WEBVTT NOTE Free Market Environmentalism Is Not An Oxymoron 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:05.840 Our final speaker is Walter Block. He teaches economics at the University of Central Arkansas 2 00:00:05.840 --> 00:00:12.080 and has just recently accepted the Harold E. Worth Eminent Scholar Chair in Economics in the College 3 00:00:12.080 --> 00:00:17.840 of Business Administration at Loyola University in New Orleans. He's an adjunct scholar at the Mises 4 00:00:17.840 --> 00:00:22.880 Institute. He's been published in many journals, from the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy 5 00:00:22.880 --> 00:00:29.840 to the Journal of Labor Economics to the Review of Austrian Economics. He's been the editor or 6 00:00:29.840 --> 00:00:34.840 Walter is our co-editor of a number of journals, a commentator on many radio and television programs, 7 00:00:34.840 --> 00:00:37.840 gives speeches all around the country to many different groups, 8 00:00:37.840 --> 00:00:44.840 and he's the editor, co-editor of a large number of books, too numerous to name here. 9 00:00:44.840 --> 00:00:51.840 And his talk is appropriately titled, Free Market Environmentalism is Not an Oxymoron, 10 00:00:51.840 --> 00:00:56.840 and I really like that title. We thought about calling this conference that. 11 00:00:56.840 --> 00:01:05.840 Thank you, Walter. 12 00:01:05.840 --> 00:01:07.840 Thanks for the kind introduction. 13 00:01:07.840 --> 00:01:13.840 I was listening to Doug Banda's speech and he mentioned that a lot of environmentalists now are very leftish 14 00:01:13.840 --> 00:01:20.840 and I have a, I don't know, a thing to keep in mind when you hear a story like that with which I fully agree. 15 00:01:20.840 --> 00:01:22.840 And that is, think of watermelons. 16 00:01:22.840 --> 00:01:39.840 I have three stories that I want to tell you about environmentalism, as all good stories have to start, long, long time ago in a faraway country. 17 00:01:39.840 --> 00:01:44.840 Actually, it's not a very faraway country, but it was long ago, and that was in the 1830s. 18 00:01:44.840 --> 00:01:52.840 In the 1930s you had a spate of what were then called nuisance lawsuits and we would now call them environmental lawsuits. 19 00:01:52.840 --> 00:02:11.840 Typically what would happen would be some railroad would come along and get sparks out onto a farmer's haystack and the farmer would go to court and say that their railroad set fire to my haystack and I want damages and I want an injunction to get them to stop it. 20 00:02:11.840 --> 00:02:17.840 or another case would be some old lady, little old lady would hang up her washing on a line 21 00:02:17.840 --> 00:02:23.840 and some factory a mile away would pollute dark smoke and get her laundry dirty 22 00:02:23.840 --> 00:02:32.840 and again she would go to court and pretty much in those days, because we had a legal regime of protecting private property rights, 23 00:02:32.840 --> 00:02:37.840 the courts were very respectful of that, very receptive to that. 24 00:02:37.840 --> 00:02:42.700 namely these courts would grant injunctions, namely prohibitions of the 25 00:02:42.700 --> 00:02:44.120 violators, 26 00:02:44.120 --> 00:02:49.320 the polluters, the people who were trespassing their dust onto the 27 00:02:49.320 --> 00:02:53.720 property rights, onto the property and lungs of other people or haystacks. 28 00:02:53.720 --> 00:02:58.400 They would award damages for the damage done and they would grant an injunction. 29 00:02:58.400 --> 00:03:00.280 And this was very salutary. 30 00:03:00.280 --> 00:03:01.640 This is very good 31 00:03:01.640 --> 00:03:04.960 because there were no externalities. The companies 32 00:03:04.960 --> 00:03:09.320 had to pay their internal costs, land, labor and capital, insurance, what have you, 33 00:03:09.320 --> 00:03:13.960 but they also had to take into account external costs, namely pollution. 