WEBVTT NOTE The Firm vs. Nationalism 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:07.400 Ludwig von Mises was not what we would today call politically correct. 2 00:00:07.400 --> 00:00:18.800 And one of Mises' least politically correct articles is a piece that he published in 1950 called The Idea of Liberty is Western. 3 00:00:18.800 --> 00:00:28.440 Mises was not offering a racial or a cultural explanation for the origins of liberty, but rather an institutional one. 4 00:00:28.440 --> 00:00:30.800 And I quote, Mises says, 5 00:00:30.800 --> 00:00:36.160 The idea of liberty is and has always been peculiar to the West. 6 00:00:36.160 --> 00:00:40.280 The East, the Oriental world, lacked the primordial thing, 7 00:00:40.280 --> 00:00:42.840 the idea of freedom from the state. 8 00:00:42.840 --> 00:00:46.960 It never called into question the arbitrariness of the despots. 9 00:00:46.960 --> 00:00:50.680 And first of all, it never established the legal framework 10 00:00:50.680 --> 00:00:53.280 that would protect the private citizen's wealth 11 00:00:53.280 --> 00:00:56.200 against confiscation on the part of tyrants. 12 00:00:56.200 --> 00:01:26.200 In other words, the rise of the Western world, the reason that the commercial and industrial revolutions happened in Europe and not, for example, in China, was not due to climate or natural resources or geography, as Jared Diamond would have it, for example, or luck or martial spirit, but rather due to institutions, institutions that protected private property, the rights of individuals, 13 00:01:26.200 --> 00:01:29.200 and limited the power of the sovereign. 14 00:01:29.200 --> 00:01:38.200 Now, key to the development of such institutions was the role of transnational or multinational organizations, 15 00:01:38.200 --> 00:01:42.200 most important of which, of course, was the church, the medieval church. 16 00:01:42.200 --> 00:01:46.200 The church was an organization that exercised real authority, 17 00:01:46.200 --> 00:01:52.200 but was not identified exclusively with any particular state. 18 00:01:52.200 --> 00:02:10.200 In fact, as Professor Reiko has reminded us, there's an emerging consensus among mainstream scholars, economic historians and political scientists on the rise of the West and the wealth and power of the Western world. 19 00:02:10.200 --> 00:02:21.700 Nathan Rosenberg, Rosenberg and Birdsell, Joel Moqueur, Douglas North, David Landis and so on have all written that Europe became wealthy 20 00:02:21.700 --> 00:02:28.200 precisely because unlike the Eastern civilizations, Europe was highly decentralized. 21 00:02:28.200 --> 00:02:38.200 That European political and social life was governed by a complex web of institutions and organizations with overlapping jurisdictions, 22 00:02:38.200 --> 00:02:45.200 Each of which competed with the others and placed limits on the power and authority of the others. 23 00:02:45.200 --> 00:02:50.200 Let me quote from one of Ralph's recent papers. 24 00:02:50.200 --> 00:03:01.200 Ralph says, the gist of the modern scholarly view is that Europe developed economically and eventually outstripped the rest of the world 25 00:03:01.200 --> 00:03:11.200 Largely because it was at once a common civilization, i.e. Latin Christendom, but also a radically decentralized mosaic of polities. 26 00:03:11.200 --> 00:03:15.200 This created multiple opportunities for economic and also political progress. 27 00:03:15.200 --> 00:03:24.200 There was competition among political entities, which came to see that a favorable treatment of property rights retained and attracted productive citizens. 28 00:03:24.200 --> 00:03:36.200 On the other hand, when a state behaved as states customarily did and do throughout history, i.e. as an unconstrained predator, it tended to lose ground to competing states. 29 00:03:36.200 --> 00:03:45.200 Other factors played crucial roles, but Europe's radical decentralization and the possibility of exit was the key factor. 30 00:03:45.200 --> 00:03:53.200 Today, of course, the church no longer plays that kind of a role as a limiting influence on the state. 31 00:03:53.200 --> 00:04:06.200 As Tom Woods alluded, even among some conservative evangelical congregations today, the church is sort of a branch of the Bush administration and the Republican Party. 32 00:04:06.200 --> 00:04:16.200 On the other hand, there are important multinational and transnational institutions that do place powerful limits today on state power. 