WEBVTT NOTE How to Reject the Statist Quo 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:06.080 What I'd like to talk about today is, well, as Doug said, the ultimate workaround to the 2 00:00:06.080 --> 00:00:13.080 problem of statism. We find ourselves doing this in all of our lives in every way these 3 00:00:13.080 --> 00:00:17.880 days, constantly having to find the workaround to the barriers that the state is putting 4 00:00:17.880 --> 00:00:26.280 up to our capacity to manage our lives, to progress, to profit, just to make do. Well, 5 00:00:26.280 --> 00:00:32.240 I'd like to think of the website that we're running as the ultimate workaround and you 6 00:00:32.240 --> 00:00:37.520 know as soon as I say that it occurs to me that there might be some people that would 7 00:00:37.520 --> 00:00:45.960 immediately dispute that idea that a website could be somehow a way to battle power or 8 00:00:45.960 --> 00:00:51.800 to find a workaround to the state or do anything at all other than you know provide some entertainment 9 00:00:51.800 --> 00:00:55.440 for value for something like okay so we're running our own version of Facebook so what 10 00:00:55.440 --> 00:01:02.720 By the way, I should say, in the old days, before the internet came along, people used 11 00:01:02.720 --> 00:01:06.120 to say about the Mises Institute, well, I like the work you're doing, but the problem 12 00:01:06.120 --> 00:01:11.820 is, you're only preaching to the choir, used to say that all the time, you're only preaching 13 00:01:11.820 --> 00:01:12.820 to the choir. 14 00:01:12.820 --> 00:01:17.520 The only people who are listening to you are those who are already persuaded of your views, 15 00:01:17.520 --> 00:01:19.280 so what good are you really doing? 16 00:01:19.280 --> 00:01:25.520 Well, I never really believed that then, because the truth was that before the age of, before 17 00:01:25.520 --> 00:01:29.860 the digital media came along, before the age of the internet, we were in fact using every 18 00:01:29.860 --> 00:01:35.060 means that was available to us, you know, in publishing and through the mails, you know, 19 00:01:35.060 --> 00:01:38.760 we would stick stamps on things and give them to government employees and they would deliver 20 00:01:38.760 --> 00:01:43.240 them to whomever happened to want them, you know, and we'd give interviews to the press 21 00:01:43.240 --> 00:01:47.560 and try any way we possibly could to get the word out. So it wasn't the case that we had 22 00:01:47.560 --> 00:02:17.560 The Internet is a little choir that we're preaching to at all and in fact we did expand dramatically in those years between 1982 and 1995 when the Internet opened up. But of course the advent of the Internet and the web browser provided all new opportunities for us just as technological events always does. You can look at the history of technology has been one long series of attempts to make communication ever more effective and ever more universal and that's in effect what Mises 23 00:02:17.560 --> 00:02:47.560 So, I never hear any more that the Mises Institute is merely preaching to the choir. You never hear that anymore. With 40,000 visitors per day on the website, and something like a million visitors per month coming and downloading our books and looking at our media, and that's just what we can take account of. Everything we publish is open source, so it appears on other venues as well. 24 00:02:47.560 --> 00:02:55.600 Well. So the influence of the Mises Institute is in fact very, very vast and it's so vast 25 00:02:55.600 --> 00:03:03.640 that it's not really possible to even begin to account for it fully in one's own mind. 26 00:03:03.640 --> 00:03:11.400 So nowadays I hear a different complaint. Well, it's one thing to burrow down in the 27 00:03:11.400 --> 00:03:23.080 World of Ideas and put up old dusty books and do podcasts and things as something else 28 00:03:23.080 --> 00:03:28.200 to change the world through real activities, you know, getting out in the streets and doing 29 00:03:28.200 --> 00:03:35.800 protests and running for political office and accumulating vast stockpiles of gold coins 30 00:03:35.800 --> 00:03:42.760 and joining a militia. You can think of all these various other ways that you can go about 31 00:03:42.760 --> 00:03:46.560 trying to make change on behalf of liberty. And there are many of them and I don't want 32 00:03:46.560 --> 00:03:50.760 to disparage any of these things. But I would like to defend this idea that working in the 33 00:03:50.760 --> 00:04:03.080 realm of ideas is in fact the best way to bring about social change. And for years I've 34 00:04:03.080 --> 00:04:10.080 I've been to conferences and speakers have often used the phrase by Richard Weaver. They say, well, ideas have consequences, ideas have consequences. 35 00:04:10.080 --> 00:04:14.080 We're just supposed to take that for granted. But I would like to ask the question today, what does that really mean? 36 00:04:14.080 --> 00:04:21.080 What are ideas and why do they matter and how do they matter and how can they in fact change the world? 