 Good evening here, you're on. How are you? I'm good. Thank you afternoon here So I need to tell you a little story to get this interview going I Accidentally started podcasting about two and a half years ago. I discovered this single Bitcoin. I didn't understand it I'm not very political I don't really understand economics. I'm certainly not technical so I started this podcast to to kind of go through a journey at learning about Bitcoin and and and here I am two and a half years later and I've had quite a few people follow the show and what happens is I get a lot of emails every week people telling me different things that I should be following and Who's talking nonsense and I got this email last week from a chapter called Adam and he said hi I continue to enjoy your podcast but sometimes I lose patience with your apparent conflation of libertarianism and anarchism and Goes on to make a few points and I was like, okay, help me out here. Who should I talk to and he said I really need to talk to you So to give you the very short background is that I had no idea what libertarianism is Before I discovered Bitcoin I've spoken to a lot of libertarians. I like a lot of what they have to say. I didn't vote in the last UK election but I've Struggled to ever fully imagine a society without some form of government and I've kind of got myself to this position Why? Directionally want less government, but a world of no government still scares the crap out of me So I'm coming to you today. You're on with with no agenda. No questions. I just want to talk I want to hear what you have to say and hopefully I'm gonna be asked to navigate some of this and get a clearer picture from yourself because I've watched some of your videos And I agree with a lot you have to say. Can you understand where I'm lost? Yeah, absolutely. Well, let me start by saying I completely sympathize with you and you your gut instinct if you will is absolutely right That is a world with no government would be a horror Equivalent to the horrors of the most oppressive status regimes So I am not an anarchist Any of your listeners I think are going to be upset by the fact that I'm not an anarchist because so many Bitcoin Unfortunately supporters or people interested in Bitcoin are anarchists. No, I mean, I think that government is necessary and Necessary good not a necessary evil I think it if it's limited to its proper function and we can get into what the proper function is and why one should limit it then it is a necessary good and The negation of it leads to what Anarchy always leads to which is bloodshed gang warfare and and and you know all hell breaks loose and so I Completely understand why you want some government because there is one aspect of human life Which you cannot leave to the market Because this aspect of human life is What is necessary if you exclude it? That's when markets get created So it is it is a necessary not sufficient but a necessary feature of markets to get created and that feature is violence force You have to exclude violence and force so that they becomes a market place Right if I can pull out a gun at any point in time and take your wallet We're not gonna trade. There's no point in trade We're gonna be watching each other's guns and we're gonna be cautious of one another trust breaks down contracts break down everything breaks down so the one thing the one reason we institute governments is to exclude force from human interaction exclude corrosion include exclude Authority and and and and so That's a job of the government the job of the government is to be a policeman and and a judiciary So we can arbitrate disputes because even because we don't want to go out and duel in the streets when we disagree and You don't provide a military to protect us from other people who would like but that's that's pretty much it But it has to do that if it doesn't do that everything breaks down see I agree with all of this and I found myself in a position sometimes where I've tried to argue for this I Get called a status slave or a status or a status cuck all range of insults because To agree with any form of state or any form of government the counter argument is well You you still believe in coercion because some form of government is coercion and and I understand the point They're making but I can only foresee a mad max world Without any form of government and one of the things I've always said is like Okay, well what I would like to see is is and I this came from a guy called Eric Voorhees who said to me Let's not try and have the magic red button and switch off the state Let's directly move to less state and I've always felt like well shouldn't we should we try and wean ourselves off the state? See which bits we can get rid off and makes a better one and see which bits We're actually know we actually need that and this whole defund the police having no police And not that I like the police and certainly the problems in the US are very different from the UK But I imagine no police and just think chaos yes, and See so I don't take the approach of let's defund things slowly progressively see what works and what doesn't I look at this from a principle perspective Okay, and and part of the problem I think with libertarians and and I don't consider myself a libertarian and maybe Adam should have should have been clearer on On the differentiation between all these different ideas and all these different groups. There's too many Something called an object of us, which is you know an iron and I believe I'm rants philosophy is true and and And part of the challenge with with libertarians is they start with this idea corrosion is bad And you ask them why is corrosion bad, you know most most ethicists Most philosophers in human history do not think corrosion is bad Indeed if you have to cause something somebody in order to achieve a good Then so be it, you know, and that's why we have taxes. That's what we have a welfare state That's what we have all these government interventions is because a Significant majority of humanity believes that corrosion for the right cause is a good thing So I start with you need a philosophical explanation for why corrosion is bad and Only then can we discuss Okay, is having any government corrosion I don't think it is because I think a government a limited government that Prevents corrosion from happening is acting primarily in self-defense and an action of self-defense is not causing Right, so if I'm getting you from killing your neighbor, that's not coercion Right, you were gonna commit coercion and I'm preventing that from happening by interfering or if you've already killed your neighbor And I go and catch you and put you in jail That is in a sense an act of self-defense. It is not an act of initiation of force I'm protecting I'm not initiating and that's that's a crucial differentiation that comes out of Why we even a poor coercion to begin with right But I would say the element they say would be coercion is that tax is an optional and If I don't pay tax I can end up in court and I can End up being convicted as a criminal for tax evasion that part would be considered coercion Yes, and I think they're right and this is why I'm against coercive taxation So it is where you know again I You know you might view me as radical as they are and and Europeans have a hard time with this But I think of taxes or the revenue from the government. I think that's a problem to be solved How does the government generate revenue without coercion? And I'd say that there are two ways of doing this one is they are certain services that the government can't charge for For example, let's say the two of us have a contract And we don't just want mediation and arbitration But we actually want if we truly disagree this to be able to go to the state courts to be enforced by the police Then when we sign the contract we pay a certain fee to the courts to guarantee that contract Okay, and we get in advance and that funds the court system and certain aspects of government So you could think of certain government Services that you could charge a fee from now You can't charge for the police because the police job is to Protect us from violation of individual rights and they can't go around charging money as that happens But you can do it for a certain segment of what the government does Patents copyrights the register they were charged and they could fund part of the government The second way the government would be funded in my world would be through voluntary contributions today people write checks for all kinds of causes and many of them very large checks and Imagine a world in which we really have we have reached a point where people understand That we need to have a limited government and that government is going to protect them and that's all it's going to do It's not gonna interfere in their lives. It's not gonna tell them who to sleep with it's not gonna tell them who to marry It's not gonna tell