and of course anything you want to bring up. Let's go right to the phones to start things out. AmplifierLine and Will in Hawaii. You're on FreeTalk Live. Will. Hey, I have a couple things I'd like to talk about. First is a brief story and then I have a hypothetical scenario. Great. Okay. The first thing, the story, my wife was recently going through some of her old high school notes and note cards from government high school. She's been out for a little while. And she came across a note card that had a definition of anarchy. Do you have any guess what it was? Oh boy. Lawless bomb throwers? That's what I was expecting when she asked me, but this is going to blow your mind. It says anarchy is the abolition of government as a necessary precondition for a free and just society. Interesting. Wow. Unexpectedly refreshingly honest. Yeah, that's what I thought. Very good. All right, I'll share that with you. Okay, and then the second thing was, I think it's probably a couple weeks ago now on the show where you had mentioned that one time when you were in North Bergen, New Jersey, you almost got killed by some guys. Well, I don't know if I almost got killed, but I was chased down some one-way streets by some scary looking guys in an SUV. The analogy you used was almost get killed. That's how I felt at that time. Well, anyway, that got me thinking. Is my understanding, I think, based on what you said on previous shows, that if you died, then Julia would inherit the, quote unquote, intellectual property of free talk lives? I guess. I mean, I don't think we've ever discussed that. I think Mark should inherit the intellectual property of free talk lives. He's put in his dues. Julia, she's a Johnny come lately here. Who stayed after the Liberty Forum to help like an hour clean up while you went to party with Ron Paul, huh? Hey, I brought you a damn sandwich at the Liberty Forum. I don't want to hear crap about you. I brought my own sandwich. I brought you the sandwich. I drove it here from Keen. And nobody else ate it. So what was your question? Well, I'm sorry. Yeah, so anyway, with that, you know, whatever the fess of that was, and of course, Mark's the main co-host. My question is for Mark and Julia. What would you guys do if Ian met an untimely death as far as the show with co-host and the format of the show? And of course, you'd probably have to make a fairly quick decision. What would you guys do? Let me jump in. First off, I don't think Julia can manage to make it on what Ian makes it on as far as pay. So she'd have to keep her full-time job currently, which would preclude her from being able to do some of the things that Ian's able to do. However, I'm the only one who knows how to run the show, so you need to get me and my notes to be able to do a show the next day. At the very least, I would have to, you know, pay Julia to run the board for a little while. But, you know, I really like Gardner, and he holds Ian's, you know, political views without being, well, I don't know, weird. And he doesn't, you know, antagonize the callers nearly as much. But, you know, Gardner's pretty good, and I probably would, you know, try to get him on as much as possible, too. And we'd have Julia on a regular basis, but that's probably what we would do. Gardner's a very talented broadcaster. So would you try to take over the role as, I guess, Ian's role now as the announcer of whatever you call it, or would you get other people to do that? I don't know. I like sitting in the Ed McMahon chair here. You know, I've always done radio sales. I'm comfortable doing radio sales. I'm happy doing radio sales, and that's the part of the show that I really enjoy doing, the intros, the extras, and all the other things that Ian does. But you, the myriad of things that go unseen that Ian does as far as putting the show online and all that other stuff, I have no interest in doing. If it was up to Mark Edge, Free Talk Live would have not gotten to where it is. It's true. There you go. Well, any other thoughts? Yeah. Well, yeah, I guess, of course, Gardner, you know, could do that, all that stuff, but, you know, he has his own show now. Well, Julia would have to do part of it. She would have to put it on. She would have to bargain with me. I've got the key here. I'm the only one who knows how to run the boards. True. She's holding the cards. Okay, I guess that's it. I just was curious about that. Yes, we have a contingency plan. There you go. Well, thanks for the call. We appreciate it. We just made one up right now. 800-259-9231. Apparently, the contingency plan is I kiss Julia's butt. It's a nice book to kiss. I'm reasonable. No, I'm like, I should be so lucky. 1-800-259-9231. Let's talk about the idea, the concept of intellectual property. We touched on it last night, of course. Mark, you sort of, you know, you're with me on some things. Like, you're not really a huge fan of patents, but you can see some reasons for them. You think that patents, for instance, help with innovation, but at the same time, you also understand that they can be used by lawyers to steal ideas or to rip off inventors and sit on their ideas. You acknowledge some problems with the existing patents. Sure. Would that be correct? Yes. And then, of course, intellectual property is more than just patents. It also includes copyrights, and I'm sure there's some other stuff that I'm not thinking of right now. So if you're, you know, you're certainly welcome to comment on this, but I've got it. Finally, Robert down in Georgia sent me this link. And it's great because it's by Steven Kinsella, who is sort of the libertarian scholarly expert when it comes to intellectual property. This guy, at one time I found a 50-page long PDF file about intellectual property and just, you know, it's with citations and very, very sort of scholarly sort of file, right, information. And I trudged through as much of it as I could. I just don't have, I really just didn't have time, or I didn't want to make the time to read all 50-something pages. But I read some of it. It was very, very good, very good information, obviously way too long to be read on the air. So this one, and that scholarly stuff is just not airworthy. Yeah. This one is a little bit more, a little more mass market, a little more understandable, and a lot shorter. So he pretty much boils down his 50 pages into a few paragraphs. And I want to share that with you because it's, it's, this is an issue that divides libertarians. You know, we talk about liberty-oriented topics on this show a lot, and in many cases, we agree. You know, we certainly agree that getting the government out of our lives as much as possible is a desirable thing. And we agree on a lot of issues. But on some issues libertarians are just rabid at one another, you know, at one another over, like abortion is one of them. And obviously I don't want to go there today. No, we're talking about intellectual property. But intellectual property is another one. And it's certainly a more, well, intellectual discussion. It covers a lot of areas of life as far as, you know, products and services and that sort of thing. And a lot of people that are producing what they consider intellectual property, maybe artists or musicians, are very, very concerned and rightfully so about this issue. So it resonates. Now, what I'm interested in finding is a libertarian. And I mean a libertarian, a small government libertarian, somebody who believes that the government has a role or is necessary or something like that, that envisions the perfect world containing some sort of small government. I'm interested in finding that libertarian that believes that intellectual property is wrong and immoral and all that other stuff. Because it seems to me that the ANCAPs or the anarcho capitalists or the free marketeers, whatever term you wish to use, the people that don't believe in a government at all, have sort of co-opted the, you know, they realize that intellectual property is an important issue. So they believe that because they don't believe in government, they don't believe in intellectual property. It's not the other way around. Generally. That's just what I'm generally seeing. So I'm interested in hearing from a small government libertarian that does not, not an ANCAP posing as a small libertarian, small government libertarian, but in fact a small government libertarian that doesn't believe in intellectual property. I'll tell you what I do. I'll see if I can pull up a bio for Stephen Consilla to find out what his belief system is. I don't know what it is. Well, if it's on the internet, he's probably not wanting to be labeled as an anarcho capitalist, so he is... Who knows? I mean, many scholarly types could care less what they're labeled as. That's true. And so we'll definitely get into this here. And I came to the conclusion through that manner that you suggested, Mark, that, you know, I've already dispensed with the idea of government. It's just a matter of figuring out how to get from here to there, basically. And so when the topic of intellectual property came up, I knew that I couldn't support government monopoly privilege because you didn't believe in government or copyrights. And so I support the marketplace deciding. And what does that mean? Well, I don't know. It's up to the marketplace. Will the marketplace be able to come up with revolutionary ways to protect ideas? Perhaps so. Or are we throwing out babies with bath water? Or are we giving lawyers the ability to take people's ideas and profit from them? More on the way. It's Free Talk Live. This is Free Talk Live, your show. You bring up anything. The toll-free number is 1-800-259-9231. CICL-C-A-I toll-free line. That's 800-259-9231. It is Ian here with you. And Julia. And Mark. And you can join us online at freetalklive.com. All the features on the site we give away. So enjoy those on us. And that, again, is freetalklive.com. And those features include the Wiki over 1,400 pages created by listeners just like you. You can get interactive for free, of course. Go to wiki.freetalklive.com. And that's wiki.freetalklive.com. Free Talk Live is brought to you by the Free State Project. Your only choice for more personal freedom and smaller, less intrusive government. To learn more about joining the Second American Revolution, go to freestateproject.org. That's freestateproject.org. Okay, Stephen Kinsela, or Kinsela, rather, is the author of a lot of stuff about intellectual property. He's really done his research. According to Wikipedia, he's an American intellectual property lawyer. So he's actually in the business. And libertarian legal theorist, his electronically published works are primarily published in his blog and websites associated with the Ludwig von Mises Institute and anarcho-capitalist organizations. So he's a practicing attorney and blah, blah, blah. So it doesn't really specifically say here if he is or is not an anarcho-capitalist, but one could certainly presume as such. I'm going to go ahead and draw that conclusion. I think it's a safe presumption at this point. So from StevenKinsela.com, the question is, do patents and copyrights undermine private property? And the answer is yes. They're a burden to marketplace transactions and they discourage business startups. Because one of the common arguments you'll hear, and he'll address it in here, one of the common arguments you'll hear is that, well, without intellectual property laws, no one will do research and development. And therefore, no new ideas will come out or very few new ideas will come out because they'll be afraid of somebody ripping out their ideas and so on and so forth. Let's get started. He says property and liberty are intricately linked. In fact, property, not representative government or majority rule, exemplifies freedom. Property is a sphere in which the individual can be free of government. The historical role of private property as countervailing to the power of the state cannot be overstated. Equally strong is the relationship between strong private property rights and prosperity. If nothing else, the dismal economic failure of socialism has demonstrated what transpires when private ownership of the means of production is abolished. There's going to be a lot in here that you agree with, Mark. I mean, you like private property and you want the government off of your land and all that good stuff. Largely, you know, it's minutia that separates somebody who believes in no government and somebody who believes in small government. Well, now, to somebody who makes art and music for a living, this is not a minute issue. This is critical. He says the insidious and persistence encroachment on property by the modern welfare state has, however, resulted in a complete confusion about the nature of ownership. By undermining the ethical foundations upon which property rests, the welfare state has made it morally acceptable to give people access to property they don't own. Property grabs run the gamut from taxation, welfare programs, forfeitures, and environmental and antitrust legislation to the more subtle interference with freedom of contract inherent in minimum wage laws and affirmative hiring. Copyright and patent grants of privilege are another form of property infringement, courtesy of the state. While they have their origins in a much earlier privilege given to friends of the crown and their modern incarnation, they blend in with the welfare state's wealth-distributing impetus. Far from being natural, property rights grounded in the common law, patent and copyright are monopoly privileges granted solely by state legislation. Copyright gives authors of original works, like books, the exclusive rights to copy the work or to prepare derivative works based on the original. A patent gives an inventor the right to stop others from making, using, or selling the patented invention. In both cases, the whole... Something I'd like to point out that's also a difference between patents and copyrights that people don't generally know is that if you and I were to write the exact same book, somehow or another, we managed to come up with the exactly the same book, but we did it without ever referencing the other person or anything like that. Somehow or another, I never snuck a peek at your book and you never snuck a peek at mine. Then we could both copyright that book and... Or we couldn't prove that the other one did so. We could copyright that book and there wouldn't be a problem. But as far as a patent goes, the first one to get that book to patent, if there were a patent for books, let's say it's an invention, then own the invention. Even if we invented the same thing uniquely without the other's involvement, the person who invented it first gets the patent. And