34 00:03:13.960 --> 00:03:17.640 They would be led as if by an Adam Smith's invisible hand 35 00:03:17.640 --> 00:03:22.320 to use clean burning anthracite coal, even though it was a bit more expensive, 36 00:03:22.320 --> 00:03:24.600 rather than dirty burning sulfur coal, 37 00:03:24.600 --> 00:03:29.600 because they knew that if they used the sulfur coal, they'd get a bunch of old ladies on their case 38 00:03:29.600 --> 00:03:31.840 and they'd pay big bucks. 39 00:03:31.840 --> 00:03:41.840 So they had to take these things into account. Railroads had to try to prevent sparks, they'd have spark prevention devices, what have you. 40 00:03:41.840 --> 00:03:57.840 There was even a nascent forensic environmental industry. Now you all know what forensics is, and forensics is the study of blood and hair follicles and semen and fingernail, stuff under your fingernail. 41 00:03:57.840 --> 00:04:01.840 And the reason we have forensics is because we have laws against murder and rape. 42 00:04:01.840 --> 00:04:05.840 And given that we have laws against murder and rape, it behooves us to find out who done it. 43 00:04:05.840 --> 00:04:14.840 Well, one way to find out is to have a scientific crew to inspect the semen and whatever to find out who the bad guy is. 44 00:04:14.840 --> 00:04:22.840 Well, in the good old days, in the 1830s, we had environmental forensics, which meant, here's a piece of dust, where did it come from? 45 00:04:22.840 --> 00:04:26.840 Let's go get that guy, because he's trespassing. 46 00:04:26.840 --> 00:04:30.760 Okay, that's the first scenario. That was the good guy story. 47 00:04:30.760 --> 00:04:33.860 Now, along in the 1870s, 48 00:04:33.860 --> 00:04:37.260 60s, 80s, this was the so-called progressive period. 49 00:04:37.260 --> 00:04:43.880 This was one of the first pushes of socialism or coercive socialism. 50 00:04:43.880 --> 00:04:48.360 And at that time, a new legal regime came into effect. 51 00:04:48.360 --> 00:04:52.720 In that time, the U.S. was not number one. You know, nowadays we have this 52 00:04:52.720 --> 00:04:58.720 The March Madness with the basketball and everyone's yelling we're number one or we want to be number one. 53 00:04:58.720 --> 00:05:01.720 Well, the U.S. wanted to be number one and Great Britain was number one. 54 00:05:01.720 --> 00:05:05.720 And the way to become number one was to have more manufacturing. 55 00:05:05.720 --> 00:05:09.720 This was a new legal philosophy that took place in the 1880s, 1890s. 56 00:05:09.720 --> 00:05:11.720 This was a gradual process. 57 00:05:11.720 --> 00:05:17.720 And then what happened when some old lady would come to the court or some farmer would come to the court and say, 58 00:05:17.720 --> 00:05:23.400 and say, well, there is an environmental pollution, protect my property rights, grant me an injunction, 59 00:05:23.400 --> 00:05:28.280 grant me damages, they'd say. What? You're stinking, sniveling, selfish, private property 60 00:05:28.280 --> 00:05:31.720 rights? The hell with your stinking, sniveling, selfish, private property rights. Well, that's 61 00:05:31.720 --> 00:05:38.680 a mouthful. There's a higher good, a higher goal. And you have a little drum roll and 62 00:05:38.680 --> 00:05:44.440 what's the higher goal? Well, you've got to be number one. We've got to whip Britain's 63 00:05:44.440 --> 00:05:57.440 And the way to do that is to give carte blanche to manufacturers. Let them do their thing. Let them use other people's lungs and property as sinks for disposal of pollution. 64 00:05:57.440 --> 00:06:06.440 Well, now, under this regime, everything was different. There's no need for any environmental forensics. The only reason you have environmental forensics is to find the bad guys. 65 00:06:06.440 --> 00:06:11.440 But now there are no bad guys because the law was changed to undermine private property rights. 66 00:06:11.440 --> 00:06:18.440 Now there's no incentive to use anthracite coal. There's no incentive to have research and development to stop pollution. 