them who to do business with and how much to pay their employees. It's just going to protect them I think people would be happy To write a check to the government every every indeed My fear is the governor would have too much money not too little and and I would want some kind of provisioning of how their money gets returned back to the people who wrote the checks, but So you make it volunteer you make you make and and so you know people would come and say well that you create free writer problems, right people don't pay in so benefit from the fact sure who cares, right? Free writer problems are everywhere. We have lots of free writer problems I don't really care that we have free writers as long as my rights are being protected as long as I have a Good police and a good military and a good judiciary if a few people don't pay their taxes you know so what and You know, there are kinds of other mechanisms we can take care of that you can have social You know pressure the government could could actually publicize who pay taxes That's probably a good idea because you don't want people buying influence So why not have a list of everybody who's paid into the system and we can all monitor that list and Evaluate it and therefore somebody if my neighbor hasn't paid, you know, maybe I don't deal with that neighbor Maybe they don't speak to him for a full month or whatever To kind of put social pressure on them But yes, I agree with those libertarians who claim that Cozion is evil. I agree. Cozion is evil and therefore the government needs to find ways to fund itself that are not coercive Okay, so I Understand these kind of principles and there are some there is some alignment here with the libertarian certainly So what areas are would you say the government's responsible for? In the in the judiciary contract laws, obviously very important certain things. I'm assuming fraud Violent crimes, but I'm imagining very similar to libertarians. It's a the list of list of possible crimes is a lot smaller a Lot smaller a lot smaller. So, you know all the financial crimes we have today have nothing to do with fraud They could be left a voluntary association. So for example, you know insider trading Right, why can't that be a contractual issue between insiders in the company and shareholders or a Contractual issue between the company and the exchanges in which they are listed and traded, right? So that's that's the kind of laws that just wouldn't exist if if shareholders didn't like companies that are loud insider trading They wouldn't buy their shares so a lot of the laws that that protect consumers not from fraud but Exposed right you would have a lot more reliance on civil law on things like liability and things like that. So There'd be no preventive law Right, no law that says, you know, a lot of use this because there's some possibility maybe there'd be no regulatory agency That allowed certain drugs, you know, certain vaccines Let's say to be used or not to be used that would be I Think what would happen is you'd have private entities that would screen medication give recommendations to doctors This gets our thumbs up this gets a thumbs down use this don't use that and doctors and patients would have to decide What kind of drugs and how much risk are they willing to take? I mean a good example right now is these covert vaccines. Why can't I go and get a vaccine right now? I mean, they've gone through phase one and phase two in other words They're fairly safe and if I want to take the risk as an individual Why can't I go and get a vaccine? Why is the government dictating and if there's a doctor who's willing to write me a description because he thinks they're pretty Safe and the drug companies willing to sell them even though they might face liability Why is the government deciding? 30,000 people is the right number for phase three trial and I have to be excluded all of those kind of decisions would be given back to individuals and Back to markets and back to voluntary Relationships that we have with one another All right, I'm gonna run through a few scenarios with you and sadly you're probably you're probably gonna Cover this a few times with various people before but I just think a specific scenario So firstly you haven't you I'm guessing you just have no Objections to the forming of monopolies Well, how do you define monopoly right? So if you if you if you look at the word monopoly it comes from a government grant So that I think the East Indies company in in Britain was the first monopoly And the king basically gave them a grant to do all the trade between India in the UK And they had a monopoly over protect it by the government In a free market the government doesn't have the power to do that So they are no monopolies almost by definition because the government even granted that if you're asking Do I have a problem with a company having large market share? The answer is absolutely not indeed, you know the goal of every successful companies They have large market share that's that means they've been successful And to the extent that they continue to be successful and can sustain a large market share It means they're doing the right thing and if we take historical examples for example Rockefeller a standard oil in the 1870s. I think it was had 93% of all the oil refining capacity in the United States Now when we take classes in economics, and I don't know if you've taken an econ 101 class But we're taught that what happens what happens then is prices are gonna go up Because there's no competition and quality will come down The fact is that's not what happens in reality That is when somebody gets large market share what usually happens is they keep prices down Because they want to keep their market share and they know that if they raise prices They are no I mean there are no real barriers to entry capitalism the beauty of capitalism is people are always trying to knock it out and Indeed by the time standard oil was broken up in the 20s in 1920s It's market share was was something like 23 24% not 93 and When it had 93% of the oil refining capacity the product that was selling was a product called kerosene You know what it was used for? heating No, it was actually used for light light And who who competed them out of existence? There's a lighting company Thomas Edison the bulb. Yeah, so who would have imagined imagine the bureaucrat Sitting in 1873 Thinking oh, this is an uncompetitive business because they control 93% of the lighting business. Oh wait Edison is gonna invent the light bulb suit that would have never happened. So you're a broken-up standard all because of lighting monopoly But it was irrelevant by then because Thomas Edison was already working on about light bulb So Nobody can predict what the real competition is for any particular product and at any particular point in time today a large so-called monopolies Offer their offer their product for basically zero right Google. What do you pay to use Google right nothing? What do we pay to use Amazon lower prices than what we pay and of course? They don't even have a large market share. What do we pay any of these come Facebook or whatever zero? So the whole framework of anti-trust and the whole idea of monopolies. I think comes from bad economics bad political philosophy Really comes from bad thinking it just it's just not an issue never has been an issue In a free market never will be an issue that the real issue is when government gives you special favours when govern Protects you from competition. Then you have real barriers to entry that cannot be overcome. That's fair. Okay Let me try another scenario with you. I watched a film recently called Dark waters is about Dupont's and when they were poisoning the water in a certain area Effective the cows or the cows died and then a lot of people locally got sick I'm in this kind of scenario. Where does that it fit in terms of say? Is that a is that a criminal law? that are their regulations around say certain chemical usages and and Like that feels like a complicated one Sure, but not not that complicated not again What's what's the principle the principle should be property rights and the principle is that I can't harm you and Sometimes I home you on purpose and that's criminal and sometimes I home you by accident And that's civil liability and the variety of liberate liabilities I don't know whether Dupont purposely poisoned the water because it didn't care or it wanted to hood cows and people You know, let's assume. I I don't know but to an extent that they did it on purpose Let's say and they knew that this was actually gonna kill Three people are they gonna kill X percent of the population of the people drinking the water then it's criminal They they they did something with the with the full knowledge that somebody was going to die And they were there with the absolute cause of that death If on the other hand, which is more likely they You know, they just spewed