 Well, hello everybody, thank you for coming. I want to start by thanking Professor Hoppe and Gulchan for having me. It's a very big honor for me to be here in front of so many people whose work I've admired for so long. What I hope to do is firstly discuss the military mentality and some of the thinking that makes it possible for so many people to sacrifice so much blood and money for an endeavor that I think almost all of us would consider clearly immoral, illegal, and contrary even to its stated goal, whether that be the goal of keeping us safe or the goal of supporting and defending the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic. Those words are from the oath of enlistment taken by all U.S. military personnel. I'm trying to avoid the word service members because I know Lou Rockwell would cringe at that term. Secondly, I want to tell some stories from my time as a nation builder and some of the economic consequences. Some of these are things that I started seeing in a new light after I began studying Austrian economics. What I don't want to spend very much time doing is reiterating the libertarian case against war. It's already made very well, very clearly. I learned it from others, including from several of you. But for the sake of completeness, I'd like to begin by reading or citing three arguments as part of the libertarian case against war. First, Hermann Göring's testimony as recorded in the Nuremberg Diaries. Naturally, he said, the common people don't want war that is understood. But after all, it is the leaders of a country who determine the policy. And it is always a simple matter to drag the people along. There is one difference I pointed out. I as the American psychologist who conducted the interviews and wrote the diaries. In a democracy, the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives. And in the United States, only Congress can declare war. That's a good bit of comedy because since this was written in 1948, the United States has waged a war every decade. Not a single one declared. Hermann Göring replied, oh, that is all well and good. But the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country. Second, I want to cite something that Murray Rothbard wrote in a book that's available over there, The Myth of National Security. He wrote, the state takes care to arrogate to itself the compulsory monopoly of various critical services needed by society, thus keeping the people independence upon the state for key services. And fostering among the public the myth that only the state can supply these goods and services. Later in the essay, he writes, the great Randolph Bourne realized that war is the health of the state. It is in war that the state really comes into its own swelling in power, in number, in pride, in absolute dominion over the economy and society. Society becomes a herd seeking to kill its alleged enemies, rooting out and suppressing all dissent from the official war effort. And third and last, I want to cite Professor Hoppe's devastating criticism that a monopoly on security will always favor itself at the expense of its clients. By its nature, it unilaterally determines the price of security and the nature of security. True security can only be private voluntary security subject to market forces. It would inevitably put a much greater emphasis on arbitrage and conflict resolution rather than on the brute force of invading armies. You can imagine that with private security, which we are voluntarily paying for, we would not have additional services such as the indiscriminate firebombing of cities, the infecting of unsuspecting Guatemalans with syphilis, the setting up of brutally oppressive regimes, and the staging or provoking attacks against ourselves, not to mention today's additional services of being fondled by TSA agents and our handful of wars in the Muslim world. I think these are the most important things which can be said about war. I'm just providing a little bit of illustration. I commissioned as an infantry officer in 2000 and joined the 82nd Airborne Division. We went to Afghanistan in 2002. In 2003, we went to Iraq. There I had the additional duty of meeting weekly with the Council of Sheiks and helping them with their civil problem sanitation, irrigation, civil security. Here's a picture of me looking at an irrigation canal. I was about 20 kilometers south of Baghdad and the green zone. And I would always read about these multi-million dollar contracts going to military industries. I would always repress releases by all the technocrats and bureaucrats. But judging from just 20 kilometers away from this green zone, those people never even existed. And the book Imperial Life in the Emerald City sheds some light on their utter incompetence. I left the Army in 2004 and over the course of three years developed a profound visceral distrust of all things government. It was then I received a letter in the mail calling me back for one more trip to Afghanistan. And you can imagine how delighted I was to be retrained officially now in nation-building by the very same technocrats and bureaucrats who proved so useless in Iraq, whose job I was doing for them. I used to talk about this and I used to talk about how we would how Iraqis would line up around the block to work