WEBVTT NOTE Scott Horton Interviews Walter Block 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:14.000 I'm always talking about my idea for a new political realignment in America, where the libertarians are the real moderate center, and my next guess is the proof of that. 2 00:00:14.000 --> 00:00:21.000 That the libertarians are the real political center in America. It's the eminently moderate Walter Block. 3 00:00:21.000 --> 00:00:26.320 Walter Block is a professor of economics at Loyola University, a scholar at the Ludwig 4 00:00:26.320 --> 00:00:32.600 von Mises Institute, and is the author of Defending the Undefendable, The Pimp, Prostitute, 5 00:00:32.600 --> 00:00:39.080 Scab, Slumlord, Libeler, Money Lender, and Other Scapegoats in the Rogues Gallery of 6 00:00:39.080 --> 00:00:40.520 American Society. 7 00:00:40.520 --> 00:00:41.520 Welcome to the show, Walter. 8 00:00:41.520 --> 00:00:42.520 How are you, sir? 9 00:00:42.520 --> 00:00:43.520 Pretty good. 10 00:00:43.520 --> 00:00:45.920 They don't call me Walter, Moderate Block, for nothing. 11 00:00:45.920 --> 00:00:49.360 Yes, well, so you are a moderate, right? 12 00:00:49.360 --> 00:00:50.360 They do call you that, right? 13 00:00:50.360 --> 00:00:55.120 I'm a moderate libertarian. 14 00:00:55.120 --> 00:00:57.960 You think we should abolish the state yesterday or what? 15 00:00:57.960 --> 00:00:59.440 Today will be fine. 16 00:00:59.440 --> 00:01:02.000 You see, that's my moderation. 17 00:01:02.000 --> 00:01:03.800 I'll even take tomorrow. 18 00:01:03.800 --> 00:01:04.800 You'll even take tomorrow? 19 00:01:04.800 --> 00:01:06.200 So that is a pretty moderate position. 20 00:01:06.200 --> 00:01:14.520 Yes, I don't insist on today, unlike some of my rabid colleagues. 21 00:01:14.520 --> 00:01:16.520 But you do favor abolishing the state? 22 00:01:16.520 --> 00:01:17.520 Of course. 23 00:01:17.520 --> 00:01:18.520 They're a criminal gang. 24 00:01:18.520 --> 00:01:30.520 The Criminal Gang. But, all right, basic basics, right? Never mind welfare statism, never mind the regulatory state, never mind even criminal justice for the moment. 25 00:01:30.520 --> 00:01:47.520 What about national defense, Walter Block, because don't we have to have at least enough government to prevent some other government from somewhere else coming and replacing it and making us all its subjects in an even less libertarian situation than we have now? 26 00:01:47.520 --> 00:01:52.960 Well, I admit that if all we take over is a country the size of Lichtenstein and every 27 00:01:52.960 --> 00:01:59.240 other status country hates us and wants to conquer us, there's not much chance for us. 28 00:01:59.240 --> 00:02:04.160 On the other hand, you have to uphold with ceteris paribus in economics where other things 29 00:02:04.160 --> 00:02:05.160 equal. 30 00:02:05.160 --> 00:02:11.760 In other words, the question should be, is anti-statism or non-statism a good idea? 31 00:02:11.760 --> 00:02:19.760 If it is, if you posit that 99.9% of the world hates us and ask are we going to survive, well the answer is no. 32 00:02:19.760 --> 00:02:26.760 But if you ask if another Lichtenstein or a status Lichtenstein sized country could take us over, 33 00:02:26.760 --> 00:02:33.760 the answer is pretty much no because freer is richer. The freer you are, the richer you are. 34 00:02:33.760 --> 00:02:38.760 There's a lot of empirical work that shows that and certainly it's just common sense. 35 00:02:38.760 --> 00:02:42.920 The more you rely on free enterprise, the more wealthy you get? 36 00:02:42.920 --> 00:02:48.320 Well, if we, the free enterprise anarchist Lichtenstein, were facing someone our own size 37 00:02:48.320 --> 00:02:53.360 who wasn't as free as we, we'd be richer than them, and that's, presumably, better able 38 00:02:53.360 --> 00:02:58.200 to take care of ourselves than them, and not only richer, but we'd have more creativity, 39 00:02:58.200 --> 00:03:02.600 more entrepreneurship, more innovation. 