WEBVTT NOTE Defending the Undefendable 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.560 I'm delighted to be here. It's an honor and a privilege. I've been associated with the 2 00:00:03.560 --> 00:00:09.300 Mises Institute since its beginning in 1982. I've been a friend of Murray Rothbard since 3 00:00:09.300 --> 00:00:16.440 about 1965. I'm one of the people here. I've been asked to speak about my book, Defending 4 00:00:16.440 --> 00:00:21.320 the Undefendable, which is available for free, so you don't have to buy it. But I can autograph 5 00:00:21.320 --> 00:00:26.440 it if you don't buy it. So that's one of the advantages of paper. 6 00:00:26.440 --> 00:00:32.460 I have to disagree with my friend and colleague, Doug French, who said that university is a 7 00:00:32.460 --> 00:00:39.940 slumber party. It is, but there's a lot more to it. It's also a dedication institution 8 00:00:39.940 --> 00:00:46.620 to Marxism and feminism and multiculturalism and a lot of crap, and I'm sure he would agree 9 00:00:46.620 --> 00:00:51.940 with this. There's a lot of slumbering, and then there's a lot of Marxism, and the combination 10 00:00:51.940 --> 00:00:55.900 is not the greatest. 11 00:00:55.900 --> 00:01:01.900 I would like to start off with a commercial announcement for my school, Loyola University, 12 00:01:01.900 --> 00:01:02.900 New Orleans. 13 00:01:02.900 --> 00:01:06.940 There are these freebies out on the table there. 14 00:01:06.940 --> 00:01:11.820 If you have a young person who's in high school or in college and might be interested in transferring 15 00:01:11.820 --> 00:01:15.220 to my school, please consider doing so. 16 00:01:15.220 --> 00:01:20.940 One of the benefits to me is it would be wonderful to get some students who I don't have to convince 17 00:01:20.940 --> 00:01:27.260 that capitalism isn't greedy and exploitative and horrible and sexist and racist and piggery 18 00:01:27.260 --> 00:01:31.040 and all that, whereas most of my students, that's the way I get them and it takes me 19 00:01:31.040 --> 00:01:35.680 a year or so to work them into freedom isn't all bad and then maybe by the junior year 20 00:01:35.680 --> 00:01:40.600 freedom is good and so it would be nice to start with better students. 21 00:01:40.600 --> 00:01:46.220 From your point of view, my school, all four of my colleagues or all three of my other 22 00:01:46.220 --> 00:01:50.820 Other colleagues in the economics department are all Austro-libertarians. Dan D'Amico, 23 00:01:50.820 --> 00:01:56.540 who is a former student of mine at Loyola, is now a regular on Judge Napolitano's show. 24 00:01:56.540 --> 00:02:01.540 Bill Barnett is the person I consider the foremost macroeconomist in the Austrian tradition. 25 00:02:01.540 --> 00:02:05.980 John Lavendis, another colleague of mine, has made great contributions. That's the economics 26 00:02:05.980 --> 00:02:12.420 department, all four Austro-libertarians. We also have Stuart Wood, who is a former student 27 00:02:12.420 --> 00:02:18.500 of Israel Kirzner. We have Nick Capaldi who teaches business ethics and is a libertarian 28 00:02:18.500 --> 00:02:24.540 and a David Hume scholar. And we've got maybe another half dozen people who are free enterprises 29 00:02:24.540 --> 00:02:30.460 which is very rare in a school which has about 200 professors. Most schools with 200 professors 30 00:02:30.460 --> 00:02:36.760 have zero Austro-libertarians. People have never heard of Mises or Rothbard. Many schools 31 00:02:36.760 --> 00:02:42.380 have one or two. We've got maybe a dozen professors. Now if you're worried that you won't get Marxist 32 00:02:42.380 --> 00:02:46.940 Feminist Stuff, don't worry, we've got plenty of that too. 33 00:02:46.940 --> 00:02:51.740 You take a sociology course or a religion course or a literature course and you'll be 34 00:02:51.740 --> 00:02:59.220 up to here with multiculturalism and feminism and other irrationalities. 35 00:02:59.220 --> 00:03:04.060 So if you have children, grandchildren, or if some of your students are in college, please 36 00:03:04.060 --> 00:03:07.100 consider transferring to us. 37 00:03:07.100 --> 00:03:22.100 Okay, what I want to do is go over some of the chapters in this book and also read you the chapters from my forthcoming sequel to this book, Defending the Undefendable, it'll be called, I don't know, Defending the Undefendable 2 or something like that. 38 00:03:22.100 --> 00:03:35.100 Let me first read off the chapters in this book. Well, before I do that, let me say what libertarianism is and why this book is libertarian and not just weird, but weird and libertarian. 39 00:03:35.100 --> 00:03:41.540 Libertarianism, as far as I'm concerned, is predicated on two things. 40 00:03:41.540 --> 00:03:43.060 One is the non-aggression principle. 