WEBVTT NOTE The Market in Defense of Markets: The Impact of the New Technology 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:05.200 So, ladies and gentlemen, dear friends and comrades, 2 00:00:06.700 --> 00:00:11.500 I couldn't believe and still I cannot believe that the Mises Institute has asked me 3 00:00:12.200 --> 00:00:14.700 to deliver the Henry Aslet Memorial Lecture. 4 00:00:15.600 --> 00:00:21.300 I'm in no way up to the job and thought I'm very thankful to Lew Rockwell and Jeff Tucker 5 00:00:21.300 --> 00:00:23.900 and really flattered to be here. 6 00:00:24.500 --> 00:00:29.000 I can hardly hope to provide you with the same remarkable insights 7 00:00:29.000 --> 00:00:32.000 offered by the other lecturers over this weekend. 8 00:00:33.000 --> 00:00:39.000 Of course, I got the distinction of being the one speaking the funnest English over all of them, 9 00:00:40.000 --> 00:00:49.000 and I will also ask you to forgive me if I will speak mainly as a movement person in the manner of speaking, 10 00:00:50.000 --> 00:00:52.000 which is, after all, the hat I wear best. 11 00:00:53.000 --> 00:00:58.000 So, after so many great Austrian scholars, now it's time for a free market cheerleader. 12 00:00:59.000 --> 00:01:10.000 Now, I don't have to remind this audience what a sharp mind Henry Aslet was before being a great populizer of the ideas we believe in. 13 00:01:10.000 --> 00:01:22.000 His book, Economics in One Lesson, has opened the eyes of many people, bringing them to a better understanding of economics than what they could have achieved in many economics classes. 14 00:01:22.000 --> 00:01:34.000 I don't just say so because I'm not an economist myself and I find relief in the consideration that I could understand economics even if I didn't endure years and years of neoclassic brainwash. 15 00:01:35.000 --> 00:01:37.000 That was a cheap shot, I know. 16 00:01:38.000 --> 00:01:51.000 I say so because economics in one lesson is just a magnificent example of how powerful a book can be, of how many lives it can change, of the kind of light it can cast over obscurity. 17 00:01:52.000 --> 00:02:00.000 Either the obscurities of a dismal science or the obscurities in which political powers always try to wrap itself up. 18 00:02:01.000 --> 00:02:08.000 Also I'm very proud, let me say, in my institute, the Instituto de Brunelione is going to publish a new Italian edition of Heslid's book by the end of the year. 19 00:02:09.000 --> 00:02:18.000 So like Frederic Bastiat, Heslid was the great enemy of economic fallacies and with teaching sound economics also gave timeless lessons on the value of liberty. 20 00:02:18.000 --> 00:02:23.680 Liberty. If we agree with Amherst on that, some books leave us free and some books make 21 00:02:23.680 --> 00:02:29.860 us free, Harry has that books definitely belong to the second category. And this is true for 22 00:02:29.860 --> 00:02:35.440 many works sold out by writers and journalists who supported the cause of free market, private 23 00:02:35.440 --> 00:02:42.440 property and individual liberty over the years. I hope this talk can be, if anything, a declaration 24 00:02:42.440 --> 00:02:49.680 of Love for Free Market Journalism. This is partially for personal reason. As any human 25 00:02:49.680 --> 00:02:56.520 being I have few talents, many deficiencies. If any of you is interested in my deficiencies 26 00:02:56.520 --> 00:03:03.040 I will be happy to provide you with a phone number of my ex-girlfriend. She used to give 27 00:03:03.040 --> 00:03:10.460 lectures on the subject. As far as my very few talents are concerned I always found very 28 00:03:10.460 --> 00:03:16.460 The day I realized I could actually make some money from it, I was happier than ever. 29 00:03:16.460 --> 00:03:26.460 So in the last six, seven years of my life, I've been publishing quite a few op-eds and articles, mainly in the Italian press, in a desperate effort to spreading libertarian ideas. 30 00:03:26.460 --> 00:03:32.460 I particularly enjoy the kind of serendipity I believe you also benefited from. 31 00:03:32.460 --> 00:03:42.460 We wanted to gain freedom, and this is why we do what we do, why we sacrifice our time and our energy for the sake of pursuing a political ideal. 32 00:03:42.460 --> 00:03:50.460 And what we did find in our way? Not freedom, at least so far, but friendship. 33 00:03:50.460 --> 00:03:58.460 Real solid friendship, which is what makes it a joy to endure in promoting a political philosophy that is far from being popular, 34 00:03:58.460 --> 00:04:04.320 are popular, which does not pay off as much as the competing ones, but which fits us with 35 00:04:04.320 --> 00:04:07.900 a sense of righteousness and belonging. 36 00:04:07.900 --> 00:04:11.980 I am blessed by the fact I work with people of such qualities that I can hardly remember 37 00:04:11.980 --> 00:04:18.120 a day when it was not under the benevolent influence of their enlightening friendship. 38 00:04:18.120 --> 00:04:23.460 Ideas can progress only over the shoulders of men, and the moral, before even the professional 39 00:04:23.460 --> 00:04:28.300 excellence of my colleagues at IBL and C&E, of the people in this room and of the many 40 00:04:28.300 --> 00:04:32.920 Many good libertarians doing great scholarly or journalistic works all over the world bring 41 00:04:32.920 --> 00:04:39.500 me in a mood of euphorical optimism. 42 00:04:39.500 --> 00:04:44.660 I will try briefly to enter two different kinds of subjects. 43 00:04:44.660 --> 00:04:50.520 At the beginning I will try to explain why I believe classical liberalism somehow implies 44 00:04:50.520 --> 00:04:55.680 the necessity of fighting in the trenches of public opinion, and later on to discuss 45 00:04:55.680 --> 00:05:00.280 as the pros and cons of new technologies in this field. 46 00:05:00.280 --> 00:05:05.640 Now the subject I want to enter now, even though briefly and in a very impressionistic way, 47 00:05:05.640 --> 00:05:12.800 so to speak, is to me one of the most fascinating and I suppose is also for most of you. 48 00:05:12.800 --> 00:05:17.080 Educating public opinion has historically been the means by which classical liberals 49 00:05:17.080 --> 00:05:22.280 have tried to change the societies in which they live and move them in a more liberal 50 00:05:22.280 --> 00:05:23.740 direction. 51 00:05:23.740 --> 00:05:29.180 In a manner of speaking, liberals have always appealed to the means of persuasion. 52 00:05:29.180 --> 00:05:33.260 This is at least for two major families of reasons. 