WEBVTT NOTE Regulation 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:24.000 Thank you very much. It's a pleasure to be here. It's great to see people interested in the free market and in Austrian law and regulation and officially government regulation in the economy. How much is enough? I think we'll tackle that. 2 00:00:24.000 --> 00:00:52.000 The first question I think is just a problem in America right now, a problem, a basic problem, mainly that, well one thing is most people feel that they're worse off than they were ten years ago, they feel that their children will be worse off than they are, which is a big change in the American dream, where most people expect to have their children better off than they are, so each generation improves. 3 00:00:52.000 --> 00:01:02.000 And now we're beginning to see that it's sort of sliding down slowly but surely into an abyss of a lack of consumer confidence, as it's called. 4 00:01:02.000 --> 00:01:08.000 Well, isn't that sort of crazy? What's the reason for it? Well, first place, we're going to need recession. 5 00:01:08.000 --> 00:01:12.000 I'm not here to talk about the recession tonight. I'm just an alert. That's really not a topic. 6 00:01:12.000 --> 00:01:18.000 From the top of the recession, and, after all, there always have been recessions. There have been every three, four, ten years or something. 7 00:01:18.000 --> 00:01:22.400 And something else has changed, mainly on top of the recession, in the middle of the recession, 8 00:01:22.400 --> 00:01:28.800 there's also a gradual but substantial slowing down, decline in American living standards. 9 00:01:28.800 --> 00:01:37.440 The average person, the average income is correcting for inflation, correcting for taxes, worse off than they were. 10 00:01:37.440 --> 00:01:44.400 Since 1973, there's been a slow, steady decline in American incomes, living standards. 11 00:01:44.400 --> 00:01:51.400 So, that accounts, of course, for the perception of things are getting worse, good reason for the perception. 12 00:01:51.400 --> 00:01:58.400 And you see various aspects of this. Young people can't afford, when they get married, they can't afford a house anymore. 13 00:01:58.400 --> 00:02:03.400 They used to be able to afford a house. They could afford a house in the 1950s. How come they can't afford it now? 14 00:02:03.400 --> 00:02:08.400 So, it's not just the perception that's off of something going on out there. 15 00:02:08.400 --> 00:02:21.040 One of the responses of the recession and the clients that were, one of the, I think, pretty 16 00:02:21.040 --> 00:02:25.480 honestly feeble response, but at least in the right direction, in the State of the Union 17 00:02:25.480 --> 00:02:33.320 address, President Bush, this January 28th, made a more time on new government regulations. 18 00:02:33.320 --> 00:02:42.080 Originally, I think for 30 days or 60 days, the extended until about August, it might 19 00:02:42.080 --> 00:02:44.680 still be on, I don't really know. 20 00:02:44.680 --> 00:02:50.680 But the interesting thing is that this could consider maybe, how do we get out of the recession? 21 00:02:50.680 --> 00:02:55.200 How can the government get us out of the recession or help get us out of the recession and still 22 00:02:55.200 --> 00:02:58.320 be, still want to intervene in the economy very much? 23 00:02:58.320 --> 00:03:05.520 And one obvious answer, or maybe a more drawing on new regulations, ponder that for a moment, 24 00:03:05.520 --> 00:03:11.880 Vice President Cueto and the Council on Competitiveness, which has done some fairly good work, it's 25 00:03:11.880 --> 00:03:15.520 again sort of peddling, Congress is trying to defund it, they're thinking of it as a 26 00:03:15.520 --> 00:03:20.920 historical thing, they're trying to deregulate it a little bit. 27 00:03:20.920 --> 00:03:24.880 And what the Council on Competitiveness has done since the Bush administration began, 28 00:03:24.880 --> 00:03:32.880 change a hundred federal regulations, a hundred, I don't know how many there are, maybe a hundred thousand regulations. 29 00:03:32.880 --> 00:03:38.880 They managed to change a hundred to save the public an estimated fifteen to twenty billion dollars annually. 30 00:03:38.880 --> 00:03:46.880 Ponder that, these are tight, this is like a frothing on the cake, this is like the tip of the iceberg. 31 00:03:46.880 --> 00:03:52.880 And there are tens of thousands of federal regulations, old ones as well as new ones, 32 00:03:52.880 --> 00:04:00.880 and a little bit, changing a little bit can save the public $20 billion. How much could they save? They could eliminate a whole bowl of wax. 33 00:04:01.880 --> 00:04:03.880 The whole shebang. 34 00:04:04.880 --> 00:04:11.880 There were two bills in Congress, I presume they didn't pass. I really haven't been following the political scenes too depressing the last couple of weeks. 35 00:04:11.880 --> 00:04:15.880 I haven't followed the latest Congress left back home. 36 00:04:15.880 --> 00:04:22.880 The Nichols-Reed bill, which would require an economic impact statement, an unemployment 37 00:04:22.880 --> 00:04:28.880 impact statement, for all new federal regulations, how many people are still out of work, how 38 00:04:28.880 --> 00:04:34.880 much would it cost, how little would it suffer, and this of course did not pass. 39 00:04:34.880 --> 00:04:38.880 But the thing is, what about the old regulation, what about the hundreds of thousands of old 40 00:04:38.880 --> 00:04:42.880 regulations around the books, how about their economic impact and employment impact, how 41 00:04:42.880 --> 00:04:54.880 There is also the Hatch-Cumbas bill, which would require a three-year cap on the total cost of federal regulations. 42 00:04:54.880 --> 00:05:08.880 The idea is, if any new regulations come in, any increase in the cost of the economy or the business of new regulations should be offset by reducing federal regulatory costs somewhere else. 43 00:05:08.880 --> 00:05:18.880 This is worth in half either. What are we dealing with here? We're dealing with a monstrous, parasitic burden on the economic system, that's what we're dealing with. 44 00:05:18.880 --> 00:05:29.880 And just a little bit shuffling here and a little bit of reduction could mean 20 billion dollars, you can imagine what would happen. I would say the whole thing was eliminated. 45 00:05:29.880 --> 00:05:36.580 So we have, I think this is one big reason, or two, I think big reasons for the decline 46 00:05:36.580 --> 00:05:37.580 of living standards. 47 00:05:37.580 --> 00:05:43.720 One of them, tremendous increase in the tax burden, federal, state and local, which keeps 48 00:05:43.720 --> 00:05:51.240 siphoning off private savings and private income to government boondoggles, number one. 49 00:05:51.240 --> 00:05:55.680 Number two, tremendous increase in cost of federal regulation and government, state and 50 00:05:55.680 --> 00:05:56.680 local regulation. 