WEBVTT NOTE Five Ways Government Grows, and What the Mises Institute is Doing About It 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:30.000 Thanks for everybody to come. It's great to be in Houston, and what I'm told is typical weather, so it's, no, but I had the pleasure of, the honor of working for Ron Paul, who I might mention is in fact what he seems to be, unlike all those other guys in Washington, spent a lot of time in Houston, mainly in the summertime, so that was different. And of course the city is entirely different every time I come back, so that's great capitalist enterprise. 2 00:00:30.000 --> 00:00:33.600 James said I'm going to talk today about the state and its five rationales. 3 00:00:33.600 --> 00:00:40.040 If you say that government is too big and truly overweening, you elicit a surprising 4 00:00:40.040 --> 00:00:46.400 degree of agreement among people, even mainstream columnists, economists and nearly everyone. 5 00:00:46.400 --> 00:00:51.280 Even government employees, who famously resent their bosses, might be quick to agree. 6 00:00:51.280 --> 00:00:57.760 If you hang out outside the offices of the IRS in Washington, D.C., in the park at noontime 7 00:00:57.760 --> 00:01:07.760 In a time where its employees routinely take their lunch, you'll get an earful of vitriol against the bureaucracy that you wouldn't hear outside 1990s militia circles. 8 00:01:07.760 --> 00:01:12.760 Incidentally, the government is having a terrible time recruiting employees. 9 00:01:12.760 --> 00:01:18.760 Only 16% of college-educated workers say they have any interest whatsoever in a government job. 10 00:01:18.760 --> 00:01:22.760 Among those without a college degree, there's twice that level of interest. 11 00:01:22.760 --> 00:01:29.760 Among people currently employed, those with managerial or professional occupations show a low interest rate of 17%. 12 00:01:30.760 --> 00:01:36.760 Among those who want their work to be challenging and enjoyable, 9% thought a government job might qualify. 13 00:01:37.760 --> 00:01:49.760 And interestingly, those who say they want to make a contribution to society, 90% said that non-government work in the private sector with for-profit or non-profit organizations is the way to go. 14 00:01:49.760 --> 00:02:01.760 Now what this means is that the smart set avoids government. Government work still might be attractive to people with fewer economic opportunities, but they're entering for reasons that are not ideological. 15 00:02:01.760 --> 00:02:08.760 And for that reason too, they're less loyal to the public sector and glad to bail out if something else becomes available. 16 00:02:08.760 --> 00:02:14.760 Now most people view this as a very bad trend. I would only say it's a very significant trend. 17 00:02:14.760 --> 00:02:20.760 It's always a tragedy to see smart and entrepreneurial men and women be attracted away from productive employment in the private sector towards a position of power in the public sector. 18 00:02:44.760 --> 00:02:50.760 It makes us poorer to have talents drawn away from wealth creation towards wealth destruction. 19 00:02:50.760 --> 00:02:56.760 As for the very few good people in politics, Ron Paul being the shining exception that proves the rule, 20 00:02:56.760 --> 00:03:03.760 they are true public servants only insofar as they work to diminish government power rather than increase it. 21 00:03:03.760 --> 00:03:10.760 So long as government is large and overweening, we're better off with a public sector that cannot attract the best and the brightest. 22 00:03:10.760 --> 00:03:18.760 and the brightest. They should stay put right where they are and continue to expand the range of goods and services offered within the market framework. 23 00:03:18.760 --> 00:03:28.760 It is the market, after all, that provides us the means necessary to improve our standard of living and the tools we need to maintain some degree of independence from the state. 