40 00:03:02.600 --> 00:03:08.360 So I think that it's sort of a bogeyman to say, well, you know, some other country will 41 00:03:08.360 --> 00:03:19.120 I think there's even more to be said on this, and that is, if you're really worried about 42 00:03:19.120 --> 00:03:23.880 other countries taking us over, then what you really are implying is that we need a 43 00:03:23.880 --> 00:03:26.360 world government to protect ourselves. 44 00:03:26.360 --> 00:03:30.720 Right now, the U.S. is in a state of anarchy with regard to France, the world government 45 00:03:30.720 --> 00:03:32.120 above both of them. 46 00:03:32.120 --> 00:03:37.360 We assume that the U.S. is not a world government yet, although they're working on that. 47 00:03:37.360 --> 00:03:40.920 Brazil and China are in a state of anarchy with each other 48 00:03:40.920 --> 00:03:45.200 Canada and Australia are in a state of anarchy with each other 49 00:03:45.200 --> 00:03:49.160 So if we really have to fear that, then we should have a world government, but 50 00:03:49.160 --> 00:03:52.660 there are problems with the world government. If we had one, you know, there's no place to run. 51 00:03:52.660 --> 00:03:57.240 I mean, Mars and the Moon are not inhabitable, at least right now. 52 00:03:57.240 --> 00:04:00.340 Well, as moderate as you are, sir, 53 00:04:00.340 --> 00:04:04.240 I think most people probably by default would say, yeah, but throughout history 54 00:04:04.240 --> 00:04:10.920 You've always got a monopoly on the military power for a certain land mass. 55 00:04:10.920 --> 00:04:15.160 You can't just have a free market competition in national defense, can you? 56 00:04:15.160 --> 00:04:17.040 Well, I don't see why you can't. 57 00:04:17.040 --> 00:04:20.440 We don't have a monopoly, at least in the world sense, in the sense that we have many 58 00:04:20.440 --> 00:04:27.000 different countries, all of whom are in a state of anarchy with regard to each other. 59 00:04:27.000 --> 00:04:31.080 As I said, if you really don't like that, then you're favoring the world government. 60 00:04:31.080 --> 00:04:34.120 Logically speaking, that's the implication. 61 00:04:34.120 --> 00:04:36.920 People will balk at world government. 62 00:04:36.920 --> 00:04:44.240 And in any case, there's a whole series of books, court-trois, I'm not sure I'm pronouncing 63 00:04:44.240 --> 00:04:52.040 it right, that show that most murders in the last century were done by governments. 64 00:04:52.040 --> 00:04:56.600 And I'm not talking about wars where they fight with each other, I'm just talking about 65 00:04:56.600 --> 00:04:58.200 internal killings. 66 00:04:58.200 --> 00:05:01.760 Most killings are done by governments of their own people. 67 00:05:01.760 --> 00:05:10.840 So if you're really worried about other people killing us, the main enemy is government. 68 00:05:10.840 --> 00:05:14.120 You know, I wonder what the statistics are for America now. 69 00:05:14.120 --> 00:05:19.000 I mean, I think the last time I heard there were 12,000-something murders, but I don't 70 00:05:19.000 --> 00:05:23.560 know if that counts, you know, cops killing people, or, you know, how those numbers break 71 00:05:23.560 --> 00:05:25.320 down in the U.S. right now. 72 00:05:25.320 --> 00:05:26.320 What do you think? 73 00:05:26.320 --> 00:05:28.320 Well, there's lots more than 12,000. 74 00:05:28.320 --> 00:05:36.760 My most recent book is Highway and Road Privatization, and some 40,000 people die on our highways, 75 00:05:36.760 --> 00:05:42.000 our socialist road system, and if you count that as murders, and I'm sort of inclined 76 00:05:42.000 --> 00:05:47.680 to do so because, you know, we have road socialism, we don't have private competing road owners 77 00:05:47.680 --> 00:05:54.680 who would vastly reduce the death rates, so if you add that in, you get a lot more. 78 00:05:54.680 --> 00:06:01.040 And, you know, when private person A kills private person B, the government is supposedly 79 00:06:01.040 --> 00:06:06.560 to protect private person B against private person A, and if the government is not protecting 80 00:06:06.560 --> 00:06:13.480 them, if the government is too busy putting victimless criminals in jail, such as those 81 00:06:13.480 --> 00:06:20.880 who sell drugs or sex to adults, and they're too busy doing those things when they're supposed 82 00:06:20.880 --> 00:06:33.400 Now, of course, we've had Waco, where the government explicitly killed people, but not too many. 83 00:06:33.400 --> 00:06:41.800 And this is a point that Murray Rothbard has made, that you can't infer domestic killing 84 00:06:41.800 --> 00:06:43.440 from foreign killing. 