51 00:05:56.680 --> 00:06:02.680 Regulations keep increasing. As they increase, they burden the economic system. 52 00:06:02.680 --> 00:06:11.680 So what the, one thing a regulation does, it sort of, it sort of hits the consumer five ways, like four or five ways, I took it off the other day. 53 00:06:11.680 --> 00:06:18.680 One thing is the regulation increases costs, obviously, in regulation on businesses, lowers the productivity of the economy. 54 00:06:18.680 --> 00:06:25.680 You can't do this because you have to do that, you have to fill out this form there, that sort of thing. 55 00:06:25.680 --> 00:06:31.680 lowers the competitiveness of business abroad so he can't compete with the Japan, Germany, or whatever 56 00:06:31.680 --> 00:06:38.680 and causes a decline in living standards for everybody. That's of course what we see anyway, decline in living standards. 57 00:06:38.680 --> 00:06:46.680 And there's a myth among many people, many businessmen, that if you increase the cost of business either by a tax or by regulation, 58 00:06:46.680 --> 00:06:52.680 they just pass it on to the consumer, sort of like passing you the check, you know, the waiter gives you the check. 59 00:06:52.680 --> 00:06:59.680 That's not the way it works. That in itself would be bad enough if the consumer loaded on the extra cost. 60 00:06:59.680 --> 00:07:04.680 But it doesn't work that way. You can't just pass on the cost to the consumer, because there's competition. 61 00:07:04.680 --> 00:07:08.680 And there's competition abroad, there's competition in other firms. 62 00:07:08.680 --> 00:07:13.680 So what happens, the way the increased cost gets passed on to the consumer is not that easy. 63 00:07:13.680 --> 00:07:21.680 What happens is, firms go out of business, they make losses, and supply of goods goes down, and prices then go up. 64 00:07:21.680 --> 00:07:33.680 So what the costs get passed on in a manner such that businesses get hurt and consumers get hurt, everybody gets hurt, not exactly everybody, this will be the exception in a minute. 65 00:07:33.680 --> 00:07:45.680 So when costs increase and regulations increase, when taxes on business increase, it hurts businesses, it puts them out of business, it suffers severe losses, it hurts savings and it also hurts the consumer. 66 00:07:45.680 --> 00:07:51.680 and the consumer, this production goes down in what it would have been before the course of regulation was imposed. 67 00:07:51.680 --> 00:07:58.680 But there are, as I said, some groups that benefit, but not everybody loses. 68 00:07:58.680 --> 00:08:03.680 Because the interesting thing is, if everybody lost by government regulation, why are they still having them? 69 00:08:03.680 --> 00:08:10.680 You would think that people would eventually get wiser in the situation and eventually see, 70 00:08:10.680 --> 00:08:35.960 The first place, people who advocate regulations do not say, I want the regulation in order 71 00:08:35.960 --> 00:08:44.960 I want a regulation because I want to have a monopoly or I want to restrict entry into my occupation or my business. 72 00:08:44.960 --> 00:08:50.960 If they said that, they wouldn't get very far and wouldn't fly a little bit away. 73 00:08:50.960 --> 00:08:55.960 So I'll give you a couple of examples in a minute. 74 00:08:55.960 --> 00:09:02.960 Crazy regulation, I was talking in my class, in a lecture in my class the other night about regulations 75 00:09:02.960 --> 00:09:19.960 And they all popped out, they were all paid, they were all really adult students, and they were entrepreneurs and small businessmen and they were examples of a crazy regulation that went on and on and it was very interesting because they knew about the biggest situation in California or whatever. 76 00:09:19.960 --> 00:09:30.960 Well, one thing that happens, like who benefits? First they impose a regulation, even if the regulation is innocuous, even just filling out forms, let's say, forgetting about the content of the regulation for a minute. 77 00:09:30.960 --> 00:09:37.960 You fill out forms. Government means filling out forms. Government means two things. Filling out forms and standing in line. 78 00:09:37.960 --> 00:09:40.960 That's the essence of government. 79 00:09:40.960 --> 00:09:47.960 So, when you fill out forms, the small business gets hurt more. You have just the same number of forms, more or less. 80 00:09:47.960 --> 00:09:53.960 Small business gets hurt much more than big business. If you're a gentleman voter, you can hire an apartment of form fillers. 81 00:09:53.960 --> 00:09:59.960 They don't care that much. If you have a small businessman with four or five employees, you can hire full-time form fillers. 82 00:09:59.960 --> 00:10:12.960 The impact of regulation is tremendously disproportionate on small business. Small business gets crippled, gets put out of business, and so big business competitors realize that that's dumb. 83 00:10:12.960 --> 00:10:21.960 Realize that any kind of fixed cost, imposition of fixed cost or more or less fixed cost will cripple their competitors. 84 00:10:21.960 --> 00:10:26.960 The way businesses get big in the United States, mostly, is by growing. 85 00:10:26.960 --> 00:10:32.960 You start small, like Polaroid Corporation, you start very small, you grow into a giant corporation, 86 00:10:32.960 --> 00:10:34.960 if you're efficient at satisfying consumers. 87 00:10:34.960 --> 00:10:39.960 Well, if you're crippled from the very beginning, you have regulations, 85 regulations, 88 00:10:39.960 --> 00:10:42.960 that can fill out before they get started, and never grow. 89 00:10:42.960 --> 00:10:47.960 And so the big businesses are content, these young upstarts won't come on and have to pee us, 90 00:11:17.960 --> 00:11:29.960 By the way, Tourbo, a great French economist of the 18th century, was sort of a pre-Austrian type and a wonderful section which could have been written on an attack on Ralph Nader in the 1760s. 91 00:11:29.960 --> 00:11:36.960 The same sort of junk was going on then and going on now, except they didn't really say it was benefiting the consumer then. 92 00:11:36.960 --> 00:11:39.960 Propaganda has gotten slicker. 93 00:11:39.960 --> 00:11:47.960 He points out that the regulation is allegedly designed to protect consumers and roll them to sleep. 94 00:11:47.960 --> 00:11:55.960 In other words, the consumer doesn't have to exercise his or her smarts to figure out which doctor to go to, which contract or whatever. 95 00:11:55.960 --> 00:12:01.960 The government is a promoter. It's a licensed contractor. It's a licensed doctor. Everyone must be good. 96 00:12:01.960 --> 00:12:09.120 And so, the government, by putting the informator of the government on each of these occupations, each of these businesses, 97 00:12:09.120 --> 00:12:15.520 we can leave the argument of the consumer's learning balance going on and picking the best people. 