WEBVTT NOTE What Must Be Done 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:09.800 A slightly more appropriate title would be Society, State and Liberty and the Austro-libertarian Strategy of Social Revolution. 2 00:00:09.800 --> 00:00:15.800 So I want to step up things a little bit after all these moderate talks that you have heard before. 3 00:00:19.800 --> 00:00:27.000 Now, I want to end, of course, with some rather concrete strategic advice, but in order to give this, 4 00:00:27.000 --> 00:00:35.000 First I have to diagnose what the problem is, otherwise the cure might be worse than the disease. 5 00:00:35.000 --> 00:00:49.000 And this diagnosis involves some sort of systematic reconstruction or a theoretical explanation of human history, nothing less. 6 00:00:49.000 --> 00:00:56.000 Now let me begin with a few words about society. Why is there a society? Why do people cooperate? 7 00:00:56.000 --> 00:01:03.800 Why is there peaceful cooperation rather than permanent war among mankind? 8 00:01:03.800 --> 00:01:15.800 Austrians, and in particular Misesians, emphasize the fact that we do not need to assume anything like sympathy or love for other people in order to explain this. 9 00:01:15.800 --> 00:01:24.800 Self-interest, that is, to prefer more over less, that is entirely sufficient to explain this phenomenon of cooperation. 10 00:01:24.800 --> 00:01:35.800 Men cooperate because they are able to recognize that production under division of labor is more productive than self-sufficient isolation. 11 00:01:35.800 --> 00:01:47.800 Imagine just that we would withdraw from division of labor and you would immediately recognize that we would be desperately poor, most of mankind would immediately die out. 12 00:01:47.800 --> 00:01:56.800 Now, note one important thing here and I'll come back to this. What this explanation implies and what it does not imply. 13 00:01:56.800 --> 00:02:07.800 It does not imply, of course, that there will be always and without any exception or disturbance nothing but peace among men. 14 00:02:07.800 --> 00:02:14.800 There are always robbers and murderers around and every society somehow has to deal with these types. 15 00:02:14.800 --> 00:02:25.800 But what it does imply is that the Hobbesian account of the emergence of peaceful cooperation is fundamentally misconceived. 16 00:02:25.800 --> 00:02:39.800 Thomas Hobbes assumed that people would be permanently at each other's throat if it were not for some independent third party, that is the state of course, to make peace among them. 17 00:02:39.800 --> 00:02:45.800 You notice immediately what kind of curious construction this is. 18 00:02:45.800 --> 00:02:56.800 People are assumed to be bad wolves and they can be turned into sheep if another third wolf is made to rule above them. 19 00:02:56.800 --> 00:03:04.800 Now, if the third party, however, is also a wolf, as obviously he must be, 20 00:03:04.800 --> 00:03:20.800 Then, even if he can make peace between two individuals, this obviously implies that there will be a permanent war between the ruling wolf and the two wolves that are now peaceful cooperating with each other. 21 00:03:20.800 --> 00:03:35.300 Now, what this implies is something of great importance. That is, there must be no state or there must be no independent third party in order to have cooperation between two individuals. 22 00:03:35.300 --> 00:03:42.300 Which you can also recognize immediately if you just look, for instance, at the international scenery. 23 00:03:42.300 --> 00:03:52.000 There exists no such thing as a world government, at least not yet, and still people of different countries peacefully cooperate with each other. 24 00:03:52.000 --> 00:04:00.200 Or, even out of the greatest social chaos, all this cooperation emerges again. 25 00:04:00.200 --> 00:04:15.200 Now, what this boils down to is simply that peaceful cooperation between humans is a perfectly natural and constantly re-emergent phenomenon. 26 00:04:15.200 --> 00:04:27.200 And out of this cooperation, then equally naturally and equally driven by self-interest comes capital formation and money, the medium of exchange, 27 00:04:27.200 --> 00:04:33.860 and then division of labor ultimately expands to the entire globe and likewise money, 28 00:04:33.860 --> 00:04:40.400 the commodity money, also becomes a worldwide used commodity money. 29 00:04:40.400 --> 00:04:47.960 Then material living standards increase for everyone and based on higher material living standards, 30 00:04:47.960 --> 00:04:55.580 an ever more elaborate superstructure of non-material goods, that is civilization of science, arts, 31 00:04:55.580 --> 00:05:00.580 Literature and so forth can be developed and maintained. 32 00:05:00.580 --> 00:05:12.580 But something can and obviously has happened that disrupts and distorts or even derails this normal self-interest driven development. 33 00:05:12.580 --> 00:05:19.580 And this is of course a state which I will define initially, rather abstract, 34 00:05:19.580 --> 00:05:26.280 as a compulsorily funded territorial monopolist of protection, 35 00:05:26.280 --> 00:05:32.980 that is a monopolist of defense and the provision and enforcement of law and order. 36 00:05:32.980 --> 00:05:35.680 Now how does the state originate? 37 00:05:35.680 --> 00:05:40.280 While this is generally and I think intentionally confused, 38 00:05:40.280 --> 00:05:49.280 it should be made clear from the very outset that law and order were protection of property and state. 39 00:05:49.280 --> 00:05:57.280 State law and state order and state protection are not one and the same thing. They are not identical things. 40 00:05:57.280 --> 00:06:04.280 Just as property and social cooperation based on the division of labor are natural, 41 00:06:04.280 --> 00:06:18.280 so the human desire to have one's property protected against natural and also against social disaster such as crime is a completely natural desire. 42 00:06:18.280 --> 00:06:25.280 And in order to satisfy this desire, there is of course first and foremost self-protection. 43 00:06:25.280 --> 00:06:32.280 Precaution, insurance, individually or collective, vigilance, self-defense and punishment. 44 00:06:32.280 --> 00:06:43.280 And let there be absolutely no doubt as to the effectiveness of a protection system based on people's willingness of self-defense. 45 00:06:43.280 --> 00:06:49.280 This is how law and order was maintained most of the time for most of mankind. 46 00:06:49.280 --> 00:06:58.280 In every village, even up to this day, law and order is basically maintained in this way. 47 00:06:58.280 --> 00:07:06.280 The American Wild West, which of course was not exactly wild as compared to the current situation, 48 00:07:06.280 --> 00:07:13.280 That's the way law and order was maintained there, by people being willing to defend themselves. 49 00:07:13.280 --> 00:07:22.280 Moreover, division of labor will then, of course, naturally also affect the production of security, of protection services. 50 00:07:22.280 --> 00:07:30.280 The higher standards of living grow, the more people will, besides relying on self-defense measures, 51 00:07:30.280 --> 00:07:50.280 All of these measures also want to partake in the advantages of the division of labor and attach themselves for protection in addition to relying on self-defense to a specialized protector, to providers of law and order and of justice and protection. 52 00:07:50.280 --> 00:07:57.780 And naturally, every person will look for this particular task for assistance. 53 00:07:57.780 --> 00:08:04.280 He will look to persons or institutions who have something to protect themselves, 54 00:08:04.280 --> 00:08:12.780 who have the means to assure effective protection and who have a reputation as just and impartial judges. 55 00:08:12.780 --> 00:08:19.280 In every society of more than the most minimal degree of complexity then, 56 00:08:19.280 --> 00:08:36.280 And then there will quickly emerge specific individuals who, on account of having property to defend, having a good reputation and so forth, will assume the role of judges and peacemakers and protectors. 57 00:08:36.280 --> 00:08:47.280 And again, every single village up to this day, every small community and even the Wild West, of course, again, illustrate the truth of this conclusion. 58 00:08:47.280 --> 00:09:09.520 Now, protection then is also possible without a state. This should actually be of course absolutely obvious, but in an age of status obfuscation and confusion, it is increasingly necessary to emphasize this elementary and yet, as we will see, very dangerous insight. 