53 00:05:33.260 --> 00:05:38.600 Historically, classical liberalism emerges as a coherent body of thinking in the very 54 00:05:38.600 --> 00:05:45.060 same age that saw what we call today public opinion to become a force to be reckoned with. 55 00:05:45.060 --> 00:05:49.860 Classical liberalism is born in a time when a fledgling private sphere was developing and 56 00:05:49.860 --> 00:05:51.160 blossoming. 57 00:05:51.160 --> 00:05:57.160 We see salons and newspapers becoming a feature of the civil and political life of European societies. 58 00:05:57.160 --> 00:06:03.160 In a complex matrix of political change, with representative institutions coming to life, 59 00:06:03.160 --> 00:06:11.160 and natural rights of man being vindicated vis-à-vis absolute power, public opinion plays a vital role. 60 00:06:11.160 --> 00:06:18.160 Its importance is associated with the idea of the existence of a civil society which is separated from the state, 61 00:06:18.160 --> 00:06:22.660 An assumption that is in turn at the very roots of classical liberalism. 62 00:06:22.660 --> 00:06:32.660 In a manner of speaking, public opinion is at the same time an essential tool and an ideological ingredient of classical liberalism itself. 63 00:06:32.660 --> 00:06:36.660 In the second book of its essay concerning human understanding, 64 00:06:36.660 --> 00:06:43.160 John Locke says, quote, the law of opinion of reputation as the third law that men typically refer their action to, 65 00:06:43.160 --> 00:06:46.160 coming after divine law and civil law, writes Locke, 66 00:06:46.160 --> 00:06:52.160 By the relations they bear to the first of these, men judge whether their actions are sins or duties. 67 00:06:52.160 --> 00:06:59.160 By the second, whether they be criminal or innocent, and by the third, whether they be virtues or vices." 68 00:06:59.160 --> 00:07:08.160 The measure of what is a virtue and what is a vice is for Locke established by a secret and tacit consent. 69 00:07:08.160 --> 00:07:32.160 Through men uniting into political society have resigned up to the public the disposing of all their force, so that they cannot employ it against any fellow citizen any further than the law of the country directs. Yet, they retain still the power of thinking well or ill, approving or disapproving of the actions of those whom they leader more." 70 00:07:32.160 --> 00:07:47.160 The statements bring us in a context where the social opinion processed by people, of course filtered by time, is recognized as having an essential value for social interaction. 71 00:07:47.160 --> 00:07:55.160 What comes to mind is obviously a very different characterization of public opinion in ancient times vis-a-vis this view. 72 00:07:55.160 --> 00:08:18.160 In his book on the structural transformation of the public sphere, Eugen Abermas recognizes a central role for Locke's statesmen in a process that brought public opinion to become an important feature of the political debate and, more generally, the knowledge of the millions, namely something which is valued rather than despised by political thinkers and political actors. 73 00:08:18.160 --> 00:08:35.160 In his study, Aberma shows how the appeal to the public spirit gradually becomes a highly significant moment of political fight, public opinion being for him a category of the bourgeois society, ultimately self-contradictory, but we shouldn't get into that. 74 00:08:35.160 --> 00:08:41.640 It is not by chance that in his thoughts on the cause of the present discontents Edmund 75 00:08:41.640 --> 00:08:46.760 Burke defines the first study of the statement as, quote, the temper of the people among 76 00:08:46.760 --> 00:08:52.420 whom he presides, end quote. For those who oppose absolutism, government should be intended 77 00:08:52.420 --> 00:08:57.720 as a servant rather than a master of people. This is why people's opinion acquires importance 78 00:08:57.720 --> 00:09:03.680 and gains consideration. On a more ideological ground, we can see that the classical liberal 79 00:09:03.680 --> 00:09:08.000 Classical appeal to public opinion can be understood in two different ways. 80 00:09:08.000 --> 00:09:12.440 Maybe an appeal to self-constraining forces within the body of a society, which brings 81 00:09:12.440 --> 00:09:17.280 us back to Locke's law of opinion and reputation. 82 00:09:17.280 --> 00:09:21.880 Customs and social penalties have proved to have some efficiencies in fostering order 83 00:09:21.880 --> 00:09:28.960 in a society and keeping a balance in it regardless of direct action by political power. 84 00:09:28.960 --> 00:09:35.200 So liberalism, anyway, has not just been defending the legitimacy of prejudicers, so to speak, 85 00:09:35.200 --> 00:09:41.800 but has also gloriously defended free inquiry as the only way to get closer to the truth. 86 00:09:41.800 --> 00:09:46.960 In the hierophagitica, there are few sentences that are more moving than John Milton's passionate 87 00:09:46.960 --> 00:09:53.000 cry, give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience 88 00:09:53.000 --> 00:09:54.960 above all liberties, and so forth. 89 00:09:54.960 --> 00:10:00.960 Well, by the way, we should remember to send a copy of the book to our friend, the bureaucrats at the University of Nevada. 90 00:10:00.960 --> 00:10:09.960 But either way, the value of the opinion of the people is being placed above the stake of government regulation. 91 00:10:09.960 --> 00:10:16.960 Many have found inconsistencies in the classical liberals' appeal to reason in this defense of customs, of the legitimacy of opinions, 92 00:10:16.960 --> 00:10:20.960 and of the heritage of the past, and are valued as such. 93 00:10:20.960 --> 00:10:26.720 On this front, I find truly exemplary of the essence of a classical liberal perspective. 94 00:10:26.720 --> 00:10:33.600 The reaction by a Spencerian libertarian, such as Hulsworth Donister, that's quite too much for my English, 95 00:10:33.600 --> 00:10:37.840 to the idea that theory of evolution was to be thought in schools, 96 00:10:37.840 --> 00:10:42.400 being obviously very much a proponent of theory of evolution. 97 00:10:42.400 --> 00:10:47.120 In 1895, he wrote, quote, 98 00:10:47.120 --> 00:10:52.120 The State should not be permitted to teach the Darwinian Theory of the Origin of Species 99 00:10:52.120 --> 00:10:57.120 at the expense of those who accept a special creation hypothesis. 