37 00:04:21.080 --> 00:04:26.080 Why are they an effective weapon in the battle for liberty? 38 00:04:26.080 --> 00:04:43.080 So, and trying to answer the question, I started going through the work of Mises himself, who was just after all, you know, completely dedicated to the idea of that intellectual work was the most important kind of work that we could ever do to bring about freedom. 39 00:04:43.080 --> 00:04:55.080 Obviously, he believed this. I mean, you know, here's a guy who was driven out of his home country in 1933 and had to take a kind of political refuge in Geneva. 40 00:04:55.080 --> 00:04:59.560 He lands there and instead of sulking and doing absolutely nothing and sitting around 41 00:04:59.560 --> 00:05:05.200 disparaging and being pessimistic about the state of the world, he sat down and wrote 42 00:05:05.200 --> 00:05:07.960 the book that became Human Action. 43 00:05:07.960 --> 00:05:11.400 And it's a remarkable thing when you go through the book and you're reading it. 44 00:05:11.400 --> 00:05:17.480 It's pure philosophy, it's pure ideology in the old-fashioned use of that term ideology. 45 00:05:17.480 --> 00:05:19.920 It's pure ideas from the first page to the last. 46 00:05:19.920 --> 00:05:23.960 You don't pick up anything in there that would suggest that he was, after all, writing this 47 00:05:23.960 --> 00:05:32.760 in a kind of a sanctuary in the midst of war. You don't catch this at all as you're reading 48 00:05:32.760 --> 00:05:40.460 the book. He had a way of thinking outside of the physical world itself because he knew 49 00:05:40.460 --> 00:05:46.560 that his ideas that he wrote on paper had the possibility of outlasting these times, 50 00:05:46.560 --> 00:05:52.740 the war, and his own life to, and in fact, become immortal in a way. And he took that 51 00:05:52.740 --> 00:05:58.900 very seriously. He took very seriously everything he put down on those pages because he knew 52 00:05:58.900 --> 00:06:05.100 that if he said things the right way that there could come a time when the whole world 53 00:06:05.100 --> 00:06:09.360 could turn on a dime because of what he wrote. Extraordinary, isn't it? To have that level 54 00:06:09.360 --> 00:06:15.140 of faith and ideas. So, I began to look into why he did. So, I began to kind of accumulate 55 00:06:15.140 --> 00:06:19.180 some quotations from him and I assembled one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, I think 56 00:06:19.180 --> 00:06:24.940 There may be seven principles here that Mises himself believed applied to the world of ideas 57 00:06:24.940 --> 00:06:32.780 and I think it makes a case for why it's important to do things like put up a website at Mises 58 00:06:32.780 --> 00:06:37.820 Oregon to publish books and to put out videos and mp3s and do the kind of educational work 59 00:06:37.820 --> 00:06:39.400 that the Mises Institute does. 60 00:06:39.400 --> 00:06:45.980 So in the first place, Mises said that ideas are effective. 61 00:06:45.980 --> 00:06:51.980 are effective. Not mythical material productive forces, but reason and ideas determine the 62 00:06:51.980 --> 00:06:57.520 course of human affairs. That's what he wrote. Now in saying this, he's rejecting the historicist's 63 00:06:57.520 --> 00:07:04.360 view, the Hegelian view, which surrounded him really throughout his whole life in Vienna. 64 00:07:04.360 --> 00:07:10.180 The view that somehow history is on some kind of auto drive, that there's gears that are 65 00:07:10.180 --> 00:07:15.620 working that are independent completely of human action and human choice and human reason 66 00:07:15.620 --> 00:07:28.980 and Independent of Ideas. We can think whatever we want, but it doesn't matter. History has got this own logic to it that's driving it forward towards some end, you know, whether it's socialism or whatever other kind of thing. 67 00:07:28.980 --> 00:07:35.460 And this is, of course, the view of Marx and the view of many socialists that history is on this predetermined course. 68 00:07:35.460 --> 00:07:43.700 Mises completely rejected this. So that's the most important thing about Mises' view of history, is he thought it was shaped completely by human action and human choices. 69 00:07:43.700 --> 00:07:48.540 So, of course, the ideas that people hold are the driving force behind the choices they 70 00:07:48.540 --> 00:07:54.020 make and the actions they take, and so history itself then becomes the determining force 71 00:07:54.020 --> 00:07:59.020 for the unfolding of history. So, ideas are effective. 72 00:07:59.020 --> 00:08:07.580 The second thing that Mises said is that ideas are real. He says, thoughts and ideas are 73 00:08:07.580 --> 00:08:14.060 not phantoms, they are real things, although intangible and immaterial, there are factors 74 00:08:14.060 --> 00:08:20.220 in bringing about changes in the realm of tangible and material things. 75 00:08:20.220 --> 00:08:27.100 And here I think it's interesting to reflect on the difference between what Mises calls 76 00:08:27.100 --> 00:08:34.780 the intangible things that are nonetheless real and those tangible things. 