WEBVTT NOTE 44. The Decivilizing Effects of Government 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.360 The Decivilizing Effects of Government 2 00:00:03.360 --> 00:00:09.840 Ah, for the days when the socialists believed in material progress. 3 00:00:09.840 --> 00:00:12.520 That is no longer the case. 4 00:00:12.520 --> 00:00:17.440 Now they propose poverty and advocate government regulations to bring it about, and expect 5 00:00:17.440 --> 00:00:20.640 us to be grateful for it! 6 00:00:20.640 --> 00:00:24.760 Whereas socialism could not actually work to bring about greater productivity, it can 7 00:00:24.760 --> 00:00:29.360 do what the post-materialist socialists desire. 8 00:00:29.360 --> 00:00:34.600 Ludwig means can work to bring about lower standards of living. 9 00:00:34.600 --> 00:00:40.120 In a strange way, this is a betrayal of Karl Marx, whose key complaint about capitalism 10 00:00:40.120 --> 00:00:43.120 was that it failed to uplift the worker. 11 00:00:43.120 --> 00:00:48.480 The modern laborer sinks deeper and deeper below the conditions of existence of his own 12 00:00:48.480 --> 00:00:49.480 class. 13 00:00:49.480 --> 00:00:56.600 He becomes a pauper, and pauperism develops more rapidly than population and wealth. 14 00:00:56.600 --> 00:01:03.680 Men's slogan was, Communism is Soviet power, plus electrification of the whole country! 15 00:01:03.680 --> 00:01:07.840 Measuring the GDP was a source of great pride for countries, as were big innovations in 16 00:01:07.840 --> 00:01:11.480 space travel and military technology. 17 00:01:11.480 --> 00:01:15.800 The same was true with regard to government planning schemes that fell short of full-scale 18 00:01:15.800 --> 00:01:18.480 nationalization. 19 00:01:18.480 --> 00:01:25.160 During the progressive era, the goals of government policy was the material uplift of the population. 20 00:01:25.160 --> 00:01:29.640 The rap on corporate monopolies broken up by Andrew Trust law was that they were a drag 21 00:01:29.640 --> 00:01:33.700 on competition and therefore on economic growth. 22 00:01:33.700 --> 00:01:39.860 The central bank was pushed as an instrument of fueling economic growth and progress. 23 00:01:39.860 --> 00:01:45.280 The New Deal, which was nothing but a manifestation of the prevailing faith in government planning, 24 00:01:45.280 --> 00:01:49.080 sought to improve the material lot of mankind. 25 00:01:49.080 --> 00:01:53.540 The idea of progress was embedded in its ideological structure. 26 00:01:53.540 --> 00:01:57.260 Every rural community was to get roads and electricity. 27 00:01:57.260 --> 00:01:59.980 Farmers were to leave their land and embrace industry. 28 00:01:59.980 --> 00:02:04.020 Our backwards attachment to settled rural life would be revolutionized, and we would 29 00:02:04.020 --> 00:02:09.380 all embrace modern technology brought to us by the state. 30 00:02:09.380 --> 00:02:12.220 Up with poverty. 31 00:02:12.220 --> 00:02:18.380 Somewhere along the way, during the last 50 years, the critique of capitalism changed 32 00:02:18.380 --> 00:02:23.260 from condemning its failure to spread the wealth to condemning the very opposite. 33 00:02:23.260 --> 00:02:29.200 Suddenly, the great sin of capitalism was that it was producing too much, making us 34 00:02:29.200 --> 00:02:34.720 all too materialistic, fuelling economic growth at the expense of other values, spreading 35 00:02:34.720 --> 00:02:40.060 middle-class decadence and generally causing society to be too caught up in productivity 36 00:02:40.060 --> 00:02:44.680 and too focused on the standard of living. 37 00:02:44.680 --> 00:02:49.640 In noting this dramatic change, Murray N. Rothbard writes that the turning point might 38 00:02:49.640 --> 00:02:57.300 have been John Kenneth Goldbraith's 1958 work called The Affluent Society, which is 39 00:02:57.300 --> 00:03:03.640 one long harangue against consumerism, middle-class decadence and the ever-increasing wealth of 40 00:03:03.640 --> 00:03:06.400 the average person under capitalism. 41 00:03:06.400 --> 00:03:10.960 Goldbraith claimed that all of this was coming at the expense of public institutions and public 42 00:03:10.960 --> 00:03:13.840 infrastructure. 43 00:03:13.840 --> 00:03:16.520 This book became a bestseller. 