 Now, it's not true that most of the apartments in this condo building will rent us. Most of the people in the condo building own the condos. They were the ones fighting it out. They were the ones disagreeing. They were the ones who delayed fixing the building. So who's responsible to start this off? I got we were connected by Ben Burgess. I think in the wake of the Steven Crowder, I believe debacle or depending on your perspective, wonderful phenomena. You reached out to Ben and said, I would like to debate Sam and I was down. And so here we are. Let me, well, I'm not going to make you comment on the Steven Crowder thing. Let's move on from Steven. Yeah. So all right. So okay. So with this said, what shall we discuss libertarianism? Well, I mean, I'll just clarify. I'm not exactly a libertarian. And I know this is probably in the weeds for you guys, but I like to differentiate myself on them and not an anarchist. I'm not a complete subjectivist as many libertarians are. But sure, we can we can discuss free markets and we can discuss capitalism. We can discuss debate them or whatever you want to present it. All right. Well, I mean, let's start with free markets, because I of the the opinion that there's really no such thing as a free market. And that markets only really can exist, particularly in this day and age, but in general with with a, you know, with a with government, essentially, that governments create and structure markets. And that there really isn't a free market. It's really just a question of, you know, how the market is structured in such a way and who it benefits. Well, what's a question is, is what is freedom? That is, what does it mean to say there's a free market? Freedom is the absence of coercion. It's the absence of force. It's the absence of an authority that says this is how things have to be. And if you don't abide by the rules, we put you in jail or we shoot you or whatever. Free market is a system in which the government exists. But the role of government is to protect rights, to protect individual rights. It's to leave you alone to make choices based on your values, based on your pursuits, based on your choices, to leave you alone to do all that and to protect you from other people who want to do your harm. So you need government because you need a monopoly over the use of force. But other than that, the government should leave you free. And that's what free markets mean. It means where the government is not dictating to you how we should live, what products to buy, how much to pay employees, etc. But I mean, do you think we have free markets in this? No, I don't think we've ever really had free markets. I think we've gotten close to it. I think it's gotten close to and I think it's possible to get free markets in the future. And I think to the extent that we get towards free markets, to that extent, we're richer and better off and more flourishing. I want to circle back as to who the we is in that. That'd be great. But what would you in and look at the market that we have for, let's say, labor and products and whatnot, and explain to us what you perceive as the lack of freedom there and what you think is obviously supported and structured by the government, but still represents freedom? There's massive amounts of lack of freedom in labor markets, for example. Minimum wage is a lack of freedom. Requiring employers to play benefits is a lack of freedom. The restrictions on firing and hiring, many of the discrimination laws are an example of a lack of freedom. Any intervention of the government in a voluntary activity, in a voluntary exchange between two individuals that is that is not cost, that is not illegal, but is illegal. I mean, I mean, the only thing the only thing that should be legal is law. That's not fraudulent. That's not fraudulent, let's say. That's not fraudulent. Okay. So, I mean, what about things like tax breaks or what about, you know, what about, I don't think there should be tax breaks. I think that if you're going to have a if you're going to have a tax system, taxes should, I mean, taxes should be flat and they should be as close to zero as possible. And they should be simple and everybody should pay exactly the same. There should be no breaks and corporations and corporations at the end of the day don't really pay taxes. They pass it on to consumers and they pass it on to employees. So, corporate taxes make zero sense from anybody's perspective because the economics of it is workers pay corporate taxes. It's just a hidden employment tax. And I mean, I don't I don't think that's necessarily the case. Every economic study out there shows that at the end of the day, the corporate tax is either paid by consumers in higher prices or by employees in lower wages. There is no such, shareholders pay very little in corporate taxes. Shareholders, shareholders. And who pays? There is no such thing as a corporation. It's just an excess of contracts, right? No, I mean, the corporations will will pay taxes on the on on exchanges of goods. They will actually pay money to the government. You're suggesting that they just pass on all of those expenses. They may. If there is no such thing as a corporation, Sam, corporations are just people, right? So, who, who, which are the people within the corporation that actually pay the tax? Well, the entity, the entity, but they but the entity, the the the cash sitting in the bank account of the entity is owned by shareholders, right? So, if if if it's either shareholders are paying the tax or they pass it on yet, but it's their property. Legally, it's their property. It is not their money yet until it's passed on to them. And then which case the government takes apart. I mean, no more than, you know, my money is Matt's money right