77 00:08:34.780 --> 00:08:43.300 Public science deals primarily with the world of scarce goods, by which economists mean 78 00:08:43.300 --> 00:08:46.220 that there's just not enough of them to go around. 79 00:08:46.220 --> 00:08:50.460 So they have to be allocated and they have to be rationed through some means. 80 00:08:50.460 --> 00:08:55.080 The prices are one way, the voluntary way. 81 00:08:55.080 --> 00:08:58.940 The other way to ration things is just by stealing things from people and overcoming 82 00:08:58.940 --> 00:09:01.660 them with clubs and guns and power and that sort of thing. 83 00:09:01.660 --> 00:09:03.500 That's another way to ration goods. 84 00:09:03.500 --> 00:09:06.780 Some people believe in one way, other people believe in the other way. 85 00:09:06.780 --> 00:09:13.500 Well, it turns out that ideas are not like this at all. 86 00:09:13.500 --> 00:09:21.020 They are intangible, they're immaterial, but they're still real things in the sense that 87 00:09:21.020 --> 00:09:24.400 you can carry them with you. 88 00:09:24.400 --> 00:09:26.900 This hasn't always been clearly understood. 89 00:09:26.900 --> 00:09:36.340 You know, it was, I think, in the fourth century, Augustine addressed this question about ideas, 90 00:09:36.340 --> 00:09:40.940 and he was given a sermon, and he was talking about the difference between the physical 91 00:09:40.940 --> 00:09:46.940 world and the world of ideas, and he isolated it to this one specific point. 92 00:09:46.940 --> 00:09:53.320 He said, you know, my sermon I'm giving you today, I don't have to ration my words for 93 00:09:53.320 --> 00:09:58.600 for fear that in saying them, you will take them from me. 94 00:09:58.600 --> 00:10:06.480 In fact, I can be as liberal and generous as I want to with my ideas and my words because 95 00:10:06.480 --> 00:10:09.640 I know that you can take them with you. 96 00:10:09.640 --> 00:10:15.320 You can retain them and pass them on to somebody else but I can retain them as well. 97 00:10:15.320 --> 00:10:21.680 So I keep my ideas and I keep my words but I can also share them with you. 98 00:10:21.680 --> 00:10:28.820 So there is no scarcity in the sense that economists talk about in the realm of ideas because they're 99 00:10:28.820 --> 00:10:29.820 non-material. 100 00:10:29.820 --> 00:10:35.760 It's a kind of utopia of endless abundance. 101 00:10:35.760 --> 00:10:44.280 Once an idea is stated, then it becomes there's more than enough for everybody forever. 102 00:10:44.280 --> 00:10:45.640 That's a remarkable thing. 103 00:10:45.640 --> 00:10:50.280 So there's a strict line really that divides these two realms. 104 00:10:50.280 --> 00:10:55.760 The realm of the scarce good and the realm of the non-scarce good. 105 00:10:55.760 --> 00:11:02.760 So the realm of scarce goods will always be in some sense limited, and so long as we're 106 00:11:02.760 --> 00:11:07.720 on this earth, by the need that it always be rationed. 107 00:11:07.720 --> 00:11:13.280 The realm of the non-scarce good, once the good comes into existence, a real thing, Mises 108 00:11:13.280 --> 00:11:19.240 says, though intangible, though immaterial, it is not a phantom, it is a real thing. 109 00:11:19.240 --> 00:11:26.400 can be infinitely abundant. That's a remarkable thing to think about. It's real. The third 110 00:11:26.400 --> 00:11:31.400 thing Mises mentions is that it's reproducible. And he gives the analogy, the ideas are reproducible. 111 00:11:31.400 --> 00:11:37.800 He gives the analogy of a recipe. So you can make a recipe for a cake and I can hand it 112 00:11:37.800 --> 00:11:41.880 on to anybody in this room and you can go home and make the cake and I suddenly don't 113 00:11:41.880 --> 00:11:46.920 find myself with the inability to make that same cake. I can continue to make that same 114 00:11:46.920 --> 00:12:16.920 The Recipe itself is reproducible unto infinity in this way and this is the most powerful aspect of what's happened to us really in our time with digital media is we've seen that ever more things have entered into this category of infinite reproducibility so that I can have a file in my hard drive and it can be a very large file in fact that file can contain records of all the world's financial transactions 115 00:12:46.920 --> 00:12:59.080 It's over who owns it, but it's not true in the realm of digital goods, which fall into the category of ideas like recipes that Mises talks about. 116 00:12:59.080 --> 00:13:02.400 So look up that passage in Human Action on recipes. 117 00:13:02.400 --> 00:13:08.880 You can see everything he says about recipes applies to every kind of good in the digital universe. 118 00:13:08.880 --> 00:13:10.920 Striking. 119 00:13:10.920 --> 00:13:21.360 So, coming to the next point, in this sense that distribution can in fact be universal. 