WEBVTT NOTE Authors Forum: What the Greens and the Nationalists Have in Common 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:08.000 I had an old friend, Bill Parker, who's dead now. He used to teach economics history at Yale University. 2 00:00:08.000 --> 00:00:13.000 And Bill used to say, the older you get, the less you write and the more you publish. 3 00:00:13.000 --> 00:00:21.000 So, if I get up in here, I'm starting to become a great prolific publisher. 4 00:00:21.000 --> 00:00:29.000 And I want to tell you today about a couple of books and my journal a little bit, too. 5 00:00:29.000 --> 00:00:49.000 I never like to go anywhere without my journal of the way. Some people won't go without their American Express card and the independent review, this is the issue of the newsstand. You may have noticed it. 6 00:00:49.000 --> 00:01:03.000 I believe I can say without fear of contradiction that no other journal of serious political economy has ever had a cover quite like this. 7 00:01:03.000 --> 00:01:10.000 If that tells you, you can expect things a little out of the ordinary from my journal and you're correct. 8 00:01:10.000 --> 00:01:18.000 If you're not already a subscriber, get with it. The prices are right and I think you'll enjoy the reading. 9 00:01:18.000 --> 00:01:31.000 Many of the people who are affiliated with the Mises Institute, our friends at the Mises Institute, have written for the Independent Review, including Tom Buolanzo and Mark Thornton, 10 00:01:31.000 --> 00:02:00.000 I think it would be wrong to describe the Independent Review as an Austrian journal, but its editor is certainly one who is closely identified with the Austrian school nowadays, 11 00:02:00.000 --> 00:02:06.000 and is very much open to good writing by Austrian. 12 00:02:06.000 --> 00:02:12.000 So I want to tell you about a couple of books. 13 00:02:12.000 --> 00:02:16.000 One is about to be published, it's not yet published, 14 00:02:16.000 --> 00:02:20.000 so all I have to show you is three publications and proofs. 15 00:02:20.000 --> 00:02:24.000 This book is called Rethinking Green, 16 00:02:24.000 --> 00:02:28.000 Alternatives to Environmental Bureaucracy, 17 00:02:28.000 --> 00:02:34.800 And it's edited by me and by Carl Close, who works at the Independent Institute. 18 00:02:34.800 --> 00:02:43.160 And the book consists of a number of essays, it's 450 pages long, so there is a lot of 19 00:02:43.160 --> 00:02:44.160 material here. 20 00:02:44.160 --> 00:02:50.440 But all of these essays were published previously in the Independent Review. 21 00:02:50.440 --> 00:03:05.440 It turns out that without quite trying, we have, as it were, focused on, I don't know, six or eight topics in the journal over the years. 22 00:03:05.440 --> 00:03:12.440 And when we look back, we see that if we brought all of these things on a particular topic together, it would make a nice collection. 23 00:03:12.440 --> 00:03:23.440 So that's what we've done here with essays dealing with environmental matters, and particularly the government's environmental policy. 24 00:03:23.440 --> 00:03:34.440 Environmental policy, I don't have to explain to any of you, I'm sure, is one of the battle fronts in the fight for liberty in this country. 25 00:03:34.440 --> 00:03:46.440 and environmentalism as represented by so-called environmentalists, the people who describe themselves that way in public, 26 00:03:46.440 --> 00:04:03.440 is a kind of manifestation of collectivism and tyranny as it has come to be most influential in the wake of the breakup of old-fashioned Marxist-type leftism, 27 00:04:03.440 --> 00:04:07.440 is now flourishing only on university campuses. 28 00:04:07.440 --> 00:04:11.440 But environmentalism flourishes all over the country. 29 00:04:11.440 --> 00:04:15.440 Many ordinary people actually think they are environmentalists and support 30 00:04:15.440 --> 00:04:19.440 environmental policies of all sorts. That's why Congress 31 00:04:19.440 --> 00:04:23.440 keeps rolling this stuff out. And the 32 00:04:23.440 --> 00:04:27.440 Environmental Protection Agency is one of the most egregious 33 00:04:27.440 --> 00:04:31.440 regulatory agencies we 34 00:04:31.440 --> 00:04:37.760 have to contend with in this country. So these essays deal with a variety of environmental 35 00:04:37.760 --> 00:04:47.520 policy questions, the Endangered Species Act, global warming, oil drilling, you name it, and 36 00:04:47.520 --> 00:04:53.840 many of the people who are friends of or associated with the Mises Institute have essays in here, 37 00:04:54.560 --> 00:04:59.760 two excellent pieces here by Bob Nelson, who's going to be giving one of the featured addresses 38 00:04:59.760 --> 00:05:08.760 This conference appeared in the book. A very nice Austrian paper by John Breitling is included. 39 00:05:08.760 --> 00:05:19.760 Roy Cordado has an extremely hardcore Austrian presentation as part of the debate with P.J. Hill on so-called market-based environmentalism. 40 00:05:19.760 --> 00:05:25.480 So I urge you to have a look at it if you have any interest in this topic at all. 41 00:05:25.480 --> 00:05:32.360 This will be available for sale very quickly within the next month. 42 00:05:32.360 --> 00:05:38.440 Now let me spend the rest of my time telling you about another book which is called Against 43 00:05:38.440 --> 00:05:49.440 Leviathan, a sub-title of government power and free society and this is my own work entirely 44 00:05:49.440 --> 00:05:59.440 And the book is a collection of essays, almost all of which were previously published. 45 00:05:59.440 --> 00:06:10.440 There is, I think, one substantial paper on the FDA, which was never published before, although I gave it at a conference a few years ago in Germany. 