67 00:06:18.440 --> 00:06:23.440 There's no incentive to have scrubbers or smoke prevention devices or all these other good environmental things. 68 00:06:23.440 --> 00:06:33.440 Now, if you're a green business person, businessman, and you say, well, you know, let these other guys pollute and do bad environmental things, 69 00:06:33.440 --> 00:06:43.440 I will be, maybe I'm a religious person, I don't want to trespass, or maybe I'm a green businessman type, and I will have smoke prevention devices. 70 00:06:43.440 --> 00:06:48.440 What happens to you, you go broke, because you have a competitive disadvantage. 71 00:06:48.440 --> 00:06:54.440 Everyone else is doing their thing, and using other people's property to dispose of waste, you're not. 72 00:06:54.440 --> 00:06:57.440 Other things equal, you'll go broke. 73 00:06:57.440 --> 00:07:07.440 Now there was one SOP that the court offered the environmental plaintiffs and that was minimum smokestack height laws. 74 00:07:07.440 --> 00:07:13.440 The idea was you get that smokestack 300 feet high and it's not going to get this little old lady. 75 00:07:13.440 --> 00:07:17.440 It's sort of like putting the problem under the rug or into the clouds. 76 00:07:17.440 --> 00:07:21.440 Some other old lady will get it or other people's lungs will get it. 77 00:07:21.440 --> 00:07:33.440 And that was pretty much the situation of the law from about 1870 to about 1970, 1960, I'm not much of a historian, but that's roughly the time period. 78 00:07:33.440 --> 00:07:44.440 And all during this time, the invisible hand wasn't working because the underlying regime of private property rights was undermined. 79 00:07:44.440 --> 00:07:50.560 And all of a sudden we realized that, you know, we're choking on our own excrescences. 80 00:07:50.560 --> 00:07:55.200 You know, you have to wear gas masks in certain places. There was once a cartoon I saw. 81 00:07:55.200 --> 00:07:58.320 There was a mother and a daughter in an outdoor restaurant and the mother said, 82 00:07:58.320 --> 00:07:59.960 hurry up dear, eat your soup. 83 00:07:59.960 --> 00:08:01.800 And you'd think she'd say before it gets 84 00:08:01.800 --> 00:08:03.900 cold, but she said before it gets 85 00:08:03.900 --> 00:08:05.360 dirty. 86 00:08:05.360 --> 00:08:09.360 The air was really horrible. I once went from New York to 87 00:08:09.360 --> 00:08:13.120 L.A. and I got off the plane and my eyes started tearing and I wasn't very unhappy or 88 00:08:13.120 --> 00:08:17.360 or anything. It's just that I wasn't used to the California pollution. I was used to 89 00:08:17.360 --> 00:08:23.560 the New York stuff, but you know, it was pretty tough. And of course capitalism was blamed 90 00:08:23.560 --> 00:08:27.320 and markets were blamed and private property was blamed and greed was blamed and business 91 00:08:27.320 --> 00:08:32.980 people were blamed, but the real problem was none of that. The real problem was the lack 92 00:08:32.980 --> 00:08:39.720 of private property rights. So when I say that it's not an oxymoron to talk about free 93 00:08:39.720 --> 00:08:45.720 and market environmentalism, that's one story, that's a case in point. 94 00:08:45.720 --> 00:08:53.720 Okay, the second story occurred, I forget what year it was, maybe in the mid-80s. 95 00:08:53.720 --> 00:08:57.720 And what was happening was two things were happening. 96 00:08:57.720 --> 00:09:03.720 One thing that was happening was, this is before the belly-up of the Soviet Union, so it must have been the mid-80s. 97 00:09:03.720 --> 00:09:09.720 And what happened was that McDonald's opened up a restaurant in Moscow. 98 00:09:09.720 --> 00:09:17.720 And I was applauding, oh, this is wonderful, you know, McDonald's is sort of emblematic of our free enterprise system 99 00:09:17.720 --> 00:09:23.720 and we'll show those commies, you know, how we do it and this is great, they'll get burgers, they'll get fries, you know, 100 00:09:23.720 --> 00:09:26.720 they'll see some of the benefits of the market. 