WEBVTT NOTE A Libertarian Analysis of Law 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:09.000 The talk that I had prepared was on libertarianism and it was going to discuss eight or ten different issues. 2 00:00:09.000 --> 00:00:17.000 The issues I had listed are a libertarian analysis of blackmail, libel, inside trading, incitement, antitrust, 3 00:00:17.000 --> 00:00:23.000 hostile takeovers, the exclusionary rule, Coase-Posner and the law and economics movement. 4 00:00:23.000 --> 00:00:33.000 I also added unions and affirmative action, drug legalization. 5 00:00:33.000 --> 00:00:48.000 While I was speaking to Judge Dean John Carroll, we decided that the issues that he and I disagree with on most are economics more than the issues that I've just mentioned. 6 00:00:48.000 --> 00:00:53.000 So I've added them to my list, and the issues that I'll cover based on my discussion with him are 7 00:00:53.000 --> 00:01:01.000 poverty and the death penalty issues that liberal Democrats and libertarians such as I would have different views on. 8 00:01:01.000 --> 00:01:10.000 So I won't be going in depth on any one issue, but my thought was that I would sort of give the gamut of these kinds of issues 9 00:01:10.000 --> 00:01:14.000 three or four minutes on each, so I won't necessarily be relatively brief, 10 00:01:14.000 --> 00:01:23.000 But hopefully there'll be questions and controversy, at least for the non-comitose, hopefully I'll say something controversial here. 11 00:01:23.000 --> 00:01:25.000 Okay, so what is libertarianism? 12 00:01:25.000 --> 00:01:29.000 Libertarianism is based on two axioms. 13 00:01:29.000 --> 00:01:32.000 The non-aggression axiom is the key axiom. 14 00:01:32.000 --> 00:01:35.000 Non-aggression axiom just means keep your midst to yourself. 15 00:01:35.000 --> 00:01:39.000 Don't put them around anyone else's neck without their permission. 16 00:01:39.000 --> 00:01:47.500 Voluntary sadomasochism between consenting adults is okay, or not okay, legal, I'm not in favor of it, but people shouldn't go to jail for that. 17 00:01:47.500 --> 00:01:51.000 Keep your myths to yourself, keep your myths off of other people and their property. 18 00:01:51.000 --> 00:01:57.500 No murder, no rape, no theft. And I think most people would agree with that. 19 00:01:57.500 --> 00:02:02.500 I mean, you know, where are the people that favor murder, rape and theft? You know, not too many of them out there. 20 00:02:02.500 --> 00:02:08.000 The difference between libertarianism and other people who start with that premise is that we're maniacal. 21 00:02:08.000 --> 00:02:16.300 rabid, crazy, logically consistent. We tolerate no deviations from this, whereas other people 22 00:02:16.300 --> 00:02:20.720 make all sorts of exceptions. For example, if a majority of the people say something, 23 00:02:20.720 --> 00:02:27.760 no matter what it is, the majority is right. Democracy and all that, but you know, my theory 24 00:02:27.760 --> 00:02:34.720 is that Hitler came to power through a democratic process, so much for democracy. All that it 25 00:02:34.720 --> 00:02:38.720 What it is, is counting noses and counting votes. It doesn't mean that they're right. 26 00:02:38.720 --> 00:02:42.720 And there's something higher than democracy, namely the non-aggression axiom. 27 00:02:42.720 --> 00:02:48.720 And if the majority violates that, then so much the worse for the majority. 28 00:02:48.720 --> 00:02:56.720 But there are two axioms. The opposite side of the coin, the non-aggression axiom, is private property rights. 29 00:02:56.720 --> 00:03:02.720 Because I suppose that I go over to Brad and I grab his red tie. 30 00:03:02.720 --> 00:03:05.720 I pull it off his throat, practically choking him, and I run away with it. 31 00:03:05.720 --> 00:03:10.720 Have I committed aggression against him or not? Well, it all depends upon who owns the red tie. 32 00:03:10.720 --> 00:03:13.720 If the red tie is his, well then I'm an aggressor. 33 00:03:13.720 --> 00:03:16.720 But on the other hand, if he stole it from me yesterday and I'm now repossessing it, 34 00:03:16.720 --> 00:03:19.720 well then I'm the good guy and he's the bad guy. 35 00:03:19.720 --> 00:03:23.720 So you need a theory of property rights in order to determine who the good guys and the bad guys are, 36 00:03:23.720 --> 00:03:27.720 who is aggressing and who's being victimized. 37 00:03:27.720 --> 00:03:40.720 Right? Reasonable so far? Okay, everyone with me? Great. I love support. So how do we libertarians do that? Well, we sort of go back to John Locke and homesteading. 38 00:03:40.720 --> 00:03:52.720 You mix your labor with the land. You get to own it. You domesticate a cow. You get to own the cow. You own the cow. Your neighbor owns some corn. You trade. 39 00:03:52.720 --> 00:04:10.720 We trade, Robert Nozick talks about any consensual activity on a voluntary basis, and now even though I didn't produce the corn, I own it because I traded, and even though he didn't or you didn't produce the milk, I did, you now own the milk because of this trade. 40 00:04:10.720 --> 00:04:14.720 So we have legitimate title transfer, namely voluntary. 41 00:04:14.720 --> 00:04:21.720 What are the benefits of libertarianism? Well, prosperity and end to poverty. 42 00:04:21.720 --> 00:04:27.960 Sam Smith wrote this wonderful book, 1776, The Wealth of Nations, and he discovered that 43 00:04:27.960 --> 00:04:32.480 the way to become rich and prosperous and fight poverty is to have free enterprise, 44 00:04:32.480 --> 00:04:37.840 because all free enterprise is, is voluntary trades. Look, if I trade you my tie for your 45 00:04:37.840 --> 00:04:43.640 pen, it must mean that I value your pen more than my tie, otherwise why am I giving up 46 00:04:43.640 --> 00:04:48.040 the tie for the pen? On the other hand, if you're willing to do it, you value my tie, 47 00:04:48.040 --> 00:04:52.040 You fool, it's not very stylish, but what the hell, you have that crazy taste. 48 00:04:52.040 --> 00:04:56.040 You value the stupid time more than your pen. 49 00:04:56.040 --> 00:05:02.040 So we each gain, we each make profit, we each exploit the other, we each make profit off of the other guy. 50 00:05:02.040 --> 00:05:07.040 But necessarily, at least in the ex ante sense of anticipations, we benefit. 51 00:05:07.040 --> 00:05:08.040 Otherwise, why are we doing it? 52 00:05:08.040 --> 00:05:10.040 Now, it might not be that you like the time. 53 00:05:10.040 --> 00:05:14.040 Maybe I'm your professor and you think you can butter me up by giving the pen for the time. 54 00:05:14.040 --> 00:05:16.040 So we don't know that it's the time you like. 55 00:05:16.040 --> 00:05:20.040 All we know is that there's something about the trade you like, otherwise why are you doing it? 56 00:05:20.040 --> 00:05:22.040 So there's mutual gain. 57 00:05:22.040 --> 00:05:28.040 And all the free enterprise laissez-faire capitalist system consists of are trades like that. 58 00:05:28.040 --> 00:05:33.040 Barter, purchase, I buy a newspaper for a buck, I value the newspaper more than the buck. 59 00:05:33.040 --> 00:05:37.040 The guy who sells it to me values the buck more than the newspaper. 60 00:05:37.040 --> 00:05:39.040 I work for somebody, somebody works for me. 61 00:05:39.040 --> 00:05:41.040 That's all the market is, is voluntary trade. 62 00:05:41.040 --> 00:05:44.040 So how can this not improve us, at least in the ex ante sense? 63 00:05:44.040 --> 00:05:55.040 Ex-posts, sometimes we regret an exchange, but this is rare, it's an unusual case, and most of the time even ex-posts you gain. 64 00:05:55.040 --> 00:06:02.040 The other great benefit of laissez-faire capitalism or the libertarian philosophy is freedom. 65 00:06:02.040 --> 00:06:09.040 This is what freedom is, the right to do anything you damn well please, provided you keep your mitts off of the persons and property of other people. 66 00:06:09.040 --> 00:06:18.040 Okay, that's the short two-minute version of what libertarianism is. Now I'm going to apply it to a whole bunch of weird kinds of things. 67 00:06:18.040 --> 00:06:27.040 A lot of these are in my book, Defending the Undefendable. I'm taking some of the chapters out. That's where I got this litany, the first litany. 68 00:06:27.040 --> 00:06:37.040 The first one is blackmail. Okay, so what's going on with blackmail? Here we have blackmail, and here we have extortion. 69 00:06:37.040 --> 00:06:40.040 And I want to distinguish blackmail from extortion. 70 00:06:40.040 --> 00:06:44.040 In both cases, there's a threat. 71 00:06:44.040 --> 00:06:46.040 So I give a check to the threat. 72 00:06:46.040 --> 00:06:48.040 Yes, there's a threat in both cases. 73 00:06:48.040 --> 00:06:55.040 The case of blackmail is unless you do what I say, 74 00:06:55.040 --> 00:06:59.040 and what I say is usually give me money or give me sex or something like that, 75 00:06:59.040 --> 00:07:04.040 I'm going to tell everyone that you take a bath with a rubber ducky. 76 00:07:04.040 --> 00:07:07.840 And then nobody's going to play with you anymore, okay? 77 00:07:07.840 --> 00:07:10.240 What's the threat here? 78 00:07:10.240 --> 00:07:14.740 Well, the threat here is, unless you give me money or sex or some other valuable commodity, 79 00:07:14.740 --> 00:07:17.340 I'm going to kick your butt. 80 00:07:17.340 --> 00:07:21.540 I'm going to kill you. 81 00:07:21.540 --> 00:07:24.040 You know, I come up to you with a gun, say, give me your money or I'll shoot you. 82 00:07:24.040 --> 00:07:26.040 That's extortion. 83 00:07:26.040 --> 00:07:33.440 So, while both have a threat and both have a demand, 84 00:07:33.440 --> 00:07:42.340 The threat here is illicit threat, and the threat here is illicit. 