44 00:03:16.520 --> 00:03:21.040 It changed the way the left went about promoting government intervention and critiquing free 45 00:03:21.040 --> 00:03:22.740 markets. 46 00:03:22.740 --> 00:03:27.240 This book was the first of a half-century of similar books that recaptured that Rousseauian 47 00:03:27.240 --> 00:03:33.080 spirit, that penchant to romanticize the world before industrialization, to toy with the 48 00:03:33.080 --> 00:03:37.380 idea that the hunter-gatherer society has a lot going for it. 49 00:03:37.380 --> 00:03:42.480 To imagine we can all live better by trading only at the level of the small tribe and raising 50 00:03:42.480 --> 00:03:53.640 The Romance of Hunting and Gathering The current buzzword to show off this newfound 51 00:03:53.640 --> 00:04:00.640 love of lowering the standard of living and of forced poverty is sustainability. 52 00:04:00.640 --> 00:04:06.360 If you want a definition of sustainability, it is this – rolling back the advances of 53 00:04:06.360 --> 00:04:10.000 civilization by force. 54 00:04:10.000 --> 00:04:16.960 A quick look at the literature reveals hundreds of titles along these lines. 55 00:04:16.960 --> 00:04:23.360 Sustainability by Design, a subversive strategy for transforming our consumer culture. 56 00:04:23.360 --> 00:04:30.720 Sustainability Indicators, Measuring the Immeasurable, Return to Sustainability, 147 Tips for Teaching 57 00:04:30.720 --> 00:04:37.400 Sustainability, Living Green, a practical guide to simple sustainability. 58 00:04:37.400 --> 00:04:42.160 We bridge to the edge of the world, capitalism, the environment, and crossing from crisis 59 00:04:42.160 --> 00:04:44.120 to sustainability. 60 00:04:44.120 --> 00:04:49.040 Sustainability, an amazing picture of what life will soon be like. 61 00:04:49.040 --> 00:04:54.420 Permaculture, principles and pathways beyond sustainability. 62 00:04:54.420 --> 00:04:59.900 Future scenarios, how communities can adapt to peak oil and climate change. 63 00:04:59.900 --> 00:05:05.460 The author of these last two books, David Holmgren of Australia, is an interesting figure. 64 00:05:05.460 --> 00:05:11.640 He is the innovator of this idea that we need to get beyond sustainability. 65 00:05:11.640 --> 00:05:18.260 If you have doubts about sustainability, believe me, you do not want to go beyond it. 66 00:05:18.260 --> 00:05:21.540 I've been watching YouTube interviews with this nice fellow. 67 00:05:21.540 --> 00:05:25.820 He's always sitting outside surrounded by natural landscapes and birdsong, and he has 68 00:05:25.820 --> 00:05:31.140 this spaghetti-like prose style that is sort of captivating. 69 00:05:31.140 --> 00:05:36.900 He takes it as axiomatically true that oil, gas and all forms of modern energy production 70 00:05:36.900 --> 00:05:41.520 are coming to an end, both because fossil fuels are running out and because people will 71 00:05:41.520 --> 00:05:46.880 no longer tolerate a globe that is heating up to intolerable levels due to modernity 72 00:05:46.880 --> 00:05:49.480 itself. 73 00:05:49.480 --> 00:05:52.320 There is no questioning of these basic assumptions. 74 00:05:52.320 --> 00:05:56.560 In one interview, Holmgren makes a passing remark that technology has been on the wrong 75 00:05:56.560 --> 00:06:01.840 on track for the last 500 years. 76 00:06:01.840 --> 00:06:08.000 Now keep in mind that these views are not at all out of the mainstream. 77 00:06:08.000 --> 00:06:12.720 If I interview most of the shoppers at Earthfair Grocery as they rummage around for their free-range 78 00:06:12.720 --> 00:06:18.000 chicken eggs, ear candles and bean sprout sandwiches made with organic mulch bread, I 79 00:06:18.000 --> 00:06:23.400 could find near universal agreement that he is completely correct, such is the ideological 80 00:06:23.400 --> 00:06:26.640 Fashion of Our Time. 81 00:06:26.640 --> 00:06:32.760 In one interview, Holmgren speaks with great optimism about the future of suburbia. 82 00:06:32.760 --> 00:06:38.800 He says that it can be easily retrofitted to adapt to a new world of sustainability. 83 00:06:38.800 --> 00:06:42.680 Remember he says that the asphalt parking lots are great for collecting rainwater to 84 00:06:42.680 --> 00:06:44.000 drink. 