101 00:09:26.720 --> 00:09:31.720 This is really wonderful, maybe it's not the thing that we can be most proud of, but it's a nice thing, you know, 102 00:09:31.720 --> 00:09:38.720 You know, good quality food, the poor can go out to restaurants, you're traveling around the country, you stop at a McDonald's, you know what you're going to get. 103 00:09:38.720 --> 00:09:41.720 It might not be five-star stuff, but it's good. 104 00:09:41.720 --> 00:09:47.720 And around the same time, a McDonald's was trying to open up in Seattle, and they wouldn't let them. 105 00:09:47.720 --> 00:09:55.720 Why? Because they were using styrofoam and plastic stuff in those days, and the environmentalists were going rabid and crazy like they do in Seattle just a year ago. 106 00:09:55.720 --> 00:10:00.720 Seattle is a great place for going rabid, for some reason, don't ask. 107 00:10:00.720 --> 00:10:13.720 And I said to myself, wait a second, you know, something's funny here, here the goddamn commies are allowing McDonald's to open and here in the land of the free and the home of the brave, you know, you can't even open a McDonald's, what's going on here? 108 00:10:13.720 --> 00:10:21.720 And the answer was it was all due to this environmental nonsense because of plastics and styrofoam and this and that and the other. 109 00:10:21.720 --> 00:10:36.720 Okay, well I'm going to assume for the purposes of my second story, this is a story about plastics and styrofoam, that plastics and styrofoam are every bit as evil and vicious and environmentally disruptive as all the lefties say. 110 00:10:36.720 --> 00:10:41.720 Just assume for the sake of argument. Later, if I have time, I'll call that assumption into question. 111 00:10:41.720 --> 00:10:46.720 Well, if this is true, Adam Smith's invisible hand is supposed to be helping us out. 112 00:10:46.720 --> 00:10:52.720 The invisible hand is your lead, as if by an invisible hand to do that which is in the public good, even out of your own selfish interest. 113 00:10:52.720 --> 00:11:01.720 That's one of the essences of the capitalist story, one of the greatest defenses of free enterprise. 114 00:11:01.720 --> 00:11:03.720 Well, how come it's not working? 115 00:11:03.720 --> 00:11:06.720 And I want to illustrate, let's see if I can get that thing to work. 116 00:11:06.720 --> 00:11:08.720 I'm a pro-tech person, so wish me luck. 117 00:11:36.720 --> 00:11:55.720 Okay. What I'm doing here is I'm going to take you, my first scenario here is you're now at the supermarket checkout counter and they've rung up all your groceries and they ask you this $64,000 question, paper or plastic bag. 118 00:11:55.720 --> 00:12:05.720 And I'm going to assume that the costs of these things are explicit, not implicit as they are in many cases, although there are some supermarkets where they'll charge you for a plastic bag or a paper bag. 119 00:12:05.720 --> 00:12:10.720 Let's assume that they do it explicitly so we can have something out here to show you. 120 00:12:10.720 --> 00:12:16.720 And let's assume that it costs a penny to produce a paper bag and a penny to produce a plastic bag. 121 00:12:16.720 --> 00:12:24.720 And do you have any incentive to eschew the un-environmentally sound plastic bag? 122 00:12:24.720 --> 00:12:27.720 No, because it's a penny versus a penny. 123 00:12:27.720 --> 00:12:34.720 So the only incentive that you have to act in a green way, to act environmentally soundly, is benevolence. 124 00:12:34.720 --> 00:12:41.720 which is all well and good, benevolence is great and some of my best friends are friends and I smile once in a while and you know benevolence is nice 125 00:12:41.720 --> 00:12:45.720 but you know you can't really count on it as much as you can for selfishness 126 00:12:45.720 --> 00:12:53.720 so we're not really doing too well yet defending the marketplace because you know what Adam Smith said about benevolence 127 00:12:53.720 --> 00:12:57.720 he says it's not from benevolence that the butcher and the baker and the candlestick maker give you their product 128 00:12:57.720 --> 00:13:01.720 it's out of a keen analysis of their own selfish interest 129 00:13:01.720 --> 00:13:09.720 So I'm not against benevolence but I think we need more to show the viability of markets than benevolence and so far we don't have it. 130 00:13:09.720 --> 00:13:25.720 Okay, let's try again. 