100 00:10:57.120 --> 00:11:04.120 It is not fair an honest evolutionist have faith enough in the final triumph of the truth 101 00:11:04.120 --> 00:11:11.120 not to request or desire even the unconscious assistance of their adversaries. 102 00:11:11.120 --> 00:11:23.120 The idea of separating the game of knowledge-building from political power does not imply that public opinion cannot cast new light on the mechanism that underlies political power. 103 00:11:23.120 --> 00:11:32.120 In a way, if we can find a unifying experience in different streams of classical liberal thought, it is the fight against the Arcana Empire. 104 00:11:32.120 --> 00:11:46.120 The attempts to establish constitutionally limited governments, no matter if they succeeded or failed, were exactly the attempt to force political power to be reliable, transparent, predictable, that is not arbitrary. 105 00:11:46.120 --> 00:12:01.120 Opening the access to power via democratic institutions, making the debate over legislation a de facto food-public debate, was another step that was originally intended to undermine the most distinctively dangerous features of power. 106 00:12:01.120 --> 00:12:08.920 Somehow, free market anarchism builds upon the failure of these attempts and on the observation 107 00:12:08.920 --> 00:12:14.840 that since the political class is always keeping at hand the key of the chastity belt we try 108 00:12:14.840 --> 00:12:24.560 to impose on them, we should better resort to other strategies to get rid of its oppression. 109 00:12:24.560 --> 00:12:30.000 Public opinion is key in this scenario. We know from Etienne Labessy and David Hume that 110 00:12:30.000 --> 00:12:33.300 The Government Cannot Survive by Pure Force 111 00:12:33.300 --> 00:12:35.200 Hume's famous words, 112 00:12:35.200 --> 00:12:40.980 nothing appears more surprising to those who consider human affairs with a philosophical eye 113 00:12:40.980 --> 00:12:42.380 than the easiness 114 00:12:42.380 --> 00:12:45.220 with which the many are governed by the few 115 00:12:45.220 --> 00:12:47.280 and the implicit submission 116 00:12:47.280 --> 00:12:52.460 with which men resign their own sentiments and passions to those of their rulers. 117 00:12:52.460 --> 00:12:55.760 When we inquire by what means this wonder is affected, 118 00:12:55.760 --> 00:12:59.960 we shall find that as force is always on the side of the governed, 119 00:12:59.960 --> 00:13:15.960 The governors have nothing to support them but opinion. It is therefore, on opinion only, that government is founded, and this maxim extends to the most despotic and military governments, as well as to the most free and most popular. 120 00:13:15.960 --> 00:13:28.960 The consent of the people is an essential tool for government survival as an institution, given the fact that policemen are, as we all know, even in the most totalitarian state, just a limited fraction of the population. 121 00:13:28.960 --> 00:13:46.960 This is why public education is so essential to governments all over the world, not just because it's a pillar of the welfare state for the reason we all know, but first and foremost, it is the instrument by which the state lowers the cost of coercive transfer of money by taxpayers to tax consumers. 122 00:13:46.960 --> 00:13:55.960 If everybody did not believe in the legitimacy of taxation, of course we would have many people resisting this form of institutionalized robbery. 123 00:13:55.960 --> 00:14:13.960 However, state education is the vehicle by which the legitimizing formulas of the political status quo are disseminated in the citizen's mind, typically at a very early stage, so that they influence the behavior and the basic beliefs of individuals for most of their life. 124 00:14:14.960 --> 00:14:24.960 The public education system, conservatives I believe are right on this point, is the battlefield where great so-called cultural wars are fought. 125 00:14:25.960 --> 00:14:39.960 But the first of these cultural works is the work to give legitimacy to the state as an institution, to dress it up in neutral clothes, to make it a natural fact of life as much as the sun over our heads. 126 00:14:39.960 --> 00:14:54.960 The state has by and large succeeded in such an effort so that the very existence of groups like ours that venture to question the right to exist of the modern state is sometimes taken just as a quaint evidence of a lost past. 127 00:14:54.960 --> 00:15:08.960 No matter what kind of weapons we can use, when we compare our magazines, our website, our think tanks, to the magnitude of the state education system, we soon realize that we are, you know, bad mice fighting with an elephant. 128 00:15:08.960 --> 00:15:19.960 Now I apologize if any of you feel offended in being compared with a rat, but the good news is that rats can scare elephants, and sometimes that happens. 129 00:15:19.960 --> 00:15:27.960 Persuading people of our argument is very far from being easy. It often takes a tremendous amount of time. 130 00:15:27.960 --> 00:15:34.960 It probably implies the necessity of changing our vocabulary depending on the people we are talking with. 131 00:15:34.960 --> 00:15:46.960 In a manner of speaking, there are many roads to Damascus, and all of them deserve to be worked if they can gain new members to our club, new fighters to the cause of liberty. 132 00:15:46.960 --> 00:15:55.960 So if the state ultimately rests largely on opinion, obviously it has to be fought and defeated on the ground of opinion. 133 00:15:55.960 --> 00:16:09.960 But this is not all. By saying that the state rests largely on public opinion, we are merely putting in a different way our original point, that is that consent accounts for a good deal of social interaction. 134 00:16:09.960 --> 00:16:35.960 In his Social Statics, Herbert Spencer thought that an instinct of our freedom and a sympathy which makes us respect the likely freedom of our fellows compose a mechanism capable of establishing social contrasts in which the low-equal freedom that, in Spencer's mind, is the juridical principle that governs a free society can reign. 135 00:16:35.960 --> 00:16:42.960 It's true that the young Spencer embraces an anthropology very similar to the one displayed by philosophical radicals. 136 00:16:42.960 --> 00:16:48.960 His evolutionism leads people toward progressive self-perfection. 137 00:16:48.960 --> 00:16:54.960 His approach has been described as a final state natural theory, which is a fair sketch actually, 138 00:16:54.960 --> 00:17:00.960 meaning that people can enjoy their natural right just as soon as the process of evolution is perfected. 