their stuff into the river Because it was easy thing to do and they didn't really think about it and they didn't have evidence that this was gonna kill anybody They thought it was harmless or whatever Then and somebody got sick then you would have to go to court and show that they were negligent or grossly negligent And you would you would get compensation like you would in several law But there was a third element here, which I think solves a lot of these problems Which we don't have today at our detriment Because we assume that they're throwing their chemicals into the water and then nobody owns this water That is this water is public property. Therefore public property means nobody owns it Which means nobody takes care of it, which means nobody even nobody can sue at that point Nobody can tell you you can't do that. Now we know for example from British common law Hundreds of years going backwards that you can't take your garbage and dump it in my backyard. Mm-hmm That's settled law. We know that right? Well, if I own the lake If I own that piece of the river and there's no reason I can't own pieces of river lakes Then you're not gonna throw your trash in my river Dupont is not gonna dump their garbage in my river And if they dump the garbage upstream and I own the river downstream again There's well settled law on how to deal with polluters up here when I bear the consequences down here And there are all kinds of ways in which we can deal with that From a contractual relationship and that the law steps in because you're damaging my property So the solution to most pollution problems, I'm not gonna argue all of them But most pollution problems is private property If you make the river's private and I know that sounds bizarre But why not if you make the lakes private if you even start thinking about how to make the oceans or at least The asset within the ocean for example fish in Iceland. They have come up with a whole structure legal structure where they have basically privatized the fishing stock and because it's private You know the the fishermen don't have an interest in depleting it Because they in a sense own it and therefore they have an incentive to keep it thriving to keep it going The same by the way happened in Africa the way they dealt. I think it was in Uganda, Okina The way they dealt with the extinction of elephants is they privatized the elephants Now if you privatize the elephant and you sell hunting licenses Then you have got a ongoing incentive to keep the elephant stock Robust so that you can make money on the on the on the hunting right Licenses and what happened is the population of elephants has gone up dramatically Since they were privatized So because if it's privatized there's a value to somebody and that person is going to protect that value whereas poachers It's easier for poachers to attack elephants on public property where nobody's really defending it because nobody cares that much Then on private property where there's an economic incentive So most of these kind of problems are solved Through private property the same is true of like the burning of the Amazon and creed You know the problem is nobody owns the Amazon somebody should own it If I owned the Amazon you couldn't burn my my father's it would be my father's I think there's a slightly more complicated Point with the say the DuPont example and it is one that I wrestle over because There are certain regulations with the how much the certain concentration of things they can release and without that Existing there's no benchmark to work from and what we wouldn't we know self regulation with greedy corporates Isn't always a good thing at least with some kind of centralized regulation that came from a state at least It's independent of the potential polluter Do you see what I'm wrestling with there? sure, so I think the I think what you need to do in circumstances like that is There needs to be it needs to Before you have such a law that restricts people's actions you need a Significant burden of proof that somebody's rights are being violated So so let's let's take something that is not easy to privatize the air, right? Yeah, let's say you have a factory and you're screwing out. I don't cyanide into the air and Nobody knows that cyanide is bad, right? Some people get sick they investigate turns out to cyanide and They now sue the the the industry that's polluting with the sign at some point when these cases Become evidence and and and a few of them. Let's say past the legislature as they do with common law I think at that point it makes sense for the government to say, okay We've got now significant evidence that X concentration of cyanide in people's lungs causes real harm this has gone through the process, right and Now we're going to ban cyanide above this concentration from being in the air So they have to be a process in which It's made clear that there's a rights violating we've learned it right because you can't go back and say you should have known back Then how would I go back there? But we've learned that this is damaging and now we stop the behavior given that it's damaging It's there any chance for something like that There's a risk that these things would take too long to possibly even resolve and cause a lot more damage So for the I started to keep going back to the two-point to do point example It's just I watched it recently and I know the I know Nathaniel rich from Vanity Fair who did the research piece But it took a nearly 20 years to resolve the case in that do pond were able to abuse the legal system Do you think the legal system would be different? These kind of cases could be expedited in in a different framework Well first I'd say that the DuPont case never would have happened if you truly had property rights Okay, right they the DuPont only happened because they assumed that the water They were spewing this stuff into was not owned by anybody and they wouldn't get caught and nobody cared right That's point number one. So I think a lot of this just wouldn't happen in a proper in a proper system I also think Things would be a lot more expedited because the legal system would be a lot less Bound because they'd be a lot less regulations and a lot less controls But also look stuff takes time. I mean we like to have a garden of Eden ideal Where life is just perfect and life is but that's not life life is messy Yeah, sometimes big time, but and I'll give you an example where sometimes You just got to suffer through the pollution the best example of that. I can think of is London In the middle of the 19th century So take London in the middle of the 19th century literally the air is filled with Cold dust. I mean, this is really awful objectively harmful to human life. This is not good. It's polluting It's damaging and yet If at that point, let's just randomly pick 1850 or 1860 You choose to stop producing energy using coal because people are getting sick That's the end of civilization. I mean literally right the end of progress the end of innovation the end of technology The end of wealth the end of all that Sometimes there is a cost to progressing to you know to growing to getting somewhere and if it's civilizational like that with It's a civilization event then you just have to say okay, you know There's there's gonna be a certain cost But you know what life is still better than it would be if we hadn't discovered coal and we're just gonna live to it It's it's not as good as our so-called ideal which we can't really create right now because it's too expensive But it's far better than what it was without it We'll bear the cost so okay, I mean you have to be careful of utopia. Yeah Life is messy things are messy. Sometimes things don't work out You know optimized based on some Ideal that somebody has in terms of how the world will be but the outcome is far superior by any other measure so that that would put me to guess that you are Against any of the current of our mentalism which is going on right now and the fear over Melting ice caps etc. Is that because you don't think it's happening or is that because you believe? Any form of Regulation or taxation to try and solve a potential problem would be more damaging It's not really worth it So I certainly think the last one is true. I think that the regulations would I mean the I Look if it's really as bad as they claim it is Then we would literally have to shut down CO2 production tomorrow To save us all That would mean like five six billion people would die that would mean You know just just the annihilation of the human race at least at the levels in which we live in today There's just no way to maintain it And and I find that particularly absurd and particularly evil if you will Given that there are solutions if they really cared about the solutions Whether a solution would be nuclear power which they take off the table even though It's the only solution, right? It's the only thing that does not emit carbon and