now because I'm going to pay him the future. It's not his money yet. Well, to the extent that you have a contract with him when he has a claim against you. But then I give money to the government as well at that moment. They have a claim against you as well. So, it's in that sense, it's their money. And do you have and so you don't think that there's any type of coercion that is set up in between this relationship that is a function of government, for instance, like protecting property rights, like building infrastructure, like shielding those individuals who are surrounded by the corporation, which is a legal protection that the worker may not have. You don't do you see that as a government intervention. So let's take them one at a time, right? So protecting property rights. No, all the government there is doing is protecting something that's mine. It's not the governments. The government is just recognizing the fact that I created something and it is now mine and it's protecting my ability to use it. That's what property rights mean. Rights are not something that government grants you. It's something that is recognized. It's a principle of human interaction that the government is protecting. So rights are not things. Rights are freedoms of action. All rights mean is it's a recognition that you are free, free of coercion and that the government's job is to protect that freedom. And property is the same thing. You know, I earn something. It's mine. The government is protecting my ability to keep it. Okay. So the government, it's not just a question of the government recognizing you're right. It is a question of the government deploying its power in defense of that right. And it's also defining that it's yours, right? It's not defining it's mine. The reality defines that it's mine. It's the fact that it's mine. You know, if I could use something. Yaren, hold on for a second. If reality defines that something's yours, how is it that we, what is the use of, why do we have courts that very often have to step in to define who's this is? Because we often disagree about things out of reality, right? I mean, we have courts to decide who murdered person X, even though in reality somebody murdered him. Now it's a question of do we know and there's disagreement about what happened? So there are disagreements about property rights and that's why you have a court system. But the fact is somebody owns this stuff, somebody created it and therefore it is of somebody's before you had government, before you had a government. Hold on, wait, wait, wait, I want to just focus on this because on one hand you say it is, we know who owns this because it's reality. But in fact, you're also acknowledging that different people can have a different view of reality. So we have disagreements. Yes. Okay, we have disagreements about the reality of who owns this. Yes. And one person's right and one person's wrong and that's the job of the courts is to help us decide that. In other words, the government decides who's ownership, who's going to have that ownership right. And it's not just a function of you built this. I mean, property exists before you get there. But it can be, I created this, but we also have regimes for who owns the creation of that. Slaves built quite a lot, for instance. That's not free markets, right? We're talking about what would happen in the free markets. So the fact that slave built something is, I mean, the fact that slave existed is evil and an abomination. But that's not what we're talking about, right? We're talking about under freedom what happens to property rights. And what I'm saying is that you create, you pay Matt a certain amount of money, that's his. That's a contract between you and him. You got to decide that Matt's worth X and he gets X. That is now all the government is going to do is say, okay, if there's a dispute between you and Matt, the government's going to say, what did Sam promise Matt? What is there for Matt's? What is Sam's based on that promise? So the government is there to intervene when there's a disagreement between you. But the property rights allocation, the amount of money coming into you, and then the amount of money you give Matt is voluntarily decided between you and Matt. Matt has a property right claim against what you promised him. That's all. I mean, property rights are not that hard. They are, you work, use, and then you get stuff. Yeah, my father's an attorney, right? Whose entire career has been resolving these type of disputes. So it's not complicated. But it's not just a question. It is the government that comes in and ultimately decides and shapes the property right. I mean, sure. And that's why we want government, we want a government that is focused on doing a good job shaping, not shaping property rights, but recognizing property rights, doing it objectively, doing it transparently, and not getting bogged down with the millions of regulations and controls and millions of things that we have today. Rather, if we lived in a simple free market world, government would have one job, it would be relatively easy and things would be a lot simpler than they are right now. And your father would probably not have a job. I'm sorry, I don't mean your father, but there'll be a lot fewer lawyers in the world. I understand. So what would that look like? And how would that work? I'm very curious about that. If government was more, in your aspirational view of the world, what would, how would that work? How would we determine property rights, let's say? Well, I gave you an example between you and Matt, right? So Matt would have a property right over what you paid him, right? Whatever contractually you promised to pay Matt, that's now his. And then if he went and he bought a home, there