Defending the Undefendable: An Interview with Walter Block

0:00How's everybody doing out there? It's the Mike Martin Show here on blogtalkradio.com. As always, I'm Mike Martin along with Chris Sterk. Sterk, are you there, man? Yes, I am. All right. Excellent. So we're going to test some new stuff out here. I got myself a really fancy audio mixer. So I've been playing around with that, trying to get everything to go smoothly. And as you know, as always is the case with new technology, it doesn't always go as planned. the first time around. But today is going to be a great show. As always, Libertarian Politics and Philosophy, and just general hanging out, playing some good music. And Stokes actually got a treat for us today. You're going to play your guitar in the background, right?

0:45Yeah, at some time. I'm sure I'll play a little bit. Excellent. I mean, this is what it's going to be all about, man, is just hanging out, having a good time, and talking some real philosophy. And today we've got quite a treat, And we have a special guest on the line with us who is all the way down in Auburn, Alabama right now. His name is Professor Roger Block from Royal University and Professor Block is, I guess you can say, kind of like a Jedi of libertarian thought. Professor Block, are you with us? I am and I'm delighted to be with you. Excellent. So we're going to be talking today a little bit about the questions that come up every time we debate the issues about stateless societies. Me being an anarcho-capitalist, I'm always faced with the same sort of questions every time I talk to my friends about how a society would work without a government.

1:39So Professor Block is going to help us out here in talking about some major questions that always arise when it comes to a stateless society. So we're going to start right off the bat, but first I want to mention that if you're interested in calling up and talking to us here and hanging out and throwing out a question

2:27of Experience. I think we're at around the 200th student mark, so it's very exciting. That is really exciting. And actually, as a matter of fact, I really want to attend one of these conferences, but it's kind of hard to get away from work for a couple of days to go see it. Well, one of these days, hopefully. Maybe. Who knows? Yeah, and hopefully we might have something going on again here in New York, as I missed the Murray Rothbard thing The Mises Institute does have meetings in New York, either every year or every other year, and maybe we'll all link up at the next one.

3:25and sort of a chaotic spree to run amok and to cause damage and all kinds of things like that. And when I usually start off, I talk about the non-aggression axiom, which is a big central part of libertarian ethics. So could you elaborate a little bit about what the non-aggression axiom is? Yes. I think that you're quite right in pointing to the non-aggression axiom as the, I don't Basic Axiom or Basic Premise of Libertarianism

4:211. The voluntary way and 2. The coercive way. The voluntary way is, I say, hey, I'll give you 100 bucks for them, or I'll be your best friend forever, or if you give me your shoes, I'll give you my tie and my wristwatch. Something like that. And if you reject all these offers, I'll try and up my offer. And if you say, you know, sorry, these shoes have got sentimental value and I'm not giving them to you for anything, well then, I just can't get the shoes and it's tough on me because they're your shoes. Now, there's another way to do it. So there's another way I can get those shoes. I can come to you with a gun and say, hey, give me those shoes or I'll plug you. Or I can steal them from you when you're not wearing them or something like that. And all the libertarian non-aggression axiom says is the first way of doing it is the voluntary way, trade, gifts, whatever, is legitimate and ought to be allowed by law.

5:10Whereas the second way of doing it, murder, rape, theft, whatever, is illegitimate and ought to be prohibited by law. There's nothing really wild-eyed about this. I think most people in our listening audience, if all they heard was that, yeah, they'd say, sure, you shouldn't steal his shoes. The difference between libertarianism and most people who would agree with that, however, is that libertarians are very, very rigidly, dare I say, consistent. We brook no exceptions to that general rule of non-aggression. For example, suppose I come into your house with The Theory of Money and Credit Democracy, we get your shoes. Well, the libertarians wouldn't go along with that because this is a violation of the Non-Aggression Act, and that's what the government is when it's a democracy, and that's the best sort of government I suppose. The others are autocracy or monarchy or something like that, where the dictator dictates. But even in a democracy, you have Now that's such a thing as called tyranny of the majority. So if the majority of people vote to take your shoes or to take your tax money,

6:46the hell with them, says libertarians, because they're violating the non-aggression axiom. Now there is one more thing I have to say, because the way I see libertarianism is not really just a non-aggression axiom. There's the opposite side of that coin, and that is called property rights. Because if I take the shoes that you're now wearing, strictly speaking, we don't know if I'm aggressing against you, The Theory of Money and Credit

7:36Robert Nozick tells us any legitimate title transfer from that is compatible with free enterprise and laissez-faire capitalism and libertarianism. So for example if we trade, I now get to own the milk even though I didn't produce it and you get to own the corn even though you didn't produce it, but we can both trace our ownership to a legitimate title transfer, in this case, border, plus the initial homesteading. So there you have libertarianism in a two-minute version or a three-minute version. It's the non-aggression axiom and private property rights based on homesteading and no exceptions, even for government.

8:23And the problem with government... Now, I should be fair and say that most libertarians are not anarcho-libertarians. They're not anarchists. I think that's where Sturck falls in is not... I'm sorry, I can't hear you. I'm sorry, that's where Sturck falls in is not being an anarcho-capitalist as myself. Right, right, right. And the minarchist or minimal archist position, and that's not a pejorative, it's just the way this is called. The most famous person of this sort is Arne Rand, and she said, I'm for limited government, I'm for laissez-faire capitalism. and Socialism. However, government has one legitimate function, and that is to protect persons and property and property based on homesteading. She was a libertarian even though she rejected that label.

9:09And to that end, there are three legitimate institutions of government, armies to keep foreign bad guys off of us, police to keep local bad guys off of us, and courts to tell who the good guys and the bad guys are, and that's it for her. The problem that the anarchist libertarian or anarcho-libertarian has with that is that a government is necessarily a violation of the very thing that Ayn Rand says it's supposed to protect against. Namely, it violates persons and property rights because of two things. One, it taxes people and taxes the compulsory levies. If you don't believe that, try not paying and see what happens to you. And the other is that government is a monopoly. It demands a monopoly of the protection services, and why should it have a monopoly?

9:57We believe in competition in producing shoes and milk and corn, so why not in protection services? So, as an anarcho-libertarian, I would say that government is, per se, a violation of the very axiom of libertarianism that all libertarians agree, namely, minarchists are are a little inconsistent here. Right. And you touched on a couple of points. And one is whenever people ask the question, well, how would an anarchy work without a government, as long as it's a capitalist anarchy, there's always going to be order because of private property. The people who own the property make the rules. And obviously being in a world of chaos is just not conducive to anything that's creative Creative or anything that's going to bring in any kind of wealth to you. So you kind of find it necessary to create a sense of order, even though there is no government?