85 00:07:42.340 --> 00:07:48.140 I'm a little weak on spelling, so if I screw up, bear with me. 86 00:07:48.140 --> 00:07:51.740 There's all the world a difference between the threat to be a gossip, 87 00:07:51.740 --> 00:07:59.040 to tell people that you, you know, take the bath with a rubber ducky or whatever it is that you do, you weirdo you, 88 00:07:59.040 --> 00:08:01.340 and to threaten bodily violence. 89 00:08:01.340 --> 00:08:04.140 In other words, the libertarian axiom says not only may you not 90 00:08:04.140 --> 00:08:09.260 aggress, but you may not even threaten to aggress. And here you're threatening to 91 00:08:09.260 --> 00:08:10.180 aggress, so 92 00:08:10.180 --> 00:08:14.500 that would be illicit and illegitimate, and that certainly no libertarian would 93 00:08:14.500 --> 00:08:15.980 defend. But blackmail, 94 00:08:15.980 --> 00:08:20.740 why should we have a law against blackmail? There was this University of 95 00:08:20.740 --> 00:08:22.220 Pennsylvania law review 96 00:08:22.220 --> 00:08:28.180 about that fat, had maybe 35 articles in it in 1993 or something like that. 97 00:08:28.180 --> 00:08:36.180 And I've written an article attacking each and every one of them, because the way this law review was... 98 00:08:36.180 --> 00:08:40.180 See, I don't know anything about law, but I got maybe 65 articles in law reviews. 99 00:08:40.180 --> 00:08:44.180 I don't know, I just sort of mouthed off and they published it. I don't know how it works out. 100 00:08:44.180 --> 00:08:53.180 But see, the whole University of Pennsylvania compendium was solving the paradox of blackmail. 101 00:08:53.180 --> 00:08:55.180 I've just given you the paradox. 102 00:08:55.180 --> 00:08:58.980 Why is it illegal if all what you're threatening is to be a gossip? 103 00:08:58.980 --> 00:09:02.580 And gossiping isn't illegal, it's under free speech, right? 104 00:09:02.580 --> 00:09:04.680 Anyone can say things, you know, 105 00:09:04.680 --> 00:09:09.680 Did you know that he was out with this lady and he's married and she's married 106 00:09:09.680 --> 00:09:12.380 and they're not married to each other and stuff like that? 107 00:09:12.380 --> 00:09:13.980 Well, that's just gossip. 108 00:09:13.980 --> 00:09:17.080 So all I'm doing when I blackmail you is I threaten the gossip. 109 00:09:17.080 --> 00:09:22.680 But if gossip is licit or legal and should be legal, then why is threatening it illegal? 110 00:09:22.680 --> 00:09:23.480 That's the paradox. 111 00:09:23.480 --> 00:09:31.480 and they went into all sorts of convolutions as to why it should be illegal, and my answer is no, it should be legal. 112 00:09:31.480 --> 00:09:37.480 Okay, the next one is libel. 113 00:09:37.480 --> 00:09:50.480 Okay, so now I'm going to libel you, you're a pinko, you're a commie, you're a weirdo, whatever it is, I libel you, and now you lose reputation, no one will hire you, 114 00:09:50.480 --> 00:09:56.480 You get fired from your job, your wife or your husband leaves you, whatever it is. 115 00:09:56.480 --> 00:09:59.480 Should this be a crime? 116 00:09:59.480 --> 00:10:06.480 Well, according to the libertarian theory of property rights, what I've stolen from you is your reputation. 117 00:10:06.480 --> 00:10:11.480 And your reputation is more important than a code or a tie or a pen or a wristwatch, right? 118 00:10:11.480 --> 00:10:13.480 I mean, reputation is very important. 119 00:10:13.480 --> 00:10:15.480 You work hard for your reputation. 120 00:10:15.480 --> 00:10:25.480 You can sell your reputation in the sense of goodwill, you know, sometimes you'll sell a store and the fixtures of the store are worth 10,000, but the goodwill is worth 50,000. 121 00:10:25.480 --> 00:10:37.480 So goodwill is something very valuable, something that you all work very hard for, something that when I take it away from you, you greatly regret it, and you go to court and say, hey, Block is a thief, he stole my reputation. 122 00:10:37.480 --> 00:10:42.480 That's the argument in favor of the President's status. 123 00:10:42.480 --> 00:10:49.600 But the libertarian answer or the answer I give in this book, defending, is 124 00:10:49.600 --> 00:10:53.080 Do we really own our reputation? 125 00:10:53.080 --> 00:10:58.400 What does my reputation consist of? My reputation consists not of what I think of myself 126 00:10:58.400 --> 00:11:03.480 That's too incestuous and bread. It's rather what you all think about me 127 00:11:03.480 --> 00:11:10.280 This young lady, what's your name? Lauren's reputation consists of what me and all of you think about her 128 00:11:10.280 --> 00:11:18.980 Isn't that literally true that our reputations, even though we work hard for them and we benefit from them, they consist of the thoughts of other people? 129 00:11:18.980 --> 00:11:23.280 Well, do we own the thoughts of other people? No way. 130 00:11:23.280 --> 00:11:28.980 We don't own the thoughts of other people. If I own the thoughts of other people, I can say, well, do you like vanilla or chocolate ice cream better? 131 00:11:28.980 --> 00:11:33.280 And she says, no. I said, no, no, chocolate. I want you to like chocolate because I own your thoughts. 132 00:11:33.280 --> 00:11:35.980 No, I don't own her thoughts. 133 00:11:35.980 --> 00:11:39.080 None of us own each other's thoughts. None of us own everyone's thoughts. 134 00:11:39.080 --> 00:11:42.780 Therefore we paradoxically don't own our reputations and therefore when someone 135 00:11:42.780 --> 00:11:44.560 besmirches them 136 00:11:44.560 --> 00:11:48.620 we have no cause at law, or we should have no cause at law according to libertarian 137 00:11:48.620 --> 00:11:50.400 legal theory 138 00:11:50.400 --> 00:11:54.240 because something that I own was not stolen from me so who the hell am I going according 139 00:11:54.240 --> 00:11:58.000 to crying wolf or crying theft? 140 00:11:58.000 --> 00:12:00.060 Paradoxically 141 00:12:00.060 --> 00:12:04.840 reputations would be a lot safer even though we don't own them, they'd be a lot safer 142 00:12:04.840 --> 00:12:08.840 under a regime of full free enterprise and private property rights and libertarianism 143 00:12:08.840 --> 00:12:12.700 Why? Because if we had no laws against libel, 144 00:12:12.700 --> 00:12:16.580 well right now in the magazines and newspapers they have help wanted columns, 145 00:12:16.580 --> 00:12:23.740 they have courts for sale, houses for sale, singles for sale or rent or whatever it is singles do to each other. 146 00:12:23.740 --> 00:12:27.380 Now you'd have a whole other section in this paper called libel. 147 00:12:27.380 --> 00:12:29.900 And you'd have all sorts of charges and counter charges, 148 00:12:29.900 --> 00:12:34.600 oh this one's a commie, this one's a weirdo, that one's a pervert, the column is full of it. 149 00:12:34.600 --> 00:12:39.040 Lauren likes vanilla ice cream, she's disgusting, right? 150 00:12:39.040 --> 00:12:43.760 No longer would the mere allegation suffice to ruin a reputation. 151 00:12:43.760 --> 00:12:46.280 You see that, the paradox here? 152 00:12:46.280 --> 00:12:48.600 I mean, right now, if I say you're a commie, people say, 153 00:12:48.600 --> 00:12:52.560 well, with the smoke, this fire, Block is a wonderful guy, he must know. 154 00:12:52.560 --> 00:12:56.200 I'll ignore this person, is there a commie? 155 00:12:56.200 --> 00:13:01.000 But under a regime of property rights and libertarianism, 156 00:13:01.000 --> 00:13:03.200 reputations paradoxically would be safer. 157 00:13:03.200 --> 00:13:06.640 Then you get all these sort of weird things. Am I a public figure or not a public figure? 158 00:13:06.640 --> 00:13:14.440 What's the relativeness of that? I mean, if a public figure is raped or a non-public figure is raped, it's the same thing. 159 00:13:14.440 --> 00:13:21.840 Why should it be any different? You know, what does public figuredness have to do with the law? 160 00:13:21.840 --> 00:13:24.640 Next one is inside trading. 161 00:13:24.640 --> 00:13:29.360 Okay, I'm an explorer for mineral. 162 00:13:29.360 --> 00:13:36.360 And what's your name? Chris. I hire Chris who's an archaeologist. No, not an archaeologist. Who are the people that look for oil? 163 00:13:36.360 --> 00:13:37.360 Geologists. 164 00:13:37.360 --> 00:13:42.360 Geologists. Boy, I'm pathetic. Pretty soon I'll be drooling. You people in the front row better watch out. 165 00:13:42.360 --> 00:13:48.360 Okay, so I hire her as a geologist and say, go look for oil or gold or whatever it is. 166 00:13:48.360 --> 00:13:52.360 And now I have two kinds of contracts that I can make with her. 167 00:13:52.360 --> 00:14:00.360 One contract is I can offer $5,000 a year just enough to, I don't know, keep her alive or $10,000 a year or something like that 168 00:14:00.360 --> 00:14:05.360 and then say, if you find anything, you can engage in insider trading. 169 00:14:05.360 --> 00:14:10.360 You can buy shares in my company, which now benefits from your discovery. 170 00:14:10.360 --> 00:14:16.360 On the other hand, I can offer her another contract. I'll pay you $150,000 a year. 171 00:14:16.360 --> 00:14:19.360 Let's say that's what a good geologist gets. 172 00:14:19.360 --> 00:14:23.360 But now you have to promise contractually that if you find something you keep your mouth shut 173 00:14:23.360 --> 00:14:30.360 you just tell me. And if you engage in insider trading it's not a crime but it's rather a contract violation. 174 00:14:30.360 --> 00:14:40.360 Now, why is the first contract criminal? It's a voluntary trade between consenting adults. 175 00:14:40.360 --> 00:14:46.360 She can trade, I don't see why it should be. Indeed, I think that this is incompatible with libertarian legal code 176 00:14:46.360 --> 00:14:52.760 and legal code to put inside traders in jail and inside trading has a lot of benefits. 