 Welcome to Ehana Kako. We're here every week on the Think Tech Hawaii Broadcast Network. I'm Kelea Akina, president of the Grassroot Institute. Those of you who are here in Hawaii know that the Grassroot Institute plays an important role of challenging, prevailing views by talking about how we can have a better economy, a better government, and a better society, as well as coming up with solutions. Well, this process takes place all across the nation in think tanks that are participants in a broad network called the State Policy Network. And I have colleagues all across the country who are doing very much the same thing that we're doing here in Hawaii, but in their own state. Today we're going to talk with Connor Boyack. Connor Boyack happens to be the founder and president of the Libertas Institute in Utah, and he's very much involved in affecting the legal and economic community there, but not community, but the entire environment that affects everybody there, making Utah a better place to live. Connor, welcome to the program. Thank you very much for having me. Well, I'm so glad that you're here. You were here out in Hawaii with a group of economists at one of our conferences just a few weeks ago. How did you like it here? Oh, it was beautiful. It was actually my first time we went to Maui, and we were there, as you say, with a bunch of free market economists to talk about how we can communicate our ideas better to people of all sorts of ages. And so I probably confess that I ditched a little bit of that conference so I could do a little more sightseeing, but I had a wonderful time. Well, we noticed that on the more beautiful days you were missing from some of the more boring seminars. That's right. Connor, tell me a little bit about the Libertas Institute. In fact, what in the world do you mean by Libertas? That's an important word. Yeah, so she is the Roman goddess of liberty, the statue of liberty that is Libertas or Libertas. And so we named our institute after her. Funny thing, people are often confused about how to pronounce the name of our organization. We say Libertas. Most people say Libertas. We've consulted people who claim to know Latin. Of course, it's a dead language. And so there's two schools of thought as to how it's actually pronounced. Absolutely. I always say it doesn't matter, you know. That's right. And anyone who likes to pretend that they have a Harvard background pronounces that Libertas hasn't very touched. But in any case, you have to be commended because Libertas Institute has gone from zero to where it is today in just six years, a very significant player in the scene in Utah. You have a legal department there that you're growing. You're also involved in what putting forth better solutions to economic problems and so forth. But one of the most important things you do is communicate principles of better law and better economics. In fact, I'm very intrigued by a series of six books that you've written for of all people, Little Children. Yeah, this started because I'm a father. This was an organically grown project. This was not something our team kind of master planned. One day I was on Amazon looking around for books that would teach my children free market ideas. Those are principles that I value and want to communicate to them and was surprised and a little frustrated to find nothing. And so I spent about a week being frustrated before I thought, you know what, you're an entrepreneur. Why don't you solve the problem? And thus the Tuttle Twins were born. The Tuttle Twins. Now you use a term free market and for the sake of our very broad audience, what do you mean by a free market way of looking at things? Yeah, obviously there's free market economics, which is rather narrow. I use it in the general sense where voluntary interactions of free people buying, selling, exchanging, interacting with one another, it really encompasses political, social, and economic interactions and ideals where rather than a micromanagerial government that restricts us, that puts obstacles in our path, that limits what we can do, gives us permission slips or permits in order for us to be able to do things, that rather we recognize that we have inalienable rights, that we have the fundamental right to interact with each other in this way so long as we do not harm other individuals. That is the basis of good government. It is the foundation of a philosophy of freedom. And obviously its various terms have different connotations, whether you're talking about libertarianism or conservatism or whatnot. I tend to like free market because it really connotes that at the end of the day we're talking about interactions between people and those interactions should be free. I like the fact that you use the word voluntary because I think children whom you're trying to educate can clearly understand what it is to do something voluntarily or to do something because you're forced to do it. For example, if you want to share a toy, it means so much more if you can volunteer the toy and your friend can exchange with you appropriately rather than being told by your parent. And so there are a lot of parallels in raising children and building good government. Tell me a little bit about this six-part book series you've got, The Tuttle Twins. Yes, so The Tuttle Twins, each book is based on an original book. And so we take classic free market texts, books or essays and we take the core ideas from those writings and distill them down in a fun story for children to learn. For example, the very famous economic essay, I Pencil, that talks about how the simple pencil is actually a miracle to produce because of the many millions of people and processes involved in all the elaborate parts going into making that pencil. That essay was written decades ago by Leonard Reed, excuse me. It was popularized by Milton Friedman. So we take that and put it into a fun story so children can learn about those free market economic ideas with the object lesson of a pencil. But we have other books, Economics in One Lesson by Hazlett, The Road to Serfdom by Hayek, The Law by Bastiat, and others where we can take these very popular writings, turn them into a children's edition so that young kids can find these ideas in a more accessible format, think about them, learn about them, and then progress as they get older to learn about them from the original texts. But when you rattle off those names, Hayek, Bastiat, Friedman, you