can produce pretty much an infinite amount of energy Whether it's all kinds of technologies that might be able to cool the planet as it warms Nobody wants to touch that kind of stuff, right? So you put stuff in the atmosphere and of course if this is really the end of humanity because of climate change Well, let's try to change the climate in our favor Whether it's all kinds of technologies that suck CO2 out of the atmosphere that nobody's discussing You know, there's a lot of scientists working on this and there's a lot of progress being made of doing this Nobody wants to discuss those so to me. I'm suspicious when the obvious Pro-civilization solutions are shunned and what they really want to do is shut down civilization I'm also suspicious for another reason I'm a finance guy, right? So if you want to throw me if you want me to invest in your project One of the first things I asked you is how have you done in the past? Are you good at this? If I asked the global warming crowd, how good are you at predicting catastrophes? How how good have you been over the last 50 60 years? Well, their track record is abysmal, right? It's abysmal whether it's well I'm not gonna die of cancer really really young because of chemicals or whether it's because you know global cooling of population bomb or Or even with regard to climate change, you know, we're gonna the things they predicted 20 years ago never happened the things They predicted 10 years ago never happened and so on. So I'm I'm suspicious now. Is it happening? probably Is it catastrophic the end of the world stuff now? I just don't believe that oh another thing if if if oceans are rising Why aren't we building dykes? Right think about Amsterdam. It's been under sea level. It's been below sea level For hundreds of years. They build a dyke and they protect it So if they are low-lying areas that we really honestly think are going to be submerged Why aren't we thinking about new modern 21st century dyke systems to protect the low-lying areas? So again, none of these solutions are being considered in any kind of serious way So I'm skeptical about the urgency or the the panic involved plus, you know, human beings like catastrophes We like to believe that our generation is going to be the one where Armageddon happens, you know, millennial cults Happen on a regular basis if you look at the religious fervor Which was some of these people relate to climate change. It seems to me like a religious fervor I don't think that point is entirely true in terms of if the sea levels are rising We would be doing things. I just did the search again. I'd have to spend a bit of time on it But I'm pretty aware that for example Coastal regions of Florida and Miami have experienced increased flooding and they are doing work there And I'm also pretty aware that say in the Maldives They are spending money because then literally the whole nation will be submerged if it's true So I think some of that is happening Sure, but nobody's talking about large scale civil engineering projects like we did maybe a hundred years ago to solve a problem Right. Maybe they are localized efforts to pour a little bit more sand on the beaches I'm not sure what they're doing exactly in the Maldives. They're localized effort to do that But if this is really, you know, yeah, we're talking about a catastrophe that could wipe out millions of people You think we would be thinking about big solutions and advocating for those instead of saying and by the way We'll need a lot of fossil fuels will need to burn a lot of fossil fuels in order to implement these solutions Right and that's why maybe people are not thinking about the solutions in order to do it I would say I think some people are thinking about it, but I've always assumed the reason it's not really happening is I Think because of the way election cycles work It's always possible to kick that can down the road a little bit It's somebody else's problem because who nobody wants to be the president who turns around says, you know what? We've really got to do something here. We've really got it. You know, we've got to cut back we've got so I Understand you'll think him the question is are the activists advocating for this and I don't see that I see the activists Almost exclusively focused on reducing CO2 emissions, which is the wrong ball Wrong approach CO2 is a lifesaver all companies are the greatest beneficiaries mankind has ever had we would still be Good poor without all companies and and CO2 emissions they I mean energy is what we live on and In the cheapness of energy today is unbelievable and has raised us then of living so if we're gonna find solutions They can't be solutions to reduce the amount of energy we produce and indeed if you look at this stat This is a really fascinating stat that And that is how many people die? from weather events today versus 20 years ago 50 years ago 100 years ago like Tornadoes and hurricanes and flooding and all these bad things as well. Well, the number is shrunk dramatically You know a lot fewer people died today because of the weather than any point in human history Well, isn't that the measure and if that's the measure shouldn't be focused on protecting human life from whatever the weather I mean one of the things that really scares me is the next ice age Because there's gonna be a next ice age. We know that the cycles Are we ready for an ice age, you know where there's a glacier in New York City? I you know, it's it's It strikes me as there's no relationship between The scam ongoing and the kind of solutions that they're proposing and that leads me to suspicion about motivation No, and I can agree with that the suspicion about the motivation is certainly an issue Are there any within this kind of your school of thought know what you're thinking Are there any specific areas where you get really challenged where you think actually maybe that does require some form of regulation? So for example, I Wouldn't want myself to be able to set up a nuclear power plant and I certainly think nuclear power something I'm glad is regulated and Having watched Chernobyl, which was fantastic I certainly think there are certain standards that it is useful That we have globally, you know, we had Fukushima as well Which is obviously very scary and I don't think perhaps we should be building nuclear power plants where there can be tidal waves That one I would find hard to argue against but but again, I'd put it to you Are there any areas that or other areas where you're thinking is challenged? You think perhaps we do need regulation So let me take the nuclear one first. I viewed exact the other way around right when I watched Chernobyl Okay, I said myself. Oh my god, you know, the last people in the world We should running a nuclear power plant designing one building one and then responsible for safety of government officials government bureaucrats Those are the last people and I think Chernobyl illustrates why we don't want to take responsibility. It's political. It's not Economics the drive it economics understand motivations they Understandable and you can you can easily structure incentives in a way that increase safety and even Fukuyama Fukushima one of the problems with that old power plant was That because of the regulations because of the panic of the last few decades We haven't built modern nuclear power plants which are far safer than those old ones and as a consequence We rely on all nuclear power plants that are susceptible to things like earthquakes and and tidal waves so My view is if we had allowed nuclear power to continue to evolve I'm not and we'll get to how much regulation but let's say free of regulation I think we would have today small efficient Unbelievably safe with zero waste because completely recyclable nuclear power plants And they would be plentiful and they would be everywhere and they would be and and and there wouldn't be any of this risk we Shut down all the old power plants and we would have less concern about co2 because so much of our energy would be produced by nuclear I'm now look if if somebody's building a nuclear plant in my neighborhood and So I could imagine that when you're building something where And again, this is why like small rather than big nuclear power plant Well, I said they were building a big nuclear plant and there was the potential of a problem that could wipe out thousands of people or more Then yes, I think that at the margin you could have specific Very very limited regulations that gave the government very very narrow powers To go in and just make sure that nothing crazy was going on But I also know that I give you some examples, you know, you can't build a power plant You can't raise enough money to build a power plant without issuing bonds without without taking on debt Bond holders would want the insurance plan to be insured They don't want their nuclear plan to be insured the insurance company now has a incredible incentive to make