177 00:14:52.760 --> 00:15:01.120 The prices are more accurate based on more knowledge. You see that this idea is 178 00:15:01.120 --> 00:15:05.760 sort of an attack on knowledge. It comes from the perfect competition model of 179 00:15:05.760 --> 00:15:10.200 economists, neoclassical economists, not Austrian economists such as myself, where 180 00:15:10.200 --> 00:15:15.320 information should be totally available to everybody. But a lawyer's main stock 181 00:15:15.320 --> 00:15:18.080 and Trade is information, right? 182 00:15:18.080 --> 00:15:19.840 So if there's something wrong with profiting off 183 00:15:19.840 --> 00:15:22.080 of inside information that lawyers have 184 00:15:22.080 --> 00:15:24.040 when they tell their clients, well then no lawyer 185 00:15:24.040 --> 00:15:25.840 should be able to charge anything for anything. 186 00:15:25.840 --> 00:15:28.360 No teacher should be able to charge anything 187 00:15:28.360 --> 00:15:30.840 for imparting, you know, you give someone a cello lesson, 188 00:15:30.840 --> 00:15:32.440 you tell them how to play the cello, 189 00:15:32.440 --> 00:15:34.480 that's inside information. 190 00:15:34.480 --> 00:15:36.800 You are an insider with regard to the cello, 191 00:15:36.800 --> 00:15:38.720 or with regard to the law. 192 00:15:38.720 --> 00:15:41.760 So the whole thing is weird and wonky and doesn't work. 193 00:15:43.320 --> 00:15:44.560 Next one is incitement. 194 00:15:45.320 --> 00:15:52.280 Go, burn, rape, loot, kill, and you maniacs go out and do it. 195 00:15:52.280 --> 00:15:55.480 Am I responsible? What did I do? 196 00:15:55.480 --> 00:16:01.880 I'm just giving my opinion as to the propriety of raping, burning, looting and killing. 197 00:16:01.880 --> 00:16:07.560 I say it's great, go out and do it. You idiots do it, you're criminals. I'm innocent. 198 00:16:07.560 --> 00:16:10.040 There should be no law against incitement. 199 00:16:10.040 --> 00:16:13.880 If there was a law against incitement, then what's his name? 200 00:16:13.880 --> 00:16:15.880 Got it in my notes here somewhere. 201 00:16:19.880 --> 00:16:27.880 Rushdie wrote this book that a bunch of people thought was horrible and then went out and went berserk. 202 00:16:27.880 --> 00:16:29.880 Rushdie should go to jail. 203 00:16:29.880 --> 00:16:35.880 Every time someone makes a movie about gang war, gangs fighting each other, 204 00:16:35.880 --> 00:16:38.880 after the movie the audience goes out and they start fighting each other. 205 00:16:38.880 --> 00:16:40.880 So the movie producers should go to jail? 206 00:16:40.880 --> 00:16:47.880 Now, what I'm trying to do is pull some reductios ad absurdum here. I'm trying to say, here's the law. Let's take it to its logical conclusions. 207 00:16:47.880 --> 00:16:52.880 The logical conclusions are really crazy and weird. Let's therefore reject the premise. 208 00:16:52.880 --> 00:16:56.880 Nothing wrong with incitement. It's free speech. 209 00:16:56.880 --> 00:17:01.880 Now, I'm not an absolutist on free speech. I don't say you should be able to say anything you damn well please. 210 00:17:01.880 --> 00:17:05.880 For example, you shouldn't be able to say, give me your money or I'll kill you, because that's a threat. 211 00:17:05.880 --> 00:17:08.880 But anything else pretty much goes. 212 00:17:08.880 --> 00:17:12.120 The libertarian notion is that free speech, we're serious about it. 213 00:17:12.120 --> 00:17:16.480 I remember I said, we libertarians are rabid about the non-aggression axiom. 214 00:17:16.480 --> 00:17:19.560 This is another instance of it. 215 00:17:19.560 --> 00:17:21.160 Antitrust. 216 00:17:21.160 --> 00:17:22.880 We shouldn't have any antitrust laws. 217 00:17:22.880 --> 00:17:25.640 Let me tell you my antitrust joke. 218 00:17:25.640 --> 00:17:26.640 This will have to suffice. 219 00:17:26.640 --> 00:17:30.720 I mean, I teach a whole course on this, but, you know, one, well, actually two jokes. 220 00:17:30.720 --> 00:17:35.440 First joke, there are three Soviet prisoners in jail in the Gulag, and as prisoners do, 221 00:17:35.440 --> 00:17:38.240 they compare notes, you know, why are you in jail, why are you in jail. 222 00:17:38.240 --> 00:17:45.240 The first guy says, well, I came to work early. Every day I came to work early and they accused me of brown-nosing. 223 00:17:45.240 --> 00:17:54.240 So they put me in jail. The second guy said, I came to work late and they accused me of cheating the state out of my labor services. 224 00:17:54.240 --> 00:18:02.240 And the third guy said, I came to work every day exactly on time and they accused me of owning a western wristwatch. 225 00:18:02.240 --> 00:18:08.400 I once told this joke to a bunch of antitrust lawyers and economists and that 226 00:18:08.400 --> 00:18:12.560 one got a good laugh. This one got no laugh whatsoever. They didn't like this. 227 00:18:12.560 --> 00:18:17.080 The second joke is there were three people in jail guilty of antitrust 228 00:18:17.080 --> 00:18:22.720 violations. First one said, well I charge higher than everyone else and they accused me of 229 00:18:22.720 --> 00:18:27.840 profiteering and gouging. Second guy said, I charge less than everyone else and 230 00:18:27.840 --> 00:18:31.360 they accused me of cutthroat competition and predation, predatory 231 00:18:31.360 --> 00:18:34.360 Third guy said, I charge the same price as everyone else. 232 00:18:34.360 --> 00:18:38.360 Hard to see how he did given these other guys, but let that pass, it's just a joke. 233 00:18:38.360 --> 00:18:41.360 And they accused me of collusion. 234 00:18:41.360 --> 00:18:45.360 Now what kind of a law is that, that no matter what you do, you go to jail? 235 00:18:45.360 --> 00:18:48.360 That's a crazy law. 236 00:18:48.360 --> 00:18:53.360 What they're really accusing a monopolist is of withholding. 237 00:18:53.360 --> 00:18:56.360 Monopolistic withholding, you're not selling as much as you can, 238 00:18:56.360 --> 00:18:59.360 you're holding back in order to jack up the prices. 239 00:18:59.360 --> 00:19:05.360 Well, the reductio ad absurdum near is, monogamous marriage should be outlawed. 240 00:19:05.360 --> 00:19:10.360 Because each of the monogamous marriage partners is withholding from everyone else. 241 00:19:10.360 --> 00:19:13.360 They're refusing to trade certain things, sex, right? 242 00:19:13.360 --> 00:19:19.360 So if you're really serious about antitrust, get rid of monogamous marriage, which is a little loony. 243 00:19:19.360 --> 00:19:25.360 Well then, so is antitrust law, refusal to trade, I mean, nonsense. 244 00:19:25.360 --> 00:19:38.360 Next one is hostile takeovers. How can you have a hostile takeover when a takeover is part of the market and I just got finished saying that all the market consists of voluntary trades between consenting adults? 245 00:19:38.360 --> 00:19:54.360 There can't be any hostile takeover. If I take over your shirt or your blouse or your jacket or whatever it is, your earrings, and I do it through the market, I must have made her an offer better than the one that she now has, namely to keep the status quo. 246 00:19:54.360 --> 00:19:59.360 So where can there be any hostility? There can't be. 247 00:19:59.360 --> 00:20:05.360 Whence then comes hostility, as in hostile takeovers? It comes from third parties. 248 00:20:05.360 --> 00:20:10.360 I see this hotel. I think the hotel can make a million dollars a year profit. 249 00:20:10.360 --> 00:20:14.360 Right now the hotel is making 10,000 a year profit. 250 00:20:14.360 --> 00:20:18.360 At a million profit at a 10% interest rate, the present capitalized value, 251 00:20:18.360 --> 00:20:22.360 assuming that the hotel will last forever, is 10 million. 252 00:20:22.360 --> 00:20:27.680 you multiply it by 10. At 10,000 the thing is worth 100,000, 253 00:20:27.680 --> 00:20:32.800 assuming a 10% interest rate. So I offer 254 00:20:32.800 --> 00:20:36.680 half a million for the hotel. And who doesn't like that? 255 00:20:36.680 --> 00:20:39.720 The share owners of the hotel, oh no they like it, they like it a lot because I'm 256 00:20:39.720 --> 00:20:40.800 offering them 257 00:20:40.800 --> 00:20:44.480 triple or quadruple whatever the market rate is based on the 258 00:20:44.480 --> 00:20:48.240 low-performing hotel. Who doesn't like it? The manager of the hotel and the staff of 259 00:20:48.240 --> 00:20:50.120 the hotel, a bunch of bums that are 260 00:20:50.120 --> 00:20:55.400 You know, not doing their job, and as soon as I take over the hotel, I'm going to throw them all out. 261 00:20:55.400 --> 00:20:58.360 That's the hostility. Well, the hell with them. They're not the owners. 262 00:20:58.360 --> 00:21:02.200 They're none of this, what do you call it, 263 00:21:02.200 --> 00:21:06.640 third parties and busybodies. 264 00:21:06.640 --> 00:21:13.880 Stakeholders. The hell with the stakeholders. The stakeholders don't own anything. 265 00:21:13.880 --> 00:21:17.800 So the hostility comes from not the person that I'm dealing with, because by 266 00:21:17.800 --> 00:21:22.800 By definition, the person I'm dealing with has to be non-hostile otherwise they're not agreeing. 267 00:21:22.800 --> 00:21:28.800 So, we should toss hostile takeovers in the dustbin of law. 268 00:21:28.800 --> 00:21:30.800 Next one is the exclusionary rule. 269 00:21:30.800 --> 00:21:33.800 Now, I agree that it's reasonable, you know, in the bad old days, 270 00:21:33.800 --> 00:21:38.800 the cops, the way they'd get a confession out of the guys, they'd slap them around until they confessed. 271 00:21:38.800 --> 00:21:42.800 That's not cool. You know, you have to have certain proprieties. 