WEBVTT NOTE Bourbon for Breakfast: Living Outside the Statist Quo 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:05.120 Well, our next speaker is the editorial vice president of the Ludwig von Mises Institute. 2 00:00:05.120 --> 00:00:12.760 And he is the man that really makes most things happen day to day at the Institute. 3 00:00:12.760 --> 00:00:16.880 But in addition to that, he writes a column for The Wanderer, and of course he's the author 4 00:00:16.880 --> 00:00:22.480 of Sing Like a Catholic, which is not on sale out front. 5 00:00:22.480 --> 00:00:29.000 But his book that is on sale out front is called Bourbon for Breakfast, Living Outside 6 00:00:29.000 --> 00:00:36.000 The Status Quo. He's here to tell you about it. Mr. Jeffrey Tucker. 7 00:00:42.440 --> 00:00:46.520 Thank you so much Doug. You know it's a wonderful thing to be in Las Vegas. It's my first time 8 00:00:46.520 --> 00:00:53.520 here and I'm amazed and impressed. Yesterday when we first got to town, Doug and I went 9 00:00:53.520 --> 00:00:58.400 And Doug and I went to lunch. We walked into the restaurant. The lady said, well, would 10 00:00:58.400 --> 00:01:02.460 you like to eat indoors or outdoors? And Doug said, well, I think we'd like to eat outdoors. 11 00:01:02.460 --> 00:01:08.120 So we sat down in this lovely French cafe with blue skies. And I thought, you know, 12 00:01:08.120 --> 00:01:11.480 the weather is really lovely in Las Vegas. And it took me five or 10 minutes to realize 13 00:01:11.480 --> 00:01:17.800 that we were actually still indoors. The city of illusions, I guess, is the idea. 14 00:01:17.800 --> 00:01:22.760 Now, Las Vegas is amazing. I mean, it's, to me, the final proof that organized crime contributed 15 00:01:22.760 --> 00:01:32.560 a lot more to the well-being of this country than the federal government ever has. 16 00:01:32.560 --> 00:01:38.400 So I hope it will be the first of many more return trips. It's wonderful to be here. I'm 17 00:01:38.400 --> 00:01:41.820 blogging live about it on the Mises blog if you want to check it out. 18 00:01:41.820 --> 00:01:48.200 So the title of my talk is Bourbon for Breakfast, which is a peculiar name. I want to kind of 19 00:01:48.200 --> 00:01:53.680 I want to give you some history of how the title came about in the first place. It happened 20 00:01:53.680 --> 00:01:59.080 when I first got to Auburn some years ago that I was invited to a breakfast with Ward 21 00:01:59.080 --> 00:02:06.280 Allen and it was about 7 a.m. Ward Allen is a remarkable man. He's sort of an aristocrat 22 00:02:06.280 --> 00:02:11.160 of the old southern sort, an expert in Greek and Latin and Hebrew and he's written a book 23 00:02:11.160 --> 00:02:16.760 on the King James Bible. And I don't know, to be around him is to be inspired by, I don't 24 00:02:16.760 --> 00:02:21.560 the scholarship and brilliance and manners of the old world and you kind of get wrapped up 25 00:02:21.560 --> 00:02:26.920 Tom Woods can confirm this he kind of get wrapped up into his world very quickly so he said to me 26 00:02:27.560 --> 00:02:32.200 Jeffrey would you like some coffee and I said well sure I'd like some coffee then he said 27 00:02:32.200 --> 00:02:36.440 there's a little bit of hesitation and he said would you like some bourbon in that coffee 28 00:02:37.480 --> 00:02:44.280 I was kind of shaken there for a second you know I said well yes I think so yeah so he got out his 29 00:02:44.280 --> 00:02:48.720 I was Dixie Dew and poured a splash of bourbon into the coffee and I drank it and I don't 30 00:02:48.720 --> 00:02:57.120 remember what we talked about after that, but the whole event kind of shattered some 31 00:02:57.120 --> 00:03:07.560 preconceived notions I had about everything, about what breakfast was and about the role 32 00:03:07.560 --> 00:03:12.200 of liquor in civilized living and the aristocracy and all kinds of confusing things ran through 33 00:03:12.200 --> 00:03:17.960 in my head, and for me it was an interesting moment, not because it told me something new 34 00:03:17.960 --> 00:03:23.520 about liquor mainly, but because it told me how experiences like that can change the 35 00:03:23.520 --> 00:03:28.760 way you look at the world around you, and as the years have gone on I began to think 36 00:03:28.760 --> 00:03:34.820 more and more about this whole topic of, in particular, things like bourbon and everything 37 00:03:34.820 --> 00:03:41.460 else and how it is that the government has, and government policy changes and distorts 38 00:03:41.460 --> 00:03:46.020 That's really the way we think about things. I wrote an article the other day calling for 39 00:03:46.020 --> 00:03:52.340 a repeal of the drinking age and began to look at the history of our perceptions of 40 00:03:52.340 --> 00:03:59.020 