is a role for government to have a registry, but that's about it, of who owns what so that there's not a lot of confusion about, you know, who owns a piece of land. But that's it. There's no, you know, he would buy it from somebody. Now it's his because he acted to gain it. He could, as a consequence, do with it. Basically, what he wanted, he was now his home. Could he burn plastic on it? Well, if the plastic was not harming his neighbors, if his neighbors were being harmed by the burned plastic, then they could sue him to prevent him from burning it. So I mean, again, the common law is all, what's that? Sue him in the government's courts. Well, I'm not against government. I believe governments are necessary. And governments are there to protect you from harm. So they would have to sue him in the government's courts and show harm in order to stop him. So governments are there to do this one thing. So I'm not against the government. No, I understand that. I'm trying to get when they're very limited. You're wrong. I'm trying to figure out how your world is different than the one that we're existing in. Because when you say do harm, who defines that it's harmful? So I'll give you an example. Wait a second. So Matt and I, I don't know without I don't know, you know, sort of like at birth that the inhalation of the burning plastics are are are going to do me harm. And maybe maybe there are some plastics that he's burning that actually wouldn't do me harm. The government writes regulations and makes determinations through the EPA, let's say, that it does do harm. And that's the basis of the my argument that his burning does harm there. How is this to the extent, to the extent what are how is that world different? How that's your fantasy world? How is that different from our existing one? The difference is this that how much you pay mad is not an issue of harm. How much you pay mad is not an issue of harm. That's true. Burning plastic, if it really does harm, in some sense, your world and my world look the same if there's harm, right? The way to prove harm would might be a little different. But at the end of the day, if there's harm, it will look the same. If you beat Matt up, if you whip him, right, you try to enslave him, he brought up slavery before, then the government would intervene to stop you from doing that both in your world and in mind, right? But where the difference happens is your choice of whether to pay mad health care or not. Now, I don't know if you're required to pay him because maybe you're too small of a business to do so. I don't know how many employees you would need. But at some point, you know that there are hundreds, if not thousands of regulations that dictate how you and Matt should treat each other that have nothing to do with harm, have nothing to do with force, have nothing to do with coercion, have something to do with some kind of social policy. We believe that everybody should have health care there for the best way to do it is to employers and we will force employers to provide that my government would never do. If you want to pay mad health care, you guys can negotiate, maybe he prefers to get cash, maybe he doesn't want you to pay his health care. You would have contractually you would decide with Matt on that relationship. Does your government have corporations? In other words, does your government give certain benefits? So you raise the limited liability issue, so let's deal with the limited liability issue. I mean, a little bit limited liability issue for the most part is a contractual issue. It is an issue that relates to the relationship between debt holders and shareholders. Basically, debt holders are saying we're willing to lend you as a corporate entity money in exchange for not and we know by doing this it's in the covenants of the bond that we can go after the individual wealth of shareholders. That's a voluntary decision that they made. Now the government has recognized that, called it a limited liability corporation, but it's recognized a contractual dispute. Now you cannot lend, you can choose, you can choose not to lend a corporation money because you think it's too much of a risk and you'd rather be able to actually go after the money of the shareholders. That's all it is. I mean, a big deal is made out of this, but limited liability basically is just a formalization of a market contract, a voluntary contract. But Yaron, there may be voluntary between the debt holder and the shareholder, but in terms of the corporation and the public, the public doesn't volunteer for any of that. I, as an S corp, have certain protections that amongst people I've never even met before. What are you protected from? From people outside? I'm protected from my personal wealth being sued. Let's say I infringe upon someone's copyright, I pay that all in pre-tax dollars. If they come after me and they sue me, I am... Put aside taxes. Put aside taxes. I'm fine if you want to get rid of the limited liability that corporations have with regards to third parties that do not have a contract with the company. Sure. I mean, I don't think that's an issue. I would also... But the pre-tax stuff, let's put aside, because as I said, corporations don't actually pay taxes, your employees do. Well, I mean, they're pre-tax relative to the past. I mean, I wish everything was pre-tax. I'm not a big fan of taxes, particularly not today. I don't doubt that. But what of all the advantages that these entities get from society that workers don't necessarily get? Like, for instance, I make my living on the internet, largely established by the government that becomes a commercial vehicle for me. I am a trucking company, and I make my money through having high quality infrastructure in a way that I take