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NOTE Speaker Panel

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Does anyone have a question? This is the part where you ask questions, and we make up answers.

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Yes, sir. Let's see, I'm going to try to boil that question down. I think you're equating

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the price of gold with the price of crops, more or less, or the increase in the money

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Supply created by the Federal Reserve and 0% interest rates has led to the price of

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commodities going up, including gold, and so some people think it's different because

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this will go on, and I don't understand how the gold plays in there, if you can help me

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Money with that.

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Okay.

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So, yeah, it's two different questions.

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I think that I tried to make a couple of points in the talk that were probably rather subtle,

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These low interest rates have provided the perverse incentive to stay in farmland as

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opposed to selling farmland because you can't get any higher interest rate or any higher

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return on that.

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So, and the crop yield, you know, driven by China and India and wherever it may be, we

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don't know whether that's real, imagined or what have you.

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I mean, there's speculation in those markets just like any other market.

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So generally bankers will leverage up this land and that's where the real problems will

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become because if that average 5% farmland loan becomes 7% and it doesn't take too much

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imagination to imagine a 5% farm loan going to 7% or even 10% for that matter, that will

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will cut the legs completely out of this market, really no matter what happens to crop prices.

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They could stay the same. If crop prices were to come down at the same time we had a rise

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in interest rates or a fall in the dollar, which would precipitate a rise in interest

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rates, the same thing could happen. So that's the way I'd answer that part of the question.

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is, I don't know, somebody else want to take a swing at the gold. Is gold different this

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time? Is it, is anybody arguing that gold's a speculative bubble and, but it's different

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this time?

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Well, no, I mean, the way I would handle it, as you're right, would, I'm not telling people

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I think gold is going to, for sure I'd bet my life gold's going to be higher next month

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I'm speculating it's going to go up next month, but it's there so you don't get completely wiped out, would be the way I would say.

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I forgot one quick thing. I'm just making an announcement for the high school people in there.

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If you want to go to school in the area, I forgot to mention, if Tyler Watts could just raise your hand.

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He is an Austrian at Ball State. He just wanted me to mention, if you want to see him and Jim McClure as well,

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that they want you to know that they're in the area and they have a strong Austrian program there.

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Do you guys have an opinion on gold prices or speculative land?

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Oh yeah, they could. The government uses taxes, borrowing and money printing to finance everything.

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And so, yeah, in theory, but of course with printing money by the Fed makes it easier,

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for one thing, and it creates what economists call a fiscal illusion in that, you know,

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I just published an article a few months ago on inflationary finance of war, and imagine

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if President Bush, trying to persuade us to go to war in Iraq, said, okay, it's going

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to cost a lot of money, and I figure it's $20,000 per family.

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I think there would be a lot more opposition to that war than there was if you did that.

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So it makes it more difficult, and therefore there would be less of it if we just resorted

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to tax finance and not inflationary finance, but that requires abolishing the Fed.

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Hold your applause please, we want to continue with this.

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Okay. Yes, sir. The question again, the government holds a lot of land. Yeah, pretty much the

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entire western half of the United States is pretty much owned by the federal government.

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Where I came from, spent 22 years in Nevada, 86 percent of the land in Nevada is owned

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by the Federal Government by the BLM, and there were reasons for that, actually, that

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tie into a lot of work that Professor DiLorenzo has done in terms of Lincoln, actually, right?

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Well, yeah, well, the home, you know, if you want to talk about history, the original Homestead

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Act in the 1860s, there's a historian named Ludwell Johnson who once published an article

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Showing that the majority of it went to corporations, there were a lot of people who got 160 acres

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to farm, but he made the case that over half of it went to mining, forestry and railroad

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corporations and I think more up to date, a lot of that land historically has been leased

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to ranchers at below market prices, so it's a form of pork barrel politics of a congressman

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and making, giving a sweetheart deal to campaign contributors who are ranchers or our friends

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in Montana at the Political Economy Research Center for years have been writing articles

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and books about how in the timber industry, you know, all the timber lands that are owned

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by the government are leased on the cheap to timber companies who then clear cut the

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timber and create all kind of environmental devastation compared to on their own privately

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But our friends in Montana, they used to say that 50% of the land west of the Mississippi

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is owned by the federal government.

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That's a statistic they used to use.

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In Nevada, what is it, 86% of the whole state of Nevada?

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And I know in Nevada, in Doug's case, it's really like the government operates like the

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mafia because when the developers, during the boom outside of Vegas, when the developers

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wanted to build land, the first thing they had to do, like all developers everywhere

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here in any city, is bribe the politicians to let them buy the land that the government

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owns.