272 00:21:42.800 --> 00:22:12.800 Suppose they forget to mirandize or they don't have a search warrant or whatever it is that they violate and there are so many things that they can now violate and the police protect us with one hand behind their back because of all these rules, but be that as it may, let's accept the rules and now the cop screws up and what they do is they let the prisoner go? Come on, give me a break. If the policeman makes a mistake, dock him an hour's pay or a day's pay. In other words, the law should punish the 273 00:22:12.800 --> 00:22:18.800 The transgressor, the transgressor is the cop who didn't dot his I's and cross his T's, right? 274 00:22:18.800 --> 00:22:25.800 So punish the policeman. I mean it's a minor thing, you're not going to fire him, you're not going to execute him, 275 00:22:25.800 --> 00:22:30.800 you know, you give him a docum a day's pay for not doing what was right. Fine. 276 00:22:30.800 --> 00:22:36.800 But to let the prisoner go? That's lunacy. 277 00:22:36.800 --> 00:22:44.640 The next one on my list is Coase. Are you into Coase in law school here? 278 00:22:44.640 --> 00:22:52.560 Coase is a, in Yiddish we call it a Gansah Maha, big, big shot. 279 00:22:52.560 --> 00:22:57.280 I'm from, I'm a Jew from Brooklyn, I have to revert to my roots every once in a while. 280 00:22:57.280 --> 00:23:02.120 Okay, what, for Coase, what's going on with Coase is that there are two states of the world. 281 00:23:02.120 --> 00:23:10.920 There's a zero transaction state of the world, and then there's a more realistic, positive transactions cost state of the world. 282 00:23:10.920 --> 00:23:20.420 And Koos makes an interesting point that in the zero transactions cost world, it doesn't matter if there are two people disputing as to who owns this pen, 283 00:23:20.420 --> 00:23:29.620 my left hand or my right hand, it doesn't really matter for the allocation of resources which the judge gives it to, my left hand or to my right hand, 284 00:23:29.620 --> 00:23:41.620 Because in a world of zero transactions cost, the one who likes it more, the one who, if he gets it, the GDP will be higher, and that's because the main thing. 285 00:23:41.620 --> 00:23:49.620 Doesn't matter because suppose you give it to the guy who really likes the pen most and will maximize GDP if he gets it, well then he'll keep it. 286 00:23:49.620 --> 00:23:58.620 Suppose you give it to this guy who doesn't really value it as much, well then this guy will bribe him out of it, and bribing is now costless, so it will automatically occur. 287 00:23:58.620 --> 00:24:06.120 Now, I have one little problem with this, and that is the bribes really depend upon people having enough money to bribe, 288 00:24:06.120 --> 00:24:13.320 and if all the value of the pen is a psychic value, you might not have the money to bribe, but that's a minor point. 289 00:24:13.320 --> 00:24:19.420 The major point has to do with the world of positive transactions cost. 290 00:24:19.420 --> 00:24:23.920 Now, suppose I go over to Brad again. 291 00:24:23.920 --> 00:24:28.920 Brad, give me your wallet. I promise I'll give it back. 292 00:24:28.920 --> 00:24:34.920 Okay, I got Brad's wallet, I run away, I got the wallet, and now the cops catch me. 293 00:24:34.920 --> 00:24:42.920 And now I'm in front of the august judge over there, and we're trying to figure out who should keep this wallet. 294 00:24:42.920 --> 00:24:47.920 Now, the libertarian, for the libertarian, he's historical, not hysterical, historical. 295 00:24:47.920 --> 00:24:50.920 He says, well, from whence sprang this wallet? 296 00:24:50.920 --> 00:24:58.920 Oh, I notice it's got a picture of Brad, it's got a picture of his wife, and, you know, it's got all sorts of Brad kinds of things. 297 00:24:58.920 --> 00:25:05.920 That's historical, and the judge would say, the classical judge, libertarian judge, would say, well, it's Brad's wallet. 298 00:25:05.920 --> 00:25:09.920 You stole it from him. Give it back. 299 00:25:09.920 --> 00:25:16.920 What would the Cosian judge say? The Cosian judge would say, well, if we give it back to Brad, what will the GDP be? 300 00:25:16.920 --> 00:25:19.920 If Walter keeps it, what will the GDP be? 301 00:25:19.920 --> 00:25:21.920 Now, Brad's a bum, you know him, he's a bum. 302 00:25:21.920 --> 00:25:27.920 All he'll do with this money is he'll buy wine and he'll get drunk and, you know. 303 00:25:27.920 --> 00:25:33.920 Whereas I'm a wonderful person, I'll invent the cure for cancer if I have this extra money. 304 00:25:33.920 --> 00:25:36.920 So obviously, I keep it. 305 00:25:36.920 --> 00:25:40.920 Now, is this a perversion of justice or is this a perversion of justice? 306 00:25:40.920 --> 00:25:43.920 The answer is this is a perversion of justice. 307 00:25:43.920 --> 00:25:45.920 That was a simple question. 308 00:25:47.920 --> 00:25:50.920 This is a horrendous perversion of justice. 309 00:25:50.920 --> 00:25:53.920 Let me give you the Sturgis versus Bridgman case. 310 00:25:55.920 --> 00:25:59.920 I forget who was who. I'm not a lawyer so I don't know all these things. 311 00:25:59.920 --> 00:26:03.920 But one of them was a doctor and one of them was a... 312 00:26:05.920 --> 00:26:07.920 Boy, this is a little weak here. 313 00:26:08.920 --> 00:26:11.920 One of them was a doctor and one of them was a mechanic. 314 00:26:11.920 --> 00:26:41.920 Let's say here's the doctor, I forget who it was, and here is the mechanic, and what happened was, the doctor first had his office there, he was the first one in, he had his office, and he had a stethoscope and he needed deathly quiet, and the machinist put his machine there, and I'll illustrate this, indicate noise, the machine is grinding something or other, and I forget if it's Sturges or Bridgman, 315 00:26:41.920 --> 00:26:57.920 What happens 10 years later? The doctor moves his office to here, and he now sues the mechanic for noise pollution. 316 00:26:57.920 --> 00:27:04.920 Now, how would the libertarian judge and how would the Kossian judge handle this? 317 00:27:04.920 --> 00:27:09.920 Well, the libertarian judge would go on homesteading and say, who homesteaded the noise rights first? 318 00:27:09.920 --> 00:27:21.920 If you have an airport here and the airport makes noise there and then somebody later comes in and wants quiet, too bad. 319 00:27:21.920 --> 00:27:23.920 The airport homesteads the noise first. 320 00:27:23.920 --> 00:27:29.920 On the other hand, if he was there first and then the airport starts up, well then the airport has to buy the rights from him. 321 00:27:29.920 --> 00:27:33.920 That's the way the libertarian judge would do it. 322 00:27:33.920 --> 00:27:36.920 How would the Coasean judge do it? 323 00:27:36.920 --> 00:27:43.920 He would ask, well, if I give it to this guy, what will GDP be? If I give it to that guy, what will GDP be? 324 00:27:43.920 --> 00:27:49.920 And I forget the way Coase answered that. It's really unimportant. All I can say is that it's unjust. 325 00:27:49.920 --> 00:27:54.920 And how does the judge know which is more valuable, which will increase GDP? 326 00:27:54.920 --> 00:27:57.920 What you're doing is you're making the judge into a central planner. 327 00:27:57.920 --> 00:28:02.920 And, you know, the Soviet Union went belly up for a good reason. 328 00:28:02.920 --> 00:28:06.960 up for a good reason. North Korea is worse than South Korea economically for a good reason 329 00:28:06.960 --> 00:28:10.620 in East Germany, North Germany. Central planning doesn't work. Well, central planning doesn't 330 00:28:10.620 --> 00:28:17.620 work whether it's on the part of the judge or a central planner. Okay, the next one is 331 00:28:20.900 --> 00:28:27.460 the law-free association. According to libertarianism, law-free association, you should be able to 332 00:28:27.460 --> 00:28:31.860 associate with anyone you want. The whole problem with slavery is that it didn't uphold 333 00:28:31.860 --> 00:29:01.860 Law of Free Association. Otherwise, slavery would have been fine. They give you food, you can sing songs, you get to pick cotton. It's a wonderful deal, but as soon as they start whipping you, and you say, well, I quit, slavery is fine. The problem with it is, it violates the law of free association. The slave master says, you can't quit. Namely, you have to associate with me against your will. Well, affirmative action is a form of violation of free association, too. I have to associate 334 00:29:01.860 --> 00:29:05.860 I don't want to associate with him. He's a bum. I don't want to associate with him. He's bald. Look at him. He has a beard. Disgusting. 335 00:29:05.860 --> 00:29:09.860 I'm a self-hater. I can't help myself. 336 00:29:09.860 --> 00:29:21.860 If we have a law that you have to associate with bald-bearded people, to that small extent, enslaved. 337 00:29:21.860 --> 00:29:27.860 Unions are a violation of the law of free association. 338 00:29:27.860 --> 00:29:31.860 The employer is told that he has to bargain fairly with the Union. 339 00:29:31.860 --> 00:29:33.860 He doesn't want to bargain with them at all. 340 00:29:33.860 --> 00:29:36.860 He wants to disassociate himself from them. 341 00:29:36.860 --> 00:29:44.860 And he can't based on Haft-Hartley-Wagner Act and all those labor legislations. 342 00:29:44.860 --> 00:29:47.860 Let me do the death penalty because I'm almost out of time. 343 00:29:47.860 --> 00:29:50.860 I want to give you a proof that the death penalty is justified. 344 00:29:50.860 --> 00:29:56.860 And here's my proof. 345 00:29:56.860 --> 00:30:15.860 Okay, what we have here in period one, here is the Vic, and here is the murderer, and in period one, right after the murder, the victim I'm going to give an unhappy face since he's dead, and the murderer I'm going to give a happy face since he's alive. 346 00:30:15.860 --> 00:30:23.860 Now, what did the murderer do to the victim? Did he not steal his life in a poetic sense? 