85 00:06:43.440 --> 00:06:49.200 Namely, some countries are very good on domestic killing, and the U.S. is pretty good. 86 00:06:49.200 --> 00:06:53.840 It doesn't kill too many people, Waco is an aberration with only 100 or so people whereas 87 00:06:53.840 --> 00:06:57.280 other countries kill their own citizens much more. 88 00:06:57.280 --> 00:07:00.400 But you can infer that since the country is pretty good domestically, it's going to be 89 00:07:00.400 --> 00:07:06.600 good in foreign policy, and the U.S. is probably the worst one right now in foreign policy. 90 00:07:06.600 --> 00:07:12.040 I think the U.S. government has, what is it, some 800 foreign military bases in about 130 91 00:07:12.040 --> 00:07:13.040 different countries? 92 00:07:13.040 --> 00:07:14.040 Almost. 93 00:07:14.040 --> 00:07:16.080 Ron Paul has been talking about this. 94 00:07:16.080 --> 00:07:19.080 No other country has got anything like that. 95 00:07:19.080 --> 00:07:24.080 I mean, at one time Russia had something in Cuba and we got very upset about that. 96 00:07:24.080 --> 00:07:26.080 Imagine how the other people feel. 97 00:07:26.080 --> 00:07:34.080 Imagine if China or Brazil had soldiers in 800 foreign military bases in 130 different countries, including the U.S. 98 00:07:34.080 --> 00:07:38.080 Walter, I'm talking with Walter Block from the Ludwig von Mises Institute. 99 00:07:38.080 --> 00:07:42.080 Do you have any friends from Switzerland, like personal friends that you talk with? 100 00:07:42.080 --> 00:07:46.080 Not on a regular basis, no. 101 00:08:12.080 --> 00:08:14.960 Capital Punishment. 102 00:08:14.960 --> 00:08:17.420 The government of Switzerland is not a bunch of murderers. 103 00:08:17.420 --> 00:08:20.720 It's actually all right, you know? 104 00:08:20.720 --> 00:08:26.840 I think that you probably hear that argument about other countries in Europe, too. 105 00:08:26.840 --> 00:08:31.280 I guess people don't usually cite Germany or whatever, but they'll cite Denmark or Belgium 106 00:08:31.280 --> 00:08:34.920 or something and say, you know, here are countries that aren't liars and murderers. 107 00:08:34.920 --> 00:08:39.800 All they do is provide services to their people all the time and not fight wars and they're 108 00:08:39.800 --> 00:08:40.800 great. 109 00:08:40.800 --> 00:08:43.200 I would ask, great, compared to what? 110 00:08:43.200 --> 00:08:49.000 I mean, yes, the Swiss and the Belgians are peace-loving people and they're very efficient 111 00:08:49.000 --> 00:08:54.280 and they save money and they work hard and they're entrepreneurial, but, and they're 112 00:08:54.280 --> 00:09:00.440 doing pretty well compared to other countries that have bigger states or worse states, but 113 00:09:00.440 --> 00:09:04.520 you have to ask, well, how would you compare if they didn't have any welfare or they didn't 114 00:09:04.520 --> 00:09:09.080 have public roads which kill people even in Switzerland? 115 00:09:09.080 --> 00:09:16.960 We know that the welfare system undermines the family, it's true in Scandinavian countries 116 00:09:16.960 --> 00:09:23.720 like Sweden, which is also a peace-loving, pretty prosperous country, but the point is 117 00:09:23.720 --> 00:09:25.720 they would be much better off without government. 118 00:09:25.720 --> 00:09:29.560 In other words, they're pretty good in spite of the government, not because of the government. 119 00:09:29.560 --> 00:09:31.560 They have pretty good government. 