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And like anywhere else, even if the government doesn't own the land, you still have to get

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permits.

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And so that's how a lot of county commissioners and these people finance their political careers

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through sort of Tony Soprano-like activities.

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If you want to do business in town, you've got to give me my share, is essentially what

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they're saying.

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Every once in a while, there will be some kind of proposal to privatize a small piece

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of a government-owned and managed area, in the National Forest, for example. Those proposals

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come along every once in a while. And whenever they do come along, there's a huge outcry

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from the environmental lobbies which are just completely invested in the idea that any movement

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of ownership from government to the private sector is wrong, a movement in the wrong direction.

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They would actually like to move more land under the control of the government.

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But this is also another case where the subsidies and the government management benefit interests

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that you might not expect if you'd never really looked into how these programs operate.

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In the national forests, for example, where the land is leased to timber companies to

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cut the wood, we know there have been some studies by my old friend Barney Dowdle at

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at the University of Washington that showed that the costs of managing the national forests

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exceed the value of everything produced in the national forests.

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So it's like a net loss just from the fact that the government is operating and managing

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these areas to begin with.

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But if you look at what national forests are for, you discover that they don't really exist

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exist to cater to forestry companies as much as they exist to cater to road builders.

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There are more miles of road in the national forest system in the United States than in

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all the rest of the country combined.

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All the interstate system, the state roads, the local roads, add them up, that's not as

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many miles.

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Of course, this is a different kind of road, but it just gives you an idea of how many hundreds

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of National Forests, and of course that's all made with contracts with road building

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companies and they make beaucoup bucks from doing this work and they have sweetheart arrangements

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with the people who manage particular areas of National Forests and what have you.

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But this is also something that the environmentalists have fallen down on because some of the biggest

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complaints about the despoilation of the National Forest occur because all of this road building

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creates tremendous amount of erosion and it wrecks the streams and rivers in these areas,

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kills fish and other riverine life and so it's just terrible for the environment.

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never should be happening in the first place because, you know, if people had to really

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pay market prices for their access to cutting this timber, the whole system would operate

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differently.

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Well, I came from, again, the Soviet Union was called environmental Auschwitz in the

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sense that they destroyed their nature more than anybody else.

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However, I had a strange, very strange experience where the state of Nevada was invited by a

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a very radical group there to talk about

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Bureau of Land Management and how the mining claims

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are being served and what not, and so my point was

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that government does not have any role

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in ownership of land and that definitely

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should be privatized, however, amazingly enough,

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my host, who were pretty radical at that time,

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Bruce Babbitt, maybe you remember, he was a home secretary

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and he was raising grazing fees per cow,

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like almost 40% up and so they were pretty radical, they would invite me to a pub and

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they were just throwing darts into his eyes, put his picture there and Bruce Babbitt and

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Janet Reno and what not and however when I said that they should be, they said no, no

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this is ridiculous, no, we don't need this, we don't want this land at all, they wanted

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just to reduce the grazing fears, reduce grazing fears, keep them low so they can rape the

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So the question is, does the executive branch have the power, if the right libertarians were

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elected, if they could just shut the tap off at the Department of Agriculture, just stop

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But you guys all go sit and do nothing, download porn all day, what they do at the SEC or whatever.

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So, yeah, I'm certainly not qualified for the question.

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Yeah, the first thing people would say is that, well, the Constitution gives Congress the power of the purse,

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and so they could force the President to do it.

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but nobody in Washington pays attention to the Constitution anymore. Whenever Democrats talk about the Constitution, it's only to try to block something the Republicans want to do.

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Whenever the Republicans talk about the Constitution, it's only to block something the Democrats want to do, but neither party believes in limited constitutional government.

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About five years ago, Ron Paul invited me to go to his office in D.C. and give a presentation

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based on my book, The Real Lincoln, to him and his Liberty Caucus, about a dozen members

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of Congress.

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And during that evening, one of the things they all agreed on, is about a dozen members

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of Congress, is that no one in Washington will take you seriously if you try to make

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a constitutional argument against any kind of government program.

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They all nodded in agreement with that.

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And so, my answer to your question is, yeah, why shouldn't a president do this?

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And it should give the Congress the big middle finger if they start talking about the Constitution.

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And the same with the Supreme Court.

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You know, I think we should...

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This idea that the Supreme Court is black-robed deities who announce to us what our freedoms

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are to be did not always exist.

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It's a post-Civil War phenomenon.