85 00:06:44.000 --> 00:06:47.920 Our backyards can be turned into gardens for growing our own food. 86 00:06:47.920 --> 00:06:52.820 Our garages will be otherwise useless since there will be no cars, so this way we can 87 00:06:52.820 --> 00:06:59.200 can turn them into workshops for making crafts like benches and chairs and tables and things. 88 00:06:59.200 --> 00:07:03.140 Of course, there are a few problems with this vision of the world. 89 00:07:03.140 --> 00:07:08.200 There will be no nails with which to make things, because the process of making nails 90 00:07:08.200 --> 00:07:13.860 is an incredibly complicated one, requiring a vast division of labour and the accumulation 91 00:07:13.860 --> 00:07:16.940 and use of capital. 92 00:07:16.940 --> 00:07:21.400 There will be no wood either, unless you chop it down from the backyard, since the wood 93 00:07:21.400 --> 00:07:27.320 Industry as we know it, relies very heavily on power tools, fossil fuel transport and 94 00:07:27.320 --> 00:07:33.800 the division of labor and capital accumulation stretching over many countries. 95 00:07:33.800 --> 00:07:37.940 There is also the problem that people will have to quit their day jobs to do all this 96 00:07:37.940 --> 00:07:42.140 gardening and craft-making, but of course they will not have a choice, since the end 97 00:07:42.140 --> 00:07:44.440 of fossil fuels will lead to mass unemployment. 98 00:07:44.440 --> 00:07:50.060 I'm not sure how he plans to have water collected from asphalt and distributed house 99 00:07:50.060 --> 00:08:07.780 He doesn't seem to understand that his plan is not a romantic vision of a world reconnecting 100 00:08:07.780 --> 00:08:15.680 with nature, but rather a prescription for mass death on an unprecedented scale. 101 00:08:15.680 --> 00:08:21.860 In his idyllic time of 500 years ago, there were only 500 million people alive on the 102 00:08:21.860 --> 00:08:23.660 whole planet. 103 00:08:23.660 --> 00:08:27.460 They didn't live very well. 104 00:08:27.460 --> 00:08:31.560 Today there are nearly 7 billion people alive on the planet, which means he needs to come 105 00:08:31.560 --> 00:08:38.820 up with a way to dispense with the 6.5 billion people who could not be sustained on 500-year-old 106 00:08:38.820 --> 00:08:42.140 technology alone. 107 00:08:42.140 --> 00:08:47.580 Of course, the irony is not lost on us that my viewing of this video is itself a miracle 108 00:08:47.580 --> 00:08:51.860 of modern technology, one that would have been inconceivable even five or ten years 109 00:08:51.860 --> 00:08:52.860 ago. 110 00:08:52.860 --> 00:08:57.460 Furthermore, ten years ago, it would not have been possible for me to purchase his books 111 00:08:57.460 --> 00:09:03.300 by clicking a button on a floating electronic monitor, either downloading them to my electronic 112 00:09:03.300 --> 00:09:10.340 reader in an instant, or having them delivered, in physical form tomorrow, by truck. 113 00:09:10.340 --> 00:09:17.220 So perhaps there is one benefit to his plan, there is no question that once it is implemented, 114 00:09:17.220 --> 00:09:23.860 David Holmgren would no longer be a best-selling author. 115 00:09:23.860 --> 00:09:30.860 Reducing Living Standards by Force It is easy to dismiss these people as fashionable 116 00:09:30.860 --> 00:09:32.660 cranks. 117 00:09:32.660 --> 00:09:38.020 We can regard their views as an understandable reaction of the ideologically restless in 118 00:09:38.020 --> 00:09:41.020 in an Age of Superabundance. 119 00:09:41.020 --> 00:09:45.980 And truly, anyone is free to downgrade his or her standard of living by choice, and even 120 00:09:45.980 --> 00:09:49.460 swear an oath of poverty and stick with it. 121 00:09:49.460 --> 00:09:54.660 But it is a fact that this tendency has had a massive effect on the stated purpose and 122 00:09:54.660 --> 00:10:00.060 cultural effect of government policy in our times. 123 00:10:00.060 --> 00:10:05.680 Let's leave aside the ridiculous claims we've been hearing for two years that somehow government 124 00:10:05.680 --> 00:10:11.340 is going to stimulate the economy by robbing us more, running up massive debts and spending 125 00:10:11.340 --> 00:10:13.840 on anything and everything. 126 00:10:13.840 --> 00:10:17.560 This talk about stimulus is really a departure. 