59 00:09:09.520 --> 00:09:19.920 The decisive step in diverting human history from its natural course, that is, the original sin of mankind, so to speak, 60 00:09:19.920 --> 00:09:29.320 occurs with the monopolization of the provision of protection, defense, security and order. 61 00:09:29.320 --> 00:09:38.420 The monopolization of these tasks by a single one of these initially numerous protectors at the exclusion of all others. 62 00:09:38.420 --> 00:09:55.060 A protection monopoly exists once a single agency or a single person can effectively insist that everyone on a given territory must exclusively come to him for justice and protection. 63 00:09:55.060 --> 00:10:06.940 That is, that no one can rely exclusively or solely on self-defense or attach himself for protection to somebody else. 64 00:10:06.940 --> 00:10:19.940 Once this is reached, a monopolist, then of course funding of this protector is no longer entirely voluntarily, but in part becomes compulsion. 65 00:10:19.940 --> 00:10:32.940 And as standard Austrian economics predicts, once there is no longer free entry into the business of property protection, or into any other business for that matter, 66 00:10:32.940 --> 00:10:39.440 The price of protection will rise and the quality of protection will fall. 67 00:10:39.440 --> 00:10:46.940 The monopolist will become increasingly less of a protector of our property 68 00:10:46.940 --> 00:10:56.940 and increasingly more become a protection racket or even a systematic exploiter of property owners. 69 00:10:56.940 --> 00:11:07.940 He will become an aggressor against and a destroyer of the people and their property that it was initially supposed to protect. 70 00:11:07.940 --> 00:11:18.940 Now, what is easily described in abstract terms as monopoly is in practice, of course, a painstaking and lengthy task. 71 00:11:18.940 --> 00:11:25.940 How can anyone get away with barring all other protectors from competition? 72 00:11:25.940 --> 00:11:39.940 and why would the people and especially the excluded other potential peacemakers and judges allow such a thing to happen that one individual monopolizes the service. 73 00:11:39.940 --> 00:11:49.940 Now the answer regarding the origin of a state is in detail very complicated but in its general structure it is very easy to recognize. 74 00:11:49.940 --> 00:12:05.940 First, every state, that is every monopolistic protection agency, must begin or can only originate on an extremely small territorial level, such as a village, for instance. 75 00:12:05.940 --> 00:12:19.940 It is practically inconceivable that a world state or a protection monopoly encompassing the entire world population could come into existence from scratch. 76 00:12:19.940 --> 00:12:28.940 And the second thing we have to notice is that not just anyone can even reach a local protection monopoly. 77 00:12:28.940 --> 00:12:37.940 The local protection monopolists initially are members of the natural social elite. 78 00:12:37.940 --> 00:12:43.940 That is, they are initially accomplished and acknowledged members of society. 79 00:12:43.940 --> 00:12:52.940 They were also, before they reached the position of a monopolist, they were previously chosen voluntarily as protectors. 80 00:12:52.940 --> 00:13:08.940 Only as established and recognized elites, whose authority is essentially voluntary, is it possible for them to make this decisive step toward monopolization and get away with it. 81 00:13:08.940 --> 00:13:20.940 That is to say, every initial local government or state originates in the form of personal or private lordships or of princely rule. 82 00:13:20.940 --> 00:13:34.340 No one would entrust just anyone with the maintenance of law, order and justice, and in particular not if this person or agency had a monopoly for this particular task. 83 00:13:34.340 --> 00:13:52.340 Instead, people would look for protection, obviously, to someone known and known to be a knowledgeable person and only such a person, a noble or an aristocrat, can possibly attain a monopoly position initially. 84 00:13:52.340 --> 00:14:02.340 Historically, by the way, if one looks at modern or ancient history, states everywhere, of course, are basically first princely states. 85 00:14:02.340 --> 00:14:06.140 and only later do they become democratic states. 86 00:14:06.140 --> 00:14:12.940 And even though it is true that states must begin only locally, and they are usually princely states, 87 00:14:12.940 --> 00:14:22.940 it still took hundreds of years before anything resembling the modern state came into existence. 88 00:14:22.940 --> 00:14:30.340 Now, once a protection monopoly is in place, a logic of its own is set in motion. 89 00:14:30.340 --> 00:14:34.860 Every monopolist takes, of course, advantage of his position. 90 00:14:34.860 --> 00:14:40.900 The price of protection will go up and, more importantly, the content of the law, that 91 00:14:40.900 --> 00:14:47.420 is, the product quality, will be altered to the advantage of the monopolist and at the 92 00:14:47.420 --> 00:14:50.300 expense of others. 93 00:14:50.300 --> 00:14:58.020 Justice will be perverted and the protector becomes increasingly an exploiter and an expropriator. 94 00:14:58.020 --> 00:15:06.020 More specifically, as a result of the territorial monopolization of protection, two tendencies are generated. 95 00:15:06.020 --> 00:15:17.020 First, a tendency towards the extensification of exploitation and second, a tendency towards the intensification of exploitation. 96 00:15:17.020 --> 00:15:32.020 Now, originally local institutions, states have an inherent tendency, driven by self-interest, of wanting more income rather than less, toward territorial expansion. 97 00:15:32.020 --> 00:15:40.020 The more subjects a state protects or rather exploits, the better it is, of course. 98 00:15:40.020 --> 00:15:49.020 And the competition between states, that is territorial monopolists, is an eliminative competition. 99 00:15:49.020 --> 00:15:55.020 Either I am the monopolist or you are the monopolist of ripping people off. 100 00:15:55.020 --> 00:16:01.020 Moreover, with numerous states, people can easily move with their feet. 101 00:16:01.020 --> 00:16:10.020 However, a loss of population, of course, from the point of view of a state is a bothersome problem. 102 00:16:10.020 --> 00:16:19.020 Hence, states almost automatically come into conflict with each other and one way of solving this conflict 103 00:16:19.020 --> 00:16:28.020 or solving this problem from a statist viewpoint is territorial expansion either by means of war 104 00:16:28.020 --> 00:16:35.220 of war or by means of intermarriage and sometimes also by outright purchase. 105 00:16:35.220 --> 00:16:44.620 Ultimately, this tendency would come to a halt only with the establishment of a one-world single state. 106 00:16:44.620 --> 00:16:48.820 The second thing is the intensification of exploitation. 107 00:16:48.820 --> 00:16:55.020 Now, extensifying exploitation, ripping people off of a state monopoly, 108 00:16:55.020 --> 00:17:13.020 The theory implies in and of itself already also an intensification, because the smaller the number of competing states, that is the larger the state territories become, the less are the opportunities of voting with one's feet. 109 00:17:13.020 --> 00:17:21.020 And under the scenario of a world state, wherever one goes, the tax and regulation structure is the same. 110 00:17:21.020 --> 00:17:36.020 That is, with the threat of immigration gone, monopolistic exploitation will naturally increase, or that is to say, the price of protection will rise and the quality of justice will fall. 111 00:17:36.020 --> 00:17:57.520 However, even apart from this, as soon as a protection monopoly exists for any given size territory, the monopolist will try to intensify his exploitation and increase his income and wealth at the expense of the protected subjects to the maximum extent possible. 112 00:17:57.520 --> 00:18:09.520 As long as the monopoly is held by a single person, that is like a prince or a king, and especially when it is turned into a hereditary monopoly, 113 00:18:09.520 --> 00:18:22.520 then it is in the monopolist's interest, because he owns this monopoly and he owns the capital value of it, to preserve the value of his property. 114 00:18:22.520 --> 00:18:30.520 He will exploit little today in order to be able to exploit more tomorrow. 115 00:18:30.520 --> 00:18:42.520 And as well popular resistance against expansion of state power will be very high if there is a single person in charge. 116 00:18:42.520 --> 00:18:48.520 Because there is then obviously no free entry into the state apparatus. 117 00:18:48.520 --> 00:18:58.520 And the benefits of the monopoly accrue to a single man and his extended family, that is, the hereditary nobility. 