sure the nuclear power plant is safe Again, I trust the insurance company more than I trust the government bureaucrat any day to make sure why because the government bureaucrat Nothing's gonna happen to him like insurable. Nothing's gonna happen to him if he turns out to be wrong I mean, maybe maybe he gets fired maybe in the worst case scenario gets sent to the gulag But nothing in a free country is gonna happen to this bureaucrat. He's got a lifetime job and insurance company will lose and go bankrupt So they better get it right and that employee will be fired if they get it wrong I thought prefer that incentive than the government bureaucrats instead So you can easily see how in a free market the incentives for self-regulation This would be true of building codes and true of all of these things The government should only interfere if there is what I call probable cause If somebody has noticed something suspicious Something weird like the crane on this building is really tilting right or I watch them pour the concrete And it just look bad Then there should be a number I can call and yes, maybe then a government inspector comes and said People in the neighborhood are afraid of what's going on here would come to inspect other than that I think markets are a million times better at Self-regulating and self-regulating. Yeah, I'm not I don't mean the company regulating itself I mean other companies like insurance companies On-holders and other elements within the the marketplace Regulating the company. I think that I trust that much much more than I trust any government bureaucrat. It's it's funny I've listened to a number of these shows where they you know when they have where they interview farmers in the United States about Food safety the whole issue of food safety and the farmers always describe How the FDA is you know comes and inspects But when they really get serious when they really get intense is When they describe the private companies that are sent to inspect the food on top of the FDA They're sent by supermarkets grocery stores Because look the grocery store doesn't trust the government The government could say the food is fine The grocery store wants to test it again. Why because the grocery store is going to be liable if something bad happens McDonald's is going to be liable if you eat the hamburger and get sick from it FDA Food the food, you know the food inspector regulator. They don't care I mean they easily bribed and they're easily, you know, just just lazy and and have no reason to do it Not because they're bad people but because the incentives are all messed up the incentives just don't so private sector just does a better job and and That's because self-interest is the right motivation for proper rational decision-making so another area I wanted to ask you about and I'm pretty sure I know where you're standing this is The social safety net now I'm going to assume you're not particularly keen on redistribution of income because I certainly not myself in terms of how the government does it certainly right now and I've got a specific question Related to the pandemic, but I'm going to come back to that But I watched a film recently on Netflix called Crip Camp. I think it was called and it was about disabled people I don't know if you've seen it. It's fantastic And then the campaigns that the people attended the camp ran for years to try and get equal access To buildings and certain things like that and now I certainly think in a city like London You could argue that well, you don't need wheelchair access to every cinema because you know in a free market there would be enough incentive to build a Cinema for disabled people to have access to but in a small town where I live the incentive model might be there And I think it's a great thing that we do have equal access to all people Within with disabilities to be able to access services. I think that is a great thing that society I I see that as a progression of society and I and I'm in favor of that But to do that requires some form of regulation to make it happen, of course How does that sit with you? I Mean we could so I would be against any kind of compulsion. Okay, I Mean I agree with you. I want to live in a town Where people have access I think it's a good thing. I think it's a it's a nice thing. It's the right thing If enough of us think that's true Then enough of us could get together and and lobby and encourage store owners cinema owners to make the changes necessary to make that happen So I think it needs to be done voluntarily I think if we're convinced that this cinema owner is being irrational here or or you know is is You know is destroying the town or destroying the sense of what it means to be in the town or whatever Then we can argue against them. Maybe even boycott the cinema, you know The good the people who want it could boycott the cinema It doesn't have to be just people in world chairs that boycott the cinema We can all do it and until he fixes it. So I would much rather see I think all these kind of issues dealt with much more positively and much more in a much more healthy way then Compulsion for example, there might be a small grocery store in your village The just doesn't have the money to do it and if you force them to do it I'll go out of business and some businesses in the US I know went out of business when they were forced to do this Well, maybe that grocery store doesn't do it and there's no access there But there are other grocery stores to do because they have a little bit more of a Profit margin or they have a little bit more capital and they can afford to do it So you if you make it voluntary then it adjusts and over time Maybe this this grocer can save enough money to make the changes if if that's necessary, right? Yeah, I'm not sure I see I buy I buy most of your free market stuff And I'm agreeing with you and I'm nodding but this one I think this one feels a little bit more utopian that what we hope we would but I don't imagine we will especially haven't watched the film and watching how these people had campaigned for years and fight for their rights to have Equal access. I think they had to do it because people didn't care and Whilst in in your world as you said well, we might I just I don't think that we would I Mean if we wouldn't then we wouldn't yeah, and we don't do it then we just don't deserve it Right. Yeah, I mean you get what you're willing to do and if you're not willing to If you if you if you don't care enough, right? You said you cared you watched the bit fine But if you don't care enough to actually do something not do something by voting to take somebody else's money and To force somebody else to do it Yeah If you're not willing to put up your own money to actually go and do and make the changes Then you don't care that much and if we don't care that much then it shouldn't happen That's the beauty of a market the market values are caring And our caring is measured by how much whether we're willing to boycott a cinema Whether we're willing to put our own cash and play in the same thing with a social safety net I don't have a problem with the safety net as long as it's voluntary If you say people wouldn't give enough money to help the poor then the poor won't get helped But that means we don't care enough about the poor to help them And that means why is it okay for us to vote to take somebody else's money when we don't care enough to put Our own money into it See, I think we do because the funny thing is like a very, you know Times are really tough right now, especially in the UK. We went through an austere period of austerity And we had we saw a massive growth in the food banks and the food banks often rely on donations And people do volunteer and if I had the other 40 percent of my income back that the government takes for me I'm already quite generous with it. I'm pretty sure I would be generous and I trust myself To distribute it better than the government. So I'm with you on that side of things Okay, so I'm agreeing with a lot of this and the next thing I would worry about is that Okay, how do we get there is is is a tough question but how do we maintain it is a bigger question for me because One of the things about say going back to the idea of the big red button is that I just think humans Are designed in a way where we like to organize we have leaders and followers And without any form of governance and governance structure, we will naturally have Bloodshed and and potential warlords and I know I know the the Rothbardians will say we don't but we potentially will But It feels like it requires some form of very strong Constitution to avoid the slow creep of this state to say oh, we need to do a little bit Because we've seen this the u.s. Has a very strong constitution something I wish the uk had and I think it's something that's going to protect The u.s. Government from donald trump personally, and I know that's going to trigger people