I think that that particularly is what's wrong with patent law. In both cases, the holder of this right is given legal contract over how others use their property. As the author of a differently huge Gone with the Wind recently found out, the copyright holder can stop you from using your own paper and ink to publish a novel that reproduces the copyrighted work or one based on its plot. Mark, if you and I were to write the same book across the country from one another and you got a copyright and I got a copyright, there would be a dispute and you could take that to court. No, that's not true. If I wrote something based on Gone with the Wind, I have written something based on Gone with the Wind. I didn't just write some novel that happened to have those words. It's a safe assumption that everybody in America, a large amount of people in America have heard about Gone with the Wind. And then if you write something with a scarlet hair and a rich butler, then in fact you are stealing the characters, the intellectual property of that author, whomever it might be. In this case, the estate of Margaret Mitchell, the author of Gone with the Wind, is suing Alice Randall to block her from publishing the parody, The Wind Done Gone. That's funny. Randall tells the famous tale from the perspective of black slaves, the mere act of creation, composing a song, penning a novel, or inventing a mousetrap, to create a control over the tangible property of others. In addition to allowing the author partially to control the paper, ink, computer, and photocopies of others, copyright in particular restricts not only our rights to our property, but to our very bodies. Consider the choreographer of a dance who gets the right to stop another from moving his body in a certain fashion. Also, another good example of this, and this is against my argument, would be, for instance, a fashion designer that doesn't, you know, there are no patents in fashion. That's correct. And they still make it. And somehow or another, they manage to make it. Absolutely true. But, you know, they sort of, it's sort of the big fashion companies that set the scene for the $10 shirts or whatever that you get at Marshall's. So there's no copyright, and, you know, it takes a couple of years to trickle on down through the fashion industry, but basically the little guys, the cheapies, managed to take all the designs from the innovators out there. By the way, Julia has been very upset recently. She's been looking, just on the side note of fashion, she's been looking for a pair of jeans. Will you describe what you're looking for, Julia? Okay. Maybe one of our listeners can post a link on the BBS to somewhere where you can actually order something like this. Okay. I'm looking for regular blue jeans. They do not exist. All blue jeans nowadays, unless they are old lady blue jeans, I want them to fit nicely. I don't want them to be super tight, but I don't want to wear old lady jeans. But anyway, they're all pre-faded, pre-ripped, pre-stained, or they have those ugly lines down them. Ugly lines? I can't explain it. Like the sort of like the wear lines, bleach lines. Yeah, the vertical lines. I despise those pants. I refuse to wear them, and I cannot find a pair of blue jeans, men's or women's, and it frustrates me. She went all over town. What frustrates me is back in 1986, you could find a full outfit. I'm talking about the jean boots, the blue jeans, the... A Canadian tuxedo. Right, the jacket, the whole thing, and you could find it in stonewashed denim, and you just can't find that crap anymore. She went store to store. Everywhere in Keen. I even used stores. Could not find a pair of just plain old blue jeans. They don't exist? Sorry. Apparently the hot thing these days is to have your pants torn up. But it's been like that for a few years. Or to have... Make it look like they've been torn. What's wrong with that? I've got my jeans torn. Where'd you end? Well, she's not going to have pants to wear, apparently. So if anybody can help her with that, post over to the BBS or email her at Julia at freetalklive.com. More on the way about intellectual property. This is Free Talk Live. George Phillies is the right candidate for president. A serious, well-educated candidate who stands for the basic principles of liberty and the basic principles of this nation. Paid for by Phillies 2008. This is George Phillies, libertarian for president. Approved of this message. This is Free Talk Live. It's your show, and you take control of the airwaves toll-free at 1-800-259-9231. Get ahold of yourselves. I'm not laughing. Look, I've been doing this long enough. I know you're not allowed to laugh when the mics are on. 1-800-259-9231. You're serious here. The Sacred CAI told Freeline you can join us online at freetalklive.com. The updates are there. Get signed up. We will keep you clued in. Whenever there's something fresh to announce about the show, you'll know first on the updates list, updates.freetalklive.com. The Republican Liberty Caucus welcomes new members in the pursuit of individual rights, limited government, and mom genes. All within the GOP. Visit rlc.org and click Join Us Today. We'll find liberty together. That's rlc.org. We'll jump back into intellectual property here in a moment, but as an aside, whenever somebody comes back laughing, I always feel obligated to explain why, because it's rude to the listeners to come back and laugh and not tell them what's up. We, of course, went away a moment ago talking about genes and how Julia has been on a quest to find some, well, regular colored genes. Not the new fangled, ripped genes. You know, the pre-ripped. You buy these genes with holes in them already. You also, now they have the faded genes. The ones that look like there's faded and then there's worse than faded, which is faded and looks like I've been rolling around in dirt. Those ones are the worst. The sort of brown, yeah. Yeah, those gross me out. So she's been looking and looking. She can't find anything. So we threw it out over the air and said, if anybody has any suggestions, but now you're saying you don't want to order online, so I'm sorry I even asked our listeners for help. I mean, you're not going to ever be able to find genes that way if you aren't even interested in... We have managed to discover during the break that Julia doesn't, in fact, want regular genes. She wants, you know, nice fitting... I want genes that I bought when I was in 13. I want them to fit nicely. She wants the sort of Bell Botomies to fit a little low to show off her booty to everybody, but she doesn't. But she wants the blue blue, like regular blue gene blue. She doesn't want your standard Levi's... I don't think she wants that tight in the booty, though. I don't think she's interested in that. Levi's 501, she doesn't want that. She's not interested in the mom gene, you know. We were talking about mom genes. In fact, she wants something very unique. Just like me, she's pining for the days when you could get a full, you know, outfit in Stonewash genes. There you go. So now you understand. 800-259-9231. We're talking about so-called intellectual property, and the argument against it. Steven Kinsella at StevenKinsella.com is commenting, and he's already pointed out that he's going to talk about copyright, and he's going to talk about patents. And he points out that the government monopoly privilege, known as patents and copyright, basically prevent others, if you are the patent holder, it prevents others from doing the same thing with their own property. So if you've painted a Picasso, and, you know, you have used your own paint and your own canvas, then you violated, well, I guess he's not holding a copyright on that, but you get my point, you violated intellectual property laws, and therefore you can be arrested or fined or whatever the, you know, the trouble you'll get into is. It's usually handled through our court system. So basically he's pointing out that it prevents you from using your property how you want. It goes on. First Amendment rights to freedom of speech are also compromised. A recent court order obtained by factions of the entertainment industry decreed that source code, which is the computer programs that you run, is not protected free speech and that studios have a right to suppress it. What's next? Do we unleash the force of law against a devotee who recites computer code on a street corner? It gets worse. You don't have to be guilty of copyright violation to be constrained. Doing something that might result in some third party making prohibited copies will suffice. A particularly rank example of prior restraint legislation is the Audio Home Recording Act of 1992. Manufacturers of digital recording devices are compelled by law to incorporate technology that prevents copying. They're penalized in anticipation of possible infractions. Manufacturers are also made to pony up royalties in lieu of each device of blank media sold. Ditto for consumers who pay through excise taxes. Did you know that? No, I didn't. I had heard that at one point that when you buy a bunch of blank CDs, Sony or Phillips or whoever it is that's manufacturing those CDs is paying royalty fees out to the RIAA and those guys in advance just presuming you're going to burn music to the CDs. Then there shouldn't be any problem if I do. Patents, however, take the cake, says Stephen. The patent holder can prevent others from practicing invention, even if, as is quite common, they arrive at the process quite independently. Happened to think of a new way to tune your car engine to get better gas mileage? Better hope someone else doesn't have a patent on that technique. He could stop you from twiddling with your own 1967 Mustang in your own garage. Thinking of dashing off a quick software filing program to streamline your business? Think again. Quote, software-driven, multi-host storage solutions for powering advanced business applications, unquote, are being patented at a furious rate. Stripped of baffle gab, this mouthful means that for the privilege of filing, albeit electronically, you will have to pay extortion money to a patent holder. It gets scarier when you consider that 20,000 software patents are issued annually. Price-inflating patent monopolies have grave consequences for undeveloped nations. As the latest patent embryo on furling in South Africa suggests, the government of South Africa enacted legislation to allow parallel importing of and domestic production of generic AIDS drugs to help deal with the AIDS crisis. The multinational pharmaceutical kingpins moved in to enforce their patent monopolies, plunging South Africa into a life-and-death battle. South African firms, presumably, have not stolen their equipment. Neither have they trespassed or broken an entry to obtain the molecular combinations for AZT, 3TC, or DDI. These are in the public domain. So why should South Africans be prohibited from making these drugs? Given that it's generally a bad thing to do legislation to transfer control of property from owner to non-owner, what possibly is the justification for such laws? Well, most proponents view intellectual property, or IP, as a matter of utility. Without such laws, the argument goes we would be deprived of clever inventions and beautiful works of art. To the utilitarians, the costs of monopoly privileges, not least the violation of property rights, are outweighed by the benefits of having wonderful inventions. Well, I don't know that the benefits necessarily are wonderful inventions. I would say that yes, intellectual property laws do change the face of invention. But I also think that, you know, that there's some good arguments for it. I would say yes. Those arguments are utilitarian. I would concur with him. Utilitarians turn a blind eye to the staggering sums that companies spend on the fees of patent attorneys who prepare, file, and defend patent applications mostly for defensive purposes. Litigation costs millions. Mergers between companies often occur for no other reason than to settle patent disputes or to allow the merging parties to compete with a rival with a large patent armory. Submarine patents can emerge at any time, only to sink a high-tech company. Like, you remember the Blackberry thing from last year where Blackberry had come out with this wonderful, whoever's behind Blackberry, I don't know what the company name is, but this, you know, this company had come out with this device that allows you to check emails and do all kinds of cool things remotely. And then somebody, you know, surfaced with a patent complaint and, you know, they went to court and they shut down their network and it was a mess. The threat of patents increases overall business risk and can torpedo marginal or startup companies. If patents and copyright are essential to innovation as the mantra goes, how is it that Dade Dawn's and the perfume maker who owns no odor rights still is marketing high-end perfume that can be easily knocked off? Philosophers persist in writing their tomes. Mathematicians toil at solving age-old riddles and physicists don't tire from probing the universe. How does all this creativity continue without the reward of a monopolistic ownership in the ensuing ideas? And why is it fair for the law to protect practical gizmos but not more abstract ideas such as Einstein's equation E equals MC squared or not protect the perfume manufacturer? The line that separates them is where really the rub comes in. For instance, some companies have patented human genomes. That's scary stuff. Crustless peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Absolutely true. They've patented computer programs which you've pointed out are really just X's and O's. Where does the line get drawn? You would agree that computer programs deserve some protection, but what kinds? Well, this is, again, he doesn't even think address this but what you're addressing is the inefficiency of bureaucracy and the fact that we're leaving it to the government to these government bureaucrats to make decisions in the lawyers to make decisions about what should be protected and to what extent it should be protected and everybody else gets left out of the cold but yet they manage to do business. The clothing manufacturers manage to design new clothing that gets ripped off and sold for less. The perfume manufacturers manage to design new perfumes and sell them at, you know, the price of gold and they're still doing all right. More on the way, this is Free Talk Live. This is Free Talk Live. It's your show and you can take control of the airways. The toll-free number is 1-800-259-9231. That's the Sekel CAI toll-free line, 800-259-9231. It's Ian here with you. And Julia. And Mark. And you can join us online. FreeTalkLive.com