10:55Well, I wouldn't say even though. I would say government is the greatest violator of order. I mean, in the last century, governments, apart from wars, have killed 170 million people of their own citizens. You know, so when you say that you're against chaos and disorder and blood in the streets, I tell you, I come from New Orleans, and that sounds like what we've got right now, where government can't protect us out of a paper bag, so to speak, or to mix a metaphor there. We have, in New Orleans, we have murders every week. We have the prohibition of drugs, which creates a lot of the havoc, and I'm not talking about The War. I'm not talking about Iraq and Afghanistan and maybe Iran. I'm just talking about domestic killing. And then also the fact that some 40,000 people a year lose their lives on government socialist highways, and somehow it's blamed on, I don't know, drunken driving or speeding or something, but it's really the government's fault. So I'm not really a big fan of government

12:00when it comes to the tasks that the minarchists assign to it, namely protection of person and Property. I think government is chaos and it makes us less safe, not more safe. Well, I totally agree on that. And if you've got any questions about this topic, the number here is 347-826-7648. Sturck, you got anything here, any questions? No, as of right now, I think I'm pretty contempt. Hey, maybe we've got a convert there. There you go. I mean, it's something that if you talk about it from the very roots and in the very beginnings of non-aggression, and you explain to people that the government cannot exist without aggression, then I think you can sell over a lot of people, and that's been my experience in debating and talking about the issues, is that if you break it down to let people understand that the government or the state, any state, is based on violence and it cannot exist without it, then I think you can start to understand how people like

13:01like us are more anarchists because we see the state as violence and it cannot be separated as such. Right. Absolutely. Now there is one objection that sometimes people mention, they say, look, the government is not coercive, it's really a club. And if you join the golf club, you have to pay your dues, otherwise they kick you the hell out of the golf club. If you join the tennis club, you have to pay your dues, otherwise they kick you out of the club. Well, the US government or the United States of America should more accurately be called The United States of America club, to just put it in words that articulates what they really mean. So we have to ask, is the government a club? And the key to being a club is that everyone has to volunteer for it. You can't be walking down the street and somebody grabs you with an umbrella handle around the neck and pulls you in and says, okay, you're a

13:53member of the club, whether you like it or not, that's not a club. So is the United States The Theory of Money and Credit

14:28How do we counter this? We ask, how did the United States start? I don't know when it started, in 1776, 1789, I'm not a historian, so I don't know exactly dates, I'm weak on dates, but a long time ago there was no United States club. There was Britain, and then we seceded from them. We had a little bit of a war about that, a revolutionary war, and all of a sudden we've We've got this supposed club. Well, in the Dolphin Tennis Club, it has to be unanimous. Everyone who's a member has to agree to join, and for important things, you have to have some sort of signature. Well, who signed anything? Well, a bunch of people. John Hancock with a big signature, and maybe 15 other people signed the Declaration of Independence, which wasn't really the Constitution, which is supposed to be the club rules. Nobody signed the bloody Now, take an example, some guy is living in Weston, Pennsylvania in around 17, I don't

15:30know, 80 or 85 or so, and he doesn't know anything about the US, he's out in the boonies and the war passed him by, and out comes a revenue from, I don't know where it was, maybe not Washington DC, maybe the capital was Philadelphia, or anyway, some tax guy comes out to him in Weston, Pennsylvania, which is really the boonies, and says, hey, guess what, we started This is the United States Club. And the Western Pennsylvania guy says, oh, congratulations, that's wonderful. I'll be your good neighbor, we'll trade, you know, we'll be friendly, come on for dinner. And the revenueist says, wait, you don't understand, you're part of this club. And the guy says, what? I'm part of this club? I don't want to be part of this club. Clubs are supposed to be voluntary things and you're telling me I have to be in it? And then the guy says, well, if you don't like it, leave.

16:17And he says, what, leave? We've been homesteading this here patch of Western Pennsylvania for a hundred years or whatever it is. We were here before your club started and now you're telling me I've got to join your club? You know, take a hike. So the United States club is not really a club. The United States government is a government which is a compulsory thing which is a violation of the non-aggression axiom and the non-aggression axiom is the basic premise of libertarianism. So, government is per se incompatible with libertarianism, the views of the minarchists to the contrary notwithstanding. I love the whole voluntary argument that people make in saying, well, our government is voluntary because we vote for the elected officials, but what they neglect to mention is that, well, you know, Hitler was elected by the majority, right, a democracy over there, and when you're in an election, you're really, as an elected official, you're trying to get the vast majority of votes. So you're going to give and you're going to give and you're

17:19going to expect that people are going to vote for you and in essence all you're doing is really plundering the small minority of people in order to get to the majority of people. So naturally the majority is always going to favor being or plundering the minority. So you're never going to get any advancement in society because it's always going to be based on plunder in some way. Well, I agree with you with two very very minor reservations. One, strictly speaking, Hitler didn't win a majority, he won a plurality. I think there were three major parties and he won like 40% and the other two guys won 30% each or something like that, which was certainly compatible with democracy. The second point is, it's not usually a majority that exploits the minority, it's usually a minority that exploits the majority in most western democracies.

18:10What they have to do is then hire the intellectual class, the court historians or professors or people like that, and they have to convince the people that the government is either necessary or inevitable or a necessary evil or something like that. In other words, if the richest 95% try to exploit the poorest 5% of the population, they can do it, but the pickings are very slim, there's not much to steal. But if the richest or among the richest 5% of the people want to exploit the other 95% of the people, then there's plenty of money to steal, but they just have to hire intellectuals to make the case for them, so you have this unholy alliance of ruling class types and Well, that's a vicious, nasty question on your part.

19:20I would say that the majority of the professoriate thinks that I'm a loon, and that's the polite way to put it, a nutcase or nutjob or something like that. Happily, at Loyola University in New Orleans, all four or all five of us, I forget, we had some change, I think there are now four professors of economics, and all of them would agree 3 of us are anarcho-capitalists and one of them is a anarchist, but all four are free market advocates and for many years I was sort of like an ugly duckling, and now I'm a beautiful swan because the swans at Loyola University in New Orleans very much appreciate me and we're all on the same page, so hint, hint, if anyone wants to go to a good college where they've got a great education and they'll have professors who are free enterprise think of us.

20:19You're listening to the Mike Martin Show here with special guest, Professor Walter Block. If you want to get on board the program, it's 347-826-7648 and also you could email any comments you have to mikemartinshow.gmail.com and Professor Block, you wrote a book that You asked me to talk about a little bit, and I actually read it just recently, and it's called Defending the Undefendable. And if you could elaborate a little bit about what's in the book, and just to give you a little synopsis, it's a book about economic choices made every day by those people who you think as sort of the outcasts of society. And I think it's a really excellent way of looking at their conditions, like the prostitute, The Slum Ward, things like that. So if you'd like to elaborate a little bit about that, now's your chance.

21:14Sure. The book, Defending the Undefendable, first came out in 1976, and amazingly enough, it's gone for about five printings, and it's still selling, so it's got legs, as they say. Well, what the book is about is really the non-aggression axiom and private property rights and the libertarian theory, and then it applies it to a whole bunch of weird cases. For example, it applies it to, I don't know, the drug runner, the person who sells heroin. And what I'm saying there is not that I favor the use of heroin and I actually oppose it, but I think that there should be no log for adults having heroin or cocaine or marijuana or any of those addictive drugs.