98 00:12:15.520 --> 00:12:26.520 So, instead of helping the consumer, government regulation weakens them and cripples them in their own learning process, their own competition. 99 00:12:26.520 --> 00:12:32.520 As I said, there are several examples of this. I'm sure all of you can document this even more. 100 00:12:32.520 --> 00:12:41.520 My brother-in-law, for example, is a photographer in rural Virginia. 101 00:12:41.520 --> 00:12:45.520 He's a good photographer. That's not his profession. He's a printer. 102 00:12:45.520 --> 00:12:54.520 But he can't become a full-time photographer. He doesn't want to get a photographer's license. 103 00:12:54.520 --> 00:13:01.520 Because it costs too much. In other words, you have this fixed cost, but I don't know whether it's hundreds of dollars for either of the licenses. 104 00:13:01.520 --> 00:13:10.520 You want to be a part-time photographer, you can't do it because of the license, of course, the licensing situation is in the hands of the occupation of the business. 105 00:13:10.520 --> 00:13:17.520 I suppose the Virginia Board of Photographers, whatever, issues licenses. 106 00:13:17.520 --> 00:13:23.520 And what do you have to do? You have to pay a lot of money and to be a quote, good moral character, unquote. 107 00:13:23.520 --> 00:13:47.520 I don't know what privileges photographers become judges of immoral character, methodists and preachers or whatever, but at any rate, the essence of it is he can't because it costs too much for him to do it, he still engages in illegal photography, but he can't advertise on the paper, he can't be in the yellow pages, which of course cuts the scope of his market and his income. 108 00:13:47.520 --> 00:14:08.520 That's not a terrible thing, my brother doesn't look at this anyway, but the point is, he could be doing a good service for the public, he could be competing with a license for biographers, and they can't do it because of this cartel situation, the whole country is cartelized, business groups getting, squeezing out possible competitors or actual competitors. 109 00:14:08.520 --> 00:14:27.520 One of my students said that he was a plumber in California, in the Los Angeles area, and he couldn't become a plumber, but he had 130 different license requirements in different jurisdictions, which of course squeezes out plumbing. 110 00:14:27.520 --> 00:14:35.520 It's not that you don't know plumbing, the whole project is a plumbing school, a special plumbing school in Los Angeles or whatever. 111 00:14:35.520 --> 00:14:47.520 Another example I got from a lady who owned 4 or 5 beauty schools, hairdressers, beauty parlors in California, decided to retire in Nevada. 112 00:14:47.520 --> 00:14:51.520 Nevada is fairly entrepreneurial compared to many other states. 113 00:14:51.520 --> 00:14:58.520 Retired in Nevada owned one beauty salon. She couldn't do it because she had to go to a beauty school for five years or something in Nevada. 114 00:14:58.520 --> 00:15:02.520 Apparently hairdressing is different in Nevada than in California. 115 00:15:02.520 --> 00:15:20.520 These regulations are long and hard. One of my pet peeves, this is true, I think of every taxi, every city in the country, is a taxi monopoly of an unbelievable sort. 116 00:15:20.520 --> 00:15:33.520 In New York City, where I was born and raised, I lived most of my life, there were 22,000 taxis on the streets in the 1920s and it was a booming period in the left. 117 00:15:33.520 --> 00:15:43.520 In the 1930s, the big depression, of course, one thing is if you're poor, you don't drive right on the taxis very much, the taxis didn't decline. 118 00:15:43.520 --> 00:16:13.520 and it went down from 22,000 to about 11,000, something like, I used to know the exact number, 11,171, in 1934, 1936, in one period, they had a taxi industry in New York, those were the city governments, and we need help, and it's okay, and before that, before 1934, in order to be able to own and drive a taxi, you have to have a driver's license, you have to have a car, okay, and that's it, and they had to go get a license for 10 bucks, 119 00:16:13.520 --> 00:16:18.520 and the Actee Commission down in City Hall, and for $10 you get your license, that's it. 120 00:16:18.520 --> 00:16:24.520 You pay the cost of the car, the cost of the money you have to drive, and the $10. 121 00:16:24.520 --> 00:16:31.520 Well, the license, from since 1934 until the present day, the city of New York has not issued one single new license. 122 00:16:31.520 --> 00:16:36.520 That's it. Licenses were frozen forever, apparently, in 1934. 123 00:16:36.520 --> 00:16:46.520 So there, how do you buy a cab? You only buy a cab, you have to buy the license for somebody who's willing to get out of the cab business. 124 00:16:46.520 --> 00:16:52.520 A license which originally was ten bucks and now something like a hundred and sixty thousand dollars. 125 00:16:52.520 --> 00:16:57.520 And this, for a squeeze of that, pushes the supply curve of the economy to the left. 126 00:16:57.520 --> 00:17:02.520 It means the supply of cabs is tremendously restricted, the price goes up, you can't find cabs in New York. 127 00:17:02.520 --> 00:17:12.520 You can't find a rush hour, you can't find it when it's raining, you can't find it when there's a baseball game going on, you can't find it when you want to go to Brooklyn, you want to go to places they don't like, and so you have to. 128 00:17:12.520 --> 00:17:23.520 And as a result of this, by the way, you have black markets and camps, you have crazy illegal camps, illegal camps, gypsy camps, crazy gypsy camps, the whole insane structure, all due to cartelization. 129 00:17:23.520 --> 00:17:30.520 And this is, I think, and I found out in Las Vegas, which I'd say is fairly free-market oriented, locally, 130 00:17:30.520 --> 00:17:34.760 there are 2,000 cab licenses and that's it. It hasn't been having increases for 10 years, 131 00:17:34.760 --> 00:17:41.280 with all of the cities booming, a population of 17% per year increase, plus all the tourists. 132 00:17:41.280 --> 00:17:47.160 So the number of cabs is severely restricted, therefore it's pretty difficult to get a cab. 133 00:17:47.160 --> 00:17:53.440 Anyway, this goes on and on, and I'm sure you don't multiply examples of this. 134 00:17:53.440 --> 00:18:03.440 So, and this brings us to another key point here, who, in addition to who benefits, the cartelists benefit, 135 00:18:03.440 --> 00:18:11.440 and a whole group of regulators, what Irving Kristol calls a new class, the new class benefits, 136 00:18:11.440 --> 00:18:17.440 the guys who do the regulating, the guys who fill out the forms, the audience that fill out the forms, 137 00:18:17.440 --> 00:18:24.640 The counselors, technocrats, engineers, planners, city planners, and pharabists, 138 00:18:24.640 --> 00:18:29.440 I'm trying to leave out the pharabists, the brainwashers, they don't like this whole set up, 139 00:18:29.440 --> 00:18:32.640 send you to sensitivity training, okay? 140 00:18:32.640 --> 00:18:38.440 All this whole crew of people who are multiplying like locusts, they benefit, 141 00:18:38.440 --> 00:18:44.440 they're not what we have, but we have a whole system, we have a productive sector, 142 00:18:44.440 --> 00:18:55.440 The private sector, which I call the productive sector, which is actually producing business services and leeching off them are the public sector, bureaucrats, politicians, all the rest of them. 143 00:18:55.440 --> 00:19:04.440 And so, and you have a tremendous increase in the public sector and decrease in the private sector, but people leave the private sector and go to the parasitic sector. 