120 00:09:31.560 --> 00:09:38.280 One of my books is a rating economic freedom across different countries, and Switzerland 121 00:09:38.280 --> 00:09:43.760 Switzerland and Australia and New Zealand and other such countries are pretty high up on 122 00:09:43.760 --> 00:09:49.680 the list. They are among the freest countries, at least economically speaking. But that doesn't 123 00:09:49.680 --> 00:09:55.600 show that a freer Switzerland wouldn't be a better Switzerland, just because our present 124 00:09:55.600 --> 00:10:00.200 unfree Switzerland is pretty good compared to other countries, as your friend says. It 125 00:10:00.200 --> 00:10:04.560 doesn't prove what she really wants to prove, namely that it's because of the government. 126 00:10:04.560 --> 00:10:08.960 could be in spite of the government, and my claim is indeed that it is in spite of the 127 00:10:08.960 --> 00:10:11.080 government, not because of it. 128 00:10:11.080 --> 00:10:17.960 Well, and so, but if she says actually though, because the government has control of the 129 00:10:17.960 --> 00:10:22.360 education system, they make sure that everybody in Switzerland, rich or poor, all of them, 130 00:10:22.360 --> 00:10:26.980 get just as good an education as each other, and it's really good. 131 00:10:26.980 --> 00:10:30.720 And it's not based on how much money your parents make, it's based on how much every 132 00:10:30.720 --> 00:10:33.360 child deserves to have a good education. 133 00:10:33.360 --> 00:10:39.360 Well, I don't know, it doesn't seem to me that every child deserves to have a good education anymore. 134 00:10:39.360 --> 00:10:49.360 It seems that, and this is my moderate position here, I think every child deserves what their parents give it. 135 00:10:49.360 --> 00:10:55.360 And if their parents don't think education is that important, or don't want their kids to be educated, 136 00:10:55.360 --> 00:11:01.360 I mean, there are Mennonites, and who are those people that drive around in horses in this country? 137 00:11:01.360 --> 00:11:09.480 The Pennsylvania Dutch, the Amish, they keep their kids out of school in the 8th grade. 138 00:11:09.480 --> 00:11:13.120 Now I don't know if there are any Amish in Switzerland, but if there are, those people 139 00:11:13.120 --> 00:11:17.240 should have the right not to have their kids have an equal education or a lot of education 140 00:11:17.240 --> 00:11:18.240 or whatever. 141 00:11:18.240 --> 00:11:20.720 What is this education business? 142 00:11:20.720 --> 00:11:25.040 Why should we force people to have more education than they want? 143 00:11:25.040 --> 00:11:29.600 And why doesn't everyone in Switzerland have a Ph.D. if we want to maximize education or 144 00:11:29.600 --> 00:11:30.600 two Ph.D.s? 145 00:11:30.600 --> 00:11:37.120 There are diminishing returns on education too, and everyone should have as much as they 146 00:11:37.120 --> 00:11:41.480 want, not a lot or an equal amount of what the government dictates. 147 00:11:41.480 --> 00:11:48.040 Alright, now let me change gears a little bit here to some environmental concerns. 148 00:11:48.040 --> 00:11:52.640 Now, I'm not much into believing whatever it is everybody seems to believe, you know, 149 00:11:52.640 --> 00:11:53.640 in the majority. 150 00:11:53.640 --> 00:11:54.760 It seems like they're always usually wrong. 151 00:11:54.760 --> 00:11:58.800 So when everybody's all full of hype about the global warming, I tend to dismiss it because 152 00:11:58.800 --> 00:12:04.640 I categorize myself as not really qualified to figure out the science, you know, so I just, eh. 153 00:12:04.640 --> 00:12:09.840 However, there's an environmental concern. There are a lot of legitimate environmental concerns. 