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Before the Civil War, there were Andrew Jackson, for example, when the Supreme Court said the

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Bank of the United States, which was a precursor of the Fed, was constitutional, he responded

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by in essence saying, thanks for your opinion, but my opinion is different.

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And so we didn't always bow down to these black-robed deities of the Court.

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And I think we'll never have freedom again in America, really, until we start giving

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and every member of the Supreme Court, the big middle finger, too, and say, so what?

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You know, that's your opinion. Keep it to yourself. You know, we have, we, and Andrew

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Jackson reminded the Court at the time that there are three branches of government, not

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one. And so, so this was an invention that the Supreme Court has the sole, whole sole

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power to decide on constitutionality. So I could see a Ron Paul-type president just doing

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There was an attempt, several attempts during the Reagan administration to impound authorized

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funds and it gave rise to court challenges which went to the Supreme Court and the drift

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to the rulings was that the executive may not unilaterally impound these funds. Now,

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as Tom says, if the executive branch were willing to say the hell with the Supreme Court,

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it wouldn't matter because the Supreme Court is just nine persons with no private army

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of its own. On the other hand, if the executive were to act that way in current political

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and Social Sciences, it would run a tremendous political risk and I'm willing to say, although

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no one knows the future, that it would end up being totally repudiated because even though

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the Supreme Court has no army to enforce its rulings, it still has a considerable power

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of public opinion behind its rulings and the people dispute the rulings of course greatly

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for all kinds of reasons.

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But that's different from disputing the authority

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of the court to exist and make constitutional rulings.

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And I think if the executive branch took that position,

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it would find itself very much on the losing end

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of the political fallout.

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So I think maybe it was easier to do in Jackson's day

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than it would be today.

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Ultimately, the only way to achieve this is to do what happened in a former Soviet Union

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and have all the states secede and create one that's a society of liberty rather than

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the society of tyranny which we live under today.

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Yeah, well I'll move to Indiana.

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I take it the Monsanto issue with using intellectual property laws to keep their seeds from being

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used by anybody else, right?

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Is that...

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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I mean, my view of that would be that that's not a legitimate right that they have and

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they're keeping food out of people's mouths.

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And they're using the power of government, the power of their lobbying efforts to keep

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small farmers out of the market.

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And so, yeah, I personally wouldn't be a Monsanto fan, or at least the way they do business.

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Anybody else?

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This is by no means something I did a lot of research on or anything, but I have talked

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with a few people that were, you know, in agriculture that didn't seem to be demonstrably

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insane. And, you know, the guy didn't, you know, then talk about how the aliens mistreated

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him or anything. And he was saying it's not just the issue of, you know, sort of aggressive

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practices but he was saying stuff and again, I didn't verify this but this is what he was

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telling me that like if the breeze blows the seed onto your land and then Monsanto can

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to come in and prove that you have some of their strain, then you have to pay them money.

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Even if like you didn't buy the product and put it, just the wind took it on and he was

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saying like sort of there are some small independent farmers that just hate everything they stand

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for and yet the stuff, they can't keep it off their land and then now they're stuck having

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to pay them and then it, you know, they can't even remain independent if they wanted to.

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So if that's true, certainly that sounds crazy to me.

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Sir, the effects on agriculture during Chairman Mao's what? Great Leap Forward. I'm sure

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that's what they figured it was. Yeah.

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Well, I can't speak with any genuine authority about that, but from what I have read about

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The effects of the Great Leap Forward in agriculture were very bad in terms of hurting the productivity

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of agriculture at the time.

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One of the things that the government did during the Great Leap, so-called, was to absolutely

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clean out the cities and force people, at least for a period of time, to go out and

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work on farms.

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Can you imagine anything worse for farming than having a whole bunch of totally inexperienced city slickers sent out to help you farm?

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It's a disaster. We used to hate it when people came out to hunt pheasants and ducks on our farm, but this had to be very harmful.

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And it was done really for ideological reasons. It was to basically break everybody's will and spirit

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by showing them that they could be put out in the country doing very hard, unpleasant work.

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And in fact, they had to do it, like it or not, whether they enjoyed the pay or the conditions or whatever.

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So the idea was, you know, we're going to create this new man,

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and the first thing we had to do is destroy the old man's type of thinking by breaking him,

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Program, just the way when you go in the military, the first order of business is to break you,

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so you'll do automatically anything you're told to do.

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Well, I was one of these slick urban dwellers.

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And in the Soviet Union, they would send most people, when I was a student, every September

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and October, I would spend in pretending that I'm picking up potatoes, yes.

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That was massive.