advantage of that other people either don't have the resources to take advantage of or don't. There are, I mean, just the idea that I have that much more property that needs to be protected by the government is an advantage that I have over these, when I get into a contract theoretically with a worker, etc., etc. So a few things. I don't believe government should build infrastructure. I don't think it's necessary. I don't think it has been necessary historically. So in my world, you're asking about my world, right? The trucking company would not be writing off of what you had paid into through it. It would have to pay for its use of infrastructure through tolls or whatever, to a private, to somebody who built the road through tolls or whatever. And I think tolling is pretty simple right now. I think all infrastructure could be built and be more efficient and be more productive on a private basis. Let me just say something about the internet. I mean, this mythology that the government built the internet is truly nuts. And while it's true that government funds funded university programs and academics and so on, that ultimately created the basis on which the internet was built. Sure, but if the government is going to fund something like university research, it funds a lot of university research, 90% of it is garbage and you never see once in a while you see something that produces a result. And then we saw the government did it. The government did very little of it. They funded randomly a bunch of research. Some of it turned out to be good. Now the idea that research wouldn't happen if not for the government is bizarre. Research was happening well before government started funding it. But it's true that once the government starts funding something, it crowds out everybody else. That is, you don't expect private funding of university research if the government is going to do it. You know, in some of the biggest innovations in all of human history happened at a time when government was funding exactly zero research. And that was during the 19th century in England and the United States where there was no government funding of any research. And we got electricity and we got the steam engine and planes and so on. Where did that wealth come from? It came from people producing and creating and building. And a little bit of like the triangle slave trade and all of that. But the slave trade is wealth destroying. No, the wealth trade is wealth destroying. Let's be very clear about this. The south was poor, the north was rich. It's one of the reasons the north won. Slavery from an economic perspective. You keep raising slavery. I need to answer this question. Slavery is, first of all, immoral and evil and so on. But it isn't a net economically destructive force. It is not a productive force. It would have been a lot more wealth created without slavery and indeed much more wealth was created post-slavery than it was pre-slavery. So I know the easiest thing to do when the 19th century is raised is to say, but it's all slavery. But that's just economic and historical foulness. I don't want to stay on where we were. So let me finish my point about the internet. Because Matt interrupted me. The point is that the internet, yes, some infrastructure with regard to the internet was produced by government. That would have happened even without the government. That is this plenty of capital flowing into research throughout the last couple of centuries without government flowing into it. So yes, you are using a private service. I assume YouTubers make you a lot of money off of your show. Good for them. Yaron, let me just address some of those. First of all, in terms of the slavery, I have interviewed at least a half a dozen authors who have written extensively that the northern wealth was just as tied into the free labor and created the entire cotton industry. And it had knock-on effects throughout the world, including in Britain, because you had zero input in terms of labor. And cotton at that time was incredibly labor-intensive to produce. And when you have the ability to produce that labor for nothing, virtually nothing, it has knock-on effects. Can I just say one thing about that? And then I'll let you... Slavery has existed forever. We've had slavery. How about the triangle slave trade? Matt, please. Slavery has existed forever. The fact is that something different happened in the 19th century, and it wasn't some innovation with regard to slavery. It was the discovery and the use of capitalism. And the fact that slave labor was mitigated. If you look at the actual wealth created during the 19th century, almost none of it was created as a consequence of slavery. And I know there's a massive political agenda of painting the 19th century in that way, but it is distorted and it is wrong. And if you look at the places in the world without slavery that has taken the same principles as capitalism developed in the 19th century in the United States, they developed wealth as fast, if not faster, than the United States. So the slavery issue is just a massive perversion and distortion. And it's sad to see that that is the critique of... Listen, let's just table this because I've literally interviewed a half a dozen people. I know, and experts at this who disagree. Political angle on it, absolutely. I'm sure you haven't interviewed the experts that would mitigate that. I have actually talked to many libertarians before who've made this similar argument, but without the data. But nevertheless, let's go back to just even your description of the internet. Now, your argument is a counterfactual that's impossible for any of us to argue, which is the internet would have existed even if the government hadn't spent all this money on research, which