127 00:10:17.560 --> 00:10:23.540 The usual rubric under which government policy is pushed today is precisely the opposite 128 00:10:23.540 --> 00:10:29.880 – to slow down production, to take away conveniences, and to make us more virtuous 129 00:10:29.880 --> 00:10:34.320 by forcing on us a lower standard of living. 130 00:10:34.320 --> 00:10:40.000 This is a prevailing political ethos in our own time, and it is having an effect. 131 00:10:40.000 --> 00:10:46.780 We are constantly being told to cut back, consume less, buy locally, go green, carpool, 132 00:10:46.780 --> 00:10:50.640 and recycle, and save, stop indulging. 133 00:10:50.640 --> 00:10:55.360 To this end, consumer products are constantly being banned, every day. 134 00:10:55.360 --> 00:11:01.600 We have ever fewer choices in the area of medicine, chemicals, food, drink and otherwise 135 00:11:01.600 --> 00:11:26.600 Let us consider, for example, the egregious but ongoing war on the incandescent lightbulb, 136 00:11:26.600 --> 00:11:32.700 The very symbol of the bright idea and the innovation that ushered in civilisation as 137 00:11:32.700 --> 00:11:34.820 we know it. 138 00:11:34.820 --> 00:11:39.940 Our overlords in government have decided that we should no longer use them since they are 139 00:11:39.940 --> 00:11:46.260 inefficient, as if bureaucrats rather than consumers and producers are the ones to decide 140 00:11:46.260 --> 00:11:50.160 what is or is not efficient. 141 00:11:50.160 --> 00:11:54.540 The last factory in the United States that makes these bulbs closed, only last week, 142 00:11:54.540 --> 00:12:00.820 in preparation for the banning of the incandescent bulb in 2014. 143 00:12:00.820 --> 00:12:05.980 Now we are told that fluorescent lighting is just great, because it gives out as much 144 00:12:05.980 --> 00:12:11.260 light, it is better light, and it consumes a fraction of the energy. 145 00:12:11.260 --> 00:12:17.080 If all of that were true, then there would be no reason to use force at all. 146 00:12:17.080 --> 00:12:21.900 The regulators could just stay home and take up other occupations, like gardening in their 147 00:12:21.900 --> 00:12:29.780 The shift from incandescent lighting to fluorescent lighting would be no different from the shift 148 00:12:29.780 --> 00:12:34.820 from the iPhone 3G to 4G or Windows XP to Windows 7. 149 00:12:34.820 --> 00:12:39.780 It would just be something that consumers would accomplish on their own. 150 00:12:39.780 --> 00:12:45.700 We don't need government agencies to tell us to upgrade from Photoshopped CS4 to CS5 151 00:12:45.700 --> 00:12:50.500 or from our old cars to the latest model of the Honda Accord. 152 00:12:50.500 --> 00:12:53.940 Regulates and shifts from product to product, hopefully along the lines of progress, occur 153 00:12:53.940 --> 00:13:01.540 naturally through consumer choice, depending on resource availability and economic priority. 154 00:13:01.540 --> 00:13:05.300 But regulators don't trust human choice. 155 00:13:05.300 --> 00:13:09.960 And I don't think there is any question that if human choice prevailed here, we would not 156 00:13:09.960 --> 00:13:14.260 see the end of incandescent bulbs. 157 00:13:14.260 --> 00:13:19.500 This past holiday season, I was shocked to discover that I could not find a string of 158 00:13:19.500 --> 00:13:49.340 Now, it is possible that in a 159 00:13:49.340 --> 00:13:52.780 In a free market, fluorescent would win the day. 160 00:13:52.780 --> 00:13:56.800 But I seriously doubt it, or else, why would the governments of the world have to conspire 161 00:13:56.800 --> 00:14:01.460 and use force to eliminate incandescent bulbs? 162 00:14:01.460 --> 00:14:06.240 It seems clear to me that what we have here is a case in which government is deliberately 163 00:14:06.240 --> 00:14:11.980 overriding consumer preference, reducing our standard of living, and doing it with a specific 164 00:14:11.980 --> 00:14:18.340 ideological agenda in mind, one that seeks to use force to make us less well-off, to 165 00:14:18.340 --> 00:14:25.060 to live poorer, to be poorer, and to decline material progress. 166 00:14:25.060 --> 00:14:28.820 The return of bedbugs. 167 00:14:28.820 --> 00:14:33.140 This is an exceedingly dangerous trend in government policy. 