154 00:12:09.840 --> 00:12:14.640 One of them that I think is the most important is something that's really shocking to me, at least 155 00:12:14.640 --> 00:12:19.120 from the article that I read the other day about this new documentary that's coming out, 156 00:12:19.120 --> 00:12:25.520 about the overfishing. And basically, here's what they describe. This is how they got me shocked, 157 00:12:25.520 --> 00:12:32.800 Walter they said imagine the landmass of Africa and imagine taking a giant you know set of 158 00:12:32.800 --> 00:12:39.080 nets and and going from the southern tip all the way up to the Sahara Desert and catching 159 00:12:39.080 --> 00:12:43.520 every bit of wildlife in there just to pick out the few zebras and whatever that you want 160 00:12:43.520 --> 00:12:47.920 and throwing the rest all the way dead that that is basically what is happening now in 161 00:12:47.920 --> 00:12:54.920 the oceans that the the industrial technology of fishing is such that they are just completely 162 00:12:54.920 --> 00:13:24.920 Depleting the Ocean. They're breaking down the very chain of life on this planet. They're destroying ecosystems. They've got places where they finally freaked out and banned fishing, and the fish haven't come back. In 10 and 15 and 20 years, the fish have not come back. They were depleted past the point of coming back again. This article is really scaring me. This is basically describing the food chain as 163 00:13:24.920 --> 00:13:54.760 I agree with this assessment, it is pretty horrible what they are doing. 164 00:13:54.760 --> 00:13:59.640 What they do, not to free enterprise, is to do the absence of free enterprise. 165 00:13:59.640 --> 00:14:04.040 You see, what you need for free enterprise is private property rights. 166 00:14:04.040 --> 00:14:07.200 And you know, we don't have to go to the oceans. 167 00:14:07.200 --> 00:14:09.600 We had the similar situation with the buffalo. 168 00:14:09.600 --> 00:14:13.440 The buffalo almost went extinct because you weren't allowed to own buffalo. 169 00:14:13.440 --> 00:14:18.960 Whereas the cow never came within a million miles of extinction, even though the cow and 170 00:14:18.960 --> 00:14:23.280 the buffalo are roughly similar, you know, they're about the same size and they give 171 00:14:53.280 --> 00:14:59.520 All right, well, now please elaborate further for our audience because I know, I mean, seriously, 172 00:14:59.520 --> 00:15:03.840 liberal, imagine a liberal in the audience saying, yeah, right, turn the oceans over 173 00:15:03.840 --> 00:15:06.800 to the corporations, that'll fix everything. 174 00:15:06.800 --> 00:15:08.640 That's the pressure you're under here, Walter. 175 00:15:08.640 --> 00:15:11.520 Yes, well, I think it doesn't have to be corporations. 176 00:15:11.520 --> 00:15:16.520 It could be private entrepreneurs, single entrepreneurs, partnerships, or corporations. 177 00:15:16.520 --> 00:15:21.840 Any individual private company that can make money or lose money based on how well they 178 00:15:21.840 --> 00:15:35.720 The Tragedy of Common is that if we own things in common that are coercively not under partnerships, 179 00:15:35.720 --> 00:15:38.440 we tend to overuse them. 180 00:15:38.440 --> 00:15:45.160 The example I sometimes offer my classes is, if I give each of them a can of soda and then 181 00:15:45.160 --> 00:15:50.760 a straw and then I monitor the rate at which they sip the soda, it won't be too fast. 182 00:15:50.760 --> 00:15:55.600 They won't slurp it all down quickly because they know that if they don't slurp it now, 183 00:15:55.600 --> 00:15:58.400 they can slurp it in five minutes or so. 184 00:15:58.400 --> 00:16:03.200 But if I give them one big bowl of soda or orange juice or whatever it is I'm giving 185 00:16:03.200 --> 00:16:09.080 them in long straws, then they're going to slurp to bust a gut because if they relax, 186 00:16:09.080 --> 00:16:11.600 someone else will get their share. 187 00:16:11.600 --> 00:16:15.840 So when you have that sort of a thing, you tend to overuse or use it quickly. 188 00:16:15.840 --> 00:16:19.500 It's very similar to the buffalo which weren't owned. 189 00:16:19.500 --> 00:16:23.340 Why let this buffalo get away? Because if you let it get away, someone else will get it. 190 00:16:23.340 --> 00:16:27.420 Whereas if it's a cow and you let it go away, you can have it tomorrow. 