144 00:19:04.440 --> 00:19:09.440 And what's the result? In the long run, the social forces, that's for the host and the parasite. 145 00:19:09.440 --> 00:19:37.440 And more on those who have nothing but communism. He had a communist system in Russia and Eastern Europe. Supposedly impregnable, totalitarian, brainwashing everybody, almost everybody is now managing classrooms, nobody is doing any producing, and suddenly bingo, opening collapses. Of course everything is chaotic. So I hope we don't have to reach that point when the whole system dies out. 146 00:19:37.440 --> 00:19:53.440 If we wake up in time, we presumably will not reach that point, but the point is, if you have a productive group, you have a parasitic group, and the parasites wax greater and greater and stronger and stronger, 147 00:19:53.440 --> 00:20:16.440 One of the questions is asked of course, what do we do with all these bureaucrats and therapists and planners in the last few millennia and all that stuff? What do we do with them? 148 00:20:16.440 --> 00:20:24.440 My favorite answer to that is about Howard Jarvis, who was the heroic leader of the Proposition 13 movement in California in 1978. 149 00:20:24.440 --> 00:20:31.440 And by the way, if you want to be optimistic, one of you can tend to be optimistic even though it's a gloomy topic, 150 00:20:31.440 --> 00:20:37.440 having to be living in California during that year in 1978 was a heartwarming experience for everybody. 151 00:20:37.440 --> 00:20:43.440 Everybody was attacking this thing versus the crime and property taxes by two-thirds. 152 00:20:43.440 --> 00:20:53.040 Everybody attacked, the entire establishment, economists, PTAs, teachers' unions, government officials, newspapers, big business. 153 00:20:53.040 --> 00:21:02.240 I mean, if you look at the list of unions, if you look at the list of contributors, big contributors to the anti-popular team, every big corporation in California contributed to it. 154 00:21:02.240 --> 00:21:10.440 If you look at the list of businesses that contributed for Proposition 30, you've never heard of them, a little holiday spa, something like that. 155 00:21:10.440 --> 00:21:33.440 This is a blip on the screen. And so everybody was attacking it, and the establishment of the political party, everybody, and the struggling thing was that at the time of the approach for the vote, you could see the swing going, tele-proposition 13, and the establishment was just bananas. 156 00:21:33.440 --> 00:21:43.440 If you pass this, the streets will disappear, the fire farm will disappear, the police will disappear, all local governments die, and you have the ability to die in the street, and there won't be any doctors left. 157 00:21:43.440 --> 00:21:53.440 Total hysteria, and yet it won. It won by a huge percent, maybe 60 percent. It was magnificent. Everybody was against it except the public. The public rose up and passed it. It was just great. 158 00:21:53.440 --> 00:21:58.440 and of course they were trying to get around it and all sorts of finagling, but the thing is that he was a heroic moment, 159 00:21:58.440 --> 00:22:11.440 but the public actually rose up and did something about it, and against the entire establishment blockade, there were two or three economists who signed maybe one of them, one of them signed positions for it, I think that was one of them. 160 00:22:11.440 --> 00:22:19.940 But anyway, that was just a magnificent demonstration. I remember, I spoke at a rally the night before the Proposition 13 vote. 161 00:22:19.940 --> 00:22:27.440 There was a rally in Berkeley somewhere and there was almost nobody there. There was a big baseball park and 50 people there. 162 00:22:27.440 --> 00:22:35.440 I was pretty depressed. There were 50 people. I said, don't worry about it. All people don't go to rallies. They just go and vote. 163 00:22:35.440 --> 00:22:38.440 Sure enough, that's what happened. 164 00:22:38.440 --> 00:22:46.440 So, my favorite answer to the question, what do you do about these people who were thrown out of work? 165 00:22:46.440 --> 00:22:49.440 These bureaucrats and planners and therapists and counselors. 166 00:22:49.440 --> 00:22:59.440 And Howard Jarvis, my favorite answer, he said, well, in that case, all these wonderful people will be set free to find productive jobs in the private sector. 167 00:22:59.440 --> 00:23:02.440 So that, I think is the answer to that. 168 00:23:02.440 --> 00:23:28.440 And I had Yuri Molotov, my favorite Soviet defector, he defected just before the Iron Curtain fell, in the fall of 1989, he was the last, he was one of the top economists in Russia, he sort of took a boat across Sweden or whatever it is, and then fled to the KGB, and just after that, like two weeks later, they opened the borders. 169 00:23:28.440 --> 00:23:33.440 At any rate, he said, well, what do you do with all these people? 170 00:23:33.440 --> 00:23:36.440 He said, well, what do you do with KGB? 171 00:23:36.440 --> 00:23:38.440 There's a couple million KGB people in Russia, ex-KGB. 172 00:23:38.440 --> 00:23:39.440 What do you do? 173 00:23:39.440 --> 00:23:41.440 Well, they make good private guards. 174 00:23:41.440 --> 00:23:42.440 You know, things like that. 175 00:23:42.440 --> 00:23:47.440 Security, checking security in the factory. 176 00:23:47.440 --> 00:23:50.440 So, some kind of related skill. 177 00:23:50.440 --> 00:23:53.440 I don't know if that's what it is. 178 00:23:53.440 --> 00:24:23.440 So, I think the answer to the question must be how much regulation is too much, the whole pool of lack should be limited, how fast you do it, well first of all how fast can you do it, we're trying to practice, we have no magic button, we can push it away, but I would push the button, there, that's my temperament, all the people might want to give it a couple of weeks, 179 00:24:23.440 --> 00:24:35.440 The basic answer I think is pretty clear. Get rid of it. Get rid of this stuff. The more you get rid of it, the better. 180 00:24:35.440 --> 00:24:42.440 The more you can start paring away with this tremendous network of crippling regulations, the better. 