24 00:03:28.760 --> 00:03:38.760 We often rail against incompetence in government, but before we go too far with that language, we need to consider that competence in government may be a far worse fate. 25 00:03:38.760 --> 00:03:45.160 We don't need genuinely competent antitrust enforcers, drug and food regulators, tax collectors, 26 00:03:45.160 --> 00:03:50.240 money manipulators, labor law interventionists, gun grabbers and environmental police. 27 00:03:50.240 --> 00:03:57.800 As H.L. Mencken said, we should be grateful we don't get all the government we pay for. 28 00:03:57.800 --> 00:04:02.600 To be sure, we're paying far more today for government than ever before. 29 00:04:02.600 --> 00:04:07.000 Consider the real annual growth rate of total government outlays by president. 30 00:04:07.000 --> 00:04:15.400 Under Nixon it was 3%, under Carter 4.1%, under Reagan 2.6%, under Bush's dad 1.9%, 31 00:04:15.400 --> 00:04:20.120 but that was because of the cuts in military spending at the end of the Cold War, his domestic 32 00:04:20.120 --> 00:04:21.840 spending soared. 33 00:04:21.840 --> 00:04:27.560 Under Clinton, whom we all denounce as a socialist, it was 1.5%, the lowest rate in the post-war 34 00:04:27.560 --> 00:04:28.560 period. 35 00:04:28.560 --> 00:04:33.500 And under the present Bush, who promised less government, the real annual growth rate of 36 00:04:33.500 --> 00:04:39.940 Total Government Outlays has been 5% which compares to LBJ era spending. 37 00:04:39.940 --> 00:04:44.260 The old rationales for government growth may have been discredited in the public mind but 38 00:04:44.260 --> 00:04:48.740 they're alive in Washington among the special interest groups and among the media and I'd 39 00:04:48.740 --> 00:04:51.500 like to identify the main ones. 40 00:04:51.500 --> 00:04:53.700 Rational number one, the Good Samaritan State. 41 00:04:53.700 --> 00:04:57.860 In this view of government the state should act like the third person to come upon the 42 00:04:57.860 --> 00:05:00.600 poor man who had been beaten and robbed. 43 00:05:00.600 --> 00:05:06.400 They imagine a population of people that is divided among three types. Victims, victimizers, 44 00:05:06.400 --> 00:05:11.200 and those who refuse to help. The victim classes we know all too well because the litany is 45 00:05:11.200 --> 00:05:16.840 set again and again within the structure of labor law. The elderly, the young, ethnic 46 00:05:16.840 --> 00:05:21.400 and racial minorities, religious minorities, sexual minorities, the physically and mentally 47 00:05:21.400 --> 00:05:28.060 disabled, workers, the underpaid, people in rural areas, those who deal with urban overcrowding, 48 00:05:28.060 --> 00:05:33.140 People who breathe dirty air or eat chemically produced products, artists, the manufacturing 49 00:05:33.140 --> 00:05:41.660 industry, people with peanut allergies, the dyslexic, short people, fat people, the leisure 50 00:05:41.660 --> 00:05:46.060 deprived, and I probably left out about a hundred other groups. 51 00:05:46.060 --> 00:05:53.260 Among the victimizers we have a similar list, capitalists, racial and ethnic majorities, 52 00:05:53.260 --> 00:06:11.260 The sexual majorities, the overpaid, managers and CEOs, people who live in gated communities, the well-armed, consumers of cell phones, owners of mines, anyone living off a trust fund, fully abled men and anyone who resents social managers telling them what to do. 53 00:06:11.260 --> 00:06:18.260 In the view of those who advocate the Samaritan state, these two classes of victims and victimizers are constantly at war. 54 00:06:18.260 --> 00:06:23.260 There is nothing but conflict between them. The loss of one is the gain of the other. 55 00:06:23.260 --> 00:06:32.260 These categories are fixed and unchanging. The lack of harmony of interests is built into the structure of the social and economic world. 56 00:06:32.260 --> 00:06:39.260 The remedy requires an institution that is relentlessly engaged in reweighing the power relationships between these two groups. 57 00:06:39.260 --> 00:06:45.260 The conflict cannot be finally ended, but justice requires that the victims are given an unending stream of compensation 58 00:06:45.260 --> 00:06:49.260 and that the victimizers are treated with disdain and punished for their very existence. 