but I do um, I feel like you'd need an even stronger constitution to To to maintain this small state So yes But you need something much more than that. Okay So I agree about a constitution and I've got some ideas on how you would structure constitution to make it much Stronger we can talk about that in a second, but I want to I want to go a little deeper philosophically because I'm ready I think the problem is not that we don't have the right constitution I don't think the problem is that people don't understand economics I don't think the problem is any or any of that. They don't really get how We get wheelchairs into cinemas. I don't think that's what causes big government I think the challenge we have is a philosophical one. It's a it's an ethical moral one and And this is why it's so hard to convince people of this of of free markets and the benefit you get in free markets We grow up believing that our moral duty our ethical duty and responsibility Is to do what? It's to take care of others Our whole morality is built around sacrifice Other ism altruism, which means other ism literally It's about thinking of others first. We celebrate people when we view them as self less Right now none of us wants to be selfless and none of us actually is consistently selfless We would die if we were but that is our moral ideal. That's a little conscious voice in our mind saying You need to do good is is really means You need to sacrifice for the sake of other people Now what better way to sacrifice to the sake of other people than socialism feudalism You know all kinds of isms that have a big state We outsource the responsibility. We don't to worry about it on a day-to-day basis And yeah, they take 50% of my income, but I don't care because I'm supposed to do it It's the right thing to do. It's just it's noble and and I might say it doesn't work guys And you go I don't care that it doesn't work that well I've done my duty. I've done I've given it the church, right? I gave it the church. Leave me alone. I'll give again on next sunday That whole moral framework needs to be challenged Which means and I don't know where you stand on this. So I risk offending you. No, no Yeah, um, it means challenging the whole foundation of christianity which means Challenging the whole foundation of the judo christian so-called western tradition if you will Okay, and maybe going back to a greek Aristotelian tradition which says Actually, that's not what morality is about. It's not about sacrifice. It's not about jesus on a cross Suffering not for since he committed that I get if you commit sins you should suffer No, he suffered because of sins. We all committed That's like the biggest injustice in the world. That's horrible I don't admire jesus for giving his life for my sins I should give my life for my sins So we have to reject that whole view of morality and embrace Aristotle's view which is iron rand's iron rand is modernized and I think improved this significantly And that is the view that the purpose of life is not to Sacrifice and live for others and feel guilty about not doing enough the purpose of life is to live with a capital l It's to live the best damn life. You can live on this planet now not in some after life It's to embrace happiness. It's the it's the it's the strive towards happiness. It's to Pursue happiness and be guided by some pretty clear moral principles That are empirically have been shown to produce happiness. That is and that's what life should be It's about living the best life you can live in this earth based on Using your mind based on using reason or using using rationality and then the question becomes If that were them all bases that people accepted, let's say they accepted that Then I would ask them, okay What is the enemy Of you being able to live the best life you can Using, you know using reason and rationality And what's the enemy of reason and rationality? Well, the enemy of reason and rationality is coercion If I put a gun to your back of your head, you can't think if thinking is meaningless It doesn't mean anything and of course you can't act based on your thoughts Because you have to act based on what the regulators told you is okay to act on right the whole areas of research That people don't even research that entrepreneurs don't go into because they're banned. They're not allowed to so why even bother? so The only solution for a person who values his own life Values his own happiness once to live the best life that he can live is freedom It's the freedom to think and the freedom to act based on those thoughts and as long as you're not violating somebody else's rights As long as you're not hoarding somebody else Being left alone that's it so To me that is what we need to convince people the economics is easy Right, what's hard is to convince people to live that full Flowshing successful and racing life with everything that they have and then Adopting the political system consistent with such a life. That's the challenge. It's the overturning 2000 years of guilt Do you have to do you have to enter the political system to do that? I don't mean you personally, but does somebody have to enter the political system With a party with a goal of doing this like we have libertarian parties like is is is that possible or not? It's not possible. It's futile and I think for most part a waste of money and time One day it will be possible one day it will be necessary, but we're far from that day What is necessary today is education education education and primarily philosophical and moral education Not political and economic education Now you can often use economics and politics to illustrate a moral point But unless people value their own life in and of itself And are willing to you know, if you're a couch potato and you just you just you don't care You're just living, you know for the moment you television eating the junk food and you don't care about yourself and you don't care about your health and you don't care about what's in your head and you just then Forget it. Any politician is going to be able to manipulate you and promise you goodies and your vote for them What we need are active minded people engaged in the world pursuing their happiness pursuing values Trying to live a good life if you had those kind of people Then I think freedom becomes almost inevitable, right? We could easily I think convince that group of people That these ideas make sense. It's getting from here to there Which is hard Going to take a lot of time and requires real education. It requires people to really think and and thinking thinking is work So it's funny The the other thing I you know, I want to talk to you is about about the money Broadly broadly the money Okay, there's one other issue we were going to talk about Yeah, the constitution. Let me just talk about it. I would say there A few things that a constitution would have to would have to have in order to be solid I would call them four separations You know in the constitution american constitution is separation between church and state And I think that's incredibly healthy and required. I would actually make it stronger I would make the the separation between ideas and state the state should not have Ideas about how people should live about what's moral and what's not it should basically be there to protect rights To protect rights as lock conceive of them or as iron man is modernized it, you know, just protect us from force and not have detailed Ideas about human behavior Religious or not religious secular or religious. So one separation of ideas from state two separation from economics from state The government should have no role in economics none whatsoever It should never be there should never raise right It should never be tempted it should have no And then third would be separation of education from state Which I think is crucial I agree with that Be separation of state from science Which I think is also crucial particularly in an era of like panics around global warming and stuff which I think The politics of it are far more The politics of the science Are destructive so if we could get the government to just focus on what the government is supposed to do By separating from other human activities Then I think we have a better shot at that constitution sustaining itself But they have to get to that point and then to sustain it You also need a population that actually has the right morality the right moral approach to life Okay Well, they're good points and that takes me back on to the money point because you said the separation of economics and state Yeah, which again, I absolutely Fundamentally agree with But how do you do that? When the state controls the money, how do you have money that isn't controlled by the state? Well, we've had it at least a you know in in the uk You had a great example of this in the uh, I think it was the early to mid 19th century in scotland Not in britain, but in scotland until the