120 00:13:21.360 --> 00:13:28.960 And they take an unpredictable path. So, everything I say in this lecture, you can pass on to 121 00:13:28.960 --> 00:13:32.840 anybody you want to, and they can pass it on to anybody they want to. I've quickly lost 122 00:13:32.840 --> 00:13:38.440 track of it, haven't I? There's no way, no possible way that can trace where this idea 123 00:13:38.440 --> 00:13:44.040 is headed and who owns it, who possesses it next. Once it's out here into an audience, 124 00:13:44.040 --> 00:13:51.480 once it's stated publicly, it contains within itself the possibility and the prospect of 125 00:13:51.480 --> 00:13:58.240 becoming absolutely universal. Universal. So that every living soul could potentially 126 00:13:58.240 --> 00:14:04.960 possess that idea simultaneously without ever diminishing the integrity, the quality of 127 00:14:04.960 --> 00:14:24.400 Mises says one cannot organize or institutionalize the emergence of new ideas. In this way, ideas 128 00:14:24.400 --> 00:14:29.960 are completely different from other material goods. So in the material world, because things 129 00:14:29.960 --> 00:14:34.640 These are scarce. You have to have a system and an institution for their production. You 130 00:14:34.640 --> 00:14:38.040 have to have a structure of production. You have to have prices and profits, and you have 131 00:14:38.040 --> 00:14:44.800 to have strict limits of who owns what in order for this thing to emerge. So the whole 132 00:14:44.800 --> 00:14:48.320 business cycle theory, for example, in the Austrian tradition is based on this idea of 133 00:14:48.320 --> 00:14:52.720 a structure of production. The structure of production, in turn, is based on the existence 134 00:14:52.720 --> 00:14:59.380 of prices and interest and money and profit and loss tests and all these things that apply 135 00:14:59.380 --> 00:15:06.340 in the realm of scarce goods. None of them apply in the realm of non-scarce goods like ideas. 136 00:15:07.460 --> 00:15:13.620 So one cannot organize or institutionalize the emergence of ideas. There doesn't need to be a 137 00:15:13.620 --> 00:15:19.380 structure of production for them. Once they exist and they can come, they can exist at any 138 00:15:19.380 --> 00:15:23.780 point in time in an unpredictable way, there doesn't need to be a structure of production 139 00:15:23.780 --> 00:15:28.500 for them because the distribution can be instantaneously, especially these days, 140 00:15:28.500 --> 00:15:33.100 Absolutely Universal. Now, of course, this is also true in the ancient world, right? 141 00:15:33.100 --> 00:15:40.500 It was also true in the 5th century, it is true in the 500 BC. Ideas have always had this capacity for being universally distributed. 142 00:15:40.500 --> 00:15:47.000 So what limited that in the past? Well, communication technology. But that's no longer a limit for us, is it? 143 00:15:47.000 --> 00:15:54.500 We now have the technology to make possible, make it possible to realize the full potential of any single idea, 144 00:15:54.500 --> 00:16:00.500 The potential for absolute universal distribution. Extraordinary. 145 00:16:00.500 --> 00:16:10.500 And Mises further goes on. He says that ideas live longer than walls or other material artifacts. 146 00:16:10.500 --> 00:16:15.500 And by this he means that ideas are indestructible. 147 00:16:15.500 --> 00:16:22.500 That's another feature of the realm of non-scarce goods. Ideas cannot be destroyed once they're set. 148 00:16:22.500 --> 00:16:41.500 So, I think this is why Mises had that sense when he was writing Human Action, not of despair, but of absolute optimism and hope, because he knew that even if he died after finishing the last sentence, the ideas wouldn't die. They would be indestructible. They would continue to live. 149 00:16:41.500 --> 00:17:11.500 And I think about Mises, too, you think about an indestructible idea. For example, his theory of money and credit, okay, is written in 1912. It's a full theory of banking and a case against inflation. And just the other day, a bill was introduced in parliament that would have brought about 100% reserve or at least made banking reserve contracts with customers 150 00:17:11.500 --> 00:17:16.780 completely open so that the customers have to make contracts with the banks 151 00:17:16.780 --> 00:17:21.020 based on full disclosure of what's happening to the reserves. I think 152 00:17:21.020 --> 00:17:24.380 certainly would have driven us to a hundred percent reserve position. 153 00:17:24.380 --> 00:17:28.340 Now we're talking about a hundred years after an idea was first advanced 154 00:17:28.340 --> 00:17:32.420 and suddenly it kind of comes in fruition in the form of this 155 00:17:32.420 --> 00:17:35.580 of this legislation before parliament. 156 00:17:35.580 --> 00:17:38.860 It's extraordinary. Sometimes it takes a hundred years for an idea 157 00:17:38.860 --> 00:17:40.060 to be realized. 