by the very expense of it is indicative of it is research that they're going out there and they're laying a lot of bets on stuff that doesn't necessarily pay off, which of course, capital is highly reluctant to do. We see it in the context of the COVID, right? Like you would not have had without the billions of dollars that were pumped into these private entities without the guarantee of distribution, even if this stuff didn't work, you wouldn't have seen the COVID vaccines developed at the same rate, you wouldn't have seen so many of them. Sam, none of that is true. I mean, I encourage people to look at the critiques of the entrepreneurial state. I mean, you're referring to a book called Entrepreneurial State where she lays out the case of, or maybe you're not, but the case that the internet is funded by, it was funded by government. I encourage people to look at the critiques of the entrepreneurial state and look at exactly what was funded, what was not funded, and what would have happened if free market, if those elements that are still free in our markets had stepped in and turned the internet into what we know of it today. I don't believe that's true of COVID either. The fact is that the only reason we have a vaccine today is that two companies were set up completely in the marketplace, not funded by government, Moderna and Bioengine in Germany. Set up trying to create mRNA technologies for all kinds of, and they were ready, they were ready. Moderna was heavily funded by the NIH prior to this. No, it wasn't funded by the NIH. Again, research on which Moderna later took was funded by the NIH. Sure. Again, if the government is funding all research, you're not going to be able to find a company. It's not funding all research, it's funding all. That is the longest shot. I mean, no, that's not true. I'll give you one example. I'll give you an example of exactly what you're saying. When we discovered there was COVID out there, there were many researchers and scientists out there who wanted to jump in and try to get funds to do research and to develop drugs relating to COVID in March of last year. Yet they couldn't because the government bureaucracy was such that they couldn't get the grants, the grand authority wasn't there, they couldn't switch the authority from what they were doing to something else. The people who jumped in were the private sector. Now it's true that the government stepped in and said, we'll buy everything you're to produce. As if in a free market, that couldn't have happened, right? As if in a free market, insurance companies don't have any incentive to do exactly that. I know you'll pull a face, but we could lay down a scenario where profit-seeking, profit-maximizing evil corporations actually seek to buy as many vaccines as they can because it's cheaper than actually paying for treatment in hospital, which is what would have happened in a free market. But look, we can argue about the factual and the counterfactual. To me, the deeper issue about free markets is not, can we draw these scenarios? Because I think if you gave me enough time, I could draw you the exact scenario of what would happen at a COVID and a free market. And a lot fewer people died than under the 600,000 that died in the world in which we have the government involved in it. The government was an obstacle at every step of the way. It didn't do its job. It didn't test screen and isolate, which is its job. It wouldn't let private enterprise produce tests until it was way too late. The CDC insisted on making the test themselves, and it was a lousy test. And the vaccine distribution is a joke, centrally planned, was a complete abomination. Could it be much more efficient if it was done in the free market? We could go over all of these in great detail, and I could present a counterfactual, and you'll say it's counterfactual, so who cares? But the essential is this. I don't believe that the government telling you what research to do. I don't believe the government building infrastructure. I don't believe the government getting involved in our lives is moral, or right, or just. The only government is forced, government is coercion. The only time coercion and force is justified is in self-defense. And it has no business. The government has no business. The majority has no business in telling me what values to pursue, what education to get, what research to do. That are choices that need to be left to individuals and not to central planners. Alright, Yaron, let me, I'll get to the morality of this, because, you know, we may have a different value system, but there's a couple of things. I just want to go back to what you were saying about the infrastructure. The government doesn't need to pay the infrastructure. They could charge, the private entities could charge tolls for corporations who you would say at that point would then pass it on to take out of their workers' pay and charge to consumers, I would imagine, right? There's no reason why the toll is any different than a tax in that regard. Well, any expense, a toll is just an expense, right? And there's no reason a tax is not any kind of expense, right? Somebody has to pay. We also know that one of the things that, and maybe this is just a question of immorality to you, but we have roads that go to just about everywhere in this country. And we have, you know, for instance, a mail delivery, you can send a letter regardless of how remote you are. We even have bridges to know it. And we have bridges to know where it is true. There are definitely abuses within our system, like there is in any system, whether it's corporate or not. But the whole point is, is that private corporations will only seek profit. We know many, many stories. I'm sure you must know, you know, have heard