168 00:14:33.140 --> 00:14:38.220 Our country is currently suffering one of the consequences. 169 00:14:38.220 --> 00:14:43.820 There was a rhyme that was common in the 1920s that went, sleep tight, don't let the bedbugs 170 00:14:43.820 --> 00:14:46.180 bite. 171 00:14:46.180 --> 00:14:51.580 Scientists have thought of it as a quaint saying that has nothing to do with reality. 172 00:14:51.580 --> 00:14:57.300 In fact, bedbugs were almost completely wiped out all over the planet by the 1950s, due 173 00:14:57.300 --> 00:15:03.780 to modern life-saving chemicals like DDT, a chemical invented by scientist Paul Hermann 174 00:15:03.780 --> 00:15:10.060 Muller, working for a private Swiss company, Novartis, that has been widely smeared, but 175 00:15:10.060 --> 00:15:13.660 has saved hundreds of millions of lives. 176 00:15:13.660 --> 00:15:19.520 Its banning in the early 1970s under the influence of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring 177 00:15:19.520 --> 00:15:23.540 has been blamed for a global calamity. 178 00:15:23.540 --> 00:15:32.060 Thanks in part to this ban, malaria today kills between 1 and 3 million people per year. 179 00:15:32.060 --> 00:15:37.500 This is shocking, but it is not entirely unusual in the sweep of history. 180 00:15:37.500 --> 00:15:41.880 It is easy to regard insects as the most dangerous evil on this earth, having killed far more 181 00:15:41.880 --> 00:15:51.400 In fact, insects are the only things on this earth that have been more dangerous to human 182 00:15:51.400 --> 00:15:57.720 welfare than governments, and that is really saying something. 183 00:15:57.720 --> 00:16:04.500 In the 14th century, disease-carrying insects killed off as much as 60% of Europe's population. 184 00:16:04.500 --> 00:16:09.000 The United States has had its own serious issues with yellow fever. 185 00:16:09.000 --> 00:16:14.520 We don't think about this, but this is because we don't have the Black Death right now, due 186 00:16:14.520 --> 00:16:17.920 mainly to the achievements of capitalism. 187 00:16:17.920 --> 00:16:24.160 Today, we are living with a return of bedbugs on an epidemic level. 188 00:16:24.160 --> 00:16:28.800 The National Pest Management Association says that nearly all pest management companies 189 00:16:28.800 --> 00:16:33.660 say they have seen thousands of new bedbug reports from all over the country. 190 00:16:33.660 --> 00:16:39.180 There is even a website that tracks this – bedbugregistry.com. 191 00:16:39.180 --> 00:16:44.640 This epidemic, which is so bad that even the New York Times published an alarmed editorial, 192 00:16:44.640 --> 00:16:52.140 is directly related to the banning of chemicals that had had bedbugs under control. 193 00:16:52.140 --> 00:16:58.220 There are other chemicals besides DDT that control bedbugs, such as propoxer, but in 194 00:16:58.220 --> 00:17:03.220 In 2007, the EPA banned it for indoor use. 195 00:17:03.220 --> 00:17:10.060 Now, any pest management company that uses it indoors is threatened with fines and, potentially, 196 00:17:10.060 --> 00:17:11.060 with jail. 197 00:17:11.060 --> 00:17:18.020 It's so bad that the Ohio Department of Agriculture has begged the EPA for a change in policy, 198 00:17:18.020 --> 00:17:20.940 but the EPA won't budge. 199 00:17:20.940 --> 00:17:27.880 Instead, it advises people to reduce clutter in your home, to reduce hiding places for 200 00:17:27.880 --> 00:17:48.600 The New York Times had a headline story on how the return of bedbugs has baffled scientists. 201 00:17:48.600 --> 00:17:52.320 Later in the article, however, the text says that chemicals can control them, but that 202 00:17:52.320 --> 00:17:55.120 all those chemicals are currently banned. 203 00:17:55.120 --> 00:18:01.040 Well, if the answer is before us, but we are forbidden by government to use that answer, 204 00:18:01.040 --> 00:18:05.160 or retails and exterminators are too intimidated by the threatening political culture to take 205 00:18:05.160 --> 00:18:10.040 the risk, I don't see that there is much reason to be baffled by the problem. 206 00:18:10.040 --> 00:18:15.680 What is it about cause and effect that these people do not understand? 