alcohol. You know, it turns out that in the 18th and 19th century, as far back as you 41 00:03:59.020 --> 00:04:04.300 look at all of human history, there is a different perception towards wine and beer and liquor 42 00:04:04.300 --> 00:04:09.580 than we have now. And the reason we tend to associate it now with the sort of daring do, 43 00:04:09.580 --> 00:04:16.580 the Federal Reserve, fiat money, fractional reserve banking, Human Action, Man Economy and State, The Theory of Money and Credit 44 00:04:39.580 --> 00:05:09.580 and all these other hair-brained ideas also gave us prohibition, and that lasted for many years until, I guess, Congress decided that they were losing too much in tax revenue, by attempting to ban it, it would be better to have it sold and loot people at the retail level, and that's when we first saw the age limits on drinking, before then there was no such thing in the 19th century, 18th century, it would be inconceivable. 45 00:05:09.580 --> 00:05:13.580 I don't know how many of you know this, I just discovered this the other day because Mark Thornton told me about it, 46 00:05:13.580 --> 00:05:19.580 that the father of our country, George Washington, was the largest distiller in all of North America in the 18th century. 47 00:05:19.580 --> 00:05:23.580 Times have changed. 48 00:05:23.580 --> 00:05:29.580 So it's an example of how government policy affects the way we look at the world around us, 49 00:05:29.580 --> 00:05:33.580 and I'm afraid that this happens more often than we know. 50 00:05:33.580 --> 00:06:00.580 I consider my whole ideological enlightenment to be a series of small discoveries about this very topic and part of my talk today I would like to go through ten areas of life that have been particularly enlightening for me with a series of suggestions of how you two might gain some similar insight and help to fight the state. 51 00:06:00.580 --> 00:06:30.580 Now, several people have read my book and they said to me, what seems to me that this book just consists of a series of observations by a guy who's walking around with ideological lenses on, you know, sort of Rothbardian, Austrian, you know, look at the world, and I thought about that later, I thought, is it really true that I have these lenses on? And I realized it's not really true at all. I think to discover libertarianism and to discover the truths of economics and the truth about liberty 52 00:06:30.580 --> 00:06:40.580 is not so much to put on particular lenses or glasses, rather it's to remove the blinders that helps you see reality more clearly than you ever have before. 53 00:06:40.580 --> 00:06:42.580 So that's what I hope that the book will do. 54 00:06:42.580 --> 00:06:56.580 So let me go through ten areas that I think that I would suggest you pursue as ways of either fighting the state or gaining your own enlightenment about a whole series of topics. 55 00:06:56.580 --> 00:07:02.300 I'm going to start with the silliest one first and it was the alternative title for my book 56 00:07:02.300 --> 00:07:07.380 and the phrase is hack your showerhead. 57 00:07:07.380 --> 00:07:12.380 This whole insight came to me because I began to purchase a series of showerheads for my 58 00:07:12.380 --> 00:07:15.900 shower in hopes of getting a faster water flow. 59 00:07:15.900 --> 00:07:20.260 I went to a hotel somewhere where the showerhead was blasting me with this hot water and I 60 00:07:20.260 --> 00:07:21.260 thought this is fantastic. 61 00:07:21.260 --> 00:07:24.220 I went home to my own shower and it was sort of dripping out of the showerhead in a pathetic 62 00:07:24.220 --> 00:07:25.220 way. 63 00:07:25.220 --> 00:07:26.220 I thought this is ridiculous. 64 00:07:26.220 --> 00:07:31.580 So I went to Lowe's and one of these hardware stores to pick up a series of shower heads 65 00:07:31.580 --> 00:07:35.220 and I kept buying them, buying them, trying to find one that would blast me with lots 66 00:07:35.220 --> 00:07:37.220 of water and it never really happened. 67 00:07:37.220 --> 00:07:38.900 I couldn't really figure out what the deal was. 68 00:07:38.900 --> 00:07:43.060 So I got curious and I began to take it apart and found that each one that I bought had 69 00:07:43.060 --> 00:07:47.020 this little stopper thing in it, you know, it was installed by the manufacturer to stop 70 00:07:47.020 --> 00:07:48.940 the water flow. 71 00:07:48.940 --> 00:07:53.340 I was amazed by this and I thought, why would a shower head, when you go to the store they're 72 00:08:23.340 --> 00:08:27.300 No difference in terms of water conservation whether you have that little plug in your 73 00:08:27.300 --> 00:08:31.420 shower head or not. It's just preposterous. So what I did is I took it out to my garage 74 00:08:31.420 --> 00:08:38.580 and I pulled out my power drill and drilled the darn thing out of there and put it back 75 00:08:38.580 --> 00:08:43.900 up and it worked. So that's what I call hacking your shower head and I strongly recommend 76 00:08:43.900 --> 00:08:52.580 it to all of you. That's a way to work around the state. Don't let them wreck your shower. 