21:59Again, I oppose the use of them. I don't use it and I don't advocate anyone use it. and the theory of just use of violence and it says only in defense and to stop a consenting adults from selling and buying drugs to each other is a violation of liberty so what this book says is that ordinarily in a free enterprise system to change the analogy for a moment there's nothing heroic about The Theory of Money and Credit

22:59I agree with you, especially when you have so many laws that just are ridiculous. In New York City, we're becoming more and more like fascistic with the kinds of laws that they're passing. For example, here in New York, if you get around, you need a metro card to swipe to get a subway and the buses. Well, did you know that it's illegal to sell a metro card swipe? So, for example, if a tourist came to you and they had no idea how to use the system, but they understood American money, And they said, well, I'll give you $2 if you swipe my MetroCard, and me being a good person, just a kind-hearted person, I agree. I'll take their $2 and I'll swipe their MetroCard. But I can go to jail for that. And that's ridiculous because there's nothing illegitimate of that. There's no violation of personal property in my selling a MetroCard swipe.

23:48Well, I don't know. I agree with you because the government shouldn't be running the, what do you call it, the subways in the first place. Originally, the BMC and the IRT, not the IND, were privately owned and they were charging a nickel fare and they were going to raise it to a dime and the government nationalized it or rather municipalized it. The government shouldn't take it over at all. But suppose I'm the legitimate owner of, I don't know what, the Walter playground, sort of thing, Disney World, and I have a rule that to get in you have to pay 10 bucks and you get a card swipe, but it's illegal to sell the card swipe to anyone else.

24:39A private owner could make that rule and it would be legitimate, but you're quite right in criticizing the government for doing it because the government has no legitimate ownership right of that enterprise in the first place, but it's not a per se violation of liberty because, look, suppose I invite you to come to my house and I say you have to wear a pink hat. You know, it's a little silly, but, you know, it's my house. Or if I say, you know, I'll give you the pink hat, but you can't sell it to anyone else of Money, The Theory of Money and State, The Theory of Money and State, The Theory of Money

25:36It's rather that the government shouldn't be able to do that. Heck, the government shouldn't be able to do anything, because it's, per se, an illegitimate institution. Right. And it's gone even further in New York now, because not only is it illegal to sell a metric card, but it's also illegal to sell any food with trans fat in it. Ah, that's totally ridiculous. And they're also pretty much prohibiting cigarettes. You have to hide them and you can't advertise them. I tell you, in Canada, where I spend my summers, if you ride a bicycle, you have to wear a helmet. Whereas in New Orleans, you can ride a motorcycle without a helmet. I mean, you know, the nanny state is just going berserk. It is. We live in a world in which, you know, you're told what to do. I'm an architect by trade, and they basically tell you what kind of toilets you can, you know, excrete in, and what kind of light bulbs you can use in your house.

26:29in Your House. There's no end to it and you know as a matter of course you understand that there never will be an end to it as long as the state is allowed to get away with these things and that's just the state's nature is to keep growing and getting more and more powerful. for All. So I think with that we'll take a quick music break and if you guys want to get on board the program, the number is 347-826-7648. I have a tune here from Def Leppard for you guys. It's called Stay With Me and it's on blogtalkradio.com. And I'm Mike Martin alongside Chris Sturch and Sturch is still there, very quiet, just Thank you for taking the time, but we also have special guest, Walter Block, here with us, and we're talking about the main questions that come about when you talk about a capitalist anarchy, and we touched already on some good points, primarily the non-aggression axiom and how that relates to a lot of capitalist and anarcho-capitalist thoughts, but now I have some real questions that always come up when we talk about free market anarchy.

27:44The question that comes to most people's minds is how would you deal with utilities such as, or not just utilities, but infrastructure such as roads, water and electricity and all that stuff. What do you think, Walter? Well, let's take roads first. I think roads are very important. The problem that I have with the present socialist road system, where the government owns the roads, is that two main problems. One is 40,000 people a year die on them. And the secondary problem is traffic congestion. New York City is known for its traffic congestion. Just the other day I was in New York. I landed in the New York airport at around 10 o'clock, and I was trying to get into New York City.

28:29And I made the mistake of taking a cab, and we tried to get through the Lincoln Tunnel, and we couldn't.

29:04I'm kidding, I'm kidding. But just 4,000. In the war in Vietnam, 50,000 US soldiers died, but that was over 7 or 8 years. So here you have 40,000 people, civilians, mothers, babies, children, grandmas, you know, just get slaughtered like flies on the roads. And you don't even hear about this. Obama and McCain are now having a battle to see who's going to be the president. the President and is anyone mentioned here? No, I mean it's not even in the newspapers. Oh, every once in a while if you have a 15 car crack up and you know 300 people die, well you'll hear about it in the newspapers but it's just sort of nobody's got any solutions to it. Well the free market anarchists or the in the minarchists here also would agree that we should privatize roads. Now most Most people are going to say, well, you know, we're just talking about addictive substances.

30:01What are you crazy? What addictive substances are you now using such that you think we can have privatized roads? If we had privatized roads, you know, you'd have carnage and death and it would be impossible to have them. And, you know, every time you went down the street, you'd have to pay some little old lady a penny as you went moving by our house at one mile an hour. So they think it's crazy. So as an actual case in point, the first roads, I hope everyone in the audience is sitting down for this, because if you're standing you might peel over, the first roads were all private turnpike roads. Some guy would build a road and go from A to B and, I don't know, New York to Boston or whatever, and he would assemble a road that would not cement in those days. This was during the 18th century, during the 1700s when you had private turnpike roads.

30:52And he would assemble land and he would grade it and get out some of the potholes and try to make it smooth and it'd be a term like a payment system every couple of miles. And you'd have a road. There was a private road. So don't tell me that it's lunatic to think of private roads and highways. I think the greatest example of private roads anywhere is Walt Disney World in Florida. Oh, yes. The Walt Disney World has many roads within it, many college campuses have got highways or little streets in them, condominium associations, golf clubs, whatever, they all have little bits of private roads, but I'm talking about, you know, I-90 or the US-5 or whatever, I'm talking about limited access highways, I'm talking about arterial streets, avenues, roads, Main Street, Broadway, Fifth Avenue, whatever you have in Manhattan, 59th Street, it should all be private.

31:51There shouldn't be any government involvement in the roads whatsoever. Now, the obvious objection to my claim that socialist roads are killing people is to say, well, it's not socialist roads, it's rather, now they've come up with a long, long laundry list. It's speeding and drunk and driving and vehicle malfunction and driver error and how far the The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has about 125 different causes of highway fatalities, and none of it has got anything to do with the government. Now, to me, this is a confusion of proximate with ultimate causes. Look, suppose I took a gun and just shoot some innocent person, and now a whole bunch of people grab me and they're about to charge me with murder, and I say, hey, it wasn't me, it was the bullet that killed him.