for $2 a day pulling reeds out of the irrigation canal. And I used to contrast this with how private industries, American industries would contract to do the same job and their security guards would earn $1,000 a day. And this is very interesting to me, but it lapses into a discussion of how to conduct a military occupation when the important question is if we should conduct a military occupation. A question I'm often asked is what soldiers think about our wars and I'm not able to quantify this in terms of percentage, but I think I know what the categories are. There are some constitutionalists and for them I have the most hope. While they recognize the state as a necessary monopoly on security, they see the tension between our unconstitutional wars and the task they are doing. In 2008, more veterans and military personnel contributed to Ron Paul's presidential campaign than to all his Republican challengers combined. There are also organizations like the Oath Keepers who try to instill in military personnel and law enforcement personnel a respect for the Constitution. The second category probably thinks of the Constitution, though they wouldn't say it in the way that most evening news anchors think about it, that it's generally a little bit quaint and unsuitable to the modern world. And they see there, some of them very genuinely see their job as good and noble and some of them are just seduced by it. I can say from personal experience that it feels great to hand out other people's money. When you're somewhere where the people are desperately poor and you get this flow of American tax dollars which you're controlling, it just feels great. You're giving desperately poor people something they want. Additionally, you get this huge status with which many of my, many people have never felt before who are engaged in this type of work. Suddenly, people hang on your every word. They come to you very politely, very respectfully. Although if you look closely at them, you might see that where their people should be are little dollar signs. Incidentally, I bought this Constitution at the Jefferson Monuments. I forgot it, unfortunately, but this is the same version. And I was shocked to see that on the inside cover, it begins with a general disclaimer. It says something to the effect of some people regard this document as important, others think it's no longer suitable to our modern world, nevertheless, here it is. It has historic significance or something like that. This was at the Jefferson Monument of all places. So I think a third category of military personnel are somewhat indifferent to politics. Either they happily sort of punt on the issue of politics or ideology because they regard the state as more good than evil and they're happy to let themselves be wielded as a weapon by the representatives of the state. Also in the indifferent category are, I think, and this I think is quite a few service members, they regard our wars as just another feature of the landscape whose creation or sustenance has nothing to do with their participation. It's just like another hill or a river and they make economic decisions to determine their participation. They take into account the level of danger, money, quality of life, personal development. That was a part of my motivation way back in 2000 and also the status they achieved. This has always been the motivation of soldiers. It's been evident from Thucydides onward. I want to comment about that last motivating factor, the status they achieved because this is very real. When I returned from Afghanistan in 2002 or from Iraq in 2004, I was showered with praise and thanks, I was offered free drinks and free dinners. At the time I was still a statist, however I felt extremely uncomfortable by all the thanks I was receiving because the hero's welcome was given to me without any knowledge of whether or not I was completely incompetent or not. I happened to have been a little proud of how I'd served as an officer and including proud of the restraint that I had shown and I was getting this praise just automatically. They were giving it without knowledge of whether I commanded an infantry platoon or a desk and it became very clear to me that the soldier, his role as a security provider is of secondary importance. Much more important is his symbol as a figure of national pride and national identity. He becomes a idol behind which all the nefarious political motives and all the hypocrisy can hide. The soldier becomes a rallying call in support of the official war effort. It's hard to imagine something similar happening with a private voluntary security agency. And I imagine such a mindset would be much, much worse if this was a war with a conscription where the propaganda must be even stronger. Now of course I view the automatic praise as downright dangerous because it opens the door for all manner of tyranny and more importantly it allows for the systematic aggression against innocent people based only on their proximity to our perceived enemies. I did benefit from personal development. I learned a lot in the military. Nevertheless for the most part I consider it a fool's errand from which I thankfully merged unscathed minus just a little bit of hearing. I've also been asked a few times including last year