181 00:24:42.440 --> 00:24:46.440 And nobody ever talks about it. I mean, the media doesn't talk about it, of course. 182 00:24:46.440 --> 00:24:51.440 And we understand that if they hear about regulation, they're also supposed to be for their benefit. 183 00:24:51.440 --> 00:25:02.440 You can't get a photographer in a part-time photographer's room in rural Virginia because you're being protected in some obscure fashion. 184 00:25:02.440 --> 00:25:08.440 But I think we need, of course, a lot of education for the public to realize what's going on. 185 00:25:08.440 --> 00:25:38.440 The public is sound in all of this. They've been conned. They've been conned because, and one of the reasons they've been conned, one of the reasons they've gotten away with, is the media and the intellectual elite, not just the cultural elite, but the intellectual elite, academics, all the columnists, all of the rest of it, network news programs, all these people are part of the new class. They are the same group. So naturally they have their affinities in the class. They have the same ideas. 186 00:25:38.440 --> 00:25:43.440 And that's why we don't hear about it, the media curtain or filter about it, through which 187 00:25:43.440 --> 00:25:47.440 all these things will have to pass before it gets to the general public. 188 00:25:47.440 --> 00:25:51.440 What can be done about that? I'm not quite sure. I'm not ready for suggestions. 189 00:25:51.440 --> 00:25:53.440 None about the media. 190 00:25:53.440 --> 00:25:56.440 At any rate, I haven't gotten the answer to all questions. 191 00:25:56.440 --> 00:25:59.440 The answer to regulation questions, abolish them. 192 00:25:59.440 --> 00:26:01.440 How do we know about it? 193 00:26:01.440 --> 00:26:03.440 It's like the whole of us. 194 00:26:03.440 --> 00:26:05.440 Thank you very much. 195 00:26:08.440 --> 00:26:18.440 We'd now like to open the floor to any questions that anybody has for Dr. Rothbard. 196 00:26:18.440 --> 00:26:24.440 We'll entertain a few minutes of questions and I have a few closing comments. 197 00:26:24.440 --> 00:26:31.440 Also, Dr. Rothbard has graciously consented to stay around for a little while afterward, 198 00:26:31.440 --> 00:26:35.440 in case some people had mentioned to me about autographing books and things like this, 199 00:26:35.440 --> 00:26:43.440 I have one, but before I ask it, I wanted to tell you I was in the last one. 200 00:26:43.440 --> 00:27:12.440 I have one, but before I ask it, I wanted to tell you, I was in the last month and the salmon fisherman I met either said that his license to fish for salmon cost $40,000 or it wasn't worth $40,000. 201 00:27:12.440 --> 00:27:18.440 was worth $40,000 and I remember that in conjunction with what I said. 202 00:27:18.440 --> 00:27:22.440 A question is a part of regulation. 203 00:27:22.440 --> 00:27:28.440 How is the deadliest of our society going to work itself out? 204 00:27:28.440 --> 00:27:32.440 Public debt. Public or private? 205 00:27:32.440 --> 00:27:38.440 Private debt is a person, that's a separate topic, separate lecture topic. 206 00:27:38.440 --> 00:28:07.440 The private debt is being washed out in a sense by the recession, private debt. What happened was that during the 1980s, very much like the 1920s, the bank credit expansion fueled the Federal Reserve System, poured in expanded bank credit and led to cheap credit, led to over malinvestments, bad investments, lousy loans, loans to shopping malls in Texas that don't exist and things like that, and we're paying the price for that. 207 00:28:07.440 --> 00:28:17.440 So corporations and individuals got sucked into debt and banks because of the Federal Reserve system fueling this, pumping more credit and more money into the system. 208 00:28:17.440 --> 00:28:26.440 It's being watched now by the recession, by restricting their income, by having to pay back. 209 00:28:26.440 --> 00:28:36.440 Unfortunately, the debt has not been paid off as much as you'd think because even though corporations and individuals are going down with debt, paying it off, 210 00:28:36.440 --> 00:28:45.440 Their assets are going down faster. Many corporations, especially those with real estate, their assets are deflating faster than paying off the debt. 211 00:28:45.440 --> 00:28:51.440 So the ratio of debt to assets is going up. That's why I think it's going to take a long time to get out of the recession. 212 00:28:51.440 --> 00:28:59.440 Already a long time. Anyway, the price of the private debt can be counteracted by this kind of price, by simply the natural forces of the market. 213 00:28:59.440 --> 00:29:08.440 The government can print money, but we can't. The government can print money to pay off their debts, but we can't. So we have to tighten our belts. 214 00:29:08.440 --> 00:29:16.440 One of the reasons, by the way, why the Federal Reserve is driving down interest rates and not working is because people don't want to borrow anymore. They want to pay off their existing debt. 215 00:29:16.440 --> 00:29:25.440 So it's not going to work. It's not going to hike the horse until that is paid off. All it's doing now is stimulating the banks, purchasing government bonds. 216 00:29:25.440 --> 00:29:32.560 So the public debt is much more difficult, but the public debt is unproductive, at least 217 00:29:32.560 --> 00:29:36.600 private debt goes into something, maybe shopping malls that don't exist, the government debt 218 00:29:36.600 --> 00:29:45.040 goes into Zippo, it's just dissipated, and it's first piled up tremendously, and for 219 00:29:45.040 --> 00:29:50.360 the government, they don't have to, either we pay off their debt, be it the tax payer, 220 00:29:50.360 --> 00:29:56.360 Or they print money in an inflated debtor way, which is what the Germans did in 1923. 221 00:29:56.360 --> 00:29:59.360 Either way it's a terrible situation. 222 00:29:59.360 --> 00:30:06.360 There's no magic elixir for the public debt. 223 00:30:06.360 --> 00:30:09.360 I think the public debt is very important, but it's worse. 224 00:30:09.360 --> 00:30:13.360 There's one thing worse than the public debt, and that's increasing taxes to try to pay it off. 225 00:30:13.360 --> 00:30:16.360 Increasing taxes make the recession even worse. 226 00:30:16.360 --> 00:30:30.360 The way, of course, for anybody to pay off their debt, to cut expenditures, the way for the government to pay off their debt or reduce it, is to stop spending, cut their expenses. 227 00:30:30.360 --> 00:30:40.360 My favorite, by the way, my favorite budget proposal, people ask me, where would you cut? It was massive, what's the current government budget? 1.3 trillion or something? 228 00:30:40.360 --> 00:31:10.360 My favorite answer is, look, take any past year you're interested in. Be very moderate about it. It's a long shocker we've got. Let's take the last Carter year, free-spending Carter, $50 billion deficit, have about $500 billion expenditure. Let's go back to that. Let's pass a law, and from now on, no federal agency can spend any more than they did in 1979, 1980, period. If it's a new agency, they can't spend anything. 