77 00:08:52.580 --> 00:08:57.420 So it turns out there was a company in Phoenix, actually, that was selling showerheads that 78 00:08:57.420 --> 00:09:02.180 are easier to hack. You don't have to use a drill, you just reach in there with a screwdriver 79 00:09:02.180 --> 00:09:06.060 and pop it right out of there. It's fantastic. So I bought one of their showerheads. I got 80 00:09:06.060 --> 00:09:11.240 very curious about this topic. As a matter of fact, I went around measuring all the showers 81 00:09:11.240 --> 00:09:15.700 and how many gallons it'll pour out per minute, and I became a temporary expert on gallons 82 00:09:15.700 --> 00:09:19.740 per minute per showerhead, and I had all the data and everything. I've forgotten it now, 83 00:09:19.740 --> 00:09:23.740 Anyway, that was my great weekend project with my kids. 84 00:09:23.740 --> 00:09:29.740 But anyway, this company was selling these shower heads that you can easily hack. 85 00:09:29.740 --> 00:09:36.740 So I promoted them in a website, in an online article, and they got lots of hits and had lots of sales. 86 00:09:36.740 --> 00:09:40.740 And next thing you know, about two weeks later, they got a letter from the federal government, 87 00:09:40.740 --> 00:09:44.740 I don't know, consumer product safety, I don't know, whoever regulates this stuff, 88 00:09:44.740 --> 00:09:48.740 telling them to cease and desist from the company, which had previously written me a letter of thank you. 89 00:09:48.740 --> 00:10:18.740 Number 2. Turn the screw. This concerns a much more serious topic. It's the heat of the water in your house, actually. I don't know where I was. Somewhere I was noticing that the water 90 00:10:18.740 --> 00:10:24.740 The water coming out of the faucet was extremely hot, and my own water in my own faucet was not that hot, and it was the deal. 91 00:10:24.740 --> 00:10:30.740 And at the time, there was all kinds of hell scares going on about what happens if you have tepid water. 92 00:10:30.740 --> 00:10:40.740 The germs aren't killed, and your dishes don't get that clean, your clothes don't get that clean, your own body never quite gets clean. 93 00:10:40.740 --> 00:10:46.740 So I began to wonder, am I just living in disgusting tepid water all the time, and what can I do about this? 94 00:10:46.740 --> 00:10:58.500 And sure enough, I went to my hot water heater and it was set at something like 110, but there was a little screw that allowed you to change that. You have to sort of unbolt the thing or whatever. 95 00:10:58.500 --> 00:11:09.540 So when I changed it to 120, it wasn't quite right, so I moved it to 130, it was getting better, finally moved to something like 145, perfect, right? So blasting hot water is amazing to me. 96 00:11:09.540 --> 00:11:15.540 Now, what is the deal with these hot water heaters that they don't come preset at 145? 97 00:11:15.540 --> 00:11:21.540 Well, you guessed the answer. There's a government regulation on this. They have to be shipped at 110. 98 00:11:21.540 --> 00:11:29.540 Moreover, if you're going to be licensed to install these things, you are not permitted to change them, even if the consumer begs you. 99 00:11:29.540 --> 00:11:34.540 So, I tried this myself. I had a guy over repairing something in the house and I said, 100 00:11:34.540 --> 00:11:37.940 Can you fix my hot water heater so that it's hotter? 101 00:11:37.940 --> 00:11:40.380 He said, ah, no, not going there. 102 00:11:40.380 --> 00:11:42.060 That's not something I do, you know. 103 00:11:42.060 --> 00:11:42.900 I said, well, why is that? 104 00:11:42.900 --> 00:11:45.380 He said, well, yeah, I'll lose my license, you know. 105 00:11:45.380 --> 00:11:46.380 So there you go. 106 00:11:47.780 --> 00:11:48.940 Look at your hot water heaters. 107 00:11:48.940 --> 00:11:51.020 Take a look and see what the government's done to you. 108 00:11:51.020 --> 00:11:53.780 Another favor that the Congress and the president have done 109 00:11:53.780 --> 00:11:55.860 and the bureaucracies have done for you. 110 00:11:55.860 --> 00:11:57.060 Okay, the third point. 111 00:11:59.940 --> 00:12:04.220 I recommend that everybody visit a coin shop. 112 00:12:04.220 --> 00:12:12.820 In the coin shop you find a marvelous look at the legacy of liberty through a certain 113 00:12:12.820 --> 00:12:15.180 perspective that you would otherwise not get. 114 00:12:15.180 --> 00:12:20.580 You find coins from all ages and it turns out these coins are made of real stuff, real 115 00:12:20.580 --> 00:12:24.560 stuff that's valuable in a market, gold and silver and other things. 