33 00:04:16.200 --> 00:04:22.200 These include charitable and relief organizations like the Red Cross or Doctors Without Borders. 34 00:04:22.200 --> 00:04:32.200 Educational institutions like the Mises Institute, social and religious movements and groups, websites, even the internet itself in an important sense. 35 00:04:32.200 --> 00:04:42.200 But the most important such transnational institution is the business firm, the modern multinational or transnational corporation. 36 00:04:42.200 --> 00:04:52.200 And this afternoon I want to talk to you about such firms and the role that they currently play and potentially can play in limiting the power of the state. 37 00:04:52.200 --> 00:05:02.200 Of course we shouldn't be surprised that capitalism and capitalist institutions such as the firm are fundamentally at odds with the state. 38 00:05:02.200 --> 00:05:09.040 If you recall the famous distinction made by the German sociologist Franz Oppenheimer 39 00:05:09.040 --> 00:05:12.840 between two means of creating and acquiring wealth. 40 00:05:12.840 --> 00:05:19.240 The first, through voluntary exchange, what he called the economic means, and second, 41 00:05:19.240 --> 00:05:23.880 through theft, confiscating the wealth of someone else, which Oppenheimer termed the 42 00:05:23.880 --> 00:05:26.080 political means. 43 00:05:26.080 --> 00:05:33.320 The state in Oppenheimer's definition is, quote, the organization of the political means. 44 00:05:33.320 --> 00:05:38.520 In Murray Rothbard's words, Rothbard being influenced by Oppenheimer, Rothbard says, quote, 45 00:05:38.520 --> 00:05:45.320 the state is organized theft, organized robbery, and organized exploitation. 46 00:05:45.320 --> 00:05:51.500 The state encourages conflict among people, while capitalism, the free market, leads to 47 00:05:51.500 --> 00:05:54.560 harmony or encourages harmony and peaceful interaction. 48 00:05:54.560 --> 00:06:12.560 Of course, it's well known that private property and the market system encourage cooperation among strangers, people who don't know each other, people of different races, colors and creeds, people who speak different languages and might otherwise wish to have very little to do with each other. 49 00:06:12.560 --> 00:06:21.560 The famous metaphor of the pencil from Leonard Reed's article, iPencil, is one of the classic illustrations of this phenomenon. 50 00:06:21.560 --> 00:06:32.560 How thousands and thousands of individuals can cooperate peacefully and voluntarily in the production of even the simplest goods and services like a pencil. 51 00:06:32.560 --> 00:06:36.560 Just last week I read about a very dramatic example of this. 52 00:06:36.560 --> 00:06:45.480 The October, this week, earlier this week, the October 24th, 2006 issue of the Christian Science Monitor 53 00:06:45.480 --> 00:06:52.680 had an interesting article on a coffee enterprise in Rwanda that employs both Tutsis and Hutus. 54 00:06:52.680 --> 00:06:59.080 Let me just quote a couple of paragraphs from the article because it's instructive. 55 00:06:59.080 --> 00:07:11.080 A tall, slender Tutsi woman named Jeanette Nira Bagawana has at least a hundred perfectly good reasons never to speak to Anasat's Turimbukanusi again. 56 00:07:11.080 --> 00:07:22.080 That's how many of Jeanette's relatives, including her husband, parents and baby, were killed during the 1994 genocide that raced through her hometown here in Africa's midsection. 57 00:07:22.080 --> 00:07:28.080 Anastaz is a confessed killer who, Jeanette says, helped murder her husband. 58 00:07:28.080 --> 00:07:32.100 Yet Jeanette does, in fact, speak to Anastas regularly. 59 00:07:32.100 --> 00:07:34.780 She even pays him, along with other Hutus 60 00:07:34.780 --> 00:07:37.440 who killed her relatives, to work on her coffee farm. 61 00:07:38.560 --> 00:07:41.740 Increasingly, their uneasy partnership is paying off. 62 00:07:41.740 --> 00:07:44.580 The beans they grow and pick together are being sold, 63 00:07:44.580 --> 00:07:47.640 along with those of many other Rwandan coffee farmers, 64 00:07:47.640 --> 00:07:51.100 to Starbucks and other high-end U.S. coffee purveyors, 65 00:07:51.100 --> 00:07:53.860 creating growing prosperity for her, him, and others. 66 00:07:55.060 --> 00:07:55.900 The article goes on, 67 00:07:55.900 --> 00:07:59.760 This is a tale of Rwandan-style reconciliation. 