59 00:06:49.260 --> 00:06:55.260 Social justice thus requires that victimizers are reduced, disabled, denounced and spat upon, 60 00:06:55.260 --> 00:07:00.260 while the victims must be exalted, fed, clothed, funded and made whole. 61 00:07:00.260 --> 00:07:05.260 This is how the left, broadly speaking, thinks the world works and should work. 62 00:07:05.260 --> 00:07:10.260 It doesn't matter whether one considers oneself a hard Marxist or a soft Social Democrat. 63 00:07:10.260 --> 00:07:14.260 The intellectual tie that binds them together is the view that conflict and not cooperation, 64 00:07:14.260 --> 00:07:21.260 and cooperation characterize the work of society in absence of an institution dedicated to bringing about social justice. 65 00:07:21.260 --> 00:07:25.260 The institutional answer is, of course, the state. 66 00:07:25.260 --> 00:07:30.260 The state is the Samaritan, who lifts up and exalts the meek, smites the proud and the powerful, 67 00:07:30.260 --> 00:07:33.260 who would otherwise walk right past the poor person on the street, 68 00:07:33.260 --> 00:07:38.260 who is the very archetype of the victim in the leftist view of how the world works. 69 00:07:38.260 --> 00:07:41.260 But there are many things wrong with this view of society. 70 00:07:41.260 --> 00:07:44.300 In the parable, after all, the victim was beaten and robbed. 71 00:07:44.460 --> 00:07:47.660 He was exploited only in a very narrow and old-fashioned sense. 72 00:07:47.820 --> 00:07:50.420 His person and property were violated. 73 00:07:50.580 --> 00:07:52.900 These are crimes against libertarian ethics, 74 00:07:53.060 --> 00:07:57.260 a system of thought that mirrors what every religious and ethical system has always taught. 75 00:07:57.420 --> 00:08:00.100 Do not kill, do not steal. 76 00:08:00.260 --> 00:08:05.100 In other words, he was not a victim of some hazy notion of social injustice. 77 00:08:05.260 --> 00:08:08.860 He was not discriminated against, exploited by an employer, 78 00:08:08.860 --> 00:08:12.860 made to work long hours or denied a comfy living in his old age. 79 00:08:12.860 --> 00:08:15.860 There's a huge difference between being beaten and robbed 80 00:08:15.860 --> 00:08:18.860 and having to pay high prices for prescription drugs. 81 00:08:18.860 --> 00:08:22.860 The great error of the left is its inability to distinguish the injustice of violence 82 00:08:22.860 --> 00:08:26.860 from the supposed injustice of inequality of material conditions. 83 00:08:26.860 --> 00:08:31.860 As for the Samaritan, he was not acting as an agent of the regime. 84 00:08:31.860 --> 00:08:33.860 He used his own money to help the victim. 85 00:08:33.860 --> 00:08:37.860 He got him back on his feet and paid his bills at the private clinic 86 00:08:37.860 --> 00:08:44.100 The Samaritan did not rob someone else to give money to the man on the street. He presumably 87 00:08:44.100 --> 00:08:49.540 got his money justly by hard work and investment. He had no desire to keep the man dependent 88 00:08:49.540 --> 00:08:55.100 nor to exercise power over him, tax him, regulate him or send him to war. 89 00:08:55.100 --> 00:08:59.660 The state is something very different. It has no income but that which it robs from 90 00:08:59.660 --> 00:09:05.260 someone else. It seeks its own gain at others' expense. It protects itself and promotes itself 91 00:09:05.260 --> 00:09:09.460 before the interest of everyone else. It's beholden to special interests who create and 92 00:09:09.460 --> 00:09:14.980 control this regulatory apparatus. It is not impartial. It sides with its friends over 93 00:09:14.980 --> 00:09:19.980 its perceived enemies. Moreover, the state is an exploiter, a murderer, a violator of 94 00:09:19.980 --> 00:09:24.680 human rights. The typical response of the left is to say that they want a state that 95 00:09:24.680 --> 00:09:30.460 only does good things, such as share and care, and not bad things, such as steal and kill. 96 00:09:30.460 --> 00:09:34.900 But this cannot be. We might as well wish for a lion that only purrs and cuddles, or 97 00:09:34.900 --> 00:09:40.900 The State is a rattlesnake that only provides percussive accompaniment to mariachi music. 