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at that time I was pretty young or whatever so I just had a great time. Others, older

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people, theyivid just drinking themselves into oblivion. Nobody was picking up potatoes.

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Only to put them in the fire and then eat them with the pickles or whatever. But in China

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I had a friend who was Soviet advisor, can you imagine, Soviet advisor to Chinese Department

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of Labor. And he was part of that. And his stories were just amazing. That, for example,

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they decided to kill all yard birds, sparrows. They're considered sparrows. And we were attacked

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by sparrows because they eat a lot of grain and a lot of rice. And so the whole country

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was murdering sparrows. And he was, so the vice, also recruited because he needs to show

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his understanding of that. And they would come with pots and pans and beat them to the

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The point that poor sparrows have, and sparrows cannot fly more than five minutes, they have

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a heart attack and they drop.

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And then people would fight each other to pick up sparrows because they need to show

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them.

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And then if you have enough dead sparrows, then they exchange it for a medal.

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Yes, can you imagine?

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And then I worked for the Soviet Department of Labor, and my minister, usually I would

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go to him because I worked with the Minister of Labor, and he would call and would say,

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Don't draft him, because I need him, so just draft somebody else instead.

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And I was kind of, because he would all the time would do that, and I asked him what is this for?

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I mean, what is this for this? It doesn't help agriculture. I was kind of naive and whatever.

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He said, yeah, but it keeps people a little bit more humble. Yes, it's like TSA today.

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You know, they can take your picture if naked or whatever, or do the tricks you like, and the same thing, that you have a family responsible, you have a lot of things to do, and they will say, no, this is not important, just go, and they will drive you on a school bus, ten hours from Moscow, dump you in the middle of a swamp, and that's it for two months, and that was it.

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In China, that was, I think, the last coffin. They've beaten into entrepreneurship and

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creativity of Chinese people at that time. After that, everybody was submissive. The

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human toll of that experiment with agriculture in China, almost 16 million people died because

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starvation during the Great Leap Forward. That's wonderful. Also, those of you who

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are interested in murders and crimes of socialism, you can look at the University of Hawaii.edu.

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and then Slash Rammel, Rammel that's Professor Rudolf Rammel of University of Hawaii. He

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wrote a lot of books about democide, about government murdering their own people. I think

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the best one is called Death by Government. His point was that this is the worst disease

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that you can have is government and government is murderous diseases, wars on AIDS or anything

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else.

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Well, I'm not a great fan of the Prime Minister, Mr. Putin, nor his spokesman, President Medvedev.

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They are all KGB stooges.

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But even under, I would say, kind of half-fascist thing they have, it's still greatly forward

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because what they did now, Russia became a net exporter of grain again.

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Moreover, they're exporting almost as much as grain as the United States does.

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In the year 2019 they have this, I don't know if it's a statistical delusion or not, they

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think they will become the first in the world in exporting of grain.

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Most of this Arab unrest in Arab countries was not because people were looking for freedom

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or read too much of Mises and Hayek and began to throw out their social parasites away.

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No, because food prices increased by 70-80% in all these countries.

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Mostly because of the huge drought in the Southern Russia. Southern Russia is producing

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a lot of cheap, low quality, but food grain, which is mostly was exported to countries

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in developing world, into these countries. And so today, today it's much better. What

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they do, they kind of privatize it, those who would like to assume the proper. The problem

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is that it's, I think it's a huge human, human disaster. For example, I go to Baltic states

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In Estonia, I met a gentleman from Finland. He was buying land there. Buying land for

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almost nothing. For what reason? His point is that they privatized the land properly.

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Everything is private. But already peasants, they hate this land because for them it's

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kind of part of the privatized concentration camp there were slaves in. So they don't

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value this land. They sell it cheap. They want to go to the cities and forget about

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All these atrocities that they experience. So it's really, really pretty sad. But now, again, it's much better than it was.

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Yes, yes, yes. They, in the beginning, they stalled the privatization of land. It was nationalized.

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However, but since 1995-96, they began to privatize. It's still about half of it is publicly owned, even today.

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All right, yeah, I'd love to hear more about this, but I'm afraid we have to shut it down.

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I am very pleased that you all came.

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Thank you for my speakers, Yuri Maltz, Bob Higgs, Robert Murphy, and of course, Tom DiLorenzo

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here behind me.

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Thanks to the crew of Chad Parrish and Will and James and Christy, of course.

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It was a pleasure to be here in Indianapolis. We hope we can come back next year. Thank you to Weaver Popcorn for making this all possible.

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If you have a chance to buy a book on your way out, please do. Otherwise, enjoy the rest of your weekend. Thank you.