68 00:07:59.760 --> 00:08:02.220 It may seem almost incomprehensible to outsiders, 69 00:08:02.220 --> 00:08:04.540 yet in some cases it works here. 70 00:08:04.540 --> 00:08:06.980 It's driven largely by economics. 71 00:08:06.980 --> 00:08:09.620 Coffee is Rwanda's biggest export. 72 00:08:09.620 --> 00:08:12.560 To get the beans grown, harvested, and processed, 73 00:08:12.560 --> 00:08:15.340 both killers and victims from the genocide 74 00:08:15.340 --> 00:08:20.260 are striking an uneasy peace born of economic co-dependence. 75 00:08:20.260 --> 00:08:23.460 They need each other to make that container of coffee, 76 00:08:23.460 --> 00:08:28.020 A Consultant is quoted as saying. 77 00:08:28.020 --> 00:08:30.980 Others have alluded today to the role 78 00:08:30.980 --> 00:08:35.960 that business enterprise plays in preventing warfare 79 00:08:35.960 --> 00:08:38.300 among states. 80 00:08:38.300 --> 00:08:41.180 We only need to look to the example of Walmart 81 00:08:41.180 --> 00:08:43.860 and Walmart's relationship with China. 82 00:08:43.860 --> 00:08:48.100 One of the things that, in all likelihood, 83 00:08:48.100 --> 00:08:50.980 prevents the neoconservatives from launching 84 00:08:50.980 --> 00:08:58.980 and their Desired War Against China are the strong economic ties between firms like Walmart and Chinese manufacturers. 85 00:08:58.980 --> 00:09:07.980 Walmart purchased about $23 billion of exports from China in the last year, 2005. 86 00:09:07.980 --> 00:09:10.980 As Michael Strong has recently written, 87 00:09:10.980 --> 00:09:17.980 Walmart might be single-handedly responsible for bringing about 38,000 people out of poverty in China each month, 88 00:09:17.980 --> 00:09:22.620 About 460,000 people per year. 89 00:09:22.620 --> 00:09:29.460 During the Cold War, some American grain trading enterprises, in violation of U.S. Congress 90 00:09:29.460 --> 00:09:35.820 and the Trading with the Enemy Act, were engaged in grain purchases and sales to the Soviet 91 00:09:35.820 --> 00:09:45.340 Union, again making it more difficult for the U.S. to pursue more aggressive policies 92 00:09:45.340 --> 00:09:47.420 against the Soviets. 93 00:09:47.420 --> 00:09:51.980 But let's talk specifically not just about importers and exporters, not only about firms 94 00:09:51.980 --> 00:09:59.340 that purchase and sell to firms and individuals in other countries, across borders, but more 95 00:09:59.340 --> 00:10:05.380 specifically about multinational or transnational corporations. 96 00:10:05.380 --> 00:10:14.660 Of the 100 largest economies in the world, 51 are multinational corporations. 97 00:10:14.660 --> 00:10:20.980 According to estimates by the UN, the universe of transnational corporations now spans some 98 00:10:20.980 --> 00:10:27.940 77,000 parent companies with almost 800,000 foreign affiliates. 99 00:10:27.940 --> 00:10:35.060 In 2005, these foreign affiliates generated an estimated $4.5 trillion in value added, 100 00:10:35.060 --> 00:10:41.140 employed some 62 million workers and exported goods and services valued at more than $4 101 00:10:41.140 --> 00:11:00.140 Globally, inflows of foreign direct investment, or FDI, were about 900 billion in 2005, a substantial increase over the prior couple of years, largely due to an increase in cross-border mergers and acquisitions. 102 00:11:00.140 --> 00:11:11.140 The value of these cross-border M&A deals rose almost doubled from 2004's level to $716 billion in 2005. 103 00:11:11.140 --> 00:11:18.140 Over 6,000 deals, 6,000 cross-border mergers and acquisitions in 2005. 104 00:11:18.140 --> 00:11:27.140 Now multinational companies can be organized in different ways ranging from very tightly structured companies 105 00:11:27.140 --> 00:11:32.740 that are headquartered in one nation with affiliates or subsidiaries in other nations 106 00:11:32.740 --> 00:11:36.740 to more loosely organize less centralized companies 107 00:11:36.740 --> 00:11:40.240 that have headquarters spread across different countries. 108 00:11:40.240 --> 00:11:44.440 The partnership between Nissan and Renault would be an example. 109 00:11:44.440 --> 00:11:47.940 There's a single chief executive officer of both Nissan and Renault, 110 00:11:47.940 --> 00:11:50.440 but executive offices in both countries. 