191 00:16:27.420 --> 00:16:29.300 Where's the buffalo? You can't. 192 00:16:29.300 --> 00:16:33.700 So whenever you have this tragedy of the commons, as in the oceans, 193 00:16:33.700 --> 00:16:35.780 people tend to over-fish. 194 00:16:35.780 --> 00:16:42.100 Why should I leave this cod or this whale or whatever 195 00:16:42.100 --> 00:16:45.380 for other people? Because then they'll get it and I won't. I'll lose. 196 00:16:45.380 --> 00:16:49.460 It's true that if everyone acts that way, we won't have any more cod or whales or whatever 197 00:16:49.460 --> 00:16:54.980 it is, the zebras, but that's not my concern, my concern is to maximize profits. 198 00:16:54.980 --> 00:17:01.980 So if you're maximizing profits under a tragedy of the commons as we have in the oceans, then 199 00:17:01.980 --> 00:17:08.820 the answer is disaster, and the scenario that you were portraying a few minutes ago about 200 00:17:08.820 --> 00:17:14.300 how just horrible it is, I think is pretty accurate, but the reason for it is that we 201 00:17:14.300 --> 00:17:15.860 We don't have private property rights. 202 00:17:15.860 --> 00:17:18.900 If we had private property rights, it would be like cows. 203 00:17:18.900 --> 00:17:24.700 Yes, corporations run cows, when chickens or whatever, horses, we're not running out 204 00:17:24.700 --> 00:17:25.700 of them. 205 00:17:25.700 --> 00:17:31.300 There's no extinction for things that private people can lose if they run out of. 206 00:17:31.300 --> 00:17:36.100 In fact, it's funny, you think about, you bring up chickens, the problem with the private 207 00:17:36.100 --> 00:17:40.700 property owners and their chicken industry is they cram too many chickens into too small 208 00:17:40.700 --> 00:17:42.940 of a space rather than the other way around. 209 00:17:42.940 --> 00:17:52.460 the problem surely isn't that what happened all the chickens there are plenty of chickens 210 00:17:52.460 --> 00:17:57.700 are too many for per square foot right it's sort of like in free enterprise the big problem 211 00:17:57.700 --> 00:18:03.220 for the poor is not starvation but obesity was the problem in North Korea they'd like 212 00:18:03.220 --> 00:18:08.060 to have a little obesity up there yeah but they're starving and that's what happened 213 00:18:08.060 --> 00:18:13.500 under the Soviet Union. So yes, obesity is a problem and maybe cramming too many chickens 214 00:18:13.500 --> 00:18:18.700 into too small a space is a problem, but we're not talking about that now. That deserves its 215 00:18:18.700 --> 00:18:23.540 own discussion. What we're now talking about is running out of stuff, like running out 216 00:18:23.540 --> 00:18:29.980 of fish. And when private enterprise runs it, we don't run out of things. We don't 217 00:18:29.980 --> 00:18:36.500 run out of pigs, horses, cows, barnyard animals. And take the elephant and the rhinoceros in 218 00:18:36.500 --> 00:18:37.500 in Africa. 219 00:18:37.500 --> 00:18:42.220 We were running out of those too because you had tragedy of the commons on the land. 220 00:18:42.220 --> 00:18:48.140 I mean, an elephant is just a big whale with bigger feet. 221 00:18:48.140 --> 00:18:50.580 Yeah, a big land whale. 222 00:18:50.580 --> 00:18:54.420 There's not really much of a way to make money off them except for killing them and taking 223 00:18:54.420 --> 00:18:55.420 their tusks away. 224 00:18:55.420 --> 00:18:59.180 Well, if you do that, that's because you don't own them. 225 00:18:59.180 --> 00:19:02.340 A farmer will never kill a pregnant cow. 226 00:19:02.340 --> 00:19:06.460 They kill old cows, they'll kill bulls because you don't need as many bulls as cows. 227 00:19:06.460 --> 00:19:07.940 It's the same thing with elephants. 