118 00:18:58.520 --> 00:19:09.520 Accordingly, the public resentment and vigilance is heightened and attempts to intensify exploitation find quick and severe limitations. 119 00:19:09.520 --> 00:19:15.520 People hated the king because they realized that he is the ruler and we are ruled by him. 120 00:19:15.520 --> 00:19:34.520 Now predictably, a great push forward in the state's desire for intensified exploitation occurred only in conjunction with the reform of the state, drawn out over centuries from a princely to a democratic state. 121 00:19:34.520 --> 00:19:51.520 Under modern majoritarian democracy, that is the type of state which came into full bloom after World War I on a worldwide scale, the monopoly and exploitation do not disappear, of course. 122 00:19:51.520 --> 00:20:01.520 Majoritarian democracy is not a system of self-rule and self-defense. State and people are not one and the same thing. 123 00:20:01.520 --> 00:20:15.520 With the substitution of an elected parliament and presidents for an unelected prince or king, protection remains as much a monopoly as it was before. 124 00:20:15.520 --> 00:20:25.520 What happens only is this. The territorial protection monopoly becomes now public rather than private property. 125 00:20:25.520 --> 00:20:37.520 Instead of a prince who regards it as his private property, a temporary and interchangeable caretaker is put in charge of the protection racket. 126 00:20:37.520 --> 00:20:52.520 The caretaker does not own the protection racket. Instead, he is just allowed to make use, to use the current resources for his own advantage. 127 00:20:52.520 --> 00:21:06.520 He owns usufruct, but he does not own the capital value. This then does not eliminate the self-interest-driven tendency toward increased exploitation. 128 00:21:06.520 --> 00:21:17.520 To the contrary, it only makes exploitation less rational and less calculating and more short-sighted and more wasteful. 129 00:21:17.520 --> 00:21:32.120 Moreover, because entry into a democratic government is open, everyone can become president, resistance against state property invasions are reduced. 130 00:21:32.120 --> 00:21:44.120 And this leads to the same result. Increasingly now under democratic conditions, the worst will rise to the top of the state in free competition. 131 00:21:44.120 --> 00:21:55.120 Competition is not always good. Competition in the field of becoming the shrewdest aggressor against private property is nothing to be greeted. 132 00:21:55.120 --> 00:22:05.120 And this is precisely what democracy amounts to. Princes and kings were dilettants as rulers. 133 00:22:05.120 --> 00:22:11.120 and normally had a good measure of natural elite upbringing and value system 134 00:22:11.120 --> 00:22:17.120 so as to act often enough simply as a good household father would have done. 135 00:22:17.120 --> 00:22:23.120 Democratic politicians on the other hand are and must be professional demagogues 136 00:22:23.120 --> 00:22:30.120 constantly appealing to even the basest and that is typically egalitarian instincts 137 00:22:30.120 --> 00:22:34.120 as every vote is obviously as good as any other. 138 00:22:34.120 --> 00:22:56.120 And because publicly elected politicians are never ever held personally accountable for official public service, they are far more dangerous from the viewpoint of those who want really their property to be protected and want security than any king has ever been. 139 00:22:56.120 --> 00:23:09.120 If you combine these two tendencies that I mentioned, inherent in a state, intensification, exploiting the domestic population and extensification, 140 00:23:09.120 --> 00:23:19.120 then you get a one world global democracy with one world global paper currencies issued by World Central Bank. 141 00:23:19.120 --> 00:23:24.120 Now at this moment, let me just simply take stock. 142 00:23:24.120 --> 00:23:39.120 Here we are then at the end of the 20th century, closer than ever to the end state of the one world state, at least closer than ever before in history. 143 00:23:39.120 --> 00:23:48.120 The United States is the sole superpower and the world's top cop. At the same time, democracy has become almost universal. 144 00:23:48.120 --> 00:23:55.080 And the world's leading power, the United States, is the world's leading champion of democracy. 145 00:23:55.080 --> 00:24:05.320 Some neoconservatives such as Francis Fukuyama pointed out that this must be the end of history. 146 00:24:05.320 --> 00:24:13.280 One world democracy. We almost reached it. Now from an Austro-libertarian point of view, 147 00:24:13.280 --> 00:24:23.280 just look somewhat different. Under highly centralized democracy, or let me call it the highly centralized mob rule, 148 00:24:23.280 --> 00:24:40.280 the security of private property has almost completely disappeared. The price of protection is enormous and the quality of justice dispensed has gone downhill constantly. 149 00:24:40.280 --> 00:24:54.780 It has deteriorated to the point where the idea of immutable laws of justice and principles of justice, of natural law, has almost entirely disappeared from public consciousness. 150 00:24:54.780 --> 00:25:04.280 Law is considered nothing but state-made law, positive law. Law and justice is whatever the state says it is. 151 00:25:04.280 --> 00:25:13.280 There is still private property in name, but in practice, private property owners have been almost completely expropriated. 152 00:25:13.280 --> 00:25:28.280 Rather than protecting people from invaders and invasions of person and property, the state has increasingly disarmed its own people and stripped them of their most elementary right to self-defense. 153 00:25:28.280 --> 00:25:38.280 Moreover, private property owners are no longer free to include or exclude other people from their property as they see fit. 154 00:25:38.280 --> 00:25:50.280 And this, of course, that is the right to include if you want, or exclude if you want, is absolutely an essential ingredient of private property. 155 00:25:50.280 --> 00:26:10.280 Property. And this entails a defense mechanism. It is an anti-invasion method that you can kick people off your property. But this right to kick people off your property, especially if it is commercial property, has entirely been taken away from you. 156 00:26:10.280 --> 00:26:21.780 And with this right gone, and no one can today hire or fire, buy or sell, include or exclude from his property at will, 157 00:26:21.780 --> 00:26:29.280 with all of this gone is also another basic method of defending oneself from invasion. 158 00:26:29.280 --> 00:26:36.280 The state, which was supposed to protect us, has in fact rendered us completely helpless. 159 00:26:36.280 --> 00:26:48.280 It robs its subjects of more than half their income to be distributed according to public sentiment rather than according to principles of justice. 160 00:26:48.280 --> 00:26:54.280 It subjects our property to thousands of arbitrary and invasive regulations. 161 00:26:54.280 --> 00:27:02.280 We can no longer freely hire and fire whoever we want for whatever reason we deem good and necessary. 162 00:27:02.280 --> 00:27:09.280 We cannot sell or buy whatever we want to whoever we want and wherever we want. 163 00:27:09.280 --> 00:27:23.280 And we cannot charge prices freely as we wish. We cannot associate and disassociate and separate ourselves with whoever we want or with whomever we do not want. 164 00:27:23.280 --> 00:27:31.280 And instead of protecting us then, the state has delivered us and our property to the mob and mob instincts. 165 00:27:31.280 --> 00:27:50.280 Instead of safeguarding us, it impoverishes us, it destroys our families, local organizations, private foundations, clubs and associations by drawing them, all of them increasingly into its own orbit or ban. 166 00:27:50.280 --> 00:28:06.280 And as a result of all of this, the state has perverted the public sense of justice and of personal responsibility and bred and attracted an ever-increasing number of moral and economic monsters and monstrosities. 167 00:28:06.280 --> 00:28:15.280 Now, how can the state and the status disease be stopped? Now I will come to my more strategic considerations. 168 00:28:15.280 --> 00:28:22.280 First off, three fundamental insights or guiding principles must be recognized. 169 00:28:22.280 --> 00:28:34.280 First, that the protection of private property and of law or justice and order and law enforcement is, of course, essential to any human society. 170 00:28:34.280 --> 00:28:44.280 But there is no reason whatsoever why this task must be taken on by one single agency, by a monopolist. 