WEBVTT

NOTE Abortion

1
00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:14.000
Okay, welcome to the eighth in a series of ten lectures on the Steve Berger, Walter Block, Austrian libertarian seminar.

2
00:00:14.000 --> 00:00:23.000
Please let's start with the moment of silence as is our practice.

3
00:00:23.000 --> 00:00:30.000
I said that as the week were on, I would get more radical.

4
00:00:30.000 --> 00:00:40.000
I was being namby-pamby at the beginning, you know, Mr. Nice Guy, as is my usual pursuit, but now I'm taking off the kid gloves.

5
00:00:40.000 --> 00:00:47.000
Before I get to today's subject, which will be very radical and very controversial even within our small group,

6
00:00:47.000 --> 00:00:50.000
I just wanted to say that this week is a very tough week.

7
00:00:50.000 --> 00:01:10.000
I didn't realize how tough it would be. My typical day is prepare for the morning lecture, give the morning lecture, wolf down some lunch, prepare for the afternoon lecture, give the afternoon lecture, go do some exercise, I usually swim, then prepare for the next day's lectures, two of them, and then again and again and again.

8
00:01:10.000 --> 00:01:13.800
It's tough but it's a delight. I wouldn't give it up for the world and I'm very

9
00:01:13.800 --> 00:01:18.640
honored that I was asked to do this. I mean how often does a professor get to

10
00:01:18.640 --> 00:01:24.840
give 10 lectures to volunteers in a week and have it blasted all out to radio land

11
00:01:24.840 --> 00:01:29.240
or TV land or blog land or whatever they call it. It's an honor and a privilege

12
00:01:29.240 --> 00:01:35.840
not only to do it but to interact with the people here. The people out there in

13
00:01:35.840 --> 00:01:39.920
blog land don't appreciate because the questions usually don't come so thick and

14
00:01:39.920 --> 00:02:09.920
Fast During the Formal Sessions. But afterward, I'm attacked viciously by about 10 people. And it's always with very important questions, and many of which I haven't thought of, some of which I say I have to sleep on and come up with some half inept answers the next day. But it's been a great learning experience for me, and it's an honor and a privilege to be interacting with you. Notice I'm trying to get you on my good side. Because now,

15
00:02:09.920 --> 00:02:12.920
No More Mr. Nice Guy

16
00:02:12.920 --> 00:02:20.920
Okay, I have written an article on abortion.

17
00:02:20.920 --> 00:02:29.920
The first article I ever wrote on abortion appeared in Reason Magazine in 1969 or 72 or somewhere in there.

18
00:02:29.920 --> 00:02:37.920
The second article I wrote, co-authored with my friend and colleague from the University of Central Arkansas, Roy Whitehead,

19
00:02:37.920 --> 00:02:45.360
is appears in the Appalachian Journal of Law, Appalachian Journal of Law and it's

20
00:02:45.360 --> 00:02:49.200
called Compromise and the Uncompromisable, a private property rights

21
00:02:49.200 --> 00:02:53.640
approach to resolving the abortion controversy. Before I get into the

22
00:02:53.640 --> 00:03:00.720
specifics, I wanted to talk a little bit about this effort. It was

23
00:03:00.720 --> 00:03:08.720
It was published in volume four, number one, of spring 2005, so it just came out.

24
00:03:08.720 --> 00:03:21.720
I probably wrote it in 1995, I was 10 years old at least, and it probably was rejected by 20 or 30 or maybe 40 journals.

25
00:03:21.720 --> 00:03:29.720
I probably beat Murray Rothbard out in one thing, namely I get more rejections than he gets before I get published.

26
00:03:29.720 --> 00:03:51.720
What happened is in the academic journals, economics, philosophy, political theory, you're only supposed to send an article out to one at a time, and sometimes they'll keep it for three months, six months, a year, and then reject it, so it takes a long time.

27
00:03:51.720 --> 00:03:58.400
Then finally what I did is I hooked up with my friend Roy, with whom I've co-authored a lot of law review articles.

28
00:03:58.400 --> 00:04:08.560
The advantage of law review articles is you can send it out to 300 law reviews all at once, so you don't have to wait quite so long.

29
00:04:08.560 --> 00:04:19.120
But still, I had a horrible experience because it was accepted not once, but twice, and two times the journal that accepted it,

30
00:04:19.120 --> 00:04:21.920
The law review journal that accepted the article reneged.

31
00:04:23.280 --> 00:04:25.160
They said, you know, we've been reconsidering

32
00:04:25.160 --> 00:04:27.040
and in the basis of this, that and the other,

33
00:04:27.040 --> 00:04:29.400
you didn't put the comma right or something,

34
00:04:29.400 --> 00:04:30.600
we're rejecting it.

35
00:04:30.600 --> 00:04:31.920
I said, didn't put the comma right,

36
00:04:31.920 --> 00:04:34.000
you know, I'll change the comma.

37
00:04:34.000 --> 00:04:36.720
No, no, sorry, we can't publish it.

38
00:04:36.720 --> 00:04:38.320
This is hot stuff.

39
00:04:38.320 --> 00:04:39.240
And in the,

40
00:04:43.760 --> 00:04:45.120
let me read the first

41
00:04:45.120 --> 00:04:57.120
Footnote to the thing. The authors of the present article wish to congratulate the editors of the Appalachian Journal of Law for their courage in publishing it.

42
00:04:57.120 --> 00:05:05.120
This article was accepted for publication previously by both the Thomas M. Cooley Law Review and the Manitoba Law Journal in Canada.

43
00:05:05.120 --> 00:05:10.120
In each case, the editors reneged and refused publication despite their initial acceptance.

44
00:05:10.120 --> 00:05:24.120
So that's a strange history of an article. It takes so long and then reneging and stuff, but finally it's here and I'm very proud of it.

45
00:05:24.120 --> 00:05:34.120
I think it's the cat's pajamas. I think it's hot stuff. If any of you want copies of it, email me and I'll give you an email version of it.

46
00:05:34.120 --> 00:05:45.120
You might, you know, not want it after you hear what I have to say, but that's a whole other issue.

47
00:05:45.120 --> 00:05:55.120
Okay, now for the substance. The abortion controversy is a horrible controversy.

48
00:05:55.120 --> 00:06:00.120
The life and death of millions of human beings is at stake.

49
00:06:00.120 --> 00:06:09.120
And philosophically there are two sides, the left is pro-choice, that's what they call themselves, the right is pro-life.

50
00:06:09.120 --> 00:06:17.120
And yet there doesn't seem to be any way to compromise this, there doesn't seem to be any way to deal with this.

51
00:06:17.120 --> 00:06:23.120
The left says what they say, the right says what they say, and never the twain meet.

52
00:06:23.120 --> 00:06:28.120
It seems to me that since the, not the Civil War, but the War of Northern Aggression,

53
00:06:28.120 --> 00:06:38.120
or the war to prevent southern secession, there hasn't been as philosophically a difficult issue as that time.

54
00:06:38.120 --> 00:06:43.120
I mean we've had other wars that have killed more people, but there wasn't any philosophical problem.

55
00:06:43.120 --> 00:06:46.120
Here there is a philosophical problem.

56
00:06:46.120 --> 00:06:50.120
And there are two schools of thought. The left is pro-choice.

57
00:06:50.120 --> 00:06:55.240
It says that you can have an abortion pretty much on demand.

58
00:06:55.240 --> 00:06:58.400
The extreme right, the conservatives say no, no, no,

59
00:06:58.400 --> 00:07:00.280
it's human life, you must preserve it.

60
00:07:01.280 --> 00:07:05.640
I am happy to say that libertarianism offers a compromise.

61
00:07:07.580 --> 00:07:09.600
That's why I call the piece compromising

62
00:07:09.600 --> 00:07:12.160
the seemingly uncompromisable.

63
00:07:12.160 --> 00:07:14.020
It seems that you can't compromise this,

64
00:07:14.020 --> 00:07:17.160
but you can compromise it, as I'll try to show.

65
00:07:17.160 --> 00:07:24.160
And I think that the compromise is not like you add up five and three and divide by two and get four.

66
00:07:24.160 --> 00:07:29.160
It's not a compromise like that, like let's say abort half the kids or something.

67
00:07:29.160 --> 00:07:32.160
That would be a numerical compromise.

68
00:07:32.160 --> 00:07:34.160
This is a philosophical compromise.

69
00:07:34.160 --> 00:07:41.160
This is, to my way of thinking, the essence of libertarianism applied to this very tough, intractable problem.

70
00:07:41.160 --> 00:07:44.160
And it just comes out that it's a compromise.

71
00:07:44.160 --> 00:07:48.280
need not and I didn't think it would necessarily when I started but that's

72
00:07:48.280 --> 00:07:55.480
where the logic of the libertarian position has led me. Libertarian position

73
00:07:55.480 --> 00:07:59.720
to repeat very briefly is of course non-aggression and private property rights

74
00:07:59.720 --> 00:08:04.920
and what you do is you hold on to them like the girl in those horror movies

75
00:08:04.920 --> 00:08:09.640
holds on to the cross where she wants to ward off the vampires, you know, or the

76
00:08:09.640 --> 00:08:19.640
Garlic or whatever it is, you hold, you cleave onto that tightly, no matter what happens, you hold onto that and I think you can come through correctly.

77
00:08:19.640 --> 00:08:29.640
Okay, we start with the first issue, when does life begin? And this, just in and of itself, is a tough problem.

78
00:08:29.640 --> 00:08:36.640
Some people say, well, life begins at birth and therefore what the fetus is, is sort of a bit of protoplasm

79
00:08:36.640 --> 00:08:47.640
And it's no more significant to get rid of the fetus than it would be to get rid of, if I had cancer on my pinky, you know, you cut off the pinky and that's it, or get rid of an appendix.

80
00:08:47.640 --> 00:08:55.640
It's just a bit of protoplasm and it's not a controversial issue.

81
00:08:55.640 --> 00:08:57.640
I reject this for two reasons.

82
00:08:57.640 --> 00:09:06.240
And one, it doesn't seem right. It doesn't seem that the key difference is the time between

83
00:09:06.240 --> 00:09:10.800
you're in the womb and the time that you're out of the womb. It seems to me the key difference

84
00:09:10.800 --> 00:09:15.080
is at one time there's a sperm here and an egg there, and then they get together and

85
00:09:15.080 --> 00:09:21.600
now there's a fertilized egg. That seems to me much more philosophically significant,

86
00:09:21.600 --> 00:09:26.800
because now there's a human being that in the ordinary course of whatever will become

87
00:09:26.800 --> 00:09:31.800
human being, whereas the other seems to me almost like it just a change of

88
00:09:31.800 --> 00:09:37.360
address, you know you move from Auburn to Montgomery and you change the dress, big

89
00:09:37.360 --> 00:09:45.200
deal. One dramatic way of putting this is imagine twins and one comes out five

90
00:09:45.200 --> 00:09:50.440
minutes after the other and now here you have one twin who's crying and the other

91
00:09:50.440 --> 00:09:55.480
twin even sort of see the head peeping out and you know five minutes later

92
00:09:55.480 --> 00:10:00.480
If they're identical twins, you're going to be hard put to tell the difference between them.

93
00:10:00.480 --> 00:10:04.480
And right now, the only difference seems to be the change of address.

94
00:10:04.480 --> 00:10:07.480
One is breathing air and the other is breathing through an umbilical cord.

95
00:10:07.480 --> 00:10:15.480
But it doesn't seem to me to be so different that you can make a life or death distinction between the one twin and the other twin.

96
00:10:15.480 --> 00:10:17.480
Okay, that's one reason.

97
00:10:17.480 --> 00:10:32.480
The other reason is that I am going to come out in favor, in certain circumstances, of the pro-choice view, namely that abortion is justified under certain circumstances.

98
00:10:32.480 --> 00:10:39.480
Therefore, philosophically, it behooves me to take the assumption that is the most damaging to my case.

99
00:10:39.480 --> 00:10:46.480
I don't want to have a straw man argument. I don't want to say, well, it's just a bit of protoplasm, therefore abort it.

100
00:10:46.480 --> 00:10:50.480
I mean, what's the fun there and where's the philosophical challenge there?

101
00:10:50.480 --> 00:11:01.480
So given that I am going to take, under certain circumstances, which I will elucidate soon, the abortion side,

102
00:11:01.480 --> 00:11:12.980
it's much more impressive or it's more required of me to take the more difficult of the two scenarios to make my case.

103
00:11:12.980 --> 00:11:15.480
Because if I can make my case in the easy one, I prove nothing.

104
00:11:15.480 --> 00:11:21.480
If I can make my case in the more difficult one, then maybe I've accomplished something.

105
00:11:21.480 --> 00:11:29.480
Okay, so for those two reasons, I assume that human life starts not at birth, but at the fertilized egg stage.

106
00:11:29.480 --> 00:11:37.480
Just the two-cell stage, and then that's a human being.

107
00:11:37.480 --> 00:11:46.480
Okay, let me put up an equation, if you will.

108
00:11:46.480 --> 00:12:01.480
Abortion equals killing plus evicting.

109
00:12:01.480 --> 00:12:06.480
It's no sense talking about abortion because abortion is a complex activity.

110
00:12:06.480 --> 00:12:21.480
It encompasses two sub-categories, and we might be wanting to say different things about each of them, I will, and therefore, it's of the utmost importance to distinguish between the two sub-categories of which abortion is made.

111
00:12:21.480 --> 00:12:28.480
So we're not going to really be talking about abortion, rather we'll be talking about each of them separately, killing and evicting.

112
00:12:28.480 --> 00:12:39.480
And the theory that I've come along with, or the title for the theory that I've dreamed up is, it could be a libertarian theory of abortion.

113
00:12:39.480 --> 00:12:44.480
The one I've come up with is a theory of eviction, or evictionism.

114
00:12:44.480 --> 00:12:49.480
So now there are three choices. There's the pro-choice, the pro-life, and evictionism.

115
00:12:49.480 --> 00:12:55.480
And my claim is that evictionism is a compromise, and evictionism is correct,

116
00:12:55.480 --> 00:12:59.480
and evictionism of the three is the only one compatible with libertarianism.

117
00:12:59.480 --> 00:13:07.480
So what I say is that the mother of an unwanted fetus has the right to evict but not to kill.

118
00:13:07.480 --> 00:13:09.480
Killing is murder.

119
00:13:09.480 --> 00:13:15.480
You're not supposed to be murdering young babies who are in the hollow ball stage

120
00:13:15.480 --> 00:13:18.480
or in the whatever fetus kind of stage.