139 00:17:00.960 --> 00:17:06.860 Still, in 1851, Spencer could write it when, quote, 140 00:17:06.860 --> 00:17:11.140 We reflect upon the character of modern ideas and agitations, 141 00:17:11.140 --> 00:17:14.580 on the declaration of rights, liberty of the press, 142 00:17:14.580 --> 00:17:18.740 slave emancipation, removal of religious disabilities, 143 00:17:18.740 --> 00:17:21.360 reform bills, et cetera. 144 00:17:21.360 --> 00:17:25.240 My gosh, those were the times, in a manner of speaking. 145 00:17:25.240 --> 00:17:27.980 And consider how, through all of them, 146 00:17:27.980 --> 00:17:34.160 that runs a hindered spirit, and now this spirit is manifesting itself with constantly 147 00:17:34.160 --> 00:17:37.860 increasing intensity and universality. 148 00:17:37.860 --> 00:17:44.280 We shall see that these facts imply some moral change, and explicable as they are by the 149 00:17:44.280 --> 00:17:50.040 growth of this compound faculty responding to the law of equal freedom, it is reasonable 150 00:17:50.040 --> 00:17:56.740 to consider them as showing the mood in which such faculty seeks to play social arrangement 151 00:17:56.740 --> 00:17:59.740 in Harmony with Dead Law, end quote. 152 00:17:59.740 --> 00:18:01.740 The most important faculty to be developed 153 00:18:01.740 --> 00:18:04.300 in the social landscape was for Spencer 154 00:18:04.300 --> 00:18:08.220 the jealousy of liberties, a watchful determination 155 00:18:08.220 --> 00:18:12.500 to resist anything like encroachment upon rights 156 00:18:12.500 --> 00:18:16.360 that, according to him, generates among those in power 157 00:18:16.360 --> 00:18:20.600 such respect for these rights as checks any desire 158 00:18:20.600 --> 00:18:24.580 they may have to address the people and the rights of them. 159 00:18:24.580 --> 00:18:26.520 In a state of mature evolution, 160 00:18:26.520 --> 00:18:37.520 A free man, quote, loves liberty as a miner loves gold, for its own sake and quite irrespective of its advantages, end quotes. 161 00:18:37.520 --> 00:18:43.520 Another, again Spencer, what he too highly values is liblacy watches. 162 00:18:43.520 --> 00:18:51.520 He quickly detects any attempt at the diminution of it, and he opposes aggression the moment it initiates. 163 00:18:51.520 --> 00:18:58.520 Indeed, when a community consists of men animated by the spirit that we have just exemplified, 164 00:18:58.520 --> 00:19:01.520 the continuance of liberal institution is certain. 165 00:19:01.520 --> 00:19:06.520 Now, I think Spencer is up to a very important point when he concludes that, quote, 166 00:19:06.520 --> 00:19:12.520 political freedom, therefore, is, as we say, an external result of an internal sentiment. 167 00:19:12.520 --> 00:19:15.520 It's alike, dependent on the moral sense. 168 00:19:15.520 --> 00:19:36.520 To be sure, I don't want to imply that the hopes of classical liberalism rest upon, you know, the fate of a new man, that some features of human nature have to be changed if we want to live in a free society. 169 00:19:36.520 --> 00:19:53.520 But I think that the consciousness of the value of freedom, as well as the ultimate deconstruction of the fundamental mystique of the state is a necessary step to achieve the goal of a society in which aggression is minimized. 170 00:19:53.520 --> 00:20:08.520 Even if we are not to attribute much credit to Herbert Spencer evolutionary approach, even if we are still recovering from the disillusion that the transition from status to contract was never completed, 171 00:20:08.520 --> 00:20:15.520 I think there is a common sense, there is much common sense in recognizing that, again, quote, 172 00:20:15.520 --> 00:20:25.520 The very antecedents of a peaceful agitation serve in some measure to ensure the success of the free institutions obtained by it. End quote. 173 00:20:25.520 --> 00:20:39.520 Continues Spencer. Quote, not anger, not the anxiety to escape from torture, is now the transforming force, but a calm determination to get human liberties recognized. 174 00:20:39.520 --> 00:20:55.520 The carrying out one of these battles of opinion to a successful issue through long delays and discouragement, through ridicule and misrepresentation, implies a perennial source of energy, quite different from the mere insurrectionary rage. 175 00:20:55.520 --> 00:21:08.520 In place of a passing gust of anger, a persistent and ever-strengthening sentiment is here the acting agent. Agitation is its own gymnasium. 176 00:21:08.520 --> 00:21:14.700 If we endure enough, in other way, the new institution won't express just what Spencer 177 00:21:14.700 --> 00:21:20.440 calls an exceptional state of the popular mind, but rather it's a vitriol state. 178 00:21:20.440 --> 00:21:25.620 Now, this may sound a bit naive, especially because these lines were written long before 179 00:21:25.620 --> 00:21:29.800 socialism became, well, the leading political theory. 180 00:21:29.800 --> 00:21:35.000 In a manner of speaking, when he was writing social studies, Spencer saw very little competition 181 00:21:35.000 --> 00:21:38.000 to the ideas that inform his mindset. 182 00:21:38.000 --> 00:21:40.680 Still, this does not change the fact 183 00:21:40.680 --> 00:21:43.560 that he is giving us an impressive catalog of the reasons 184 00:21:43.560 --> 00:21:46.520 why classical liberals should not abandon 185 00:21:46.520 --> 00:21:49.480 the trenches of public opinion. 186 00:21:49.480 --> 00:21:52.360 Writing one century after Spencer, 187 00:21:52.360 --> 00:21:55.960 and thus in a time when the individualist perspective seemed 188 00:21:55.960 --> 00:22:00.440 to be irremediably lifeless, and on the other hand, 189 00:22:00.440 --> 00:22:04.080 socialism was more popular than ever, 190 00:22:04.080 --> 00:22:11.840 The coming slavery, Spencer feared, has consistently become reality, yet Frank Chodorov didn't 191 00:22:11.840 --> 00:22:15.080 chase to show optimism. 192 00:22:15.080 --> 00:22:21.000 One revolution breeds another, he contended, outlining a strategy that the Mises Institute, 193 00:22:21.000 --> 00:22:26.480 among others, is successfully putting in practice today. 194 00:22:26.480 --> 00:22:32.240 Since the only direction youth can go is away from the current collectivistic tradition 195 00:22:32.240 --> 00:22:38.200 towards his opposite, those who cherish the individualist stock of values must try to 196 00:22:38.200 --> 00:22:42.680 peddle them to this embryonic revolutionist. 