347 00:30:23.860 --> 00:30:27.860 He sort of plucked the life out of him and then stamped on it? 348 00:30:27.860 --> 00:30:35.860 Wouldn't justice consist of if we had a machine like a Robert Nozick kind of machine where we flip the switch 349 00:30:35.860 --> 00:30:41.860 and then we get into situation two where the life gets transferred out of the murderer and into the victim 350 00:30:41.860 --> 00:30:49.860 And now the victim is a smiling face because he's alive, and the murderer is unhappy because he's dead. 351 00:30:49.860 --> 00:30:55.860 There's even a TV program where they sort of pick the life out of people nowadays, daisies or something, isn't that right? 352 00:30:55.860 --> 00:31:03.860 Okay, we don't have that machine now, but we'll have it in 500 years or a thousand, and if we never have it, we can still imagine it. 353 00:31:03.860 --> 00:31:13.860 Isn't this the essence of justice, to take from the murderer the life of him and give it to the victim so the victim comes out of this alive and the murderer is dead? 354 00:31:13.860 --> 00:31:20.860 Tough on the murderer, he shouldn't have murdered the guy in the first place if he didn't want to be dead, right? 355 00:31:20.860 --> 00:31:32.860 Unfortunately, we don't have the murderer, but we've now established that his life is, he doesn't own, he's not the proper owner of his life anymore, right? 356 00:31:32.860 --> 00:31:35.560 Right? The proper owner of his life is the dead victim. 357 00:31:35.560 --> 00:31:40.200 Now it's true the dead victim can't benefit from it because the dead victim is dead, 358 00:31:40.200 --> 00:31:44.000 but the dead victim has heirs. He has a wife and three kids. 359 00:31:44.000 --> 00:31:50.520 Shouldn't the wife and three kids, through her agent, own the murderer as in a slave? 360 00:31:50.520 --> 00:31:54.220 Shouldn't she be able to publicly execute him and collect money for it if she wants? 361 00:31:54.220 --> 00:31:58.640 Or put him to a life of slavery to support her? 362 00:31:58.640 --> 00:32:00.960 seems to me to be justice. 363 00:32:00.960 --> 00:32:04.160 If you believe in private property rights, 364 00:32:04.160 --> 00:32:06.080 you also have to believe that when someone steals something 365 00:32:06.080 --> 00:32:08.280 that they ought to be made to give it back. 366 00:32:09.280 --> 00:32:11.720 Indeed, the libertarian punishment theory 367 00:32:11.720 --> 00:32:15.080 is two teeth for a tooth plus cost of expenditures 368 00:32:15.080 --> 00:32:16.860 plus scaring. 369 00:32:18.200 --> 00:32:21.280 So, let's go back, I steal Brad's red tie. 370 00:32:21.280 --> 00:32:23.960 The first thing I have to do is give him back his red tie. 371 00:32:23.960 --> 00:32:26.280 Second thing I have to do is give him my tie, 372 00:32:26.280 --> 00:32:27.400 assuming it's the equivalent, 373 00:32:27.400 --> 00:32:30.600 because I have to have done to me what I try to do to him. 374 00:32:30.600 --> 00:32:33.200 The third thing is that if I immediately confess, 375 00:32:33.200 --> 00:32:34.040 I go to the police and say, 376 00:32:34.040 --> 00:32:35.720 hey, I stole a tie, I feel guilty, 377 00:32:35.720 --> 00:32:37.360 then there's no cost of capture. 378 00:32:37.360 --> 00:32:39.520 But if I evade, then I'm doing something else 379 00:32:39.520 --> 00:32:40.800 other than just stealing his tie. 380 00:32:40.800 --> 00:32:43.120 I'm also evading justice. 381 00:32:43.120 --> 00:32:47.080 And I have to pay the cops out of hard labor 382 00:32:47.080 --> 00:32:48.160 who search for me. 383 00:32:48.160 --> 00:32:49.480 The fourth one is scaring. 384 00:32:50.460 --> 00:32:53.160 When I came to him and stole his tie with this gun, 385 00:32:53.160 --> 00:32:54.160 he was scared. 386 00:32:55.200 --> 00:32:56.120 You have to scare me. 387 00:32:56.120 --> 00:33:00.120 How are you going to scare me? Russian roulette. 388 00:33:00.120 --> 00:33:04.120 Where the number of bullets and the number of chambers is proportional to the scaring. 389 00:33:04.120 --> 00:33:07.120 So if I just pickpocket and I didn't even know it, less. 390 00:33:07.120 --> 00:33:11.120 If I came in with a gun, carjacked them, more. 391 00:33:11.120 --> 00:33:16.120 Well, I'm out of time, so thanks for your attention. 392 00:33:16.120 --> 00:33:26.120 Anybody have any questions? Yes. 393 00:33:26.120 --> 00:33:47.620 Well, assuming that government is legitimate, which is a problem for some libertarians, libertarians 394 00:33:47.620 --> 00:33:56.540 is divided into minarchists or minimal government, archists means rule, or ARC means rule, and 395 00:33:56.540 --> 00:34:01.100 anarcho-capitalists who believe that government is per se a violation of the non-aggression 396 00:34:01.100 --> 00:34:02.100 axiom. 397 00:34:02.100 --> 00:34:05.340 Let's take the minarchist case. 398 00:34:05.340 --> 00:34:11.100 The answer from the libertarian end of things is you only fight when you're attacked. 399 00:34:11.100 --> 00:34:16.140 You don't go and go to Iraq where Iraq has gotten up the hope and hell of coming to attack 400 00:34:16.140 --> 00:34:17.140 us. 401 00:34:17.140 --> 00:34:23.140 10th grade power. They're thousands of miles away. They had nothing to do with 9-11. 402 00:34:23.140 --> 00:34:28.140 The purpose of the government, you go to the founding fathers in the Constitution 403 00:34:28.140 --> 00:34:32.140 and they said avoid entangling alliances and avoid being the policemen of the world. 404 00:34:32.140 --> 00:34:37.140 Just Fortress America. Anyone who attacks us will kick their butt. 405 00:34:37.140 --> 00:34:42.140 But we're not going out to the world and being the policemen of the world. 406 00:34:42.140 --> 00:34:48.140 I mean right now we have 130 countries and 700 military installations. 407 00:34:48.140 --> 00:34:52.140 In 130 foreign countries we've got 700 military bases. 408 00:34:52.140 --> 00:34:54.140 That's defense? 409 00:34:54.140 --> 00:34:57.140 What would we think if China or Mexico did that? 410 00:34:57.140 --> 00:35:03.140 What would we think if China had military bases in Idaho or in Alabama? 411 00:35:03.140 --> 00:35:05.140 We wouldn't much like that. 412 00:35:05.140 --> 00:35:07.140 And yet that's what we're doing. We've got bases all over. 413 00:35:07.140 --> 00:35:11.140 What are we doing in Germany? What are we doing in Japan? What are we doing in Korea? 414 00:35:11.140 --> 00:35:14.140 What are we doing in the Middle East? What are we doing anywhere? 415 00:35:14.140 --> 00:35:19.140 Every time two tribes get into a fight, we're in the middle of it. 416 00:35:19.140 --> 00:35:25.140 9-11 wouldn't have occurred if 9-11 didn't occur in Switzerland. 417 00:35:25.140 --> 00:35:28.140 It didn't occur in Norway. It didn't occur in Canada. 418 00:35:28.140 --> 00:35:31.140 Well, Canada deserves a little bit because they're in Afghanistan. 419 00:35:31.140 --> 00:35:32.140 What the hell are they doing in Afghanistan? 420 00:35:32.140 --> 00:35:35.140 When did the Afghanis attack Canada? 421 00:35:35.140 --> 00:35:46.140 Spain went to Iraq, so did Britain, but take Switzerland. Switzerland didn't send any troops anywhere, nor did Norway, and properly no one is attacking them. 422 00:35:46.140 --> 00:35:52.140 These people are not attacking us because we have miniskirts and we have rock music, much as they don't like those things. 423 00:35:52.140 --> 00:36:00.140 They're attacking us because we're attacking them. We bombed the crap out of Iraq for ten years. We've killed zillions of Iraqis. 424 00:36:00.140 --> 00:36:05.180 Madeleine Albright was told that 500,000 Iraqi children were killed because of the 425 00:36:05.180 --> 00:36:08.540 blockade and the bombing and she said, well is this acceptable? And she said, yes. 426 00:36:08.540 --> 00:36:15.300 That's not defense. So the libertarian is not a pacifist. If somebody comes at you 427 00:36:15.300 --> 00:36:19.920 with a knife, you plug them or you run away or you give them a karate kick in the 428 00:36:19.920 --> 00:36:23.500 crotch or whatever you do. You don't have to be a pacifist, but you don't go out 429 00:36:23.500 --> 00:36:33.500 You know, Laura, Lauren, she didn't smile. I'm going to go punch her. She might attack me. She's got arms and legs. 430 00:36:33.500 --> 00:36:38.500 If I attacked her on that ground, I would be the aggressor. 431 00:36:38.500 --> 00:36:44.500 So the libertarian is not a pacifist. The libertarian believes in war, defense of war. 432 00:36:44.500 --> 00:36:50.500 The Catholic, what is it, just war theory? This is compatible with that. 433 00:36:50.500 --> 00:37:04.500 I would like to know that traffic laws, when libertarians are served in the main traffic laws, give us freedom on top of the top line, not in the way. 434 00:37:04.500 --> 00:37:09.500 Those laws are dangerous because traffic flows better when you observe it. 435 00:37:09.500 --> 00:37:29.500 Why should you get a better deal? Why should you? Why should the law compel me to give you a better deal than the deal I want? 436 00:37:29.500 --> 00:37:35.500 The more interesting one is traffic regulations, to me the more interesting one. I have more to say about it. 437 00:37:35.500 --> 00:37:40.500 I have a recent book coming out on just this. 438 00:37:40.500 --> 00:37:42.500 Brad wrote the preface to it. 439 00:37:42.500 --> 00:37:44.500 I say two things there. 440 00:37:44.500 --> 00:37:51.500 First of all, do you know the difference between a bathroom and a living room? 441 00:37:51.500 --> 00:37:55.500 And the joke is if you say no, then I say don't come to my house. 442 00:37:55.500 --> 00:37:58.500 Whenever you come to my house, you obey my rules. 443 00:37:58.500 --> 00:38:01.500 And I say you have to wear a beanie with a propeller on it. 444 00:38:01.500 --> 00:38:04.500 And you have to push a peanut with your nose across my living room. 445 00:38:04.500 --> 00:38:10.500 Have I violated your rights? No. It's my house. Don't come. You don't want to do this? Don't come. 446 00:38:10.500 --> 00:38:16.500 So traffic laws are, per se, not a violation of freedom. It's rather when you go onto someone else's property. 