121
00:13:18.480 --> 00:13:20.480
You're not supposed to be killing them.

122
00:13:20.480 --> 00:13:25.480
Now, you can evict them because we have rules about private property rights.

123
00:13:25.480 --> 00:13:28.480
And who owns the private property rights in question?

124
00:13:28.480 --> 00:13:32.480
Well, it's the mother's womb. She owns it.

125
00:13:32.480 --> 00:13:40.480
Now, the easy case is when a 13-year-old girl is walking down the street, she gets grabbed, she gets raped,

126
00:13:40.480 --> 00:13:43.480
and all of a sudden she's got something growing in her.

127
00:13:43.480 --> 00:13:49.480
Isn't it obvious that what's growing in her is a trespasser?

128
00:13:49.480 --> 00:13:56.480
And isn't it right, according to libertarian theory, that you have a right to remove trespassers?

129
00:13:56.480 --> 00:14:04.480
Now, there is another side-order condition for libertarianism, and that is you have to do it in the gentlest manner possible.

130
00:14:04.480 --> 00:14:12.480
For example, if someone is trespassing on my lawn, maybe inadvertently, the first thing I do is not to take a bazooka and blow them away.

131
00:14:12.480 --> 00:14:18.480
I mean, libertarians are a bit hard-hearted, but, you know, that's too hard-hearted.

132
00:14:18.480 --> 00:14:21.720
I think the first thing you do when you have a trespasser on your property is say,

133
00:14:21.720 --> 00:14:23.720
Sir, did you know that you're on my land?

134
00:14:23.720 --> 00:14:26.720
And, oh, you didn't know? Well, it is my land, so please leave.

135
00:14:26.720 --> 00:14:29.720
And I think that's a reasonable way to go about it.

136
00:14:29.720 --> 00:14:32.720
And if he says, you know, this or the hell with you,

137
00:14:32.720 --> 00:14:37.720
and, you know, then you push and shove and then you get to the bazooka stage.

138
00:14:37.720 --> 00:14:40.720
But then he's doing a lot more than trespassing.

139
00:14:40.720 --> 00:14:47.760
He's trespassing plus he's resisting your licit use of violence to repel him

140
00:14:49.120 --> 00:14:53.640
So it's sort of an escalation stage. I mean the second stage is in a bazooka you say well

141
00:14:53.640 --> 00:14:58.680
You know if you don't leave I'm going to call the cops and if he goes for your throat when you say that well

142
00:14:58.680 --> 00:15:02.840
Then he's doing a lot more than just trespassing. He's a real serious bad guy

143
00:15:03.600 --> 00:15:07.000
or if somebody is you know stealing your bubblegum and you're a

144
00:15:07.000 --> 00:15:13.000
If you're a shopkeeper and you have a net that you can drop and trap them, you don't shoot them instead, you drop the net.

145
00:15:13.000 --> 00:15:21.000
So we have the principle, I think well established in a whole host of other areas, that when you're dealing with criminals, you have to stop them.

146
00:15:21.000 --> 00:15:26.000
But you don't use the most force possible first, you use the least force.

147
00:15:26.000 --> 00:15:30.000
Now if he's dangerous, if it's Godzilla there, you might not want to argue with him.

148
00:15:30.000 --> 00:15:36.000
Who was it? Walter Williams was talking, you go into a room and there's a tiger sitting on the couch there.

149
00:15:36.000 --> 00:15:42.000
You don't say, well, you know, tiger, you're trespassing, please leave, you know.

150
00:15:42.000 --> 00:15:45.000
You have to take this with some common sense.

151
00:15:45.000 --> 00:15:52.000
But I think we've established that you remove the fetus in the gentlest manner possible.

152
00:15:52.000 --> 00:16:00.000
Now, a hundred years ago, the gentlest manner possible of removing a fetus was to kill it.

153
00:16:00.000 --> 00:16:02.000
That was the only way you could do it.

154
00:16:02.000 --> 00:16:08.000
And I think it's justified to remove it, because it's a trespasser.

155
00:16:09.000 --> 00:16:17.000
A hundred years from now, or five hundred years from now, when we have super-duper medicine, if we don't blow ourselves up first,

156
00:16:17.000 --> 00:16:23.000
I presume it will be possible to remove the fetus at any stage,

157
00:16:23.000 --> 00:16:29.000
put it in a host mother, or a test tube, or a petri dish, or some new invention that they come up with,

158
00:16:29.000 --> 00:16:40.000
without any harm to the mother or to the fetus and under 100 years from now or 500 years from now would be totally unjustified to kill it.

159
00:16:40.000 --> 00:16:47.000
Things get a little bit more complicated with today but things are clear with the partial birth abortion.

160
00:16:47.000 --> 00:16:51.000
Now what's the partial birth abortion? Partial birth abortion is the fetus is just about ready to come out.

161
00:16:51.000 --> 00:16:58.000
It's nine months old or eight and a half months old as a fetus and instead of taking it out and killing it

162
00:16:58.000 --> 00:17:06.000
And once or twice that's happened, somehow it slips out before the abortionist is ready and then they kill it while it's outside and viable?

163
00:17:06.000 --> 00:17:13.000
Oh, come on, that's out and out first degree murder or even worse than first degree murder, it's killing of an innocent.

164
00:17:13.000 --> 00:17:27.000
But suppose it's still, the head is just peeping out and what you do is you drill a hole in the skull and sort of extract its brains while it's inside because, you know, you want to kill it, that's what a partial birth abortion is.

165
00:17:27.000 --> 00:17:41.000
Well, it seems to me that if we adopt evictionism, with the side order condition of the libertarian, most generalist manner possible of evicting, that that would be ruled out right away.

166
00:17:41.000 --> 00:17:52.000
Now, you see, the benefit to the pro-life people is if they keep on with what they're doing, they're losing right now.

167
00:17:52.000 --> 00:18:03.000
These are being slaughtered, and when medical technology kicks in, if they then adopt this, it'll almost be seen as too late, it'll be seen as special pleading.

168
00:18:03.000 --> 00:18:12.000
Whereas if they adopt evictionism now, they can say, well look, you know, we've done it long before medical technology came along to prove it.

169
00:18:12.000 --> 00:18:22.000
Okay, I talked about the rape victim. Let's talk about the case where the cause of the fetus is voluntary sexual intercourse.

170
00:18:22.000 --> 00:18:29.000
Is the fetus still a trespasser? People are likely to say, no, no, no.

171
00:18:29.000 --> 00:18:37.000
It's not a trespasser because the mother invited the fetus in, in effect, by consenting to have sexual intercourse.

172
00:18:37.000 --> 00:18:45.000
But, she changed her mind. For one reason or another, she now doesn't want to feed us.

173
00:18:45.000 --> 00:18:55.000
Look, suppose I invite you into my house, and we have a nice dinner, and now I get tired of you, you don't agree with me, I hate people who disagree with me, and I say, okay, leave.

174
00:18:55.000 --> 00:19:00.000
Well, if you refuse to leave then, you're a trespasser.

175
00:19:00.000 --> 00:19:26.000
Now, this I think is different. The obvious retort to what I just said is, I invite you up in an airplane for a little tour, and now I get tired of your discussion, and now we're at 30 feet, and I say, please leave, and you say, well, how about, you know, letting me out when we land, or give me a parachute or something, and I say, no, no, no, no, this is private property, get out.

176
00:19:26.000 --> 00:19:32.000
I think that this analogy there is that there's an implicit contract.

177
00:19:32.000 --> 00:19:51.000
There's an implicit contract between me who invites you on my airplane and you who comes to my airplane that what I'll do, I mean if there's a crash, there's a crash, you can't help it, but if the airplane is working properly, the only time you get out is when we're back down on the ground.

178
00:19:51.000 --> 00:19:57.000
So there is an implicit contract. I'm a believer in implicit contracts. You don't have to have things that are written.

179
00:19:57.000 --> 00:20:04.000
If you go to a restaurant and order a cup of coffee and you drink it down and then they present you with a bill for a million dollars, no.

180
00:20:04.000 --> 00:20:10.000
There's an implicit... I'm not a price controller. I'm not against charging a million dollars for a cup of coffee.

181
00:20:10.000 --> 00:20:15.000
But you have to tell them beforehand. And if you don't, you can't charge that.

182
00:20:15.000 --> 00:20:22.000
Well, how about $100? Can you charge $100? How about $10 for what you could usually think of as a $2 cup of coffee?

183
00:20:22.000 --> 00:20:25.000
Well, that's a continuum problem and I don't want to get into that.

184
00:20:25.000 --> 00:20:30.000
But certainly $1 million is way too much and even $10,000 is way too much for a cup of coffee.

185
00:20:30.000 --> 00:20:38.000
But I insist that for there to be an implicit contract, there have to be at least two parties.

186
00:20:38.000 --> 00:20:46.000
And in the case of me who invite you on my airplane and you who come to my airplane, there are two parties.

187
00:20:46.000 --> 00:20:49.000
So there can be an implicit contract between us.

188
00:20:49.000 --> 00:20:53.000
But now let's look back at the case of voluntary sexual intercourse.

189
00:20:53.000 --> 00:20:55.000
Are there two parties?

190
00:20:55.000 --> 00:20:56.000
Well, who are the two parties?

191
00:20:56.000 --> 00:21:00.000
It seems that there are two adults, a male and a female.

192
00:21:00.000 --> 00:21:07.000
And there's one fetus that's not yet a fetus because the sperm and the egg are this far apart in the mother's body and they're getting close.

193
00:21:07.000 --> 00:21:12.000
Getting close or the egg is staying there and the sperm is moving along.

194
00:21:12.000 --> 00:21:17.000
Where is the implicit contract? Well, if it's between the mother and the father,

195
00:21:17.000 --> 00:21:24.000
then it would be sort of like this case of purchasing the services of a woman to bear your child.

196
00:21:24.000 --> 00:21:29.000
I think there was a Mary Beth Whitehead case where the couple was infertile,

197
00:21:29.000 --> 00:21:32.000
and they went to Mary Beth Whitehead and said, look, we'll give you 10,000.

198
00:21:32.000 --> 00:21:36.000
Here's the sperm, you know, put it together with your egg and give us this baby.

199
00:21:36.000 --> 00:21:47.500
Then if she aborts or evicts, she's in violation of a contract. Okay, but that's a very statistically insignificant case.

200
00:21:47.500 --> 00:21:52.500
Let's get back to the case that there's a man and a woman, they engage in voluntary sexual intercourse.

201
00:21:52.500 --> 00:21:59.500
Who is the contract between? Well, if they make a contract such that the man pays the woman to have the baby,

202
00:21:59.500 --> 00:22:04.500
then she can't evict it or abort it or anything to it because of the contract violation.

203
00:22:04.500 --> 00:22:12.500
But again that's not the interesting case. Let's suppose now that the man leaves, he's out of the picture, he can't be found.

204
00:22:12.500 --> 00:22:22.500
Can there be a contract between the mother and the fetus such that when the mother voluntarily takes on the fetus she has an implicit contract to keep it for nine months?

205
00:22:22.500 --> 00:22:33.500
And my answer is no, because at the time of sexual intercourse there's only one person, remember we're forgetting about the adult male, there's only one person, the woman.

206
00:22:33.500 --> 00:22:39.500
There is no fetus yet. So while I go along with implicit contracts, I only go so far.

207
00:22:39.500 --> 00:22:43.500
I don't go along with implicit contracts when there's only one person.

208
00:22:43.500 --> 00:22:58.500
There have to be two people, and there aren't two people.

209
00:22:58.500 --> 00:23:06.500
Another objection to my modest proposal here is you throw someone in the water.

210
00:23:06.500 --> 00:23:11.000
Now, ordinarily, if there's someone in the water drowning, do you have an obligation to go and pick them up?

211
00:23:11.000 --> 00:23:14.000
No. Not according to libertarians.

212
00:23:14.000 --> 00:23:17.000
But suppose you throw someone in the water who can't swim.

213
00:23:17.000 --> 00:23:23.000
Then do you have an obligation? I think so, because otherwise you're a murderer.

214
00:23:23.000 --> 00:23:34.000
So, then the question comes, is having a child or is conceiving a child like throwing them in the water, and I think the analogy falls apart.

215
00:23:34.000 --> 00:23:42.000
I think that throwing some in the water is an act of aggression. It's an initiation of violence against their body.

216
00:23:42.000 --> 00:23:49.000
You're picking them up, it's a salt and battery, you're throwing them in the water, they can't swim, you're about to drown them, you should go to jail for that.

217
00:23:49.000 --> 00:24:03.000
The analogy is you should go to jail for having voluntary sexual intercourse, which is highly problematic, you know, there'd be a lot of people in jail if we did that, so we can't allow that.

218
00:24:03.000 --> 00:24:17.000
So I think that that objection fails, and we can't say that I'm wrong because I'm on that ground.

219
00:24:17.000 --> 00:24:26.000
Okay, I want to prove to you that evictionism is really a, what do you call it, compromise.

220
00:24:26.000 --> 00:24:35.000
And I have a table here. The rest of it is my notes, so forget about that.

221
00:24:35.000 --> 00:24:44.000
Just let's look at this table here. And what I'm saying is that it's a compromise because there are three theories now,

222
00:24:44.000 --> 00:24:52.800
People that have theories, there's us libertarians have evictionism, and by the way, as in so many other things, where do I get this stuff from?

223
00:24:52.800 --> 00:25:02.200
I got it from Murray, I got it from reading Murray Rothbard, he wrote three lines on it and I've written many more than three lines about it, but the original idea came from him.

224
00:25:02.200 --> 00:25:11.400
He didn't take my view that life starts at birth, rather that life starts at a fertilized egg, he took the view that life starts at birth,

225
00:25:11.400 --> 00:25:19.000
But apart from that minor difference between he and I, this is really his theory, but articulated and expanded by me.

226
00:25:20.000 --> 00:25:31.720
So, we have three, a three by two matrix, evict, kill, evictionism, pro-life, pro-choice, evictionism says yes, you can evict.

227
00:25:33.280 --> 00:25:34.880
Can you kill? No.

228
00:25:36.680 --> 00:25:39.280
Pro-life says, can you evict? No.

229
00:25:39.840 --> 00:25:40.960
Can you kill? No.

230
00:25:41.400 --> 00:25:46.400
And pro-choice says, can you evict? Yes. And can you kill? Yes.