may even throw in so many others. You're talking about classics that are hard to understand for many people. Would you say that these children's books are something that could help adults as well? I joke often with people that the age range for the Tuttle Twins books are roughly five to ten years of age and congressman. And of course that's a joke that suggests that, yes, adults can get this too. And I should say that while not intentional, we've found that a large audience that we now have are the very parents of these children who never have heard of these original thinkers, who would never pick up a thick dry text. And yet when we provide them an opportunity to sit down with their children, have a shared experience reading a fun story while learning important principles, the parents eat it up just as much as they can. I can imagine a parent reading a bedtime story from the Tuttle Twins or maybe reverse a daughter reading to her father. In fact, there's a little girl, Emily Tuttle, in the Tuttle Twins Learn About the Law. She says this, and I want to ask you to explain this. True laws protect people and their property from plunder. So Emily says true laws protect people and their property from plunder. What are you trying to teach children with this? So this is based on a concept espoused by Frederick Bostia where he tries to dispel the misconception that law is whatever a group of politicians say it is. That may be a statute, that may be legislation, but law in the true sense, based on natural observable law that binds us together, that is observable, and that we can just infer from our interactions. Those are the true, valid, legitimate laws that really govern us. Even in the absence of the state or a government, those are still laws that we would be subject to as part of being in a society or interacting with others. And so he talks about how plunder or legalized plunder is when we start taking things from other people. And even if there is a so-called law that legitimizes or purports to legitimize that interaction, it's still in Bostia's view not a law because it actually contradicts true law. So trying to help children understand that not all things that politicians say are necessarily actually laws. So you're teaching children that even if you have permission or power to steal something from someone else, that doesn't make it right at all. And that's an area that Libertas Institute works in, the area of property rights, that property rights are true law in the sense or when they protect the property rights of individuals, but they're not a true law when they result in plunder. What are some of the stories that you use in Tuttle Twins to convey that? Yeah, no, that's precisely right. These are very real issues that apply to Grassroot Institute, Libertas Institute, and our other sister think tanks. They're very relevant today. If you think of something like Airbnb, do homeowners have the right to share a room in their home with travelers from elsewhere? Well, no one contests that they have the right to share it with grandma or a boy scout or a college student or a homeless person. No one says, hey, you're not allowed to use your room that way, but suddenly if you want to do it to earn some money, that changes things, even though the actual use of property is not the same. Very interestingly, most state constitutions have a recognition of the right to own property. They do not, however, recognize the right to use your property in the peaceful way that you see fit. So one of the ideas that we have been working on in Utah is a constitutional amendment that would recognize and thus legally protect the right to peaceably use your property. This would make it harder for the government to pass any ordinance or regulation it wishes restricting your property without showing sufficient justification to overcome that constitutional recognition, much like with free speech. The government can in the right time and place and manner restrict speech, but not on a wholesale ban. And so we want to do that with property as well. You know, one of the things that I like about your books and the few excerpts that I have read is that they cut across partisan lines. Your books are not about becoming conservatives or becoming liberals. They're not about Republican or Democrat values. They're about things children have a natural innate sense about. They have a sense of justice. And that kind of reminds me of what you were talking about a little bit earlier, property, whether it be your house or it be your car. I remember in the election this past year, 2016, many in the Bernie Sanders camp were thrilled by Bernie Sanders' support of ride sharing, such as Uber, because a car is someone's property. And if you have an empty seat and want to exchange that seat for 25 bucks to take someone down the road, children can see you have a right to do that. And the government shouldn't interfere with it. So would it be correct to say that your perspective and the free market perspective is not a partisan perspective, but something as simple as what children can understand to be justice? I think you're honing in precisely on what we understand in creating these books. And that is so many of these lessons are already being taught by parents to their children. Don't hurt people. Don't steal their stuff. Be kind to others. Be curious about the world around you. And yet it's with schooling and society and the media as these children get older, that basic view becomes encumbered with all sorts of exceptions. Like, oh, don't steal unless it's for this noble purpose or for the social program or by people with badges and guns. And so what our book series is trying to do is help children and their parents recognize that those exceptions are maybe not as valid as we think they are, that those principles that children innately understand, that many parents are teaching their children very actively, are not the exception, but they are rather the rule and that they apply even as we get older, even in complex situations, even to the government, that we should not just give it all the exceptions it wants to these important principles, but that those principles should in fact govern our interactions one with another. Well, I want to commend you because I know that the major focus of your work at Libertas, and I'll say it that way for the remainder of the program, Libertas Institute is public policy in the