stories of medical inventions that are built that are maybe helpful to a very narrow amount of people and their private corporations don't support it. I can tell you that living in an area where there was a tremendous amount of Lyme disease, there was a Lyme vaccine that existed 40 years ago. That was about 70% effective, but it was just not profitable for the company at the time. And maybe there's one coming back now with some government intervention and support of that because the profit motive is such that it wasn't compelling enough. So we're going to see a Lyme vaccine in a couple of years now. That's really bizarre, Sam, because if you think about the number of drugs that are being researched and being produced and being investigated, and the number the FDA approves and the cost that the FDA, the amount of money that the FDA causes a drug to cost these days, the idea that is private enterprise that is restricting drug supply, and not the FDA and not government restricting drug supply is bizarre. And the fact is that, for example, I'll give you a quick example. There was a drug that people who had arthritis swore by this because they live in excruciating pain, and there was one drug that would actually actually reduce their pain. And the government stepped in and said, you know what, but 10% of you have an increase in heart disease. Therefore, we were drawing the drug, and it's illegal. Even if you choose to take on the risk of heart disease, to reduce this excruciating pain, we the government have decided you cannot access this drug because we the government know what's good for you. So instead of me and my doctor making a decision based on risk that is personal to me, the central planner now dictates, no, no, no, 10% risk is too much that the drug is off the market. The reason we have so few drugs in this country is because the FDA has an incentive to be super risk-averse. It is going to be blamed for any damage that happens but never blamed for a drug that's released that actually going to cure something or actually help us. So, you know, this is all completely twisted. Profit motive is what gets us around more drugs, not less drugs. What is that drug? I forget now, but it was like 10 years ago, it was on the market, it was a hugely popular drug, and they withdrew it because there was an increased risk, the 10% increased risk of heart disease and those receiving it. What do you do about the problem that we had with let's say Oxycontin, where doctors were making these decisions with their patients but because of the intense profit motive and because of frankly, in some respects, the failure of the FDA and the fact that the statutory protections were not strong enough, in my opinion, that we ended up having this use and ultimately abuse of Oxycontin that led to a massive opioid epidemic. So, I for one believe that drugs should be legal, and if people want to abuse them, they have every right to abuse them. It's sad. But the point is the doctors gave us to, excuse me, wait, the doctors, you said this would be a decision between the doctor and the patient, and I'm suggesting to you that a significant part of the overdose that we see in the addiction was not a function of people making a choice to be addicted or to abuse drugs, but was rather a profit motive on the part of Purdue and subsidy. Have you ever had surgery? I'm just curious. If you've ever had surgery and been in intense pain, I have been in intense pain. I have friends. And when the doctor offered you an opioid, let me just finish. Let me just finish. The profit motive drove these salespeople and this company to make doctors believe that this was not addictive in the way that the doctors understood oxycontin could be or that this type of opioid could be. You're shaking your head. I'm shaking my head because no doctor believed it wasn't addictive, and particularly they couldn't believe it after they actually saw their patients come back over and over again to ask for more. So maybe initially you're right, but at some point you have to ask. We have a tremendous amount of corrupt doctors in this country. And we have a lot of corrupt doctors in this country. You're making an argument that to allow, listen, your own, just listen to what you've just said in the past two minutes. I know. You have said we need to allow doctors to have an unfettered relationship with their patient, and all of these doctors knew they were giving a highly addictive drug to their patients, and they turned the other direction, which led to the incredible overdoses. I think that's right, but look. So why am I suggesting we should trust doctors? Yeah, because I think we live in a system where we encourage people not to take personal responsibility, doctors and patients not to take personal responsibility for the decisions that they make, and we encourage corruption. I think because we have an SEC, for example, we have more corruption in financial markets. I think because we have an FDA, we have more corruption among doctors because doctors now rely on guidance from above rather than making personal decisions. Let me just finish this point about OxyContin. Look, when a doctor offered me, this is years ago, when a doctor offered me opioids after back surgery because I was in tense pain, I said, you know, maybe not, right? These are addictive, right? I knew that. You knew that. Everybody knows opioids are addictive. Everybody knows opioids are addictive, and what we do is we shrug off. Do you know anybody who's ever been addicted to that pain medication? Yeah, and they rationalize it away, but they knew what they were doing. They knew what they were getting into, and it reduced their pain so they was excusable, and they could justify it to themselves because the pain was