41 00:03:43.060 --> 00:03:44.060 Keep your myths to yourself. 42 00:03:44.060 --> 00:03:45.780 You can do anything you damn well please. 43 00:03:45.780 --> 00:03:49.700 Just keep your myths to yourself, unless you have the permission of other people. 44 00:03:49.700 --> 00:03:54.460 So voluntary, say don't massacre them is okay. 45 00:03:54.460 --> 00:03:56.080 It's compatible with libertarian law. 46 00:03:56.080 --> 00:04:00.980 But if you don't have people's permission, keep your myths off of them and their property. 47 00:04:00.980 --> 00:04:03.860 The other side of the coin is property rights. 48 00:04:03.860 --> 00:04:10.740 If I grab someone's shirt, a Mises shirt, am I a thief or not? 49 00:04:10.740 --> 00:04:12.580 Well it all depends upon who owns the shirt. 50 00:04:12.580 --> 00:04:17.540 If that person who's got the t-shirt stole it from me yesterday, well then I'm the good 51 00:04:17.540 --> 00:04:18.820 guy and he's the bad guy. 52 00:04:18.820 --> 00:04:25.180 So property rights are very important to determine who is the aggressor and who is the victim. 53 00:04:25.180 --> 00:04:31.440 And the libertarian view on this is pretty much based on homesteading, the Lockean Rothbardian 54 00:04:31.440 --> 00:04:38.000 and Hoppean Theory of Homesteading, and the Nozickian notion, Robert Nozick, of legitimate 55 00:04:38.000 --> 00:04:44.200 title transfer, namely any voluntary act would be a legitimate title transfer, for example, 56 00:04:44.200 --> 00:04:49.300 a barter or sale or gifts or gambling or things like that. 57 00:04:49.300 --> 00:04:53.320 So that's libertarianism in the two-minute version. 58 00:04:53.320 --> 00:04:58.080 The non-aggression axiom, non-aggression principle, and private property rights. 59 00:04:58.080 --> 00:04:59.680 So what is libertarian law? 60 00:04:59.680 --> 00:05:04.680 in law is just the fulfillment of these two principles. 61 00:05:04.680 --> 00:05:12.020 Murder, rape, theft, fraud, all those things would be prohibited, but anything else, anything 62 00:05:12.020 --> 00:05:14.840 else would be allowed. 63 00:05:14.840 --> 00:05:20.660 So what this book, Defending the Undefendable, does is try to elucidate this, try to expand 64 00:05:20.660 --> 00:05:27.300 on this, try to explain this by taking cases of activities that are not prescribed by libertarianism 65 00:05:27.300 --> 00:05:31.380 and that are compatible with libertarianism and yet are against the law or are universally 66 00:05:31.380 --> 00:05:33.040 hated. 67 00:05:33.040 --> 00:05:37.820 And I go further, I don't say just that these things are legitimate, I say that it's heroic 68 00:05:37.820 --> 00:05:43.540 to do these things, that I'll be listing in a minute, because if it's compatible with 69 00:05:43.540 --> 00:05:49.440 libertarian law and it's hated by masses of people and it's prohibited, and you still 70 00:05:49.440 --> 00:05:54.660 insist on doing it, you still insist on living liberty, if I can use that phrase, well then 71 00:05:54.660 --> 00:05:55.660 you're heroic. 72 00:05:55.660 --> 00:06:01.660 Look, right now it's okay to wear a striped tie, even though it's not a very good tie, but, you know, aesthetics apart. 73 00:06:01.660 --> 00:06:03.660 This is a legal activity. 74 00:06:03.660 --> 00:06:12.660 But suppose that the government, in its infinite wisdom, decided that wearing blue striped ties was illicit and punishable by a jail sentence. 75 00:06:12.660 --> 00:06:15.660 And I still insisted on wearing this stupid tie. 76 00:06:15.660 --> 00:06:27.660 Then not only would I be acting compatibly with libertarianism, but there would be an element of heroism in me for doing this in contradiction to what the government is saying. 77 00:06:27.660 --> 00:06:36.660 Okay, so I'm now going to read the list of chapters in this book and also the chapters in the forthcoming book and see if you can catch me in an error. 78 00:06:36.660 --> 00:06:41.660 See if any of these chapters do not contradict what I just said. 79 00:06:41.660 --> 00:06:50.660 See if all these chapters indeed are compatible with libertarianism and are either illegal or are hated by various members of the public. 80 00:06:50.660 --> 00:06:56.660 Okay, so in this book, I've got it under headings, under sexual. 81 00:06:56.660 --> 00:07:00.660 The prostitute, the pimp and the male chauvinist pig. 82 00:07:00.660 --> 00:07:05.660 The first two are illegal, except in Nevada, except for Las Vegas, where prostitution is legal. 83 00:07:05.660 --> 00:07:09.660 And the male chauvinist pig is hated by all good feminists. 84 00:07:09.660 --> 00:07:12.660 On the medical, the drug pusher and the drug addict. 