111 00:11:50.440 --> 00:11:54.440 Even Daimler-Chrysler, to an extent, is of this form. 112 00:11:54.440 --> 00:12:02.440 The management scholar C.K. Prahalad at the University of Michigan, one of the most prominent writers in globalization and management, 113 00:12:02.440 --> 00:12:07.440 distinguishes among what he calls four stages of globalization. 114 00:12:07.440 --> 00:12:14.440 And I'll quote from Prahalad, the first stage, companies operate in one country and sell into others. 115 00:12:14.440 --> 00:12:21.440 Second stage, multinationals set up foreign subsidiaries to handle the sales to a particular country. 116 00:12:21.440 --> 00:12:28.080 In the third stage, the third stage involves operating an entire line of business in another country. 117 00:12:28.080 --> 00:12:31.680 Now what we're seeing today, according to Prahalad, what he calls transnationals as 118 00:12:31.680 --> 00:12:36.640 opposed to multinationals, represent firms in which, quote, even the executive suite 119 00:12:36.640 --> 00:12:38.360 is virtual. 120 00:12:38.360 --> 00:12:43.080 These firms place their top executives and core corporate functions in different countries 121 00:12:43.080 --> 00:12:48.400 to gain a competitive edge through the availability of talent or capital, low cost, or proximity 122 00:12:48.400 --> 00:12:51.080 to their most important customers. 123 00:12:51.080 --> 00:12:57.340 So what we're looking at today is the rise of transnational organizations that have even 124 00:12:57.340 --> 00:13:04.880 their central executive functions spread across national boundaries. 125 00:13:04.880 --> 00:13:13.480 The rise of such transnational organizations has caused great consternation in some circles. 126 00:13:13.480 --> 00:13:19.160 Businessweek published a cover story in 1990, unfortunately I couldn't find a picture of 127 00:13:19.160 --> 00:13:31.480 The Business Week was talking in 1990 about the stateless corporation. 128 00:13:31.480 --> 00:13:39.200 And the words of two popular writers on globalization, Horsman and Marshall, they say, quote, effortless 129 00:13:39.200 --> 00:13:45.040 communications across boundaries undermine the nation-states control. 130 00:13:45.040 --> 00:13:49.880 Increased mobility and the increased willingness of people to migrate undermine its cohesiveness, 131 00:13:49.880 --> 00:13:52.840 the nation-state's cohesiveness, that is. 132 00:13:52.840 --> 00:13:56.980 Business abhors borders and seeks to circumvent them. 133 00:13:56.980 --> 00:14:01.960 Information travels across borders and nation-states, and nation-states are hard-pressed to control 134 00:14:01.960 --> 00:14:03.240 the flow. 135 00:14:03.240 --> 00:14:08.720 The nation-state is increasingly powerless to withstand these pressures. 136 00:14:08.720 --> 00:14:15.480 Richard Swift, editor of the left-wing activist magazine, The New International, reports the 137 00:14:15.480 --> 00:14:21.600 following with great alarm, quote, capital moves so freely that it is often impossible 138 00:14:21.600 --> 00:14:27.380 for governments to find, let alone to tax. 139 00:14:27.380 --> 00:14:32.160 Corporations treat the world like a global chessboard, bidding down wages and taxes, 140 00:14:32.160 --> 00:14:38.000 avoiding environmental regulation and pillaging natural resources. 141 00:14:38.000 --> 00:14:43.720 If only that were so. 142 00:14:43.720 --> 00:14:48.040 Clearly the critics are exaggerating and overreacting. 143 00:14:48.040 --> 00:14:54.460 At the same time, there are important and real mechanisms by which multinational corporations 144 00:14:54.460 --> 00:15:00.080 do retard the growth of the state and do place limits on the state. 145 00:15:00.080 --> 00:15:05.580 For example, as global companies become less dependent on any particular state, they have 146 00:15:05.580 --> 00:15:11.420 Less interest in supporting any particular government with their tax payments. 147 00:15:11.420 --> 00:15:16.500 Some writers have written on what they call the fiscal crisis of the state, quote unquote. 148 00:15:16.500 --> 00:15:22.180 This idea that government expenditures are more rapidly outpacing government revenues, 149 00:15:22.180 --> 00:15:29.860 often blaming multinational corporations as part of the cause. 150 00:15:29.860 --> 00:15:35.620 Subsidiaries have learned how to tap into global labor markets, which makes them less 151 00:15:35.620 --> 00:15:40.700 dependent on social welfare policies of any particular nation. 152 00:15:40.700 --> 00:15:43.220 Governments can perform some tax arbitrage. 