areas of economy, law, government and society. And yet you see and have the foresight to see that it's important to influence the next generation in terms of their own education in these principles. So I appreciate that. When we come back from a quick break, I hope that you'll be willing to share with us a little bit more about the public policy work of Libertas Institute, and I think my viewers in Hawaii will see how relevant it is to our own state. I'm Kayleigh Akina, president of the Grassroot Institute talking with you on Think Tech Hawaii's Ehana Kako. We'll be right back after this short message. They'll go away. Aloha. I'm Senator Russell Ruderman, representing Pune and Ka'u on the Big Island and the host of the Ruderman Roundtable. We're here at Think Tech Hawaii every other Tuesday at two o'clock. You can join us on ThinkTechHawaii.com and you can find links to our YouTube channel for past episodes there. I want to thank Think Tech Hawaii for hosting us and we'll see you again on the Ruderman Roundtable. Mahalo. I'm Ethan Allen, host of likeable science here on Think Tech Hawaii. Every Friday afternoon at 2 p.m. you'll have a chance to come and listen and learn from scientists around the world. Scientists who talk about their work in meaningful, easy to understand ways. They'll come to appreciate science as a wonderful way of thinking, way of knowing about the world. You'll learn interesting facts, interesting ideas, you'll be stimulated to think more. Please come join us every Friday afternoon at 2 p.m. here on Think Tech Hawaii for likeable science with me, your host, Ethan Allen. Welcome back from the break. We're here on Think Tech Hawaii's Ehana Kako. Every week, Mondays at 2 o'clock p.m. Hawaii time, but we broadcast across the world and I want to tip my hat to the folks at Think Tech Hawaii who produce about 35 hours of live content that goes across the world every week. You can see all of this on ThinkTechHawaii.com. Today I've been talking to Connor Boyak who is the president and founder of Libertas Institute in Utah that deals with public policy issues, issues ranging from law to government to economy and society, but he does so through a variety of approaches including educating young people in his books as well as going to court when necessary and of course trying to speak out to the legislature and the governor. So we welcome him back as we talk a little bit more about this. Connor, welcome back to the second half. There are some issues that you have developed an expertise at dealing with in Utah, but first let me ask you why you are necessary in Utah? A lot of people would say, well that state is a fairly conservative state, but you're not trying to promote conservative values per se. What is Utah like and why does it need to have a ThinkTech committed to free market principles? Great question that we had to come up with an answer for at the outset of starting Libertas six years ago. Utah receives many accolades for being best in business among the states. Just the other day, Alec, the American Legislative Exchange Council released a report showing that Utah was for the 10th year in a row at the top of its fiscal rankings for being the most friendly for business from a tax standpoint. So we are doing a lot of things right. The important point, however, is number one, those awards and those perceptions of Utah's conservatism are very narrow. Often it's based on something like taxes or regulations, but there are many, many other areas of policy that the government touches that Utah does not do so well. And the other thing to note, of course, is that rankings comparing one state to another are relative. And so when Utah is doing the best, we say, well, that's great. We're getting a D plus and everyone else is getting Ds and Fs, right? But there's significant room for improvement. And so we feel that even in Utah, there are many areas for improvement that need to be advocated for and solutions proposed. And that's why we exist. We spoke earlier, referring to your books, Tuttle Twins, about the fact that children have an innate sense of justice. They understand that word mine very much. And when somebody takes what's mine from children, they react immediately. They know that there's something wrong when there's the unjust taking. And that's not just a principle you've been teaching children. You've been fighting a trend of the taking of property from individuals in Utah. Can you tell us a little bit about your property rights initiatives? Yes. So this comes in many forms. One that I'll offer here in answer to your question is something called civil asset forfeiture. This is an issue in most every state, including Hawaii, where the government has the illegal authority to take property from individuals, even when they are not charged with, let alone convicted of, a crime. And so the government can on its own suspicion, a police officer thinks that you're guilty of a drug crime or of a theft. They can initiate the taking of your property without you actually being criminally charged and convicted nationwide, including federally by federal officers. This has been abused significantly. And many innocent people have seen their property be taken and unable to reclaim that property. Or even if they try, there are massive financial disincentives where the amount of money they would have to spend on attorneys in order to fight for their property far exceeds the amount of property they would be able to get back. And thus they are disincentivized from fighting it all. So if in fact our system of justice is based on innocence until guilt is proven, what we've been working for in Utah and what many of our partner think tanks have been espousing as well is reforming the system such that people are in fact presumed innocent and their property as well. So they retain their property until the government can provide sufficient evidence to demonstrate that they are guilty of the alleged crime. And so we've been making some good headway on that, including rooting out a conspiracy among the attorney general's office a few years ago, where they were trying actually they succeeded in undermining the law, the legal protections to make it easier for their prosecutors to do this. And so this is something that's happening everywhere. And frankly, as you mentioned with the books being nonpartisan, the Tuttle Twins book, this is a great example of policy that crosses partisan boundaries