85 00:07:12.660 --> 00:07:18.660 Now here, what I'm doing is not saying that we should use these things, just that we shouldn't prohibit them. 86 00:07:18.660 --> 00:07:23.660 There's a distinction between urging the use of and urging the legalization of. 87 00:07:23.660 --> 00:07:28.660 I certainly don't favor the use of these things, but I do favor the legalization. 88 00:07:28.660 --> 00:07:36.660 Under free speech, I've got the blackmailer, the slanderer, the libeler, the denier of academic freedom, the advertiser, and the person who yells far in a crowded theater. 89 00:07:36.660 --> 00:07:38.660 One of my favorites. 90 00:07:38.660 --> 00:07:43.660 Under outlaw, I've got the gypsy cab driver, the ticket scalper and the dishonest cop, 91 00:07:43.660 --> 00:07:47.660 that is the dishonest cop who won't put you in jail for victimless crimes, 92 00:07:47.660 --> 00:07:50.660 not the one who will let you get away with murder and rape. 93 00:07:50.660 --> 00:07:53.660 Under financial, I've got the non-government counterfeiter, 94 00:07:53.660 --> 00:07:58.660 the miser, the inheritor, the money lender, the non-contributory charity, 95 00:07:58.660 --> 00:08:00.660 which is compatible with libertarianism. 96 00:08:00.660 --> 00:08:03.660 Under business and trade, the curmudgeon, the slumlord, the ghetto merchant, 97 00:08:03.660 --> 00:08:07.660 the speculator, the importer, the middleman, the profiteer. 98 00:08:07.660 --> 00:08:18.660 Under ecology, the strip miner, the litterer and the wastemaker, and under labor, the fat capitalist pig employer, another of my favorites, the scab, the rate buster, and the employer of child labor. 99 00:08:18.660 --> 00:08:25.660 Okay, so that's for the published book, and now a quick rundown of the chapters in this subsequent book. 100 00:08:25.660 --> 00:08:36.660 And then what I'll do is discuss some of the high points or the low points, if you want to put it that way, and try to defend some of the chapters that are more interesting than others. 101 00:08:36.660 --> 00:08:46.660 Under trade here, for the new book, I've got the multinational enterprise of the smuggler, the oil manufacturer, the nuclear provider, and the corporate raider. 102 00:08:46.660 --> 00:08:52.660 Under labor, I've got the hatchet man, the home worker, the picket line crosser, the daycare provider, and the automator. 103 00:08:52.660 --> 00:08:58.660 Medical, the smoker, the human organ merchant, and the breast milk substitute purveyor. 104 00:08:58.660 --> 00:09:04.660 Under sex, topless and public, publicist marriage, and burning bed. 105 00:09:04.660 --> 00:09:11.660 Under discriminators, I've got the sexist, the peeping tom, the aegis, the homophobe and the stereotyper. 106 00:09:11.660 --> 00:09:19.660 Under business, the war toy manufacturer, the colorizer, that is the person who colorizes old black and white movies, 107 00:09:19.660 --> 00:09:27.660 the baby seller, the heritage building destroyer, and politically incorrect, the bad Samaritan, not the good Samaritan, but the bad Samaritan, 108 00:09:27.660 --> 00:09:33.660 the duelist, the executioner, the dwarf thrower and the intellectual property denier. 109 00:09:33.660 --> 00:09:38.660 I see I got a reaction from the dwarf thrower, so let me start in with that one. 110 00:09:38.660 --> 00:09:42.660 Thanks for the reaction. I paid them five bucks to do that. 111 00:09:42.660 --> 00:09:46.660 You could have done a little better, but it was okay. 112 00:09:46.660 --> 00:09:53.660 The dwarf thrower is a person who takes a dwarf and throws him. 113 00:09:53.660 --> 00:09:59.660 Or you go to a bowling alley and you roll the dwarf down the bowling alley and you see how many pins he can knock down. 114 00:09:59.660 --> 00:10:05.500 Now this is seen as, you know, obscene, that it's a violation of rights and aesthetic sensibilities 115 00:10:05.500 --> 00:10:12.960 and this and that, but if the dwarfs are willing to do this, and they get paid pretty heavily 116 00:10:12.960 --> 00:10:18.220 to do this, and the thrower and the throwee are both willing to do it, well then it's 117 00:10:18.220 --> 00:10:20.980 a capitalist act between consenting adults. 118 00:10:20.980 --> 00:10:24.700 And if people get off doing this, well, who am I to say no? 119 00:10:24.700 --> 00:10:26.300 It shouldn't be illegal. 120 00:10:26.300 --> 00:10:32.700 And yet it is illegal and in many jurisdictions and it's hated and revolved by all good thinking 121 00:10:32.700 --> 00:10:39.660 progressives and therefore it's part and parcel of this book. Plus I have a cartoon for it, 122 00:10:39.660 --> 00:10:47.280 that was the key. I don't like to brag but the cartoons are great in this book. I'm not 123 00:10:47.280 --> 00:10:52.860 bragging because I didn't draw them and one of the reviewers of this book, the Sunday 124 00:10:52.860 --> 00:10:57.100 The London Times Literary Supplement was unkind enough to say that the only good thing about 125 00:10:57.100 --> 00:11:00.100 the book was the cartoons. 