is the place to go. The feature is on the site. We give them away. So enjoy those on us. And if you like the show and you want to help support Free Talk Live, then you can go and shop with us at amazon.freetalklive.com. When you enter Amazon through that link, Free Talk Live gets a percentage of your purchase. There's 41 categories to shop in. Free SuperSaver shipping on a whole bunch of items and just great deals. I mean a huge selection. You can get virtually anything you might need for life, including groceries. Head over to Amazon.freetalklive.com. Great way to help the show and get the stuff you need. So wrapping up thoughts on the intellectual property debate from StevenKinsella.com, who is an intellectual property attorney that doesn't believe in intellectual property. Very interesting. Interesting position to be in in life. And so he knows his stuff and he's pointing out several things to us, talking about copyrights and patents. And of course, he hasn't really touched on the fact that the bureaucracy just sucks. I mean government bureaucracy, they set rules arbitrarily based on, you know, whoever's in charge and what they want to do. And of course that means that everything from, as you say Julia, a crustless peanut butter and jelly sandwich, there's actually a patent for that, right? Right, which I'm pretty sure I invented that. Everything from the stupid stuff like that all the way on up to complex inventions can be patented. Well, other things can't be. Fragrances, clothing, you know, conceptual ideas like E equals MC squared. Anyway, he goes on to say, so far we've highlighted how intellectual property rights interfere with the freedom of others to use their own bodies or their justly acquired property in certain ways. But why should they not be accorded this right? Why should tangible goods be the proper objects of property rights instead of intangibles such as the ideas that IP laws protect? Here we arrive at the nub of the issue. Thomas Jefferson wrote, and he himself was an inventor, quote, he who receives an idea from me receives instruction himself without lessening mine, as he who lights his taper at mine receives light without darkening me, unquote. Jefferson was very definitely not articulating the fatuous information wants to be free argument made by the left regarding IP. He was however enunciating what is the essence of ownable property. Ownable property is only that economically scarce, and by economic scarcity we mean that absent clear demarcation conflict will arise as to who owns the resource. Land, cars, printing presses, paper and ink are scarce in the sense that if we remove them from you you no longer have them. Our use of an item conflicts with your use of it. While an abundance of computers can be had on the market our use of this particular personal computer excludes your use of it. If we would conjure computers with a genie gesture it would be abundant and not scarce. And it would be immaterial if this one were removed. You could just conjure another one. However valuable ideas are not economically scarce. Our listening to a piece of music doesn't conflict with or exclude your doing the same. A copy made of a book doesn't remove from its author the configuration of ideas that is the book. Ideas very plainly can be jointly consumed without dissipating. Of course the end product of an idea to wit a book or compact disc is very definitely scarce. True to John Locke we say that if you purchase the book or buy the CD you are its rightful sole owner. Proponents of IP and intellectual property however say that some distant author or musician partially may colonize your book and CD and tell you how to use them. How do we lay the fear that without patent and copyright we would all perish? Consider this. How many tiers would you shed if Bill Gates were only worth several? Not dozens of billions. Since Microsoft owns a good portion of its wealth or owes rather a good portion of its wealth to the copyright monopoly, this would be the upshot of its removal. If the company relied only on profits from initial sales and from support services would that be so bad? Being first on the market is its own reward. The various spin-offs and short-term advantages that accrue to innovators who develop new products provide sufficient incentive and profit to render patent protection unnecessary. Removal of patent protection often can accelerate research and development efforts. No sooner had Eli Lilly been stripped of its patent protection for Prozac than the company pledged a renewed commitment to innovation. This was reflected in investor confidence and climbing stock prices. Innovators can and do fence their products. As intellectual property scholar Tom Palmer points out concerts and circuses are fenced in events with tickets sold and checked at the door. There already are assorted blank recording media on the market that scramble signals beyond recognition, making reproduction impossible. Bundling of products is a viable option as are tie-ins. These arrangements wed a product to a service. Television broadcasts are already tied to advertising as are so many other goods. Computer programs are bundled with manuals or service features. The customer would rather purchase the product and get access to free maintenance than resort to copying. Because when you download a computer software off the internet you don't get to call the company and ask them questions. No you don't. Really, when it comes to certain programs it's just a lot easier. The company makes it significantly easier to use their product if you buy it from them than if you try to get it off the internet. For one, copying it off the internet is not easy generally under the current circumstances. You have to be a little knowledgeable to do that. Not to say that in the world of no IP it wouldn't be rather easy. Contracts, of course, inherently are free market friendly but also in a world of no IP it's very unlikely that anyone's going to set up a call center to field tech support calls from people who didn't actually buy the original product. Not necessarily. For instance, Apple could sell Microsoft's software and then use their existing call center and just decide that they were going to do that but then again Microsoft could do the same. That's true. Unlike intellectual property rights, contracts, of course, are inherently free market friendly. Unlike intellectual property rights, they're voluntary and they bind only the parties to the agreement. There are leasing arrangements too. Companies can enforce their property rights in the end product of the idea, the tangible good. They then lend the thing out subject to conditions specified in the contract. Patent and copyright clearly undermine private property. A staunch defense of private property must lead to anti-intellectual property conclusions. So there. 1-800-259-9231. You're welcome to comment on the IP thing or whatever might happen to be on your mind. Any comments from the peanut gallery here? Well, I personally don't think that the government should be dealing in intellectual property. I don't really believe necessarily in... I can't speak. Intellectual property. I think the fashion comment is perfect because Mark's right. There are these high-end fashion designers. Burberry, Gucci. Right. And then there's lower-end and people can tell the difference and people still buy the high-end because they like it. Look at the girls with their purses, right? The $1,500 purses or whatever they cost. They can tell the difference between a real $1,500 purse and $50 purse. They can tell the difference. And it matters to them. And you'd think the Chinese manufacturers that are making the knock-offs, you'd think they'd figure out ways to make it more difficult for people to tell the difference. But sure enough, there are guides out there. There are these little subtleties that you can look for. For instance, I was looking at an article the other day about fake Rolexes and how you can tell the difference when you go to New York City or Hong Kong or whatever. People are going to offer you these imitation Rolexes. Or on eBay. And, well, you know, at least in person you have a much better chance of actually identifying a knock-off. And if it's being sold by a guy who's opening his coat pocket to you, chances are good. It's probably a knock-off. But they ran down some of the very subtle differences between the two. For instance, it says that apparently with a fake Rolex, and I only have it in front of me, it's from memory, it says that one of the key differences is that Rolexes do not tick. They just sort of roll through the seconds. And it has something to do with the fact that they have a very precision mechanism that probably cost them a lot of money to develop and implement. Is that what it's called? Well, they have this precision mechanism in there that, you know, makes their product very, very special. And, you know, the Chinese manufacturers just don't want to pay whatever it costs to put those into their products. So it's very interesting. I remember my ex-girlfriend at one time went to a knock-off party. There was somebody who would, I guess, travel around and bring a bunch of knock-off purses and that sort of thing to someone's home, sort of like a Tupperware party, but for knock-offs. And you'd go there and you'd see all these, you know, Burberry purses, but they weren't really Burberry purses or whatever the other hot brands are. They had them all. And they were at a fraction of the cost that you would pay for the actual brand. And, of course, there's also a level of sort of elitism that goes on with this, right? Oh, sure. Of these young girls, or girls, I guess they're not all young girls, but girls who are into the brand names, if they find out you've got a knock-off, what happens? Well, I certainly don't associate with people of that sort. You used to. So it's difficult for me to say, you'd be outed. Yeah. You'd be outed as an opposer. Oh, I don't think that they would, first they would talk about it behind your back. Behind your back. And make sure there was disseminated amongst everyone that they could find out that in fact what you had was a knock-off. Right. But, you know, I have to say that anybody who would spend $1,500 on a purse is the one that really deserves to be laughed at. Deserves to be laughed at behind their back. I agree. Everybody has different preferences. Sure. I buy some things. I'll buy sugar. That isn't the real store, for example, but there are some things where I would like the real brand. So it just depends. There's some food items. I wouldn't buy a real brand. Right. What you're saying makes me want to retract what I said. If you have enough money to pay $1,500 for a handbag, please, by all means, go right ahead. Right. You're going into credit card debt, on the other hand. If you are a middle class, if you are even upper middle class and you have the expectation, especially that some man in your life is going to buy a $1,500 handbag for you, you're a bad person. Yeah. More on the way. You can take control of the airwaves. The toll-free number is 800-259-9231. We're getting ready to head into hour number two. And coming up, we'll talk about plastic surgery, among other things. This is your show. Would you like to help others find Freetalk Live? You can help us advertise, market and promote the show at amp.freetalklive.com. Consider becoming a Freetalk Live amplifier now for $3 a month and get some cool bonuses at amp.freetalklive.com. This is Freetalk Live. It's your show. You can take control of the airwaves. Toll-free 800-259-9231. Sickle CAI toll-free line at 1-800-259-9231 as we roll into hour number two. It's Ian here with you. And Julia. And Mark. You can join us online at freetalklive.com. The features on the site are for free. So enjoy those on us. That is freetalklive.com. Let's roll right into the phone calls and start things out with Tom in New Hampshire. Tom, you're on Freetalk Live. Hello there. Tom. Hi there. I just wanted to point something out because you got a lot of people who don't really care about other people's rights. That's right. They vote. And they don't care about the cops going on doing racial profiling and enforcing unjust laws. Right. Because they're whiten and wealthy so they'll never get caught up in all that is the way they see it. The way they see it, they don't care about that. A lot of them are cop lovers and they worship cops and they don't care about these things. But let me tell you a couple of stories here. On 16th February 2004, this guy was just peacefully driving down the road minding his own business in Detroit, Michigan. And he got pulled over for no apparent reason other than driving wall black. He decided enough was enough. So he fought back. And that was all for those cops. And he captured a 40 caliber handgun which, by the way, fell back into enemy hands an hour later when he was captured. But the cops are still dead. Both of them. How's he doing? Is he still sucking air? Because I wouldn't imagine he is. Well, I don't know. See, either way, the cops are still dead. So I would say, let that be a lesson to the cops. You know, you can get the bill of rights through your head or you can get bullets through your head. But they'll choose the second option. Because the news media keep portraying them as fallen heroes even when they get themselves killed in the act of their own deliberate wrongdoing. That I've got to say, I don't agree with you on everything, Tom, but I have to say that it really bugs me that whenever a cop dies, it doesn't really seem to matter what the circumstances are. Here in New Hampshire, there was a story recently about a cop that pulled a guy over that had some incidents in the past and the guy ended up shooting the cop. Of course, the cop was apparently this out-of-control rogue cop. Right, and he targeted this guy on multiple occasions in the past. And the guy ended up shooting the cop. They had a history. And then what happened was, I guess someone else came along and shot the original guy that shot the cop. Right, the next convict avenges the cop. And then they have parades for the cop simply because he's a cop. And for some reason, because you're a cop means you're better than everybody else. You're a hero automatically because you wear a uniform. And I think that that's a little unfair and it's mindless. Let the voters take notice that if their politicians don't straighten out the cops, the undertakers will. When you go into that voting booth, you've got two choices there, cops under control or cops under flower. The other story I wanted to tell you was a few weeks later on 31 March 2004 when the cops went to arrest this guy who was peacefully minded in his own