131 00:13:25.720 --> 00:13:33.720 Okay, so far we discussed producing. Now we're talking about disposing of it. And again, it's a penny versus a penny. 132 00:13:33.720 --> 00:13:43.720 Assuming, actually, it's hard to say this because most disposal, most garbage, you don't pay per disposal of a paper bag or a plastic bag. 133 00:13:43.720 --> 00:13:51.720 Rather, you pay a fixed price for garbage disposal to your town council or what have you or to the city through taxes. 134 00:13:51.720 --> 00:14:01.720 And I could either put a penny there or I could put zero depending on how we did it, but the point is there'd be no marketplace incentive yet. 135 00:14:01.720 --> 00:14:03.720 So where's the greatness of the market? 136 00:14:03.720 --> 00:14:17.720 Well, the greatness of the market comes about, or we can see it, when we realize that the government, bad guy, has undermined yet another instance of private property, and that is solid waste management or dump sites. 137 00:14:17.720 --> 00:14:24.720 Imagine now, second scenario, first scenario was at that checkout counter when they asked you which paper bag or plastic bag you wanted. 138 00:14:24.720 --> 00:14:34.720 Now imagine that we had a scenario where there was no municipalization of garbage dumps. 139 00:14:34.720 --> 00:14:36.720 All garbage dumps were private. 140 00:14:36.720 --> 00:14:41.720 Now you had to put stuff in a garbage dump because if you piled it up in your house, 141 00:14:41.720 --> 00:14:45.720 the neighbors would get on your case, you'd be a nuisance or what have you. 142 00:14:45.720 --> 00:14:49.720 You can't put it at the side of the road or on someone else's property. 143 00:14:49.720 --> 00:14:54.720 You'd have to make a deal with a private dump site owner. 144 00:14:54.720 --> 00:14:59.720 Now let's suppose, again, that paper really is environmentally sound. 145 00:14:59.720 --> 00:15:00.720 It's biodegradable. 146 00:15:00.720 --> 00:15:08.720 It's all sorts of great stuff where it's plastic and styrofoam will create methane gas and all sorts of monstrous environmental situations. 147 00:15:08.720 --> 00:15:14.720 Let's suppose that the real cost of putting a piece of paper bag into the ground is a penny 148 00:15:14.720 --> 00:15:20.720 And at the real cost, the full cost of putting a plastic bag into the ground is five bucks. 149 00:15:20.720 --> 00:15:30.720 Namely, anyone stupid enough, any private owner, stupid enough to allow you guys to put a plastic bag in his land is going to lose five bucks per plastic bag. 150 00:15:30.720 --> 00:15:33.720 You get it? Okay. 151 00:15:33.720 --> 00:15:39.720 Well, what then will the market generate as the cost of disposing of a plastic bag? 152 00:15:39.720 --> 00:15:46.320 Would it be $10 or $9? No, because then excess profits would be made, and in equilibrium, 153 00:15:46.320 --> 00:15:50.700 not that we always reach equilibrium or even indeed ever reach it, but let's assume for 154 00:15:50.700 --> 00:15:56.260 simplicity that we are at equilibrium, the price would have to be no higher than $5, 155 00:15:56.260 --> 00:16:01.560 because at $5 or $1 or more you make profits. Nor could the price be $4, $3, $2 or $1, 156 00:16:01.560 --> 00:16:05.440 because then you would lose money and eventually go bankrupt. 157 00:16:05.440 --> 00:16:12.200 So, if we had privatization of solid waste management disposal, dump sites, the scenario 158 00:16:12.200 --> 00:16:21.200 would look a little different. 159 00:16:21.200 --> 00:16:33.760 The difference would be, it would not be two cents versus two cents. 160 00:16:33.760 --> 00:16:40.560 So it would rather be 501 versus two cents. Do you see the point? 