98 00:09:40.900 --> 00:09:46.900 The very nature of the State is that it exists only through and for compulsion. 99 00:09:46.900 --> 00:09:50.900 To imagine otherwise is not to face reality. 100 00:09:50.900 --> 00:09:53.900 Rational number two, the Solomonic State. 101 00:09:53.900 --> 00:09:55.900 In the Bible we're told that King Solomon had, quote, 102 00:09:55.900 --> 00:10:00.900 understanding exceeding much and largeness of heart, even as that is sent, excuse me, 103 00:10:00.900 --> 00:10:03.900 even as the sand on the seashore. 104 00:10:03.900 --> 00:10:07.240 His wisdom excelled the wisdom of all the children of the East Country, and all the 105 00:10:07.240 --> 00:10:12.840 wisdom of Egypt. He was wiser than all men, and his fame was in all nations round about. 106 00:10:12.840 --> 00:10:17.380 He spoke three thousand proverbs, and his songs were a thousand and five. He spoke of 107 00:10:17.380 --> 00:10:21.860 trees from the cedar trees that is in Lebanon, even unto the hyssop that springeth out of 108 00:10:21.860 --> 00:10:26.260 the wall. He spoke also of beasts, and of fowls, and of creeping things, and of fishes. 109 00:10:26.260 --> 00:10:30.700 And there came of all people to hear the wisdom of Solomon, from all kings of the earth, who 110 00:10:30.700 --> 00:10:41.700 I'm not here to dispute the Bible's account of Solomon's wisdom, but I would suggest that these traits are not generalizable to the population of rulers. 111 00:10:41.700 --> 00:10:52.700 In fact, it's very dangerous to hope that they may be. If we set out to find such a person and have fantastic power available to him when we believe he has arrived, we've set up a framework for tyranny. 112 00:10:52.700 --> 00:11:05.700 The framers knew that no man can be trusted with power. They attempted to construct a system that presumed that all men were corruptible, and that there would be some means to dislodge them if the corruption were shown. 113 00:11:05.700 --> 00:11:18.700 Still today many people long for the Solomonic state as a means of dispensing justice. Unlike the Samaritan model, the goal here is not charity, but the just wielding of the sword on behalf of the right and true. 114 00:11:18.700 --> 00:11:29.700 Thus we should seek out righteous men of learning and moral character who know what evil is and have the courage to stand up and destroy it. This model is what inspires this mentality. 115 00:11:29.700 --> 00:11:45.700 There are many problems with this model. One man might be very wise, even the wisest of all men, but as F.I. Hayek might remind us, all the accumulated knowledge in the head of one person is still infinitesimal as compared with the wisdom that emerges through social cooperation in the marketplace. 116 00:11:45.700 --> 00:11:59.700 We can consider the price of any good on the market as it stands right now and know that this one price results from the accumulated decisions of millions of people across thousands and thousands of sectors of economic activity spread throughout the world. 117 00:11:59.700 --> 00:12:05.700 The knowledge is dispersed in a million directions and results from small decisions and actions by economic actors. 118 00:12:05.700 --> 00:12:12.700 But the result is a single indicator that assists in allocating resources better than any single mind could ever do. 119 00:12:12.700 --> 00:12:26.700 The model of the Solomonic State also imagines that somehow the social order we see around us cannot possibly have come about without a single will operating in society, some iron hand that has designed the order and keeps it running smoothly. 120 00:12:26.700 --> 00:12:38.700 People who think this way imagine that in the absence of this firm hand there would be nothing but a Hobbesian state of nature, where society would be a war of all against all and life nasty, Buddhist and short. 121 00:12:38.700 --> 00:12:49.700 Our age is notably lacking in the likes of Solomon, and so those who fear the Hobbesian state of nature turn to the managerial state to act wisely in the interest of justice and order at home and abroad. 122 00:12:49.700 --> 00:12:55.700 They might not always like what the rulers do, but they consider the alternative to despotism more fearsome. 