171 00:28:44.280 --> 00:29:04.280 As a matter of fact, it is precisely the case that as soon as you have a monopolist taking on this task, he will with necessity destroy justice and render us defenseless against foreign as well as domestic invaders and aggressors. 172 00:29:04.280 --> 00:29:29.280 It is then one's ultimate goal, which one has to keep in mind here, it must be the demonopolization of protection and justice, protection, security, defense, law, order and arbitration in conflicts, can and must be supplied competitively, that is entry into the field of being a judge must be free. 173 00:29:29.280 --> 00:29:40.280 Second, because a monopoly of protection is the root of all evil, any territorial expansion of such a monopoly is per se evil too. 174 00:29:40.280 --> 00:29:46.280 Every political centralization must be on principle grounds rejected. 175 00:29:46.280 --> 00:29:57.280 In turn, every attempt at political decentralization, segregation, separation, secession and so forth, must be supported. 176 00:29:57.280 --> 00:30:10.280 The third basic insight, a democratic protection monopoly in particular must be rejected as a moral and economic perversity. 177 00:30:10.280 --> 00:30:20.280 Majority rule and private property protection are incompatible. The idea of democracy must be ridiculed. 178 00:30:20.280 --> 00:30:25.240 That is nothing else but mob rule parading as justice. 179 00:30:25.240 --> 00:30:31.660 To be labeled a Democrat must be considered the worst of all possible complements. 180 00:30:31.660 --> 00:30:35.720 This does not mean that one may not participate in democratic politics. 181 00:30:35.720 --> 00:30:39.560 I will come to that a little bit later again. 182 00:30:39.560 --> 00:30:44.600 But one must use democratic means only for defensive purposes. 183 00:30:44.600 --> 00:30:52.880 That is, one may use an anti-democratic platform to become elected by an anti-democratic constituency 184 00:30:52.880 --> 00:30:59.520 in order to implement anti-democratic, that is, anti-egalitarian and pro-private property 185 00:30:59.520 --> 00:31:00.520 policies. 186 00:31:00.520 --> 00:31:08.880 Or, put it differently, a person is not honorable because he is democratically elected. 187 00:31:08.880 --> 00:31:17.400 If anything, this makes him his suspect. Rather, despite the fact that a person has been elected 188 00:31:17.400 --> 00:31:24.600 democratically, he may still be a decent and honorable man. We have heard one before. 189 00:31:24.600 --> 00:31:34.960 Now, from these principles now to the problem of application. Well, the basic insights, 190 00:31:34.960 --> 00:31:51.960 That is, monopolized protection, a state, will inevitably become an aggressor and lead to defenselessness, and political centralization and democracy are means of extensifying and intensifying exploitation and aggression. 191 00:31:51.960 --> 00:32:03.960 While these basic insights give us general direction and the goal, they are obviously not yet sufficient to define our actions and tell us how to get there. 192 00:32:03.960 --> 00:32:24.960 How can the goal of de-monopolized protection and justice be possibly implemented given the present circumstances of centralized almost world democracy as at least temporarily our starting point from which we have to begin? 193 00:32:24.960 --> 00:32:46.460 Now let me try to develop an answer to this question by elaborating first in what respect the problem and also the solution to it has changed in the course of, let's say, the last 150 years, that is, since around the middle of the 19th century. 194 00:32:46.460 --> 00:33:01.960 The problem then, and actually indeed until 1914, the problem in the 19th century was comparatively small and the possible solution was comparatively easy then. 195 00:33:01.960 --> 00:33:08.460 And today, as we will see, matters are more difficult and the solution is far more complicated. 196 00:33:08.460 --> 00:33:20.460 By mid-19th century, in Europe as well as in the United States, not only was the degree of political centralization far less pronounced than it is now. 197 00:33:20.460 --> 00:33:31.460 The southern war of independence that had not yet taken place, and neither Germany, for instance, nor Italy existed as unified states. 198 00:33:31.460 --> 00:33:38.460 But in particular, the age of mass democracy had hardly begun at this time. 199 00:33:38.460 --> 00:33:49.460 In Europe, after the defeat of Napoleon, countries were still ruled by kings and princes and elections and parliaments played little roles 200 00:33:49.460 --> 00:33:56.460 and were in addition restricted to extremely small numbers of major property owners. 201 00:33:56.460 --> 00:34:09.460 Similar, in the United States, government was run by small aristocratic elites and the vote was restricted by severe property requirements. 202 00:34:09.460 --> 00:34:20.460 After all, only those people who have something to be protected should be running those agencies that do the protection. 203 00:34:20.460 --> 00:34:33.460 150 or even 100 years ago, only the following thing was essentially necessary in order to solve the problem. 204 00:34:33.460 --> 00:34:41.460 It would have been necessary only to force the king, so to speak, to declare that from now on, 205 00:34:41.460 --> 00:34:50.960 Every citizen would be free to choose his own protector and pledge allegiance to any government that he wanted. 206 00:34:50.960 --> 00:35:04.960 That is, the king would no longer presume to be anyone's protector unless this person had asked him and met his price that the king would have asked for such service. 207 00:35:04.960 --> 00:35:07.460 Now, what would have happened in this case? 208 00:35:07.460 --> 00:35:16.460 What would have happened, let's say, if the Austrian Emperor had made such a declaration in, let's say, 1900? 209 00:35:16.460 --> 00:35:25.460 Now, let me try to give a brief sketch of a scenario of what I think would likely have happened in this situation. 210 00:35:25.460 --> 00:35:35.460 First, everyone upon this declaration would have regained his unrestricted right to self-defense 211 00:35:35.460 --> 00:35:42.460 and would have been free to decide if he wanted more or better protection than that afforded by self-defense 212 00:35:42.460 --> 00:35:47.460 and if so, where and from whom to secure this protection. 213 00:35:47.460 --> 00:35:54.460 Now, most people in this situation undoubtedly would have chosen to take advantage of the division of labor 214 00:35:54.460 --> 00:36:00.460 and rely in addition to self-defense also on specialized protectors. 215 00:36:00.460 --> 00:36:25.460 Second, on the lookout for protectors, almost everyone would have looked to persons or agencies who own or are able to acquire the means to assure the task of protection, that is, who have themselves a stake to be protected territory in the form of substantial property holdings, 216 00:36:25.460 --> 00:36:32.460 and who posses an established reputation as reliable, prudent, honest and just. 217 00:36:32.460 --> 00:36:40.460 It is safe to say that no one would have considered an elected parliament up to this task. 218 00:36:40.460 --> 00:36:47.460 Instead, almost everyone would have turned for help to one or more of three places. 219 00:36:47.460 --> 00:37:04.460 Either the king himself, who is now no longer a monopolist, or a regional or local noble or magnet or aristocrat, or a regional, national or even internationally operating insurance company. 220 00:37:04.460 --> 00:37:17.460 Obviously, the king himself would fulfill these requirements that I just mentioned, and many people would have voluntarily chosen him as their protector. 221 00:37:17.460 --> 00:37:24.460 At the same time, however, many people also would have seceded from the king. 222 00:37:24.460 --> 00:37:40.460 Of these, a large proportion would have likely turned to various regional nobles or magnates who are now natural instead of hereditary nobility. 223 00:37:40.460 --> 00:37:51.460 And on a smaller territorial scale, these local nobles would be able to offer the same advantages as protectors than the king himself would be able to offer. 224 00:37:51.460 --> 00:38:03.460 and this shift to regional protectors would bring about a significant decentralization in the organization and structure of the security industry. 225 00:38:03.460 --> 00:38:14.460 And this decentralization would only be reflective of and in accordance with private or subjective protection interests. 226 00:38:14.460 --> 00:38:27.460 and interests. That is, the centralization tendency that I mentioned before has also led to an over-centralization of the protection business. 227 00:38:27.460 --> 00:38:38.460 Lastly, nearly everyone else, especially in the cities, would have turned for protection to commercial insurance companies, such as fire insurers. 