161 00:16:40.560 --> 00:16:44.400 The next time, now go back to the first scenario when you were at the checkout counter, and 162 00:16:44.400 --> 00:16:48.600 now they ask you, do you want paper or do you want plastic? The answer is very clear 163 00:16:48.600 --> 00:16:55.640 and it's not going to be depending upon benevolence. Rather, a keen analysis of self-interest will 164 00:16:55.640 --> 00:17:02.480 lead you as if by Adam Smith's invisible hand to eschew the evil, vicious plastic or styrofoam 165 00:17:02.480 --> 00:17:05.480 You want to take the paper. 166 00:17:05.480 --> 00:17:12.480 Does anyone doubt that the whole environmental problem will go away if we have prices that reflected the true costs? 167 00:17:12.480 --> 00:17:26.480 This is very similar to one of the points that was made by the panel before, that if you don't have prices that mean anything, you can't plan your way out of a paper bag or a plastic bag. 168 00:17:26.480 --> 00:17:32.480 Now, what is the true case? Is it really true that plastic is so bad and styrofoam is so bad? 169 00:17:32.480 --> 00:17:38.480 Well, there is this guy, William Rathje, R-A-T-H-J-E, who is a garbologist. 170 00:17:38.480 --> 00:17:43.480 A garbologist is like an archaeologist, only an archaeologist, you know, gets into ancient ruins. 171 00:17:43.480 --> 00:17:47.480 A garbologist gets into garbage. 172 00:17:47.480 --> 00:17:50.480 Now, it's true, no little kid grows up wanting to be a garbologist. 173 00:17:50.480 --> 00:17:55.480 On the other hand, no little kid grows up wanting to be a proctologist either, and yet we have them. 174 00:17:55.480 --> 00:18:02.480 So we have garbologists, and according to Rathje, can you imagine some proud mother saying, 175 00:18:02.480 --> 00:18:07.480 my son the garbologist, you know, doesn't quite ring true. 176 00:18:07.480 --> 00:18:11.480 In any case, William Rathje, the garbologist, gets down in deep and dirty intergarbage, 177 00:18:11.480 --> 00:18:18.480 and he finds out that really the bad stuff is paper, especially phone books, which release methane gas. 178 00:18:18.480 --> 00:18:28.480 Now, I'm no garbologist, I don't know, I just sort of take it on faith, but I have no bias one way or another. 179 00:18:28.480 --> 00:18:34.480 My bias is toward the market to show how private property rights can help you. 180 00:18:34.480 --> 00:18:39.480 You see, the point is that at 501, it doesn't mean that no plastic bags would ever be used. 181 00:18:39.480 --> 00:18:45.480 Rather, it means that plastic bags would not be used unless they were worth 501 or more, or more than 501. 182 00:18:45.480 --> 00:18:47.480 What kind of plastic bags would still be used? 183 00:18:47.480 --> 00:18:54.480 Well, the stuff that they drip into your arm when you're in the hospital, you can't use a paper bag for that, you use a plastic bag. 184 00:18:54.480 --> 00:19:02.480 The point is that the market would naturally gravitate toward rational use of resources if the market were allowed to be the market. 185 00:19:02.480 --> 00:19:08.480 But if the government rescinds the market, in this case, solid waste management or dump sites, then of course it can't work. 186 00:19:08.480 --> 00:19:15.480 And similarly with packaging. The reason we have so much packaging and stuff that's so hard to recycle, 187 00:19:15.480 --> 00:19:26.480 You've got orange juice, frozen orange juice with tin, with plastic, with cardboard, which is very expensive to recycle because there's no incentive to do it because you don't pay for that. 188 00:19:26.480 --> 00:19:35.480 If you had to pay more to dispose of hard to recycle stuff than easy to recycle stuff, you'd be buying the easy to recycle stuff and any company that didn't give you that would go broke. 189 00:19:35.480 --> 00:19:40.480 So there are sort of waves of ramifications of markets here. 190 00:19:40.480 --> 00:19:48.480 Private property or the lack of private property in one area translates into socialist chaos in other areas. 