123 00:12:55.700 --> 00:13:01.700 They warn about the dread results of anarchism and liberty, where people senselessly kill and rob without consequence. 124 00:13:01.700 --> 00:13:05.700 They fear this liberty more than they fear the abuses of power. 125 00:13:05.700 --> 00:13:11.340 and Power. This, I submit, is the mentality of many conservatives and many on the right. 126 00:13:11.340 --> 00:13:16.940 We see it in the affections for Bush, the Patriot Act, the war on terror, and how quickly 127 00:13:16.940 --> 00:13:22.140 people fall for any leader who uses Manichean rhetoric in defense of the latest nationalistic 128 00:13:22.140 --> 00:13:27.340 crusade. What these people need more than anything else is a familiarity with the insights 129 00:13:27.340 --> 00:13:34.020 of the old liberal tradition, as represented by Jefferson, Bastiat, Mises, Hayek and Rothbard. 130 00:13:34.020 --> 00:13:38.420 They need to come to see how order is not the mother of liberty, but its daughter. 131 00:13:38.420 --> 00:13:42.460 They need to see how society is harmonious, not because of the state, but because of the 132 00:13:42.460 --> 00:13:46.680 prevalence of human cooperation in the marketplace, where people work to trade to their 133 00:13:46.680 --> 00:13:49.260 own mutual betterment. 134 00:13:49.260 --> 00:13:53.660 People who fail to understand this become the unwitting servants of tyranny, particularly 135 00:13:53.660 --> 00:13:59.980 in this modern age, when it is so obviously not wise, but stupid and violent and presumptuous. 136 00:13:59.980 --> 00:14:04.700 They imagine that the state can possess a god-like power and bring justice and order, but they 137 00:14:04.700 --> 00:14:09.580 end up only empowering the worst elements of society, bringing injustice and chaos. 138 00:14:09.580 --> 00:14:14.960 Now, you might say the old liberal view of society is naive. It might be in people's 139 00:14:14.960 --> 00:14:20.620 interest to learn to trade rather than steal, but we live in a fallen world. If it were 140 00:14:20.620 --> 00:14:24.820 not for some overarching controlling force, people would loot each other relentingly and 141 00:14:24.820 --> 00:14:41.000 History is strewn with examples. The question we have to ask ourselves is whether a society 142 00:14:41.000 --> 00:14:45.740 that fails to learn the art of civilization will erect and sustain a state that will impose 143 00:14:45.740 --> 00:14:50.580 civilization on the people. I submit that history also teaches that when a people are 144 00:14:50.580 --> 00:14:54.580 The more brutal and uncivilized the state is even more so. 145 00:14:54.580 --> 00:14:58.580 The state is rarely and maybe never better than the people it rules. 146 00:14:58.580 --> 00:15:01.580 In fact, it is almost always worse. 147 00:15:01.580 --> 00:15:04.580 Rationale number three, log rolling. 148 00:15:04.580 --> 00:15:10.580 Given these two very different conceptions of the state, one favoring the welfare state, the other favoring a warfare state, 149 00:15:10.580 --> 00:15:14.580 why don't the visions cancel each other out? 150 00:15:14.580 --> 00:15:18.580 So intense is the desire of one group to have the state that it wants 151 00:15:18.580 --> 00:15:23.380 that it's willing to put up with another group's desire for its conception of the state. 152 00:15:23.380 --> 00:15:27.660 The two conceptions decide to cooperate. An erectus state purports to behave both like 153 00:15:27.660 --> 00:15:32.740 Solomon and like the Samaritan. That is the origin of the guns and butter state, or the 154 00:15:32.740 --> 00:15:37.460 welfare warfare state, the modern state as we know it, one that purports to meet our 155 00:15:37.460 --> 00:15:39.700 every need. 156 00:15:39.700 --> 00:15:44.420 We see how this log rolling works every day on Capitol Hill. One group wants more money 157 00:15:44.420 --> 00:15:49.980 for Tanks and Weaponry. The other wants more for Medicaid and education. If both agree 158 00:15:49.980 --> 00:15:54.320 that politics is the art of compromise, they will put up with the other groups' priorities 159 00:15:54.320 --> 00:15:58.140 in order that their own vision can be fulfilled. 