126 00:11:00.100 --> 00:11:06.380 So the first book had about 25 cartoons and this guy, Rodriguez, a brilliant cartoonist, 127 00:11:06.380 --> 00:11:07.860 did 100 cartoons. 128 00:11:07.860 --> 00:11:13.700 So at that rate, I've got three more subsequent volumes to fill up because I've got 75 more 129 00:11:13.700 --> 00:11:17.460 cartoons and at the rate of 25 per book, I've got three more books going. 130 00:11:17.460 --> 00:11:22.680 So in the next little while, I'm going to leave off writing all these articles and contributing 131 00:11:22.680 --> 00:11:28.360 to the Mises web and, well, maybe I'll still do that, and to lewrockwell.com, which by 132 00:11:28.360 --> 00:11:33.800 the way, the traffic is just burgeoning and burgeoning and you'd be amazed if you compared 133 00:11:33.800 --> 00:11:40.680 the Mises Institute electronic traffic with some of the other people and maybe Doug later 134 00:11:40.680 --> 00:11:43.680 can elaborate on that. 135 00:11:43.680 --> 00:11:50.580 Okay, so I've now given you the ballpark, the figures, let me go into two or three or 136 00:11:50.580 --> 00:12:01.580 I'm going to go through four or five of these episodes to justify what I'm saying and give some specifics and that'll be pretty much my half hour. 137 00:12:01.580 --> 00:12:08.580 Okay, I think the first one I'll talk about is the blackmailer. 138 00:12:08.580 --> 00:12:16.580 Now, blackmail is against the law, but we have to distinguish blackmail from extortion. 139 00:12:16.580 --> 00:12:22.420 In both blackmail and extortion, what happens is that you make a threat against somebody 140 00:12:22.420 --> 00:12:29.340 and you also make a demand. You make a threat and a demand. And the demand is usually for 141 00:12:29.340 --> 00:12:33.700 money but it could be for sexual services or something like that, but it's a threat 142 00:12:33.700 --> 00:12:38.300 and a demand. The difference between blackmail and extortion is that in extortion the threat 143 00:12:38.300 --> 00:12:45.220 is an illicit threat. The threat is, I'll kill you if you don't give me money, or I'll 144 00:12:45.220 --> 00:12:54.220 Burn your house down, or I'll kidnap your child, or something like that. If you don't give me money, that's extortion, and that would be absolutely prohibited by the libertarian code. 145 00:12:54.220 --> 00:13:03.220 But under blackmail, the threat is not to violate the non-aggression principle, rather the threat is to gossip. 146 00:13:03.220 --> 00:13:09.220 If you don't give me money, I'm going to tell people that you take a bath with a rubber ducky. 147 00:13:09.220 --> 00:13:14.220 And you do take a bath with a rubber ducky, and I've got a picture of you taking a bath with a rubber ducky. 148 00:13:14.220 --> 00:13:18.980 and people won't play with you if this picture gets out, so give me a hundred bucks. 149 00:13:18.980 --> 00:13:23.180 That's blackmail. Should that be illegal? 150 00:13:23.180 --> 00:13:27.580 No, because I'm not violating the non-aggression principle. 151 00:13:27.580 --> 00:13:32.260 It's sort of like I got the blinders on. I got the non-aggression principle and I'm just trying to 152 00:13:32.260 --> 00:13:37.060 get the implications of it and one of the implications is that blackmail should be legal. 153 00:13:37.060 --> 00:13:43.260 By the way, Murray Rothbard has got like one sentence on blackmail and man economy and state 154 00:13:43.260 --> 00:13:44.940 and that's where I got this from 155 00:13:44.940 --> 00:13:49.540 and I got a lot of my stuff from Murray. I owe Murray a great intellectual debt 156 00:13:49.540 --> 00:13:53.580 as anyone can see who reads my stuff and his stuff 157 00:13:53.580 --> 00:13:57.380 he stole a lot of ideas from me 158 00:13:57.380 --> 00:14:01.020 it's true he published them twenty years before I ever heard of them but 159 00:14:01.020 --> 00:14:05.020 we're not going to go into that. He stole a lot of ideas from me 160 00:14:05.020 --> 00:14:07.020 okay so that's the blackmailer 161 00:14:07.020 --> 00:14:11.380 and just as we wouldn't put people in jail for gossiping, gossiping is a free 162 00:14:11.380 --> 00:14:18.380 The next one is the slanderer or the libeler. One is in speech and one is in writing. And I now slander you. I say that you're a rotten kid, or you're a commie, or Doug is a lesbian, and, you know, you're going to go to jail for threatening to do it. 163 00:14:41.380 --> 00:14:47.380 Yuri is a child molester and, you know, I just keep going on and saying nasty things about people. 164 00:14:47.380 --> 00:14:52.380 And the idea here is that what I've done is akin to stealing. 