32:44Everyone would laugh at me and they say that I'm confusing proximate and ultimate cause. Of course the proximate cause is the bullet, but the ultimate cause is my finger on me, you know, my purposes, and I'm guilty even though I was 200 yards away from my victim when I shot him with a rifle. Take another example. Take the restaurant that goes broke. Suppose we were called in as restaurant consultants and trying to figure out why the place went broke. And we started this stupid list of, well, you know, location, location, location, they didn't locate the restaurant in a good place, and they didn't hire a good chef, and the food was lousy, and the waitresses were surly and slow, so when the food came it was cold, and they didn't

33:56The Theory of Money and Credit keeps losing money, what happens to it then? Well, they go bankrupt and the remaining restarts a little bit better. The problem, and that's true of any capitalist enterprise, and that's a very salutary effect of bankruptcy. It weeds out inefficient producers. But you don't have that in highways. If the Lincoln Tunnel is lousy but the Hudson Tunnel is good, Does the Lincoln Tunnel lose money? No. The government doesn't lose money. I was in New Orleans and we had Katrina and the Army Corps of Engineers and FEMA. By the way, a great bumper sticker. FEMA happens, a very popular bumper sticker there. See, I don't mind the fact so much that they killed around 1,100 people. I don't like it, but what really kicks me off is that these wretched people are still in business. And that's no way The way to run a railroad, the way to have a civilized economy is when you screw up, you get out of business and you leave the industry for other people who can do a better job.

35:27Well, that's why we have so many deaths on the highway, because you don't have any competition. Right. Now, Walter, if I can interrupt you for a second, we have a caller on the line. Caller, are you there? Hi, I'm here. Hey, how's it going? It's okay. This is James. Mike, I'm your friend, James. I know. James is actually one of my good friends from back in the college days, and he was also a DJ on WQRI with Sterk and I. So, James, tell us a little bit about what question you have for Walter. Well, I want to say, first of all, I'm getting a little feedback here, so sorry if I stutter. I want to say first of all that Walter, thank Thank you very much. You're one of my personal heroes and I love listening to all your lectures on Mises.org and I don't know, you've been a great inspiration because to me, you follow the principle and you let everything else fall to the side and it's just an inspiration,

36:24just in the same line as Murray Rothbard, really. Oh, you're very kind. Thank you. I'm delighted to be mentioned in the same sentence with Murray Rothbard, who is my mentor. And you know, James has actually been my mentor in libertarian thought. So, my political Yoda, I call him. Well, obviously, I'm nowhere near as good as Murray Rothbard, so let's not mention me. What I wanted to ask is, I actually work in a coffee center, and it's in a retail store. And I know from studying economics, I sort of do it on the side, so I haven't really gone to school for economics. Economics. It's just something like a hobby of mine, and Austrian economics, obviously, because I'm a big fan of yours.

37:11What I wanted to ask is, are wages, say, for instance, it's supposed to be that you earn the marginal revenue product and that determines your wage or the discounted marginal revenue product, but we don't make anywhere near that. So we can bring the copy sensor sort of $500 an hour, $1,000 an hour, and we're getting paid what, $12 or something? So I just wanted to understand the disparity there. Well you have to realize if your gross receipts are say $1,000 an hour and let's say there are three of you so you might think that your contribution is $333 each per hour, right? That sort of a thing? And you're making, I don't know, $10 an hour of salary?

37:58And you're wondering about the disparity between $333.00 and $10.00 an hour, am I understanding you correctly? Yeah, absolutely. So if it tends towards equilibrium or it tends towards what we're producing, it doesn't seem like it's tending that quickly, do you know what I mean? Well, with regard to the disparity between this $333.00 and the $10.00 that you're paid, There's a lot that you have to take into account, like that the owner has to pay for the machinery, he has to pay to set the thing up, he has to pay either rent if he rents the place, or he has to pay the alternative cost of what he could have rented if he owned it, and he must have put in, I don't know, a couple hundred thousand or a million dollars in terms of machinery, which could have been earning interest.

38:49So, when you take all those sort of things into account, he's got a lot of other payments to make beside you and your two buddies who are working in the Kinko's kind of place for that given hour. So, you're talking about overhead and that... And let's suppose that what you were writing, let's ignore everything I just said, although I think what I said was pretty definitive, but let's suppose that you guys were really Producing at the rate of $333, and he was only paying you $10, and he was therefore making $323 profit off of you? Sure. Right? Wouldn't some other capitalist pig hire you away from him and offer you $11 an hour, and therefore make only a profit of $330 minus $11 versus minus $10, and wouldn't somebody

40:14I don't think that your marginal revenue productivity is anything like three divided by the thousand an hour. Okay, so they let us know their numbers. So for instance, we know what the margin, the profit margin is on any given service, right? And so the copy center generally is around 60 or 70 percent margin, give or take what you're selling. And so, yeah, you could discount all the overhead and that goes, you know, and that's reflected in the margin. And so, even if, you know, we're being paid 10 or whatever it is, and then we're bringing in, and it could just be me, I could make the $1,000 sale and, you know, the sale might come in two days and someone else might ring it out or whatever.

41:01But say it cost them, you know, even $400 to make the sale. I mean, that's still a margin of $600 or whatever it is. I made the sale, you know, they only paid me however long it took me to consult with the customer to bring in that sale. Well, that's right. You know, sometimes you get this joke where some technical person, an engineer is called in to solve some problem and it takes them one minute and he charges, I don't know, two thousand bucks and the guy says, what, two thousand for one minute? And the guy says, well, you know, 2000 for one minute to give you the opinion, but to learn all the stuff that I needed to give you the correct opinion, that took years. Sure. Okay. So you have to put these things in.

41:48I got to say, James, you went from being my political Yoda to being a walking burrito. That's pretty freaky. I could do that to you, I guess. I'm trying to make the thing come alive because economics is supposedly boring and I'm trying to just make it come alive here. So I hope I didn't insult you by calling you a walking burrito, but I thought the metaphor was apt. I'm sure he'll be okay. I'll be fine with it. He'll recover. I'll certainly never look at you the same way, you know? Well, if you try to take a bite out of me, I think that's a private property infringement.

42:34I might have to react. So, I mean, these are great questions because you also have to realize that, you know, people always, especially Obama supporters, these guys are the worst because they spout out so much economic fallacy, you know, they're always claiming that the big companies ought to screw everybody. The people don't realize there's a lot of overhead that goes into things, especially ATM charges. This seems to be something that liberals have a tremendous hate for. They don't think there's anything wrong with paying a $2 charge on an ATM, but they're all for paying 40-50% of their income and taxes. But the point is an ATM needs to be maintained. There's overhead of the place that it's in.

43:49The problem is that we need help there. For example, I keep bringing up New Orleans things, but it's very apt. In New Orleans, right after Katrina, there was shortages of things like, I don't know, flashlight batteries and candles and milk and water and orange juice and stuff like that, and the prices went up very high and they were accused of gouging. Well, the salutory effect of a high price rise in the face of a shortage, as you had in New Orleans, is twofold. One, on the demand side, it rations to goods. In other words, if the old prices, the first 15 people into the Walmart are going to buy up everything, and they'll leave nothing for the people next online, it won't be very salutory.