207 00:18:15.680 --> 00:18:19.700 Now I don't want to get into a dispute about chemicals and their effects. 208 00:18:19.700 --> 00:18:25.000 Some people say that DDT is no longer effective, but black market DDT is still a vibrant industry. 209 00:18:25.000 --> 00:18:31.000 and that there are downsides to propoxer or that there are other natural and chemical agents that are effective. 210 00:18:31.000 --> 00:18:35.000 I'm not a scientist and I have no opinion on which views are correct here. 211 00:18:35.000 --> 00:18:40.000 Opinions are all over the map on these questions. 212 00:18:40.000 --> 00:18:43.000 My point is simply this. 213 00:18:43.000 --> 00:18:47.000 The market process that would normally allow innovation, trial and error, 214 00:18:47.000 --> 00:18:52.000 and the accumulation and implementation of all available scientific knowledge 215 00:18:52.000 --> 00:18:58.840 has been subverted by government institutions that have presumed to know what is best, thereby 216 00:18:58.840 --> 00:19:03.280 centrally planning the use of chemicals to control pests. 217 00:19:03.280 --> 00:19:09.920 Even to bring a new chemical to market requires 7 years and some $100 million just to jump 218 00:19:09.920 --> 00:19:16.600 through the regulatory thicket, which has a bias against progress, capitalism and innovation. 219 00:19:16.600 --> 00:19:21.900 We end up having to trust experts and competing scientific claims based on rarefied results 220 00:19:21.900 --> 00:19:26.300 from tests rather than markets. 221 00:19:26.300 --> 00:19:30.380 Goodbye hot water, hello trash. 222 00:19:30.380 --> 00:19:34.980 Another suggestion we hear about bedbugs is that we should wash our sheets in hot water. 223 00:19:34.980 --> 00:19:41.960 Well, that would be fine, except that most houses no longer have hot water from the tap. 224 00:19:41.960 --> 00:19:45.400 Because of government regulations, our hot water heaters are shipped with a default setting 225 00:19:45.400 --> 00:19:48.740 that makes our water lukewarm. 226 00:19:48.740 --> 00:19:54.580 The consequences of this are themselves devastating, our clothes do not get clean, our bodies do 227 00:19:54.580 --> 00:19:58.260 not get clean, our dishes do not get clean. 228 00:19:58.260 --> 00:20:03.300 To change this requires that you open your hot water heater and turn it up to the hottest 229 00:20:03.300 --> 00:20:07.580 setting, but not many people know about this trick. 230 00:20:07.580 --> 00:20:13.660 If you suggest to a repairman that he do it for you, he will suspect that you are an agent 231 00:20:13.660 --> 00:20:17.640 provocateur and run away. 232 00:20:17.640 --> 00:20:20.920 First we come to the problem of trash. 233 00:20:20.920 --> 00:20:25.760 Government policy is increasingly limiting our trash pick-up days, and even limiting 234 00:20:25.760 --> 00:20:28.960 the amount of trash we can create. 235 00:20:28.960 --> 00:20:34.120 We all know about the attacks on and regulation of landfill space. 236 00:20:34.120 --> 00:20:38.760 Then there is the subject of recycling itself, which might have some limited merit under 237 00:20:38.760 --> 00:20:41.080 certain conditions in a market environment. 238 00:20:41.080 --> 00:20:47.040 But under government, we are forced to sift through our own garbage and separate it according 239 00:20:47.040 --> 00:21:01.840 Now, every study ever conducted on recycling shows that it does not save money, but rather 240 00:21:01.840 --> 00:21:08.580 wastes vast amounts of money and energy with recycling trucks and plants. 241 00:21:08.580 --> 00:21:14.520 Most cities have piles and piles of waste that cannot be recycled. 242 00:21:14.520 --> 00:21:19.320 There is nothing wrong with voluntary, profitable recycling, but there is much that is crazy 243 00:21:19.320 --> 00:21:23.800 and inefficient about centrally planned recycling. 244 00:21:23.800 --> 00:21:30.000 But what concerns me more here are the sheer de-civilising implications of having to dig 245 00:21:30.000 --> 00:21:35.960 through our trash with our hands, moving it from spot to spot and creating ever more receptacles 246 00:21:35.960 --> 00:21:40.120 for holding it for even longer periods of time. 247 00:21:40.120 --> 00:21:46.680 This is nasty, unsanitary and probably dangerous at some level. 