231
00:25:46.400 --> 00:25:55.400
So you can see that the two other theories, pro-life and pro-choice, each say no-no or yes-yes to evict and kill.

232
00:25:55.400 --> 00:26:02.400
Whereas the third theory, evictionism, truly is a compromise between the two because it agrees with one on one thing,

233
00:26:02.400 --> 00:26:08.400
it agrees with the pro-choice on eviction and it agrees with the pro-life on no-killing.

234
00:26:08.400 --> 00:26:15.400
So it really is a compromised position, not because it's set out to be a compromised position or anything like that,

235
00:26:15.400 --> 00:26:19.400
but because that's the very nature of the thing.

236
00:26:21.400 --> 00:26:26.400
Okay, so what happens if this view is implemented?

237
00:26:26.400 --> 00:26:31.400
If this view is implemented, if eviction is implemented right now,

238
00:26:31.400 --> 00:26:35.400
what happens right now is that one-ninth of babies are saved.

239
00:26:35.400 --> 00:26:49.600
Say, the babies in the last month, okay, because a baby who is now nine months old, if it's evicted in the gentlest manner possible, can live.

240
00:26:49.600 --> 00:26:53.600
But let's suppose that an eight-month-old can't, or many of them can't.

241
00:26:53.600 --> 00:27:01.900
But in ten years, an eight-month-old one will be able to be evicted without harm, if medical science moves on,

242
00:27:01.900 --> 00:27:05.400
and maybe not 10 years, but maybe 20 years, I don't know.

243
00:27:05.400 --> 00:27:10.800
And then in another 10 or 20 years, a 7-month-old one will be able to be saved.

244
00:27:10.800 --> 00:27:17.100
And then in another 10 or 20 years, or 5 years, or whatever the years may be,

245
00:27:17.100 --> 00:27:24.900
eventually, in 50 years, or 100 years, or whatever it is, through a gradual process,

246
00:27:24.900 --> 00:27:28.300
all fetuses will be saved.

247
00:27:28.300 --> 00:27:30.700
There'll be none that will be put to death.

248
00:27:30.700 --> 00:27:35.800
And the whole controversy will end. There'll be no controversy.

249
00:27:35.800 --> 00:27:46.300
Nor will there be any injustice during this period of, what do you call it, during this transition period.

250
00:27:46.300 --> 00:27:50.800
Because take a three-month-old fetus right now who can't be saved.

251
00:27:50.800 --> 00:27:55.400
According to the evictionism theory, the mother has a right to rid herself of it.

252
00:27:55.400 --> 00:28:00.300
And if medical science is not well developed enough to save it, tough on the baby.

253
00:28:00.300 --> 00:28:21.300
It's not a rights violation to evict a fetus in a generalist manner, it's just a horror, because medical technology is not well established yet to do that for a three-month-old.

254
00:28:21.300 --> 00:28:28.300
I think as a general point, it's very important for us libertarians to distinguish ourselves from both our friends on the left and the right.

255
00:28:28.300 --> 00:28:33.300
It's not that we're moderates. We're more extreme than both of them in both directions.

256
00:28:33.300 --> 00:28:36.300
But we have to have a bit of product differentiation.

257
00:28:36.300 --> 00:28:39.300
We can't say, well, you know, we're really a branch of conservatism.

258
00:28:39.300 --> 00:28:43.300
Nor can we say we're a branch of left liberalism. We're unique.

259
00:28:43.300 --> 00:28:46.300
Everyone else is out of step.

260
00:28:46.300 --> 00:28:51.300
The left sort of agrees that, you know, you should have civil liberties but not economic liberties.

261
00:28:51.300 --> 00:28:56.300
The right sort of agrees that you should have economic liberties but not civil liberties.

262
00:28:56.300 --> 00:29:01.300
The first two parties, neither one is really adamant on their particular liberty.

263
00:29:01.300 --> 00:29:05.300
We say you should have both. And everyone says we're inconsistent.

264
00:29:05.300 --> 00:29:12.300
No, everyone else is inconsistent. And to take the third area, you know, those charts,

265
00:29:12.300 --> 00:29:17.300
the Nolan chart that is supposed to rate your... where you're a libertarian, they have economics and they have civil liberty,

266
00:29:17.300 --> 00:29:24.300
but they never have foreign military adventurism. So it really should be a three-dimensional thing, including that.

267
00:29:24.300 --> 00:29:28.300
And there, the left and the right sort of take turns in being bad.

268
00:29:28.300 --> 00:29:33.300
Right now, the right is bad and the left is sort of okay, but it keeps changing around.

269
00:29:33.300 --> 00:29:38.300
Whereas libertarians are pretty consistent about, you know, the George Washington

270
00:29:38.300 --> 00:29:43.300
and John Quincy Adams business of non-entangling alliances and no imperialism.

271
00:29:43.300 --> 00:29:46.300
So we're unique in three ways.

272
00:29:46.300 --> 00:29:50.300
And we're also unique here in the case of abortion.

273
00:29:50.300 --> 00:29:56.100
And I try to tell my Catholic friends, and my friends who are pro-choice,

274
00:29:56.100 --> 00:30:03.500
Why did it get so big? Oh, I see, because of this, right.

275
00:30:03.500 --> 00:30:12.000
That you're losing the war right now, and if you adopt this view, you can win it starting right now.

276
00:30:12.000 --> 00:30:16.000
And not only adopt it because it's philosophically correct, but adopt it to save babies.

277
00:30:16.000 --> 00:30:23.000
You can save one-ninth of babies right now, assuming that the babies are equally distributed among the nine months.

278
00:30:23.000 --> 00:30:29.000
I haven't had much success, but I'm hoping, and this is the first time I got a publication in a scholarly journal.

279
00:30:29.000 --> 00:30:32.000
The last one I said was in Reason Magazine in the 70s.

280
00:30:32.000 --> 00:30:34.000
Maybe this will have some effect.

281
00:30:34.000 --> 00:30:44.000
I put my heart and soul into it and I really am on the side of the pro-life people because my goal is to save life.

282
00:30:44.000 --> 00:30:52.000
Life, I think life is precious. One of those babies will be a Murray Rothbard or a Mozart and, you know, we've got to save all the babies we can.

283
00:30:52.000 --> 00:30:58.000
And I think this is a philosophically coherent and justifiable way to do it.

284
00:30:58.000 --> 00:31:08.000
Okay, that's pretty much what I want to say about abortion. Now I get into stem cell research which is a lot more controversial.

285
00:31:08.000 --> 00:31:12.000
Hard to believe, but there's a compromise here too.

286
00:31:12.000 --> 00:31:24.200
Now, stem cell research is taking a fetus or a fertilized egg and mushing it and killing it and doing stuff with it.

287
00:31:24.200 --> 00:31:27.800
So you might say, well, you know, how can we justify that sort of a thing?

288
00:31:27.800 --> 00:31:31.300
But give me a few minutes.

289
00:31:31.300 --> 00:31:37.400
First of all, there's no compromise on government funding for stem cell research.

290
00:31:37.400 --> 00:31:38.600
That's out of the picture.

291
00:31:38.600 --> 00:31:45.600
I mean, for libertarian, there's no government funding of anything and no government funding of this.

292
00:31:45.600 --> 00:31:54.600
So again, in the analysis of the stem cell situation or the research on babies,

293
00:31:54.600 --> 00:32:03.600
we start again off with the assumption that life begins at the fertilized egg stage.

294
00:32:03.600 --> 00:32:10.600
And that's more important than near birth, which is just a change of life, a change of address.

295
00:32:10.600 --> 00:32:25.600
Now, I want to introduce a distinction, a tripartite distinction between other adults, children and everything else, like cows and cars.

296
00:32:25.600 --> 00:32:37.600
Other adults you can't own. Children you can't own, but you can own the right to bring them up, the right to be their guardian.

297
00:32:37.600 --> 00:32:45.600
And how do you get to own the right to be their guardian? How is it just that Bob Murphy and his wife had that little baby?

298
00:32:45.600 --> 00:32:52.600
Why should they be the guardians? Why not me? Why can't I just grab that little cute kid and, you know, I've been kissing him and all,

299
00:32:52.600 --> 00:32:57.600
Well, according to the libertarian homesteading theory, they're the ones that homesteaded them.

300
00:32:57.600 --> 00:33:02.600
They each took some small amount of time to conceive the baby,

301
00:33:02.600 --> 00:33:07.600
and then the wife took nine months to homestead it, to mix her labor with it,

302
00:33:07.600 --> 00:33:12.600
to give it a homestead. They're the legitimate owners of the baby,

303
00:33:12.600 --> 00:33:17.600
and as long as they act in a way that is not child-abusive, they're the rightful owners.

304
00:33:17.600 --> 00:33:23.600
As long as they act in a way that is not child abusive, they're the rightful owners.

305
00:33:23.600 --> 00:33:29.600
If they starve it, they're murderers.

306
00:33:29.600 --> 00:33:35.600
Suppose, well let me not pick on them, but suppose that there's a couple that has a baby

307
00:33:35.600 --> 00:33:40.600
and now wants to leave it in the back bedroom and not feed it anymore.

308
00:33:40.600 --> 00:33:42.600
They're tired of feeding it. Why should they feed it?

309
00:33:42.600 --> 00:33:48.000
Well, in libertarian theory, they are now stopping their homesteading process,

310
00:33:48.000 --> 00:33:55.100
so they lose rights to keep that baby as theirs, and anyone else who comes and takes that baby is justified.

311
00:33:55.100 --> 00:34:00.400
So if I come and take the Murphy baby, I'm not justified because they are actively homesteading it.

312
00:34:00.400 --> 00:34:07.000
But if somebody is abusing it by neglect or in any other way, and the amount of neglect on babies is amazing,

313
00:34:07.000 --> 00:34:12.000
you know, burning it with cigarettes and, you know, there's just horror stories, but just good old neglect.

314
00:34:12.000 --> 00:34:17.600
If they neglected for more than, you know, you can neglect it for 10 minutes if it doesn't cry,

315
00:34:17.600 --> 00:34:28.800
but if, you know, you neglected past its next feeding, you're a neglectful parent, anyone else can come grab that baby.

316
00:34:28.800 --> 00:34:35.300
I happen to believe that you can own other people through alienation, and I've written on that in the JLS.

317
00:34:35.300 --> 00:34:42.900
It's sort of a side order point, but let me just make the point, even though it's a little peripheral to my main interest.

318
00:34:42.900 --> 00:34:53.600
Suppose my son has a dread disease, and Steve Berger here has long wanted me to be his slave, and he's very rich.

319
00:34:53.600 --> 00:34:58.400
And my son's operation, which will save his life, will cost five million.

320
00:34:58.400 --> 00:35:02.600
And I make a deal with Steve that if he gives me the five million, I'll be his slave.

321
00:35:02.600 --> 00:35:07.600
and I agree to do it because I value my son's life more than my liberty.

322
00:35:07.600 --> 00:35:11.600
He agrees to do it because he values me as a slave more than the five million he has to pay.

323
00:35:11.600 --> 00:35:21.600
So it's a mutually beneficial decision and all is well, as far as libertarianism is concerned, until I first sass him.

324
00:35:21.600 --> 00:35:24.600
When I sass him, he gets out the whip and he starts whipping me.

325
00:35:24.600 --> 00:35:32.600
And now Ken, the policeman, sees this, and I start saying, well, you know, he's initiating violence against me.

326
00:35:32.600 --> 00:35:38.600
And he says, violence, tut-tut, I own you, you're my slave.

327
00:35:38.600 --> 00:35:41.600
What should Ken, the policeman-judge, do?

328
00:35:41.600 --> 00:35:44.600
Well, I say it's a valid contract.

329
00:35:44.600 --> 00:35:51.600
And Ken should ignore this whipping, or help him whip me further, or whatever, because I'm an ornery slave.

330
00:35:51.600 --> 00:36:00.600
But apart from that, you can't own human beings unless a human being voluntarily sells himself into slavery to you

331
00:36:00.600 --> 00:36:07.600
and a baby can't do it because we don't agree that babies can be part of contracts without guardians, okay?

332
00:36:07.600 --> 00:36:18.600
So you can't own a baby, but you can own the right to bring up the baby in that it would be wrong for anyone else to take the baby out of your care

333
00:36:18.600 --> 00:36:23.600
as long as you're bringing up the baby, as long as you're not doing any child abuse.

334
00:36:23.600 --> 00:36:26.600
Okay, another point.

335
00:36:26.600 --> 00:36:30.600
Now, you know libertarians are against positive obligations.

336
00:36:30.600 --> 00:36:32.600
There are no positive obligations.

337
00:36:32.600 --> 00:36:36.600
If you're starving or drowning, I don't owe you anything unless I'm contractually obligated,

338
00:36:36.600 --> 00:36:41.600
in which case it's a negative obligation or it's a contractual obligation.

339
00:36:41.600 --> 00:36:47.600
But apart from that, all libertarian theory says with people vis-a-vis each other

340
00:36:47.600 --> 00:36:49.920
is you keep your mitts off of them, that's it.

341
00:36:49.920 --> 00:36:51.720
You don't have to come to their aid.

342
00:36:51.720 --> 00:36:54.280
Coming to their aid is over and above the call of duty.

343
00:36:54.280 --> 00:36:57.520
It's a virtue, it's a mitzvah, it's good to do this.

344
00:36:57.520 --> 00:36:59.360
Libertarians aren't against it,

345
00:36:59.360 --> 00:37:02.360
but libertarianism is a theory of when you go to jail

346
00:37:02.360 --> 00:37:04.920
or when it's justified to use violence against you,

347
00:37:04.920 --> 00:37:07.200
and it's not if you keep your mitts off.

348
00:37:08.240 --> 00:37:11.620
But how about this baby that I am now neglecting?

349
00:37:12.840 --> 00:37:17.200
Do I have an obligation to tell you about this?

350
00:37:17.200 --> 00:37:29.200
And my claim is that I do, and that it's not an instance of positive obligations, rather, if I don't, I'm guilty of some sort of crime against homesteading,

351
00:37:29.200 --> 00:37:41.200
namely, forestalling or precluding people from owning stuff. And here's where we get into that, what do you call it, the bagel.

352
00:37:41.200 --> 00:37:53.200
Here is area X, here is area Y. If you homestead an area like area Y, you have to allow somebody access to area X.

353
00:37:53.200 --> 00:38:03.200
Maybe bridge under or a tunnel under or bridge over, but if that's not technologically possible, you have to allow them an egress.