165 00:14:52.380 --> 00:14:57.380 Your reputation is probably more important than your coat. 166 00:14:57.380 --> 00:15:05.380 Companies are sold with goodwill, where the price of the company is way more than the price of the physical objects because of goodwill. 167 00:15:05.380 --> 00:15:07.380 Well, goodwill is just reputation. 168 00:15:07.380 --> 00:15:14.880 So, if I start saying that various people here are misfits in various ways, total lies, whatever, 169 00:15:14.880 --> 00:15:20.380 I'm ruining their reputation and people say that I'm stealing their reputation. 170 00:15:20.380 --> 00:15:24.380 And therefore, it violates the non-aggression principle because I'm taking your property rights away. 171 00:15:24.380 --> 00:15:33.180 However, a moment's thought will convince you, I hope, it's convinced me, that you don't own your reputation paradoxically. 172 00:15:33.180 --> 00:15:35.380 Because what does your reputation consist of? 173 00:15:35.380 --> 00:15:38.420 The reputation consists of the thoughts of other people. 174 00:15:38.420 --> 00:15:39.940 Can you own the thoughts of other people? 175 00:15:39.940 --> 00:15:41.100 No. 176 00:15:41.100 --> 00:15:44.580 Therefore, paradoxically, you can't own your reputation. 177 00:15:44.580 --> 00:15:47.740 The other paradox is that you work hard 178 00:15:47.740 --> 00:15:50.980 to create your reputation by dealing fairly 179 00:15:50.980 --> 00:15:53.260 with other people, and you can profit from it, 180 00:15:53.260 --> 00:15:55.420 but you still don't own it. 181 00:15:55.420 --> 00:15:57.300 So if you don't own it and I take it away from you, 182 00:15:57.300 --> 00:16:00.060 I haven't taken anything away from you that you own. 183 00:16:01.500 --> 00:16:03.100 Therefore, I'm not a thief. 184 00:16:03.100 --> 00:16:09.100 Another paradox is that if we got rid of the libel laws, and in Britain the libel laws are really crazy. 185 00:16:09.100 --> 00:16:14.100 You know, there you have to prove that you're innocent, and rather than they have to prove you're guilty. 186 00:16:14.100 --> 00:16:16.100 It's just horrendous. 187 00:16:16.100 --> 00:16:24.100 Paradoxically, reputations would be safer in a full free market of ideas institution, 188 00:16:24.100 --> 00:16:32.100 because right now you go to the newspapers, or you go to the web, or whatever, 189 00:16:32.100 --> 00:16:41.900 And there are houses for sale, and there are cars for sale, and houses for rent, and cars for rent, and jobs opening, and there are personals, you know, I want to meet a lady, yack, yack, yack. 190 00:16:41.900 --> 00:16:52.580 Well, now there might be libel columns. You know, Joe is bigot, he's a libertarian, which would be a horrible thing. 191 00:16:52.580 --> 00:16:56.740 And no longer would a mere allegation suffice to ruin a reputation. 192 00:16:56.740 --> 00:17:02.640 because the charges would come thick and fast. Everybody be libeling everybody. 193 00:17:02.640 --> 00:17:07.440 Right now, you know, if I say that Doug is a lesbian, well, where the smoke, there's fire, who knows? 194 00:17:07.440 --> 00:17:12.740 Let's check him out in the men's room, whatever. It's unclear. 195 00:17:12.740 --> 00:17:18.540 But if everyone was doing this, a mere allegation would be just silly. 196 00:17:18.540 --> 00:17:23.940 Now, you'd have to have some evidence. So paradoxically, again, paradox upon paradox upon paradox, 197 00:17:23.940 --> 00:17:29.060 Reputations would be safer, not more at risk. 198 00:17:29.060 --> 00:17:32.020 Another one is the person who yells far in a crowded theater. 199 00:17:32.020 --> 00:17:38.060 Now, free speech, there really is no free speech rights, more private property rights. 200 00:17:38.060 --> 00:17:43.300 You can say anything you want in your own house or with your own writing, 201 00:17:43.300 --> 00:17:46.780 but there is one exception and that is you can't make a threat. 202 00:17:46.780 --> 00:17:50.660 It's not really free speech to say that if you don't give me money I'm going to shoot you, 203 00:17:50.660 --> 00:17:53.020 or to threaten I'm going to kill you. 204 00:17:53.020 --> 00:18:04.020 That would be the one illegitimate thing, because the non-aggression principle is not only against force or initiation of force, but also the threat thereof, because often the threat will do fine. 205 00:18:04.020 --> 00:18:10.020 I'm holding a gun on you and I say, give me a hundred bucks or I shoot you. I don't have to actually shoot you, you're going to give me that money. 206 00:18:10.020 --> 00:18:20.020 So the non-aggression principle, if you understand it fully and correctly, it's the force, the initiation of force or the threat thereof. 