229 00:31:10.360 --> 00:31:24.360 It's pretty simple. I mean, I think if people were out starving in the streets in 1980, in fairly good shape, no worse shape than we are now, let's do that. Let's start with that. Then we have a big surplus. We could pay off a lot of the debt. We could cut taxes. 230 00:31:24.360 --> 00:31:38.360 That's the way to do it. The idea is drastic cuts in government spending. Just go back, instead of having to wrangle with various bureaucrats who come to this agency and that, just go back to 1980. It's the only 1980-spirited reason. I would prefer going back to 1780. 231 00:31:38.360 --> 00:31:44.360 That's too extreme. What about the 1980s? Start small. 232 00:31:44.360 --> 00:31:50.360 That's a big problem. The only way I can see is to do with cut slash government spending. 233 00:31:50.360 --> 00:31:53.360 That's for those of us who advocate the free market concept. 234 00:31:53.360 --> 00:31:55.360 And you're the question, what about monopolies? 235 00:31:55.360 --> 00:31:58.360 If you have no regulation, then a monopoly won't necessarily happen. 236 00:31:58.360 --> 00:32:00.360 That's a common question. 237 00:32:00.360 --> 00:32:02.360 Okay, exactly. I think I've already answered. 238 00:32:02.360 --> 00:32:04.360 Monopolies are created by the government. 239 00:32:04.360 --> 00:32:15.360 The government creates the license of plumbers, license of photographers, the government sets up cartels, creates special contracts. 240 00:32:15.360 --> 00:32:25.360 I mean, the regulatory commission, for example, the interstate commerce commission, is set up allegedly to help, because railroad freight rates are going up too high, 241 00:32:25.360 --> 00:32:31.360 and therefore we need a government to keep them low in the public interest, to make sure the big business monopoly doesn't hurt the consumer. 242 00:32:31.360 --> 00:33:01.360 The actual reason for it was just the opposite, actually what was happening before the ICC came in 1887, freight rates were going down all the time, railways were the best way to have a cartel and raise the, cut production and cut shipments and raise the rates they couldn't do in the free market, they turned to the government to do it, the ICC was a creature of the railroad basically to try to cartelize the system, to do what Bismarck did in Germany, you can't lower, you have to keep the rates up, you can't lower it, you can't increase your shipments, 243 00:33:01.360 --> 00:33:31.360 It happened like we had an NRA officially, it was time to have a cartel, but they couldn't get away with it, they couldn't tell the public what we have to have a cartel in order to raise freight rates, they said we're doing it in order to curb big business monopolies, that was a big shell game, which was then repeated in every major legislation system, the rest of the era, the New Deal was more or less the same thing, the New Deal was more stuff that comes into the picture, basically the same sort of thing. Just for example, when I was before, I forget now when I came, the Hurl? 244 00:33:31.360 --> 00:33:35.360 Brandeis, one of the most revered figures of the 20th century American intellectuals. 245 00:33:35.360 --> 00:33:42.360 His official biographer, the title of his book was The Fighter for Freedom, who was Brandeis. 246 00:33:42.360 --> 00:33:44.360 It's sort of a value neutral term. 247 00:33:44.360 --> 00:33:51.360 This guy was supposed to be a great believer in free competition, but he actually was a believer in retail store monopoly. 248 00:33:51.360 --> 00:33:55.360 He hated the consumer, he called him a consumer of evil and traitorous. 249 00:33:55.360 --> 00:33:58.360 He left one retail store and went to another retail store. 250 00:33:58.360 --> 00:34:10.360 He was the father of the resale price maintenance of the so-called Fair Trade Act, which meant that the retail association could set a minimum price and nobody would get discounted on a penalty of going to jail. 251 00:34:10.360 --> 00:34:22.360 This existed until the 1960s, I think, when Masters and a court of that broke it. They had a constitutional fight. It went to the Supreme Court. 252 00:34:22.360 --> 00:34:26.360 The Supreme Court said it was unconstitutional and was restricting this restraint of trade, which indeed it was. 253 00:34:26.360 --> 00:34:38.360 So the point is that these are minimum price controls, which are imposed, cartelized by the government, in the name of helping out freedom and free competition and all that. 254 00:34:38.360 --> 00:34:44.360 So government doesn't do anything to promote competition, it doesn't create monopolies of its favorite people. 255 00:34:44.360 --> 00:34:51.360 Most of the anti-trust suits now are by one corporation trying to shaft the other one who is better at free market competition. 256 00:34:51.360 --> 00:35:04.360 What about the cable debate going on right now? 257 00:35:21.360 --> 00:35:30.860 We regulate the prices of the leaves that are not laid intact, just the opposite, should not regulate prices and allow free competition in cable. 258 00:35:30.860 --> 00:35:38.860 Most of the whole finer optic thing, I don't know much about, allows the telephones to engage in cable and that sort of stuff. 259 00:35:38.860 --> 00:35:41.360 So the laws are still being restricted. 260 00:35:41.360 --> 00:35:50.860 By the way, my friend of mine is a big politician, political campaign person in Tucson for many years. 261 00:35:50.860 --> 00:36:02.860 And he told me a great story about the, you know, mobile cable franchises are one of the big rackets in the country, because you're fighting for the monopoly franchise. Who gets it? Which global machine gets it? 262 00:36:02.860 --> 00:36:10.860 The guy who owns the franchise in Vegas has been on a long time, I shouldn't say mafia, because it's not supposed to exist, but he's on a mafioso type. 263 00:36:10.860 --> 00:36:23.860 At any rate, in Tucson, there were five or seven people in the city council, and there was a battle between two possible people franchisees who would get the franchise. 264 00:36:23.860 --> 00:36:26.860 One city councilman suggested a secret ballot. 265 00:36:26.860 --> 00:36:31.860 He said, what do you mean secret ballot? Secret ballot is not national security or the state one. You can't have a secret ballot. 266 00:36:31.860 --> 00:36:40.860 It turns out this guy was in the pay of both companies, and he didn't want either company to find out which of them he betrayed. 267 00:36:40.860 --> 00:36:46.860 George Washington Plunkett, the famous family philosopher back in the late 19th century, 268 00:36:46.860 --> 00:36:52.860 George Washington Plunkett said, his definition of an honest politician is somebody who stays bought. 