158 00:17:40.060 --> 00:17:43.540 And the other great thing about the indestructibility of ideas 159 00:17:43.540 --> 00:17:46.060 is that any idea can be rediscovered 160 00:17:46.060 --> 00:17:49.620 at any moment in history by anyone, anywhere, 161 00:17:49.620 --> 00:17:51.980 no matter when it was ever said. 162 00:17:51.980 --> 00:17:54.620 So every writer who's ever written 163 00:17:54.620 --> 00:17:59.120 a text that is distributed universally 164 00:17:59.120 --> 00:18:04.460 is, therefore, immortal in some way, 165 00:18:04.460 --> 00:18:06.940 just for the fact that he put his ideas on paper 166 00:18:06.940 --> 00:18:12.940 or that he shared a thought with someone at some point in his life. 167 00:18:12.940 --> 00:18:16.940 That's the path to immortality. 168 00:18:16.940 --> 00:18:19.940 Your ideas are indestructible. 169 00:18:19.940 --> 00:18:23.940 So people ask, why do you keep putting up these old books on Mises org? 170 00:18:23.940 --> 00:18:25.940 That's because ideas are indestructible. 171 00:18:25.940 --> 00:18:30.940 It only takes one person reading one sentence at the right time. 172 00:18:30.940 --> 00:18:32.940 The whole world could change. 173 00:18:32.940 --> 00:18:33.940 Unbelievable. 174 00:18:33.940 --> 00:18:48.940 Another factor about ideas, they're malleable, Mises said. The mark of the creative mind is that it defies a part of what it has learned or at least it adds something new to it. 175 00:18:48.940 --> 00:19:02.940 That was what Mises said about ideas. So it's not just so much that you take an idea and copy it completely. No, it's because you take an idea and you learn from it and you change it a little bit to create something completely new. 176 00:19:02.940 --> 00:19:08.460 and ideas become malleable just because they exist. 177 00:19:08.460 --> 00:19:11.820 Anytime we hear a thought or read a book, 178 00:19:11.820 --> 00:19:15.940 it will be changed in some sense, transformed 179 00:19:15.940 --> 00:19:21.180 just by the way in which our own minds and our own spirits 180 00:19:21.180 --> 00:19:24.340 understand that idea and we will change it when we 181 00:19:24.340 --> 00:19:28.540 present it in a new way. And this is a wonderful thing 182 00:19:28.540 --> 00:19:32.580 to have that ideas are malleable. 183 00:19:32.580 --> 00:19:37.280 is for this reason that the Mises Institute publishes all of our material in Creative Commons, for example, 184 00:19:37.280 --> 00:19:42.580 because we know that it can always be reproduced somewhere else in a different form. 185 00:19:42.580 --> 00:19:49.580 I can't count the number of times that I've gone to YouTube and seen some podcast, for example, that I've done. 186 00:19:49.580 --> 00:19:56.580 It's just a pure audio podcast put into a video with new kind of backgrounds and pictures and things like that by somebody else. 187 00:19:56.580 --> 00:20:02.080 Now, if we were really hung up on the idea of intellectual property, trying to take a 188 00:20:02.080 --> 00:20:06.300 non-scarce good and fit it into the category of the scarce good, right, we would complain 189 00:20:06.300 --> 00:20:10.060 about this. Well, it's ridiculous. It's a wonderful thing to see somebody do something 190 00:20:10.060 --> 00:20:19.060 creative with something that we've done. All of life is creativity in the world of ideas. 191 00:20:19.060 --> 00:20:25.260 Another point that Mises makes is that ideas enable progress. This is a striking claim. 192 00:20:25.260 --> 00:20:44.260 A technological invention is not something material. It is the product of a mental process of reasoning and conceiving new ideas. The tools and machines may be called material, but the operation of the mind, which created them, is certainly spiritual. 193 00:20:44.260 --> 00:20:52.760 So he says that it enables progress and that it is the fundamental factor in all of human progress, not material goods. 194 00:20:52.760 --> 00:21:00.260 We talk about technological inventions, Mises says, well they're not really material, they're all the product of the human mind. 195 00:21:00.260 --> 00:21:08.260 And the final point that Mises makes here is that, and this is a striking claim, 196 00:21:08.260 --> 00:21:18.500 only ideas can overcome ideas so if all of human history is a result of the 197 00:21:18.500 --> 00:21:22.820 ideas we hold because that's what drives our choices it's what drives our actions 198 00:21:22.820 --> 00:21:29.260 forwards it's what shapes our institutions these real reproducible 199 00:21:29.260 --> 00:21:34.820 universally distributable indestructible malleable progressive things we call 200 00:21:34.820 --> 00:21:42.020 All Ideas. How do we supplant bad ideas with good ideas? Well, we simply have to advance 201 00:21:42.020 --> 00:21:45.700 good ideas. Well, let's say I wanted to take another tactic. Let's say I wanted to do 202 00:21:45.700 --> 00:21:58.260 it with tanks and guns and clubs and power. How far will that get me? Well, it'll get 203 00:21:58.260 --> 00:22:02.920 me a little bit of the way, won't it? You think about the armies in the world, the large 204 00:22:02.920 --> 00:22:08.600 What are the empires that are occupying countries that they ultimately can't control? 205 00:22:08.600 --> 00:22:09.600 What do they control? 