207 00:18:20.020 --> 00:18:47.020 So, apart from that, people start saying, well, you know, we have to have exceptions for free speech, like right now there's this guy who's burning a Koran, a minister in Florida, and he's engaging in hate speech against Muslims and this and that, and also he pickets, what is it, funerals for army people who are dying, and he says, you know, the reason they're dying is God hates homosexuals, or something like that. 208 00:18:47.020 --> 00:18:53.020 Well, does he have a right to do that? People say, well, you know, free speech rights aren't absolute. 209 00:18:53.020 --> 00:18:57.020 There are always exceptions. For example, you can't yell far in a crowd theater. 210 00:18:57.020 --> 00:19:00.020 That's a famous one from one of the Supreme Court judges. 211 00:19:00.020 --> 00:19:03.020 And therefore, we have to take this guy's free speech rights away, too. 212 00:19:03.020 --> 00:19:08.020 Now, I have no love for this guy. I think he's a little weird. 213 00:19:08.020 --> 00:19:14.020 But does he have a right to say what he wants to say on his own property with his own megaphone? 214 00:19:14.020 --> 00:19:19.020 in his own house or in his own church, I say yes. 215 00:19:19.020 --> 00:19:24.020 So I have to ask myself, well, is it ever legitimate to yell for anocratic theater? 216 00:19:24.020 --> 00:19:31.020 And I came up with a case. Now, most sadomasochists believe in whipping each other or waterboarding each other. 217 00:19:31.020 --> 00:19:35.020 I'm not really sure. I'm not into that as much as I could be, but that's my understanding. 218 00:19:35.020 --> 00:19:42.020 But suppose there was an S&M group that didn't believe in waterboarding or whipping or hanging or choking or suffocating, 219 00:19:42.020 --> 00:19:46.980 Suffocating. But what they believed in is yelling far in a crowded theater and then 220 00:19:46.980 --> 00:19:51.700 rushing to the exit and getting crushed. Well, you know, you perverts who haven't tried it, 221 00:19:51.700 --> 00:19:56.780 don't knock it until you've tried it. Maybe you'll enjoy it, who knows. Do they have a 222 00:19:56.780 --> 00:20:02.340 right to do it? Of course they do, if it's a clearly SM theater. Now in the ordinary 223 00:20:02.340 --> 00:20:06.620 theater the reason you can't do that is because you have an implicit contract with the movie 224 00:20:06.620 --> 00:20:11.900 owner who either writes it on the back of the ticket or it's implicit, you know, sit 225 00:20:11.900 --> 00:20:15.760 there, shut up and watch the movie and laugh at the appropriate times and don't laugh and 226 00:20:15.760 --> 00:20:20.580 don't stand up and don't wear a big hat and don't be an annoyance to the other patrons. 227 00:20:20.580 --> 00:20:24.020 And certainly don't yell fire in the crowded theater unless there's a fire, which is a 228 00:20:24.020 --> 00:20:25.980 different issue. 229 00:20:25.980 --> 00:20:30.280 So the point is that I've come up with one case where it would be legitimate to do it 230 00:20:30.280 --> 00:20:34.580 so therefore it can't be per se a violation of rights and therefore we shouldn't allow 231 00:20:34.580 --> 00:20:40.580 and allow it to be an entering wedge in undermining freedom of speech. 232 00:20:40.580 --> 00:20:44.580 Okay, another one, here's an interesting one. 233 00:20:44.580 --> 00:20:50.580 This is the only one that's really been subjected to withering criticism in the academic journals. 234 00:20:50.580 --> 00:20:54.580 This is the non-government counterfeiter. 235 00:20:54.580 --> 00:20:58.580 Now, let me just go into money a little bit. 236 00:20:58.580 --> 00:21:02.580 Why do we have money? The reason we have money is to facilitate trade. 237 00:21:02.580 --> 00:21:09.580 If we had barter, and I had a chicken and I wanted a pickle, it would be very hard for me to find a pickle-owning chicken-wonner. 238 00:21:09.580 --> 00:21:15.580 It's called the double coincidence of once, and if you say that fast, you get all mixed up. 239 00:21:15.580 --> 00:21:21.580 And it would be very hard for him to find a chicken-owning pickle-wonner, or a pickle-owning chicken-wonner, I don't know. 240 00:21:21.580 --> 00:21:29.580 So what we do instead of making a barter to overcome the double coincidence of once, what we do is we, 241 00:21:29.580 --> 00:21:37.580 I trade my chicken in for something that I know everyone will use, and if everyone won't use it, they know that everyone else will use it, and they can use it to facilitate trade. 242 00:21:37.580 --> 00:21:45.580 Something like salt. Especially before refrigeration, everyone used salt to, you know, preserve meat and stuff like that. 243 00:21:45.580 --> 00:21:52.580 So I take the chicken and I trade it for salt, and then I take the salt and I buy a pickle. 