228 00:38:38.460 --> 00:38:46.460 Insurance and private property protection are obviously very closely related matters. 229 00:38:46.460 --> 00:38:50.460 Better protection leads to lower insurance payoffs. 230 00:38:50.460 --> 00:39:01.460 And by insurers entering the protection market, quickly protection contracts rather than unspecified promises 231 00:39:01.460 --> 00:39:07.460 would have become the standard product form in which protection would have been offered. 232 00:39:07.460 --> 00:39:26.460 Further, by virtue of the nature of insurance, the competition and cooperation between various protection insurers would promote the development of universal rules of procedure, evidence, conflict resolution and arbitration. 233 00:39:26.460 --> 00:39:48.460 As well, it would promote the simultaneous homogenization and de-homogenization of the population into various classes of individuals with different group risks regarding their property protection and accordingly also different protection insurance premiums. 234 00:39:48.460 --> 00:40:06.460 All systematic and predictable income and wealth redistribution between different groups within the population, as it existed under monopolistic conditions, would be immediately eliminated and this would of course make for peace. 235 00:40:06.460 --> 00:40:12.460 Most importantly, the nature of protection and defense would have been fundamentally altered. 236 00:40:12.460 --> 00:40:23.460 Under monopolistic conditions, there is only one protector. Under monopolistic conditions, whether that is monarchical or democratic, makes no difference in this respect. 237 00:40:23.460 --> 00:40:33.460 Under monopolistic conditions, a government is invariably conceived of as defending and protecting a fixed and contiguous territory. 238 00:40:33.460 --> 00:40:40.460 Yet this feature is the outcome of a compulsory protection monopoly. 239 00:40:40.460 --> 00:40:50.460 With the abolition of a monopoly, this feature would immediately disappear as highly unnatural or even artificial. 240 00:40:50.460 --> 00:40:57.460 There might have been a few local protectors who defended just one contiguous territory. 241 00:40:57.460 --> 00:41:14.460 But there also would have been other protectors, such as the King, for instance, and also these insurance agencies whose protection territory consisted of widespread patchworks of discontinuous bits and pieces and stretches. 242 00:41:14.460 --> 00:41:22.460 And the borders, in parentheses, the borders of every government would be in constant flux. 243 00:41:22.460 --> 00:41:34.460 In cities in particular it would not be more unusual for two neighbors to have different protection agencies than it is to have different fire insurers. 244 00:41:34.460 --> 00:41:41.460 Now this patchwork structure of protection and defense improves protection. 245 00:41:41.460 --> 00:41:54.460 Monopolistic, contiguous defense presumes that the security interests of the entire population living in a given territory are somehow homogeneous. 246 00:41:54.460 --> 00:42:00.460 That is, that all people in a given territory have the same sort of defense interests. 247 00:42:00.460 --> 00:42:07.460 But this is of course a highly unrealistic and actually untrue assumption. 248 00:42:07.460 --> 00:42:22.460 Actually, people's security needs are highly heterogeneous. People may own property in just one location or in numerous territorially widely dispersed locations. 249 00:42:22.460 --> 00:42:30.460 Or they may be largely self-sufficient or only dependent on a very few people in their economic dealings. 250 00:42:30.460 --> 00:42:42.460 or on the other hand, they may be deeply integrated into the market and dependent economically on thousands and thousands of people strewn out over large territories. 251 00:42:42.460 --> 00:42:55.460 The patchwork structure of the security industry would merely reflect this reality of highly diversified security needs that exist for various people. 252 00:42:55.460 --> 00:43:04.460 As well, this structure would in turn stimulate the development of a corresponding protective weaponry. 253 00:43:04.460 --> 00:43:12.460 Rather than producing and developing weapons and instruments of large-scale bombing, 254 00:43:12.460 --> 00:43:21.460 instruments would be developed for protecting small-scale territories without collateral damage. 255 00:43:21.460 --> 00:43:39.460 In addition, because all interregional redistribution of income and wealth would be eliminated in a competitive system, the patchwork structure would also offer the best assurance of interterritorial peace. 256 00:43:39.460 --> 00:43:48.460 The likelihood and the extent of interterritorial conflict would be reduced if there are patchworks. 257 00:43:48.460 --> 00:44:11.460 And because every foreign invader, so to speak, would almost instantly, even if he invaded only a small piece of land, run into the opposition and military and economic counter-attacks by several independent protecting agencies, likewise the danger of foreign invasions would be reduced. 258 00:44:11.460 --> 00:44:25.460 Now, indirectly, it is already clear, at least partially, how and why it has become so much more difficult to reach this solution in the course of the last 100 or 150 years. 259 00:44:25.460 --> 00:44:31.460 Let me point out some of the fundamental changes that have occurred, which make all of these problems far bigger. 260 00:44:31.460 --> 00:44:37.460 First, it is no longer possible to carry out the reforms from the top down. 261 00:44:37.460 --> 00:44:59.460 Classical liberals, that is, during the old monarchical days, could and did in fact frequently think and could actually realistically believe in simply converting the king to their view and asked them to abdicate his power and everything else would have been almost automatically fallen into places. 262 00:44:59.460 --> 00:45:23.460 Now, today, the state's protection monopoly is considered public instead of private property and government rule is no longer tied to any particular individual, but to specified functions exercised by unnamed or anonymous individuals as members of a democratic government. 263 00:45:23.460 --> 00:45:30.260 Hence, the one or few man conversion strategy does no longer work. 264 00:45:30.260 --> 00:45:39.060 It doesn't matter if one converts a few top government officials, that is the president and let's say a handful of senators, 265 00:45:39.060 --> 00:45:50.460 because within the rules of democratic government, no single individual has the personal power of abdicating the government's monopoly of protection. 266 00:45:50.460 --> 00:46:01.460 Kings had this power, presidents don't. The president can only resign from his position only to be taken over obviously by someone else. 267 00:46:01.460 --> 00:46:13.460 But he cannot dissolve the government protection monopoly because supposedly the people own the government and not the president himself. 268 00:46:13.460 --> 00:46:43.460 Under democratic rules, then, the abolition of the government's monopoly of justice and protection requires either that a majority of the public and of their elected representatives would have to declare the government protection monopoly and, of course, accordingly, then all compulsory taxes over and abolished or, even more restrictive, that literally no one would vote and the voter turn out weak. 269 00:46:43.460 --> 00:46:49.460 would be zero. Now, only in this case would the democratic protection monopoly itself 270 00:46:49.460 --> 00:46:56.460 could be said to be effectively abolished, yet this would essentially mean that it was impossible 271 00:46:56.460 --> 00:47:03.460 to ever rid ourselves of an economic and moral perversion, because nowadays it is of course a given 272 00:47:03.460 --> 00:47:11.460 that everyone, including the mob, does participate in politics and it is inconceivable that the mob 273 00:47:11.460 --> 00:47:28.460 The mob should ever, in its majority or even in its entirety, renounce and abstain from exercising its right to vote, which is of course nothing else but exercising the opportunity to loot the property of others. 274 00:47:28.460 --> 00:47:37.260 Moreover, even if one assumed against all odds that this was achieved, the problems do not end, 275 00:47:37.260 --> 00:47:46.060 because another fundamental sociological change to the age of modern egalitarian mass democracy, 276 00:47:46.060 --> 00:47:55.180 and that is the almost complete destruction of natural elites, the king could abdicate his monopoly 277 00:47:55.180 --> 00:48:02.860 and the security needs of the public still would have been almost automatically been taken care of 278 00:48:02.860 --> 00:48:09.740 because there existed, foremost with the king himself and also regional and local nobles and 279 00:48:09.740 --> 00:48:18.540 also major entrepreneurial personalities, there existed a clearly visible and established natural 280 00:48:18.540 --> 00:48:37.540 show voluntarily acknowledged elite and a multi-layered structure of hierarchies and rank orders to which people could turn with this desire, I want to be protected. 