that is getting significant attention and reform in blue states, red states, purple states. We work closely, for example, as a more right-leaning organization with the ACLU. And so this brings us together to work on common sense solutions to protect our rights and our property. Well, whether your property is red or blue, you don't want somebody else taking it away from you. And you were speaking earlier in reference to Frederick Bastiat about true law. Think about that, the idea that attorney general's offices will be used to promote false law, will be used to promote something that's really unjust. That's a terrible thing. Can you tell me in some of the ways you've made some headway in terms of advancing the rule of law and property rights in Utah? Yeah, great question. I think first and foremost and easiest is transparency. So we have, for example, the nation's only law that requires police officers to be transparent when they're using force. This is a big sensitive subject in the wake of Ferguson and the war on drugs and police shootings. And so our law says, look, every time a SWAT team is deployed, every time there's a no-knock raid or a shooting, we need to be documenting this stuff to show the public at a very minimum that they can access when this is happening. They can see it. We're not hiding it. We do the same with civil asset forfeiture. Every single time the government seizes property using this tool, the public has the right to know. And so we can talk about reform and what the right solutions are there. That can be a debate at a very minimum to get to that common sense justice. There has to be information. There has to be data in order to understand what's being done so that we know what needs to be changed. And so we tend to focus a lot on transparency laws that empower the public to understand what their government is doing. Otherwise, you get into a lot of suspicion, a lot of accusations and speculation if you don't have access to that data. And so the transparency laws tend to very much help in driving us towards those good policy solutions. Another area in which you have been very active is in educational reform. Can you tell us some of the challenges that the educational system is facing in terms of operating well and actually delivering good education? Yeah, I would say something common to our states and all other states is the federalization of education. This is something that's been very problematic where funding is offered sometimes with incentives, sometimes with strings attached. And what we find is of course state bureaucrats who pursue that money and thus bind the state and its schools to federal programs. And so we've been working at trying to pull Utah out of those arrangements so that we can have more independence in how we want to do things. Now the problem of course with government run education is that you get central planning, you get a few politicians and school district members and bureaucrats who think that they are going to master plan this entire educational course. So our interest at the end of the day is while we want to talk about that system and how it can be improved, especially through market-based incentives, what we want to do at the end of the day is protect the right of the family. And so what we passed a few years ago was a law that completely deregulated homeschooling. So there's no accountability to the government, there's no testing requirements, there's no forms that have to be filled out or even permission that has to be sought. Now in Utah a parent can simply declare to the government one time, one piece of paper, I'm homeschooling this child, see you later. And they can take that parental responsibility upon themselves in whatever way or capacity they desire and deem best and thus be free of all the regulations and all the problems inherent in the government school system. So we can talk about the system, but at the end of the day we want that firewall to protect the parental rights and families being able to do things as they see fit. Well many will say that's all fine and well to provide greater school choice, greater options to parents as to how they spend their money on the education of their children. But how do you respond to the frequent criticism that homeschooling removes the opportunity and the need for the government to supervise and to assure the quality of the education? Important question and one that requires a definition and what is government, right? The government is subservient to us, it is a creation of individuals, it is our third party servant to do things that we collectively deem important to do, but by no means is it the source of our authority, by no means is it the owner or the steward of our children. And so it again requires protecting families and the independent inherent rights that they have independent to prior to the state coming into existence. And so that's an important philosophical distinction that requires a bit of education and persuasion so that people recognize that families don't report to the government, the government reports to families and that is something very important to recognize that to the extent parents want to send their children to school they need that help, maybe it's a single mom that can't homeschool or a married couple that for financial reasons you know both need to work or things like that, it may be advantageous for them to employ the government to to ask for that third party support in their inherent duty. But again our interest is making sure that the public understands and supports laws that contain the government as subservient to us rather than us being subservient to it. Very good. Connor I want to thank you for giving our viewers here in Hawaii a glimpse into your work in Utah and there are so many parallels between what Libertas Institute is doing and the Grass Root Institute mainly because the principles are the same, we reach upward for individual liberty free markets and limited accountable government. And Connor thank you very much for being on the program. Thank you for having me, I appreciate it. My guest today was Connor Boyack who is the president and founder of Libertas Institute in Utah, a public policy think tank part of the state policy network working for a better world for everyone. And until next week I want to wish you an aloha this is Kelea Akina signing off for Think Tech Hawaii's Ehana Kako. Let's work together aloha.