116 00:12:24.560 --> 00:12:28.860 And you get, you pick up the coins, you hold them and you gain a perspective about what 117 00:12:28.860 --> 00:12:31.020 it means to be free. 118 00:12:31.020 --> 00:12:35.620 When you compare those coins with the money you have in your wallet, with the pictures 119 00:12:35.620 --> 00:12:42.460 of dead politicians on them, on paper or whatever they're made out of, and you get a short history 120 00:12:42.460 --> 00:12:49.340 of what's happened to us, going from a free society to a society that's preposterously 121 00:12:49.340 --> 00:12:53.540 despotic in every conceivable way. 122 00:12:53.540 --> 00:12:58.700 I always enjoy going into these shops and looking at coins from all times and all ages 123 00:12:58.700 --> 00:13:06.500 is an imagining just how much a freer country we would have been if we had retained a monetary 124 00:13:06.500 --> 00:13:15.620 system that was really linked to the individual citizen and his or her ability to change paper 125 00:13:15.620 --> 00:13:21.180 for gold and gold for paper back and forth to really have a profound sense of independence. 126 00:13:21.180 --> 00:13:25.600 Of course if you have a state that's going to be taxing you all the time and running huge 127 00:13:25.600 --> 00:13:29.520 huge deficits and running high debts, you have to change the money. There's no such thing 128 00:13:29.520 --> 00:13:35.640 as, for example, a Keynesian state that's on the gold standard. Those things are completely 129 00:13:35.640 --> 00:13:40.320 incompatible. And even if an ideology of a country is not very friendly to freedoms, 130 00:13:40.320 --> 00:13:45.840 insofar as the money is sound and secure and it's of a good quality, you're going to be 131 00:13:45.840 --> 00:13:51.280 able to retain that freedom much more than you ever would. And so I argued in the book 132 00:13:51.280 --> 00:14:04.560 4. Work for Free 133 00:14:04.560 --> 00:14:10.500 This is some advice that I would give, in particular young people. It's poignant today 134 00:14:10.500 --> 00:14:15.460 because of the very high unemployment rate of new college graduates. All over the country 135 00:14:15.460 --> 00:14:19.200 you've got these people that have done everything right. They stayed in school like the public 136 00:14:19.200 --> 00:14:24.100 Service Announcements used to tell us, stay in school, they got great grades, they spent 137 00:14:24.100 --> 00:14:30.340 gazillion dollars on their education, they've got high college debts in excess of six figures 138 00:14:30.340 --> 00:14:33.960 and they go out into the job market with a degree in aerospace engineering or whatever 139 00:14:33.960 --> 00:14:36.840 it may happen to be and they can't find a job. 140 00:14:36.840 --> 00:14:43.520 And this is true for as many as 35% of our new college graduates, the official data lists 141 00:14:43.520 --> 00:14:47.440 it somewhere closer to 20% but if you include everybody who can't get a job it's closer 142 00:14:47.440 --> 00:14:48.440 to 35%. 143 00:14:48.440 --> 00:14:59.440 It's a particular problem for students with debts right now, because the way the whole system works is that you have to start paying the debt off as soon as you get a job. 144 00:14:59.440 --> 00:15:11.440 But if you stay in school and get a second or third or fourth or fifth PhD, then you can continue to prolong the period in which you don't have to pay off the debt. 145 00:15:11.440 --> 00:15:21.440 If you accept a job at Starbucks or Wal-Mart or wherever the places that are hiring today, it doesn't give you enough income to both live and pay off your debt. 146 00:15:21.440 --> 00:15:30.440 So they're in a particular quandary. It's particularly dangerous since in a very tight labor market, people are not interested in hiring a person just because they have a college degree. 147 00:15:30.440 --> 00:15:34.440 They're interested in actual real skills, things that you can do. 148 00:15:34.440 --> 00:15:43.440 and so they're looking for people, all enterprises are looking for people with some experience and some value to add to the life of the firm. 149 00:15:43.440 --> 00:15:53.440 Unfortunately, many young people have been told their whole lives that it's not necessary that they get a job. 150 00:15:53.440 --> 00:15:55.440 The most important thing they can do is stay in school. 151 00:15:55.440 --> 00:15:57.440 So they're in a terrible situation. 152 00:15:57.440 --> 00:16:03.440 So I recommend for all these people that they find some place that they can do volunteer work, 153 00:16:03.440 --> 00:16:09.440 whether it's an enterprise or a non-profit organization or a church or some other kind of situation, 154 00:16:09.440 --> 00:16:17.440 to get a job and just work for absolutely nothing and possibly live at home as long as your parents can stand having you around. 