281 00:48:37.540 --> 00:48:50.540 Today, after less than one century of mass democracy, there exists no such natural elites and social hierarchies to which one could immediately turn for protection. 282 00:48:50.540 --> 00:49:04.040 Natural elites and hierarchical social orders and organizations, that is people and institutions commanding an independent authority and respect, independent from the state, 283 00:49:04.040 --> 00:49:17.540 are even more intolerable and unacceptable to a democrat and more incompatible with the democratic spirit of egalitarianism 284 00:49:17.540 --> 00:49:41.540 Then they were a threat to any king or to any prince and because of that, under democratic rules of the game, all independent authorities, all independent institutions have been systematically wiped out or have been diminished through economic measures to insignificance. 285 00:49:41.540 --> 00:49:51.540 Today, no one person or institution outside of government itself possesses genuine national or even regional authority. 286 00:49:51.540 --> 00:49:58.540 Rather than people of independent authority, we now merely have an abundance of people who are prominent. 287 00:49:58.540 --> 00:50:03.540 Sports and movie stars and pop stars and of course politicians. 288 00:50:03.540 --> 00:50:17.540 But these people, while they may be able to set trends and shape fashions, do not possess any such thing as natural, personal, social authority. 289 00:50:17.540 --> 00:50:28.540 This is true in particular of politicians. They may be great stars now. Every day they are on TV and the subject of public debate. 290 00:50:28.540 --> 00:50:37.540 But this is almost entirely due to the fact that they are a part of the current state apparatus with its monopolistic powers. 291 00:50:37.540 --> 00:50:45.540 Once this monopoly was dissolved, these stars of politics would become non-entities, 292 00:50:45.540 --> 00:50:51.540 because in real life they are mostly nothings, hacks and halfwits. 293 00:50:51.540 --> 00:51:08.540 And only democracy, of course, allows them to rise to these elevated positions. Left to their own devices, left to their own personal achievements, they are, with almost no exception, complete nobodies. 294 00:51:08.540 --> 00:51:30.540 Put bluntly, once the democratic government, Congress, had declared as a king, let's say a hundred years ago, that from now on everyone would be free to choose his own judge and protector, such that he still can, but no longer must choose the government for protection. 295 00:51:30.540 --> 00:51:37.540 Protection, who in his right mind would ever choose them? That is, the current members 296 00:51:37.540 --> 00:51:43.380 of Congress and the Federal Government, who would choose them voluntarily as their judge 297 00:51:43.380 --> 00:51:50.300 and protector? To raise this question, of course, is to answer it. Kings and princes 298 00:51:50.300 --> 00:51:56.940 possessed real authority. There was coercion involved, no question whatsoever, but they 299 00:51:56.940 --> 00:52:04.940 and received also a significant amount of voluntary support. 300 00:52:05.940 --> 00:52:13.940 In contrast, democratic politicians are generally held in contempt, even by their own mob constituency. 301 00:52:14.940 --> 00:52:19.940 But there is then also no one else to whom one might turn for protection. 302 00:52:19.940 --> 00:52:34.940 Local and regional politicians are basically posing the same sort of problem and with the abolition of their monopoly powers as well, 303 00:52:34.940 --> 00:52:45.940 they obviously do not offer a great attractive solution to this problem either, nor are there any great entrepreneurial personalities standing in the wings 304 00:52:45.940 --> 00:52:54.940 and insurance companies in particular have become almost entirely creatures of the egalitarian democratic state 305 00:52:54.940 --> 00:53:05.940 and thus appear as little trustworthy as anybody else to take over this particularly important task of protection and of justice. 306 00:53:05.940 --> 00:53:22.940 Thus, if one did today what the king could have done 100 years ago, there would be the immediate danger of having in fact social chaos or of anarchy in the bad sense. 307 00:53:22.940 --> 00:53:30.940 People would indeed at least temporarily become highly vulnerable and defenseless. So then the question is there no way out? 308 00:53:30.940 --> 00:53:42.940 Now let me sum up the answer in advance. Yes, but rather than by means of a top-down reform, one strategy must now be that of a bottom-up revolution. 309 00:53:42.940 --> 00:53:52.940 And instead of one battle on a single front, a liberal libertarian revolution now will have to involve many battles on many fronts. 310 00:53:52.940 --> 00:54:01.940 time preference, that is, if you want a guerrilla intellectual, a guerrilla war rather than a conventional warfare. 311 00:54:01.940 --> 00:54:08.940 Now before explaining this answer, and as another step in the direction of Cisco, 312 00:54:08.940 --> 00:54:14.940 a second sociological fact has to be recognized. 313 00:54:14.940 --> 00:54:22.940 The change of the role of intellectuals, of education and of ideology. 314 00:54:22.940 --> 00:54:33.940 As soon as a protection agency becomes a territorial monopolist, that is, a state, it is turned from a genuine protector into a protection racket. 315 00:54:33.940 --> 00:54:39.940 And in light of resistance on the part of the victims of this protection racket, 316 00:54:39.940 --> 00:55:00.940 A state is then of course in need of legitimacy, of intellectual justification for what it does, and the more the state turns from a protector to a protection racket, that is, with every additional increase in taxes and regulation, the greater does this need for legitimacy become. 317 00:55:00.940 --> 00:55:16.940 In order to assure correct status thinking, a protection monopolist will employ its privileged position as a protection racket to quickly establish in turn also an education monopoly. 318 00:55:16.940 --> 00:55:36.940 Even during the 19th century, under decidedly undemocratic, monarchical conditions, education, at least on the level of elementary schooling, and also on the level of university education, was of course already largely monopolistically organized and compulsorily funded. 319 00:55:36.940 --> 00:56:05.940 And it was largely from the ranks of the royal government teachers and professors, that is, those people who had been employed as intellectual bodyguards of kings and princes, from where the monarchical rule and the privileges of kings and nobles was ideologically undermined and instead egalitarian ideas were promoted in the form of democracy and socialism. 320 00:56:05.940 --> 00:56:29.940 And this was, of course, with good reason from the point of view of intellectuals, because democracy and socialism, in fact, multiplied the number of educators and intellectuals and this expansion of the system of government, public education, in turn, has led to an ever greater flood of intellectual waste and pollution. 321 00:56:29.940 --> 00:56:39.540 The price of education as a price of protection and justice has gone up dramatically under monopolistic administration. 322 00:56:39.540 --> 00:56:47.940 All the while, the quality of education, just as the quality of justice, has continuously declined. 323 00:56:47.940 --> 00:56:52.940 Today, we are as unprotected as we are uneducated. 324 00:56:52.940 --> 00:57:00.380 without the continued existence of the democratic system and of publicly funded education and research. 325 00:57:00.380 --> 00:57:11.580 However, most current teachers and intellectuals would be unemployed or their income would fall to a small fraction of its present level. 326 00:57:11.580 --> 00:57:24.080 Instead of researching the syntax of ebonics, the love life of mosquitoes, or the relationship between poverty and crime for 50 or even 100 grand a year, 327 00:57:24.080 --> 00:57:33.080 they would research the science of potato growing or the technology of gas pump operation for 15 or 20 grand. 328 00:57:33.080 --> 00:57:42.080 The monopolized education system is by now then as much of a problem as the monopolized protection and justice system. 329 00:57:42.080 --> 00:57:53.080 In fact, government education and research and development is the central device and instrument by which the state today protects itself from public resistance. 