153 00:15:43.220 --> 00:15:49.820 They can arbitrage tax rates by shifting reported income among subsidiaries in different countries 154 00:15:49.820 --> 00:15:56.780 through transfer pricing, changing royalty rates, other inter-firm cross-departmental 155 00:15:56.780 --> 00:15:58.900 accounting maneuvers. 156 00:15:58.900 --> 00:16:04.100 This tends to put downward pressure on taxes in any particular political entity. 157 00:16:04.100 --> 00:16:09.600 The ability to shift production among countries puts some downward pressure on labor and environmental 158 00:16:09.600 --> 00:16:12.220 restrictions. 159 00:16:12.220 --> 00:16:16.460 Information sharing among affiliates of a multinational company can frustrate government 160 00:16:16.460 --> 00:16:21.160 restrictions on technology transfer, or at least can make it more difficult for governments 161 00:16:21.160 --> 00:16:27.460 to enforce limits on the exportation of key technology from one country to another. 162 00:16:27.460 --> 00:16:51.460 More generally, subsidiaries of multinational companies pay less attention to the actions of their host company governments than do stand-alone entities headquartered in states run by those governments because these subsidiaries are operating again on a multinational level where decisions are being made outside the boundaries of the host country. 163 00:16:51.460 --> 00:17:01.460 We know there's a vast number of studies showing that countries with higher levels of measured economic freedom, 164 00:17:01.460 --> 00:17:08.460 there's other empirical studies using the economic freedom index that Walter Block and others helped develop at the Fraser Institute, 165 00:17:08.460 --> 00:17:17.460 in other words countries with better protection of property rights, lower taxes, fewer restrictions on trade and international capital flows 166 00:17:17.460 --> 00:17:26.460 tend to attract more foreign investment, more foreign direct investment than countries with less transparent and more oppressive regimes. 167 00:17:26.460 --> 00:17:35.460 So it's well known in the development community that having an attractive business climate is a way to increase foreign investment. 168 00:17:35.460 --> 00:17:39.460 This is something that policy makers are coming to realize. 169 00:17:39.460 --> 00:17:42.940 Now, does this mean that we can rely exclusively 170 00:17:42.940 --> 00:17:47.620 on transnational corporations to protect us from the state? 171 00:17:47.620 --> 00:17:51.120 Well, hardly, hardly. 172 00:17:51.120 --> 00:17:54.120 Under the mixed economy in which we all live, of course, 173 00:17:54.120 --> 00:17:57.140 multinational corporations have strong incentives 174 00:17:57.140 --> 00:18:00.260 not only to avoid restrictions on the state, 175 00:18:00.260 --> 00:18:03.300 but also to use the state, to co-opt the state 176 00:18:03.300 --> 00:18:06.220 when feasible, to their own advantage. 177 00:18:06.220 --> 00:18:12.620 Multinationals tend to support not free trade, but government-managed trade. 178 00:18:12.620 --> 00:18:19.220 Large multinationals are among the strongest supporters of GATT and the WTO and so on. 179 00:18:19.220 --> 00:18:27.420 Many countries have a whole range of interventions they use to try to attract multinationals, 180 00:18:27.420 --> 00:18:34.620 to set up operations in their countries, to try to encourage their own companies to be more multinationally active. 181 00:18:34.620 --> 00:18:45.620 For example, some countries try to match domestic firms with specific international partners, or merger and acquisition targets, 182 00:18:45.620 --> 00:18:50.620 taking executives on diplomatic missions and trying to perform matchmaking and so on. 183 00:18:50.620 --> 00:18:59.620 Some governments even offer insurance, political risk insurance, for their companies making foreign direct investment overseas. 184 00:18:59.620 --> 00:19:07.620 If there's a coup or something in the target country, the home country government will reimburse the firm for its losses. 185 00:19:07.620 --> 00:19:13.620 Some countries even offer investment guarantees, more general investment guarantees. 186 00:19:13.620 --> 00:19:26.620 We know that host country governments often compete with each other in offering subsidies and other government favors to try to attract large multinational affiliates. 