going away, but it doesn't take much research to discover. You just do a Google search, even five, six, 10 years ago, and you would have discovered that any one of these drugs was addictive. We don't want, we don't want people to take personal responsibility. We don't talk, doctors say have personal responsibility about the decisions they make. Let me ask you this. They want to give that decision authority to some guiding authority like the FDA. Is mRNA vaccines, are they safe? Yeah, I think so. Well, I mean, if I Google it, I can find just as many hits. Oh, God. Yeah, but you're saying that it's... But just use your mind a little bit. You give differentiate between the conspiracy theory nonsense and the reality. I just want to be clear on what your argument is here. Your argument is that the literally tens of thousands of deaths that we've had as a function of addiction that started with OxyContin, you're arguing that the doctors were unscrupulous and the patients failed to understand the implications of the medicine they were taking and that, okay, this is where our world views really diverge because I don't believe that we can have a functioning society where every patient each has to know the implications of every medication they're taking so they can fact check the doctor who apparently is willing to be unscrupulous to the extent that they can because they're aided and abetted and encouraged to be corrupt by the existence of government agencies. I don't disagree with you. That would be a rotten world, but I don't believe that's the kind of world you would get. I believe that is a world that we have gotten because of the kind of role we've allowed government to take. We have delegated to government authorities so much of our personal responsibility both as doctors, as pharmaceutical companies, and as individuals, that yes, you cannot just take the world as it exists today and snap your fingers and yes, everything happens. Incentives matter. And when you create perverse incentives, which is what the FDA has created, you get perverse results. And that's what we got. And you're getting the same with MRNA right now. The reason there's so much conspiracy theories about this is because people have lost trust in our government and you get one central authority saying thumbs up, thumbs down. And we're living through that. It's a sad and horrific state that we have right now where we're not trusting scientists because scientists don't believe members of the elite. You've just described the entire opioid epidemic as a function of unscrupulous. I think it's a function of the system that we have today, which involves the FDA unscrupulous doctors, yes, and ignorant patients. But you're suggesting in the absence of the FDA and the government that everyone would trust Pfizer or that they would all do the right thing because why? How would the incentive structure be different? First of all, think about what happens if you don't. Think about how you go out of business and how much you suffer when you go out of business if you screw it up. It's a big deal. But let's take that world. Because that's an interesting thing because I'm thinking about the builders of that building in Florida. Now maybe they would take a hit now if we knew who they were. Maybe they're still in business. But it also suggests that the way the corporations, which we know, and you've made it clear, are just people who have a legal protection. Those people 10 years down the road, they're gone. That CEO and that CEO, they're gone and they've profited from it. So if the company goes bankrupt, because they, I mean, the Sacklers made billions. Yeah, they don't have them. They don't have those billions anymore. Oh, they do. They very much do. They don't. And they were pretty far off before this. I literally just interviewed the guy who did the story on the Sacklers. They very much do have billions of dollars. But again, I don't think they are the only party responsible for what happened there. And a lot of people are getting off the hook on it. But you know, I then everybody gets off the hook. Like, no, it is, you know, there's no guarantee in life. Look, we have the system you want or close to it. And a building inspector went into that building and returned every 10 years, the government sent the building inspector into the building in Miami, and they still didn't get it. They still blew it up. And I would argue the private, the private owners of that building did not respond to it. The point is this that in a world in which the government doesn't have a building inspector, let me finish this thought. And then I have to run, unfortunately, right? Because I don't have a lot of time. Let me finish this thought. In a world in which I imagine there are many people that have a clear interest in keeping the building from collapsing. Certainly the owners of the building and the people who live there. Now look, mistakes are going to happen in any system, mistakes are going to happen, right? No system is going to guarantee that no buildings ever collapse. No system is going to guarantee that no people ever get sick from a drug or sick from food that they eat. But I like the incentives of the building owners, the people who own the condos, more than I like the incentive of the building inspector from the government. No, it didn't work in this case, man. It didn't work in this case. But I said that sometimes, sometimes things are going to go wrong. But you know what? I also like the incentive of in a free market, not in the world in which we live now where everybody hides behind the government of the insurance company that ensured that building because they've got a lot of claims that they're going to have to pay now and they're going to take a big hit. They, in