330 00:57:53.080 --> 00:58:06.080 Today, intellectuals are as important or even more so from the point of view of the government for the preservation of the status quo than are judges, policemen and soldiers. 331 00:58:06.080 --> 00:58:14.080 and just as much as one cannot convert the democratic system from the political top down, 332 00:58:14.080 --> 00:58:25.080 so it also cannot be expected that this conversion will come down from within the established system of public education 333 00:58:25.080 --> 00:58:30.080 and public, whether private or public, makes no difference, public universities. 334 00:58:30.080 --> 00:58:49.080 This system cannot be reformed. It is impossible for liberal libertarians to infiltrate and take over the public education system, as the democrats and socialists could when they replaced the monarchists. 335 00:58:49.080 --> 00:58:59.080 From the point of view of classical liberalism, the entire system of publicly or tax-funded education must go, root and branch. 336 00:58:59.080 --> 00:59:08.080 And with this conviction, it is obviously impossible for anyone to make a career within these institutions. 337 00:59:08.080 --> 00:59:16.080 I will not ever be able to become the president of a university. My views bar me from making a career like this. 338 00:59:16.080 --> 00:59:26.080 Now this is not to say that education and intellectuals do not play a role in the attempt of bringing about a liberal or a libertarian revolution. 339 00:59:26.080 --> 00:59:40.080 To the contrary, as I explained before, everything hinges ultimately on the question whether or not we will succeed in delegitimizing and exposing as an economic and moral perversity 340 00:59:40.080 --> 00:59:47.080 University, democracy and the democratic monopoly of justice and protection. 341 00:59:47.080 --> 00:59:58.080 Now, this is obviously nothing but an ideological battle, but it would be wrong-headed to assume that official academia will be of any help in this endeavor. 342 00:59:58.080 --> 01:00:05.080 On the government, though, educators and intellectuals will tend to be statists. 343 01:00:05.080 --> 01:00:30.080 Help, intellectual ammunition and ideological direction and coordination can only come from outside of established academia, from centers of intellectual resistance, from an intellectual counterculture, outside and independent of and in fundamental opposition to the government monopoly of protection as well as of education such as the Mises Institute. 344 01:00:30.080 --> 01:00:38.080 Now, at last to the detailed explanation of the meaning of this bottom-up revolutionary strategy. 345 01:00:38.080 --> 01:00:45.080 For this, let me turn to my earlier remarks about the defensive use of democracy. 346 01:00:45.080 --> 01:00:54.080 That is, the use of democratic means for non-democratic libertarian pro-private property ends. 347 01:00:54.080 --> 01:00:59.080 Two preliminary insights I have already reached here. 348 01:00:59.080 --> 01:01:14.080 First, from the impossibility of a top-down strategy. It follows that one should expend little or no energy, time and money on nationwide political contests, such as presidential elections. 349 01:01:14.080 --> 01:01:27.080 And also not on contests for central government in particular, and less of course on senatorial races than on house races, for instance. 350 01:01:27.080 --> 01:01:37.080 Second, from the inside into the role of intellectuals in the preservation of the current system, the current protection racket, 351 01:01:37.080 --> 01:01:48.080 it follows that one should likewise expend little or no energy, time and money on trying to reform education and academia from inside. 352 01:01:48.080 --> 01:01:56.080 By endowing a free enterprise or private property share within the established education university system for instance, 353 01:01:56.080 --> 01:02:03.600 for instance, one only helps to lend legitimacy to the very idea that one wishes to oppose. 354 01:02:03.600 --> 01:02:09.120 The official education and research institutions must be systematically defunded and dried 355 01:02:09.120 --> 01:02:16.200 up, and to do so all support of intellectual work as an essential task of this overall 356 01:02:16.200 --> 01:02:22.480 task in front of us should of course be given to institutions and centers determined to 357 01:02:22.480 --> 01:02:24.680 do precisely this. 358 01:02:24.680 --> 01:02:30.480 The reasons for both of these advices are straightforward. 359 01:02:30.480 --> 01:02:36.240 Neither the population as a whole nor all educators and intellectuals, in particular, 360 01:02:36.240 --> 01:02:39.800 of course, ideologically completely homogeneous. 361 01:02:39.800 --> 01:02:47.560 And even if it is impossible to win a majority for a decidedly anti-democratic platform on 362 01:02:47.560 --> 01:03:04.560 On a nationwide scale, there appears to be no insurmountable difficulty in winning such a majority in sufficiently small districts and for local or regional functions within the overall democratic government structure. 363 01:03:04.560 --> 01:03:11.560 In fact, there seems to be nothing unrealistic in assuming that such majorities exist at thousands of locations. 364 01:03:11.560 --> 01:03:20.560 That is, locations dispersed all over the country, but of course not evenly dispersed. 365 01:03:20.560 --> 01:03:28.560 Likewise, even though the intellectual class must be by and large regarded as the natural enemies of justice and protection, 366 01:03:28.560 --> 01:03:36.560 there exist at various locations isolated anti-intellectual intellectuals, and as the Mises Institute proves, 367 01:03:36.560 --> 01:03:48.560 It is very well possible to assemble these isolated figures around an intellectual center and give them unity and strength and a national or even an international audience. 368 01:03:48.560 --> 01:03:58.560 But what then? Everything else falls almost automatically from the ultimate goal, which must be kept permanently in mind in all of one's activities. 369 01:03:58.560 --> 01:04:11.560 That is the restoration from the bottom up of private property and the right to property protection, the right to self-defense, to exclude or include and to freedom of contract. 370 01:04:11.560 --> 01:04:14.560 And the answer can be broken down into two parts. 371 01:04:14.560 --> 01:04:23.920 First, what to do within these very small districts where a pro-private property candidate, 372 01:04:23.920 --> 01:04:32.120 an anti-majoritarian personality can win, and second, how to deal with the higher levels 373 01:04:32.120 --> 01:04:35.960 of government and especially with the central federal government. 374 01:04:35.960 --> 01:04:41.440 Now first, as an initial step, and I'm referring now to what should be done on the very small 375 01:04:41.440 --> 01:04:59.440 As an initial step, the first central plank of one's platform should be, one must attempt to restrict the right to vote on local taxes, in particular property taxes and on regulations, to property and real estate owners. 376 01:04:59.440 --> 01:05:12.440 Only property owners must be permitted to vote, and their vote is not equal, but in accordance with the value of the equity owned and the amount of taxes paid. 377 01:05:12.440 --> 01:05:18.440 That is similar to what Lew Rockwell already explained that has happened in some places in California. 378 01:05:18.440 --> 01:05:32.440 Further, all public employees, teachers, judges, policemen and all welfare recipients must be excluded from voting on local taxes or local regulation matters. 379 01:05:32.440 --> 01:05:42.440 These people are being paid out of taxes and should have no say whatsoever how high these taxes are. 380 01:05:42.440 --> 01:05:50.440 With this platform one can of course not win everywhere. I'm fully aware of it. You cannot win in Washington D.C. with a platform like this. 381 01:05:50.440 --> 01:05:56.440 But I dare say that in many locations this can be easily done. 382 01:05:56.440 --> 01:06:02.440 The locations have to be small enough and there have to be a good number of decent people there. 383 01:06:02.440 --> 01:06:10.440 Consequently then local taxes and rates of course as well as local tax revenue will inevitably decrease. 384 01:06:10.440 --> 01:06:19.440 property values and most local incomes would increase, whereas the number and or payment of public employees would fall. 385 01:06:19.440 --> 01:06:25.440 Now, this is the most decisive step. The following thing must be done. 386 01:06:25.440 --> 01:06:33.440 And always keep in mind that I'm talking here about very small territorial districts, villages, little towns. 