at the Property and Freedom Society Conference whether I consider insurgents nobler than soldiers because insurgents fight for ideology and soldiers fight for money. I perfectly understand the libertarian hostility to all things military but I disagree with this analysis and I'd like to illustrate that with a couple examples. I remember returning from our first combat mission in Afghanistan it was a two week mission in which we helicoptered to different spots trying and failing to make contact with insurgents. Incidentally back then that was before Iraq had begun so we had all the aviation assets of the military at our disposal. But anyway after we returned one of my fellow platoon leaders told me in a very emotional sort of way that on the helicopters he was having visions of Christians praying back in the United States for him to keep them safe. He was saying that he was thinking on the helicopter of all the difficult training we'd been to and he was expressing how proud he felt for the privilege of defending America. I might accuse him of being foolish perhaps even a little egotistical but I would not accuse him of being insincere if he had his ideology too. From the other side in Iraq in 2003 we would occasionally catch poverty stricken farmers setting up rockets to launch to our base. They were being paid to do so and seemed to have little incentive for effective attacks. In fact it was hard to tell many times if the attacks were even intended for us or not. So there are insurgents fighting for money too. Incidentally later in the war the attacks became more effective and we learned they were being incentivized by things such as whether or not a Medevac helicopter showed up after the attack and I'm sure there's a dark joke in there somewhere about the power of prices. There's also the factor from both sides that young men simply like to fight. They want to know whether or not they're cowards. This is evidenced by me when I was in the Hawkeye Brazilian Jiu Jitsu Club we would drive six hours to Milwaukee and pay a $50 entry fee to go into grappling tournaments just for the privilege of fighting under very restrained conditions. Now the Libertarian instantly sees the line between such a voluntary contest and an involuntary one but I think most young men do not which is why it's so easy to get a whole bunch of them to sacrifice themselves in foolish endeavors. Now I don't mean to be muddying the water on justice and morality by stressing the similarity between insurgents and soldiers so I do believe good people have sacrificed themselves on both sides of every military conflict in history but I think you need a perspective of property rights and you need a paradigm where the individual is the center of action and the individual is the center of decision making and only then do the aggressor and the aggress come into stark contrast. If you work as most people do from this idea that the states are the actors then many people in perfectly good faith can conclude that a war between states is necessary. I think there's a Libertarian case for the invasion of Iraq that you can begin but not finish, it falls apart. It probably begins by citing the systematic abuses of Saddam Hussein's regime and the sincere and desperate desire of many Iraqis to find an outside security agency to rid them of their dictator. In many places in 2003 we were greeted with cheers, grown men shook my hand and cried thanking me for getting rid of Saddam Hussein and in other places they shot at us. It was a very confusing time. Of course this case falls apart very quickly. It does not justify the size and scope of the invasion. It does not justify the deaths of between 100,000 and 1 million Iraqi civilians depending on which estimate you believe and the exodus of four million more. It does not justify nation building, torture and the coercive means of funding our wars. I don't think it takes evil people to do evil things. It only takes evil ideologies now. Please be mindful of the possibility that I'm simply rationalizing and justifying my six years in uniform but I've given that possibility a lot of thought and I think I'm telling it to you the way it is. Please come to your own conclusions though. As further evidence I would cite the 1971 Stanford prison experiment. Out of 75 volunteers they picked the 24 who appeared most mentally stable. They made some of them prisoners, they made others guards and they had to call off what had been planned as a two week experiment after only six days because of outright brutality and sadism from the guards. We need market prices and voluntary patronage to restrict the production of security. Unfortunately this constitution is not enough. Back when I was a constitutional libertarian which was a position I gave up very, very reluctantly. I would point out that if we followed the advice of the founding fathers to avoid keeping large peace time standing armies and if we followed the constitution and forced Congress to declare our wars we probably would not have had a war every decade for the past 60 years, I'll count them. Korea in the 50s, Vietnam in the 60s and 70s, various Latin American wars in the 80s, Gulf War I in the 90s and since the millennium Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya and I haven't