228 00:19:07.940 --> 00:19:13.140 If they're farmed in big farmyards with big fences, and big, I mean, you can't keep an 229 00:19:13.140 --> 00:19:14.460 elephant in a little barn. 230 00:19:14.460 --> 00:19:20.940 You have to let them roam around, but if the farmer protects them, he might allow somebody 231 00:19:20.940 --> 00:19:26.380 to shoot an old bull elephant for their tusk, but then they'll also take advantage of the 232 00:19:26.380 --> 00:19:32.180 meat in the hide, and it'll be rationalized, whereas when it's not, when you have this 233 00:19:32.180 --> 00:19:36.620 The tragedy of the commons on the land, as with the rhinoceros or the elephant, well 234 00:19:36.620 --> 00:19:42.140 then you have these poachers who will shoot the beast and just get their tusk and if it's 235 00:19:42.140 --> 00:19:45.420 a pregnant cow, it doesn't matter, you kill it anyway. 236 00:19:45.420 --> 00:19:48.300 Well, of course we're going to run out of elephants. 237 00:19:48.300 --> 00:19:51.420 So it's the same thing whether it's on the land or the ocean. 238 00:19:51.420 --> 00:19:53.180 The answer to both is to privatize. 239 00:19:53.180 --> 00:19:57.540 Well, you know, they say, I guess this was a Ludwig von Mises said, that the middle of 240 00:19:57.540 --> 00:19:59.220 the road leads to socialism. 241 00:19:59.220 --> 00:20:04.580 Well, I don't want that crack to be aimed at me as a moderate here, and I'm only kidding 242 00:20:04.580 --> 00:20:05.580 about moderate. 243 00:20:05.580 --> 00:20:10.900 Obviously, my views are pretty extreme in terms of what most people believe in. 244 00:20:10.900 --> 00:20:13.580 Yeah, but you say it all so calmly, though. 245 00:20:13.580 --> 00:20:17.860 Oh, well, okay, I'm moderating demeanor. 246 00:20:17.860 --> 00:20:18.860 But Mises is right. 247 00:20:18.860 --> 00:20:25.140 I mean, you know, it's hard to adhere to a middle ground because each time Obama has 248 00:20:55.140 --> 00:20:59.820 We've got, you know, more than half of them probably rely on eating fish to stay alive 249 00:20:59.820 --> 00:21:00.820 every day. 250 00:21:00.820 --> 00:21:04.380 You know, we can't have the oceans die on us here. 251 00:21:04.380 --> 00:21:05.380 Somebody's got to do something. 252 00:21:05.380 --> 00:21:10.700 Oh yes, I agree with you that the present system is perhaps the worst of all possible 253 00:21:10.700 --> 00:21:11.700 ones. 254 00:21:11.700 --> 00:21:14.940 A slightly better situation would be what they do. 255 00:21:14.940 --> 00:21:22.060 Sometimes they'll have fishing quotas and they'll have fishing seasons and they'll 256 00:21:22.060 --> 00:21:26.980 to put limits on how much capacity a fishing boat can do in order to preserve the stock, 257 00:21:26.980 --> 00:21:32.100 but a much more sophisticated, much better way is to have private property rights and 258 00:21:32.100 --> 00:21:37.940 to have the Mississippi River Corporation or the Mississippi River Partnership, if you 259 00:21:37.940 --> 00:21:44.940 don't like corporations, own the Mississippi River and have the Atlantic Company own part 260 00:21:45.420 --> 00:21:50.380 of the Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific Company own part of the Pacific Ocean. Look, where 261 00:21:50.380 --> 00:21:55.580 Where would you rather meet me, in Central Park, in New York City, or in Disneyland? 262 00:21:55.580 --> 00:21:57.060 The obvious answer is in Disneyland. 263 00:21:57.060 --> 00:21:58.060 It's much safer. 264 00:21:58.060 --> 00:22:03.740 Well, I'd probably rather meet you in Central Park, but that's a matter of taste. 265 00:22:03.740 --> 00:22:07.340 There's actually security at Disneyland, you're saying, unlike in Central Park. 266 00:22:07.340 --> 00:22:08.500 Right, that's the point. 267 00:22:08.500 --> 00:22:13.300 Well, private enterprise, if you can lose money if something bad happens, it tends to 268 00:22:13.300 --> 00:22:14.300 focus your concentration. 269 00:22:14.300 --> 00:22:19.300 All right, now I'm sorry because we only have four minutes left or something here for what's 270 00:22:19.300 --> 00:22:23.100 That's a pretty big topic, but I want to see if I can get your take on this real quick, 271 00:22:23.100 --> 00:22:27.220 which is on the subject of the oceans, international trade. 