248 00:21:46.680 --> 00:21:51.560 Trash disposal has been an issue since ancient times, and the failure to do it properly has 249 00:21:51.560 --> 00:21:54.740 led to death and disaster all over the world. 250 00:21:54.740 --> 00:21:58.200 And yet, who is in control of trash disposal today? 251 00:21:58.200 --> 00:22:01.700 For no good reason, it is government. 252 00:22:01.700 --> 00:22:06.140 If the private sector were in charge, the system would work very differently indeed. 253 00:22:06.140 --> 00:22:11.180 There might be a chute that would whoosh away trash instantly, zapping it far from our house 254 00:22:11.180 --> 00:22:13.060 and into some incinerator. 255 00:22:13.060 --> 00:22:17.820 There is no way to know, because government control has stopped the process of innovation, 256 00:22:17.820 --> 00:22:22.620 just as it stopped the process of chemical innovation. 257 00:22:22.620 --> 00:22:30.020 Now we come to one of my favorite subjects, the attack on plumbing. 258 00:22:30.020 --> 00:22:35.440 The data indicate that household use of water constitutes less than one percent of total 259 00:22:35.440 --> 00:22:37.400 Domestic Water Use. 260 00:22:37.400 --> 00:22:41.980 This includes all the water we use for showering, washing and watering our lawns. 261 00:22:41.980 --> 00:22:46.920 And yet, government has been on a decades-long campaign to forcibly limit our water use in 262 00:22:46.920 --> 00:22:48.660 our own homes. 263 00:22:48.660 --> 00:22:55.300 As a result, our toilets no longer work, our water pressure in our houses is low, government 264 00:22:55.300 --> 00:23:00.500 requires water blockers in all our shower heads, so that you can't even get a decent 265 00:23:00.500 --> 00:23:04.780 shower unless you hack your shower head with a drill. 266 00:23:04.780 --> 00:23:08.540 I can go on with examples of this planned poverty. 267 00:23:08.540 --> 00:23:11.020 The attack on medicine is a very serious threat. 268 00:23:11.020 --> 00:23:15.380 Pseudoephedrine, a godsend for sufferers of sinus trouble, can no longer be purchased 269 00:23:15.380 --> 00:23:18.400 from the drugstore in just any quantity. 270 00:23:18.400 --> 00:23:23.180 In my own community, there is a lady facing 20 years in jail for buying four packets of 271 00:23:23.180 --> 00:23:28.740 Sudafed over 12 days from several different pharmacies – an action perfectly legal only 272 00:23:28.740 --> 00:23:31.000 a few years ago. 273 00:23:31.000 --> 00:23:34.960 You will know, too, that simple medicines for children's coughs and aches hardly even 274 00:23:34.960 --> 00:23:36.320 work any more. 275 00:23:36.320 --> 00:23:42.840 Most have been reduced to the status of placebos under government management of medicine. 276 00:23:42.840 --> 00:23:47.840 There is the attack on asbestos, a wonderful fire-reducing substance that government banned 277 00:23:47.840 --> 00:23:51.240 and then imposed massive costs for its removal. 278 00:23:51.240 --> 00:23:57.320 It turns out that removing it presents a much greater risk than leaving it. 279 00:23:57.320 --> 00:24:00.620 There is the attack on lead paint, too. 280 00:24:00.620 --> 00:24:07.140 And let us not forget the extraordinary evil of the attack on the gas-powered car with 281 00:24:07.140 --> 00:24:14.500 CAFE standards, the derision of larger and safer cars, the tax-funded and mandatory promotion 282 00:24:14.500 --> 00:24:21.660 of the electric car, and the general attack on energy, oil and gas, and the subsidization 283 00:24:21.660 --> 00:24:25.740 of wind, water and electricity. 284 00:24:25.740 --> 00:24:32.260 And who can forget the insanity of the attacks on BP for its recent Gulf oil disaster? 285 00:24:32.260 --> 00:24:36.920 It was a mishap brought about because of the government's restrictions on drilling close 286 00:24:36.920 --> 00:24:41.040 to shore and liability limits on oil companies. 287 00:24:41.040 --> 00:24:44.900 The company should be liable for damages, but utterly destroyed? 288 00:24:44.900 --> 00:24:47.960 That is crazy! 289 00:24:47.960 --> 00:24:54.300 If books and learning, the universal distribution of ideas, are essential to civilization, we 290 00:24:54.300 --> 00:24:59.740 We must be horrified at what the government has done in the case of the internet. 