a free market, they would have set an inspector. Now in the world we live in today, they don't because they will land the government inspector, which probably was not a good idea. The government inspector made it quite clear that there were problems there. The private inspector, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. The private inspector is also the engineering company that was in there. The private owners of that building made the decision not to fix it. Now, were there a stricter government regulation? Then why are we worried about it? Then they made a decision and they suffered the consequence. Because there's 100 people who made a decision who made a bad decision and suffered the consequences of it. I'm not justifying the building collapsing. I'm saying that people make decisions. If I make a decision to walk into the street without looking, should the driver be limited in his capacity to drive because I made a stupid decision? The point is that there are, you know, what you want is for the people who make the decision to suffer to benefit from the consequence of their actions. If I make a decision to take oxy cotton, knowing it's addictive and I become addicted from it, that's my problem, not yours and not mine and not anybody else's. I believe people should pay for the mistakes that they make. I think that we have gotten to the rub between us, that for you, the morality, as far as I can tell, is that consequences, if they can be directly attributed to a mistake that individuals make, that's just the way it is. For me, my morality, I guess, to use it your term, is that society should try and diminish and mitigate the suffering of other people. That's a big difference to you. Now, my view is if you want to mitigate the suffering of other people, you should be able to do that freely. To force me to help you mitigate the suffering of other people because it's your value, but if it's not mine, that is immoral. It's immoral for you to impose your morality on me even if you're in the majority. I have to say too that every, well, not every, but many of the conversations I've had with libertarians, the ones who are more coherent, and I count you as one of those, ultimately comes down to there's a certain frustration that they have that the vast majority of Americans subscribe to the idea that society should mitigate mistakes that people make, you know, like things like that society should be designed that way and that it is frustrating for people like you to live in a country where most people feel that way. Oh, absolutely. We try to educate people not to feel that way. But yes, I would like to live in a place where people are free to aggregate their efforts together to mitigate problems that they see fit on a voluntary basis. I don't believe in coercion. I just don't believe in force. I don't believe anybody has a right to force somebody else to protect property. That is protect. I'm all for protection. I'm protecting your life. Police should protect your life. I don't. I think property is an extension of your life, but life is property is part of your life. I mean, you can't separate the two. If I need to produce stuff in order to live, what about government protecting your life? If you if the building falls, like it's not every one of the 150 people who died and they're made that decision. Sure. Children didn't. They were shareholders of a building and they they had represented shareholders or owners and they were responsible with decision making that they the decisions they make. But it's to protect your life from somebody else using force against you. It's not from nature. I mean, a hurricane might blow through here. I'm in Puerto Rico right now. And, you know, I don't expect the government to protect me from the hurricane. I do expect the government to protect me from somebody trying to shoot me in the street. Did the government help putting electricity back on there? Well, the government destroyed their electricity grid and then it rebuilt it in in as bad of a shape as it was originally. So the next hurricane will go out again. Was that drug incidentally people are saying it was Vioxx? Is that the case? Vioxx, yes. Thank you. It was Vioxx. Yeah, my understanding is that was a recall that they did themselves. But it's but maybe that's incorrect. No, it's the FDA forced them. Vioxx had been taken by some 4 million Americans out of those patients who took Vioxx. The arthritis drug may have caused approximately 140,000 heart attacks resulting in an estimated 60,000 deaths. This is according to an FDA investigation. I mean, may have may have caused notice may I mean imagine if they did that with the vaccine may have and and also why can't I make that decision? Why can't I make decision whether I want to I want to take the risk of heart attack and would you smart a guy than most people who have the ability to assess all I don't I don't assume that I actually have a high opinion of most human beings and think that they can make decisions for themselves and I think it's a it's the the philosophy king and your philosophy king mentality of a play dough where they you get to the site for other people. It's good for them. You're right. You have kids. I do. I have. Yeah, you know, when you have little kids, it's a little bit tough to be doing all that medical reading, right? It's absolutely tough. It's absolutely tough. And part of the reading is finding a good pediatrician so that you somebody you can trust who's not going to deceive you. And that's not easy. I'm not saying life's easy. It's crossed, fingers crossed. No, it's not about fingers crossed. It's not about fingers crossed. But okay, I do need to run. I know. I appreciate the time and stability. Thank you. Have fun. Yeah, it was. Bye.