272 00:22:27.220 --> 00:22:33.180 I met a very interesting professor who pretty much liked the peace, love and libertarian 273 00:22:33.180 --> 00:22:40.020 program, but he said to me, you know, without the US Navy as the world empire guaranteeing 274 00:22:40.020 --> 00:22:45.980 security on the high seas, all your global division of labor and international trade 275 00:22:45.980 --> 00:22:50.260 and Global Economy, that you say that you guys are not protectionists, that you're for 276 00:22:50.260 --> 00:22:55.100 open friendly relations with all nations and whatever, but without the giant socialist 277 00:22:55.100 --> 00:23:00.180 navy to protect the seas, all of that breaks down, and the libertarian society becomes 278 00:23:00.180 --> 00:23:02.620 an isolationist one by default anyway. 279 00:23:02.620 --> 00:23:08.620 Well, I would trust the private cop more than the public cop, because whether it's Disneyland 280 00:23:08.620 --> 00:23:14.620 versus Central Park in New York City, or whether it's the private navy, look, you know, these, 281 00:23:14.620 --> 00:23:20.460 I was going to say, use a bad word, but these bad people, what they do with the piracy of 282 00:23:20.460 --> 00:23:25.460 these boats now, they forbid those people from having arms on those boats. 283 00:23:25.460 --> 00:23:28.340 So of course they're sitting ducks for the pirates. 284 00:23:28.340 --> 00:23:35.980 Look, who would you trust, an insurance company-private navy, that if they insured a boat and the 285 00:23:35.980 --> 00:23:38.380 boat was lost, they had to pay off? 286 00:23:38.380 --> 00:23:44.460 Or some government navy that if they mess up, and to err is human, we all make mistakes, 287 00:23:44.460 --> 00:23:46.060 And they don't lose a penny. 288 00:23:46.060 --> 00:23:52.820 Again, private cops in Disneyland are better than private cops in Central Park, and private 289 00:23:52.820 --> 00:23:58.300 cops on the ocean, that is, private navies, are more efficient than public navies. 290 00:23:58.300 --> 00:24:03.220 Do you want the people who run the post office to secure your safety? 291 00:24:03.220 --> 00:24:07.700 No, I kind of wish they'd abolish the post office, actually. 292 00:24:07.700 --> 00:24:13.740 Well, then we should abolish public navies and just have private navies who would be 293 00:24:13.740 --> 00:24:18.660 be much more efficient. Private Navy's-insurance companies. This is a point Hans Hoppe makes 294 00:24:18.660 --> 00:24:23.500 about the importance of insurance companies. And if I could leave your audience with one 295 00:24:23.500 --> 00:24:28.860 thing on environmentalism, Murray Rothbard wrote this magnificent thing which is available 296 00:24:28.860 --> 00:24:35.500 on the Mises web, M-I-S-E-S, it's called air pollution. That's the definitive piece on 297 00:24:35.500 --> 00:24:37.820 environmentalism and I recommend that highly. 298 00:24:37.820 --> 00:24:42.820 Well, I'm sorry I didn't really have a chance to spend much time with it, but I did find 299 00:24:42.820 --> 00:24:47.620 this morning, your article, Water Privatization, which is also at Mises.org. 300 00:24:47.620 --> 00:24:53.700 Yes, I certainly favor privatization of oceans, rivers, lakes, whatever. 301 00:24:53.700 --> 00:24:57.780 My motto is, if it moves, privatize it, if it doesn't move, privatize it, and since 302 00:24:57.780 --> 00:25:01.480 everything either moves or doesn't move, privatize everything. 303 00:25:01.480 --> 00:25:05.980 And that's the recipe for a sound, wealthy, prosperous and free society. 304 00:25:05.980 --> 00:25:08.840 All right, everybody, that's Walter Block. 305 00:25:08.840 --> 00:25:11.600 He is a professor at Loyola University. 306 00:25:11.600 --> 00:25:16.560 He's a scholar at the Ludwig von Mises Institute. Again, that's Mises.org. He's the author of 307 00:25:16.560 --> 00:25:24.400 Defending the Undefendable and is the ultimate moderate center in American politics. Thanks 308 00:25:24.400 --> 00:25:26.000 very much for your time on the show today, Walter. 309 00:25:26.000 --> 00:25:27.000 Thanks for having me.