354
00:38:03.200 --> 00:38:33.200
Now, someone, one of the vicious questioners said, well, suppose there are two people, each own X and Y and Z, which of them has to let people through to X, and I couldn't answer at the time, but my answer now is, well, you have a barrier right there, and they should be able to get through X, through those two barriers, in other words, the borders between Y and Z should allow them to get into the X area,

355
00:38:33.200 --> 00:38:41.200
So, nature abhors a vacuum, homesteading theory abhors an un-homesteaded piece of land like X,

356
00:38:41.200 --> 00:38:47.200
and I think you have an obligation not only to allow them through, but to even notify them.

357
00:38:47.200 --> 00:38:50.200
Now, originally I thought X would be 100 square miles and everyone would know about it,

358
00:38:50.200 --> 00:38:56.200
but if X were smaller and you didn't know about it, you'd have an obligation to tell people.

359
00:38:56.200 --> 00:39:02.200
I've been accused of informational socialism on this ground, but I plead innocent.

360
00:39:02.200 --> 00:39:07.200
Not only here, but in the case of Murder Park, you have to tell people that it's Murder Park.

361
00:39:07.200 --> 00:39:11.200
You just can't say, oh, by the way, you didn't know it's Murder Park. Boom.

362
00:39:11.200 --> 00:39:14.200
You have to tell them, I don't think that's informational socialism.

363
00:39:14.200 --> 00:39:16.200
I don't think it's a positive obligation.

364
00:39:16.200 --> 00:39:21.200
I think the implicit contract or the logic of homesteading implies that.

365
00:39:21.200 --> 00:39:23.200
Similarly with the baby.

366
00:39:23.200 --> 00:39:27.200
You have to take the baby out of the bedroom and put it where?

367
00:39:27.200 --> 00:39:37.400
Where? In the hospital, in the church steps, there was a case in MASH, the movie MASH, where they had a baby like that.

368
00:39:37.400 --> 00:39:42.900
They took it to the monastery and the people there took care of the baby.

369
00:39:42.900 --> 00:39:48.100
It's an obligation. If you don't do it, you're guilty of murder.

370
00:39:48.100 --> 00:39:57.420
Okay, let us, but wait, suppose that no one wants to take care of the baby.

371
00:39:57.420 --> 00:40:07.780
There was this case in Canada where there was a severely mentally handicapped and physically handicapped child who was in pain.

372
00:40:07.780 --> 00:40:12.740
No, just severely mentally handicapped and physically handicapped, not in pain.

373
00:40:12.740 --> 00:40:15.660
I'll get to the pain in a second.

374
00:40:15.660 --> 00:40:21.060
and the father killed it. It was the Latimer case.

375
00:40:21.060 --> 00:40:25.560
My view or what I take to be the libertarian view is he was guilty of murder

376
00:40:25.560 --> 00:40:30.660
because he didn't offer her to anyone else. By wanting to kill her he showed that he was

377
00:40:30.660 --> 00:40:37.660
incapable or unwilling to bear the responsibility of homesteading her or being her guardian,

378
00:40:37.660 --> 00:40:42.460
which is fine, he doesn't go to jail for that, but by killing her he precluded other people who might have

379
00:40:42.460 --> 00:40:48.780
wanted to take her and keep her alive and healthy and happy. So he was a criminal.

380
00:40:48.780 --> 00:40:58.180
Take the case of Terry Shivo. Terry Shivo was for all intents and purposes a baby.

381
00:40:58.180 --> 00:41:02.740
She was incapable of taking care of herself even though she was a 43 year old woman.

382
00:41:02.740 --> 00:41:10.220
But for all intents and purposes, she was incapable of taking care of herself.

383
00:41:10.220 --> 00:41:21.420
Now, there were allegations that the husband and other people had said that she had said that if she were ever in such a dire circumstance, she should be put to death quickly and painlessly.

384
00:41:21.420 --> 00:41:35.220
But it seems to me that to put someone to death, you need more than just a say-so, especially when the people who were saying so stand to gain by that because the husband had some other woman and they wanted to get rid of her.

385
00:41:35.220 --> 00:41:44.820
I mean, if it's a contract over a pen, okay, I'll say so. But if it's life itself, I want to see a notarized one, not just a signed statement, I want to see a notarized one.

386
00:41:44.820 --> 00:41:52.780
Or I want to see a TV interview saying exactly that. And there wasn't.

387
00:41:52.780 --> 00:42:02.160
So what should have happened in the Terry Shivo case is that when the husband wanted her put to death, he shouldn't have been allowed to put her to death.

388
00:42:02.160 --> 00:42:07.360
He should have been kicked out of the guardianship of her because he no longer wants to guard her.

389
00:42:07.360 --> 00:42:10.860
And then the next person online should be given that option.

390
00:42:10.860 --> 00:42:16.460
And the next person, I assume, and I'm not sure, would be the parents or the siblings,

391
00:42:16.460 --> 00:42:19.560
or the children if she had adult children.

392
00:42:19.560 --> 00:42:26.360
And if none of those wanted, then all those people picketing outside, saying, you know, life for Terry.

393
00:42:26.360 --> 00:42:28.560
Well, some of them should have been given her.

394
00:42:28.560 --> 00:42:31.660
What Murray used to call this was friends of babies.

395
00:42:31.660 --> 00:42:39.960
If there was a Friends of Babies organization, they should be given her.

396
00:42:39.960 --> 00:42:43.260
But suppose nobody in the whole bloody world wanted her.

397
00:42:43.260 --> 00:42:47.060
Or suppose no one in the whole world wanted the Latimer kid.

398
00:42:47.060 --> 00:42:49.860
Then what?

399
00:42:49.860 --> 00:42:55.060
Now we come up with a very difficult case, because according to libertarianism,

400
00:42:55.060 --> 00:42:58.460
a baby who is unwanted and no one wants to take care of him has to die.

401
00:42:58.460 --> 00:43:02.160
And it's just that they died because there were no positive obligations.

402
00:43:02.160 --> 00:43:06.160
But there are ways of dying and then there are ways of dying.

403
00:43:06.160 --> 00:43:11.360
And I ask myself, suppose I were a five-year-old kid

404
00:43:11.360 --> 00:43:14.060
and no one wanted me, how would I like to be treated?

405
00:43:14.060 --> 00:43:17.760
Namely, I'm trying to get at what is child abuse and what is not.

406
00:43:17.760 --> 00:43:19.360
And there are two ways to go.

407
00:43:19.360 --> 00:43:26.660
One is, I get no water and no food and I die an excruciating death a week later.

408
00:43:26.660 --> 00:43:29.360
That's one way.

409
00:43:29.360 --> 00:43:38.260
The other way is I get put to sleep by ether or something or a painless way.

410
00:43:38.260 --> 00:43:41.560
If ever I were to commit suicide and I announce this and I'm on tape,

411
00:43:41.560 --> 00:43:44.160
I want to go the quick and easy way.

412
00:43:44.160 --> 00:43:49.660
I don't want to go out in two weeks starving and dehydrated.

413
00:43:49.660 --> 00:43:53.160
That's a horrible way to die. That's torture.

414
00:43:53.160 --> 00:43:56.560
So, what is child abuse?

415
00:43:56.560 --> 00:44:00.760
It seems to me that child abuse is dying the way Terry died,

416
00:44:00.760 --> 00:44:04.720
of having the feeding tube removed and you just... Ben?

417
00:44:04.720 --> 00:44:07.760
Terry Schiavo wasn't conscious at all.

418
00:44:07.760 --> 00:44:13.440
Okay, well, then take another person who was conscious and suffering.

419
00:44:13.440 --> 00:44:18.080
If ever I'm in that position and I'm conscious, I mean, if you're unconscious, I guess it doesn't matter.

420
00:44:18.080 --> 00:44:21.920
But if you're conscious, then I'd rather go out quickly and cleanly.

421
00:44:21.920 --> 00:44:31.420
Take another case, and here is where I'm coming from a radical perspective.

422
00:44:31.420 --> 00:44:39.420
I now have a five-year-old son, and I can't feed him, and he's going to die because I don't have any food or water for him.

423
00:44:39.420 --> 00:44:49.720
However, there's a rich guy who wants to involve him in a pornographic film where he'll be raped.

424
00:44:49.720 --> 00:44:52.120
What's child abuse now?

425
00:44:52.120 --> 00:44:54.420
It seems to me, again, if I were the five-year-old,

426
00:44:54.420 --> 00:44:55.720
I'd rather be raped.

427
00:44:55.720 --> 00:44:59.480
It only takes 10 minutes or so, half an hour tops,

428
00:44:59.480 --> 00:45:02.040
and then live the rest of my life normally.

429
00:45:02.040 --> 00:45:03.840
Okay, maybe I'll have psychological problems,

430
00:45:03.840 --> 00:45:06.960
but I'll deal with them, rather than being dead.

431
00:45:09.140 --> 00:45:11.720
Now, we're sort of probing the outer reaches

432
00:45:11.720 --> 00:45:13.520
of libertarian theory here,

433
00:45:13.520 --> 00:45:15.780
where there are no good solutions,

434
00:45:15.780 --> 00:45:19.900
where we're in lifeboat land, lifeboat situation land.

435
00:45:20.900 --> 00:45:23.460
So don't think that libertarianism is cruel.

436
00:45:23.460 --> 00:45:26.500
Rather the cruelty emanates from the fact

437
00:45:26.500 --> 00:45:28.100
that we're in dire circumstances

438
00:45:28.100 --> 00:45:29.160
and we have to deal with it

439
00:45:29.160 --> 00:45:32.160
because when you have a lifeboat situation,

440
00:45:32.160 --> 00:45:34.700
it's incumbent upon us to analyze it.

441
00:45:34.700 --> 00:45:37.080
We just can't analyze nice situations

442
00:45:37.080 --> 00:45:39.700
where the sun is shining and everyone's rich.

443
00:45:39.700 --> 00:45:43.660
We also have to apply it to the netherworld of philosophy

444
00:45:43.660 --> 00:45:45.700
where death is the only choice

445
00:45:45.700 --> 00:45:49.060
And the only choice is which way to die.

446
00:45:49.060 --> 00:45:54.100
Well, I say keep the kid alive.

447
00:45:54.100 --> 00:45:58.620
I'm willing to make a concession that if the torture goes on for 70 years

448
00:45:58.620 --> 00:46:02.380
and then life lasts for five minutes, OK.

449
00:46:02.380 --> 00:46:05.620
But that's a continuing problem of how much torture and how much life.

450
00:46:05.620 --> 00:46:12.140
If it's just a matter of 10 minutes of torture

451
00:46:12.140 --> 00:46:21.040
and then a life of, you know, a normal life, maybe psychologically unhappy but, you know, that's why they have therapists

452
00:46:21.040 --> 00:46:27.840
and some of them are pretty good. I think that that would be non-child abuse.

453
00:46:27.840 --> 00:46:34.740
Okay, what's next in the story?

454
00:46:34.740 --> 00:46:41.240
Now, I'm abstracting from all sorts of slippery slopes and killing for money and continuing problems

455
00:46:41.240 --> 00:46:45.240
I'm assuming a God's-eye view where God knows exactly what's happening.

456
00:46:45.240 --> 00:46:52.240
The point I'm making is we've got to get the law right first and then we worry about such peripheral issues as, you know,

457
00:46:52.240 --> 00:46:56.240
people will now kill people, mercy killing when it's not justified.

458
00:46:56.240 --> 00:47:04.240
I mean, that's a legitimate concern and there are cases, I think, in Holland where they're bumping off old people to get their money

459
00:47:04.240 --> 00:47:08.240
and, you know, this is obviously not something I'm favoring.

460
00:47:08.240 --> 00:47:15.240
Okay, so now we get to the compromise of stem cell research, having drawn the picture there.

461
00:47:15.240 --> 00:47:22.240
So here we picture it. Over here there's a lab, and what they do is they get eggs and they get sperm.

462
00:47:22.240 --> 00:47:31.240
And there might be a shortage of eggs, but there's no shortage of sperm, which reminds me of the story.

463
00:47:31.240 --> 00:48:01.240
There was a male and a female actor, as good-looking as Tom Cruise and Britney Spears, not them, but very good-looking actors, a male and a female actor, and they went to some campus and they each read the same script, and the script was, I've got a motel room over there, the female actor would go to young lads on the campus and the male to young ladies and say, I've got a motel room over there, how would you like to spend the next two hours with me doing what kind of work?

464
00:48:01.240 --> 00:48:13.240
comes naturally. And the female got about 97 out of 100 yeses, and the male got about four or five yeses.

465
00:48:13.240 --> 00:48:22.240
The point is that females are a lot more judicious about spreading their eggs around, because they've got so few eggs,

466
00:48:22.240 --> 00:48:27.240
and you can prove this by supply and demand, because when you have so few, they're more precious,

467
00:48:27.240 --> 00:48:34.240
Nails have got plenty of sperm, they're willing to share it, they're generous to a fault.

468
00:48:34.240 --> 00:48:38.240
So, to get back to my story, here you are in a lab, they've got a whole bunch of sperm

469
00:48:38.240 --> 00:48:42.240
and many other eggs they can get and they put them together.

470
00:48:42.240 --> 00:48:46.240
Did they violate any rights yet?

471
00:48:46.240 --> 00:48:54.240
No, it's non-invasive, you know, voluntary sperm and eggs, whatever, donors, fine.

472
00:48:57.240 --> 00:49:03.240
Can they start experimenting on them, killing them?

473
00:49:03.240 --> 00:49:10.240
Experimenting doesn't necessarily mean killing them, but it means poking around with them, which isn't really good for them.

474
00:49:10.240 --> 00:49:22.240
Well, they can, in my view, trying to extrapolate what libertarianism says about that, they can, if and only if, there aren't any people that are willing to take them on and bring them up.

475
00:49:22.240 --> 00:49:46.240
In other words, so here you have the supply side, and the supply side is this lab, and the demand side is friends of babies, that organization, consisting of the rest of the world who are potential adoptive parents of all the sperm and eggs that they put together.

476
00:49:46.240 --> 00:49:57.240
Now, if supply is greater than demand, we've got extra human beings that no one wants to take care of.

477
00:49:57.240 --> 00:50:08.240
On the other hand, if the demand side is greater than the supply side, then there'll be no medical experiments,

478
00:50:08.240 --> 00:50:14.240
because any fetus that the lab puts together, the friends of babies will say, okay, we'll take them, we'll take them.