160 00:15:58.140 --> 00:16:02.360 On the right, we find that the love for the police power is more intense than the hatred 161 00:16:02.360 --> 00:16:07.000 of redistribution. On the left, we find that the love for redistribution is more intense 162 00:16:07.000 --> 00:16:11.920 than the hatred of war and the Leviathan. They therefore work together to erect a massive 163 00:16:11.920 --> 00:16:17.320 of an ever-growing executive. They're similarly unwilling to oppose the state in total. They 164 00:16:17.320 --> 00:16:22.760 fear that in doing so, the state as an institution would be discredited, and their conception 165 00:16:22.760 --> 00:16:28.840 of what the state should do along with it. Neither side particularly loves big government, 166 00:16:28.840 --> 00:16:33.560 but both sides agree that it is better than the alternative of letting people alone. So 167 00:16:33.560 --> 00:16:37.400 their log world will support the public sector, even when it means that they must sleep with 168 00:16:37.400 --> 00:16:42.400 and Their Political Enemies, Rationale No. 4, The Inflationary State. 169 00:16:42.400 --> 00:16:46.400 Now we come to the reason the system is able to perpetuate itself. 170 00:16:46.400 --> 00:16:49.400 And there is something of a mystery to explain here. 171 00:16:49.400 --> 00:16:54.400 No people anywhere will put up with a leviathan that grows and grows forever. 172 00:16:54.400 --> 00:17:01.400 At some point, the problem of funding state expansion will result in too much violence against property and people will revolt. 173 00:17:01.400 --> 00:17:13.400 Indeed, I would think if the federal government had to collect all its revenue through a tax of any kind, levied right now against the public, it would spark a tax revolt on a scale never before seen in modern history. 174 00:17:13.400 --> 00:17:20.400 Thus do we have the central bank to create money for the state. Thus do we have paper money that can be created in unlimited quantities. 175 00:17:20.400 --> 00:17:27.400 Thus do we have deposit insurance to make banks failure-proof so the masses will never doubt that the credit pyramid is eternal. 176 00:17:27.400 --> 00:17:33.400 Thus do we have the Feds' power to manipulate interest rates and control the flow of credit to the system. 177 00:17:33.400 --> 00:17:37.400 An economist at Lehman Brothers recently sent us an interesting chart. 178 00:17:37.400 --> 00:17:41.400 It compares the level of price increases across many Fed regimes. 179 00:17:41.400 --> 00:17:46.400 Under the first Fed governor, Charles Hamlin, the dollar declined 8% in value. 180 00:17:46.400 --> 00:17:51.400 Under Thomas B. McCabe from the late 1940s, it declined 7.2%. 181 00:17:51.400 --> 00:18:10.400 On Arthur Burns, wholly owned by President Nixon, the dollar declined 42% in value. Under Volcker, Mr. Tight Money, it fell 40%. And under Greenspan, who has a reputation as a great inflation fighter, the value of the dollar in terms of goods and services fell fully 44%. 182 00:18:10.400 --> 00:18:19.400 Inflation serves the cause of the state by giving it room to run up debts without limit and fund its activities without making the people cough up more revenue. 183 00:18:19.400 --> 00:18:24.400 Indeed, that is the primary purpose of the inflationary state. 184 00:18:24.400 --> 00:18:27.400 People often say to me that a gold standard is impractical. 185 00:18:27.400 --> 00:18:29.400 In fact, that is not the case. 186 00:18:29.400 --> 00:18:31.400 It is very practical. 187 00:18:31.400 --> 00:18:33.400 It is the free market answer. 188 00:18:33.400 --> 00:18:38.400 The state doesn't need to produce money any more than it needs to produce shoes or shirts or clocks. 189 00:18:38.400 --> 00:18:45.400 The problem is that we lack the political will to stop the inflation monster because too many people benefit from it. 190 00:18:45.400 --> 00:18:48.400 Rationale number five, the propaganda state. 191 00:18:48.400 --> 00:18:55.400 In every society, control of the society's educational institutions increases in tandem with the rise of the state. 192 00:18:55.400 --> 00:19:02.400 This is because the state needs these institutions to inculcate the civic religion of loving the public enterprise. 