155 00:16:17.440 --> 00:16:23.440 And I would compare two situations, two cases in point. 156 00:16:23.440 --> 00:16:30.440 One was, at a clothing shop I worked at when I was about 16 years old, I remember the boss came by and told my fellow employee, 157 00:16:30.440 --> 00:16:36.440 I'd like you to straighten those ties, and the boss walked off and my fellow employee muttered under his breath, 158 00:16:36.440 --> 00:16:39.440 I'm not doing that for minimum wage, is what he said. 159 00:16:39.440 --> 00:16:42.440 Okay, this guy is a loser. 160 00:16:42.440 --> 00:16:52.440 And I compare that person to a man who volunteered his time working for Misesorg last year when our main webmaster was off on his hunting trip. 161 00:17:22.440 --> 00:17:31.440 This week I got a phone call from a major university in the northeast that was asking for a job recommendation for this gentleman. 162 00:17:31.440 --> 00:17:39.440 And I gave him, as you can imagine, an over-the-top job recommendation, and he got the job immediately as a result of it. 163 00:17:39.440 --> 00:17:45.440 So you see in this very tight labor market, reputation and recommendations are worth everything, 164 00:17:45.440 --> 00:18:14.440 5. Deals with a topic that I try not to discuss because it consumes me entirely and nobody can get a word in when the topic comes up. 165 00:18:14.440 --> 00:18:22.440 In the name of property rights for about the last hundred years or so, the government has 166 00:18:22.440 --> 00:18:29.300 heavily regulated innovations with patents and texts with copyrights. These represent 167 00:18:29.300 --> 00:18:36.440 a fantastic intervention in the free market economy and have led to innumerable disasters 168 00:18:36.440 --> 00:18:41.300 in so many industries and these laws are getting tighter by the day. But at least in the world 169 00:18:41.300 --> 00:19:11.300 In the world of patents, there's hardly any work around, but in the world of publishing, there is the possibility of publishing without copyright at all, or at least not without conventional copyright, and the term that's being thrown around nowadays is creative comments, what this basically does is it takes advantage of the infinite reproducibility of texts, and you publish within that framework, and that allows anybody to copy what you do, and allows you to have complete ownership over your text, 170 00:19:11.300 --> 00:19:16.060 ownership rights with everybody in the world. I don't even like to talk about the term ownership 171 00:19:16.060 --> 00:19:20.180 when it comes to things like ideas because it doesn't really make any sense. But the 172 00:19:20.180 --> 00:19:25.060 best free market way to publish is in creative commons, with getting rid of the government 173 00:19:25.060 --> 00:19:29.540 regulations altogether. The Mises Institute has embraced this model of publishing and 174 00:19:29.540 --> 00:19:34.380 I believe it's one of the keys to the success of the organization over the last ten years 175 00:19:34.380 --> 00:19:40.380 or so. I would strongly encourage any authors to use this model of publishing and to reject 176 00:19:40.380 --> 00:19:46.180 any contracts with publishers that are going to take away your rights, but instead either 177 00:19:46.180 --> 00:19:49.220 publish it yourself or go with a publisher that publishes in Creative Commons. 178 00:19:49.220 --> 00:19:54.260 And by the way, this is not incompatible with profitability, as I think the Mises Institute 179 00:19:54.260 --> 00:19:55.260 has demonstrated. 180 00:19:55.260 --> 00:19:59.580 We're seeing ever more publishers embrace Creative Commons, but in this case, mainstream 181 00:19:59.580 --> 00:20:03.380 publishers are a little bit behind the rest of us in this respect. 182 00:20:03.380 --> 00:20:08.500 Okay, number six on my list of things. 183 00:20:08.500 --> 00:20:11.420 A Courthouse 184 00:20:11.420 --> 00:20:16.820 Even libertarians have, I think, a very naive view of the criminal justice system. 185 00:20:16.820 --> 00:20:20.100 I talk about this a little bit in Bourbon for Breakfast. 186 00:20:20.100 --> 00:20:26.100 I spent several days sitting in a courthouse in Auburn, Alabama, and I was amazed at just 187 00:20:26.100 --> 00:20:30.160 how completely benign our so-called criminal class is today. 188 00:20:30.160 --> 00:20:34.540 Most of the people that were in the courthouse could be turned, this is a criminal courthouse, 189 00:20:34.540 --> 00:20:38.020 could be turned loose on the streets immediately with no harm to society and actually quite 190 00:20:38.020 --> 00:20:49.020 If you have the view that our courts are filled with real criminals, I would encourage you to go to the courthouse and have a look at these poor, pathetic souls. 