447 00:38:16.500 --> 00:38:21.500 Look, when you go onto Disneyland and they tell you to go like this, you have to do it. 448 00:38:21.500 --> 00:38:24.500 And if you don't do it, you don't go to Disneyland. 449 00:38:24.500 --> 00:38:31.500 But more deeply, you know how many people die on the roads every year? 40,000. 450 00:38:31.500 --> 00:38:35.420 You know how many US servicemen died in the six or seven years we were in Vietnam? 451 00:38:35.420 --> 00:38:37.500 Only 50,000. 452 00:38:37.500 --> 00:38:41.780 40,000 every year get killed on the roads. 453 00:38:41.780 --> 00:38:44.940 The socialist commie roads run by the government. 454 00:38:44.940 --> 00:38:48.340 Government can't manage its way out of a paper bag. 455 00:38:48.340 --> 00:38:50.460 We don't have any competition on the roads. 456 00:38:50.460 --> 00:38:55.180 Look, if Disneyland is in competition with Six Flags and people start dying in Disneyland, 457 00:38:55.180 --> 00:38:57.780 they're going to do something about it. 458 00:38:57.780 --> 00:39:01.220 Otherwise, Six Flags will take over, right? 459 00:39:01.220 --> 00:39:07.620 Look, where would you rather meet me? In Disneyland or in New York's Central Park or in Audubon Park in New Orleans? 460 00:39:07.620 --> 00:39:13.220 Obviously Disneyland because they've got cameras there, they've got duck and geese and nice oil-packing heat. 461 00:39:13.220 --> 00:39:19.220 And if you look obstreperous, they come up to you and say, sir, please come with me, and if you don't, they sort of grab you. 462 00:39:19.220 --> 00:39:24.020 It's very safe there because, God forbid, a rape occurs in Disneyland, they lose money. 463 00:39:24.020 --> 00:39:28.520 If a rape occurs in the streets of New Orleans, who loses money? The mayor doesn't lose money. 464 00:39:28.520 --> 00:39:32.220 No one loses money, no one owns the sidewalks. It's the same with roads. 465 00:39:32.220 --> 00:39:37.320 If you had competing roads, and in Brad's road, people are dying like flies, 466 00:39:37.320 --> 00:39:41.320 and in my road it was very safe, I could charge more and you'd still come to me. 467 00:39:41.320 --> 00:39:45.520 Look, I have a whole lecture on roads, but let me just give you a little bit of it. 468 00:39:45.520 --> 00:39:49.220 Some people say that it's not the private ownership, public ownership, 469 00:39:49.220 --> 00:39:55.320 it's speed, drunkenness, bad driving conditions, whatever. 470 00:39:55.320 --> 00:40:03.320 Look, if a restaurant goes broke, you say it's the fault of a bad cook and bad location and they didn't keep the place clean. 471 00:40:03.320 --> 00:40:06.320 No, what you say is they had bad managers. 472 00:40:06.320 --> 00:40:11.320 So when the road is killing people because of drunkenness and speed, you don't say it's drunkenness and speed. 473 00:40:11.320 --> 00:40:15.320 Those are just the proximate cause. The ultimate cause is the ownership of the road, the manager. 474 00:40:15.320 --> 00:40:20.320 And who is that? The state, the evil government. 475 00:40:20.320 --> 00:40:24.320 If we had private ownership, we'd have competition. 476 00:40:24.320 --> 00:40:30.160 And then if you had a 50 car smack up in Florida, was it just in the news and five people died? 477 00:40:30.160 --> 00:40:34.680 Somebody would lose money and that would focus incentives. 478 00:40:34.680 --> 00:40:36.560 Right now nobody loses money. 479 00:40:36.560 --> 00:40:37.560 Is it speed? 480 00:40:37.560 --> 00:40:38.560 Maybe. 481 00:40:38.560 --> 00:40:39.960 But maybe it's not speed. 482 00:40:39.960 --> 00:40:41.520 Maybe it's the variance of speed. 483 00:40:41.520 --> 00:40:46.960 Maybe instead of having a 40 mile minimum and a 70 mile maximum, what we should have 484 00:40:46.960 --> 00:40:53.960 is speed over here 55, here 75 and here 95. 485 00:40:53.960 --> 00:40:57.560 I don't know. It might work. It's plausible. 486 00:40:57.560 --> 00:41:01.260 Maybe, you see, right now you have horrible variants. 487 00:41:01.260 --> 00:41:05.060 People are doing 40 and 50, these little old ladies driving in the left lane, 488 00:41:05.060 --> 00:41:08.160 and other people are just zipping around, and that causes accidents. 489 00:41:08.160 --> 00:41:10.460 Maybe it should be this way. We don't know. 490 00:41:10.460 --> 00:41:13.460 But the rules of the road don't come from on the high. 491 00:41:13.460 --> 00:41:14.960 They don't come from Washington. 492 00:41:14.960 --> 00:41:18.660 They come from competition, but we don't have competition. 493 00:41:18.660 --> 00:41:20.960 So we should privatize the roads. 494 00:41:20.960 --> 00:41:31.600 that would be my second answer. Other questions? I've got this card here, I can sign you all up. Yes sir. 495 00:42:20.960 --> 00:42:36.960 That's a very profound question. That's a very important question. I've never heard that one, and I've heard a lot to mimic what's-his-name Rudy Giuliani. 496 00:42:36.960 --> 00:42:47.960 In a sense, it's not really the free market's task to deal with government. All the free market is, is trying to make profit through voluntary trade. 497 00:42:47.960 --> 00:42:57.960 But the only way you can get rid of an overwhelming government is to do what we did in 1776 with the British government or what the South tried to do in 1861 with the North. 498 00:42:57.960 --> 00:42:58.960 Fight. 499 00:42:58.960 --> 00:43:03.960 But free enterprise is not, you know, we have specialization in divisional labor. 500 00:43:03.960 --> 00:43:08.960 Free enterprise, you know, Bill Gates doesn't specialize in that. 501 00:43:08.960 --> 00:43:15.960 The owner of Walmart doesn't specialize in assassinating fascist government people. 502 00:43:15.960 --> 00:43:18.960 So, in a sense, there's no answer. 503 00:43:18.960 --> 00:43:24.960 There are related questions, and usually when I can't answer a question, I start answering a related one, so if you'll excuse me. 504 00:43:24.960 --> 00:43:31.960 One of the problems is that a lot of free enterprise people or a lot of businessmen, you'd think that businessmen would favor the market, 505 00:43:31.960 --> 00:43:37.960 but a lot of them are in bed with the government and get subsidies, and this sort of gives a bad press to the free enterprise. 506 00:43:37.960 --> 00:43:44.960 When people think of free enterprise, they think of a Chrysler bailout or military industrial complex, 507 00:43:44.960 --> 00:43:48.200 and all these people getting a lot of money, war profiteers. 508 00:43:48.200 --> 00:43:52.200 Not that I'm against profit, but I'm against being hand in glove with the government. 509 00:43:52.200 --> 00:44:01.200 So, again, there the solution doesn't come from the market. The solution comes from us, from ideology, from free enterprise, libertarian ideology. 510 00:44:01.200 --> 00:44:05.200 I hope I've done justice to a very good question. 511 00:44:05.200 --> 00:44:12.200 The gentleman behind you, could you speak just a little louder? 512 00:44:35.200 --> 00:44:57.200 Well, I think we're on opposite sides of this. I think that when one person is thrust down the throat of another person, that's not freedom of association. That's the antithesis of freedom of association. 513 00:44:57.200 --> 00:45:03.200 Yes, they'll associate with somebody that they wouldn't otherwise associate with, but that's hardly freedom of association. 514 00:45:03.200 --> 00:45:09.200 Look, if we were really serious about freedom of association, you couldn't have heterosexuality. 515 00:45:09.200 --> 00:45:18.200 Because heterosexuals, the dirty rats that they are, they discriminate against one half of the human race in terms of bed-corner, right? 516 00:45:18.200 --> 00:45:23.200 They don't associate in bed with members of the same sex. 517 00:45:23.200 --> 00:45:30.200 The dirty rotten homosexuals, too, discriminate against half the human race, namely same-sex people. 518 00:45:30.200 --> 00:45:38.800 If we took the logic of affirmative action, we would have compulsory bisexuality, which is a problem. 519 00:45:38.800 --> 00:45:42.080 I mean, I don't want to do that. 520 00:45:42.080 --> 00:45:48.720 And to tell me that compulsory bisexuality is really freedom is problematic. 521 00:45:48.720 --> 00:45:52.680 Now, take the case of black people. 522 00:45:52.680 --> 00:45:56.360 Thomas Sowell and Walter Williams, two black economists who are free enterprise, 523 00:45:56.360 --> 00:45:58.320 attack affirmative action on the following grounds. 524 00:45:58.320 --> 00:46:12.320 What they say is that this hurts the average black person because before freedom of association was abrogated by affirmative action, anyone could hire anyone he wanted. 525 00:46:12.320 --> 00:46:19.320 And if you fired someone, you didn't have to go through connections. Whereas right now under affirmative action, if you fire a black person, you're in trouble. 526 00:46:19.320 --> 00:46:25.240 They have all sorts of holds over you. So the natural predilection, according to 527 00:46:25.240 --> 00:46:30.400 Soule and Williams, is to hire only the black who goes to Harvard, because the 528 00:46:30.400 --> 00:46:36.120 odds of having to fire him are very low. Whereas you don't fire, you don't hire 529 00:46:36.120 --> 00:46:38.680 the black who goes to this school, because this school is in Harvard and you're 530 00:46:38.680 --> 00:46:43.080 taking more of a chance. So what this does, if I can use supply-demand analysis 531 00:46:43.080 --> 00:47:03.080 Let me show you this for a second, is that here is supply and demand before, and what this does is it increases the demand for the Harvard types and it decreases the demand for people at non-Harvard places, so it hurts most black people. 