206 00:22:09.600 --> 00:22:14.480 They control the ground on which the physical objects like tanks and the feet of soldiers 207 00:22:14.480 --> 00:22:18.360 are standing, or where the tanks are sitting. 208 00:22:18.360 --> 00:22:24.160 They control the human body that is accepting a bullet at that moment and dies. 209 00:22:24.160 --> 00:22:25.160 That's all they control. 210 00:22:25.160 --> 00:22:26.760 But do they control the country? 211 00:22:26.760 --> 00:22:27.760 No. 212 00:22:27.760 --> 00:22:30.840 It's because the country is controlled ultimately by ideas. 213 00:22:30.840 --> 00:22:36.840 If you want to control the country, you have to change the minds of the people who live there. 214 00:22:36.840 --> 00:22:51.840 So what I'm saying is that if you read Mises properly, you get a striking sense that we've chosen, by choosing ideas, the most powerful weapon of all. 215 00:22:51.840 --> 00:22:57.840 It's the one that lives outside all the limits of physical reality. 216 00:22:57.840 --> 00:23:03.840 It's the one that's the only thing that's infinitely reproducible, the only thing that's infinitely malleable, 217 00:23:03.840 --> 00:23:15.840 the only thing that can ultimately reach the whole of human society and bring about changes of any sort, 218 00:23:15.840 --> 00:23:22.840 and in particular, changes towards liberty, because governments specialize in what? 219 00:23:22.840 --> 00:23:29.840 And the production of ideas? Not really. No. No. 220 00:23:29.840 --> 00:23:38.840 We're trying to specialize in the production of ideas. And we think, following Mises, that this is the way that we can win. 221 00:23:38.840 --> 00:23:45.840 I want to say some words about the development of Mises.org, some comments about the strategy that we've used. 222 00:23:45.840 --> 00:23:52.840 And I want to talk to you in a way that I end up talking to people all the time because I get relentless phone calls from people. 223 00:23:52.840 --> 00:24:00.840 They call up and they say, uh, gee, you know, we were just wondering, how do you do this whole thing with Mises work? How does this happen? 224 00:24:00.840 --> 00:24:11.840 You know, we're starting a new institute and my answer to that is, well, work every day relentlessly for 15 years and you'll be where we are today, essentially. 225 00:24:11.840 --> 00:24:20.840 But other people who have other websites, they want to copy us. In any case, we're absolutely open, completely open about everything we do. 226 00:24:20.840 --> 00:24:31.840 I just listed a few principles that we use in our own development. We always choose content over Flash, over Zip and Pazazz. 227 00:24:31.840 --> 00:24:35.840 We go for the substance first, so that's why we have thousands of books online. 228 00:24:35.840 --> 00:24:44.180 Online, and we try to make it look as pretty as possible, but ultimately it's all about 229 00:24:44.180 --> 00:24:50.280 the content, and the content is text, and the content is video, and the content is audio, 230 00:24:50.280 --> 00:24:58.480 and every other form we can do, and it gets crazy these days. You have to distribute everything 231 00:24:58.480 --> 00:25:02.600 in every possible format, so if you put it up in HTML, people say, well gee, can I have 232 00:25:02.600 --> 00:25:15.600 I don't like that Kindle is proprietary. Can you do it in EPUB format so I can read it on my thingamajig over here? 233 00:25:15.600 --> 00:25:18.600 Not a problem. We'll make it available in EPUB format. 234 00:25:18.600 --> 00:25:24.600 Well, look, I don't like to read my iPad while I drive most of the time. I do read it at stoplights. 235 00:25:24.600 --> 00:25:31.600 But when I'm driving I like to listen to stuff, so can you put it in audio? 236 00:25:31.600 --> 00:25:37.900 Yes, we'll put it in audio. We put it in audio. Well, you know, audio is a little abstract. Can you put it in video, too? 237 00:25:37.900 --> 00:25:42.520 So these are all the possibilities and I promise you whatever one of these things you haven't done, 238 00:25:42.720 --> 00:25:46.620 you'll get a call about it in an email and a request to do it that way. 239 00:25:48.400 --> 00:25:52.980 People are sometimes startled that we put up all of our books that we publish in physical form also in 240 00:25:53.360 --> 00:25:56.480 PDF and I get calls all the time from people saying, now, 241 00:25:57.240 --> 00:26:00.180 Mr. Tucker, can you promise me that if we distribute 242 00:26:00.180 --> 00:26:07.500 Institute, our book free online in a PDF form that will sell more copies of the physical 243 00:26:07.500 --> 00:26:12.500 book. Can you promise me that? And, of course, there's no way to make such a promise. There's 244 00:26:12.500 --> 00:26:16.580 no way to perform controlled experiments in the realm of human sciences. That's the way 245 00:26:16.580 --> 00:26:19.780 I usually put it. What I really want to say is, if your book's not any good, nobody's 246 00:26:19.780 --> 00:26:30.020 going to buy it. So, but you know, it changes all the time. Like, recently we had Bob Murray 247 00:26:30.020 --> 00:26:34.940 Bob Murphy's