44:40So, if the prices are tenfold, people are going to start thinking, do I really need 25 quarts of milk, maybe the milk will go bad before I drink it and it'll only take two or three. So that's one retaliatory effect of a price rise or a gouge so-called. Another one is that, you know, Adam Smith said it's not from benevolence that the butcher and the baker and the candlestick maker give us their wares, it's rather out of a keen appreciation of self-interest. So without prices rising and sharply, the only motivation of other people that help the people in New Orleans would be benevolence. And benevolence is all well and good, but when you have an emergency, you want to mobilize all sorts of motivations, not just benevolence, and you want to mobilize greed or profit seeking.

45:29So if everyone knows that prices are skyrocketing in New Orleans, then they'll bring stuff from from Texas and from Kentucky and from Tennessee, and that'll help reduce the prices back down to where they would be. And if you don't allow the prices to rise, you just get a shortage. And yet, when Governor Blanco heard of that price gouging, she threatened to put people in jail and everyone was applauding her, and this is just economic illiteracy. Exactly. You made a great point there about resources coming in. It's simple economics. You know, if all of a sudden in Louisiana, things, because of the natural disaster, my My products are going to get more money, I'm going to send a couple of truckloads over there and try and sell it off. So in the end, everybody is benefiting because there's more influx of resources, more medicine, more water coming in, so which if you stop that from happening, there's not going to be that influx.

46:20Precisely. That's the beauty of the price system, if it's allowed to be laissez-faire, namely free prices. And when government steps in, it just boxes up the works. And now, I mean, that leads to another question now that's a hot topic is oil prices and gas prices skyrocketing here. And, you know, far beyond, I mean, Obama and McCain are both going to keep blaming their speculators for this problem. But the real problem, and the way I see it, is that there's an increased demand on oil and gas, And there's a limited supply, just like anything else that has a limited supply and an increased demand, the price is going to rise. Right, I think that's absolutely correct. There are really two sources of this. One is inflation. You know, the prices of everything are rising, not just oil.

47:11But oil is rising faster than other things, and that's because of the demand. It's because government hasn't allowed any nuclear, any new nuclear power plants in, I don't know what, 30 or 40 years.

47:53With oil and gas too, there's also a lot of other government meddling beyond just inflation, like you said, the nuclear problems, but there's all kinds of environmental regulations that are really hampering the ability of people to find fuel. So the next question that comes to mind when people talk about a capitalist anarchy is, well, how do you take care of the environment then, if there's no regulation forcing you to take care of the environment? Well, I think there would be regulation, there would be laws under anarchy, you know, people think anarchy is a sin for lawlessness, but I don't see that at all. Maybe some kinds of anarchy are that way, left-wing anarchism or whatever, but libertarian anarchism is very predicated on the law of property rights, as we talked about with non-aggression.

48:46And let's take the case of pollution. Let me tell you a little fairy tale, a story, and as all fairy tales have to, they start with Once Upon a Time, a long, long time ago in a foreign land, only it wasn't a foreign land, it was the U.S. In the 1830s, and this isn't really a fairy tale, this is based on Murray Rothbard's brilliant essay on air pollution, where he bases some of his work on this guy Morton, I think his name, a Harvard historian. In the 1830s, there was a state of what we would now call environmental law cases, lawsuits, only in those days they called them Lucence cases, but it's the same thing.

49:41And typically you get some little old lady who was saying that I hung out my washing and it was wet and clean and I came back an hour later and it was dirty and dry. And that's their factory three miles away. You can see a smokestack and it got its dust particles onto my laundry. Or there'd be some farmer and the farmer would say, you know, that's their railroad. I had these haystacks sitting a hundred feet away from the railroad, and the sparks flew off so hard and fast and high that the railroad got my haystack on fire. And these would be environmental plaintiffs.

50:26And in the 1830s, not every plaintiff won, but the courts were libertarian courts in in those days, and they pretty much said, look, these are violations. You've just got to keep your spark to yourself, you've got to keep your dust particles to yourself. And they would award the plaintiffs, the little old lady and the farmer in our fairy tale here, our actual case as it happened, and they would award them two things. One would be damages, namely they'd make them pay for it, and the other is they would award them And then you have an injunction, and an injunction was an order from the court saying, if you keep up doing this, we're going to stick you in jail. So then what happened was that the railroad and the factory owner had to take into account these costs.

51:19Sometimes it's called externalities in economics. They had to maybe use some research and development into preventing sparks from flying so far away. Or they had to stick something in their smokestacks match or whatever that would catch most of the pollution. Now look, you're not going to stop all pollution. There is such a thing in law called de minimis. The law doesn't take into account trifles. We all do exhale carbon dioxide. But, you know, we've homesteaded that right. So, there were all sorts of very good things going on in the 1830s. There was even an environmental forensic. Now, we all know about forensics. I'm watching, what's that TV show ICS or something? CSI? CSI? CSI, that's it. Where they're always into hair follicles and blood and semen and, you know, fingerprints and this and that and the other. Why? Because we have laws against murder In the 1830s, when we had laws against dumping your crap onto the lungs and land of other people, it wasn't very scientific, it was only the 1830s, but there was a little environmental

52:34forensics, namely, here's the best particle, where did it come from? Let's go get the guy who is responsible for that and get an injunction against them or get damages out of them. There There was a move toward sulfur coal which is a bad coal, it's very cheap but it burns dirty and then there's anthracite coal which is more expensive but it burns much more clean and there was a move toward anthracite coal and away from sulfur coal. So all in all things weren't perfect but things were pretty good. Okay now we move to the progressive period, the so-called progressive period which is

53:42In the 1890s, which country was number one in terms of the biggest, toughest, meanest, baddest country on the planet? It was England, UK, and the powers that be in the US wanted us to be imperialistic, and The Theory of Money and Credit

55:12in the 1920s and with greater industrialization in the 30s, 40s and 50s, you get the China kind of a syndrome. You know, now in China they're going to have the Olympics and are afraid the marathon runners are afraid to run because they'll be like smoking five packs of cigarettes to run through that gunk. Well, in other words, what I'm trying to say is that the reason that we have the crisis is because government, which has abrogated the responsibility for protecting the environment, has just done the opposite of that by violating the law of private property and non-aggression. Yeah, the idea that something is for the greater good, you know, they allow people to get away with too much. But anyway, we're going to go to a quick music break here. If you want to get on board the Mike Martin Show, the number is 347-826-7648 and you can always email your comments The Mike Martin Show at gmail.com here on vlogtalkradio.com. It's The Mike Martin Show hanging with you guys here and of course, I'm Mike Martin hanging out with Chris Sturck and Walter Block.

56:20Now, you know, I got some criticism here on The Instant Messenger for playing the pipettes, but I got to say, guys, it's a pretty catchy song and it's not too bad. And the reason I picked up the album cover is because there are actually three really attractive French babes, so I've got to say that makes it all the better. I can't say I'm surprised by that one. Yeah, you know, when we were back in the QRI days, you'd look at an album, most of these people we've never heard of, these random band things, you absolutely have no idea who they are. So the only really way you have to judge it is by looking at their album art, and so if they have attractive album art, chances are you'll pick it up and take a listen. That's how I end up with these random songs like that.