46 00:06:10.440 --> 00:06:18.800 but these essays go back as far as I think 1981 and come up almost to the 47 00:06:18.800 --> 00:06:25.160 present day the bulk of them were written in the past a decade many of them 48 00:06:25.160 --> 00:06:34.600 were first written for what I called my et cetera column in the independent 49 00:06:34.600 --> 00:06:44.120 Review. However, everything in this book has been rewritten, polished, updated, corrected, 50 00:06:44.120 --> 00:06:52.280 so nothing appears here exactly as it appears originally. So it's not simply a bunch of previously 51 00:06:52.280 --> 00:07:03.640 published pieces laid end to end. And I have selected for this collection only essays that 52 00:07:03.640 --> 00:07:08.640 I think are accessible to a general audience of intelligent readers. 53 00:07:08.640 --> 00:07:17.640 There's nothing included here that I wrote specifically for my colleagues in economic history or in economics. 54 00:07:17.640 --> 00:07:24.640 There's no technicalities of any kind in here, nothing especially esoteric. 55 00:07:24.640 --> 00:07:27.640 So I think everything here is accessible. 56 00:07:27.640 --> 00:07:40.640 And I've tried to bring together about 40 pieces, all of which I hope tell us something about the nature of government power. 57 00:07:40.640 --> 00:07:44.640 That's why the subtitle is what it is. 58 00:07:44.640 --> 00:07:51.640 And just to give you a flavor of what I think is the overarching theme of these essays, 59 00:07:51.640 --> 00:08:07.640 If I had to use a single word to describe what is fundamentally wrong with government today, I would use the word fraud. 60 00:08:07.640 --> 00:08:20.640 Certainly nowadays, and perhaps in every age, government is not what it claims to be, competent, protective and just. 61 00:08:20.640 --> 00:08:29.640 And it is what it claims not to be, bundling, menacing, and unjust. 62 00:08:29.640 --> 00:08:38.640 In actuality, it is a vast web of deceit and humbug, and not for a good purpose either. 63 00:08:38.640 --> 00:08:45.640 Indeed, its true purposes are as reprehensible as its noble claims are false. 64 00:08:45.640 --> 00:08:49.640 Its stock and trade is pretender. 65 00:08:49.640 --> 00:09:00.640 The velvet glove of countless claims of benevolence scarcely conceals its iron fist of violence and threats of war-violence. 66 00:09:00.640 --> 00:09:12.640 It wants to be loved, but it will settle for being feared. The one thing it will not do is simply leave us alone. 67 00:09:12.640 --> 00:09:32.640 So, sometimes catalogs, I've noticed, such as laissez-faire's catalogs, put this book under a heading called political philosophy and I'd like to correct that because I am certainly not a philosopher and this is not a book of philosophy. 68 00:09:32.640 --> 00:09:48.640 This is a book that specializes, as I have for my entire career, in being concrete and bringing facts to bear, along with some logic, to make arguments. 69 00:09:48.640 --> 00:10:00.640 And it's much more historical than it is philosophical by far. It's more analytical than it is philosophical. 70 00:10:00.640 --> 00:10:05.640 And yet again, I think it is accessible, not essay-based. 71 00:10:05.640 --> 00:10:11.640 The essays range across a number of areas. 72 00:10:11.640 --> 00:10:15.640 I have sections on welfare statism, 73 00:10:15.640 --> 00:10:20.640 which deals with various redistributionist policies and programs, 74 00:10:20.640 --> 00:10:23.640 such as Social Security and Medicare. 75 00:10:23.640 --> 00:10:26.640 I have one section called Our Glorious Leaders, 76 00:10:26.640 --> 00:10:37.640 which is a little more clear-eyed look at the people who purport to be political leaders and fetters. 77 00:10:37.640 --> 00:10:48.640 One section is called despotism, soft and hard, and this runs from the Bird and Drug Administration's regulation 78 00:10:48.640 --> 00:11:00.140 After the drug war and related matters such as the fact that the authorities in this country have now clamped millions of people in prisons and jails, 79 00:11:00.140 --> 00:11:04.640 many of them for things that ought never to have been calmed in the first place. 80 00:11:04.640 --> 00:11:16.640 One section is called economic disgraces, and this runs across a variety of policies and programs that are simply based on economic humbug. 81 00:11:16.640 --> 00:11:37.640 And a large section is called the Political Economy Crisis. If you know anything about my previous work, you'll recognize that these essays are all, as it were, sequels to what I wrote in my book Crisis and the Biathlon, and now almost 20 years ago. 82 00:11:37.640 --> 00:11:58.640 One little section is called Retreat of the State, question mark, and there I take up a number of views that have been propounded in recent years by people who see all kinds of constraints bearing down on the modern state and therefore suppose that it's on the run. 83 00:11:58.640 --> 00:12:07.640 Perhaps my vision is faulty, but as I look at it, it doesn't look as if it's on the run at all to me. 84 00:12:07.640 --> 00:12:15.640 In fact, I think these arguments for why it's on the run are extremely problematical, and I say why in this section. 85 00:12:15.640 --> 00:12:27.640 And finally, there's a section called Review of the Truths, which consists of a number of substantial review essays dealing with what other people have written about, 86 00:12:27.640 --> 00:12:37.640 important matters in political economy ranging across books such as Bert Olson's work on 87 00:12:37.640 --> 00:12:47.640 the capitalists, good and bad, and Mancer Olson's work, especially the final works before 88 00:12:47.640 --> 00:12:50.640 he died on the nature of the state. 89 00:12:50.640 --> 00:12:56.640 So, if you're interested in these kinds of topics, I think there's something here for you. 90 00:12:56.640 --> 00:13:03.640 And if you've seen these essays before and think, oh, I've already read that, remember, they're all a little different now, 91 00:13:03.640 --> 00:13:08.640 and many of them have been brought up today, so there may be something more for you here.