business proudly serving local residents of the community by selling to them the methamphetamine that they wanted. And the cops were ready for him. They were ready for him but they didn't realize, there was another guy there that they weren't watching. They had their eyes and their concentration on their suspects. And this other guy took action and settled the matter out of court and that was all for those cops. So if you don't defend liberty with ballots, then other people are going to defend liberty with bullets. So what's your message tonight, Tom? What's your message? There's four dead cops in your face. You people that vote wrong. If you don't like it, so you're saying if you don't want cops to continue to die, you should stop voting for these big government people. For those that really do think the cops are heroes and I think that they do a job that I really would not want to do and they do put themselves in harm's way, for those that think the cops are heroes, you would say vote small government so that they don't get caught up in a mess that was not of their own doing. You're actually trying to save the cops, aren't you, Tom, in some weird twisted way? If they don't like it when the poor defenseless cops get themselves killed, then don't ever pull a lever like that again. Thanks for the call, Tom. We appreciate hearing from you. At 800-259-9231, free talk live does not advocate the killing of the police. We think it's a bad idea. It's only going to get you killed and that's not something you want. Is Tom out shooting cops? No, he's not. But his point does make sense in that... Yeah, I understand what he's saying, but I certainly don't think that killing cops is the way to go about it. He's just not the most eloquent about getting his point across. He's very, very brash. Well, he believes what he believes. So, yes, you can call about anything on Free Talk Live, 800-259-9231 as we continue with the phone calls and talk to Bill in Oklahoma. Bill, you're on Free Talk Live. Hello there. Thank you guys for taking my call. Thanks for being here. What's on your mind? Well, I have two points. First, I want to chime in on the intellectual property thing. Certainly. Being a software developer myself, I find it very discouraging when big companies such as Microsoft gets involved and Nevy's mindless threat about how we're supposedly trampling on their intellectual property when they won't disclose what that intellectual property is. Case in point, the Linux distribution of operating systems makes long story short. They bully Linux distributors to make these partnerships to evade lawsuits. To make partnerships? I don't understand. Well, basically, the Microsoft goes in and says, okay, what we're going to do is we have you did the right. You've trampled on our intellectual property. We have proved, no, we're not going to disclose what those intellectual properties are so that you can fix the problem. We're just going to go ahead and tell you that we've got you did the right. We will be more than happy to not sue you. You will just partner up with us. And then what? So then they get to use the Linux? What's the point of that for Microsoft? Microsoft, well, from a standpoint of an open source advocate, it basically says, if you want to keep certain technologies open, you know, acknowledge that, basically acknowledge that you're using our intellectual property. We're being nice guys. I guess it's like a mask of, we're being nice enough to let you use our intellectual property to do your own thing. But rest assured that if any time you make us mad, we're going to go in and take you to court. I see. So basically they have to sort of, it's Microsoft making the Linux guys bow down to them. Is that what you're saying? That's pretty much, that's how I see it. And it appears as though they're not, from what you're saying, and I don't know that this is how Microsoft operates, but if, you know, they're not revealing what it is that you're doing wrong and what way you're violating their intellectual property rights, thereby, you know, essentially say, you know, it doesn't allow you to fix anything, nor does it, you even know whether they have a valid claim or not. It's extortion because it's me coming to Ian and saying, hey, you're violating my intellectual property rights and I'm going to take you to court. Right. And these, you know, the Linux people, they don't have the money that Microsoft does. No. They know they can't play. Microsoft can afford to go to court for years and years and pay all kinds of attorneys just to scare off anybody else who might think about going to court with them. Bill, your second point? My second point was something that was brought up last night, I believe it was by you, Ian, something along the lines, and I'm just paraphrasing you said that, I didn't sign anything that may be obligated to pay perennial taxes. Federal taxes, yeah. Yeah, federal taxes, you know. You don't have an insurance with the paper. I didn't agree to anything. I shouldn't be obligated. Well, I had an interesting conversation with a lawyer about this. It just came up. And basically there is a unwritten, I guess you would call it implied oppression law. Basically it's a blind consent. You just by being in the United States, you basically consent to all the laws. I'm not in the United States. The United States is a fiction. It's a legal fiction. It's another piece of paper, just like so many other pieces of paper the government has written down. I live in a place that some people call New Hampshire. I live on a plot of land. If you want to call it the United States, that's your business. But I've never agreed to anything in this concept. This is a common legal concept that silence is consent. That's how most laws are written in that if you do not object, therefore you are consenting. Well, I'm letting it be known that I object. Thanks for the call. We appreciate it, Bill. 800-259-9231. Like it or not, that's how the legal world works. If they come up with a bunch of new laws, you supposedly have consented because you have not rejected them. If that makes any sense. It's a little weird, but that's the legal work for you. 800-259-9231. This is Free Talk Live. This is Free Talk Live. It's your show. You can take control of the airline. It's toll-free. 800-259-9231. It's the sakeful CAI toll-free line. That's 1-800-259-9231. And it's Ian here with you. And Julia. And Mark. And you can join us online. FreeTalkLive.com is the place to go. We've got live streams. There's a broadband version of the show and a dial-up version, both waiting for you for free at freetalklive.com. If you or perhaps somebody you know needs a primer on some of the subjects that we talk about on Free Talk Live, you should check out the Liberty Radio Underground. It's an elementary introduction to libertarianism and each show concisely handles a single topic in under 10 minutes. It's great for somebody new to Liberty. Go to libertyradiounderground.com. That's libertyradiounderground.com. Grab an episode today. 800-259-9231. Let's go to the phones to the fund to Bill in New Hampshire on the amplifier line. Hey, Bill. Hi, Julia, Ian and Mark. Hello. What's on your mind? I wanted to talk about this intellectual property thing. Especially in reference to computer programs. Okay. It's interesting if you think about the present way computers are sold where the software is already loaded on the hard drive and you don't get any disks with it. If anything ever happens to that, it's gone. Don't they normally sell... Are they not selling the restore disks? Some computers used to come with those. I made my own computer from scratch. I don't know if they still come with those. No, I didn't get any with my laptop. Really? Nothing. If you're going to make any backup, you're going to have to figure out how to do that yourself. It's not like you go out and buy a book and you could put it on the shelf and come back to it five months later and read it again. Or if you buy a CD, you just turn it off and then turn it right back on and you've got it there. If your hard drive crashes, it's gone. What if you registered with the company? For some way or another, you can register most of your products with the company. Would you be able to get it then? I don't know this. I don't really know. I generally don't register with anyone for any reason. Just recently, I had an old copy of Microsoft Word on my computer and we got a brand new computer. It wiped it off my old hard drive, started to use the new one, and they weren't really clear that the new version expired. It was only sort of a temporary thing. So now they're both gone. Great. Yeah. So I'm sort of wondering exactly how somebody's intellectual property rights supersede my property rights when I put out the cash. Well, now in the world of software, as I understand it, now probably 99% of people have never read any of the agreements that they usually flash up on the screen before you're allowed to install a piece of software, which of course, if you are buying a computer, then you technically don't agree to those agreements. But for most software, when you click that, I accept. There's that huge, long... And there's 35 pages, yes. Yeah, legal thing. As I understand it, the gist of that is that that's Microsoft or whatever the company it is that's made the software telling you, no, Bill, you don't own this software. We own this software and we are licensing it to you for whatever the term is. So we're going to let you use the software so you don't actually, when you purchase software, you apparently do not actually own the software. Did you know that? Well, I mean, what good does a license do me if the software is not there? I don't know. That's an interesting case. Right, so I mean, this is, you know, it basically boils down to deception, I think. Well, maybe they just figure that... They're selling me a bill of goods. Maybe they figure that computers are so cheap and so disposable these days. That if the hard drive crashes, just go out and buy another computer and be done with it. I guess so, possibly. But I mean, I think the only thing that it does is really just sort of foster contempt for Microsoft and other companies that do the same thing and make people want to just sort of get back at them and download things off the Internet. Microsoft is big enough they can handle a little contempt. They really aren't concerned with that. Oh, I'm sure they can, but, you know, we've got Linux. Yeah, Microsoft is not making their money off of consumer sales of Windows XP or Windows Vista. I mean, that's not where the bulk of their money comes from. The bulk of their money comes from licensing fees. It comes from the business side of their business. You know, the multi... When a business goes and purchases a copy of Word for 200 computers or something like that, that's where they really make bank. And so if there's a bunch of... If there's a lot of Windows installations that are illicit, Microsoft is certainly not interested in chasing that down. It's not worth their while legally to go after people like that. So, you know, they program in whatever sort of copyright protection they can program in. And then if it's hacked and people get around it, then they don't really care. People are still using their software. So that's what's important. What's important to them is that Windows is installed on most computers. Whether it's legal or not, obviously Microsoft is never going to come out and say something like that. They're never going to come out and say, Yeah, steal our software. But, you know, they'd rather have you running a stolen copy of Windows XP than running Linux or running Mac or something like that. If that makes sense. Probably. I still think it's kind of unscrupulous that, you know, their new versions of their software delete the old versions of the software and leave you with nothing. Well, I'm sorry to hear that, Bill. Any other thoughts? Yep. That's about it. Thanks for the call, dude. Yep, 800-259-9231. Yeah, Microsoft's never going to admit that one. But that's sort of the way I feel about things. Because the more people are out there using Microsoft software, as far as Windows is concerned, the more valuable their licensing fees are for the businesses that want to develop for Microsoft and all of that. I can see that. All right, 800-259-9231. Let's move on from this intellectual property thing and talk instead about plastic surgery. Now, Julia, I know you had a story. We talked about this actually a while back on the program. Yeah, I think it upsets some people actually. Wait, what? Well, just my opinions in general on plastic surgery, which I don't necessarily think that plastic surgery is the worst thing on Earth or anything like that. And I know that there are certainly a lot of people that do it. But I think that some people do it for the wrong reasons. And I think that it gives people sort of this artificial, temporary feeling of satisfaction that goes away. And I think that if you're that unsatisfied with yourself, plastic surgery isn't going anywhere. The new nose isn't going to solve the problem. Right. Or it will only solve it temporarily and then eventually you'll find something else wrong with yourself that you want to fix, that sort of thing. But this article, the title of it is Women Urged to Shun Trendy Plastic Surgery. But it's actually more specifically about genital plastic surgery, which is something that really kind of bugs me. Yeah, that's some disturbing stuff. It's the strangest of the strange. Right, exactly. Because, I mean, you aren't really, at least with your nose or your cheeks or whatever. People see that. People see it on a daily basis. The only people that are ever going to see your genitalia are someone who you're really close. Yeah, exactly. Really close with. And I'm sort of of the opinion that if somebody who you're close with sees your genitals and says, ah! That maybe they're not the best for you. Yeah. Might not be the knight in shining armor. You thought they were. People were angry at you for taking that position? I don't think anybody was angry, but I, there was. Got that impression. Right. There was just people who got the impression, I think that, I think that plastic surgery is the worst thing on the face of the earth and nobody should do it. Which is not the case. Did they email you or did you just hear things? No, it was on the BBS. I see. Which of course on the BBS, they'll talk about anything. Yeah. And everything that they have to say is of, of, of mitigable value. So, plastic surgery for genitalia. They're typically talking about female genitalia. That's correct. But it's done on man, I'm sure. More on the way. We'll dig into this. In fact, it is done on man. I did a little research. I'll pull that website up. And of course we're talking clinically here. This is not to appeal to any prurient interest or anything like that. It's a quick disclaimer. To quote the FCC. Yeah. 1-800-259-9231. This is your show. It is. Free Talk Live. Our archives website and podcast will continue to stay free. 