WEBVTT NOTE Private Defense: Now More Than Ever 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:15.000 I want to address the topic of how we produce security as private individuals and how the state destroys our security. 2 00:00:15.000 --> 00:00:31.500 We are born weak and without any arms and without any instincts that guide us. The only 3 00:00:31.500 --> 00:00:43.500 The only thing that we have available to us is our reason and our hands guided by a reason. 4 00:00:43.500 --> 00:00:58.500 And a reason guides us first of all, of course, to engage in various productive efforts that are necessary in order to sustain our life. 5 00:00:58.500 --> 00:01:08.260 But it is also our reason that guides us in protecting those things that we have produced 6 00:01:08.260 --> 00:01:17.500 and those things that we regard as our property from attacks against it. 7 00:01:17.500 --> 00:01:28.220 And I just want to go through a few examples of what reason has taught us how we go about 8 00:01:28.220 --> 00:01:38.540 about defending ourselves and what mankind through all of its history has basically done. 9 00:01:38.540 --> 00:01:47.660 The first thing to mention is of course that we produce security by providing ourselves 10 00:01:47.660 --> 00:01:56.660 with what we lack by nature, that is with arms. Arms are not only instruments that help 11 00:01:56.660 --> 00:02:03.660 to help us to hunt down wild animals and so forth and feed us. Arms are also the very first and in some ways the most effective means of self-defense, just witness the so-called wild west, which as most of you know was not quite as wild as it is sometimes depicted in movies. 12 00:02:26.660 --> 00:02:50.660 And in order to illustrate that briefly, let me give you a quote from a guy named Mac Grass, who described the effectiveness of self-defense in the Wild West, before I then continue on with other defense mechanisms. 13 00:02:50.660 --> 00:03:01.660 He looked at two frontier towns, mining camps, Bodie and Aurora in California and Nevada, 14 00:03:01.660 --> 00:03:10.660 and writes about these places. These towns actually suffered rarely from robbery. 15 00:03:10.660 --> 00:03:17.660 Today's cities, such as Detroit, New York, Miami, have 20 times as much robbery per capita. 16 00:03:17.660 --> 00:03:25.660 The United States as a whole averages three times as much robbery as these frontier towns did. 17 00:03:25.660 --> 00:03:33.660 Burglary and theft were also of infrequent occurrence in these mining towns. 18 00:03:33.660 --> 00:03:43.660 Most American cities today average 30 or 40 times as much burglary and theft per capita as these frontier towns did. 19 00:03:43.660 --> 00:04:13.660 The national rate is ten times higher. There were no reported cases of rape in either one of these towns. Today, rape occurs every five minutes. Violence, including homicide, was infrequent in both towns, but the men involved were both young. Violence, including homicide, was frequent in these towns, but the men involved were both young, healthy, armed and willing. 20 00:04:13.660 --> 00:04:19.540 and some women went about armed and male combatants killed each other mostly in fights 21 00:04:19.540 --> 00:04:22.380 where there were somewhat even chances. 22 00:04:22.380 --> 00:04:28.540 On the other hand, the young, the old, the female, and those who chose not to drink in saloons 23 00:04:28.540 --> 00:04:30.860 and display reckless bravado 24 00:04:30.860 --> 00:04:34.240 were rarely the victims of crime or violence. 25 00:04:34.240 --> 00:04:39.340 Moreover, dirty, low-down scoundrels got their just dessert. 26 00:04:39.340 --> 00:04:41.820 That is a description 27 00:04:41.820 --> 00:04:49.820 of the Wild West and obviously in many ways one could just hope that one would get this state of affairs back. 28 00:04:49.820 --> 00:05:09.820 Now in addition to defending ourselves in this way, mankind has also learned to produce security by associating themselves with others for protection purposes. 29 00:05:09.820 --> 00:05:39.820 and associating in particular, of course, with homogeneous fellows, people who are similar to themselves, people from the same family, from the same clan, and from the same tribe, because the more homogeneous people are, the more alike they are to each other, the lower are the insurance and protection cost, and the higher the 30 00:05:39.820 --> 00:05:47.620 is in a way also the social control, the controlling of one person by another one that he doesn't 31 00:05:47.620 --> 00:05:57.740 engage in illegitimate activities. Then we have developed a mechanism of protecting our 32 00:05:57.740 --> 00:06:07.460 property by forming and becoming integrated in a multiplicity of intermediating institutions 33 00:06:07.460 --> 00:06:15.660 such as families and communities and trade associations and professional associations 34 00:06:15.660 --> 00:06:26.660 in churches and in guilds, all of which constrain in a way our individual behavior, but all 35 00:06:26.660 --> 00:06:36.820 of which also protect us from aggression from the part of others and serve as arbitration 36 00:06:36.820 --> 00:06:43.820 agencies in cases of conflicts that arise among various people, frequently even balancing 37 00:06:46.100 --> 00:06:53.100 each other, that is making it impossible that one of these can gain monopoly powers. 