479
00:50:14.240 --> 00:50:24.240
Now, I used to think that the supply would outstrip the demand because it's easier to put babies together in a lab than it is to bring them up.

480
00:50:24.240 --> 00:50:31.240
And on the web, some genius who I cite in my article that I'm publishing on this subject said,

481
00:50:31.240 --> 00:50:37.240
Well, you don't really have to bring them all up. All you have to do is freeze them and keep them alive in that way.

482
00:50:37.240 --> 00:50:42.240
And who knows in 500 years, maybe this or that, but you just freeze them and you'll keep them alive.

483
00:50:42.240 --> 00:50:55.240
And now, it looks as if the demand side will win, because freezers are cheaper than petri dishes, or the technology and the number of eggs is very limited, even if not the amount of sperm.

484
00:50:55.240 --> 00:51:04.240
So that's the compromise. The compromise is, we don't say whether stem cell research is justified or not.

485
00:51:04.240 --> 00:51:12.240
We leave it to the market. We leave it to whether supply is greater than demand or not.

486
00:51:12.240 --> 00:51:18.240
If demand is greater than supply, there'll be no stem cell research.

487
00:51:18.240 --> 00:51:26.240
If, on the other hand, supply is greater than demand, the additional supply that is not demanded now has two choices.

488
00:51:26.240 --> 00:51:36.880
One, they can die out of thawing, T-H-A-W, you die from being thawed, it doesn't hurt because it's just a fetus.

489
00:51:36.880 --> 00:51:42.600
And the other is you get experimented on, and now I ask, well where is the child abuse?

490
00:51:42.600 --> 00:51:50.280
Suppose I were one of those fertilized eggs, which would I rather be, thawed or experimented on?

491
00:51:50.280 --> 00:51:58.560
And my answer is, thought is a certain death, whereas being experimented on, maybe one out of a million will live.

492
00:51:58.560 --> 00:52:10.720
And since I'm pro-life, I think it's not murder for them to experiment on stem cells or fertilized eggs as long as supply is greater than demand.

493
00:52:10.720 --> 00:52:13.120
So it's a true compromise.

494
00:52:13.120 --> 00:52:16.320
We leave it to supply and demand and see what happens.

495
00:52:16.320 --> 00:52:21.760
As an empirical statement, I think there'll be no stem cell research.

496
00:52:21.760 --> 00:52:23.680
What about the case where

497
00:52:23.680 --> 00:52:26.300
a couple has a baby and the baby has

498
00:52:26.300 --> 00:52:28.000
some horrible disease,

499
00:52:28.000 --> 00:52:32.580
and what they do is they create another baby in order to use the other baby, the

500
00:52:32.580 --> 00:52:35.200
second baby, as a

501
00:52:35.200 --> 00:52:39.200
source of supply of body parts for the first one?

502
00:52:39.200 --> 00:52:40.720
You've heard of cases like that.

503
00:52:40.720 --> 00:52:43.400
What's the libertarian view there?

504
00:52:43.400 --> 00:52:46.980
it should be obvious by now the libertarian view there is sure they can

505
00:52:46.980 --> 00:52:51.160
use the second baby as a source of whatever they want for the first baby if

506
00:52:51.160 --> 00:52:56.920
and only if there's not one person in the world that wants to take that second baby

507
00:52:56.920 --> 00:53:00.600
as long as there's someone else that says, oh, wait a minute, not so fast

508
00:53:00.600 --> 00:53:04.760
let's not be using the second baby as a supply of body parts for the first baby

509
00:53:04.760 --> 00:53:06.720
because I want the second baby

510
00:53:06.720 --> 00:53:10.920
they then have precedence over the parents because the parents are no longer

511
00:53:10.920 --> 00:53:15.920
Homesteading the Second Baby. They're homesteading the first, but they're not homesteading the second baby.

512
00:53:19.220 --> 00:53:23.420
Okay, now I have a whole series of objections to my theory.

513
00:53:25.620 --> 00:53:27.120
And what are the objections?

514
00:53:29.220 --> 00:53:38.220
The first one is that you're putting human beings in a Petri dish, and doesn't this violate libertarian law?

515
00:53:38.220 --> 00:53:48.220
Some of these objections are silly, I think, but I'm going to read them because I want to be exhausted in my treatment of this very important subject.

516
00:53:48.220 --> 00:53:55.220
Well, it doesn't seem to me to violate libertarian code to put a sperm and an egg in a Petri dish or in a test tube or in some way.

517
00:53:55.220 --> 00:54:02.220
It's not a violation of rights. It doesn't constitute an initiation of violence or a violation of property rights.

518
00:54:02.220 --> 00:54:12.520
Remember I said you've got to keep those things in the fore, and if you do, you don't run into problems, or you can negotiate through this dangerous philosophical terrain.

519
00:54:12.520 --> 00:54:21.520
Well, why is it wrong? Why is it not wrong, but why is it a violation of rights to put a sperm and an egg in a petri dish?

520
00:54:21.520 --> 00:54:24.120
I don't see why it is.

521
00:54:24.120 --> 00:54:27.920
The second one has to do with birth control pills.

522
00:54:27.920 --> 00:54:32.420
And my understanding of birth control pills is that there are three kinds.

523
00:54:32.420 --> 00:54:35.220
The first one stops ovulation, no eggs.

524
00:54:35.220 --> 00:54:41.220
Well, that doesn't constitute an initiation of violence against a human being,

525
00:54:41.220 --> 00:54:45.120
a human being defined as a fertilized egg or better.

526
00:54:45.120 --> 00:54:51.320
Second, you make the cervical mucus hostile environment for the sperm.

527
00:54:51.320 --> 00:54:54.620
So when the sperm gets there, it can't impregnate.

528
00:54:54.620 --> 00:54:56.320
That doesn't seem to be a problem.

529
00:54:56.320 --> 00:55:02.480
The third one is you change the endometrium.

530
00:55:02.480 --> 00:55:11.760
The fertilized egg is there, but it has no nutrients because it can't attach itself to the body to get the nutrients.

531
00:55:11.760 --> 00:55:15.960
Now, this seems to me to be a violation of rights.

532
00:55:15.960 --> 00:55:20.440
Because you have a fertilized egg, that's a perfectly good fertilized egg.

533
00:55:20.440 --> 00:55:22.120
And if some friend of baby says,

534
00:55:22.120 --> 00:55:25.720
Aha, we want that egg, give it to us.

535
00:55:25.720 --> 00:55:27.400
On what basis are you denying them?

536
00:55:27.400 --> 00:55:29.440
Because you're not homesteading it.

537
00:55:29.440 --> 00:55:35.240
You're as if putting it in the back bedroom when it's an infant.

538
00:55:35.240 --> 00:55:38.840
In other words, the fertilized egg that's in the womb but not connected to the womb

539
00:55:38.840 --> 00:55:43.120
and can't get nutrients from the womb is in effect like the infant,

540
00:55:43.120 --> 00:55:47.280
the two-year-old who's in the back bedroom who you're starving to death.

541
00:55:47.280 --> 00:55:48.800
No, no, no.

542
00:55:48.800 --> 00:55:55.400
So that one would be illicit, so again we have some sort of compromised position.

543
00:55:55.400 --> 00:56:03.320
The next objection is that you're treating children as property, but I'm not.

544
00:56:03.320 --> 00:56:11.640
I'm only treating as property the right to bring up a child, which is different than the child itself.

545
00:56:11.640 --> 00:56:18.080
Next objection is that I'm being a Nazi, making soap out of Jews is wrong,

546
00:56:18.080 --> 00:56:48.080
Making medicine out of children is equally wrong, that's the quote, but I'm, well I was going to say but I'm not, but I am, but I'm only doing it for people that no one wants to bring up, and it's not my fault, it's your fault, why aren't you bringing them up? You see the argument? So in a sense, Nazism is justified, boy, I shouldn't say things like that because people will take it out of context, but let me say it again more quickly,

547
00:56:48.080 --> 00:57:03.080
If Nazism is justified, if the Nazism is limited to helpless people that no one in the whole world wants to take care of and then you're giving it a quick death rather than a long drawn-out death.

548
00:57:03.080 --> 00:57:14.080
Well, by Nazism you just mean coercion here and I think coercion is justified in those weird lifeboat kind of situations.

549
00:57:14.080 --> 00:57:21.080
I know this doesn't sound right, and maybe I'm wrong and I'm open to criticism, you know, we're all struggling here for the truth,

550
00:57:21.080 --> 00:57:28.080
but I'm trying to apply libertarian theory as best I can, and this is what I'm coming up with.

551
00:57:28.080 --> 00:57:36.080
The objections get better.

552
00:57:36.080 --> 00:57:41.080
Here's the best objection, it comes from Jeff Herbiner, who I admire and respect,

553
00:57:41.080 --> 00:57:48.080
And what he does is he quotes someone who I admire and respect maybe even more, namely Murray Rothbard.

554
00:57:48.080 --> 00:57:53.080
And here's Jeff Herbiner's critique of what I'm saying. He's mainly quoting Murray Rothbard.

555
00:57:53.080 --> 00:58:01.080
It's two pages of single-spaced words, so I'm not going to read the whole Herbiner quote,

556
00:58:01.080 --> 00:58:05.080
but I'll read Herbiner's quotes of Murray Rothbard.

557
00:58:05.080 --> 00:58:11.080
And he says, Murray says, in the Ethics of Liberty, page 99, quote,

558
00:58:11.080 --> 00:58:15.080
So the parental property rights must be limited in time.

559
00:58:15.080 --> 00:58:18.080
That means, you know, once they're 18, they're on their own.

560
00:58:18.080 --> 00:58:23.080
But it also must be limited in kind, for it truly would be grotesque

561
00:58:23.080 --> 00:58:27.080
for a libertarian who believes in the right of self-ownership

562
00:58:27.080 --> 00:58:33.080
to advocate the right of a parent to murder or torture his or her children.

563
00:58:33.080 --> 00:58:51.080
Well, I disagree. I think I've specified a case where it would be right to murder or torture a child and to do so out of non-child abuse, out of love or whatever.

564
00:58:51.080 --> 00:59:01.080
And the cases to repeat myself are, take the torture first, if the torture will save the child's life.

565
00:59:01.080 --> 00:59:08.480
And if the torture takes 10 minutes and the child is 5, so it has 70 year life expectancy, fine.

566
00:59:08.480 --> 00:59:13.080
Well, not fine, but better than not. I don't want my kid dead.

567
00:59:13.080 --> 00:59:18.980
I'll be damned if my kid dies when I have it within my power to save him by letting him be tortured.

568
00:59:18.980 --> 00:59:23.080
Look, if my kid doesn't want a penicillin shot and it'll save his life,

569
00:59:23.080 --> 00:59:26.280
he's getting that penicillin shot whether he likes it or not. He's a kid.

570
00:59:26.280 --> 00:59:38.880
Paternalism is justified for children, not other adults, so torture is justified, and so is murder, so is killing.

571
00:59:38.880 --> 00:59:46.360
If the only choice is a long, slow death or a painless death, and those are the only choices, then I think it's...

572
00:59:46.360 --> 00:59:51.560
Now remember, the long, slow death is you do nothing, so in a sense you're guiltless, you didn't commit the murder,

573
00:59:51.560 --> 00:59:55.640
rather the starvation committed them, committed the murder.

574
00:59:55.640 --> 01:00:02.800
Well, I think it's more consonant with libertarian theory to have a mercy killing in such a case.

575
01:00:02.800 --> 01:00:07.040
Now again, it sounds a little weird, and Murray's got more to say.

576
01:00:07.040 --> 01:00:13.640
But let me introduce a new topic that I'm just concocting.

577
01:00:13.640 --> 01:00:14.840
I'm in the midst of writing about.

578
01:00:14.840 --> 01:00:17.640
It's a thing called negative homesteading.

579
01:00:25.640 --> 01:00:35.420
Ready for your daily allotment of jokes? Remember we're asking why is it that the

580
01:00:35.420 --> 01:00:42.100
chicken crossed the road? Barbara Walters, isn't this interesting that the chicken

581
01:00:42.100 --> 01:00:46.280
crossed the road? In a few minutes we will be listening to the chicken tell, for

582
01:00:46.280 --> 01:00:50.680
the first time, the heartwarming story of how it overcame a serious case of

583
01:00:50.680 --> 01:00:55.680
and Moulting and went on to accomplish its lifelong dream of crossing the road.

584
01:00:55.680 --> 01:00:59.680
Not a very good one, but maybe the next one will be better.

585
01:00:59.680 --> 01:01:03.680
John Lennon, why did the chicken cross the road?

586
01:01:03.680 --> 01:01:07.680
Imagine all the chickens crossing roads in peace.

587
01:01:07.680 --> 01:01:13.680
Aristotle, Roderick Long will appreciate this one.

588
01:01:13.680 --> 01:01:17.680
It's the nature of chickens to cross the road.

589
01:01:17.680 --> 01:01:20.400
Maybe he won't appreciate it, I don't know.

590
01:01:20.400 --> 01:01:23.000
Karl Marx, it was a historical inevitability

591
01:01:23.000 --> 01:01:25.440
that the chicken crossed the road.

592
01:01:25.440 --> 01:01:28.480
Saddam Hussein, it was an unprovoked act of rebellion

593
01:01:28.480 --> 01:01:30.680
and we were quite justified in dropping 50 tons

594
01:01:30.680 --> 01:01:32.240
of nerve gas on the chicken.

595
01:01:34.040 --> 01:01:38.220
Captain Kirk, why did the chicken cross the road?

596
01:01:38.220 --> 01:01:41.020
To go boldly where no chicken has gone before.

597
01:01:42.800 --> 01:01:45.320
Fox Mulder, you know who Fox Mulder is?

598
01:01:45.320 --> 01:01:53.320
You saw it cross the road with your own eyes. How many more chickens have to cross the road before you believe it?

599
01:01:53.320 --> 01:02:02.320
Freud, the fact that you're all concerned that the chicken crossed the road reveals your underlying sexual insecurity.

600
01:02:02.320 --> 01:02:13.320
Okay, let's get back to the criticism of Jeff Herbiner citing Murray Rothbard against my thesis.