even counted smaller wars like Philippines or Somalia. Now the argument is technically true that following the constitution and the advice of the founding fathers may have prevented a war every decade though perhaps this argument rests on the assumption that a monopoly on the production of security is capable of following a document like the constitution. Nevertheless today I would point out to my former self that neither the absence of a large peace time army nor the requirement to declare a war kept America out of World War I, very likely prolonging the war and setting the stage for the rise of different flavors of socialism nor did it prevent America's participation in the Spanish American war when some historians consider the first big imperialistic war and the occupation of the Philippines that followed which I never even learned about in public school I discovered it myself. Here's a quote about the American occupation of the Philippines from a Republican congressman who visited in 1902. You never hear of any disturbances in Northern Luzon and the secret of its pacification is in my opinion the secret of the pacification of the archipelago. He's speaking approvingly of this strategy. They never rebel in Northern Luzon because there isn't anybody there to rebel. The country was marched over and cleaned out in a most resolute manner. The good Lord in heaven only knows the number of Filipinos that were put under the ground. Our soldiers took no prisoners, they kept no records, they simply swept the country and wherever and whenever they could get a hold of a Filipino they killed him. The women and children were spared and may now be noticed in disproportionate numbers on that part of the island. This was done with the blessing of a congressional declaration of war. In my opinion, the correct case against war and the only case against war must begin with the rejection of the state as a monopoly on the unsecurity. And I now want to illustrate the cultural Leviathan that stands in the way of this argument. I'd like you and in particular the Americans in the audience to imagine having a conversation with this man and imagine telling him, no thank you, I do not care for the service which you have presumed to have provided me with. Imagine telling him that you don't think the war made you more safe but rather less safe. Imagine pointing out to him that Americans today are eight times more likely to be killed by an agent of government security than by a terrorist. That's a very difficult conversation indeed. I think the myth of the state has replaced individual identity with national identity. It replaced local culture with national culture and individual pride with national pride. If the myth is ever torn down or if it tears itself down as it very well might, many people I know will be hollow empty shells of themselves scarcely able to answer the question, who are you? I'd like to shift now and just talk about nation building in Afghanistan. This is the biggest population center in Kunar province. It's at the confluence of the Kunar River and the Pesh River coming in left to right. There's a very interesting place in Kunar province called the Korangal Valley and I'm gonna resist with all my might to go on anthropological tangent but it is absolutely fascinating and related to Rudyard Kiplings, the man who would be king. But anyway, the Korangalis were timber barons. They used to chop down these gigantic trees and sell them in Pakistan paying the local warlord for transportation across his turf. In 2005, 2006, we shut down the timber smuggling because we wanted timber trade and that made the Korangalis very angry. Many Korangalis and many American soldiers died in the Korangal Valley, which was abandoned last month, I believe, or at least they didn't use the word abandoned pulled back from. I would occasionally point out to my colleagues that the difference between smuggling and trade is who gets to cut. The local warlord gets to cut, it's smuggling and if the national warlord with his national munglisha called the Afghan National Army gets a cut, then it's trade. But it was like pointing out the unrealities in a science fiction movie. Everyone is mildly irritated for a while and then returns to watching the movie. The most impressive man I met in Afghanistan was a young man named Mahmood. We were on a mission to inspect one of the many schools we're building there. I think we're building, the average was around $200,000. That goes to one of my many principles of military service, whatever the private sector can do, the United States Army can do more slower and for 10 times the cost. But anyway, Mahmood came up to me very cautiously and introduced himself and standing in a mud field surrounded by bare mountains. He started telling me about Windows XP and the types of processors he has on his seven computers and how he teaches classes in Windows XP PowerPoint and many other things. He is doing for profits what the mighty U.S. Army struggles to do for charity. Incidentally, I couldn't buy him the generator that he wanted because we can't help private entrepreneurs, we could only build things that are sort of collectively owned like hydroelectric plants for little villages, micro, really small hydroelectric plants for villages. But