191 00:19:48.480 --> 00:20:01.480 Okay, the third story I want to tell you has to do with the, what do you call it, species, ending of species, species survival, going extinct. 192 00:20:01.480 --> 00:20:08.480 And I don't want you to laugh at me because I'm not a great artist, but I'm going to draw a picture of a cow and a buffalo. 193 00:20:08.480 --> 00:20:21.480 The reason I draw a picture of a cow and a buffalo is because we as social scientists, we as economists have to explain why it is that the cow never went within a million miles of being extinct, whereas the buffalo almost bit the dust. 194 00:20:21.480 --> 00:20:25.320 the Dust. So here goes my auditory. 195 00:20:51.480 --> 00:21:06.480 They have horns. I wanted to indicate horns there. See, as far as I'm concerned, I'm a non-biologist. I hope that if there are any bioprofessors here, they'll excuse me. But as far as I'm concerned, they're the same animal. 196 00:21:06.480 --> 00:21:21.480 You know, don't confuse me with, you know, the species, the genus, you know, they both move, they both give milk, they both have horns, they both have a tail that flap around, and if you crash into one of them, you're in trouble. 197 00:21:21.480 --> 00:21:31.480 You know, you don't want to mess with these guys. But otherwise, they're the same bloody animal. And why is it that one went extinct and the other didn't go extinct? It's because of the tragedy of the commons. 198 00:21:31.480 --> 00:21:37.000 There was a stupid movie that probably won awards, Dances with Wolves, which showed a 199 00:21:37.000 --> 00:21:40.120 bunch of evil white men, you know, killing Buffalo. 200 00:21:40.120 --> 00:21:44.000 Well, the reason they were killing them is because they couldn't have private property 201 00:21:44.000 --> 00:21:45.000 rights in them. 202 00:21:45.000 --> 00:21:49.320 No farmer, even white ones, white male farmers who by definition are evil because they're 203 00:21:49.320 --> 00:21:54.960 white males, nothing personal guys, but you know, white males are evil, just have to accept 204 00:21:54.960 --> 00:21:55.960 that. 205 00:21:55.960 --> 00:21:59.920 Well, no white male farmer goes into his lower 40 with a machine gun and starts shooting 206 00:21:59.920 --> 00:22:13.920 The reason he doesn't is because if he doesn't, he has a cow tomorrow, whereas if he lets a buffalo go, he doesn't have a buffalo tomorrow, it goes to someone else. 207 00:22:13.920 --> 00:22:20.920 The example I like to use to illustrate this is two more scenarios. Suppose I give you orange juice. 208 00:22:20.920 --> 00:22:25.920 The first scenario is I give you each a can of orange juice and I give you a straw, 209 00:22:25.920 --> 00:22:33.920 And in the straw, there's a monitoring device, unbeknownst to you, that monitors how quickly you sip that orange juice throughout the lecture. 210 00:22:33.920 --> 00:22:39.920 And, you know, you probably sip it slowly because, you know, you've got to make it last, and there's this boring lecture on economics, 211 00:22:39.920 --> 00:22:42.920 and, you know, God forbid you run out of orange juice, you're in trouble. 212 00:22:42.920 --> 00:22:45.920 So it lasts pretty long. You drink it slowly. 213 00:22:45.920 --> 00:22:53.920 The second scenario, I'll give you one big, fat, big swimming pool worth of orange juice and long straws so you can all dip into it. 214 00:22:53.920 --> 00:23:01.920 And now, you're going to slip until your head comes off, because if you don't, the guy next to you is going to grab your share. 215 00:23:01.920 --> 00:23:07.920 Do you see the point? In the case of buffalo, it's like a common orange juice. You've just got to slip it up quickly. 216 00:23:07.920 --> 00:23:14.920 You've got to kill those buffalo quickly, even if you only use their tongue, because if you don't, somebody else is going to get them. 217 00:23:14.920 --> 00:23:20.920 Whereas with cows, they're yours. So obviously the answer is to privatize the buffalo. 