244 00:21:52.580 --> 00:22:06.580 And it's true I had to go through two exchanges rather than one, direct exchange, I have indirect exchange, but it's much more efficient, much more effective, because the odds of me finding someone who's got what I want and wants what I've got is very tough. 245 00:22:06.580 --> 00:22:14.580 Okay, so salt is now a money. All money is, is a facilitator of trade. And we've seen that salt works. 246 00:22:14.580 --> 00:22:20.140 But then there was the sort of a competition, well, which things will be the best money, 247 00:22:20.140 --> 00:22:25.420 the best trade intermediaries? Would bananas do it? Not really, because they get rotten 248 00:22:25.420 --> 00:22:29.980 after a day or two. Would diamonds do it? No, because you can't make change in them, 249 00:22:29.980 --> 00:22:34.060 because if you break one in half, the value of it is, I think, one-eighth, the two smallest 250 00:22:34.060 --> 00:22:41.540 stones. Would platinum be good? Maybe it's too hard to break up. Gold and silver won 251 00:22:41.540 --> 00:22:48.540 run out in the competition of monies. So Austro-libertarians favor the gold standard, which doesn't really 252 00:22:49.060 --> 00:22:52.620 mean we favor gold per se, it just means we favor whatever the free enterprise system 253 00:22:52.620 --> 00:22:56.980 comes up with, but in history it always came up with gold, so we sort of favor gold as 254 00:22:56.980 --> 00:23:03.320 a shorthand for free market money. Okay, so now we get the Fed. Doug talked about Murray's 255 00:23:03.320 --> 00:23:10.320 book about the Fed and banking and stuff, and what happened in effect was that the government 256 00:23:10.320 --> 00:23:24.320 The government counterfeited money. It counterfeited gold money. Gold was legitimate money. Nixon stopped the gold window in 71. FDR, another favorite president of ours, got us off the gold standard in the 30s. 257 00:23:24.320 --> 00:23:36.320 And now we have this fiat currency. And what I'm saying in effect is that this fiat currency is counterfeit. It's not really a legitimate money. It's a counterfeit of market money. 258 00:23:36.320 --> 00:23:45.320 Now, ordinarily, if I were to engage in counterfeiting, that would be very bad. That would be like stealing something. 259 00:23:45.320 --> 00:23:52.320 But if I'm counterfeiting counterfeit money, you working with me here? 260 00:23:52.320 --> 00:23:56.320 Do I have a right to do that? Is that a violation of libertarian rights? 261 00:23:56.320 --> 00:24:03.320 And in this book, I say it's not, and yet I've got three people who I admire very much. 262 00:24:03.320 --> 00:24:20.320 Laura Davidson, who is an excellent macroeconomist, although she does it totally as a hobby, she's an airline pilot, but that doesn't stop her, she's published very good stuff on money and macroeconomics in scholarly journals, she's got no credentials, but she's a brilliant woman. 263 00:24:20.320 --> 00:24:32.820 Bob Murphy, who I revere, who is a magnificent macroeconomist, and also Matt McKay, a young man from Poland who just got his PhD. 264 00:24:32.820 --> 00:24:38.820 The three of them ganged up on me and wrote blistering attacks on me that I'm really misunderstanding libertarian theory. 265 00:24:38.820 --> 00:24:46.320 And then I replied, this is all in the American Journal of Economics and Sociology, a professional journal. 266 00:24:46.320 --> 00:24:52.320 So if you're interested in that, email me and I'll give you all the URLs for that and you can take it from there. 267 00:24:52.320 --> 00:24:57.320 I think they're all wrong. I replied to them, but who knows? The debate is ongoing. 268 00:24:57.320 --> 00:25:01.320 And I think the benefit of this debate is some of these issues are tricky. 269 00:25:01.320 --> 00:25:10.320 And the only way to really get at it is to get people who are sort of in the camp, they're not accusing me of being greedy or a capitalist pig or anything like that. 270 00:25:10.320 --> 00:25:15.320 They're all buddies of mine. But they say that I made a mistake on this or that and I say they did. 271 00:25:15.320 --> 00:25:45.320 Okay, let me talk about one or two things in the new one. The homophobe. I hate gays. I don't, actually, but let's suppose I did. I'm a hater. I hate everyone. I'm not tolerant. I just hate everyone. You know, the Archie Bunker series, there was this guy, George Jefferson, who had a spin-off of his show, Black Guy. Nobody seems to have seen it. 272 00:25:45.320 --> 00:25:52.320 Okay, some people have. And George Jefferson's schtick was being mean. So his wife one day 273 00:25:53.220 --> 00:25:59.720 said, George, stop being so mean, be nice. So George starts smiling and goes like this. 274 00:25:59.720 --> 00:26:04.480 And for about two minutes he's smiling. He said, I tried it, I don't like it. And he 275 00:26:04.480 --> 00:26:11.480 went back to being mean. But he didn't violate rights. So is he a hero? Yeah, he's a hero. 276 00:26:11.480 --> 00:26:24.080 He's a hater, and we've got this stuff about hate speech nowadays, you know, like if you commit assault and battery against this person, you're just guilty of assault and battery. 