197 00:22:42.680 --> 00:22:49.280 We must polish up our ancient arguments, apply them to the current scene and offer them as 198 00:22:49.280 --> 00:22:52.180 brand new merchandise. 199 00:22:52.180 --> 00:22:54.480 We must do a selling job. 200 00:22:54.480 --> 00:22:59.760 Youth will not buy us out, lock, stock and borrow, but will be rather selective about 201 00:22:59.760 --> 00:23:00.760 it. 202 00:23:00.760 --> 00:23:06.760 will take what seems good to them, modernize it, build it into a panacea and start a revolution. 203 00:23:06.760 --> 00:23:09.760 God bless them, end quote. 204 00:23:09.760 --> 00:23:18.760 This is the great hope underpinning what has been and still is one of the most distinctive features of the libertarian movement, 205 00:23:18.760 --> 00:23:20.760 reaching out to students. 206 00:23:20.760 --> 00:23:27.760 Seminars, conferences, books targeted on the youth are already building a new generation of intellectuals, 207 00:23:27.760 --> 00:23:41.760 and, last but not least, laymen who are not particularly interested in making their ideology their job, but who are strong as rocks in their beliefs. 208 00:23:41.760 --> 00:23:51.760 The primary task of such an educational work should be, in Murray Rothbard's words, quote, again, this is quite too much for my English, 209 00:23:51.760 --> 00:24:01.760 the bamboozling, the public on the entire nature and procedures of the despotic state. 210 00:24:01.760 --> 00:24:08.760 Changing the world one mind at a time is far more difficult than changing it by gaining power 211 00:24:08.760 --> 00:24:12.760 and executing all of our enemies. 212 00:24:12.760 --> 00:24:17.760 I know some of you and I know perhaps some days like you wake up in the morning 213 00:24:17.760 --> 00:24:26.760 and you had that dream during the night, but it is more consistent with our fundamental beliefs 214 00:24:26.760 --> 00:24:31.760 and it is the more satisfying exactly because it is so challenging. 215 00:24:31.760 --> 00:24:36.760 Now, how do new technologies fit into this scenario? 216 00:24:36.760 --> 00:24:43.760 Well, I think that the role of the internet in the growth of the libertarian movement can hardly be overestimated. 217 00:24:43.760 --> 00:24:49.760 We are still a very small minority whose voice is hardly heard within the establishment. 218 00:24:49.760 --> 00:24:55.760 Those who are pursuing a career in academia know well the kind of difficulties you are forced to endure 219 00:24:55.760 --> 00:24:59.760 if you chose the way not to conform to the dominant consensus. 220 00:24:59.760 --> 00:25:06.760 Those who write in the papers know well that most of the time you have to explain the argument you want to make 221 00:25:06.760 --> 00:25:11.760 to your editor twice or three times just before you realize, you know, there's something over there. 222 00:25:11.760 --> 00:25:20.760 And, generally speaking, I believe that our daily life is made of small triumphs and great frustrations. 223 00:25:20.760 --> 00:25:27.760 Every time we succeed in winning an argument with a friend, every time we gain people to the cause we believe in, 224 00:25:27.760 --> 00:25:36.760 every time we meet a new student or reader who is expressing interest for the bunch of crazy radical ideas we are trying to sell him, 225 00:25:36.760 --> 00:26:01.760 Now, as it is obvious, mass media do not exist in a vacuum and pay a tribute to the existing political consensus. 226 00:26:01.760 --> 00:26:07.760 They are also tied up to political power in more subtle ways. 227 00:26:07.760 --> 00:26:13.760 In many European countries, media are directly subsidized by the state. 228 00:26:13.760 --> 00:26:19.760 In the country I come from, primary sources of information, that is news agencies, 229 00:26:19.760 --> 00:26:27.760 take their money directly, not even from the state or the parliament, but from the prime minister office. 230 00:26:27.760 --> 00:26:36.760 Now, this is why we happen to have, you know, basically a dozen of clones of writers disseminated just between Milan and Rome. 231 00:26:36.760 --> 00:26:42.760 And how independent in dealing with political affairs they can be, I leave it to your imagination. 232 00:26:42.760 --> 00:26:48.760 But even when you come to papers and TV that do not depend on public funding, 233 00:26:48.760 --> 00:27:04.760 Their publishers are often businesses that rely so heavily over political subsidies and or some particular kind of regulation that they will seldom regard the frontal opposition to government as a viable option. 234 00:27:05.760 --> 00:27:10.760 This is one of the reasons why the Internet has been such a great tool for developing our network. 235 00:27:10.760 --> 00:27:23.760 Also, I would like to say at the beginning that, in a way, one great thing about the Internet is that it's a continuous antidote against basically our loneliness. 236 00:27:23.760 --> 00:27:36.760 If you think to the founding of the Mont Pelerin Society, basically you've got 50, 60 classical liberal scholars gathering together in Switzerland and then in Venice, Italy, some other places. 237 00:27:36.760 --> 00:27:46.760 And for them was a tremendous experience, I mean, as being said by Peter Klein in the session on internet and electronic media. 238 00:27:46.760 --> 00:27:54.760 I mean, really, if you talk to some of these people, for them was one of the very few occasions they had to meet likely minded individuals. 239 00:27:54.760 --> 00:28:02.760 Now we can exchange papers. I mean, we are constantly in touch one with each other, with emails. 240 00:28:02.760 --> 00:28:27.760 This is why, and I suppose this is a very positive development for most of you in the audience, now I will say that in continental Europe most of the libertarians I know are Rothbardians. 241 00:28:27.760 --> 00:28:48.760 If I just give a quick look to the people working for the center of the new Europe I work for, I see at least four people over six, so it's not a small number, that are permanently in-depth to a certain institution in Alabama for having opened their eyes on the nature of the state. 242 00:28:48.760 --> 00:28:57.760 Cecile Philippe, Gabriel Calzada, Martin Stefunco, myself, all have been here and are trying to apply what they learned now in Europe. 243 00:28:57.760 --> 00:29:05.760 Cecile runs a small but fast-growing French free market think tank named after Gustave de Molinarie. 244 00:29:05.760 --> 00:29:14.760 Gabriel has just founded a Juan de Mariana Institute in Spain and teaches at the Universidad Reywan Carlos in Madrid. 