218 00:23:20.920 --> 00:23:29.920 And elephants are just cows with big ears and a funny nose to continue my biological lesson here. 219 00:23:29.920 --> 00:23:34.920 And I hope I'm not tossed off the stage for this because, you know, a week on biology. 220 00:23:34.920 --> 00:23:41.920 But the key is the tragedy of the commons, which is underlying why the black rhino and the elephant 221 00:23:41.920 --> 00:23:45.920 and these other animals that some of the other speakers mentioned are in such trouble. 222 00:23:45.920 --> 00:23:55.920 And also, as they mentioned, when they are privately owned, then people tend to economize on them. 223 00:23:55.920 --> 00:24:01.920 I just want to end with one last point. See, I'm not really against collectivism. 224 00:24:01.920 --> 00:24:09.920 I'm not really against communism, as in communism. I'm not really against the commons. 225 00:24:09.920 --> 00:24:15.920 I'm not even against socialism. I'm against the coercive versions of those things. 226 00:24:15.920 --> 00:24:22.920 In other words, don't take this Buffalo Cow business to assume or to derive or to imply 227 00:24:22.920 --> 00:24:27.920 that I'm opposing all collectivism or all communalism or all commons. 228 00:24:27.920 --> 00:24:33.920 After all, a partnership is a commons. The key is, is it a voluntary one or is it a coercive one? 229 00:24:33.920 --> 00:24:36.920 And I want to draw something else to illustrate that. 230 00:25:03.920 --> 00:25:14.920 I'm sorry to keep pausing. I should have had this set up so that I can talk from here. 231 00:25:14.920 --> 00:25:18.920 What I'm trying to say is that there's a two-by-two matrix. 232 00:25:18.920 --> 00:25:22.920 On the one hand, we have voluntary actions. On the other hand, we have coercive. 233 00:25:22.920 --> 00:25:29.920 Those would be the columns. And then the rows would be socialism or collectivism or communism or commons or what have you. 234 00:25:29.920 --> 00:25:32.920 And the other would be capitalist or individualism. 235 00:25:32.920 --> 00:25:39.920 To me, it's not a debate between socialism and capitalism, rather it's a debate between voluntary action and coercive action. 236 00:25:39.920 --> 00:25:50.920 Because, let's give an example of a voluntary socialist commune. What are the examples? The commune, the kibbutz, the monastery. 237 00:25:50.920 --> 00:25:57.920 The American family lives according to the Marxian notion of from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs. 238 00:25:57.920 --> 00:26:03.920 There's a mother and a father and a three-year-old daughter. Does she eat in accordance with 239 00:26:03.920 --> 00:26:09.800 her ability to earn income? No. She earns in accordance with her needs, which is the 240 00:26:09.800 --> 00:26:15.920 Marxist notion of socialism. Perfectly good thing as long as it's done voluntarily. A 241 00:26:15.920 --> 00:26:22.880 club, a partnership, a business partnership, these were all voluntary socialist institutions 242 00:26:22.880 --> 00:26:24.840 and there's nothing wrong with them. 243 00:26:24.840 --> 00:26:29.880 On the other hand, you have the coercive socialism, which is Cuba, North Korea, the good old 244 00:26:29.880 --> 00:26:33.400 USSR, where you have things done on a coercive basis. 245 00:26:33.400 --> 00:26:38.320 So what's wrong with communism of the Soviet variety is not the communism part but the coercive 246 00:26:38.320 --> 00:26:39.320 part of it. 247 00:26:39.320 --> 00:26:42.880 If it was done on a voluntary basis where you can quit any time you wanted, there'd 248 00:26:42.880 --> 00:26:45.320 be nothing wrong with that. 249 00:26:45.320 --> 00:26:50.200 Similarly, voluntary capitalism would be laissez-faire capitalism, that would be the box I've called 250 00:26:50.200 --> 00:26:55.520 C, and D would be fascism or nazism, where you have a veneer of capitalism and a veneer 251 00:26:55.520 --> 00:26:57.800 of private property rights, but the whole thing is coercive. 252 00:26:57.800 --> 00:27:01.280 Okay, I've told you my three stories, I rest my case, take care.