38 00:06:57.220 --> 00:07:04.220 We have learned to protect ourselves and our property by forming protective covenants, 39 00:07:06.820 --> 00:07:16.820 which have predictable and stable internal law codes on which we can rely. 40 00:07:16.820 --> 00:07:31.820 We have learned to produce security for us and our property by selecting as locations where we reside safe and defensible places. 41 00:07:31.820 --> 00:07:47.820 Just think of places like Venice, which was established in some sort of marshland, which was very difficult for invaders to occupy and conquer. 42 00:07:47.820 --> 00:08:07.820 Just think of places like the low countries, what is nowadays the Netherlands, where people learned how to flood large areas in order to make it impossible for invading armies to take them over. 43 00:08:07.820 --> 00:08:17.820 Just think of places like San Marino, which is located on top of a very high mountain. 44 00:08:17.820 --> 00:08:31.820 Just a few hundred people were capable for hundreds of years to defend themselves in such a location against the onslaught of various enemies. 45 00:08:31.820 --> 00:08:52.820 Or just think of a place like Switzerland, where people have learned to defend themselves because of the special mountainous location where you can withdraw up high into the mountains and are difficult to reach for your enemies. 46 00:08:52.820 --> 00:09:20.820 Please just think about how difficult it was even for an overwhelming mighty enemy such as Germany to even think of attacking a place such as Switzerland because they knew that it would have been an enormously costly venture to do such a thing because of the safe location. 47 00:09:20.820 --> 00:09:47.820 Then we produce security by means of ostracism, a very important means of keeping peace and quiet and protecting our property from enemies and protecting ourselves from unwanted forms of behavior. 48 00:09:47.820 --> 00:10:14.820 In every civilized society the ultimate price for ill behavior is expulsion and all around ill behaved or rotten characters, even if they don't commit any crimes, will find themselves quickly expelled from everywhere and by everyone and become outcasts and are physically removed from civilization. 49 00:10:14.820 --> 00:10:37.820 And this is a very stiff price to pay. And because of this, as long as the right to ostracize, to expel, to discriminate against, as long as this right is in existence, the frequency of ill-behaved people is quite low. 50 00:10:37.820 --> 00:10:50.740 Then we produce security by engaging in free trade, even in free trade with distant places 51 00:10:50.740 --> 00:10:59.380 and with people that we might not want to choose to have as our immediate neighbors. 52 00:10:59.380 --> 00:11:07.380 But nonetheless we realize that free trade makes us strong and being financially, economically 53 00:11:07.380 --> 00:11:36.380 is of course one of the basic requirements for being successful in any type of defensive endeavor and in addition free trade will also gradually develop feelings of sympathy towards strangers because you realize that these strangers actually contribute to your own wellbeing. 54 00:11:36.380 --> 00:11:58.380 We produce then security in commercial societies in taking full advantage of the division of labor, in particular by associating ourselves with insurance companies. 55 00:11:58.380 --> 00:12:15.380 We know that insurance companies, competing insurance companies, will bring about a tendency to lower the prices that we need to pay in the form of premiums in order to be protected. 56 00:12:15.380 --> 00:12:26.380 We know that insurance companies actually indemnify us in case something happens to us for our property. 57 00:12:26.380 --> 00:12:41.380 We know that insurance companies have a financial incentive to be effective in the prevention of crime, because every crime that they can prevent, they do not have to pay up. 58 00:12:41.380 --> 00:12:57.380 We know that insurance companies have a financial incentive in being good at recovering stolen loot, because whatever they can recover, they don't need to pay up. 59 00:12:57.380 --> 00:13:25.380 And we know that insurance companies have a financial incentive in being effective when it comes to apprehending the criminals and punishing the criminal in such a way that it is a criminal who is forced to compensate the victim, that is to make the victim whole again to the extent that such a thing is actually possible. 60 00:13:25.380 --> 00:13:38.380 We know that insurance companies will abstain from legislation, making laws. Instead they offer us stable contracts. 61 00:13:38.380 --> 00:13:49.380 Nobody would insure himself with an insurance company that would say, look, this is what we promise you, but in the course of the game we might change our rules 62 00:13:49.380 --> 00:13:56.380 and we will not let you know in advance what the rules will be tomorrow or in two months from now. 63 00:13:56.380 --> 00:13:59.380 So we have a contract with them. 64 00:13:59.380 --> 00:14:10.380 We know that insurance companies would actually encourage the ownership of weapons among its clients 65 00:14:10.380 --> 00:14:18.380 for the same reason that insurance companies encourage us to own a vault. 