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Now before we get into the details on this story about the genitalia, the female genitalia and plastic surgery and why women shouldn't be getting this surgery, I've actually got a bit of a correction. Johnson, our producer from far away, has emailed me something from techdirt.com that rebuts what I said about how Microsoft would never admit that piracy is a good thing. Is business a good thing for them? We were just talking about that a few moments ago. In fact, turns out Microsoft has admitted that. According to techdirt.com, for some time big software companies have tried to make the argument that a copy of pirated software is equivalent to a lost sale. This is pretty ridiculous for a couple of reasons. For one thing, there's no reason to think that a given user of pirated software would have actually purchased the legitimate copy. Furthermore, the argument ignores the fact that companies actually benefited from piracy because a user of pirated software is likely to purchase software from the same maker at some point down the road. This latter point is something that even Bill Gates has admitted. Even while Microsoft continues to talk tough about cracking down on piracy, so it's not like it's not their prime message. It's not what they're out there pushing, but they have admitted it. Now the company is stating more clearly that it knows there are some benefits to piracy. Jeff Reikies, the head of the company's business group, said at a recent investor conference that while the company is against piracy, if you're going to pirate software, it hopes that you pirate Microsoft software. He cited the above reasoning, noting that users of pirated Microsoft software are likely to purchase from the company later on. He says the company wants to push for legal licensing, but doesn't want to push so hard so as to destroy a valuable part of its user base. See, Microsoft gets it, unlike the RIAA and these other agencies that are, you know, going after people that are allegedly downloading music and that sort of thing. Microsoft understands that if it goes after its customers, people are going to get upset. If it goes after people that are pirating windows, people are going to get angry and they'll be more likely to go to Linux or they'll go to Apple or something. He said the company recently got a stark reminder of this lesson when a school in Russia said it would switch to Linux to avoid future hassles with the pirate police. Of course, this moderate stance seems at odds with the company's recent hyper-aggressive anti-piracy push, which resulted in many mistaken piracy accusations. Either way, Rakes' comments completely destroyed the line about pirated software being equivalent to law sales. If it actually were, Rakes would be telling people to pirate the software of Microsoft's competitors. So, very interesting. I did not realize they would be so honest. A little credit goes to them for that. All right, so let's talk about the female genitalia plastic surgery. Women are actually having plastic surgery on their labia, as I understand it. Well, there's actually a few of them, but that's the one that we talked about a few weeks ago, or months ago, I guess it was. So, what's the story here, Julia, and where's it from? It's from the Chicago Tribune. Okay. Issuing a strong warning to women, a prominent physician's group stated Friday that there is no evidence cosmetic genital surgery is safe or effective. The statement by the American College of blah, blah, blah Sorry about that. That's okay. I accidentally slid down my mouse there and lost it. Says that it is deceptive to give the impression that these procedures, which by some accounts are among the hottest new trends in plastic surgery, are accepted and routine surgical practices. I don't understand that this is a hot trend. I can't even believe that. I mean, when you originally talked about this on the show, I thought this is obscure. Maybe only porn freaks will get this, because that's where it originally got popular, right? Right. Is that the porn stars were having plastic surgery done on their clitoris and their labia and that sort of thing. So, other girls presumably watching that said, I want to have that done. And then they went out and did it. But you're telling me this is a trend? This is hot? I guess I'm getting more popular. This is spreading? Yes. Vaginal rejuvenation, designer vaginal plastic, re-virgination, which what is that? Sounds like they're somehow using plastic surgery to replace the hymen. Which is kind of silly anyway, because the hymen isn't necessarily there by the time you lose your virginity anyway. Not necessarily. And if you believe in God, I don't think God's going to be fooled by the plastic surgery. And G-spot amplification, that's as far as I understand it. When we read the article, I went and looked at a couple of plastic surgery sites to see what people had to say about this sort of thing. And as I understand it, the G-spot amplification, they stick some sort of a chemical in there to make your G-spot more sensitive and larger. Sort of like a Botox injection for the G-spot. Something like that. Okay. I don't know a lot about this. It's fairly new. I've never even heard of such things before we came up across that article. It's crazy. I'm almost never on the back end of any trend. I generally know what's going on out there. I had no idea that this was being pushed. I guess this is the plastic surgery for the people that have already gotten all the other plastic surgery there is to get. All right. Well, these procedures are being marketed to women on late night TV and magazines and on the Internet. Doctors offering the procedures say they can enhance women's sexual pleasure, alleviate uncomfortable symptoms, why do you need more enhancement? Well, I mean, hold on. That's something that you just don't understand. Some women have a hooded clitoris and it's difficult for them to have a vaginal orgasm. And yeah, I would say that there's some reasons for that. Essentially, some women have orgasms more easily than other. Right. And there also are, it says, alleviate uncomfortable symptoms. There are some women, I heard a story. Somebody posted a link to a story on the BBS of a woman who, it was just very uncomfortable for her to go to the bathroom and had been for years because her labia were so large. And in circumstances like that, I mean, I guess I can understand. I don't personally have any experience with anything like that. So it's hard for me to put myself in that position. But I think that just getting it done for the purpose of not liking the way it looks or wanting your lover to like the way it looks better, I don't know. This seems a little, first of all, risky and weird. Well, the women with the overgrown hood or whatever you're referring to, it's not like they can't orgasm. It's just that they can't orgasm vaginally through intercourse, is what you're saying. They're having more difficulty through intercourse. There would be other ways to bring them to orgasm, correct? It would depend on the woman and her particular problem. I see. So even non-intercursal oral stimulation would also be difficult? Is that what you're saying? So I understand. Huh, okay. But critics say... I don't know if it's worth taking a knife to it down there, but okay. Yes, it depends. If you never had a good orgasm and you want to have one, I mean, everybody's talking about how great they are. Maybe it's very important to you. Maybe it's in your head. It's difficult for me to put myself in that situation. Maybe you had some problems as a kid that warped your mind and daddy touched you the wrong way or something like that, and now you've got a mental block to your orgasm. Don't they say that it's all in your head as far as sexual pleasure is concerned? You have to have the organs in order to orgasm, but I think there might be some other problems going on here. That's my uninformed opinion. Yep, that's what it sounds like. But critics say these women are exposing extraordinarily sensitive body parts to interventions with questionable benefits and unknown risks. Absence of data supporting the safety and efficiency of these procedures makes their recommendation untenable, said the Medical Group's Committee on Gyneological Practice. Other experts express concern that practitioners are offering surgical fixes to problems better addressed by correcting women's misconceptions about their body and boosting their self-esteem. If somebody doesn't like the way they look or their heart is broken, surgery is not going to fix that. These problems are above the belly button, not below. Absolutely. Yeah. An internet search turns up dozens of sites promising to help women by surgically altering their genitals and repairing the after-effects of childbirth. For physicians, the business typically cash-only is a way to supplement income squeezed by cost-conscious insurers. Many of the sites are accompanied by graphic before-and-after pictures and glowing patient testimonials. Of course. Yeah. I'm going to post a testimonial that says, that's ruined my life. Well, it makes sense to me if it's for a real physiological reason, if you have a superior orgasm, if it's for cosmetic, that bothers me a little bit. Right. More on the way. You take control. This is Freetalk Live. Would you ever cut down there? This is Freetalk Live. If you're showing, you can bring up anything. The toll-free number, 800-259-9231. Sacred CAI toll-free line in here with you. And Julia. And Mark. You can join us online at freetalklive.com. All the features on the site, we give them away, so enjoy those on us. And if you like the show, you want to help support Freetalk Live, then become a Freetalk Live amplifier. Just go to amp.freetalklive.com and join the hundreds of our listeners who have decided that Freetalk Live is worth paying for. They've sent in three bucks a month. That's all we're asking for. And what we do with the money is we take it in and we turn it around into promoting the show, to getting on more radio stations across the country. So if that's valuable to you, head over to amp.freetalklive.com to learn more about the program and learn about some of the perks you'll get access to, like the amp-only call-in line, amp-only chat room inform, and more. All the details, amp.freetalklive.com. Ladies, would you spend $6,500, and perhaps a little less, perhaps a little more, to have a doctor, a plastic surgeon go down with a knife and cut you in your private areas? Because apparently this is the hot new trend in plastic surgery. Breast enlargements, that's old hat. Actually, those have been going up in numbers as well. Well, it's old hat in that they've been around forever. The people who get these have likely already had breast implants. But now the new hot thing is labiaplasty, vaginoplasty, and hymenoplasty. Three of the most popular surgeries going right now. And Julia, you're saying the Chicago Tribune has cited some experts who are telling ladies, whoa, be careful. Right. This is not proven. This may be dangerous. You may not be wanting to do this to yourself. And give me some more details from this story. All right. It gives a couple of quotes here from doctors who do it. How grateful my patients are is unbelievable, says Dr. Bernard Stern, a board certified gynecological surgeon in Florida. I'm looking at his website right now, actually. 850 cosmetic genital surgeries in the last six years. He says he gets 50 emails every night from a woman asking about the procedure. Not the same woman, obviously, different women. That's weird. She's really obsessed and weird. She does need help. 800? 850 is what he's done. At $5,500, that's a cool $4.6 million for that doctor. Sweet. Well, if he's providing a service that people want, I have no problem with him making a bundle of money on it. Right. I do question why somebody would get there genitals just for cosmetic purposes. Well, now... Their lobby menorah reduced. They're saying here the vaginoplasty, it says that for women who've experienced multiple childbirths, vaginal muscles tend to experience enlargement due to stressful expansion. Keegles will help with that. It says even after keegle, the condition of the muscles may not improve. Many women find that while the experience of childbirth may be the most rewarding of their lives, sometimes the aftereffects for both their sexual partner and themselves is not as satisfying as it once was. Sometimes vaginoplasty is referred to as rejuvenation of the vagina and is a procedure that can usually correct the problem of the stretched vaginal muscles and is a direct means of enhancing one's sexual life again. And then they go into a little bit more detail about what goes on. So one could make the argument that there are some women that are just unsatisfied with things and that's why they're doing this, but you're saying, Julia, that this still may be pretty dangerous. Well, I think that the problem is that a lot of women, it started in porn apparently. I did a teeny amount of research on it and people, I think a lot of people watch porn and they think that that is how sex is supposed to be, that is how women are supposed to look. And so I think a lot of women see this sort of thing and then if they don't look exactly like that, they think, well, something's wrong with me. That's unhealthy. And that's unhealthy. Exactly. And I think everybody should do whatever is best for them. And if you feel like this is something that you should do, go for it. I'm not against plastic surgery. I just sort of question the reasons behind it and I don't think that it's necessarily the healthiest choice. Okay. So the doctor is saying his patients are very satisfied, of course. That's right. Among, oh, yet other organ, sorry, I skipped a paragraph, yet other medical organizations share the ACOG's concern. I know of no medical reason to do these surgeries and no scientific data that proves that they're... There's no medical reason to have breast enlargements. That's true. Proves that they are beneficial, says Dr. Thomas E. Nolan, president of the Society of Gynecological... Gynecological. Yeah. ...Certans. Among the treatments doctors are offering only labiaplasty, which involves trimming and reshaping part of the external genitalia is well documented in scientific literature. Now that one couldn't possibly have anything to do with increasing