57:07But anyway, we're asking two questions about anarcho-capitalism. Sturkey, do you have anything? What was that? I cut out. I said, you got anything to talk about? No, I don't actually. You're surprisingly quiet today. I'm just trying to, you know, sit back and kind of wrap my head around everything. It's a lot to talk about certainly, you know, you're asking people a lot of mental power to just think about a world without government, so it's a little hard to do that and we We actually have a caller on the line here, so hello, you're on blogtalkradio.com with Mike Martin.

57:52What's happening? Hi. Mike? Yes, how are you? Hi. Fine, thanks. Listen, I caught the end of your show and I think you guys are real interesting, but is there any chance you guys can give me a little bit of feedback, go back a little and tell me what exactly is a libertarian? Sure. Walter, you want to handle that? Well, sure, a libertarian is someone who believes in a non-aggression axiom and private property rights based on homesteading. Okay, okay, slow down a little. I'm sorry? You're going too fast for me. Slow down a little. Oh, sorry, non-aggression axiom, which means that the only legitimate way to deal with each other is on a voluntary basis. So we can seduce each other, but we can't rape each other.

58:39We can make each other offers, but we can't make demands or compel people to do things. And I think most people would agree with that. After all, if I want to get your dog, let's say you have a dog and I like your dog, there are only two ways I can get your dog. One is by threatening you that I'll beat you up if you don't give it to me, which is illegitimate. And the other way is I try to buy it or befriend you, say if you give me your dog I'll be your Can you apply that though to libertarian as opposed to democratic or republican views or independent views?

59:26I mean, can you make a comparison across the board like that or it has really nothing to do with that at all? Oh no, on the contrary, it has everything to do with that. Because the Democratic and the Republican parties both think that you can grab people's dogs if there are other properties with taxes and compulsions of various sorts, regulations, whereas only the libertarians would be pretty much against that. So you mean libertarians would like really go for no taxing, in other words? Well, the moderate libertarians would reduce taxes to that amount that is necessary to support the government to protect people and for that you'd have armies, courts and police and that would be it. That would be the minimal government libertarians or the laissez-faire people.

1:00:14So it would be more like a volunteer kind of government? No, no. Most libertarians would say that government has one legitimate function, that is to detect people, and to that end, they have three legitimate... But a libertarian would still... Excuse me, I'm sorry to interrupt you, but I'm just trying to get the concept. But a libertarian would still be a politician, right? Yes. He's just a different type of politician. He'd still get paid like the Democrats do in Congress and the Republicans, and you still get... It's still a paid job, right? Yes, Ron Paul, for example, is a Lutheran congressman who is running for president. Yeah, but he never accepted any money while he was in Congress, Ron Paul. Oh, well, he accepted his salary. He gets paid his salary like every other congressman.

1:01:01Oh, really? I thought, looking at his website, he didn't get a salary. He gave it up because since he was a physician, he was making his money as a doctor anyway, and he never really accepted the full salary that they gave him. That's what I thought. No, I think I might be wrong, but I'm pretty sure that I'm right that although Ron Paul is a obstetrician gynecologist and he had practiced it for many years, he regarded his congressional seat as a full-time job and while he did practice when he lost the election for a couple of years, when he came back, when he was in Congress, he was not working as a doctor, so he accepted his salary. Oh, I see. Okay. Yeah.

1:01:46So, I mean... He's not an anarchist libertarian. Well, he's an anarchist libertarian. So, you still get a salary, right? And people still have to vote for you, like any other politician, right? Correct. Except you believe in really, like, no, like, reduced government or something like that? Very, very heavily reduced government, yes. And then the services would all be privately owned, or... Yes. to support the street, the police, and all the other agencies, they would be privately owned? Well, not police, and not armies, and not courts, but pretty much everything else. Yes, certainly roads, and I don't know, health care, and social security, and all that would be privatized, yes. Okay, okay. All right, I'm getting a better picture. Thank you. I appreciate that.

1:02:34This is a little bit foggy as to, you know, the differences, the distinctions between the different parties and so forth. Well, I'm delighted that I was able to clarify a little bit. Thank you very much for being on the show. Thank you, guys. Keep up the show. It's really like a fun, interesting show. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. Good night. Show on blogtalk.com. If you'd like to get on with the show, it's 347-826-7648. And with that, we'll get back to talking about this. You know, Nicole brought up an interesting point talking about politics. And I make a separation between politics as in Republican, Democrat, fighting about stupid issues, and the deep philosophy of libertarianism, especially anarcho-capitalism.

1:03:23and Capitalism. I think you lose a lot when you start picking on little issues like right now they're making a big deal about Obama not going to see the troops. Little things like that. You start getting bogged down in this minutia and you lose sight of the big picture of things. And I think the big picture in this case is, you know, state aggression. And that's something that we need to remember that even though there's all these flashy I couldn't agree with you more. The debates and what's going on with the democrats and republicans, well, the republicans, except for Ron Paul, is just silly. I mean, yes, we can, and we have to have hope.

1:04:22You know, nonsense like that and we have to stay in Iraq for a hundred years and we have to be the imperialist country, national greatness, conservatism, I mean, it's just imperialism and fascism. You know, we talk about Hitler trying to take over the world, well, the U.S. is trying to take over the world. We've got, what is it, 800 foreign military bases in 140 different countries? If that's not trying to take over the world, I don't know what So, you've got these gigantic, stupendous problems and, you know, Obama's saying, well, we should take a few troops out of Iraq and put them in Afghanistan. What the hell has Afghanistan got to do with us? When did any Afghani ever attack us? What's going on here? You know, why is the U.S. the imperialist, warmongering country of the world?

1:05:12of the World. These are the issues that Ron Paul was talking about, and you know, the inflation and getting rid of the Fed and getting rid of government regulation and legalizing the drugs and stuff like that. Those are the important issues, and you know, what was happening during the Republican nomination that led up to McCain winning was just the seven or eight or ten other candidates were talking about, I don't know, how old McCain was or how tough Rudy Giuliani was, and only Ron Paul was talking about the issues that you and I are interested in. Exactly. And politics really distracts everybody. I mean, look at the stupid issues that came up during the campaigning and during the primary season. There's, you know, whether or not, is Obama wearing a lapel pin, is Giuliani mistress getting in the way?

1:06:00You know, and you completely get blindsided to what the real issues need to be. And it's amazing how slogans come up like change and hope and all these things. But there's no real explanation of what these things are. You know, they're just about, oh, we're here for hope and change. Right. Well, the only person who was really going to change things in Washington was Ron Paul. This guy, what's his name, Barr now, who's running for Libertarian candidacy. I don't know. I suppose he's way better than McCain or Obama, but he's not really as libertarian as he could be. And Bob Barr, isn't that like one of those children stories with the elephant? Am I the only one that remembers this thing, with the elephant, Bob Barr?

1:06:48Oh, I see what you're saying. Yeah, I remember Bob Barr. I used to read my kids those stories. No, I think I wouldn't go that far as to compare him with the elephant. I'm not an elephant, it's just his last name. I hear you and I appreciate your sense of humor, but I would, if I had to choose president between Obama, McCain, Barr and Nader, I would pick Barr, head and shoulders above the others. It's just I'm a little disappointed that he's not more libertarian than he is. Yeah, and so I have another question for you. Hello, are you there? Yeah, it's James again. I've been here the whole time. I'm just listening. I have a better feed on it. I have another question if I could.