66 00:14:18.380 --> 00:14:43.380 to have a vault at home by lowering the premiums, if we do have that. So they would likely lower the premiums if we could show them, if we could demonstrate to them that we are capable of safely handling weapons to be used with self-defensive purposes. 67 00:14:43.380 --> 00:15:10.380 We know that insurance companies would not engage in redistribution of income and thereby cause hostility and animosity among various people and we know in general that insurance companies are by nature defensive organizations. 68 00:15:10.380 --> 00:15:22.380 They will not cover in their insurance policies those people who engage in provocative and aggressive behavior. 69 00:15:22.380 --> 00:15:38.380 They would bind us all to adhere to conduct that is peaceful and accommodating with regard to our neighbors. 70 00:15:38.380 --> 00:16:08.380 And most of all we have learned to produce security in recognizing the overwhelming importance of wealth and especially the technique of protecting us and our property by having a multiplicity of homes and locations and locations where we have our 71 00:16:08.380 --> 00:16:37.380 We know how to diversify ourselves and our assets and choose different locations in order to protect us from the possibility that we will be conquered or mistreated at one place. We also have several places. 72 00:16:37.380 --> 00:16:49.380 Now let me come to what has become of all of this once the state gets involved in producing security. 73 00:16:49.380 --> 00:17:02.380 That is to the question, how does a state destroy all of this that men, using their reason, have accomplished in order to produce security? 74 00:17:02.380 --> 00:17:22.380 By the very definition of a state, the state being a territorial monopolist of ultimate decision making and having the right to tax, we can immediately make some predictions of what to expect of such an institution. 75 00:17:22.380 --> 00:17:34.380 Such an institution will first of all of course try to maximize its taxes and thereby of course attacking our property and property rights. 76 00:17:34.380 --> 00:17:48.380 Secondly, it has, because it can finance itself through taxes, practically no interest in actually doing what it promises to do, that is to protect us. 77 00:17:48.380 --> 00:17:55.380 not to work and nonetheless to have a great income, that's of course everybody's dream. 78 00:17:56.060 --> 00:18:03.060 And certainly we can predict that a state, because it is the ultimate arbitrator in any 79 00:18:03.620 --> 00:18:10.620 case of conflict, including conflicts involving itself, will of course tend to pervert law, 80 00:18:11.780 --> 00:18:18.020 will actually cause conflicts and then decide the conflicts in its own favor. It hits you 81 00:18:18.020 --> 00:18:24.140 on the Head and then you have to come to it and say, I don't think this was right, but 82 00:18:24.140 --> 00:18:28.040 they are the ultimate judge. They of course say, yes of course it was right and now you 83 00:18:28.040 --> 00:18:36.840 have to pay for this insult that they did to you. Accordingly, states have disarmed 84 00:18:36.840 --> 00:18:42.060 its population. Wherever you look, even in the United States there is certainly a tendency 85 00:18:42.060 --> 00:18:51.260 is under way in this direction, and it has armed itself. The defense expenditures currently 86 00:18:51.260 --> 00:18:59.380 of the federal government are in the neighborhood of $750 billion per year, that is somewhat 87 00:18:59.380 --> 00:19:07.060 less than $3,000 per year. You can imagine how much defense you could get for this alone. 88 00:19:07.060 --> 00:19:15.600 Most of it, however, not to protect you, but to provoke, to bully, to attack others, mostly 89 00:19:15.600 --> 00:19:24.100 outside of the United States, or to defend itself, rather than to protect its citizens. 90 00:19:24.100 --> 00:19:29.060 And while the government has certainly been successful in creating enemies all over the 91 00:19:29.060 --> 00:19:59.060 and also successful in creating some unreliable because bribed friends all over the world, they are unable to protect its own population against provoked terrorists equipped with no more than box cutters and typically for the inefficiency of tax funded agencies, they can't even defend their own headquarters of aggression that is a pentagon from a tax cutters. 92 00:19:59.060 --> 00:20:06.060 Tax by Foreigners. This morning I listened to TV. There was a hilarious little report 93 00:20:06.060 --> 00:20:15.780 given that Kerry and Bush had appeared in the same town. And during this appearance 94 00:20:15.780 --> 00:20:24.860 in the town, three bank robberies occurred. That tells you roughly what their priorities 95 00:20:24.860 --> 00:20:50.860 To protect them or to protect you? In addition, all levels of governments, and again recall how important wealth is in order to protect ourselves, all governments further impoverish us by taking nearly another $10,000 per person per year away from us. 96 00:20:50.860 --> 00:20:58.140 What some net would be to defend yourself. But then some people might say, but we get 97 00:20:58.140 --> 00:21:07.140 something for it, don't we? Yes. But what is it that we get? Now, what we get in addition 98 00:21:07.140 --> 00:21:16.300 is we get government and gendered inflation which makes us still poorer. We get thousands 99 00:21:16.300 --> 00:21:31.300 of New Laws and Regulations Annually, which create permanent legal uncertainty and moral hazard and drives many people, millions of people into bankruptcy and economic despair. 