532 00:47:03.080 --> 00:47:06.080 Take the male-female income gap. 533 00:47:06.080 --> 00:47:08.080 A lot of people say, well, this is sexism, 534 00:47:08.080 --> 00:47:10.080 run amok and all. 535 00:47:10.080 --> 00:47:13.080 What feminists, so-called feminists, 536 00:47:13.080 --> 00:47:17.080 I call them so-called because they're not really in favor, 537 00:47:17.080 --> 00:47:20.080 or what they favor is not really in favor of women. 538 00:47:20.080 --> 00:47:23.080 What they're asking us to believe is the following thing. 539 00:47:23.080 --> 00:47:26.080 Here is male, here is female, here are wages, 540 00:47:26.080 --> 00:47:29.080 and here is productivity. 541 00:47:29.080 --> 00:47:39.080 What they're asking us to believe is that, let's say, productivity is the same for a male and a female. 542 00:47:39.080 --> 00:47:42.080 Let's stipulate that just for argument's sake. 543 00:47:42.080 --> 00:47:47.080 And that the wages of the male is 10 and the wage of the female is 7. 544 00:47:47.080 --> 00:47:49.080 We're now going to do a profit analysis. 545 00:47:49.080 --> 00:47:54.080 Profit equals productivity minus wage. 546 00:47:54.080 --> 00:47:57.080 Can everyone see this? 547 00:47:57.080 --> 00:48:02.080 I should have asked this before, I'm such a lousy, whatever. 548 00:48:02.080 --> 00:48:05.080 Okay, so what's the profit of males? 549 00:48:05.080 --> 00:48:09.080 The profit that you get from a male is 10 minus 10 equals 0, 550 00:48:09.080 --> 00:48:12.080 which is fine because in equilibrium there are no profits. 551 00:48:12.080 --> 00:48:16.080 Not that we ever get to equilibrium, but no profits in equilibrium. 552 00:48:16.080 --> 00:48:23.080 Whereas the profits for a female equal 10 minus 7 equals 3. 553 00:48:23.080 --> 00:48:30.920 So anyone, under these circumstances, would never hire a male because a female would have a little thing on her lapel saying, 554 00:48:30.920 --> 00:48:36.640 hire me and you make an extra three bucks, right, which is crazy. 555 00:48:36.640 --> 00:48:39.920 The market can't, that can't be an equilibrium situation. 556 00:48:39.920 --> 00:48:43.160 All the males would be fired and all the females would be hired. 557 00:48:43.160 --> 00:48:45.920 We don't see anything like that. 558 00:48:45.920 --> 00:48:50.080 So the reality, and yet what they're saying is we should have affirmative action. 559 00:48:50.080 --> 00:48:54.880 And we should make the females be paid ten, equal pay for equal work and all that. 560 00:48:54.880 --> 00:49:09.680 The reality is that the wages are seven, and it's because the productivity is seven. 561 00:49:09.680 --> 00:49:11.520 Females have a lower productivity. 562 00:49:11.520 --> 00:49:15.080 Does this mean females are stupider, less able? 563 00:49:15.080 --> 00:49:16.080 No. 564 00:49:16.080 --> 00:49:19.680 We have an economic thing called specialization and division of labor. 565 00:49:19.680 --> 00:49:24.680 Look, if I want to be a doctor, how good a concert pianist am I going to be? 566 00:49:24.680 --> 00:49:28.280 To be a good concert pianist, I have to play eight, ten hours a day. 567 00:49:28.280 --> 00:49:31.680 To be a good doctor, I have to doctor eight, ten hours a day. 568 00:49:31.680 --> 00:49:35.680 Right? 569 00:49:35.680 --> 00:49:37.680 Let me take a little survey. 570 00:49:37.680 --> 00:49:40.680 If you're married, answer in terms of your marriage, and if you're not married, 571 00:49:40.680 --> 00:49:43.680 answer in terms of the marriage with which you're most familiar, 572 00:49:43.680 --> 00:49:46.680 say your parent's marriage or brother's marriage or sister's marriage. 573 00:49:46.680 --> 00:49:52.680 How many say that the husband and wife do an equal amount of housework? 574 00:49:52.680 --> 00:49:53.680 Raise your hand. 575 00:49:53.680 --> 00:49:55.680 Nobody. 576 00:49:55.680 --> 00:49:58.680 How many say that the husband does more housework than the wife? 577 00:49:58.680 --> 00:50:02.680 Housework including child care and, you know, just everything. 578 00:50:02.680 --> 00:50:04.680 We've got one liar in the audience. 579 00:50:04.680 --> 00:50:09.680 How many say that the wife does more work of the household variety than the husband? 580 00:50:09.680 --> 00:50:10.680 Everybody. 581 00:50:10.680 --> 00:50:15.680 So it's as if the housewife is specializing in something else. 582 00:50:15.680 --> 00:50:24.680 Look, suppose you have a husband and wife, they each have a PhD in chemistry, and you know the joke, they both come home after work, and what does the husband say to the wife? 583 00:50:24.680 --> 00:50:30.680 What's for dinner, dear? You have to add the dear, otherwise you get in trouble. 584 00:50:30.680 --> 00:50:38.680 They've both been working at the chemical lab, or whatever it is they've been working at, the whole day, and yet she has to do the cooking. 585 00:50:38.680 --> 00:50:44.680 And if they have babies, she's going to be out of the labor force from the time, or partially in the labor force, 586 00:50:44.680 --> 00:50:49.880 From the time the first kid comes to the time the third kid is six years old and go off to school, 587 00:50:49.880 --> 00:50:53.280 what's that going to do, even if she's just as smart as him and just as capable, 588 00:50:53.280 --> 00:50:57.180 what's that going to do with her ability to earn income as a chemist? 589 00:50:57.180 --> 00:51:02.080 Look, if there are two people, Brad and I can each do the quarter mile in 60 seconds, 590 00:51:02.080 --> 00:51:07.680 and now we start the race and I put a bag, a pack on his back of 50 pounds, who's going to win the race? 591 00:51:07.680 --> 00:51:14.280 Well, it's as if the woman has got a bag on her, or a pack on her back, and she's racing the man. 592 00:51:14.280 --> 00:51:18.760 she's equally able but she's going to lose the race because she has extra work to 593 00:51:18.760 --> 00:51:22.880 do that he doesn't have to do. 594 00:51:22.880 --> 00:51:26.360 An interesting thing is if you look at 595 00:51:26.360 --> 00:51:32.560 female-male wage ratio for all males and females it's about 596 00:51:32.560 --> 00:51:35.640 0.7. 597 00:51:35.640 --> 00:51:42.720 So this is for all. 598 00:51:42.720 --> 00:51:48.020 Okay, so here you have the female-male wage ratio for all. 599 00:51:48.020 --> 00:51:50.420 It's 0.7. 600 00:51:50.420 --> 00:51:55.320 What's the female for the ever-married? 601 00:51:55.320 --> 00:52:00.020 Ever-married means married, widowed, separated, divorced, any touch with marriage. 602 00:52:00.020 --> 00:52:03.720 You know what the ratio is? 603 00:52:03.720 --> 00:52:05.820 Something like 0.4. 604 00:52:05.820 --> 00:52:07.920 Very, very low. 605 00:52:07.920 --> 00:52:10.720 What's the ratio for never married? 606 00:52:13.120 --> 00:52:16.620 Never married, not widowed, not divorced, not separated, not anythinged. 607 00:52:22.720 --> 00:52:23.820 There is no difference. 608 00:52:24.320 --> 00:52:26.920 Males and females are equal in this century. 609 00:52:27.420 --> 00:52:31.820 Two centuries ago, when upper body strength meant more than it means now, 610 00:52:32.120 --> 00:52:33.420 males had a slight edge. 611 00:52:34.120 --> 00:52:37.320 Nowadays, the way to run a steam shovel or the way to dig a hole is not like this, 612 00:52:37.320 --> 00:52:53.320 So this is a crock, this idea that we have to have laws to help because the market is racist, or sexist, or this-is, or that-is, it's not anything. 613 00:52:53.320 --> 00:53:00.320 The market is fair, just, and wonderful. What the problem is, is lack of economic understanding. 614 00:53:00.320 --> 00:53:08.320 There is no discrimination. If you discriminate, you pay for it, and if you pay for it, you have a competitive disadvantage and you go broke. 615 00:53:08.320 --> 00:53:20.320 Yes, there's always some, a little bit, but there's a continual grinding process on the part of the market that grinds against people who are underpaying women or men or blacks or bald people or anyone. 616 00:53:20.320 --> 00:53:26.320 Because if they pay less, someone else will grab them, and they'll out-profit them. 617 00:53:26.320 --> 00:53:36.320 Any other questions before I call on this man for a second shot? I'd like to spread the wealth. I'm an egalitarian in that sense. Seeing no one else, I call on you again. 618 00:53:36.320 --> 00:53:57.320 Jim Crow? You mentioned Jim Crow and the market in the same sentence? Jim Crow is a product of the guy in front of you's favorite institution. I'm kidding you. 619 00:53:57.320 --> 00:54:07.320 Wait, wait, wait. Jim Crow is a government law. Jim Crow said that, look, you know this thing about the blacks in the back of the bus? 620 00:54:07.320 --> 00:54:19.320 Part of Jim Crow, blacks had to be in the back of the bus. If I were an entrepreneur in Memphis or in Birmingham in the 50s and the law said blacks have to be in the back of the bus, 621 00:54:19.320 --> 00:54:24.320 In the back of the bus, whether I was white or black, this is an immense profit opportunity. 622 00:54:24.320 --> 00:54:31.320 What I would do is start another bus line and say, look, blacks, you can ride in the front, you can ride in the back, I don't care. 623 00:54:31.320 --> 00:54:36.320 And I would get all the black customers, would I not? A large number of them. 624 00:54:36.320 --> 00:54:39.320 Why didn't I do that? Why didn't anyone do that? 625 00:54:39.320 --> 00:54:43.320 Because of Jim Crow. Jim Crow was a law that said, if I did that, I'd go to jail. 626 00:54:43.320 --> 00:54:48.320 So how can that be the market's fault? That's the government's fault. 627 00:54:48.320 --> 00:54:52.920 See, you can't blame the market for what the government is doing. 628 00:54:52.920 --> 00:54:57.620 This is a government injustice depredation against black people. 629 00:54:57.620 --> 00:54:59.920 But that's against my statement in the other place. 