1:07:36Sure, go right ahead, man. It's for Walter. There's a segment of the anarcho-capitalist community who just really hates Ron Paul just because he's involved with politics and they feel that's sort of like a sin. And I'm not like that. I think Ron Paul's great because he sticks up for for what's right, even through all the hardships and all those peers hate them and everything, or at least they're indifferent to them. How do you feel about that segment of the anarcho-capitalist community? If you had something to say to them, I'm not against them per se, or I have no animus towards them, but what would you say to them? What advice would you give the segment? They try to discredit Ron Paul and say, you know, he's just a loser because he's a politician. Well, it's not just the anarcho-capitalist or the libertarian anarchists who are against that, but some libertarians who are minimal status are also against any dealings with politics.

1:08:33And, I don't know, I think it's an interesting position, but it's not one with which I agree. There's this guy, Leif Sanders Spooner, who, one of our forebears, he wrote in the 19th

1:09:19between two evils. I don't see anything wrong with picking the lesser of the two evils. And I don't see anything per se wrong with running for office. It depends on what you do when you're in office. Now, I don't agree 100% with Ron Paul's program. I disagree with him a little bit about abortion and immigration. But apart from those two things, I think he was utterly and absolutely magnificent. He did more to convert people to libertarianism and then probably Ayn Rand and Milton Friedman put together, although I'm just speculating about that. I don't really know for sure, but he did magnificent yeoman work for the libertarian movement and, you know, look suppose there was a saint, a saint libertarian who was in office and every vote that he took he just voted the libertarian line, why is it per se wrong to be a politician?

1:10:12I just don't see it. Okay. I mean, it depends on what you do. Do you violate the non-aggression action? That's the litmus test for libertarians. And if you violate the libertarian code of non-aggression, then of course you're, to that extent, not a libertarian. But suppose every vote and every action you take, whether it's governor or mayor or anything, president, was totally libertarian. All you try to do is get rid of excessive government, and for the anarchists, it's It's all excessive, and for the minarchists, it's not all excessive, but all you do is get rid of regulations, and you legalize things that ought to be legalized, and you do virtuous work. Why is it wrong if you do it as a politician? There's some sort of fetish that these people have that there's something per se wrong with being a politician.

1:11:00I just don't agree with that. I just think that most politicians are gross and disgusting, primarily because they violate

1:11:40It's, they're just human beings and, you know, with looking out for their own self-interests, and very often it's hard to be that politician like Ron Paul and say, no, I'm not going to take part in this aggression against everybody else, and I'm just going to do, I'm going to vote to stop it, whereas most politicians won't do that. Well, I think most politicians are gangsters with shirts and ties, they're thugs, but not In my book, Defending the Undefendable, I defend the pimp. Now, most pimps are vicious, nasty people, and most drug people are vicious, nasty people, but I'm asking, per se, could we imagine a pimp who didn't beat up his prostitute and just served as sort of an agent and a protector for her?

1:12:28And yes, we can imagine that, so pimping is not per se contrary to libertarianism, even if every pimp is a violator of the non-aggression axiom. But being a concentration camp guard, now that's per se invasive. You can't imagine a good concentration camp guard. Well, I guess unless he's freeing all the prisoners or something like that. But acting as a concentration camp guard would be, or a rapist or a murderer. So isn't it true that if the market was completely free and there was no restrictions on prostitution, there would be a wide open sort of competitive prostitution market and those pimps who beat their employees, I guess, or their clients would sort of be priced out of the market because they wouldn't find, you could have a peaceful pimp or you could go to a violent and Human Action, Man Economy and State, The Theory of Money and Credit

1:13:54Dr. Paul, if you're Ron Paul, and he was called Dr. No because he would vote against Dr. Boehm-Bawerk and Dr. No because, you know, whenever there was a 434 vote against one, he'd be the one, and he'd usually, not usually, he'd invariably be on the right side of things. So there's nothing per se wrong with a politician or a pimp. They both begin with the letter P. It's just what you do. And Ron Paul was a libertarian politician if ever there was one. Excellent point. James, did you have any other questions? No, I'm just sitting back listening. I'll let you know. All right. That sounds fair. And if you'd like to get on board the program today, the number is 347-826-7648.

1:14:39You're listening to the Mike Martin Show on blogtalkradio.com. You brought up a couple of points here in this last segment talking about crime and stuff. How would a libertarian society deal with violent criminals such as murderers and rapists? Well, I'll tell you, one thing is that the police wouldn't be spending all their time with stopping peaceable activities like drugs or prostitution or seatbelts or whatever, and they'd be spending their time on real bad guys, the ones who violate the non-aggression axiom like The Economics of Drug Prohibition is that when you prohibit the drug, the price rises very, very high.

1:15:47According to estimates, the price, if these things were legalized, they'd be very, very cheap. Marijuana is sort of a weed, it grows very easily, it's a hardy weed type of product and the same thing with the poppy field, it's not like asparagus, which is reasonably expensive because you have to do a lot of care and feeding of it, I'm speaking metaphorically here. So look, suppose that the price of a marijuana habit was, I don't know, $5 or $7 a week, $1 a day. Is anyone going to steal from that? No. Is anyone going to have fights over that? No. And we have an empirical example in front of us and it's prohibition of alcohol.

1:16:34Nowadays, is there any fighting over beer or wine or whiskey? The Elliott Nest needed to stop the Chicago Mafia criminals from supplying the stuff? No. The whole thing is silly. When we got rid of the horrible experiment with the prohibition of alcohol, the crime rate in that industry practically disappeared. Well, it would be similar in drugs. If we legalized them, all of the criminal elements of that would disappear. One estimates that 60% of all prisoners in major cities are there for drug-related crimes. So if we legalize that, we'd have many fewer crimes and many fewer people in jail, and the police would be able to focus on real criminals, the ones who are violating the non-aggression act, like murderers and rapists and thieves and car trappers and fraudsters That's a very excellent point because not a lot of people see that, you know, we waste our time having cops, especially in New York, and the cops are just doing nothing most of the times.

1:17:50They're wasting their time looking for people, the teenager smoking pot once in his life and they waste all the resources of putting that teenager through the system and all the courts and all that thing, all wasted resources when they could be learning more about criminals that actually cause damage to private property and to persons. Absolutely, absolutely. They should focus on real criminals, not the law violators of the illicit laws that are illicit in the first place. So, good point. But now, what happens if the police are private? How do they deal with violent criminals then? Well, the same way. You know, look, you're from New York City. I'll meet you in Central Park at 3 in the morning tonight. What do you say about those apples? Are you willing to do this?