191 00:20:49.020 --> 00:20:59.020 I saw so many people that were accused of things like stealing a ham sandwich from Walmart and thereby having their license removed and fined hundreds and hundreds of dollars and basically their lives entirely wrecked. 192 00:20:59.020 --> 00:21:03.620 I mean, this is true for person after person after person in the courthouse, far from being criminals. 193 00:21:03.620 --> 00:21:08.520 Oh, my favorite crime that was committed at the courthouse was, of course DUI was there, 194 00:21:08.520 --> 00:21:14.420 but lots of people that were drinking while driving, but the biggest crime in Auburn, Alabama, 195 00:21:14.420 --> 00:21:17.020 is actually public intoxication. 196 00:21:17.020 --> 00:21:21.120 So what happened after they cracked down on DUI is people began to walk home from bars. 197 00:21:21.120 --> 00:21:26.220 Now they arrest you for that too, you know, so. 198 00:21:26.220 --> 00:21:27.120 So go to the courthouse. 199 00:21:27.120 --> 00:21:37.120 If you think our criminal justice system is serving you, see who's there and see who's getting in trouble with these arrogant judges and their outrages. 200 00:21:37.120 --> 00:21:49.120 Number seven, I'm listing this not because I expect you to take me up on it, but just simply because it's something that I did, which is to go to jail, and it really did happen to me. 201 00:21:49.120 --> 00:22:01.120 I went to jail for a time because I inadvertently failed to pay a fine for a traffic ticket I received by rolling through a stop sign about a block away from my house. 202 00:22:01.120 --> 00:22:08.120 I was arrested during a Sunday brunch at my house and taken to jail, and it was one of the most enlightening moments of my life. 203 00:22:08.120 --> 00:22:14.120 Actually, I got to know my inmates very well, nice folks, all. 204 00:22:14.120 --> 00:22:30.120 My experience for the first time, something that really intensified, I would say, and solidified my commitment to libertarian ideas, namely, I began to understand for the first time what it means to be completely owned and controlled by the state. 205 00:22:30.120 --> 00:22:38.120 If I can explain it. It's very different from being, for example, an animal. I have a new dog and I can tell you the animal is very well taken care of. 206 00:22:38.120 --> 00:22:42.400 that my dog is, he's beloved and valued by all of us. 207 00:22:42.400 --> 00:22:46.480 The people that go to jail are not treated like animals, 208 00:22:46.480 --> 00:22:51.000 they're treated like something far less valuable than that. 209 00:22:51.000 --> 00:22:53.560 What happens to you in jail is a complete metaphysical 210 00:22:53.560 --> 00:22:56.360 transformation where you have absolutely no value 211 00:22:56.360 --> 00:22:58.040 to anybody and anybody who does value 212 00:22:58.040 --> 00:22:59.760 has no control over your fate. 213 00:23:01.720 --> 00:23:04.280 I had no idea what time it was, for example, 214 00:23:04.280 --> 00:23:05.780 and you can't believe how important it is 215 00:23:05.780 --> 00:23:08.420 to just know things like what time it is. 216 00:23:08.420 --> 00:23:12.500 So I would holler out to the person, the warden or whatever, 217 00:23:12.500 --> 00:23:14.740 hey, sir, can you tell me what time it is? 218 00:23:14.740 --> 00:23:17.300 And this blank look would come over his face 219 00:23:17.300 --> 00:23:20.220 looking at me like there seems to be some sort of flesh blob 220 00:23:20.220 --> 00:23:22.900 across the room that's making a strange noise at me 221 00:23:22.900 --> 00:23:24.900 and I don't know why he's doing that. 222 00:23:24.900 --> 00:23:26.580 And then just go on. 223 00:23:26.580 --> 00:23:27.860 Very strange effect. 224 00:23:28.780 --> 00:23:33.200 Again, if you have a naive view of jail, 225 00:23:33.200 --> 00:23:34.300 you should go visit. 226 00:23:34.300 --> 00:23:40.220 I was astounded to discover that the overwhelming majority of people in the prison that I was 227 00:23:40.220 --> 00:23:47.220 temporarily in were there for ridiculous offenses, mostly petty theft and overwhelmingly drugs. 228 00:23:48.260 --> 00:23:53.460 And overwhelmingly among those drugs, marijuana distribution and use is preposterous. I don't 229 00:23:53.460 --> 00:23:58.340 doubt that there are some people who should be in some sort of jail, and I wonder what 230 00:23:58.340 --> 00:24:02.860 way the private sector could take care of that problem. But I can tell you that the 231 00:24:02.860 --> 00:24:09.380 The way the state is running its jails today is absolute despotism. 232 00:24:09.380 --> 00:24:13.500 The United States is the highest percentage of the population in prison of any country 233 00:24:13.500 --> 00:24:14.500 in the world today. 