sexual pleasure, right? The labia, the trimming of the labia? Right, they're a highly, highly sensitive area and you would think that if it was, I mean, there was more of it that it, like that would have absolutely nothing to do with... Yeah, you're reducing the nerve count for sure and it certainly doesn't have anything to do with childbirth or whatever the vaginoplasty is all about. Right. That's purely for appearance. Correct. That is the breast enlargement of the vagina, basically. Well, it's actually interesting that you bring that up because a few weeks ago on the BBS, there was a topic somebody said, well, we like people who look young. We like women, it's very popular, for example, for women to be shaven. We meaning men? Yeah, I guess we as a society, we like men, both men and women, we like them shaven. And essentially, when a woman gets this done, they look like a little girl. Okay. People like to look young. Which, of course, people weren't shaven as much back in the 70s and that sort of thing, at least if you're judging by pornography and what else do you have to judge by. So I don't know if that's necessarily true what that person was saying, but you're saying... It was an interesting idea. Right. That's what I'm saying. It was an interesting idea and if you look at the before and after pictures, essentially they look like young girls when they're done with this surgery because that... Well, anyway, I can't really... You're just making an observation. It's not clinical. Yes, exactly. I'm not saying that that is scientific or anything. It's just an interesting point. Yeah. In contrast, many doctors don't even accept the existence of the purported pleasure center known as the G-spot, much less approved of injections meant to enhance it. I don't know what the G-spot is, says Dr. Melvin. Melvin Gerbie, chief of gynecology at Northwestern Memorial Hospital. As for re-virgination, Gerbie said any doctor performing it at Northwestern would be in trouble. Yeah, that seems like madness to me. Very strange. I don't even know why one would want that done. I don't understand what the point would be. I don't know either. No one would be able to tell that you weren't a virgin by having sex with you because the hymen isn't necessarily intact when you have sex for the first time. What do they do? Stick a blood pack up there but you have sex after the surgery. It looks like the real thing. Which that's not even necessarily true. Pull a little skin over there. The hymen's just a little bit of skin in front of the vaginal opening. Here's what it is. A hymenoplasty. The procedure involves reattaching the tissue torn when a woman first has sex. But I don't think that a man would notice that. I don't understand what the purpose of that surgery would be at all. That's an excellent question. Maybe we can find a testimonial from some lady as far as what she was thinking before and after that sort of thing. That's bizarre to me. Maybe it's some sort of fetish. Yeah, that's even more bizarre to me than the other ones. That seems to have no purpose whatsoever. I don't understand. Or even less of a purpose in the labioplasty which also seems to have no purpose beyond appearance and being trying to look like a porn star or a little girl or something. Well that's not true. There's a couple of instances where it has been necessary for medical purposes I guess. Well these guys are saying they can't see medical purposes for this. These are other doctors. These are people who claim that they've got it done because they were uncomfortable. I mean who am I to say that they weren't uncomfortable. Neither vaginal rejuvenation nor designer vaginoplasty have been adequately described or evaluated according to critics. Practitioners say they tighten women's internal genitalia by making incisions and stitching muscles more firmly together. It just does not sound good. The thought of knives down there just really weirds me out. I don't know. Makes me uncomfortable. Yeah somebody cut me when I was a kid and I've had enough of that cutting. No thanks. What are the doctors doing? We're not really sure says Dr. Steven Soemheimer a professor of gynecology at the University of Pennsylvania. We have doctors contacting us and asking. So this really hasn't been pure reviewed in any way. Right exactly. That's what these doctors are saying is that there's really little known about the surgery and there's growing numbers of women rushing out to get this. So hold off ladies. The risk of course Maybe you should just try loving yourself. The risk of course is that patients could suffer harm from the surgeries including bleeding, scarring, infection and altered sensation while experiencing little or no benefits. Those would be some of my concerns. Yeah. It's surgery man. It's dangerous. Right. Don't you remember the story we read on the air about the dentist who was you know deciding to do that his wife decided that she wanted to go to a plastic surgery at the house you know so he was doing a little bit and then she decided you know right in the midst of it all they both the two of them decided you know instead of just trimming down the labia let's take them both off and the clitoris too. No I don't remember that. The female circumcision story that we had read. Oh female circumcision is nasty. Well that's essentially yeah to some extent that's what we're talking about. Yeah it is. You're right. It's not extreme. It's close to it though. It is mutilation. 800-259-9231 Ladies how do you feel about this? How are you interested in this surgery? If so why? Are you interested in labiaplasty, vaginoplasty, hymenoplasty? Why? And do you know anybody who is and what's your analysis of that? If you're on the outside if you've known people who are interested or have had this done how do you feel about this? Now we're three's on the way you can take control. It's free talk live. With your help we can spread the message of liberty around the world. Consider becoming a free talk live amplifier for just $3 a month now at amp.freetalklive.com If you can't afford it keep enjoying us for free. If you can spare the three visit amp.freetalklive.com This is free talk live. We're launching in now number three of the program. You can take control of the airwaves toll free at 800-259-9231. We've been from everywhere from intellectual property all the way to insanity called vaginal plastic surgery. We've been everywhere tonight so bring up anything 800-259-9231. It is Ian here with you. And Julia. And Mark. And you can join us online freetalklive.com is the place to go. The features on the site we give them away. So enjoy those on us for free freetalklive.com going right into the phone calls. Let's talk to Puk in New Hampshire on the amplifier line. Hey Puk. Good evening all. Good evening. What's on your mind? Well I wanted to report this story that I actually heard about from a co-worker today as he was driving into work. He passed the police station in Troy, New Hampshire small town South of Keene. And apparently a man became disgruntled, stole a bulldozer and rammed it into the Troy police station three times essentially destroying the front of the police station. Wow. Awesome. Well I can't say that I'm happy to see taxpayers, you know money destroyed in that fashion because they're simply going to build it again. But it does go to show that sometimes the bureaucrats just screw with people a little too much. It's too far and this is what happens. Apparently this guy had over 20 traffic violations or something. I actually got the story here from the AP. It says here that Stanley Byrd who's 34 said the police drove him to it. He says I've been harassed to the point that this has brought this to. Wearing a t-shirt at the time that depicted a construction excavator saying I want an investigation started. Byrd had numerous run-ins with the local police including 20 driving offenses. He recently was released after serving 12 months in the county jail after being convicted of being a habitual motor vehicle offender. The bulldozer had heard of that. He was charged with criminal mischief and reckless conduct with a deadly weapon as well as driving and probation violations. So he pulled one too many U-turns and the government put him in jail for 12 months and he was a little ticked off about that. It's probably not going to help him out anything what he did. I thought it was rather amusing when I heard this tale. Obviously he felt like he had nothing to lose at this point. He stole a year of his life. He figured he'd keep messing with the cops at that point. They want to mess with him. He's going to mess with them. It takes a real financial burden on you when you go to jail for a year. Absolutely. Let's not forget the financial burden that's put on the taxpayer. How much money do we have to pay in order to keep this guy in jail for a year? Driving offenses. $50,000, $80,000, $100,000 a year? Not worth it. I like at the end of the story that I have it. It talks about a different incident of a zoning battle with his town somewhere in Colorado. He actually fortified a bulldozer and went on a rampage destroying, I think it says, six buildings. Yeah, there's video footage of that. YouTube said the killdozer story. Yeah, it's called the killdozer. Not only did he fortify it, but he actually made it bulletproof and that sort of thing. It was just an awesome destruction vehicle, this tank that he was just destroying the city hall. Right, and as the bureaucrats get more and more invasive on people's lives, you're going to see more and more of these incidents where a man is driven to desperation and it's not going to be one in a hundred, it's going to be one in a a million, a hundred thousand or whatever, but this is going to happen. There's a story from down in Florida from a few years ago where some guy who just couldn't get the zoning board to see things his way went into one of the city buildings and capped like five bureaucrats. In New Hampshire, Carl Draga, back in the late 1990s, the zoning bureaucrats would not allow him to make some changes to his back yard and he was just in this major situation with the city over this. It wasn't any big deal what he wanted to do. It took years and years and he eventually just popped one of the people in the head and then killed a couple of cops and they took him out obviously. Obviously there's no winning in these circumstances and they've gone out of their minds and they're and that's what and that's really where it comes to because when you're dealing in the case of Carl Draga look it's my back yard I should be able to do what I want with it. I can understand where the guy is coming from and there's all this paperwork until you have your permit they want all this money you do a site plan to be able to do what you want that costs several thousand dollars and then they say no we want such and such so and so you needed a new site plan another couple thousand just bomb the zoning board that's a lot like school kids when they go crazy in school it's a lot like that yeah where they just snap except the school kids will shoot their fellow students whereas people like this are actually attacking the source of the problem well I think that what you just said I mean essentially the kids who go on these rampages shoot the fellow students who were mean to them and been making fun of them so it's the same idea that's a good point yeah I don't know obviously whenever somebody goes crazy right they're not who knows what's going through their head but before I go Dale Burt would like me to mention that going along with the surgery thing he thinks that guys should get their tongue lengthened surgery or some crap like that what what he's talking about it in the amp studio cam chat room and he says that instead of women getting these surgeries men should get their tongue lengthened or something thanks for the call I have enough trouble biting my tongue now and then I certainly wouldn't want it any longer 1-800-259-9231 look this is why what we're doing on free talk live and the Liberty movement is so important because if we don't turn government around if we don't turn this incredibly large bureaucratic intrusive government around and make it drastically smaller as soon as possible more incidents like this are going to happen more cops are going to get killed more buildings and city property are going to get destroyed people are going to get arrested there's going to be more incidents and that just makes it that just gives the government more of an excuse to start cracking down on people well we've got a problem with people running bulldozers into city buildings we're going to have to put up barricades we're going to need more police presence we need to hire more cops we need to have cameras in the streets I mean the more violence you use against them the more they're going to amp their violence up against us and of course violence so the more we the more stuff like this happens the more the government is going to intrude in our lives the more stuff like this will happen and so on and so forth we need to turn this around as soon as possible that's right free talk lives saving lives every single night we're trying to at least let's go to the phones and talk to Jared in Tennessee Jared you're on free talk live what's on your mind hey everybody hey there I just wanted to get in on this circumcision conversation sure I just started tuning in late and I didn't know if you discussed the male circumcision aspect we touched on it not really so much tonight and we actually didn't necessarily talk about female circumcision but female plastic surgery okay but yeah you're welcome to comment on circumcision what do you have to say about males genital mutilation I wish mine hadn't been cut oh yeah me too man I actually didn't bother me until here recently well I didn't even I didn't realize what I was you know what was truly taken from me right nor did I I didn't realize until I saw the pen and tell her episode I mean you're born as far as you're you know you're born with that I mean I always thought that was just how I was born right I mean for a long time obviously not when I got older but the fact is they stole nerve endings from you exactly I mean that is I mean what is it all about I don't understand great question right what if you wanted to surgically alter your you know young male child or even female child what if you wanted to remove one of their arms yeah I mean should we allow parents to do that I think that circumcision is child abuse now hold on that didn't answer his question what is it all about look into the history of circumcision and you'll find that it's all about desensitizing the male genitalia and it happens there was also female circumcision