193 00:19:02.400 --> 00:19:08.400 And also because the less people know about the idea of liberty, the more the state is provided room to grow. 194 00:19:08.400 --> 00:19:10.400 Consider the Department of Education. 195 00:19:10.400 --> 00:19:16.400 Ever since its creation, every Republican administration has come to power with promises to abolish it. 196 00:19:16.400 --> 00:19:21.400 But once they get in power, they find that the bureaucracy has its uses. 197 00:19:21.400 --> 00:19:26.400 Instead of cutting or abolishing it, they increase the agency and give it more to do. 198 00:19:26.400 --> 00:19:32.400 The more the state does, the more the state needs to control public opinion by controlling the schools. 199 00:19:32.400 --> 00:19:39.400 Now, there's a point of optimism here. If any state could rule without propaganda, it surely would do so. 200 00:19:39.400 --> 00:19:45.400 Why then do states find educational control and the propagation of the civic religion in its interests? 201 00:19:45.400 --> 00:19:53.400 Because at some level, every state, in all times and in all places, is required to seek the tacit consent of those they govern. 202 00:19:53.400 --> 00:19:58.400 No state can control a society by use of the sword alone and only. 203 00:19:58.400 --> 00:20:03.400 It must also seek some degree of ideological conformity with its own goals. 204 00:20:03.400 --> 00:20:07.400 Otherwise its rule becomes threatened and destabilized. 205 00:20:07.400 --> 00:20:14.400 The other side of the coin is that states can indeed be destabilized by the ultimate counterrevolutionary tactic 206 00:20:14.400 --> 00:20:18.920 tactic, providing alternative sources of education. 207 00:20:18.920 --> 00:20:22.360 As Mises said, all of history is a battle for liberty. 208 00:20:22.360 --> 00:20:25.800 Where the ideas of freedom are triumphant, liberty prevails. 209 00:20:25.800 --> 00:20:28.640 Where the ideas of freedom are buried and suppressed, 210 00:20:28.640 --> 00:20:31.080 despotism prevails. 211 00:20:31.080 --> 00:20:32.960 So our pathway is clear. 212 00:20:32.960 --> 00:20:35.360 It's a choice of the Mises Institute 213 00:20:35.360 --> 00:20:37.880 not to mix in the mire of a political system that 214 00:20:37.880 --> 00:20:40.520 is wholly owned or to attempt to seek favor 215 00:20:40.520 --> 00:20:42.760 from influential opinion makers. 216 00:20:42.760 --> 00:20:52.760 Our path is one of education, pursued with high ideals, advanced using the most modern methods, and animated by the spirit of guerrilla warfare. 217 00:20:52.760 --> 00:21:04.760 There are Misesians and Rothbardians strewn throughout the academic world, the financial and banking houses, law firms, and in every walk of life, not only in this country, but all over the world. 218 00:21:04.760 --> 00:21:11.760 At the Institute we've worked for nearly a quarter of a century on a very radical project of advancing economic science and logic. 219 00:21:11.760 --> 00:21:16.160 We have pushed to keep the fire of freedom burning brightly. We have sought to teach 220 00:21:16.160 --> 00:21:20.720 anyone and everyone about the workings and benefits of liberty. We have come under pressure 221 00:21:20.720 --> 00:21:25.920 from the left, the right and the center, yet the attention given to the body of ideas grows 222 00:21:25.920 --> 00:21:32.280 day by day. We can prevail against the propaganda state. So long as we are free to do so and 223 00:21:32.280 --> 00:21:37.440 have the means available, we will continue to do so. This is our weapon against power. 224 00:21:37.440 --> 00:21:42.080 It is the most effective weapon anyone could ever possess, and if we win this victory, 225 00:21:42.080 --> 00:21:44.800 we win all others. 226 00:21:44.800 --> 00:21:50.280 Thanks to all of you for supporting the ideals, for supporting the Mises Institute with contributions 227 00:21:50.280 --> 00:21:54.960 and moral support, and for being part of a revolutionary vanguard that sees through the 228 00:21:54.960 --> 00:22:00.800 errors of our day and imagines a brighter future of freedom, private property and peace.