601
01:02:13.320 --> 01:02:22.320
The second quote that Jeff makes from Murray is Murray says in the Ethics of Liberty, page 152,

602
01:02:22.320 --> 01:02:30.720
to sum up the application of our theory of extreme situations, and indeed we are now doing extreme situations,

603
01:02:30.720 --> 01:02:37.820
if a man aggresses against another man's person or property to save his own life,

604
01:02:37.820 --> 01:02:41.820
he is still a criminal aggressor against the property of another,

605
01:02:41.820 --> 01:02:49.180
And the victim is within his right to repel that aggression by force and to prosecute the aggressor after the crime.

606
01:02:49.180 --> 01:02:54.180
Let me introduce this new concept that I've been working on called negative homesteading.

607
01:02:54.180 --> 01:02:56.540
Now you all know what positive homesteading is.

608
01:02:56.540 --> 01:03:00.940
You grab something, you mix your labor with it and you own it.

609
01:03:00.940 --> 01:03:02.020
Fine.

610
01:03:02.020 --> 01:03:03.180
What's negative homesteading?

611
01:03:03.180 --> 01:03:10.480
Negative homesteading, I'm in a bad mood or something because everything I'm talking about today is pretty miserable.

612
01:03:10.480 --> 01:03:13.980
These lifeboat situations are pretty horrible.

613
01:03:13.980 --> 01:03:18.280
Negative homesteading is sometimes called homesteading misery,

614
01:03:18.280 --> 01:03:23.080
and I just concocted this stuff, so I'm open to criticisms as I am,

615
01:03:23.080 --> 01:03:25.980
even for stuff that I haven't concocted.

616
01:03:25.980 --> 01:03:27.880
I regard this as a learning experience.

617
01:03:27.880 --> 01:03:31.180
As I said, as I moved on in the week, I would get more and more radical.

618
01:03:31.180 --> 01:03:36.780
Well, more and more radical means new stuff that I haven't even published yet.

619
01:03:36.780 --> 01:03:37.980
So what's negative homesteading?

620
01:03:37.980 --> 01:03:41.780
Negative homesteading is homesteading misery.

621
01:03:41.780 --> 01:03:46.580
Suppose a lightning bolt hits me, pretty miserable, I'm going to die,

622
01:03:46.580 --> 01:03:55.780
but I have a magic ring and I can ward it off and it'll hit Max a million.

623
01:03:55.780 --> 01:03:58.180
Do I have a right to do that?

624
01:03:58.180 --> 01:04:02.280
He's saying thank you, but I don't think he's fully serious.

625
01:04:02.280 --> 01:04:03.280
Do I have a right to do that?

626
01:04:03.280 --> 01:04:06.280
No, I don't have a right to do that.

627
01:04:06.280 --> 01:04:10.280
There were two innocent people, me and Maximillian.

628
01:04:10.280 --> 01:04:15.280
But I was the first to be hit by the lightning.

629
01:04:15.280 --> 01:04:18.280
I homesteaded the misery.

630
01:04:18.280 --> 01:04:26.280
I own the misery. I can't pass it off on anyone else.

631
01:04:26.280 --> 01:04:28.280
Take the next case.

632
01:04:28.280 --> 01:04:31.280
I'm now a suicide bomber.

633
01:04:31.280 --> 01:04:34.280
I've got my pack of bombs here.

634
01:04:34.280 --> 01:04:47.280
Here's one, here's another, got them in my pocket, ready to blow up the hospital, here are my sticks of dynamite or whatever these guys have got.

635
01:04:47.280 --> 01:04:54.280
Now, if I were just marching toward the hospital and you were the hospital guard, you'd shoot me, now it'd be the end of it.

636
01:04:54.280 --> 01:05:00.280
But, what I do is I grab Carrie Anne and I hold her in front of me as a shield.

637
01:05:00.280 --> 01:05:05.280
And now I'm marching forward, holding her, and she can't resist because I've drugged her.

638
01:05:05.280 --> 01:05:09.280
This will teach you to mess with me.

639
01:05:09.280 --> 01:05:14.280
And she's as tall as I am, and let's say she's as wide as I am, which isn't true, but suppose she were.

640
01:05:14.280 --> 01:05:20.280
Or I get Dan, he's even wider than I am.

641
01:05:20.280 --> 01:05:27.280
I'm marching forward with Dan in front of me as a shield. I'll pick on Dan, instead of you, he's bigger.

642
01:05:27.280 --> 01:05:33.280
You are the guard for the hospital. The only way you can stop me from blowing up the whole thing?

643
01:05:33.280 --> 01:05:38.280
You can run, but the hospital people can't, and you're dedicated to saving them.

644
01:05:38.280 --> 01:05:44.280
The only way you can do it is to shoot me, and then I'll blow up right here when I'm still a hundred yards away.

645
01:05:44.280 --> 01:05:50.280
But if you do, you've got to go right through Dan, because he's in front of me as a shield.

646
01:05:50.280 --> 01:05:57.280
Can you do it? Let me read the Rothbard quote again.

647
01:05:57.280 --> 01:06:07.280
To sum up the application of our theory of extreme situations, if a man aggresses against another person's, another man's person or property,

648
01:06:07.280 --> 01:06:17.280
he is still a criminal aggressor against the property of another, and the victim is within his right to repel that aggression by force and to prosecute the aggressor afterward.

649
01:06:17.280 --> 01:06:47.280
Somewhere I've read in Murray or maybe someone else, that Dan has a guardian angel and the guardian angel is hovering up here with a pistol and just as you, remember here I am marching right behind Dan and you're the hospital guard and you're about to shoot me through Dan and the guardian angel of Dan is assigned to protect Dan's life and what the guardian angel does, Dan is helpless, he's drugged or something,

650
01:06:47.280 --> 01:07:06.280
This is my tool. The guardian angel shoots you, the hospital guard, because right now, Dan has two threats against his life, one me when I get to the hospital, and the other you right now, you're going to shoot him.

651
01:07:06.280 --> 01:07:14.280
And the angel says, well, Dan has two problems, an immediate problem and a future problem. The immediate problem is you, the guard.

652
01:07:14.280 --> 01:07:23.720
The future problem is me, the suicide bomber, but the guardian angel reasons, you know, first let's take care of the most pressing problem,

653
01:07:23.720 --> 01:07:31.380
and then we'll worry about the secondary problem, and the guardian angel shoots the guard.

654
01:07:31.380 --> 01:07:38.880
That, I think, is the libertarian view, as I understand it. I think Murray said it, but I can't find where he said it,

655
01:07:38.880 --> 01:07:44.780
But if he didn't say it, then I'll just make this up as a hypothetical libertarian view, and I disagree with it.

656
01:07:44.780 --> 01:07:50.080
The reason I disagree with it is based on my negative homesteading theory.

657
01:07:50.080 --> 01:07:59.180
My negative homesteading theory is that Dan is the first homesteader of misery.

658
01:07:59.180 --> 01:08:06.280
I grabbed him first. He's toast.

659
01:08:06.280 --> 01:08:13.280
He has to pay, not the guard. The guard is doing his good job by keeping me off of the hospital.

660
01:08:13.280 --> 01:08:19.580
Now, one argument in favor of this is that it's broadly based utilitarian,

661
01:08:19.580 --> 01:08:23.380
because we do live in an era where there are suicide bombers,

662
01:08:23.380 --> 01:08:29.580
and while no suicide bomber has yet grabbed the shield and started marching forward with him toward a hospital,

663
01:08:29.580 --> 01:08:35.980
it's certainly a plausible scenario, and it's incumbent upon us to answer the question,

664
01:08:35.980 --> 01:08:48.140
And it seems that the answer, against which I'm contending, is let the suicide bomber go and blow up the hospital, which is non-utilitarian.

665
01:08:48.140 --> 01:08:57.020
But I only point that out as peripherally because I'm not a utilitarian, I'm a libertarian, and libertarians believe in rights.

666
01:08:57.020 --> 01:09:03.340
And based on this negative homesteading theory, Dan has to keep his misery to himself.

667
01:09:03.340 --> 01:09:10.340
He can't inflict it on anyone else any more than he could if lightning was hitting him and he deflected it to some other innocent person.

668
01:09:17.340 --> 01:09:22.340
I'm claiming that the guard would be justified in shooting me and Dan.

669
01:09:22.340 --> 01:09:25.340
Let's say the bullet goes right through both of us.

670
01:09:25.340 --> 01:09:30.340
I'm saying the guard would be justified in doing it, contrary to what Murray seems to be saying here.

671
01:09:30.340 --> 01:10:00.340
I'd have to read it in the original to make sure Jeff didn't get it out of context, which I doubt, but my understanding of proper libertarian theory based on this new twist of negative homesteading is that the guard would be justified in shooting us both with one bullet, innocent Dan and guilty me. Why? Because Dan has already been captured. He can't deflect his misery onto other people any more than he could if he could deflect

672
01:10:00.340 --> 01:10:04.340
How do we deflect a lightning strike onto some other innocent person?

673
01:10:04.340 --> 01:10:10.340
See, if a lightning hits Dan, and then Dan deflects it on Matt, who's sitting next to him, they're both innocent.

674
01:10:10.340 --> 01:10:13.340
So how do we pick between Dan and Matt?

675
01:10:13.340 --> 01:10:19.340
Well, the way I'm picking is the lightning hit Dan, not Matt.

676
01:10:19.340 --> 01:10:22.340
So Dan has got to keep it to himself.

677
01:10:22.340 --> 01:10:28.340
He can't transfer the misery onto another innocent person, even though Matt is just as innocent.

678
01:10:28.340 --> 01:10:30.340
Dan?

679
01:10:30.340 --> 01:10:44.340
Rather than the misery growing, what if it was just transferred in the sense that, let's say you threatened to kill me unless I picked someone in this room for you to kill.

680
01:10:44.340 --> 01:10:51.340
I wouldn't do the killing myself, but so you would say either pick a person in the room or I'm killing you.

681
01:10:51.340 --> 01:10:53.340
And so I said Adam.

682
01:10:53.340 --> 01:10:55.340
Thanks.

683
01:10:55.340 --> 01:10:57.340
No problem.

684
01:10:57.340 --> 01:11:01.340
There have been cases, and I told you about this Hasidic rabbi friend of mine,

685
01:11:01.340 --> 01:11:04.340
where the Nazis would come to a Jewish town and they'd say,

686
01:11:04.340 --> 01:11:08.340
look, pick the worst Jew you want. We're killing one Jew. You pick him.

687
01:11:08.340 --> 01:11:11.340
The one who prays the least or the worst, whatever.

688
01:11:11.340 --> 01:11:13.340
And according to the Torah, you're not supposed to do that

689
01:11:13.340 --> 01:11:17.340
because you're aiding and abetting and cooperating with evil.

690
01:11:17.340 --> 01:11:21.340
Or A stands here and puts his gun in the back of B,

691
01:11:21.340 --> 01:11:23.340
who for some reason can't turn around and says,

692
01:11:23.340 --> 01:11:53.340
says unless you shoot C over there I'll shoot you and if the proper thing is for B to turn around and try to shoot A but if he can't he cannot shoot him picking shooting you don't cooperate with evil but this is different this is homesteading misery this guy here B he's the homesteader of the misery he can't turn it on C he's got to keep it

693
01:11:53.340 --> 01:11:56.340
He has to turn around and say to me, the bad guy,

694
01:11:56.340 --> 01:11:59.340
under no circumstances am I killing an innocent person, period.

695
01:11:59.340 --> 01:12:01.340
I'm keeping the misery.

696
01:12:01.340 --> 01:12:03.340
Want to kill me? Kill me.

697
01:12:03.340 --> 01:12:07.340
I'm keeping the misery, but I can't use it as a justification to kill someone else.

698
01:12:07.340 --> 01:12:10.340
So I think those cases were all in line.

699
01:12:10.340 --> 01:12:12.340
Let me continue.

700
01:12:12.340 --> 01:12:15.340
I've got another five minutes of this and then I'll call for more questions.

701
01:12:15.340 --> 01:12:20.340
But since Matt has been put to death, your last wish,

702
01:12:20.340 --> 01:12:23.340
Do you want to ask Matt and Adam and then I'll go on?

703
01:12:23.340 --> 01:12:30.340
Yeah, I wanted to ask if we can reverse the situation and say that the hospital is in misery and they are in trouble.

704
01:12:30.340 --> 01:12:36.340
The hospital is in misery, but not first. Dan is the first one to be in misery.

705
01:12:36.340 --> 01:12:37.340
I think.

706
01:12:37.340 --> 01:12:39.340
Yeah, because I got him now.

707
01:12:39.340 --> 01:12:42.340
Yeah, but he is in the same situation. He is threatened by the same...

708
01:12:42.340 --> 01:12:49.340
This is where homesteading comes in. And remember, homesteading, if two people are both homesteading something,

709
01:12:49.340 --> 01:12:52.340
The first one there is the homesteader.

710
01:12:52.340 --> 01:12:56.340
So the negative homesteading is that the first homesteader has to keep the misery.

711
01:12:56.340 --> 01:12:59.340
The hospital is the second one. It's theoretical.

712
01:12:59.340 --> 01:13:03.340
I'm still a hundred yards away and I've got Dan and I'm going to blow him up.

713
01:13:03.340 --> 01:13:07.340
Dan is the first homesteader of the misery. He's got to keep it.

714
01:13:07.340 --> 01:13:12.340
And in the case of the lightning, he's the first guy that the lightning hit, not you.

715
01:13:12.340 --> 01:13:16.340
You're the second guy. So he can't get you.

716
01:13:16.340 --> 01:13:23.140
Adam? It sounds to me like there's no way to take this idea without accepting

717
01:13:23.140 --> 01:13:27.740
collateral damage in war because the person living next door to Saddam Hussein

718
01:13:27.740 --> 01:13:32.580
has homesteaded the misery that he spreads and you know I would be allowed

719
01:13:32.580 --> 01:13:35.780
to send a missile out there and kills the dominant, kills this other guy, well he

720
01:13:35.780 --> 01:13:39.860
was really close homesteading that misery. This is the next objection I was going to

721
01:13:39.860 --> 01:13:46.860
Am I now becoming a, what is it called, pro-war libertarian?

722
01:13:46.860 --> 01:13:52.860
You know, let's, let's, Arandian, you know, Arandian, let's nuke Saddam or something.

723
01:13:52.860 --> 01:14:00.860
And my answer is if Saddam has somebody real close to him, you can.

724
01:14:00.860 --> 01:14:04.860
But not the whole country, you can't have the whole country next to him.