bank of england decided that this wonderful free market experiment Was diminishing their power and basically took it over. So the scottish free banking system Was an amazing period in which scottish banks Actually issued their own currency um, and it was a currency there was a I don't know the names of the bank, but bank x had its currency and bank y had its currency Um, and they were backed in this case by gold gold reserves that they had in their vault And it's one of the most successful Systems in all of history. It's actually more successful than the american system Then america ever had it but in america until 1914 when we established a federal reserve Um banks issued their own currency based on reserves of gold or silver Canada had the same system and they only established a central bank in the i think the 1940s So relatively late in the game and indeed before central banks money was gold And you got you you but people transacted with paper paper issued by the people who stored the gold for you The goldsmiths and that's how we ultimately developed banking. We developed it organically Through a market system. So my argument would be that's where you'd go back to you'd go back to Private enterprise issuing gold now it seems to me logical that banks would do it Would issue money it seems to me logical that banks would do it because that's what they do They they they deal with money. That's the that's their area of expertise I think at the end of the day it would be backed by something like gold Exactly what that would be. I would let the market attunement. The market is attunement in its past That it is gold And let let let's have competition now. I know you for example Probably will argue for bitcoin Of course bitcoin in a free market the beauty of it is Great, let's have some banks or bitcoin just just mind bitcoin and bitcoin enters the system through whatever channels through the miners And and and let's compete now. I think bitcoin would be crushed in a free market I think the only reason bitcoin has value today is because we don't have a free market I don't think it can survive in a free market, but you know, maybe i'm wrong and the beauty of a free market is That we get to see who's right and who's wrong Based on what matters which is the user's experience and the user's willingness to embrace this currency or that currency That's really interesting because I feel like it's a it's a funny one. I feel like When you've described The kind of perfect money we need I feel as a bitcoin or you've described bitcoin and I'm thinking Oh, I part of me wonders how I saw I seen you talk about it I obviously had to do some research and I wonder how much time you spent looking at it and what it is about Bitcoin that has turned you off it because to me it has all the properties of gold essentially If you if you get out if you if you ignore the fact that somebody needs to hold onto something tangible If you just talk about the fundamental properties it has all the properties of gold But it has these other properties where you can teleport it around the world. It's very easy to divide It's highly divisible But most importantly because it's decentralized it isn't really controlled by anyone so can't be It's very difficult to co-opt it So I I'm I'm they're thinking I wonder what it is that that's made you reject it Well that it's intangible that is that yeah that it doesn't have an alternative use It's either money or nothing So that if um if I had bitcoin and nobody was willing to accept it Its value goes to zero literally goes to zero because it has no alternative use I think money has to have an alternative use Gold has value partially because it's money But also because it can serve its money because it isn't money right now But partially because we use it. It's pretty we use it for jewelry It's used in electronics. It's used in other things. So even if the if all my neighbors refused to accept gold It would still have some value to me I could still use it I could still trade it for something because it has value out there Maybe not as money anymore, but it's something else, right? That to me is the big barrier that bitcoin bitcoin totally relies And everybody agreeing that it has value and of course part of it is That gold part of the value gold gets in a sense that what is it worth, right? How many cows how many goats? Is it's value in other uses? What is the value of bitcoin? I don't know It's right. It's whatever people want to give it a value of and this is why I think the biggest problem bitcoin today Is it's the volatility right the volatility price? So if I own bitcoin Yesterday I could buy two cows with it today. I can buy 73 cows with it tomorrow I might only be able to buy half a cow with it. That's not money. That's speculation, right? So it has to be stable has to have a stable value in terms of what it can buy And my sense is that that there's no anchor To allow bitcoin to ever have that stable value now. I have a theory about what gives it a value Right, which I think you've heard but but I'm happy to articulate it But but that is something. I don't know how to monetize. I don't know how to how to figure out what that value really is And therefore I wouldn't own bitcoin. I use it in church. And by the way, I'm a huge fan of blockchain I'm a huge fan of cryptocurrency in the sense that as you said easy to move around privacy Um divisible all of that but what I would like to see and what I think will ultimately be the winner in the crypto game But not today in my Idea world right when when when we when we when we when we have achieved The point where we have freedom Is a cryptocurrency backed by gold Or backed by something solid Yeah, so that so that my bar in gold might sit in a vault in london But it now is divisible into 75 bits And I can trade those 75 bits and whoever has one of those bits as a claim against my gold bar And the bank would actually give it to them if they if they put in a put in the claim to get it They could actually get that physical gold that to me combines the two system in a healthy in a healthy way, right? But There's a there's a few points there and and i'm gonna count to some of them so that use of No use of bitcoin outside of money I think is it is a fair point and I think do you think some bitcoiners do ignore it, but at the same time There are some uses for bitcoin outside of money So at the moment microsoft have developed something called decentralized id's Where you can create a decentralized id to use on the internet which is anchored to the bitcoin blockchain Which allows you to have an identity to to use across the net which is anonymous If so required, but allows you to build trust around that id So that is a that is a use outside of money. There are others. There are time stamps for time stamping information A guy called peter tard has created something called open time stamps Because it's such a secure network It is a way of securing information. So I do think there are some uses outside of it Are they as compelling as industrial use? I don't think so yet But as we move to become a more and more digitized Economy and digitized worlds and digitized life. I I think there are is a great importance But there are this before we get before we get this point um Can I replicate? Is there any limit to how much I can replicate bitcoin not not with the name bitcoin? But how many different Crypto currencies I can create with the characteristics of bitcoin or similar characteristics They can supply the same benefit In terms of alternative use as bitcoin does so can microsoft use ethereum Or 200 other types of crypto currencies to achieve the same kind of secured network as they can with bitcoin And if so, how do you argue against inflation? And no, not really. No, they can't I mean temporarily they can use ethereum because of ethereum is a decent size network, but Ethereum and bitcoin are very different things and I've under I've you know, a lot of people make this point about you can copy these uh Crypto currencies and it is a point that should be discussed because I think a good analogy would be is that bitcoin isn't the best Blockchain isn't the most efficient on a number of metrics, but it's the most trusted it holds the most value And you could go out or create a faster more efficient network But people wouldn't trust it as much and I think a good comparison would be religion I can design a far better religion than christianity with better morals But people aren't going to trust it as much Because one of the great things about the religion is the mystery of where it comes from and that's one of the great think strengths of bitcoin So the reason What I'm saying is that because nobody owns it nobody knows where it came from who did it And it has the it has the network effect because network effects are important religions Religions have network effects Scientology is for a lot of people is absolute nonsense because we know who