book, Economics for High School Students, I finished it over the summer, he's 248 00:26:34.940 --> 00:26:38.500 teaching a class on it right now, so we had to put it up on PDF. We're doing this more 249 00:26:38.500 --> 00:26:42.340 and more all the time, we put it up now online long before we ever print the thing, you know, 250 00:26:42.340 --> 00:26:45.460 the physical world is so darn slow, I don't know what we're going to do about that, we're 251 00:26:45.460 --> 00:26:51.460 working on that too, but essentially we don't have the physical book yet, so now we get 252 00:26:51.460 --> 00:26:55.740 complaints, hey, when are you ever going to print this book, you know? I mean, it's been 253 00:26:55.740 --> 00:26:59.780 two months now, well, it's going to be out in a couple of weeks, but I can promise you 254 00:26:59.780 --> 00:27:16.780 There are very few publishers in the world that do this sort of thing. We put it up in EPUB, we put it up in PDF, we distribute it in HTML, every format you can possibly think of, and that at some point it will come out in physical form too, and restart the whole process all over again. 255 00:27:16.780 --> 00:27:25.780 Another principle you saw, we're relentless, I already mentioned that, another principle we use is that no text is too old. 256 00:27:25.780 --> 00:27:44.780 Just yesterday, I'm always about the newest thing, right? So I put up this really cool book, which I just happened to bump into. 257 00:27:44.780 --> 00:27:52.780 It's just a fantastic history of British liberalism from the 18th century to our own time, and it was one of the great pleasures of doing this kind of work, 258 00:27:52.780 --> 00:27:56.580 I get to speed read, you know, bookmarking and putting them up and everything. It's just 259 00:27:56.580 --> 00:28:00.500 such a kick. You know, you read through this book, you swept up into the whole world of 260 00:28:00.500 --> 00:28:06.540 liberalism. Imagine a society and a time in which the answer to every social problem, 261 00:28:06.540 --> 00:28:13.540 every economic problem was, well, we just need more liberty. You know, this is a statement 262 00:28:13.540 --> 00:28:18.340 that states we've got a problem over here. Well, clearly we need more liberty. Well, 263 00:28:18.340 --> 00:28:23.600 What about this problem over here? You know, why don't we try liberty? This went on for 264 00:28:23.600 --> 00:28:28.660 like 200 years. Extraordinary. Unbelievable. So this book documents this. It says from 265 00:28:28.660 --> 00:28:35.860 Fox to Keynes. Keynes was, by the way, the end of this over. Everything was turned on 266 00:28:35.860 --> 00:28:41.020 its head, you know. Anyway, no text is too old. There is lost... Murray Rothbard always 267 00:28:41.020 --> 00:28:45.840 taught us that there's lost knowledge. You know, it's not the case that all knowledge 268 00:28:45.840 --> 00:28:50.240 College is cumulative? No, some drops away. So, no text is too old. We don't want to 269 00:28:50.240 --> 00:28:55.800 miss anything. We post as much as possible. It's a big world. Sometimes people say, well, 270 00:28:55.800 --> 00:28:58.800 you know, Mises work just post too much. I can't read it all. Well, that's, of course 271 00:28:58.800 --> 00:29:02.800 you can't read it all. Nobody can read it all. But, you know, you're not the only person. 272 00:29:02.800 --> 00:29:06.520 You know, there are many other people with whom you're cooperating in this grand project 273 00:29:06.520 --> 00:29:11.480 and they're all over the world. So read what you can. Learn what you can. Do what you can. 274 00:29:11.480 --> 00:29:23.800 Never assume a fixed audience. The goal is always to be as generous as possible with 275 00:29:23.800 --> 00:29:31.000 your content. And it bothers me, actually, when I see other nonprofit organizations like 276 00:29:31.000 --> 00:29:36.180 ours that are doing good work and you go and you want to hear their lectures and they want 277 00:29:36.180 --> 00:30:06.180 I'm going to charge you $1.99 for every mp3. They imagine that this is capitalism, charging people for things. Well, you know what? If it's a non-scarce good, you don't have to. There's no cost. We can distribute them at zero price, and it's a wonderful thing. So we're as generous as possible. We never assume a fixed audience. We always assume that there are going to be more people coming around to the Misesian point of view. 278 00:30:06.180 --> 00:30:14.220 Sometimes it's hard. There's always a new generation. There are always young people. 279 00:30:14.220 --> 00:30:21.900 Young people who don't know things, but they want to know things. And we unfortunately 280 00:30:21.900 --> 00:30:29.540 have not developed the capacity to upload our brains to theirs just yet. So we have 281 00:30:29.540 --> 00:30:35.920 to rely on teaching them. And they're always new. There's always a new class. Every year 282 00:30:35.920 --> 00:30:41.720 There's a new group of young people that need to learn, that are starting fresh, we must never forget them. 283 00:30:41.720 --> 00:30:45.720 And if we ever despair, we can remember them too. 284 00:30:45.720 --> 00:30:52.420 Rothbard used to say that the young people were our hope, so we never want to lose track of them. 285 00:30:52.420 --> 00:30:57.420 There are a couple of things I wanted to show you, and I'm not sure that I'll really have time. 286 00:30:57.420 --> 00:30:59.820 I do want to just mention this, okay? 287 00:30:59.820 --> 00:31:02.220 You've heard about this, it opened up in the spring. 