234 00:24:14.500 --> 00:24:15.500 We used to say that about Russia. 235 00:24:15.500 --> 00:24:17.460 It's now true of us. 236 00:24:17.460 --> 00:24:20.980 Okay, number eight. 237 00:24:20.980 --> 00:24:24.700 Now I'm listing this under the category of just generally improving the culture. 238 00:24:24.700 --> 00:24:28.860 Now I'm addressing this topic because the biggest complaint about the market from both 239 00:24:28.860 --> 00:24:33.100 Both the left and the right, for as long as I can remember and going as far back as you 240 00:24:33.100 --> 00:24:38.780 can look, is that it's unfriendly to the kind of culture that we want to have. 241 00:24:38.780 --> 00:24:45.140 The left complains that there's not enough art houses and the kind of culture that it 242 00:24:45.140 --> 00:24:46.140 wants. 243 00:24:46.140 --> 00:24:51.180 The right complains that the market is destroying morality and aesthetics and all the rest of 244 00:24:51.180 --> 00:24:52.180 it. 245 00:24:52.180 --> 00:24:58.300 Well, it turns out that the academics in Auburn, Alabama have been complaining about this for 246 00:24:58.300 --> 00:25:06.940 For years we lacked a serious ballet and we lacked enough good restaurants to sell things 247 00:25:06.940 --> 00:25:14.940 like food from all parts of the world and whole foods that greens like to eat. Well, 248 00:25:14.940 --> 00:25:19.740 it turns out this whole problem in Auburn has been completely solved and guess how? 249 00:25:19.740 --> 00:25:28.100 Just by a handful of entrepreneurs. We had a young woman in her early 20s start a ballet 250 00:25:28.100 --> 00:25:35.100 and a training school for young girls that's turned into a serious ballet and now we have that in Auburn and it's a beautiful thing to see. 251 00:25:35.100 --> 00:25:44.100 And we have many wonderful new restaurants that have opened up with our growing economy and a new grocery store that sells all the kind of food that socialists like to eat. 252 00:25:44.100 --> 00:25:54.100 And I can think of no better role for a socialist in modern life than to support capitalist production by buying their goofy foods and silly health items. 253 00:25:54.100 --> 00:26:24.100 Number 9. Read old literature 254 00:26:24.100 --> 00:26:25.100 Culture 255 00:26:25.100 --> 00:26:37.100 and some sort of transformation, and there's been a blank out about some fantastic pro-capitalistic novels that were written in the 1920s and 1930s, most especially by my favorite all-time author, Garrett Garrett. 256 00:26:37.100 --> 00:26:50.100 He wrote four great novels. How many of you in this room have read any of them? Okay, so just a few of you. And you highly recommend them, right? Do you like those novels, Garrett? Yeah, they're fantastic. 257 00:26:50.100 --> 00:26:55.220 One of them is called The Cinder Buggy. It's about the transformation of the country from 258 00:26:55.220 --> 00:27:00.260 steel to iron. Another one is called Harangue. It's about the experience of socialism in 259 00:27:00.260 --> 00:27:08.620 North Dakota. These are great novels in addition to being great economic tutorials in their 260 00:27:08.620 --> 00:27:14.060 own right. So read those books and keep them alive. I think that these books ought to be 261 00:27:14.060 --> 00:27:15.060 bestsellers. 262 00:27:15.060 --> 00:27:25.060 Okay, finally, as number 10, I have listed as just something very simple, tell the truth. 263 00:27:25.060 --> 00:27:32.060 And here, I'd like to address a point that Mises often used to make. 264 00:27:32.060 --> 00:27:37.060 He spoke about ideas as being more powerful than armies. 265 00:27:37.060 --> 00:27:44.060 And I think we need to reflect on what that means, more powerful than armies, more powerful than guns. 266 00:27:44.060 --> 00:27:47.980 Why that might be the true. Why that might be the case. There are two kinds of goods 267 00:27:47.980 --> 00:27:54.180 in the world. Those which are scarce and subject to limits and have to be allocated through 268 00:27:54.180 --> 00:28:00.620 the price system and are subject to economic law. There's a second kind of good that's 269 00:28:00.620 --> 00:28:06.620 out there and that's the kind of good that's not scarce. It's infinitely reproducible. 270 00:28:06.620 --> 00:28:12.220 It can be replicated again and again without ever diminishing the quality of that first 271 00:28:12.220 --> 00:28:19.160 Product. These are non-scarce goods. It's these non-scarce goods that do not need to 272 00:28:19.160 --> 00:28:26.160 be rationed through the price system. They can be constantly and forever reproduced. And 273 00:28:29.940 --> 00:28:35.740 therefore, they're the most powerful goods that we can ever deal in. They're the most 274 00:28:35.740 --> 00:28:40.940 powerful goods we can ever possess and the most powerful goods we can ever share. An 275 00:28:40.940 --> 00:28:44.940 One example of one of those goods might be, for example, fire. 276 00:28:44.940 --> 00:28:49.940 Then it would be used to give the example of fire, because it can start with a small match, 277 00:28:49.940 --> 00:28:53.940 or it can turn into a bonfire, it can burn down a whole city. 278 00:28:53.940 --> 00:28:57.940 And it can be shared and shared and shared again. 