was even worse taking it so sex is less pleasurable so in theory you'll want it less which of course isn't true it doesn't I mean yes it may make it less pleasurable in that you don't have as many nerve endings as you did before but it doesn't mean that you want it any less and so this was actually brought about by Puritans it was brought about by religious freaks that wanted to Kellogg and Graham make your cereal and Graham crackers these are the guys that went on some kind of weird zealotist religious advocating it basically they didn't want boys to touch themselves they said that it would reduce the incidence of masturbation self-selling or some terminology that they used very bizarre stuff how does this idea propagate how come it's maintained itself so long Jews did it at one point fortunately it is going down in popularity as I understand it it used to be in the 80's 80% of males were circumcised now it's 50 I heard 70's 73 now it's 50% so it's going down in popularity that's good news the truth is getting out how did it propagate through the religious channels people said this is what you should do to keep your kids closer to God doctors recommend it they'll do it without your permission so blame Jesus thanks for the call man we appreciate it 800-259-9231 and was Jesus circumcised that's a good question this is free talk live this is free talk live and it's your show you can take control of the airwaves via the toll free number 9231 the sequel CAI toll free line it's Ian here with you and Julia and Mark 800-259-9231 you can join us online at freetalklive.com the features on the site for free so enjoy those on us including the live under the live streams well those are there but the archives haven't mentioned those yet archives an entire year's worth of the show front page of the website you just go and get them they're free at freetalklive.com and your mattress was likely manufactured using all kinds of disturbing chemicals does this bother you well it bothers some scientists especially in the case of young children savvy rest mattresses are made of 100% natural latex rubber organic wool and organic cotton try their crib mattresses too savvyrest.com for the sleep you've been dreaming of that's savvyrest.com not only are they healthy they're darn comfy too no doubt about it let's go to the phones to the fun talk to the gourd captain in Ohio you're on free talk live hello hello hey what's on your mind first I'm going to tell you a story about possibly the weirdest episode t-shirt I've ever had in the fifth grade it's not a bit like some of your conspiracy collars okay you see in the fifth grade during orchestra class my orchestra teacher never shows up half the time well more like 25% of the time still who's coming go ahead we have to go to the theater because none of the substitutes actually know anything about an orchestra and have a study hall only problem is that the substitute starts talking about it so you know how you know she used to be in the Soviet Union how America's so wonderful and stuff but then she notes how she's glad to be away from the KGB killed her brother in the middle of the 1990s hmm and then you know how the Soviet Union never really waited they're just hiding and they'll nuke us when we least expect it yeah that seems a little paranoid I'm pretty sure the KGB was not around in the middle of the 1990s but I'm sure the conspiracy theorists believe differently I think it's G.U.R. took over for the absolutely out of all the KGB anyway and denying their theory so yeah anyway she then furthermore said this was okay but she's going to die anyway because she smokes cigarettes every day and that'll kill her off with a couple of years but she's again fine with that because the entire was going in in 2012 anyway when an asteroid hits the earth killing off all life sweet pretty awesome you think if an asteroid was going to hit earth and you know change everything out of this asteroid I mean if we could divert this asteroid right now it wouldn't take much you know because obviously it's out somewhere as far as Jupiter Neptune or something like that it wouldn't take much of a divergence to keep it away from earth a pinprick a pebble plunked against it right now which would you know it would miss us by hundreds of thousands of miles yeah you're probably right about that so yeah but that was Michael Beethoven that's a fate worse than death I haven't seen it I have seen the island Armageddon and Pearl Harbor Pearl Harbor in the island I haven't seen any of those and I've heard they're not so great but I've seen the rock and I really enjoyed that one I'll have to take your word for that anyway but after that she you know said she dealt a tale for time you see she lived in the skyscraper and one day there was an earthquake and the building collapsed on top of her luckily she somehow made it underneath a bathtub so she lived but the problem was it was several days before she was rescued she was starting to get thirsty so she found this nearby butcher's knife apparently underneath the bathtub mm-hmm when her health got there but anyway but you know she was so desperate she cut her wrists and started drinking the blood to stay alive I don't know if that would work would that work it tasted good yeah she's pretty weird man thanks for the stories we appreciate it you think you would enter a gold substitute teacher you think you would enter there recently you think you would go for urine before you went for blood did they find any of those minors I mean I saw a story I read something today that in fact I don't know that they proposed what the minors had done I don't know I think that are they alive I don't know the answer I cannot answer because I heard something on the radio it's not the kind of story we normally do so I just kind of skimmed over it I heard something about them talking about making jokes oh wow yeah I mean I'll have to look into that it has to be biological at some point right I was very curious about that because the minors you're talking about the Utah minors right yes that's what I believe I'm talking about I am almost entirely uninformed in this I saw a headline I don't know a lot but what I understand is they got caught down in the mine they sent in a rescue team to drill and get them out three of the rescue team members got killed in some sort of a cave in and then they called it off radio news about how they're trying again about how they're continuing to drill in three weeks later and I'm thinking three weeks they really they don't have water under there how could they possibly make it that long I mean they did I don't know anyway we'll look into it maybe we can find the story 800-259-9231 let's see real quick here according to dailytech.com there's in 2004 history professor Naomi Orxes performed a survey of research papers on climate change examining peer-reviewed papers published on the ISI Web of Science database between 1993 and 2003 she found a majority of scientists supported the consensus view defined as humans talking about global warming humans were having at least some effect on global climate change Orr's work has been repeatedly cited but as some of its data is now nearly 15 conclusions are becoming well, somewhat dated medical researcher Dr. Klaus Martin-Schult recently updated this research using the same database and the same search terms as the original researcher he examined all papers published from 2004 to February of 2007 the results have been submitted to the Journal of Energy and Environment of which dailytech has obtained a pre-publication copy the figures are surprising of 528 total papers on global climate change or 7% gave an explicit endorsement of the consensus if one considers implicit endorsement accepting the consensus without explicit statement the figure rises to 45% however, while only 32 papers reject the consensus outright which is 6% the largest category 48% are neutral papers refusing to either accept or to reject the hypothesis conclusion there is no consensus there's no consensus on global warming period global climate change no consensus how could there be not even whether it's human-made the scientists aren't even oh, I think they think there are some changes going on we've known it's getting a little warmer but that's not what this addresses this is addressing that humans were having some effect on global climate change our humans a factor is the question there is no consensus that's absolutely the truth these miners that they found that managed to survive I heard that story too why the hell didn't you save me I thought we were talking about the Utah miners how did I know I said I read a story today well anyway there you go thanks, got my back partner so the global warming yeah, I was just letting you know on that I thought that's what we've been saying all along well, how could there be a consensus yeah, the idea that there is a consensus as far as what's causing the climate to change how could anybody know how could you go about finding out what causes climate to change I guess you'll have to go ask the 6% that claim that the humans are indeed responsible well, I know what they're claiming they're claiming there's more carbon dioxide in the air now and our combustion engines are causing an increase in carbon dioxide and temperatures go up when there's more carbon dioxide so poof, it's us but what they fail to take into account is what's referred to in the 1400s is the medieval warm period like for instance when Greenland was actually green and when people thought it was a good idea to get on Iceland and populate the place it was warmer then they also failed to take into account and you're not scientists but they also failed to take into account things that humans couldn't possibly affect like, you know the temperature of the sun and how close it is to the earth that sort of thing more on the way you can take control this is Free Talk Live one of the bonuses you'll get as a Free Talk Live amplifier is access to our classic archives for just $3 a month you can become an amplifier and you'll help us get on more radio stations and mp3 players get the details at amp.freetalklive.com that's amp.freetalklive.com Free Talk Live, your show you bring up what you want the toll free number is 800-259-9231 it's April CAI toll free line for you Ian here with you and Julia and Mark you can join us online at freetalklive.com the features on our site we give away so enjoy those on us including the strand of female listeners and the ladies who have taken the time to send us their validated photo to prove they listen to the show see what I mean by heading over to Shrine.freetalklive.com Shrine.freetalklive.com do you have a company that needs to try something new in the area of collections Sacle CAI does collections they do early out billing and they purchase charged off receivables Sacle's employees are trained in resolving issues for your customers and treating them with respect they know that not only do you want to collect your money but you want to keep those clients too Sacle CAI check out their banner freetalklive.com or call 800-544-6359 do business with businesses that support freetalklive I think we should get to a story that we mentioned earlier this week just didn't have time to get to it's another California story since we've got our friends out in KSCO land listening in Santa Cruz and San Jose Mark you had a story about a field a little league field that was being harassed by the owner of which is being harassed by the zoning board right the planning commission or whatever they're called out there you know you always wonder with these sort of planning board stories was this the original intent of the voters when we put in place a planning board did the voters put in place a planning board I don't think so I don't even know I would imagine they had to vote on it at some point or another I imagine what happened is they voted in certain city counselors and then the city counselors went ahead and created the zoning board I don't think you I don't think voters are asked to approve all of the boards and commissions that government creates which we got a when we went to I'm filing for city council here and we went to you have filed actually yes I have filed and I'm already getting nasty emails from slimy politicians you sure are in fact it's getting kind of dirty in fact he's probably listening right now he might be hi Fred a man built a baseball field for his 11 year old son and his son's little league team but this is not some fairy tale where the ghost of shoeless Joe Jackson emerges from a corn field to join the game this is Danville not Iowa someone did arrive to check out the field of dreams but it was a city building inspector the story heads into the late innings tonight when Danville's planning commission is set to weigh in on an unusual property dispute it pits David Lowe who built the field without permits in a picturesque ridgeline how dare he right on a picturesque ridgeline against neighbors below who say the field's 14 foot high fence screams prison wall and obscures million dollar views let's take the fence down and then all the balls can go fly through your windows what do you think about that picturesque view baseball coming through your window Lowe a private equity investor spends hundreds of thousands of dollars on spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on the field which has is there barbed wire on the top of the fence what are you talking about a prison view what sort of madness is infecting these people it has artificial turf and enclosed batting cage with a motorized pitching machine hookups for electricity and water views gave San Francisco's AT&T Park a run for its money Mount Diablo to the east Las Trampas National Park to the west Old Oaks all around Lowe calls it a place for neighborhood children to play baseball his son Greg calls it really cool yeah opponents call it Guantanamo Bay because of its fences come on this is satire right is this real absolutely it's out of sfgate.com my goodness yep sorry about that the neighbors many of whom have forgotten what fun is all about they're wealthy though not build your own ball field wealthy want it removed as soon as possible rejecting lows turn that into a parking lot to hide it by planting tall trees tall trees you know this is this seems to be the problem the biggest problem in the wealthy neighborhoods this wouldn't be a problem in a you know a regular old working class neighborhood they'd be happy to have the ballpark but once people seem to get enough money they believe they own everything that they can survey from their property this is how it was at longboat key where I came from Sarasota Florida you know the the rich people zone