269 00:36:52.860 --> 00:37:08.860 Dr. Rothbard, are there any doable solutions to the health care crisis we're in and the cost of it? 270 00:37:22.860 --> 00:37:35.860 If you see a problem, then you have a two million dollar commission or something, and then you ask the Rockefeller Foundation to investigate the problem, and then you suggest the government have a massive program to combat it. 271 00:37:35.860 --> 00:37:42.860 Government has a massive program, at the end of the massive program, the problem is still there, if not worse, and two or three other problems have been created. 272 00:37:42.860 --> 00:37:48.860 And then of course the government steps in and creates another problem, you can wind up with social, you can have a cumulative intervention. 273 00:37:48.860 --> 00:37:56.860 That's what's happening in health care. I'm not an expert in health care. The point is, when I was growing up in the 1930s, we were much less affluent than we are now. 274 00:37:56.860 --> 00:38:03.860 Nobody was worrying about affordable health care. Everybody was going to afford their doctor and their hospital and everything else. 275 00:38:03.860 --> 00:38:12.860 As a matter of fact, my family physician charged two bucks for an office visit and three bucks for a home visit. 276 00:38:12.860 --> 00:38:18.860 What's home to that? So, those of you under 60, you know, have never heard of this. 277 00:38:18.860 --> 00:38:23.860 And the point is that the poor people went to clinics, and they were treated three by the doctor. 278 00:38:23.860 --> 00:38:26.860 Well, no problem with health insurance, no problem with affordable care. 279 00:38:26.860 --> 00:38:31.860 This, of course, is beyond correcting her inflation. She was great. 280 00:38:31.860 --> 00:38:34.860 And then it starts third-party health insurance and Medicare and the like. 281 00:38:34.860 --> 00:38:38.860 We wind up with huge medical costs, which most people can't afford, 282 00:38:38.860 --> 00:38:47.860 I'm going to go forward and then I'm going to try and have that socialized medicine all together because we have a third party medical insurance which I have, the man curve goes up to infinity almost. 283 00:38:47.860 --> 00:38:55.860 In other words, if you say, I have a government, I have Medicare, I will pay any doctor a bill, the bill will go skyrocket. 284 00:38:55.860 --> 00:39:05.860 As a matter of fact, a friend of mine, his wife had an operation and he gets the bill and he says, what is this? It's not going to be so big. 285 00:39:05.860 --> 00:39:10.860 And he says, don't worry about it. Well, if the insurance doesn't pay, it will cut us down about the little temps. 286 00:39:10.860 --> 00:39:17.860 The point is, the insurance, the taxpayer provides the unlimited demand and then they start yapping about it. 287 00:39:17.860 --> 00:39:21.860 Of course, it's not affordable. Then they start talking about putting a cap on it. 288 00:39:21.860 --> 00:39:46.560 The whole thing is a total absolute mess. The only way to get out of this and eliminate the entire government of invention of medicine is really the only way, can't you do it slowly and do it fairly fast, get it out, and doctors tell me it's getting worse all the time, government regulation is getting worse, all the rest of it, it's inevitable, once you've subsidized medicine then you're going to start regulating it. 289 00:39:46.560 --> 00:40:00.560 By the way, I was calling a minute, I remember in 1950, when leftists were in favor of Federal-Aid Education says, and the Conservatives said, no, no, you have Federal-Aid, you'll be controlled over public school education. 290 00:40:00.560 --> 00:40:04.560 And leftists said, I don't know if that would be controlled, we promised, we guaranteed it would be Federal-Aid, but no control. 291 00:40:04.560 --> 00:40:12.560 And now it was, everybody's been brainwashed all the time. So, that's typical. 292 00:40:12.560 --> 00:40:18.560 Would you comment on the Michael Milken jump line situation that occurred? 293 00:40:42.560 --> 00:40:55.560 And as a result, we have interesting corporations. One of the weapons of stockholders is to get rid of the management. 294 00:40:55.560 --> 00:41:00.560 What happens is, takeover bids come in. And the old days, you have a quiet takeover bid. 295 00:41:00.560 --> 00:41:09.560 I want to take over this corporation. I talk to my buddies, and suddenly I announce, November the 5th, I announce, OK, I've got 51% of the stockholders meeting. 296 00:41:09.560 --> 00:41:27.560 The old line corporations didn't like that, essentially the Guadalajara and Royal Empire, the Eastern Seaboard, they didn't like it. 297 00:41:27.560 --> 00:41:34.560 So they got Senator Williams, who was a deeply beloved figure, I don't know if anybody here remembers Senator Harris and Williams, known for having New Jersey. 298 00:41:34.560 --> 00:42:04.560 I used to read this expression, I don't know if it wasn't, I must be mad at kids, for one or two years I actually subscribed to this expression every day, and William was the most beloved person about him in the New York Times, in the arts county, he was getting money for the arts, and NEH, before the NEH, all that sort of stuff, sort of premature NEH type, and he passed the law, he gets the law passed, you can't do this anymore, you can't just have it take over, when you want to take over 299 00:42:04.560 --> 00:42:11.560 You have to stop at 5% and announce it, and then wait on like 60 or 90 days before you do anything else. 300 00:42:11.560 --> 00:42:20.560 Of course this means you alert everybody, like everybody, female, black male, whatever it is, and they stop and the whole officer jurors come in, the best is what's going to happen, 301 00:42:20.560 --> 00:42:25.560 and then it's more or less stopped to take over as coal from the Williams Act. 302 00:42:25.560 --> 00:42:39.560 And that's when in 1970 Michael Milken, a person of financial genius, decided to get around the banks, to get around the Williams Bank by financing takeovers to high yield bonds, some of the junk bonds related to their enemies. 303 00:42:39.560 --> 00:42:46.560 I mean it's like Cadillacs pulling volumetric junk, you know, it's higher risk and they have a very high interest. 304 00:42:46.560 --> 00:42:53.560 So at any rate, so Milken did get around the Rockefeller establishment types and was able to take finance takeover, which they hated. 305 00:42:53.560 --> 00:42:59.560 and then they use the Bush Administrators to tie it in a law that follows to what was fashion. 306 00:42:59.560 --> 00:43:05.560 Some of the jail comes up charges for violating two of the SEC regulations, nobody knows anyway. 307 00:43:05.560 --> 00:43:11.560 Talking about regulation, beautiful way of, these are chicken regulations nobody cares about, they're not crimes. 308 00:43:11.560 --> 00:43:17.560 And yet, the anti-average person is really depressing, the anti-average person on the street. 