187 00:19:26.620 --> 00:19:34.620 So you look at the automobile industry here in the southeast, Alabama with the, Alabama's 188 00:19:34.620 --> 00:19:42.420 Mercedes plant, South Carolina's BMW plant and so on. States are trying to figure out 189 00:19:42.420 --> 00:19:47.720 ways not only to provide tax benefits and so on to attract foreign investment but also 190 00:19:47.720 --> 00:19:54.820 in many cases outright subsidies. Some governments strongly encourage or even force their own 191 00:19:54.820 --> 00:20:04.540 Some countries to engage in multinational activities, sometimes to secure what are perceived 192 00:20:04.540 --> 00:20:07.980 as key natural resources. 193 00:20:07.980 --> 00:20:13.620 Some Chinese and Indian companies, for example, are strongly encouraged and for practical 194 00:20:13.620 --> 00:20:20.860 purposes required by the government to invest in extraction and mining, oil and gas enterprises 195 00:20:20.860 --> 00:20:25.820 and so on in other countries. 196 00:20:25.820 --> 00:20:31.260 We can go back to the British East India Company as an example of a multinational enterprise 197 00:20:31.260 --> 00:20:36.540 that was anything but a creature of the free market, but was almost sort of a quasi-government 198 00:20:36.540 --> 00:20:38.740 enterprise. 199 00:20:38.740 --> 00:20:43.540 Certainly when we talk about the potential for multinational firms to constrain the power 200 00:20:43.540 --> 00:20:50.660 of the state, we're not talking about Bechtel and Halliburton. 201 00:20:50.660 --> 00:20:56.500 We're not talking about the East India Company or the United Fruit Company in Guatemala, 202 00:20:56.500 --> 00:21:00.540 which arranged for the overthrow of the president in 1954. 203 00:21:00.540 --> 00:21:08.060 We're not talking about British Petroleum in Iran, which arranged to have the, with 204 00:21:08.060 --> 00:21:14.060 the help of the CIA and Kermit Roosevelt, the grandson of Ralph Reiko's much beloved 205 00:21:14.060 --> 00:21:20.300 Theodore Roosevelt, arranged to have the popular prime minister overthrown in Iran in 1953 206 00:21:20.300 --> 00:21:28.300 Replace with our good friend Desha, leading to the events of 1979 and many other problems we find ourselves with today. 207 00:21:28.300 --> 00:21:32.300 This is not the type of company, obviously, that we're talking about. 208 00:21:32.300 --> 00:21:40.300 Nonetheless, the rise in transnational enterprise, not only companies, but in particular, 209 00:21:40.300 --> 00:21:48.300 decentralized multinational organizations, represents an opportunity for us. 210 00:21:48.300 --> 00:21:55.300 We must continue to explain to people that multinational enterprise is inherently a good thing. 211 00:21:55.300 --> 00:22:02.300 It's fine to award the Nobel Peace Prize to an economist and banker, 212 00:22:02.300 --> 00:22:07.300 although, as Jeff Tucker has written and others have also explained, 213 00:22:07.300 --> 00:22:13.300 this particular recipient this year is really a politician, not a banker. 214 00:22:13.300 --> 00:22:32.300 It would have been even better to award the Peace Prize posthumously to Sam Walton as someone who's done more to promote peace and understanding among the U.S. and China than just about anyone else in the late 20th century. 215 00:22:32.300 --> 00:22:40.300 Oh, that reminds me. Let's see if this works. We can all buy these wristbands. I don't know if you can see these. 216 00:22:40.300 --> 00:22:43.300 You can get these from the Adam Smith Institute in Britain. 217 00:22:43.300 --> 00:22:48.300 They're wristbands. They say, I buy goods from poorer countries. 218 00:22:48.300 --> 00:22:52.300 Pick up some of those and show your friends that you're a true globalist 219 00:22:52.300 --> 00:22:56.300 and you're an advocate for the less well-to-do in the world, 220 00:22:56.300 --> 00:23:02.300 because you shop at Wal-Mart. 221 00:23:02.300 --> 00:23:06.300 We should encourage the operation of these so-called stateless enterprises, 222 00:23:06.300 --> 00:23:12.060 Mises, not only firms, but also non-profits, social cultural movements, etc. 223 00:23:12.060 --> 00:23:17.580 More generally, we need to continue to remind people of the benefits of voluntary, peaceful, 224 00:23:17.580 --> 00:23:22.300 commercial interaction among citizens of different nation-states. 225 00:23:22.300 --> 00:23:28.100 We must continue to praise the economic means of wealth creation and continue to denounce 226 00:23:28.100 --> 00:23:29.100 the political means.