279 00:28:57.940 --> 00:29:01.940 It's the same thing with digital media, which is the great innovation in human history. 280 00:29:01.940 --> 00:29:06.940 Every time you send an email with an attachment, you've replicated that document. 281 00:29:06.940 --> 00:29:08.940 And that person who receives it can replicate it again, 282 00:29:08.940 --> 00:29:12.940 It can happen millions of times and on into infinity. 283 00:29:12.940 --> 00:29:19.940 That's the true magic of ideas, is their infinite reproducibility. 284 00:29:19.940 --> 00:29:22.940 If you think about Jesus' own miracles, for example, 285 00:29:22.940 --> 00:29:27.940 so many of them involve taking scarce goods and turning them into infinitely available goods. 286 00:29:27.940 --> 00:29:30.940 I always like to think of the example of the loaves and the fishes. 287 00:29:30.940 --> 00:29:35.940 He's given a luncheon talk, you know, like this one or something, 288 00:29:35.940 --> 00:29:40.740 People start to get hungry, they're starting to complain, and they say, we've got any food around here? 289 00:29:40.740 --> 00:29:45.240 Turns out one of the apostles has some loaves and fishes, and so Jesus does whatever he does, 290 00:29:45.240 --> 00:29:55.740 and turns those small little scarce goods into infinitely reproducible enough to fill up everybody on loaves and fishes in the crowd. 291 00:29:55.740 --> 00:30:00.540 And after everybody was satisfied, there were some leftovers, and he did again whatever he does, 292 00:30:00.540 --> 00:30:04.340 and he turned it back into a scarce good and said, well, we better save those for later, 293 00:30:04.340 --> 00:30:34.340 The Miracle is all around us in the world of ideas, this infinite reproducibility of ideas, so that, it's remarkable to think of it, if you tell the truth to just one person and plant an idea of liberty in his head, that may be all that you have to do in the whole of your life to do something magnificent and wonderful, because that person can tell another person, we can tell ten people and so on and so forth. 294 00:30:34.340 --> 00:30:40.260 and so on, and it can exponentially grow to sweep the entire world without anybody doing 295 00:30:40.260 --> 00:30:45.560 anything other than writing and talking or sharing emails or sharing links. That's an 296 00:30:45.560 --> 00:30:50.540 extraordinary thing. There's no army in the world that has that kind of power, that the 297 00:30:50.540 --> 00:30:56.940 power of ideas has. If you look at what's happening in the world today, I marvel at 298 00:30:56.940 --> 00:31:03.940 the effects of digital media. What Mises.org alone, the website that I manage, has done 299 00:31:03.940 --> 00:31:10.900 for the Ideas of Liberty is extraordinary in so many ways. I receive emails every day 300 00:31:10.900 --> 00:31:15.700 showing evidence of the way it's had this tremendous influence on culture. And just to 301 00:31:15.700 --> 00:31:21.300 be at this meeting, Freedom Fest, to see all the people here from all over the world and 302 00:31:21.300 --> 00:31:24.900 from every kind of demographic, how does this happen? It doesn't happen through guns. It 303 00:31:24.900 --> 00:31:28.820 doesn't happen through real goods that are scarce. It happens through the infinite reproducibility 304 00:31:28.820 --> 00:31:36.400 of Ideas. And all of human history in some way can be looked at as a struggle to find 305 00:31:36.400 --> 00:31:43.180 a way to share things more cheaply. When I prepared a paper for a conference we had in 306 00:31:43.180 --> 00:31:49.640 Salamanca, I looked at the history of the scribes. It would take 15 or 20 scribes to 307 00:31:49.640 --> 00:31:55.340 produce one book over the course of something like five years, and that book would be the 308 00:31:55.340 --> 00:32:00.840 the most valuable thing that was owned by the monastery, and look at what we can do now with digital media. 309 00:32:00.840 --> 00:32:10.840 We can do the work of all those people over many years in a flash of a second, just by sharing links and by sharing attachments. 310 00:32:10.840 --> 00:32:21.340 This is the real miracle that we have at our fingertips, and I encourage all of you to use it, to tell the truth, to share ideas, and eventually freedom will take over the world. 311 00:32:21.340 --> 00:32:22.340 Thank you very much. 312 00:32:25.340 --> 00:32:27.340 Thank you very much.