309 00:43:17.560 --> 00:43:24.560 I, by the way, this thing on TV, I hate more than anything else than asking the guy on the street, what do you think it looks like, George? 310 00:43:24.560 --> 00:43:30.560 So, what do you think of this? What do you think of Michael Mugger? They should swallow away their keys, the one I'm up to right now. 311 00:43:30.560 --> 00:43:40.560 They have $300 million flying with them and up and 10 years in jail. I mean, mass rapists, mass murderers don't get that. They get a pat on the wrist. 312 00:43:40.560 --> 00:43:49.560 Look at the proportions here, and you see the rotten state of the political system, and that's money, and human is okay. 313 00:43:49.560 --> 00:43:57.560 Our chief economist from one of the large mutual fund groups said a couple of three months ago that no matter who was elected president, 314 00:43:57.560 --> 00:44:07.560 that was before Perot had dropped out that time, that the economic policies were fairly well set and each one of them would follow what the policies were, would you care to comment? 315 00:44:07.560 --> 00:44:13.560 But, the thing is, both parties are Keynesian. The Keynesians are probably a little bit of Keynesians. They're all Keynesians, okay? 316 00:44:13.560 --> 00:44:17.560 There are different nuances of Keynesians. Some of them are a little bit more conservative, some of them are a little bit more liberal. 317 00:44:17.560 --> 00:44:19.560 This doesn't make much difference. 318 00:44:19.560 --> 00:44:23.560 And sort of like, who do you prefer, Erring or Gable? This isn't really young. 319 00:44:23.560 --> 00:44:29.560 So, they're all Keynesians. So, they're all, their whole, their whole view of the world is Keynesian. 320 00:44:29.560 --> 00:44:33.560 So, whichever party gets in, it's true, it'll be about the same. 321 00:44:33.560 --> 00:44:37.560 I kind of think Clinton will be worse, because they're left-wing payments. 322 00:44:37.560 --> 00:44:41.560 So you have more government investment, more taxes, and then we're going to have the Bush thing. 323 00:44:41.560 --> 00:44:45.560 And then we should take the Pembroke. 324 00:44:45.560 --> 00:44:51.560 So you think the less are too evil, you think we're making it worse, it'll get some reaction. 325 00:44:51.560 --> 00:44:55.560 I'm beginning to distrust that, because if you can make it worse, 326 00:44:55.560 --> 00:44:59.560 if you're allowed to get it worse, there is no reaction, it just gets worse. 327 00:44:59.560 --> 00:45:21.560 By the way, when income taxes first passed, people were favoring income taxes, mostly classical liberals, mostly limited-care types, and their argument was, look, if you have income taxes, you visible everybody, there will be lower taxes, because you can't see excise taxes, you can't see sales taxes, therefore, it's the same visible people fight for lower taxes, or the history keeps growing up all the time. 328 00:45:21.560 --> 00:45:48.560 I see your position as being rather aggressive and maybe sometimes when the country seems to be a little deaf to the idea of reducing unnecessary regulation and cost, you have to sort of be a little bit loud to get their attention. 329 00:45:48.560 --> 00:46:08.560 given what I perceive to be a fairly extreme position on your part that you need to peel back all regulation and regulation against being somewhat the details surrounding a law and I don't believe you're proposing that we don't live under law but... 330 00:46:08.560 --> 00:46:29.560 So let's take just a simplistic example, instead of being against regulation for increased cost, which is obvious, or increased government spending, which is obvious, how about to solve the core problem, that is, of misbehavior? 331 00:46:29.560 --> 00:46:44.560 For example, an industry that without regulation might pollute. What would be the solution to their, what would the natural forces be to keep a business or industry or some sort of organization from misbehaving? 332 00:46:44.560 --> 00:46:52.560 Well, the first is laws against fraud, which covers a lot of the, doesn't cover pollution, covers a lot of the other stuff. You don't need extra laws against fraud. 333 00:46:52.560 --> 00:47:20.560 What Happened in the Early Nineteenth Century, Property Rights were Protected by those who 334 00:47:20.560 --> 00:47:50.560 In the 80s and 40s, when locomotives first came in, they were chugging down the field, they were pouring smoke out, it was obvious what the pollution was, it was destroying the crops of the farmers, the farmers took the railroads to court, and the judges, instead of defending the property rights of the farmers, said as follows, look, we know what's interfering with the property rights of the farmers, 335 00:47:50.560 --> 00:47:54.560 It's too bad, but something higher than the property rights is public policy. 336 00:47:54.560 --> 00:48:01.560 We've known that before. Public policy is a man we have in the industrial lines, we have railroads, and therefore in us, the EU. 337 00:48:01.560 --> 00:48:13.560 Basically, they're slightly more legalese. In other words, the courts then systematically, from the 1930s on, favored riding roughshod and pollution over property owners. 338 00:48:13.560 --> 00:48:18.560 So when you do that, you're going to get, if you allow that for a hundred years, you're going to get a polluting technology. 339 00:48:18.560 --> 00:48:24.960 In other words, of course the Soviet Union and the major Polish communist government are tremendous polluters. 340 00:48:24.960 --> 00:48:27.560 They were the government. There's nothing that's checked for them. 341 00:48:27.560 --> 00:48:36.460 But one of the examples I'd like to give is, supposing you have a house and a lawn and you're on a corner of a lot, 342 00:48:36.460 --> 00:48:41.760 and the trucks start crossing your lawn in order to avoid the traffic tie-up. 343 00:48:41.760 --> 00:48:45.760 If you take the guy in court and say, look, you're on a judge, you can't cross-bind the law. 344 00:48:45.760 --> 00:48:51.760 And the court says, look, traffic is more important than you're finally buying a lawn, so we'll allow the trucks to do it. 345 00:48:51.760 --> 00:48:56.760 We're going to give them light up a hundred years with no lawns and lots of trucks crossing everything. 346 00:48:56.760 --> 00:49:01.760 So the problem is not technology, the problem is not capitalism, the problem is the government has not enforced property rights, 347 00:49:01.760 --> 00:49:03.760 but they're supposed to be doing it. 348 00:49:03.760 --> 00:49:07.760 And that's the exact thing, the point, the pollution point. 349 00:49:07.760 --> 00:49:14.760 Also, the point is to privatize. Now, the way to make sure the rivers don't get polluted is to privatize the rivers. 350 00:49:14.760 --> 00:49:19.760 Make sure the owner of the river makes sure he doesn't get polluted. That's the point. 351 00:49:19.760 --> 00:49:21.760 Thank you. Thank you.