387 01:06:33.440 --> 01:06:43.440 In this government funding crisis, which breaks out once the right to vote has been taken away from the mob, 388 01:06:43.440 --> 01:06:54.440 once a funding crisis appears as a way out of it, all local government assets must be privatized. 389 01:06:54.440 --> 01:07:02.440 An inventory of all public buildings, and that is on a local level not that much, schools, fire, police stations, courthouses and roads, 390 01:07:02.440 --> 01:07:22.440 and so forth is made. Obviously, that would not be a very long list. And then property shares or stock should be distributed to the local private property owners in accordance with the total lifetime amount of property taxes that these people had paid. 391 01:07:22.440 --> 01:07:34.440 These shares then should be freely tradeable, sold and bought, and with this local government would essentially be abolished. 392 01:07:34.440 --> 01:07:45.440 If it were not for the continued existence of higher, superior level of governments, this village or this city then would now be a free or liberated territory. 393 01:07:45.440 --> 01:07:53.440 Now, what would consequently happen to education and, more importantly, what would happen to property protection and justice? 394 01:07:53.440 --> 01:08:04.440 On the small local level, we can be a certain or even more so than we could have been, let's say, a hundred years ago about what would have happened if the king would abdicate. 395 01:08:04.440 --> 01:08:17.440 What would happen is roughly this. All material resources that were previously devoted to these functions, that is schools, police stations, courthouse and so forth, still exist. And so does the manpower. 396 01:08:17.440 --> 01:08:25.440 The only difference is that they are now privately owned or temporarily unemployed public employees. 397 01:08:25.440 --> 01:08:39.440 Under the realistic assumption that there continues to be a local demand for education and a local demand for protection and justice, the schools, police stations and courthouses will be still used for the very same purpose. 398 01:08:39.440 --> 01:08:49.440 and many former teachers, policemen and judges would be rehired or resume their former position on their own account as self-employed individuals. 399 01:08:49.440 --> 01:09:02.440 Except, of course, that they would be operated or employed by local big shots who own these things or local elites, all of whom are personally known figures. 400 01:09:02.440 --> 01:09:15.440 and other figures, either as for-profit enterprises or as, and that seems to be more likely, some mixture of charitable organization and economic organization. 401 01:09:15.440 --> 01:09:21.440 Local big charts frequently provide public goods out of their own private pocket. 402 01:09:21.440 --> 01:09:27.440 And they obviously have the greatest interest in the preservation of local justice and peace. 403 01:09:27.440 --> 01:09:36.440 And this is all easy enough to see to work for schools and policemen. But what about judges and justice? 404 01:09:36.440 --> 01:09:45.440 Now, recall that the root of all evil is compulsory monopolization of justice. That is, one person says this is right. 405 01:09:45.440 --> 01:09:53.440 Accordingly, judges must be freely financed and free entry into judgeship positions must be assured. 406 01:09:53.440 --> 01:09:59.440 Judges are not elected by vote but chosen by the effective demand of justice seekers. 407 01:09:59.440 --> 01:10:11.440 Also don't forget that on a small local level under consideration one is talking actually about a demand for one or very few judges only. 408 01:10:11.440 --> 01:10:25.440 Whether this or these judges are then employed by the private courthouse association or stock company or are self-employed individuals who rent these facilities or offices, 409 01:10:25.440 --> 01:10:38.440 it should be clear that only a handful of local people and only widely known and respected local personalities, that is members of the natural local elite, 410 01:10:38.440 --> 01:10:45.440 would have any chance whatsoever of being so selected as judges of local peace. 411 01:10:45.440 --> 01:10:53.440 Only as members of the natural elite will their decision possess any authority and become enforceable. 412 01:10:53.440 --> 01:11:01.440 And if they do so, and if they come up with judgments that are considered to be ridiculous, 413 01:11:01.440 --> 01:11:23.440 Now, if you proceed along these lines on the local level, of course it cannot be avoided that one will sooner or later come into direct conflict with the upper and especially the federal level of government power. 414 01:11:23.440 --> 01:11:30.440 How to deal with this problem? Wouldn't the Federalists simply crush any such attempt? 415 01:11:30.440 --> 01:11:38.440 Now, they would surely like to, but whether or not they can actually do so is an entirely different question. 416 01:11:38.440 --> 01:11:47.440 And to recognize this, it is only necessary to recognize that the members of the governmental apparatus always represent, 417 01:11:47.440 --> 01:11:54.440 even under conditions of democracy, merely a teeny proportion of the total population. 418 01:11:54.440 --> 01:11:59.440 And even smaller is of course the proportion of central government employees. 419 01:11:59.440 --> 01:12:18.440 Now this implies that a central government cannot possibly enforce its legislative will or perverted law upon the entire population unless it finds widespread local support in cooperation in doing so. 420 01:12:18.440 --> 01:12:27.440 This becomes particularly obvious if one imagines a large number of free cities or villages as I described them before. 421 01:12:27.440 --> 01:12:45.440 It is practically impossible, manpower-wise, as well as from a public relations standpoint, to take over thousands of territorially widely dispersed localities and impose direct Federal rule on them. 422 01:12:45.440 --> 01:12:56.440 Without local enforcement by compliant local authorities, the will of the central government is not much more than hot air. 423 01:12:56.440 --> 01:13:03.440 Yet this local support and cooperation is precisely what needs to be missing. 424 01:13:03.440 --> 01:13:13.440 Now, to be sure, so long as the number of liberated communities is still small, the matters seem to be somewhat dangerous. 425 01:13:13.440 --> 01:13:21.440 However, even during this initial phase in the liberation struggle, one can be quite confident. 426 01:13:21.440 --> 01:13:29.440 It would appear to be prudent during this phase to avoid a direct confrontation with the central government 427 01:13:29.440 --> 01:13:35.440 and not openly denounce its authority or even abjure the realm. 428 01:13:35.440 --> 01:13:44.440 Rather, it seems advisable to engage in a policy of passive resistance and non-cooperation instead. 429 01:13:44.440 --> 01:13:51.440 One simply stops to help in the enforcement of each and every federal law. 430 01:13:51.440 --> 01:13:54.440 One assumes the following attitude. 431 01:13:54.440 --> 01:13:59.440 Such are your rules and you enforce them. 432 01:13:59.440 --> 01:14:03.440 I cannot hinder you, but I will not help you either. 433 01:14:03.440 --> 01:14:20.440 As my only obligation is to my local constituents. Now, consistently applied, no cooperation, no assistance whatsoever on any level, the central government's power would be severely diminished or even evaporate. 434 01:14:20.440 --> 01:14:38.440 And in light of the general public opinion, it would appear highly unlikely that the federal government would dare to occupy a territory whose inhabitants did nothing else than trying to mind their own business. 435 01:14:38.440 --> 01:14:54.440 Now, WACO, a teeny group of freaks, is one thing, but to occupy or to wipe out a significantly large group of normal, accomplished, upstanding citizens is quite another and quite more difficult thing. 436 01:14:54.440 --> 01:15:23.440 And once a number of implicitly seceded territories has reached a critical mass, and every success in one little location of course promotes and feeds on the next one, it will become inevitably further radicalized to a nationwide municipalization movement with explicitly secessionist local policies and openly and contemptuously displayed non-compliance with federal authority. 437 01:15:23.440 --> 01:15:51.440 And it is in this situation then when the central government will be forced to abdicate its protection monopoly and the relationship between the local authorities that re-emerged and the central authorities who are about to lose their power can be put on a purely contractual level and one might regain the power to defend one's own property again. 438 01:15:51.440 --> 01:15:53.440 Thank you. I'm sorry for being so long.