100 00:21:31.300 --> 00:21:43.300 We get government supervision of all our major financial transactions and must declare all of our incomes wherever we earn them and from whatever source 101 00:21:43.300 --> 00:21:50.300 in order to prevent us from seeking safety from confiscation elsewhere in other jurisdictions. 102 00:21:50.700 --> 00:21:57.700 We have our government using our own confiscated money, compelling other governments to deliver 103 00:21:58.000 --> 00:22:05.000 us and our money back into its protective hands, if they so desire. We have our government 104 00:22:06.000 --> 00:22:13.000 arrest more than one million citizens annually for committing victimless crimes and cease 105 00:22:13.300 --> 00:22:21.300 such offenders property even before they are convicted of anything, thus robbing them of 106 00:22:21.300 --> 00:22:28.300 all the means to engage even in defensive measures against such attacks against them. 107 00:22:28.300 --> 00:22:36.300 We have our government in the name of patriotism, of course, tap our telephones and read our 108 00:22:36.300 --> 00:22:51.300 We have our government through its Food and Drug Administration kill or cause pain and suffering to countless innocent citizens year after year. 109 00:22:51.300 --> 00:23:07.300 We have our government provide us and surround us with public goods such as roads and parks which are unsafe at all times, ill-maintained and the breeding ground of crime. 110 00:23:08.300 --> 00:23:17.300 We have our government cause or contribute even to natural disasters. Walter Block recently wrote an article on this subject. 111 00:23:17.300 --> 00:23:39.300 Just think about the wildfires that break out occasionally and which are caused, of course, by improperly maintained public forests where environmentalists prevent that the underbrush is cut appropriately so that these fires can be prevented. 112 00:23:39.300 --> 00:23:55.300 We have our government cause or contribute the flooding of rivers. Just think of the Mississippi by incorrectly correcting the natural flow of rivers. 113 00:23:55.300 --> 00:24:25.300 We have our government, through its public utility monopolies, fail again and again, in every case of a hurricane, to provide us with electricity and clean water, as if that were a difficult engineering test, you just put the electricity lines underground. I have seen that in other places, but if of course you have these teeny poles there and the wind blows a little bit, of course, 114 00:24:25.300 --> 00:24:31.100 You will be without electricity. I don't think it requires an engineering wonder to prevent 115 00:24:31.100 --> 00:24:40.100 something like this from ever occurring again. We have our government also create unsafe 116 00:24:40.100 --> 00:24:51.380 locations by establishing public housing in various districts, importing crime into crime-free 117 00:24:51.380 --> 00:25:05.220 and subsidizing the habitation of dangerous locations such as flood zones by bailing out, 118 00:25:05.220 --> 00:25:12.540 of course with taxpayer money, those people who have no insurance and nonetheless located 119 00:25:12.540 --> 00:25:20.340 at places such as this. In addition, we have our government strip us of the right of exclusion 120 00:25:20.340 --> 00:25:26.540 and Discrimination which is inherent in the concept of private property and thus render 121 00:25:26.540 --> 00:25:33.540 us increasingly helpless and defenseless. Employers cannot hire and fire who they want. Landlords 122 00:25:34.820 --> 00:25:41.820 cannot rent to whom they want. Groups of private owners cannot enter whatever restricted covenant 123 00:25:42.720 --> 00:25:49.600 they believe to be mutually beneficial. We must accept immigrants that cannot be considered 124 00:25:49.600 --> 00:25:56.600 to be invited by any stretch of the imagination. We have banks and insurance companies that 125 00:25:58.120 --> 00:26:05.120 are not allowed to avoid bad risks. Bars and restaurants must accommodate unwelcome customers. 126 00:26:07.960 --> 00:26:14.960 Private clubs and associations must accept members and actions that act in violation 127 00:26:14.960 --> 00:26:25.960 and the creation of their very own rules and restrictions. And all of this, of course, breeds uncivilized behavior all around us. 128 00:26:25.960 --> 00:26:36.960 And finally and lastly, we have our government forcing us for some ten years, and sometimes far longer than ten years, 129 00:26:36.960 --> 00:26:43.960 and during our most impressionable years to attend state schools or state licensed schools 130 00:26:44.240 --> 00:26:50.600 in order to be indoctrinated by state licensed teachers to learn that we live in the best 131 00:26:50.600 --> 00:26:57.600 possible world with liberty for all where we rule ourselves all on our own and above 132 00:26:59.760 --> 00:27:05.760 all where it is our government that allows us to sleep safe and sound while otherwise 133 00:27:05.760 --> 00:27:12.760 Thank you very much and thanks to the Mises Institute that it is cutting through this fog of lies and fraud and crime. Thank you.