245 00:29:14.760 --> 00:29:18.760 Martin is a very well-known opinion-maker in his country, Slovakia. 246 00:29:18.760 --> 00:29:22.760 These are just the first names that come to mind. 247 00:29:22.760 --> 00:29:31.760 Americans, so very much 95% of you, forgive me for focusing on Europe, which I know a little bit better. 248 00:29:31.760 --> 00:29:36.760 For example, we have a research center like the Liberalny Institute in Prague. 249 00:29:36.760 --> 00:29:42.760 It is organizing a European-Austrian Scholars Conference, which is a clone of this event, 250 00:29:42.760 --> 00:30:07.760 The Lithuanian Free Market Institute in Vilnius is the best ink tank in Europe to me and its directors are as sound as you can get. 251 00:30:07.760 --> 00:30:13.760 You all know what a splendid work Christian Comanescu and these associates have been doing in Romania. 252 00:30:13.760 --> 00:30:19.760 And I'm also happy with what we are doing in Italy, and I think we are very much fast growing in just one year. 253 00:30:19.760 --> 00:30:27.760 Three to seven employees, and we had a very big conference for students named GACID, the Mises Seminar. 254 00:30:27.760 --> 00:30:32.760 With more than 70 paying students, it was quite a marvel for us. 255 00:30:32.760 --> 00:30:41.760 We have a monthly seminar in Milan, which is named, again, guess it, the Rothbard seminar, which is doing pretty well. 256 00:30:41.760 --> 00:30:50.760 So, I don't want to give you a wrong impression. I mean, the impact of all of this reality is still to be checked. 257 00:30:50.760 --> 00:30:57.760 And some of them are problems, some of them major problems, or are in a period of stasis. 258 00:30:57.760 --> 00:31:15.760 For example, in Italy, what I find to be the most pressing problem is to cultivate a new generation of scholars, and I know that very few people know better how hard it is than Lew and Jeff. 259 00:31:15.760 --> 00:31:22.760 I mean, the classical liberal movement is first class in attracting nuts, and I place myself among them. 260 00:31:22.760 --> 00:31:32.760 But so far hasn't proved to be a particularly good magnet of young bright students to invest in. 261 00:31:32.760 --> 00:31:36.760 We benefit from the scholarship of great people, some of them being here this week. 262 00:31:36.760 --> 00:31:40.760 But I also should mention at least Carlo Lucieri and Mario Colombatti. 263 00:31:40.760 --> 00:31:46.760 We did have great scholars in the past, from Sergio Ritoso, Franco Romani, Antonio Martino, Dario Antisa, 264 00:31:46.760 --> 00:31:54.040 and many others, all of them sounding like a bit funny names to you, but they had a useful 265 00:31:54.040 --> 00:31:56.180 impact in our country. 266 00:31:56.180 --> 00:32:01.240 But the problem is that we still need to find some suitable heirs. 267 00:32:01.240 --> 00:32:05.520 Now Italy has the best free market journalist in Europe, in the person of Oscar Janin, another 268 00:32:05.520 --> 00:32:11.320 funny name to you, but I assure you, a contemporary heiress, still I don't see many of his like 269 00:32:11.320 --> 00:32:12.320 emerging. 270 00:32:12.320 --> 00:32:20.320 A good sign is that we recently started to get some women into our movement, as you know, I mean, it's really a cultural divide, 271 00:32:20.320 --> 00:32:28.320 when you start getting women before and later, and surely these had so far lasting consequences, but just on the hormones of our many nerds, 272 00:32:28.320 --> 00:32:32.320 I mean, it was the only change it had so far. 273 00:32:32.320 --> 00:32:40.320 The fight for liberty needs continuous dedication, eternal vigilance, obviously, and professionalism. 274 00:32:40.320 --> 00:32:48.320 Our problem, and the problem of many people in Europe, has been that many things have been done in the past, but in quite an erratic way. 275 00:32:50.320 --> 00:32:58.320 We still lack in many European countries, and this is why I was mentioning the developing of think tanks, because it's definitely a good step in that direction. 276 00:32:59.320 --> 00:33:05.320 The primary feature of a successful political movement, which is organization. 277 00:33:05.320 --> 00:33:12.320 And I think now we are doing all a little bit better, even though there is still a long way to go. 278 00:33:12.320 --> 00:33:19.320 But all what I just said is also really linked with the new technology. 279 00:33:19.320 --> 00:33:24.320 In many ways, you know, for example, our institute is an office, but nobody is ever there. 280 00:33:24.320 --> 00:33:28.320 All of my colleagues, with the exception of the secretary, work from home. 281 00:33:28.320 --> 00:33:32.320 And we gather together basically when we organize events. 282 00:33:32.320 --> 00:33:43.320 With a blackberry and a good internet connection, I believe you can really supervise the activity of a small free market institute from any place in the world. 283 00:33:43.320 --> 00:33:55.320 But what I said is also related with new technologies, because it is a testimony of the overwhelming success of tools like mises.org and ludrockwell.com. 284 00:33:55.320 --> 00:34:08.320 That is, websites that are so powerful and well done, that are literally feeding a movement with ideas and articles, exercising a real influence on people all over the world. 285 00:34:08.320 --> 00:34:22.320 I mean, just think, through the amazing amount of translations of Austrians into European languages, that were possible just because, you know, they were available, the original text and the English translation released freely on the web. 286 00:34:22.320 --> 00:34:33.320 It is particularly interesting when you compare this situation to what was the historical situation of samizdat, obviously, in Eastern Europe. 287 00:34:33.320 --> 00:34:43.320 Now, I think the internet is adding up to a phenomenon that Donnie Storpe, again, described very well for his time, quote, 288 00:34:43.320 --> 00:34:48.320 20 years ago, I took a census of the individualists in this country, England. 289 00:34:48.320 --> 00:34:51.320 It was at the end of the 19th century. 290 00:34:51.320 --> 00:34:56.320 And I found that they could all be seated comfortably in a bus. 291 00:34:56.320 --> 00:35:03.320 12 years ago, I took another and I found that their number had increased to about 300. 292 00:35:03.320 --> 00:35:08.320 This increase I attributed mainly to the teachings of Mr. Herbert Spencer. 