725
01:14:04.860 --> 01:14:11.460
But if Saddam is there, and he's captured someone, and he's holding someone, and he says,

726
01:14:11.460 --> 01:14:17.960
you can't, and let's suppose Saddam is a bad guy, because in actual point of fact, he was our man,

727
01:14:17.960 --> 01:14:23.660
he was our Noriega, I mean, the US has this long history of getting some dictator and supporting him,

728
01:14:23.660 --> 01:14:27.660
and then turning against loyal dictators, but forget about that.

729
01:14:27.660 --> 01:14:32.360
Let's suppose Saddam was a uniquely bad guy, the way some people think.

730
01:14:32.360 --> 01:14:39.680
Well, I think you can take out his castle, and people shouldn't be in that castle.

731
01:14:39.680 --> 01:14:46.680
And if they're captives of him in the castle, too bad, they're the first homesteaders in misery.

732
01:14:46.680 --> 01:14:48.320
And the people might starve?

733
01:14:48.320 --> 01:14:55.040
Well, it has to be a small bomb. It can't be a nuclear bomb, but it can be a bomb that kills more than one person.

734
01:14:55.040 --> 01:15:00.920
Because look, otherwise, any bad guy, any suicide bomber is not going to come unarmed.

735
01:15:00.920 --> 01:15:07.200
And he's going to come with a shield and then, but that's a utilitarian argument.

736
01:15:07.200 --> 01:15:11.520
But the philosophical argument is that he was first grabbed.

737
01:15:11.520 --> 01:15:17.320
He's now in the power of the ultimate bad guy, the suicide bomber.

738
01:15:17.320 --> 01:15:21.440
Let me just continue a little bit more and then I'll call on Maximilian.

739
01:15:21.440 --> 01:15:30.440
Okay, the next quote from Murray is, this is the Ethics of Liberty, page 97.

740
01:15:30.440 --> 01:15:41.440
A guardian then assumes only those rights of the ward that are necessary for him to exercise so that the ward comes into a state of full self-ownership.

741
01:15:41.440 --> 01:15:49.440
By bringing this development to an end and killing the ward fails to qualify as a right that the guardian can assume.

742
01:15:49.440 --> 01:15:55.440
It seems doubtful in fact that he would have had the right to arrest in any way the development of his ward towards self-ownership,

743
01:15:55.440 --> 01:16:04.440
as would happen in the case of indefinitely freezing eggs. My answer is the movie, The Sand Pebbles.

744
01:16:04.440 --> 01:16:16.440
Anyone ever see that movie? Steve McQueen. The apex of the movie is the protege of Steve McQueen has been captured by the bad guys

745
01:16:16.440 --> 01:16:28.340
And the bad guys have got the protege tied up to a pipe, and what they're doing is cutting him.

746
01:16:28.340 --> 01:16:30.000
And they're going to cut him to death.

747
01:16:30.000 --> 01:16:34.800
And what Steve McQueen does, he takes a rifle from a quarter mile away and kills him.

748
01:16:34.800 --> 01:16:42.740
So he saves him from this death by a thousand cuts, a quick death rather than a tortured death.

749
01:16:42.740 --> 01:16:45.940
Is Steve McQueen guilty of murder?

750
01:16:45.940 --> 01:16:52.380
No. He is exercising proper guardianship.

751
01:16:52.380 --> 01:16:55.180
Now, it's true it's not his son, but it was his protege.

752
01:16:55.180 --> 01:17:01.100
And if it was his son, if I was in that position, I'd want my father to shoot me.

753
01:17:01.100 --> 01:17:08.500
I'd rather die a quick death like that than being tortured and being skinned alive.

754
01:17:08.500 --> 01:17:11.860
I mean, what they were going to do to him was torture him to death over

755
01:17:11.860 --> 01:17:17.820
as long a time as they could keep him alive and in horrific pain.

756
01:17:17.820 --> 01:17:20.780
Now, it's a pretty depressing thing.

757
01:17:20.780 --> 01:17:24.940
You know, we're talking about this death or that death, and we're quibbling over types of death,

758
01:17:24.940 --> 01:17:29.220
but still we have to go where libertarian theory leads us.

759
01:17:29.220 --> 01:17:34.500
And libertarian theory leads us to Steve McQueen shooting his son or his protege,

760
01:17:34.500 --> 01:17:35.980
a mercy killing.

761
01:17:35.980 --> 01:17:40.020
Now, yes, yes, mercy killings can be abused,

762
01:17:40.020 --> 01:17:43.500
But again, we want to take the God's eye point of view.

763
01:17:43.500 --> 01:17:49.300
God is looking down and knows exactly what's happening and knows what's in Steve McQueen's heart

764
01:17:49.300 --> 01:17:52.260
and knows that he's trying to save him from torture.

765
01:17:52.260 --> 01:17:57.580
And we stipulate that a tortured death is worse than a quick and clean death.

766
01:17:57.580 --> 01:18:02.620
So I'm led as if, I don't know, by an invisible hand or by my understanding of libertarianism,

767
01:18:02.620 --> 01:18:07.100
down some pretty ugly corridors, but that's where I end up.

768
01:18:07.100 --> 01:18:13.660
Okay, the next guy that comes up with criticisms, a guy named Tom Fleming, who writes for Chronicles,

769
01:18:13.660 --> 01:18:18.220
and I won't even mention his criticisms, because they're all...

770
01:18:18.220 --> 01:18:24.180
I don't know, he starts blaming Mises for me, and he starts blaming Austrian economics for this stuff.

771
01:18:24.180 --> 01:18:26.340
It's just ludicrous.

772
01:18:26.340 --> 01:18:34.180
So, that ends my formal comments. Let me now call on Max Billion, and let me try to defend this, or let's discuss this.

773
01:18:34.180 --> 01:18:42.180
I was wondering if you don't recognize any difference between the case of the lightning and the case of the bird.

774
01:18:42.180 --> 01:18:53.180
I mean, the lightning is not choosing to harm you, it is not a murder if the lightning hits you,

775
01:18:53.180 --> 01:19:02.180
but the guardians can choose if they choose to shoot on you and kill you.

776
01:19:02.180 --> 01:19:09.180
The question is, do I not recognize the difference between the lightning case and the case of the suicide bomber?

777
01:19:09.180 --> 01:19:14.180
The lightning has no motivations, no purpose, it's just the act of nature.

778
01:19:14.180 --> 01:19:17.180
I'm putting words in your mouth, but I'm trying to get the point across.

779
01:19:17.180 --> 01:19:20.180
Whereas the suicide bomber is purposeful and motivated.

780
01:19:20.180 --> 01:19:23.180
No, no, no, no, not the suicide bomber, the guardian.

781
01:19:23.180 --> 01:19:26.180
Oh, the angel, Dan's angel?

782
01:19:26.180 --> 01:19:27.180
The guard.

783
01:19:27.180 --> 01:19:29.180
The guard, the hospital guard.

784
01:19:29.180 --> 01:19:31.180
Yes, there is this analogy, I agree.

785
01:19:31.180 --> 01:19:40.180
But that's what an analogy is. An analogy is a similarity, but not a perfect similarity, otherwise it would be the same thing.

786
01:19:40.180 --> 01:19:47.180
So obviously the lightning is an act of nature or an act of God or whatever, and it's blameless. You don't blame lightning.

787
01:19:47.180 --> 01:19:54.180
And you might blame the God for shooting Dan, who is an innocent person. So obviously I see a difference.

788
01:19:54.180 --> 01:20:06.180
But I also see a similarity, and the similarity is that the first one to be immiserated, the first one to be homestead negatively,

789
01:20:06.180 --> 01:20:11.180
he's the one that's got to keep it to himself, he can't be foisting it off on other people.

790
01:20:11.180 --> 01:20:16.180
And Dan was the first guy to be hit by lightning, he can't give it to Matt.

791
01:20:16.180 --> 01:20:27.180
And Dan was the first guy to be grabbed by me, the suicide bomber, and he can't save his life at the cost of the guard and the hospital inhabitants.

792
01:20:27.180 --> 01:20:37.180
I agree with this point. What I'm saying is that the guard shouldn't shoot on...

793
01:20:37.180 --> 01:20:45.180
The guard shouldn't shoot me and Dan? If the guard doesn't shoot me and Dan, then I come to the hospital with Dan, and now that I'm in the middle of the hospital,

794
01:20:45.180 --> 01:20:49.180
But this is an utilitarian argument.

795
01:20:51.180 --> 01:20:53.180
An utilitarian argument.

796
01:21:15.180 --> 01:21:17.880
They blow up the whole world.

797
01:21:17.880 --> 01:21:29.080
Now, here, he's innocent, so principle says we don't blow him up, but it's not very utilitarian.

798
01:21:29.080 --> 01:21:36.180
Probably the answer to that case is somebody volunteers to kill him.

799
01:21:36.180 --> 01:21:42.880
And we hold a ticker-tape parade for him because he saved the whole earth, and then we execute him for being a murderer.

800
01:21:42.880 --> 01:21:52.880
Because remember, libertarianism doesn't answer the question as to whether somebody should kill Steve, who's now under the threat of the Martians, who are beyond our reach.

801
01:21:52.880 --> 01:22:02.880
It just says, he killed him, should he be put in jail? And the answer is yes, or executed, or whatever punishment that he should be punished.

802
01:22:02.880 --> 01:22:04.880
Nat, and then Dan.

803
01:22:04.880 --> 01:22:11.880
I'm interested in hearing how you would distinguish the Terry Shivo case from the Steve McQueen example.

804
01:22:11.880 --> 01:22:18.880
Because it seems like in the Steve McQueen example, the murderers or torturers are using that person in much the same way

805
01:22:18.880 --> 01:22:23.880
that whatever religious riot or whoever it is, you talk about keeping Terry Shivo alive or using her,

806
01:22:23.880 --> 01:22:28.880
because it doesn't seem that she's enjoying her life as a vegetable.

807
01:22:28.880 --> 01:22:34.480
So, it's not a perfect analogy, but it seems similar to me.

808
01:22:34.480 --> 01:22:39.080
Well, at the time, they didn't really know what her situation was.

809
01:22:39.080 --> 01:22:46.080
There were some people who said she could have recovered, and others say she couldn't.

810
01:22:46.080 --> 01:22:52.380
I mean, if she's a vegetable, she feels no pain, so it really doesn't matter in some sense.

811
01:22:52.380 --> 01:22:54.980
On the other hand, where there's life, there's hope.

812
01:22:54.980 --> 01:22:59.540
Maybe in 10 years they'll invent something to bring her back to life.

813
01:22:59.540 --> 01:23:04.340
But the point is, who should be the guardian of Terry?

814
01:23:04.340 --> 01:23:09.380
Who should be the guardian of any child-like person?

815
01:23:09.380 --> 01:23:13.500
And it seems to me that the guardian of Terry should be the person who is guarding,

816
01:23:13.500 --> 01:23:16.620
who is doing the best for Terry.

817
01:23:16.620 --> 01:23:23.340
And the best for Terry doesn't seem to be her husband, it seemed to be her parents.

818
01:23:23.340 --> 01:23:28.280
Remember the case of the Latimer girl, the father murdered her.

819
01:23:28.280 --> 01:23:32.580
Anyone else would have taken care of her, or anyone else would have done better for her.

820
01:23:32.580 --> 01:23:40.860
So I think the father loses his right, as does the husband of Terry, to be the guardian when you stop guarding.

821
01:23:40.860 --> 01:23:44.540
Remember, children are a unique creature.

822
01:23:44.540 --> 01:23:47.460
You can't own them, but you can own the right to bring them up.

823
01:23:47.460 --> 01:23:53.460
And the only way you can keep the right to bring them up is by bringing them up or by supporting them.

824
01:23:53.460 --> 01:24:00.460
Once you stop supporting a helpless child, you lose your right to be their guardian.

825
01:24:00.460 --> 01:24:05.460
Steven and then Dan.

826
01:24:05.460 --> 01:24:14.460
How do you exercise the forfeiture or abandonment of the guardianship right you have?

827
01:24:14.460 --> 01:24:37.460
How far are you required to extend effort to find another place or potential sustenance in life for the fetus or the newly born baby that you don't want to bring up with the libertarian standard for finding that out?

828
01:24:37.460 --> 01:24:42.460
I don't think there is any libertarian standard. I think that's a continuum problem.

829
01:24:42.460 --> 01:24:47.460
You have to put a... and here we call upon common law.

830
01:24:47.460 --> 01:24:52.460
Common law is you put the baby on the church steps, which means you notify the priest of this.

831
01:24:52.460 --> 01:24:57.460
Well, or put an ad in the newspaper or bring it to the hospital.

832
01:24:57.460 --> 01:25:00.460
Now, what kind of a newspaper? Does it have to be the New York Times or a lot of circulation,

833
01:25:00.460 --> 01:25:03.460
but suppose it's a little ad and no one sees it?

834
01:25:03.460 --> 01:25:06.700
libertarianism doesn't answer that question because it's a

835
01:25:06.700 --> 01:25:11.740
continuum problem you have to make a good faith effort to notify the friends

836
01:25:11.740 --> 01:25:17.420
of babies or the what's that group where you keep orphanage I mean if you notify

837
01:25:17.420 --> 01:25:22.340
one or two orphanages and they both decline how many orphanages do you have

838
01:25:22.340 --> 01:25:28.940
to do 17 93 there's no answer but the idea is you have to make a good faith

839
01:25:28.940 --> 01:25:33.100
effort to notify people who you think are reasonable candidates to take the

840
01:25:33.100 --> 01:25:38.300
Baby. If you do that then you can starve the baby or you can mercy kill the baby.

841
01:25:38.300 --> 01:25:47.980
Dan? Well I had a question that sort of extrapolates from the case of the baby

842
01:25:47.980 --> 01:25:52.740
being abandoned and now we're going to have a torture of someone like that take charge of

843
01:25:52.740 --> 01:25:59.060
the baby. Let's consider the case of a fully adult individual who finds himself, for very

844
01:25:59.060 --> 01:26:12.060
Walter Block is in the continent of Asia, the Eurasian landmass, but that entire landmass is now taken over by Nazis, and perhaps legitimately, they legitimately own all the land there.

845
01:26:12.060 --> 01:26:20.060
And they now say, Walter Block is in the middle of the landmass, so he can't really get to the ocean to swim away to England or someplace like that.

846
01:26:20.060 --> 01:26:23.060
And they told you to either leave or they're going to shoot you.

847
01:26:23.060 --> 01:26:43.060
What can you do? Would it be okay for them to shoot you, since you couldn't, if you tried to leave just by walking out of the original land mass, you would die of starvation, which you said is much worse than a quick and painless death. So that would be okay then for them to shoot you, because that would be a mercy kill.