in practice, I think they were privately owned. They were just owned by the village elder. In any case, I want to contrast Mahmood's computer school with the jewel in the crown of our reconstruction efforts, which was this trade school. We would pay students for their attendance. They would learn one of five trades, plumbing, electric, carpentry, masonry, or something else. They got little hats, which looked very professional. And the parade of dignitaries that came to our provincial reconstruction team were always taken here. UN generals, diplomats, ambassadors, and undersecretary, I believe, of the State Department, who he might have been from defense. And on the surface, this looked great. And it's very easy for good people to feel good about this effort. You have to look a little more closely to realize that this was costing the American taxpayer $50,000 a month, hard to imagine. Although that figure almost surely went down, because I wrote about it, I wrote about this, and the Army is very sensitive to publicity. You could tell that there's no market pressure. Like, the Army betrays its political masters by how sensitive it is to any type of publicity. Later during my time there, I realized that there were three private trade schools doing for profit what we do as charity, which had gone out of business, because how could they possibly compete with the largest of the US taxpayer? And I also came to appreciate something which should have been completely obvious, which I was very slow to realize. Students went here for political reasons. Oh, how's this? Students went here for political reasons, and I couldn't believe how far I had gotten into this without realizing. We would go to a place like the Carangal Valley, where they didn't like us, and we would tell the elders, listen, I know you're very angry about this whole timber thing. Why don't you pick 10 people to go to the next class of the trade school? And then there was elders. I'm sure would go to people in their valley who they want to influence, and they would either trade favors or whatever else and send students here, which is why our school had a moderate dropout rate. I doubt the private schools that we put out of business had a similar dropout rate, because those students were sacrificing something to be there. This sort of central plan in which we were engaged in, which I was very slow to appreciate for what it was, because you are giving desperately poor people some resources. But this was central planning detached from any kind of reality. It very soon became apparent that we were flooding the area with eager construction workers. Thankfully, we dropped $90 million of dollars worth of construction projects on the province, so we could absorb all this labor. I almost fell out of my seat when I read, towards the end of Murray Rothbard's essay, World War I, as a fulfillment of progressivism, he describes governments lost for big numbers, because I went through a similar loss when I was engaged in nation building. The most absurd appetite for data came towards the end of my time in Iraq when soldiers, for a brief while, as part of their routine patrols, tried to photograph all the Iraqis, all of them. They would knock on the door, take a photo, go to the next house. The soldiers knew right away that this was absurd, and thankfully the leadership figured that out pretty quickly, too. But anyway, it's difficult to measure all the improvement that all this building of schools and clinics and bridges is doing. And the army's aware of that, and they discuss it often, but there's no solution. This is central planning. It's divorced from any kind of market pressure. One of the things that they loved was the roads right here. This is the road we built in our project, because for this they did have data. They counted all the shops in the bazaar before we built the road, and after we built it, it tripled. So there were many metrics of verifying the road as an improver of quality of life for the Afghans. And I was, again, astounded when I read Professor Hoppe's criticism that the overproduction of roads is a universal property of government for the purpose of moving their security forces, because this was readily discussed as the alternative purpose of building the roads. And there's a publicly available essay on this written by David Coole Cullen called Building Roads in Afghanistan, where he's very explicit as we were that the alternative purpose is to move security forces. So I was astounded to see the theoretical prediction match the reality I had known. All our efforts certainly warp the Afghan economy in bizarre ways, and this is very interesting to me. Though I'm not sure I would make the statement that it's a negative effect, because if you're building things for desperately poor people, it's still a benefit, even though it's probably not how they would allocate their resources if they had them. I think I'm running out of time. This is me playing guitar hero in my room in Afghanistan. I used to be the drummer, but our drums broke, and we couldn't get replacements. But I guess that's what they mean when they say war is held. I've written quite a bit about my military experiences, and you can read more on my website. I want to thank you all very much for your time.