293 00:35:08.320 --> 00:35:13.280 and Verber Spencer. At the present time, the individualist of England may be counted by 294 00:35:13.280 --> 00:35:19.480 thousands and perhaps tens of thousands. I attribute this further increase partially 295 00:35:19.480 --> 00:35:24.120 to the same cause, again to the teaching of Verber Spencer, and partially to the efforts 296 00:35:24.120 --> 00:35:28.960 of the Personal Rights Defense Association and the Liberty and Property Defense League, 297 00:35:28.960 --> 00:35:33.920 and partially, of course, to the visible, evil effects of the practical state socialism 298 00:35:33.920 --> 00:35:36.320 of the Legislature." 299 00:35:36.320 --> 00:35:41.400 Now I think that if you substitute the name Herbert Spencer with the name of Mises, Hayek 300 00:35:41.400 --> 00:35:46.240 and Rothbard, and the Liberty and Property Defense League with the Mises Institute and 301 00:35:46.240 --> 00:35:51.480 the many likely institutions that are trying to make a difference in the contemporary world, 302 00:35:51.480 --> 00:35:56.120 then you have a fair picture of what is happening today. 303 00:35:56.120 --> 00:36:03.360 The key difference is that the Internet gives us a much clearer vision of what others are 304 00:36:03.360 --> 00:36:11.360 And what we are doing in our small circles all over the world by allowing us the possibility of staying in touch with them all over the year. 305 00:36:11.360 --> 00:36:17.360 I mean the possibility of staying in touch with people who live even far, far away from us. 306 00:36:17.360 --> 00:36:25.360 As a movement we are growing and I believe there is no doubt about it. 307 00:36:25.360 --> 00:36:37.360 The Internet is also a great tool, not just for connecting people, but also to free ourselves from the kind of notions that were imposed on us during our school years. 308 00:36:37.360 --> 00:36:47.360 And also it's a great tool for providing access, you know, knowledge to people living in countries where it's impossible perhaps even to buy books. 309 00:36:47.360 --> 00:36:56.360 I mean, you should really measure the influence of the Internet, for example, on the very few but growing number of libertarians in Africa. 310 00:36:56.360 --> 00:36:59.360 I mean, that's quite amazing. 311 00:36:59.360 --> 00:37:07.360 So it is just so much easier to get in touch with Austrian economics, for example, even if all your professors are new classics. 312 00:37:07.360 --> 00:37:12.360 If you can get all the sources just by Googling the name of Carl Menger. 313 00:37:12.360 --> 00:37:25.360 I should also mention here the wonderful online Library of Liberty that David Hart edits for the Liberty Fund, which seems to me to be one of the greatest gifts ever made to any libertarian scholar in the world. 314 00:37:25.360 --> 00:37:33.360 Still, I believe sometimes we should remind ourselves that we do not live in a Google world. 315 00:37:33.360 --> 00:37:40.360 On the Internet, our ideas enjoy a far wider representation than in real life. 316 00:37:40.360 --> 00:37:50.360 They are much more part of the debate in newsgroups, mailing lists, websites than in magazines, TV, broadcasts, even conversations over a glass of wine. 317 00:37:50.360 --> 00:37:58.360 I fear that in getting too connected, we may get a bit disconnected from reality. 318 00:37:58.360 --> 00:38:05.360 This has also some relevance to the kind of vocabulary we use in discussing with other people in the real world. 319 00:38:05.360 --> 00:38:15.360 What I fear is that we may experience what happened in Miguel de Cervantes' novel to, you know, the hopeless Mr. Quixana, 320 00:38:15.360 --> 00:38:21.360 who ended up being so taken by novels about chivalry and the epic struggle between good and evil 321 00:38:21.360 --> 00:38:27.360 that he decided to dress himself up as a knight and became the heroic nightmare of wine mills. 322 00:38:27.360 --> 00:38:37.480 If our fight for justice is in many ways as hopeless as the one of Don Quixote, we should 323 00:38:37.480 --> 00:38:40.060 anyway keep our feet down to the earth. 324 00:38:40.060 --> 00:38:45.000 We shouldn't forget that we are not winning the war of ideas and that, if such a conflict 325 00:38:45.000 --> 00:38:51.720 is ever to be concluded with a happily ever after, this requires continuous dedication. 326 00:38:51.720 --> 00:38:57.440 Opening up a libertarian blog is important, but I believe is at least as important as 327 00:38:57.440 --> 00:39:04.440 convincing our roommates that, for example, virtualized medicine is not such a great idea. 328 00:39:05.240 --> 00:39:09.800 Now the fact that there are many libertarian websites, many libertarian mailing lists, 329 00:39:09.800 --> 00:39:14.840 many libertarian discussion groups can be, and certainly is good, but can also be bad 330 00:39:14.840 --> 00:39:18.600 news from another point of view, especially if you don't look to America, but you look 331 00:39:18.600 --> 00:39:30.840 The good news is that since the Internet is the game of younger people, we are obviously 332 00:39:30.840 --> 00:39:35.600 nurturing a number of younger libertarians greater than ever before. 333 00:39:35.600 --> 00:39:39.840 The bad news may well be related to the fact that doing things on the Internet is usually 334 00:39:39.840 --> 00:39:46.080 very cheap and amazingly cheaper than organizing conferences or publishing books. 335 00:39:46.080 --> 00:39:50.040 This is obviously good insofar as it makes it possible for us to make the most of our 336 00:39:50.040 --> 00:39:57.680 funding, but in some places and in some circumstances simply show that a libertarian movement was 337 00:39:57.680 --> 00:40:02.640 or is not able to find and cultivate donors. 338 00:40:02.640 --> 00:40:07.160 Now I think this is not something that can be easily overlooked. 339 00:40:07.160 --> 00:40:10.560 It is true that fundraising, especially in Europe, is even more difficult than in the 340 00:40:10.560 --> 00:40:15.640 United States and that in our European countries people typically do not think of donating 341 00:40:15.640 --> 00:40:21.120 money to political non-profit institutions per se, and it will take time before we can 342 00:40:21.120 --> 00:40:26.440 achieve a mentality shift as relevant as to make the idea of helping with your pocket 343 00:40:26.440 --> 00:40:31.880 because of liberty appealing to the enterprising bourgeoisie, which is still, I believe, more 344 00:40:31.880 --> 00:40:35.120 or less our social constituency. 345 00:40:35.120 --> 00:40:39.400 But you cannot have a political movement without donors and benefactors. 