277 00:26:24.080 --> 00:26:30.680 If you committed assault and battery about that person, you're guilty of hate crime, which seems a little silly to punish you for what's in your mind. 278 00:26:30.680 --> 00:26:34.880 Surely you should punish the person for, you know, what he did. 279 00:26:34.880 --> 00:26:41.000 So my claim is that merely sitting there and hating and going, I hate, that's not a violation 280 00:26:41.000 --> 00:26:46.920 of liberty, and it's illegal now, and it's hated by all of our friends on the left, so 281 00:26:46.920 --> 00:26:52.640 the hell with those people. We can now stand up for hate. Hate is great. Maybe the next 282 00:26:52.640 --> 00:26:57.880 t-shirt will be, I'm a great hater or something like that, to illustrate the logical implications 283 00:26:57.880 --> 00:27:02.680 of what we're all about, what libertarian law is all about. 284 00:27:02.680 --> 00:27:09.800 Let me do just one last one, the executioner. This is the death penalty. I favor, well, 285 00:27:09.800 --> 00:27:14.800 what should be the right punishment for murder? Well, the way I analyze murder, what murder 286 00:27:14.800 --> 00:27:20.200 is is the theft of a life. I'm going to pick on Doug again because he's my buddy. He won't 287 00:27:20.200 --> 00:27:24.520 be too angry at me and he's sitting right there. Suppose I murder Doug. What I did is 288 00:27:24.520 --> 00:27:30.360 I took his life. I stole his life. Well, surely any libertarian punishment theory worthy of 289 00:27:30.360 --> 00:27:36.360 The first thing that I must be made to do is to give back that life that I stole from him. 290 00:27:36.360 --> 00:27:41.360 Unfortunately, we don't have this Nozickian machine where you put us both in the chamber, 291 00:27:41.360 --> 00:27:48.360 Doug's dead body and my live body, and you flip the switch and the life goes out of me and into him. 292 00:27:48.360 --> 00:27:52.360 But if we had that machine, wouldn't that be the essence of justice? 293 00:27:52.360 --> 00:27:57.360 To force me kicking and screaming into that machine, and then you transfer my life back into Doug, 294 00:27:57.360 --> 00:28:03.280 And now Doug comes out alive and I come out dead? That would be justice. I mean, that 295 00:28:03.280 --> 00:28:07.120 would be the essence of justice. There could be nothing more just than to take the life 296 00:28:07.120 --> 00:28:12.360 of the live murderer and give it to the dead victim and let the dead victim walk away live 297 00:28:12.360 --> 00:28:18.400 and let the live murderer go to the grave. Unfortunately, we don't have that machine. 298 00:28:18.400 --> 00:28:22.600 You know, Doug talks about, I don't know why I'm picking on him all the time, but he talks 299 00:28:22.600 --> 00:28:28.120 about technology. One of these days maybe we'll have that machine. And if we do, libertarians 300 00:28:28.120 --> 00:28:32.880 would say use it. But we don't. So what we have to do is the next best thing. The next 301 00:28:32.880 --> 00:28:39.880 best thing is to give my life to Doug's future wife or his heirs. And what she can do is 302 00:28:42.760 --> 00:28:49.360 enslave me or publicly execute me for money. Maybe put it on Google and you'd see more 303 00:28:49.360 --> 00:28:53.640 For money, who knows about that? I don't know. But the point I'm trying to do is to justify 304 00:28:53.640 --> 00:28:59.560 the executioner. Now, the executioner is illegal in many states. I think Illinois just banned 305 00:28:59.560 --> 00:29:06.240 execution and many other states ban it. People say, well, executions don't really reduce 306 00:29:06.240 --> 00:29:10.560 the murder rate. And what they do is they compare states that have the death penalty 307 00:29:10.560 --> 00:29:16.120 with ones that don't. But if you compare the states that execute versus the ones that don't 308 00:29:16.120 --> 00:29:46.120 Well, I'm just about out of time, so let me once again urge you to consider coming to Loyola. The other professors in my department are even better than me. I'm kidding, I'm the best one. I'm the prettiest, also. But they're very, very good. And they're very, very good. And they're very, very good. And they're very, very good. And they're very, very good. And they're very, very good. And they're very, very good. 309 00:29:46.120 --> 00:29:52.120 And if you're interested, come see me and talk to me about transferring or coming to my school. Thanks for your attention.