630 00:54:59.920 --> 00:55:03.220 I'm telling you that this is not a productive decision. 631 00:55:03.220 --> 00:55:07.320 It's really a decision to do it. 632 00:55:07.320 --> 00:55:10.820 At the same time, the government has to use the desperate situation 633 00:55:10.820 --> 00:55:12.720 because there's never been a desperate situation 634 00:55:12.720 --> 00:55:14.720 where the market cannot pay the people back. 635 00:55:14.720 --> 00:55:16.020 I agree with you entirely. 636 00:55:46.020 --> 00:56:16.000 Well, we agree wholeheartedly and entirely and enthusiastically that when the government 637 00:56:16.000 --> 00:56:21.120 has an unjust law, the market can't do anything about it, only the government can stop it. 638 00:56:21.120 --> 00:56:26.220 So we agree entirely. But I disagree when you say that I'm being utopian. I don't think 639 00:56:26.220 --> 00:56:30.640 I'm being utopian. I think I'm describing reality. I'm trying to say that the problems 640 00:56:30.640 --> 00:56:38.960 come from the government, from unwise government. Some people say the government is like a fire. 641 00:56:38.960 --> 00:56:44.120 When the government is in the fireplace, it's good. When the fire gets out into the living 642 00:56:44.120 --> 00:56:59.120 If the government confines itself according to the minimal government libertarians to three functions, namely all having to do with the libertarian non-aggression axiom, armies to keep foreign guys off our back, 643 00:56:59.120 --> 00:57:08.120 police to keep local bad guys off our back, and courts to determine who the good guys and the bad guys are, then we're fine. Then the fire is in the fireplace. 644 00:57:08.120 --> 00:57:22.120 But once government gets outside of that and says, well, Jim Crow laws or minimum wage laws or any of these other laws that I've been talking about, blackmail, libel, whatever, then the government is creating injustice and you and I agree that only the government can stop that. 645 00:57:22.120 --> 00:57:29.120 Where we disagree is you think that somehow the market is responsible for the poverty of black people or women. 646 00:57:29.120 --> 00:57:33.560 and my point is that if black people are underpaid, if their marginal revenue 647 00:57:33.560 --> 00:57:38.120 productivity is ten dollars an hour and you're paying them only seven, someone 648 00:57:38.120 --> 00:57:43.520 else is going to offer 701 because you're making three dollars pure profit off of 649 00:57:43.520 --> 00:57:48.800 them. I will then hire someone at 701 and if a racist fool he'll go broke. Now I 650 00:57:48.800 --> 00:57:53.240 don't say that there's no discrimination and no racism, there is, that's the way 651 00:57:53.240 --> 00:57:57.880 people are, but what I say is that the market has within its very essence the 652 00:57:57.880 --> 00:58:01.480 The solution for this, namely profit. 653 00:58:01.480 --> 00:58:06.000 If a black person or a bald person or a left-handed person, it doesn't matter, it's the same 654 00:58:06.000 --> 00:58:07.960 supply and demand curve. 655 00:58:07.960 --> 00:58:12.760 If there is a group that is hated, left-handed redheads are hated, and nobody wants to hire 656 00:58:12.760 --> 00:58:16.020 them, that means the demand curve for their services shifts to the left and they make 657 00:58:16.020 --> 00:58:17.320 less money. 658 00:58:17.320 --> 00:58:21.880 When they make less money, they're an opportunity for some capitalist pig to come along and 659 00:58:21.880 --> 00:58:25.560 bid for them because they're like money on the hoof. 660 00:58:25.560 --> 00:58:31.560 If a left-handed redhead has a productivity of ten dollars an hour and is being paid a dollar an hour, I'll hire him at a dollar one. 661 00:58:33.560 --> 00:58:38.560 Someone else will hire him at a dollar two. Where will this end? Up toward ten dollars. 662 00:58:39.560 --> 00:58:48.560 So discrimination against any group is powerless to really do much. What really does stuff is unions or minimum wage laws. 663 00:58:49.560 --> 00:58:54.560 Or if you want to talk about the plight of the black people, talk about the fact that we prohibit drugs. 664 00:58:55.560 --> 00:59:01.560 We now prohibit drugs and young black men, especially in New Orleans, but in many inner cities, are dying like flies. 665 00:59:01.560 --> 00:59:06.560 They're shooting each other, but there's nothing special about black people or drugs. 666 00:59:06.560 --> 00:59:11.560 The same thing happened during the prohibition of alcohol, only it was Italians then for sociological reasons. 667 00:59:11.560 --> 00:59:16.560 They were shooting each other. Nowadays, does anyone die over alcohol? 668 00:59:16.560 --> 00:59:21.560 Yes, alcohol is a medical problem, but it's not an economic problem. 669 00:59:21.560 --> 00:59:28.560 Right now, the reason they're shooting each other is because when it's illegal, the supply curve shifts. 670 00:59:28.560 --> 00:59:32.560 I hate to do this, supply and demand, but I'm an economist. I have to, otherwise they'll kick me out. 671 00:59:32.560 --> 00:59:39.560 The supply curve shifts to the left and the prices of the poppy seed, poppy seed and marijuana, like weeds, they grow. 672 00:59:39.560 --> 00:59:42.560 You sort of put them in the ground and you have to back off because they'll get you. 673 00:59:42.560 --> 00:59:49.560 It's very cheap, much cheaper than tobacco where you have to cure it and take care of it and all. 674 00:59:49.560 --> 00:59:56.600 and all. It would be very cheap. No one would kill over it if it were legalized. You'd have 675 00:59:56.600 --> 01:00:00.040 a medical problem just like you have a medical problem with alcohol, so instead of, or in 676 01:00:00.040 --> 01:00:05.800 addition to alcoholics anonymous, you'd have narcotics anonymous, which they have anyway. 677 01:00:05.800 --> 01:00:15.840 Lenny Bruce, one of my favorite people, died of impure heroin, murdered by the state. The 678 01:00:15.840 --> 01:00:21.840 The state is responsible, they prohibited that, and this is creating havoc in the black community. 679 01:00:21.840 --> 01:00:25.840 Another thing that's creating havoc in the black community is welfare. 680 01:00:25.840 --> 01:00:34.840 Before, my guru on this is a guy named Charles Murray, who wrote a book called Losing Ground. 681 01:00:34.840 --> 01:00:44.840 Before welfare really took off in the 60s, mid-60s, the black and the white rate of family formation and legitimacy was about the same. 682 01:00:44.840 --> 01:00:48.340 Look, you know that thing about the frog in the water? 683 01:00:48.340 --> 01:00:52.840 If you throw a frog in boiling water, he just jumps out. 684 01:00:52.840 --> 01:00:57.840 Whereas if you put a frog in cold water and you heat it up slowly, his metabolism is such 685 01:00:57.840 --> 01:01:00.840 that he stays in and gets burned. 686 01:01:00.840 --> 01:01:05.840 Slavery for black people was like boiling water. 687 01:01:05.840 --> 01:01:08.840 It did not affect the black family. 688 01:01:08.840 --> 01:01:13.840 The black family was as intact as the white family in 1911. 689 01:01:13.840 --> 01:01:17.920 The census of 1910 was a percentage or two different. 690 01:01:17.920 --> 01:01:20.600 All during the 1870s, 1880s, and 1890s, 691 01:01:20.600 --> 01:01:22.800 there were ads in the papers from black people. 692 01:01:22.800 --> 01:01:24.440 Emily Lou is looking for Joe. 693 01:01:24.440 --> 01:01:25.560 We were at this plantation. 694 01:01:25.560 --> 01:01:26.600 Let's get together. 695 01:01:27.680 --> 01:01:30.240 50 years later, the black family was intact. 696 01:01:30.240 --> 01:01:33.480 Slavery was impotent to ruin the black family. 697 01:01:33.480 --> 01:01:38.480 By the way, in my view, families are an index of goodness. 698 01:01:39.280 --> 01:01:40.960 If you come from an intact family, 699 01:01:40.960 --> 01:01:43.320 you have less crime, more education, 700 01:01:43.320 --> 01:01:52.080 All sorts of good things and a lot of the plagues of social plagues are due to non-intact families. 701 01:01:52.080 --> 01:02:00.280 In the 60s, in the 50s, the black family and the white family, the divorce rate, the rate of illegitimacy, again, was a little bit worse for blacks, it was very close. 702 01:02:00.280 --> 01:02:04.120 Then you had the 60s and all of a sudden the whole culture changed. 703 01:02:04.120 --> 01:02:11.120 Before that, if you were a girl that got pregnant, you had to go live with Aunt Sue in the next city because you were a disgrace. 704 01:02:11.120 --> 01:02:15.920 Now, Charles Murray says that the welfare system made a young black girl an offer 705 01:02:15.920 --> 01:02:21.400 that the young black man who impregnated her couldn't match with a minimum wage job. 706 01:02:21.400 --> 01:02:24.080 Economics is very powerful. It ruined the black family. 707 01:02:24.080 --> 01:02:28.160 It's like this slow heating up of the frog. 708 01:02:28.160 --> 01:02:31.720 It's a horrendous thing. 709 01:02:31.720 --> 01:02:36.040 And don't tell me that welfare is a market phenomenon. 710 01:02:36.040 --> 01:02:39.800 Private charity is, but private charity never did anything like that. 711 01:02:39.800 --> 01:02:51.800 private charity, the church would make you pray, make you do this, make you do that, write a letter of thank you, very different and wouldn't encourage illegitimacy. 712 01:02:51.800 --> 01:03:03.800 So if you want to talk about plight of minorities, black people, women, whatever, it's not due to the market, the market is their solution, the government is their problem. 713 01:03:03.800 --> 01:03:12.800 If you have any further questions, Dr. Block will be available upstairs in the great room. 714 01:03:12.800 --> 01:03:16.800 I encourage you all to go up there and have whatever I haven't seen. 715 01:03:16.800 --> 01:03:20.800 Thank you very much.