288 00:31:02.220 --> 00:31:32.220 We worked for 10 years to try to open up an online academy. We didn't think the time had come yet, but we do, this spring, about a year of work, actually, is behind this little operation here. We finally released it, and I must say that it's exceeded my expectations. I'm thrilled. If you don't know what it is, really, it's a complete, well, we've called it an online learning environment. The potential here is to be 289 00:31:32.220 --> 00:31:34.860 University for the Whole World. 290 00:31:34.860 --> 00:31:38.980 We've already had, I think, about 10 classes. 291 00:31:38.980 --> 00:31:43.140 Doug, we've run 10 classes just since the spring. 292 00:31:43.140 --> 00:31:47.020 And we have four classes running right now. 293 00:31:47.020 --> 00:31:50.160 We've had, I think, on the level of maybe 1,300, 294 00:31:50.160 --> 00:31:54.380 1,200 or 1,300 students already come through the academy. 295 00:31:54.380 --> 00:31:57.100 The important thing here is it's not just a static environment. 296 00:31:57.100 --> 00:32:02.200 We're not just talking about texts and forums and Q&A, 297 00:32:02.200 --> 00:32:09.480 sessions, tests and multiple choice quizzes and things to read and all of that is true. 298 00:32:09.480 --> 00:32:17.200 But it's also a live environment so we can have the professor lecturing to students who 299 00:32:17.200 --> 00:32:22.380 are able to ask questions and talk to the professor while he's lecturing and it's so 300 00:32:22.380 --> 00:32:23.380 funny to me. 301 00:32:23.380 --> 00:32:27.880 You know, you see what's happening here, we've reestablished, it's like Adam Smith's dream, 302 00:32:27.880 --> 00:32:28.880 right? 303 00:32:28.880 --> 00:32:33.880 We've established the producer-consumer relationship between the professor and the student. 304 00:32:33.880 --> 00:32:38.880 It's a remarkable thing to see the way this dynamic is starting to work. 305 00:32:38.880 --> 00:32:44.880 So the students are the consumers, the professor is the producer, we put them in contact with each other, 306 00:32:44.880 --> 00:32:46.880 wherever they happen to be anywhere in the world. 307 00:32:46.880 --> 00:32:51.880 David Gordon did his class last night, he had a session, and he did it right here. 308 00:32:51.880 --> 00:32:56.880 He didn't have to be in Los Angeles, and he taught students from all over the world. 309 00:32:56.880 --> 00:33:26.880 Lectures are archived so you can watch them any time when students are graded and I tell you it's a real kick to be in the classroom because it's fancy, it's wonderful, it's intimate, I mean you really do have a sense that you're having Bob Murphy over for dinner you know and as my family can tell you I quite often watch these lectures during dinner right and it is like having a professor you know right there for you so you it's a wonderful environment for learning I think it really 310 00:33:26.880 --> 00:33:32.480 You almost could say that nothing is lost by the absence of a regular physical classroom 311 00:33:32.480 --> 00:33:35.600 and that there's a lot to be gained. 312 00:33:35.600 --> 00:33:39.400 The whole environment is much more advanced than I ever expected it to be. 313 00:33:39.400 --> 00:33:44.160 I do want to show you one more thing. 314 00:33:44.160 --> 00:33:46.800 This will be the first time anybody has seen this publicly. 315 00:33:46.800 --> 00:33:47.800 We have a community now. 316 00:33:47.800 --> 00:33:51.960 It's sort of community 1.0 with forums and blogs and blah, blah, blah, all the things 317 00:33:51.960 --> 00:33:53.760 you want in a community. 318 00:33:53.760 --> 00:34:00.760 Well, okay, so this is the new thing. We hope to release it by the end of the year. It's 319 00:34:00.760 --> 00:34:07.040 a much more robust community that allows the creation of an unlimited number of groups 320 00:34:07.040 --> 00:34:14.040 and group wikis and forums that are group-specific forums and also general forums and unlimited 321 00:34:14.360 --> 00:34:20.440 numbers of user blogs. We've never been afraid of allowing user content on Mises work. Look 322 00:34:20.440 --> 00:34:26.360 Look around the think tank world, see how many other think tanks trust their users enough 323 00:34:26.360 --> 00:34:33.360 to add content to their own sites, not many, but we do it because our readers are smart 324 00:34:33.360 --> 00:34:37.520 and they're just like all of you. They love the mission and they love liberty. 325 00:34:37.520 --> 00:34:39.000 Thank you so much for supporting our work. 326 00:34:50.440 --> 00:34:52.440 Thank you very much.