848
01:26:43.060 --> 01:26:52.060
Well, I suppose if I accept your premise, I'd rather be shot than starved to death, but I'm not sure why they get the right to, how did I get there in the first place?

849
01:26:52.060 --> 01:27:09.560
Well, that's a tough one. I mean, if you fall with a parachute onto the land of bad guys, you're a trespasser.

850
01:27:09.560 --> 01:27:19.560
Okay, if I accept your premise that I have to be either shot or mercy shot or tortured.

851
01:27:19.560 --> 01:27:24.560
Right, but with the child, we already accepted the premise that it's better to die quickly than it is to...

852
01:27:24.560 --> 01:27:31.560
Yeah, well, I'll accept that. I don't much like the idea of being put in that position.

853
01:27:31.560 --> 01:27:36.560
But if I stipulate that I'm in that position, then when you say follows, ineluctably,

854
01:27:36.560 --> 01:27:43.560
well, which would you rather be, tortured to death by starvation and thirst, or put out of your misery quickly?

855
01:27:43.560 --> 01:27:45.560
I'd have to think it.

856
01:27:45.560 --> 01:28:13.560
I'm not sure that I have any objection to your core legal reasoning, but you have an ancillary presupposition in the case of the eviction, and I believe also with Peter Dish, the best case scenario is that it's there until it can be fought and then grown into an organism.

857
01:28:13.560 --> 01:28:20.880
and this is, there's some sort of presupposition of continued technological progress which I think is

858
01:28:20.880 --> 01:28:26.480
exogenous to the argument and I don't think is very Austrian because you're sort of trying to see

859
01:28:26.480 --> 01:28:32.880
around the corner and you're making, the purpose is to get to a sort of absolute rights position

860
01:28:32.880 --> 01:28:41.720
and I buy the fact that within a rights position you can have a sort of subsidiary utilitarian

861
01:28:41.720 --> 01:28:54.720
argument too, but the historicism of the, not historicism, but I think progressivism of the auxiliary argument I don't buy, that seems to be the case.

862
01:28:54.720 --> 01:28:57.720
Could you say again specifically what you don't buy?

863
01:28:57.720 --> 01:29:05.720
The fact that, well, in the case of the eviction, you're saying that this will become an increasingly good thing, right, through history.

864
01:29:05.720 --> 01:29:17.720
In other words, 200 years from now, we'll be able to prolong the baby much longer and I don't think that has place in legal reasoning, because we don't know that, we can't see around.

865
01:29:17.720 --> 01:29:32.720
Well, I don't know that it's legal reasoning. I'm combining legal reasoning with empirical and with predictions, but my prediction is that as medical technology increases exogenously,

866
01:29:32.720 --> 01:29:34.960
More and more babies will be able to be saved

867
01:29:34.960 --> 01:29:36.620
until all of them are saved.

868
01:29:36.620 --> 01:29:38.180
Now, I might be wrong on that.

869
01:29:38.180 --> 01:29:40.560
Let's suppose I'm wrong on that.

870
01:29:40.560 --> 01:29:42.600
I'm willing to stipulate I can be wrong

871
01:29:42.600 --> 01:29:44.240
on my empirical prediction,

872
01:29:45.140 --> 01:29:47.960
but I then resort to the core argument.

873
01:29:47.960 --> 01:29:50.680
That was a utilitarian extraneous argument.

874
01:29:50.680 --> 01:29:53.760
The core argument is, let's say medical technology

875
01:29:53.760 --> 01:29:57.360
never improves past now, and that right now,

876
01:29:57.360 --> 01:29:59.400
one ninth of babies can be saved.

877
01:30:00.420 --> 01:30:01.400
Well, then that's it.

878
01:30:01.400 --> 01:30:02.720
One-ninth of babies are saved.

879
01:30:02.720 --> 01:30:07.480
Or if I were speaking or writing in the year 1700,

880
01:30:07.480 --> 01:30:09.520
and we never thought that medical technology

881
01:30:09.520 --> 01:30:13.520
would be doing anything, then I would be a pro-choicer.

882
01:30:14.640 --> 01:30:17.120
I would say that you have a right to evict

883
01:30:17.120 --> 01:30:18.920
in the gentlest manner possible.

884
01:30:18.920 --> 01:30:21.920
Medical technology is such that the gentlest manner possible

885
01:30:21.920 --> 01:30:26.720
is no different than any other manner, and that would be it.

886
01:30:26.720 --> 01:30:30.040
So then the libertarian position would collapse

887
01:30:30.040 --> 01:30:33.240
on the pro-choice.

888
01:30:33.240 --> 01:30:36.240
In the future, if my prediction is right,

889
01:30:36.240 --> 01:30:37.480
which may or may not be right,

890
01:30:37.480 --> 01:30:39.820
then it becomes pro-life.

891
01:30:39.820 --> 01:30:41.640
Right now, it's sort of a middle.

892
01:30:41.640 --> 01:30:44.740
But the principle is invariant to the historical episode.

893
01:30:45.700 --> 01:30:48.580
Namely, rights are timeless.

894
01:30:48.580 --> 01:30:50.320
It's just as wrong for the caveman

895
01:30:50.320 --> 01:30:51.920
to bop another caveman overhead

896
01:30:51.920 --> 01:30:55.400
as for the spaceman to bop another spaceman over the head.

897
01:30:55.400 --> 01:30:58.500
Libertarianism is a timeless theory.

898
01:30:58.500 --> 01:31:07.500
But still we can talk about medical technology and make reasonable assumptions and say well here let's apply it here, let's apply it here, let's apply it here.

899
01:31:07.500 --> 01:31:13.500
So I'm not really putting much emphasis in that. My main emphasis is in the libertarian theory.

900
01:31:13.500 --> 01:31:17.500
And it's reasonable to suppose different cases.

901
01:31:17.500 --> 01:31:19.500
Adam.

902
01:31:19.500 --> 01:31:26.500
So let's say I accept your premises and I can't raise any objections against them now about the eviction versus the killing.

903
01:31:26.500 --> 01:31:36.500
On the other hand, to say someone's trespassing, don't you have to say that they're willing and able to lead, or that they're able to lead but they can't?

904
01:31:36.500 --> 01:31:37.500
I don't think so.

905
01:31:37.500 --> 01:31:52.500
Like, if you're at my estate and it's a mile radius, and I say, I want you off my property, and let's say you agree, and I say you have one second to get off before I shoot you, and there's no way you can get off in one second.

906
01:31:52.500 --> 01:31:57.500
Judith Jarvis Thompson, a philosopher, has a very famous case where you wake up in bed, and there's an umbilical cord between you and a violin, and you can't get out of it in one second.

907
01:31:57.500 --> 01:32:14.500
So it seems like it has to be judged relative to the capability. And it sounds to me like the child in the womb is a captive. He might like to get out, but he can't. And so you want to evict him, that's fine, but you're not giving him the opportunity to get out based on his capabilities.

908
01:32:14.500 --> 01:32:44.500
Judith Jarvis Thompson, a philosopher, has a very famous case where you wake up in bed and there's an umbilical cord between you and a violinist and you both wake up at the same time and you ask the violinist well how come you to be in my bed and he says well I don't know all I know is I went to sleep in the hospital last night and here I am and we surmise that what happened is a bunch of bad doctors took them off the kidney dialysis machine in the hospital brought them to your house attached them to your kidney

909
01:32:44.500 --> 01:32:50.500
Again, there you are. Now he's helpless. He'll die if you cut the thing.

910
01:32:50.500 --> 01:32:56.500
Do you have to carry him around for nine months? Do you have to carry him around for the rest of your life?

911
01:32:56.500 --> 01:33:02.500
This seems to be the implication of what you're saying. My answer is a compromise.

912
01:33:02.500 --> 01:33:08.500
No, you don't have to carry him around attached to you. Be awkward, what the heck, but minor point.

913
01:33:08.500 --> 01:33:12.500
You don't have to keep him around for the rest of your life. You don't have to keep him around for nine months.

914
01:33:12.500 --> 01:33:15.660
You just can't cut the cord and you can't shoot him.

915
01:33:15.660 --> 01:33:17.420
Namely, you have to notify a hospital.

916
01:33:17.420 --> 01:33:19.520
You have to call the hospital and say,

917
01:33:19.520 --> 01:33:22.020
hey, look, there's this guy.

918
01:33:22.020 --> 01:33:24.340
Can you please take him off me and stick him back

919
01:33:24.340 --> 01:33:26.340
on the kidney dialysis machine,

920
01:33:26.340 --> 01:33:28.580
which will take a half hour of phone calling.

921
01:33:29.660 --> 01:33:30.840
So it's sort of a compromise.

922
01:33:30.840 --> 01:33:33.740
And yet that person is just as helpless as the fetus.

923
01:33:34.740 --> 01:33:38.300
So I don't think you have to keep the fetus for nine months.

924
01:33:38.300 --> 01:33:41.700
but that's an arbitrary time selection on a continuum problem.

925
01:33:43.380 --> 01:33:48.300
Okay, if you will, but it seems to me to be more

926
01:33:48.300 --> 01:33:53.060
in the spirit of ownership to keep them for a half hour

927
01:33:53.060 --> 01:33:54.820
than to keep them for nine months.

928
01:33:56.060 --> 01:33:58.620
In other words, you're so far apart on the continuum

929
01:33:58.620 --> 01:34:01.500
that it starts to make a difference in kind.

930
01:34:01.500 --> 01:34:03.100
There's a difference between notifying

931
01:34:03.100 --> 01:34:05.340
and supporting for nine months.

932
01:34:05.340 --> 01:34:08.840
and the pro-life people

933
01:34:08.840 --> 01:34:12.500
want you to keep that person for nine months.

934
01:34:12.500 --> 01:34:17.340
And that seems to be letting the trespasser

935
01:34:17.340 --> 01:34:18.580
get away with murder.

936
01:34:18.580 --> 01:34:21.020
Well, get away with trespassing.

937
01:34:21.020 --> 01:34:22.420
But only for nine months.

938
01:34:22.420 --> 01:34:23.700
Well, nine months is...

939
01:34:23.700 --> 01:34:25.340
Relative to the capability,

940
01:34:25.340 --> 01:34:27.900
where else would that capability be?

941
01:34:27.900 --> 01:34:28.740
Well, that's one way to look at-

942
01:34:28.740 --> 01:34:29.820
I give Stephen Hawking more time

943
01:34:29.820 --> 01:34:31.180
to get off my property than I give you.

944
01:34:31.180 --> 01:34:34.080
Okay, more time, but you see, even Stephen Hawking,

945
01:34:35.340 --> 01:34:41.540
Okay, so you give the fetus an hour, you give Stephen Hawking a half hour since he's better than the fetus,

946
01:34:41.540 --> 01:34:52.040
and you give me ten minutes since I'm better able-bodied than him, but nine months is a gigantic amount of time.

947
01:34:52.040 --> 01:34:52.640
Matt?

948
01:34:52.640 --> 01:34:59.140
Yeah, I think that you did a very important work on the distinction between addiction and abortion,

949
01:34:59.140 --> 01:35:08.840
And I have the example, let's take the airplane example, in which you will find a person that is in coma.

950
01:35:08.840 --> 01:35:13.940
Can you just, in a gentle way, evict it out of the airplane and throw it away?

951
01:35:13.940 --> 01:35:16.140
Even if you have a radio and somebody on the radio says,

952
01:35:16.140 --> 01:35:23.640
well, okay, you just fly around for another nine months, you don't need to do anything, and we'll take care of it when you land.

953
01:35:23.640 --> 01:35:28.840
Yeah, well, I guess you're making the point I'm making that there's a difference between notice

954
01:35:28.840 --> 01:35:38.840
And I appreciate the difference between a fetus, Stephen Hawking, and an able-bodied person such as myself, on the one hand, and on the other hand, something that is clearly not notice.

955
01:35:38.840 --> 01:35:45.840
It's way more than notice. And even on notice, I'm already treading on thin ice with regards to positive obligations.

956
01:35:45.840 --> 01:35:54.840
There are people on the other side who are saying, what? Give notice? The hell with that. Just, you know, get rid of them because there are no positive obligations.

957
01:35:54.840 --> 01:36:06.840
So I'm a great compromiser here, not because I'm susceptible to compromise, but because that's where I think the theory leads us.

958
01:36:06.840 --> 01:36:13.840
Noah, and then we're out of time. What should we do? Noah.

959
01:36:13.840 --> 01:36:17.840
There's a lot of weight placed on this gentlest manner possible, it seems.

960
01:36:17.840 --> 01:36:26.840
And I'm wondering about costs, particularly. It seems cheapest to carry the baby and have it after the nine months.

961
01:36:26.840 --> 01:36:34.840
And then maybe the next least expensive is to have a violent killing, non-addiction, non-generalism in a possible.

962
01:36:34.840 --> 01:36:40.840
And I'm wondering about the risk to the mother's life. I'm wondering about the actual monetary cost.

963
01:36:40.840 --> 01:36:44.840
And I'm wondering about even pain, even if it's more painful.

964
01:36:44.840 --> 01:36:49.840
I try to cover all this in the article, but I didn't really get into it because I had only so much time.

965
01:36:49.840 --> 01:36:57.840
I would be subjectivist in this as a good Austrian and say what cost is cost to the mother.

966
01:36:57.840 --> 01:37:04.840
And if the mother wants to evict, then that's the cheapest because that's what she prefers to keep it in for nine months,

967
01:37:04.840 --> 01:37:08.840
even though it might not cost much in money, it would cost a lot in time.

968
01:37:08.840 --> 01:37:10.840
And she's in effect announced this.

969
01:37:10.840 --> 01:37:14.840
As for the money, it's the friends of babies that have to pay for everything.

970
01:37:14.840 --> 01:37:19.840
And if there's more risk, then the mother doesn't have to take on more risk.

971
01:37:19.840 --> 01:37:27.840
But now you have to, I mean, if it's this much more risk versus, you know, that much, again, you get to continuing problems.

972
01:37:27.840 --> 01:37:31.840
But the friends of babies have got to pay the whole way.

973
01:37:31.840 --> 01:37:35.840
The mother has no positive obligations to do anything, would be my rough answer.

974
01:37:35.840 --> 01:37:39.840
For the more detailed answer, you'd have to see the piece.

975
01:37:39.840 --> 01:37:44.840
Well, thanks for being such a great audience in the face of a hostile argument.