and regulate the crap out of each other to the point where you can't change the color your carpet you think it's because they just don't have anything better to do like all they want to do is control everybody else I don't know maybe they fancy themselves all kings just it's ludicrous a sickness it's some sort of disease mental infection that these people have that they just want to control other people's property I don't like gallery your house and I was too high you're gonna you're gonna have to cut those bushes shut up go get a life some of the rules are so ludicrous absolutely true I lived in a community where they had a problem with a sego palm that I had that neighbor had that's an unapproved palm sir it really you know they called it a tree it's a palm tree of course it's so it got above three feet and the guy wasn't allowed to have it anymore they made him cut down as segos unbelievable crazy stuff but you know these planning boards and these bureaucrats in this case it was in fact a building inspector we don't want our neighborhood to look like kids are having fun around here no fun allowed in I can I want quotes I want quotes from these idiots give me an excuse Danville planners agree citing local rules preserving of course they do major ridgelines they recommend that the commission turned down a permit application that low belatedly filed the squabble could end up before the town council and the courts after that in theory the town could force the fields dismantling of course it could in fact what else is it going to do well after the fact this guy's he has violated the rules and so therefore they can just wipe it out if they want probably at his cost and they don't have to accept the permit but if they do that belated permit will cost probably ten times as much as the original permit would have and it's all just which he knew he wouldn't get I bet you he knew he wouldn't get the permit because of all the you know muckity mucks that are living there that don't like kids having fun in their neighborhood to live life is the next guy going to point to a football field on the ridge line neighbor Terry Russo asked well pointing into the black fence in her backyard wait what is this what is the next guy going to put a football field on the ridge line apparently Terry tennis courts what's going on this is basketball what do we want all these sports around here get this out of here we just want to die and watch our television and garden in places like Danville planners are used to dealing with monster homes being plopped in once pristine hills but say this is their first time dealing with a ball field on a ridge you ruined our ridge right that's that's the way it is it's like their ridge you didn't buy the ridge just because you can see the ridge from your house doesn't make it yours otherwise if I'm your neighbor and I can see your car I should be able to go and take it away from you I mean these people are crazy right having a rural feel said vice mayor Candace Anderson then buy it no hold on just a second to have a rural feel let's ludicrous to think that you're going to build a house or buy a house and that there's never going to be any progress afterwards is absolutely nuts and not what people want in fact each one of these people would like to have something built in their neighborhood whether it's on a ridge line or whatever they would like to have something or a target or a Macy's or Nordstrom's or I don't know a major league football whatever it is there's something out there that would make their life better but they don't want anyone else to have a better life and that's the selfishness that's propagated by these zoning boards it absolutely is by the way I always like to bring up an example of people saying oh my god we'd have chaos without zoning board Houston yep one of the major rules in the United States Houston number seven no zoning zoning board or anything like that and as an example people will say well Houston sounds like crap then I wouldn't want to be there well in fact the properties values inside of Houston are more valuable than self contained communities communities that are inside completely inside this Houston city limits that have their own zoning regulation this is fascinating too you know the scary the scare tactic is that if somebody advocates the abolition of a zoning board inevitably the objection that comes up is well what if they open up a junkyard next to me and we'll address this here in moments well I want to get one more quote here from the vice mayor Candace Anderson you should hold it it's so good so hold on to it okay we'll keep talking about zoning and if you've got a zoning nightmare story California you do 1-800-259-9231 give us the worst busy body you've ever come across this is free talk live this is free talk live only moments remain but just enough time for your call 800-259-9231 is the SACL CAI full free line it's 1-800-259-9231 we're talking the zoning and there's always a new zoning hell story out there to share with you this one happens to come from Danville, California and before we talk about Houston and why they're different and special there you said you had a quote to share but real quick to recap the story in Danville they are there's some old you know some muckety mucks that are complaining right a nice guy builds a part for the kids to play baseball in and the neighbors some of the neighbors say it looks like Guantanamo Bay it's got a big it's not a ridge line it's got a big wall and stuff and a big field shouldn't it have a wall so baseballs don't go flying into people's windows they just don't like it at all they're just coming up with excuses as to why they don't like it anyway that's just one example if you've got a story for us 1-800-259-9231 but you had a quote from the mayor on that particular case was that right this is the vice mayor Candace Anderson says my first thought when I saw the fence was what were they thinking it's really nice the vice mayor would be concerned with the rules and that kind of thing but at some point the rules get so restrictive the rules the rules aren't the most important thing in the world for instance if the family that hit Anne Frank had followed the rules they would have died in a gas chamber not the family but the you know the the Franks would have which finally Anne Frank did die but but it was following the rules and so the rules the road to hell is paid with your damn rules Candace yeah screw your rules the fact is the kids do need a place to play ball and to have a nice park is a very good thing I understand that you don't want your that people don't want their little ridge lines covered when buildings and that kind of thing but they don't own the ridge lines if they don't want the ridge lines covered in buildings let them buy them because if I own a piece of ridge line I should be able to build what I want on it thank you very much I don't care you damn right was that the end of that no it's the end of the quote okay so we were talking about Houston right this unzoned city right it's by no means a mecca for liberty or anything like that but it is an anomaly in America right it's the seventh metro in the United States so it's a rather large place and somehow good portions of the city managed to go without a zoning board at all now because it's such a large city there are some areas within Houston that are areas there's other towns inside of Houston that are zone that do have these plant these centralized planning boards you know the people that sit around and they've got their college degrees and I'm an expert in urban sprawl and we're going to make our city very beautiful so I know everything you would think having these experts employed and elected inside these cities these municipalities inside of Houston that you know it's in the very same area in the planned areas to prove to you isn't that the idea behind the planning board and somehow it's going to make our property values better but in fact it's not true what's the difference between a planning board and a zoning board because they're both in key they call them they're pretty much the same you know zoning's which are allowed to build there and then planning's they've got a larger view I don't even know it varies from municipality to house we've got these high property values and we're zoned and you're not but in fact the unzoned areas rise in property value far faster than the other areas that are zoned you have to ask yourself why is that well it's because the marketplace allocates resources better than central planning boards that's the short version of the answer but the other thing is that in freedom in a free situation and as far as we're talking about zoning and property and all that is concerned yeah you are taking a risk by living in an unzoned area by living in an area where someone could come in and trash their yard and park cars all over the place and make their property look relatively ugly in theory that could bring your property down in value it will also make your property look better so that's the other side of the coin but you know that is a risk that you are taking by moving into the other side of that coin however is the other side of the risk and that is that because you are unzoned because there is no centralized bureaucracy you have to go to and beg for permission and pay thousands of dollars to get their permission to do things because people have that freedom they can take the money that they would have paid in permits or whatever and take that and put it into their property they can upgrade their property without asking for permission they can do all kinds of creative original things that don't have to you know bow down to the code and to the official rulebook and because of that freedom people can upgrade their property without having to ask for permission they can upgrade it faster they can do it better they can do it more affordably and they can do different more original things thereby making property values skyrocket in comparison to the zoned controlled areas now the first thing that you are going to hear from somebody who is you know new to this concept of getting rid of a zoning board what about oh what if my neighbor wanted to start mining for oil next door neighbor how about a garbage dump or make a dump or start a pig farm well okay let's let's I'm not going to use terms like ignorant and not know anything about economics I'm not going to you know go banding about ad hominem attacks like that but why don't you go downtown to the most select police of real estate knock down the 50 story skyscraper and put a house there because it's not economically feasible it's a dumb thing take a city lot inside of your you know in your suburban or urban area or whatever take a city lot and turn it into a pig farm right farms need to be big so you can have a bunch of pigs you make pig farms out in rural areas that way you can afford the land why why don't they go tear down the empire state building and put a pig farm there God you know and why wouldn't they mine for oil well for one it's likely that and if there was oil then you know maybe it would be valuable enough you'd have to do a cost benefit analysis or anything like that and also we have laws for disturbing the peace and bothering your neighbors and those kind of things if you're creating a foul odor at your house I'm sure that there's some municipal ordinance about that if you're making a bunch of noise that keeps people up at night absolutely like the clanking of oil rigs Derek sucking the oil out of the right you know the ground in Danville California now I wonder I wonder what's the difference because we know that the zoned areas don't rise in property value as fast as the unzoned areas but what about deed restricted I'm not sure that's entirely true every time but it does here is a great case it has been the case in Houston right the only place in the United States where we can really make a good example because the rest is a brilliant example to look at and indeed there are some anomalies there are houses that are next to the place the school buses are parked and that sort of thing but okay so don't live there if that's where you don't want to live somebody has to live next to where the school buses are parked right and the fact is that's an interesting point and that the thing that lack of zoning brings is total creativity in the market the school buses that are parked in this place and it might be convenient to have the school bus people maybe living nearby there absolutely you never know what the marketplace is going to do in a given circumstance what if I want to live in town I don't want to live way outside of town and make the long drive but I can't afford most of the houses in town but there does happen to be one that's somehow shouldn't exist well I'll tell you who they are they're a bunch of officious bureaucrats that think they know better than you Mark they're educated there is a hotel here I guess you could call it a hotel or a motel the motel and it's one of the I call it a motel motel it's one of the track and hooker come up when I look at that place exactly it's awful to look it's a motel they have bought it they bought the property and they want to turn it into a hotel and there are the zoning board is considering not letting them do it because they said that they don't know if that's too big the neighbors in the community are like oh my goodness four stories it could block out the sun God knows what these people are talking about but the fact is you're going to have some Luddite go far and wide enough and ask enough people you will find an ever good honest hard working thing that you want to do you want to feed the poor with genetically reconstructing our waste you imagine the greatest plan ever now some jerk will come along and have some reason that he doesn't want it done let's just keep things how they are what's with all this change you know progress is overrated I've got no problem with conservatives change in order to control other people's freedom and to control other people's property if you don't want to change then you can just buy up a bunch of land and you can live on it your whole life and you'll never see another person walk by and you'll never get to see new hairstyles or new clothing or new buildings going up or anything new you can join us online in the meantime at freetalklive.com DVD books music instrument periodicals computers software electronic photos cell phones office products home and garden bed and bath furniture kitchen pet supplies automotive hardware apparel shoes jewelry grocery healthcare sports and outdoor toys games we'll go to freetalklive when you enter amazon through amazon.freetalklive.com