346 00:40:39.400 --> 00:40:45.400 In other words, you cannot have a political movement that is composed purely of intellectuals. 347 00:40:45.400 --> 00:40:56.400 This implies in a way it's very failure. It means you never succeed in establishing the link with that part of civil society you are fighting for. 348 00:40:56.400 --> 00:41:04.400 I think the Internet has given us so far just a fleeting glimpse of what it can do for the cause of liberty. 349 00:41:04.400 --> 00:41:11.400 We do still have to develop a better understanding, again I speak as not the Mises Institute, everybody else, 350 00:41:11.400 --> 00:41:25.400 I think we still have to develop a better understanding of what use can be made of internet broadcasting, for example. 351 00:41:25.400 --> 00:41:33.400 Very few people do what Mises Institute does, for example, in Europe, making available online MP3 files of conferences and meetings, 352 00:41:33.400 --> 00:41:40.400 which is a very powerful thing, especially with the development of broadband, even in third world countries like Italy. 353 00:41:40.400 --> 00:41:55.400 Daily updated website in Europe's rarity, and I can name but one, which is Libertad Digital in Spain, that is really self-sustaining free market online magazine. 354 00:41:55.400 --> 00:42:05.400 Blogs are often a great thing and can help a lot in popularizing ideas, especially when they are sparkingly written, 355 00:42:05.400 --> 00:42:20.400 But sometimes they can prove to be a sidetrack, and sometimes they produce, at least to me, an oversimplification of political analysis, which is almost equivalent to the one customarily supplied by printed newspapers. 356 00:42:20.400 --> 00:42:30.400 I think, you know, our movement is doing very good as far as using RSS feeds, for example, is concerned. 357 00:42:30.400 --> 00:43:00.400 I'm among those that read Jeff Tucker article on www.lewrockwell.com and the day after call his webmaster asking for RSS feeds I think the internet provides us with wonderful ways of managing our mailing list and for everybody that has the need to spreading ideas is of course a very important need but we are just at the beginning of a process and I believe there is much we will see in the future. 358 00:43:00.400 --> 00:43:04.400 If I have already annoyed you enough, I will go to the conclusions. 359 00:43:04.400 --> 00:43:14.400 If a free society is to be attained by persuading people, the role of what Hayek called the second-hand dealers in ideas is of primary importance. 360 00:43:14.400 --> 00:43:21.400 I believe a free society can be achieved only by convincing our fellow man of its superiority over possible alternatives. 361 00:43:21.400 --> 00:43:28.400 Freedom has to be recognized as a value to be protected, and Spencer was right on this point. 362 00:43:28.400 --> 00:43:36.000 In such a scenario, I can hardly picture a more important role than the one Harry Haslett served. 363 00:43:36.000 --> 00:43:41.000 And many people, including many people in this room, continue to serve. 364 00:43:41.000 --> 00:43:44.400 I'm far from being always happy with journalism. 365 00:43:44.400 --> 00:43:49.700 Sometimes you have to write about things you do not really care about much. 366 00:43:49.700 --> 00:43:52.400 Well, it's the market, baby. 367 00:43:52.400 --> 00:44:00.400 Sometimes you have to simplify your thoughts and your ideas in such a way that you have, 368 00:44:00.400 --> 00:44:07.400 well, let's say, inadvertently to be fair and kind, but in a way that you have overstepping to mere sloganeering. 369 00:44:07.400 --> 00:44:09.400 And that's very bad. 370 00:44:09.400 --> 00:44:14.400 Sometimes you may feel that you're worsening your intellectual skills. 371 00:44:14.400 --> 00:44:19.400 And sometimes, well, in a very unconscious being of modesty, 372 00:44:19.400 --> 00:44:23.400 that you're not really qualified on a particular subject. 373 00:44:23.400 --> 00:44:27.400 Sometimes you may feel that you're just talking with yourself. 374 00:44:27.400 --> 00:44:33.400 But now, I would like to tell you something that I think about it over and over, 375 00:44:33.400 --> 00:44:37.400 but I still find shocking and frightening. 376 00:44:37.400 --> 00:44:41.400 That is, there are readers out there. 377 00:44:41.400 --> 00:44:46.400 And even things you believe will be unnoticed, sometimes they will not be. 378 00:44:46.400 --> 00:44:54.400 A good line can change the mind of another human being. You can seldom resist contemplating the power of your own words. 379 00:44:54.400 --> 00:45:00.400 And this is why I believe the best investment a writer should consider is an investment in his own style. 380 00:45:00.400 --> 00:45:04.400 Never be content with the way you write, even if you are Dante. 381 00:45:04.400 --> 00:45:11.400 Only people who have a very unprofessional approach to writing believe that it is all about a natural gift. 382 00:45:11.400 --> 00:45:27.400 It may be a part of the game, but you need to work on the way you write, making it better and better, so that at a certain point there will be people who will read your articles for the sheer pleasure of doing so, regardless of whether or not they agree with your positions. 383 00:45:27.400 --> 00:45:40.400 When you reach that stage, it becomes ever easier to convince your readers, because by making them adept to your prose, you'll make them adept to your ideas. 384 00:45:40.400 --> 00:45:46.400 I would like to conclude this very small reflection with a quote from Harry Aslett. 385 00:45:46.400 --> 00:45:50.400 It comes from the speech he delivered on the occasion of his 70th birthday, 386 00:45:50.400 --> 00:45:54.400 and explains very well why we shouldn't shut up, 387 00:45:54.400 --> 00:45:59.400 why we should continue in trying to follow his footsteps, 388 00:45:59.400 --> 00:46:07.400 why there is a lot to do for free market writers who want to breed sanity in the intellectual debate. 389 00:46:07.400 --> 00:46:17.080 Quote, we have a duty to speak even more clearly and courageously, to work harder and to keep 390 00:46:17.080 --> 00:46:21.280 fighting this battle while the strength is still in us. 391 00:46:21.280 --> 00:46:27.680 The times call for courage, the times call for hard work, but if the demands are high 392 00:46:27.680 --> 00:46:30.200 it is because the stakes are even higher. 393 00:46:30.200 --> 00:46:37.200 They are nothing less than the future of liberty, which means the future of civilization. 394 00:46:37.200 --> 00:46:43.200 I find these words as beautiful and inspiring as true.