invented it and we know why they invented it Where it's we don't we can't really tell where most of these religions come from if you sit objectively outside of religion But microsoft have chosen bitcoin primarily Because it is the most secure network the cost to hack the bitcoin network is tens of billions I mean that's better security than than anything else in the world and like I say as we move to more virtual worlds more Digitized economies it is useful and and I'm with you on gold. There's a lot of things I prefer about gold, but it's very difficult for me to Teleport gold to you in America from here, but I can send you bitcoin instantly I'm not either or by the way at the moment. I'm both. I think they're both important I just think over a long enough time frame There there is a a number of reasons bitcoin can win not necessarily will But it can win Um, and I can't remember the other the other oh the volatility the only thing I'd say on volatility is Yeah, it's totally the volatility is there, but in 10 years We've gone from an asset worth zero to 200 billion dollar network that may if it reaches gold Within the next decade would be 10 trillion is it is? I think it's impossible to get from zero to 10 trillion without volatility You you have to you can't go up in a straight line and that requires a lot of speculation But if you track the volatility, oh the bitcoin volatility is decreasing But I understand right and right now the volatility scares some people But other people are willing to take that risk because they believe so much and later on Other people might come in when it's less risky Sure. So I think I think bitcoin's an asset. Yeah I just don't think it's money That's the difference, right? So yeah, I would I would be willing to To hold bitcoin as an asset and bear the volatility And and you know where it lands up as more companies like Microsoft use it its value will go up and stabilize over time I'm just not convinced of its monetary. You know the fact that it is money I think it I think it's It's an there's a whole asset class which is crypto Blockchain as an asset all these things are assets that have a particular value. So I'm not anti crypto. That would be bizarre I'm just I'm blockchain. I'm just anti The idea that this becomes money and replaces all other forms of money And even with when it comes to money, I'm for competition and let's see the best money will win I happen to think That you know, this won't happen for another few decades I know And when it went in a few decades when we have that competition, my guess is that some hybrid golds crypto Will win the competition, but you know, if I'm wrong who cares, right? It's not like anything matters here in terms of In terms of my wellbeing whether that happens or not, you know, I don't I don't buy bitcoin for one simple reason I don't know what its value is So if you understand its value and you and you have a projection and you can say I believe it's going to be value x in 10 years Then great then then go I can't I don't know how the math works. I don't know how it how the usage works um I don't know if microsoft using it Is justified its current price Justifies the price half of where it is today Justifies the price 10x of where it is today. I just don't know and i'm a finance guy So I invest in things. I I think I understand I think yeah, I I see the point again I think what it is is and i'm not going to hammer the point on you because I think we've done some had a really good conversation here, but I think The price of tesla is it's very very it's very overpriced right now But it's overpriced based on the fact that We may all be driving electric cars in 20 years And they will own the cars and they will own the charging stations and the power packs and A speculation and I think the price of bitcoin now is speculation that it will replace gold I think a lot of that is what it is. So I'm much more likely to short tesla than to buy tesla Yeah, because I'm not sure tesla can can win because other competitors come into the market Ask the competition and I don't know enough about crypto to say bitcoin is it? I mean you sound confident that bitcoin is it? I'm not I see too many confident people, you know get blown up in markets and financial markets over many decades And and so I I'm not willing to take that that risk You know, so yes, I I understand if I if I took tesla I could do a present value assessment. I could tell you exactly How many cars and at what profit margin? The stock price today implies Teslas the number of cars will sell in 10 years I can do the math We can figure that out and I did that once on amazon A years and years ago. This is amazon was was uh, this is 2000 and I came to the conclusion that amazon was way overvalued And guess what I was wrong. It went up Now does that it's still true that it was overvalued at the time And but it turned out that amazon was a winner and a lot of the other companies were losers If I did that on tesla today, I would come to the conclusion that's overvalued. I don't even know how to do that on bitcoin I I don't know how you would go through the math to do that on bitcoin other than to say I feel like It should be worth more than this That's all I know how to how to monetize in a sense Well, I I mean, I think mine is based on conviction that it's it's a better form of store value than gold Can it can it take goals position ultimately? I think it can maybe it's already fully priced How do you know it still has to get a price right? Yeah Well, listen look I I could we could do this for a long time. It's been a great discussion and and I've got one confession before we finish sure. I've never read atlas shrugged Well, you should I know I should because I think you'll enjoy it I think you'll have fun put aside the philosophy put aside all that I think you'll really enjoy it, but I think given your Philosophical leanings and your inclinations. I think I think philosophically you'd get a lot out of it and you'd be inspired by it I think and and then there's all of iron man's nonfiction writings, which I think are Fantastic and anybody who believes in markets and is interested about the future And and how do we get there? Which is a question you ask Um, I think I think iron man is is crucial to at least grapple with your ideas in a serious way Well, I know there are a lot of bitcoins who are big fans of her and I've had the book recommended me a couple of times I could see a I could see a couple of books in the background there as well Yeah, that one that one's mine. Yeah, I know that's yours listen I hope we get to do this again at some point actually. I think perhaps in a few months when I've read atlas shrugged and Uh, we should possibly do it again, but um, I've really enjoyed this and I really appreciate your time I think a lot of people listen to this will enjoy Um, if they don't know you and I'm sure a bunch of people do but if they don't Do you want to tell people how to find you how to follow your work? Sure? Well, first, let me say I'm looking forward to doing this one day. Maybe in london in person Yes in person. I would love that the days of being first of all in london one of my favorite places on planet earth And uh, and and just being in person with people I'm tired of these video conferences But if people want to find out more about me uh, you're on book y a r o n book v r o k dot com Uh, you can find me on youtube. I've got a I I produce huge quantities of content on youtube I'm on twitter. I'm on facebook and of course if you want to find out more about iron rand Which I encourage everybody to do pick up one of her books or go to iron rand a y n r a n d dot o r g which is the website of the iron rand institute And you can find a ton of material there. So you're just google your own book or iron rand and All of this comes out. It's one of one of the wonders of living in them in the 21st century Yes, I will I would definitely put it in the show notes. And yes in person would be great Look prior to this I used to do 90 percent main views in person I used to fly to the states for three weeks Do 20 30 interviews and then come home for a month and I would do the same again and And it there is just something that isn't the same You got to be much more respectful of someone speaking over zoom whereas in person you can interrupt easier I think that's right. I think that's right You know, and of course you're welcome to visit Puerto Rico If you if you love to are you allowing people in is Puerto Rico open at the moment? It's it's not you know, you need to bring a test result Within 72 hours and stuff like that. It's it's not it's not easy, but hopefully Hopefully I don't know when it'll end but hopefully it'll end sometime soon. Well, yeah one time soon All right, we'll listen your honor. This was this was great. I really enjoyed this And like I say, I wish you the best and yeah, I hope we can do this again sometime. Absolutely would love to