291 00:24:59.740 --> 00:25:06.500 For the first time in history, we had the possibility of a global library of all books 292 00:25:06.500 --> 00:25:12.220 that had ever been printed, all available online for universal distribution. 293 00:25:12.220 --> 00:25:16.740 It would have been the greatest liberation of ideas in human history embodied in the 294 00:25:16.740 --> 00:25:20.460 program known as Google Books. 295 00:25:20.460 --> 00:25:23.500 Journals would certainly have been next. 296 00:25:23.500 --> 00:25:29.740 Instead, the government created a moral hazard for predatory private interests, who have 297 00:25:29.740 --> 00:25:36.180 invoked intellectual property to destroy the possibility, hinder the spread of ideas and 298 00:25:36.180 --> 00:25:39.860 achieve a literary regress. 299 00:25:39.860 --> 00:25:45.500 It is the equivalent of the German state having smashed Gutenberg's printer just as it was 300 00:25:45.500 --> 00:25:47.300 getting going. 301 00:25:47.300 --> 00:25:49.400 And the attacks are growing. 302 00:25:49.400 --> 00:25:54.720 Federal property enforcement, something that would never exist in a free market, is now 303 00:25:54.720 --> 00:25:59.000 the number one threat to the internet. 304 00:25:59.000 --> 00:26:01.560 Freedom gives us civilization. 305 00:26:01.560 --> 00:26:05.560 Are you seeing the pattern here? 306 00:26:05.560 --> 00:26:10.880 Government planning was never a good means to do anything, but at least there was a time 307 00:26:10.880 --> 00:26:14.560 when it set out to bring progress to humanity. 308 00:26:14.560 --> 00:26:19.320 It was the wrong means to achieve the right goal. 309 00:26:19.320 --> 00:26:25.700 Today, government planning is working as a maliciously effective means to achieve the 310 00:26:25.700 --> 00:26:26.700 wrong goal. 311 00:26:26.700 --> 00:26:31.640 I mean by this, that if there is anything that government is actually good at doing, 312 00:26:31.640 --> 00:26:34.680 it is destroying things. 313 00:26:34.680 --> 00:26:39.560 Even so, in seeking to reduce our standard of living and drive us backwards in the progress 314 00:26:39.560 --> 00:26:46.880 of civilization, the government really is playing with fire, unleashing evils that are unknown 315 00:26:46.880 --> 00:26:49.840 Freedom to us today. 316 00:26:49.840 --> 00:26:56.900 Never forget that it was not government, but freedom that gave us civilization. 317 00:26:56.900 --> 00:27:02.640 Freedom gave rise to innovation, the unleashing of human ingenuity that built cities and expanded 318 00:27:02.640 --> 00:27:04.960 the division of labor across the globe. 319 00:27:04.960 --> 00:27:09.420 It tripled the average life span. 320 00:27:09.420 --> 00:27:16.480 Freedom gave us universal distribution of food, medicine, music and learning. 321 00:27:16.480 --> 00:27:22.040 Freedom created the wealth that funds our churches, centers of research, civic associations, 322 00:27:22.040 --> 00:27:26.480 dance troupes, art museums and nature preserves. 323 00:27:26.480 --> 00:27:32.040 Freedom is what allows institutions like the Mises Institute to exist and experience vibrant 324 00:27:32.040 --> 00:27:33.720 growth. 325 00:27:33.720 --> 00:27:40.800 Only a free and wealthy society permits civilization to flourish for everyone. 326 00:27:40.800 --> 00:27:47.120 Joseph Schumpeter said that the great tragedy of capitalism is that it produces riches so 327 00:27:47.120 --> 00:27:53.020 abundant that people tend to take them for granted, imagining that they can hobble and 328 00:27:53.020 --> 00:28:00.480 destroy its productive machinery without great economic and social consequences. 329 00:28:00.480 --> 00:28:05.120 This is precisely what is happening today. 330 00:28:05.120 --> 00:28:11.720 This tendency to romanticize poverty and simplicity and a world without modern technology is an 331 00:28:11.720 --> 00:28:17.960 ideology that is animating the antics of many of today's intellectuals, politicians and 332 00:28:17.960 --> 00:28:23.800 bureaucrats who have set themselves up as enemies of all that makes life grand, which 333 00:28:23.800 --> 00:28:30.860 is to say that they have set themselves up as enemies of freedom. 334 00:28:30.860 --> 00:28:37.660 Only now, our taxes are paying not for civilization, but rather for its destruction.