1:18:42If you have any sense, you're probably not, because it's lawless under the New York City's finest. But if I tell you, let's meet in Disney World at 3 in the morning, assuming Disney World is open, then I'm not sure. Do you have any compunction about meeting me at a certain place in Disney World? Of course not. Namely, the private... Look, if you're a stripper in Disney World, you're surrounded by a bunch of mice and dogs and ducks, all packing heat, and they'll come up to you and say, you know, please come with me, and if you don't, they come get you. The point is that Disney World and Disneyland and places like that have private police. And those private police... Look, if a rape occurs in Disney World, you know what's going to happen to poor Disney World?

1:20:00The theory is that private policemen who don't do a good job go the same way of restaurants that don't do a good job, namely they go bankrupt, whereas public police are like the Army Corps of Engineers or FEMA, they don't go broke no matter how bad a job they do. So I think that, you know, it's just lunacy to think that if we go to private police somehow there'll be mayhem in the streets, because mayhem in the streets now because of inefficiency Now, can you just imagine, like, you know, police officers dressed as the Seven Dwarfs, you know? Excuse me, sir, you're being a distraction, come with me, now! You know, things like that.

1:20:45Well, look, Snoopy and Doggy or whatever the Seven Dwarfs are, they keep the peace in Disney World. You go into Disney World and it is safe. You walk around in certain streets in South Bronx or Bed-Stuy or Harlem or whatever, and you think your life is in your hands. It's madness. It really is. But what I like about private police or private security is they don't harass you. The greatest difference, since we're talking about Disney World, is my last trip to Disney World was about two years ago. So in this post 9-11 world, and when I got on the plane in Orlando, actually before I got on the plane in Orlando, the transportation security people were harassing us. You know, they make you take everything apart, took my laptop out of the bag, they were swiping it with all kinds of special swabs and detectors and things like that, like they've never seen it before.

1:21:40Because you're giving these people the authority to ruin your day or ruin your vacation. These are the people that were grabbing nail clippers for a while, can you imagine nail clippers? I know. Come on, give me a break. I mean, if they had allowed those pilots to have guns, you never would have had 9-11. Most of those pilots are ex-military types and perfectly capable of dealing with a gun. 9-11 was the fault of government in two ways. One, they took a stick and shook it at a hornet's nest in the Middle East and got people very upset with us, and that was the blowback that Ron Paul was talking about. And secondly, they wouldn't allow the pilots to have guns.

1:22:28The TSA is just crazy. You can't bring toothpaste with a big 6-inch long or 8-inch long toothpaste tube. You have to have a 3-inch, what do you call it, toothpaste. If there was competition and it was the TSA versus the ACME agency, the TSA would be long gone. They're just lunatic And they make people miss flights, and it's just a hassle, and now they come help with this machine that can see through people's clothes, and you get all sorts of weirdos and perverts in there. So this is just an illustration of public police. No, private police would be much more efficient. Exactly. And you know, the thing about, like, private security, and if it came to, say, I don't know, Mises or something, if they have private security guards, they can't harass you, because if they start harassing people, Customers are not going to go into Mises anymore. They're just going to turn around and go elsewhere.

1:23:30Look, I think they have police in Mises and Gimbels and those big department stores and what they have, the view there is that the customer is always right and okay, a pickpocket or a person is stealing the goods, you stop them but you don't hassle people. People. You know, they're very politically correct. Most of the problems with airlines have been done by male people of Arabic extraction. So what are you hassling some black grandma for? I mean, there's no black grandma that's ever done anything like that or some mother with three babies and you're, I don't know, when my son was little, they were even searching his diaper. The whole thing is crazy, and if it was based on market principles, those people would be bankrupt and out of business a long time ago.

1:24:20Now, there very well may be an explosive load in your kid's diaper, but... I mean, it's political correctness gone berserk, you know, you're not supposed to profile... Douglas Goldstein, CFPÆ, Financial Planner & Investment Advisor

1:25:05There was a story not too long after the TSA was formed that a bunch of marines were coming back from Afghanistan, having just served in the war, and they could not wear their ribbons on their chest because of the pins. Ah, yes, yes. Those pins, they could stick people with them, I suppose. Exactly. I mean, like, you know, if you buy into the whole propaganda, these guys are our heroes. Are they really going to take down a plane? I mean, it's a little ridiculous. You know what's really ridiculous is the security checkpoints here in New York City. I work just off of Union Square Park and today there happened to be the random security checkpoints screening day and if you've ever been in the Union Square subway station, you have to go down the stairs to get to the main sort of concourse of the station.

1:25:55So what they do is the cops set up right before the turnstiles. So if you're a terrorist, you go down the stairs, you walk down the hall a little bit, You see in a security checkpoint, if you've got a bomb in your bag, you just turn around and walk away. And you come back another day when they're not doing the security check point. Right. Look, in the airport, they've got all sorts of garbage cans that are covered. You know, you slip a bomb in a garbage can before you go to the security checkpoint and you can take out an airport. I mean, it's just sort of make-work. I don't know. It's government for you. Look, these are the people that run the post office. These are the people that run the Motor Vehicle Bureau. Why do you expect any sense from them? These are the counterparts of the Soviet bureaucrats who were, you know, ruining Russia for 70 years.

1:26:44You know, why should we expect any sense out of these people? I certainly don't. I laugh at people who do expect things to work out, and then they go, they get all teary-eyed when it doesn't work out. You know, this is what led me to want to do this show, is picking up the paper every day and seeing these ridiculous things that are happening because of government intervention and just people do not see the obvious. Yes, I don't know, I, look, that's part of the reason I'm a professor, that you're a radio broadcaster, we want to, we see injustice, we see craziness around, we want to speak out against it. I think that's wonderful and I'm delighted to be with you as a partner in this show now. The Mike Martin Show here on blogtalkradio.com. You're home to great alternative talk radio.

1:27:32Of course, the number you'd like to get on board the program is 347-826-7648. Now, James is still with us on the line here. So, James, you've got a question that you want to ask Professor Block. I do. Well, it's not really a question. It's more of sort of I want you to discuss a topic that's pretty heated in libertarian circles right now with intellectual property. Myself, I'm against intellectual property. I don't think it's property because it's not physical and there can't be borders around it. You can't really touch it. So how can it be property? It's more like a pattern, an idea, and you really can't own that. I just want to know what you thought. Well, I agree with you entirely. I am opposed to intellectual property. Now, it's interesting that Murray Rothbard used to say patents were bad, but copyrights are good. And for a long time, I agreed with Murray, as I agree with him on most things, not all things, but most

1:28:32things. And then Stephen Kinsella came along with a magnificent article in the Journal of libertarian studies. I think it won the award for the best article that year published in the Journal of Libertarian Studies, and Stephan Kinsella just blew the whole thing out of the water as far as I'm concerned. Stephan's idea is that the whole purpose of property is to settle disputes, like we have to have property in things like oranges and apples and cows and watches and other tangible things because they're scarce, and there's a question, well, who owns them? I mean, do you have a right to use this golf club or do I have a right to use the golf

1:29:42The Theory of Money and Credit

1:30:12Mr. A gets into the patent office five minutes before Mr. B. Mr. A gets 100% of the value of that patent, and Mr. B, who is an independent inventor, and if you believe that ideas can be owned, well, poor Mr. B. He invented it, we stipulate, we take it from a God's eye point of view so we know exactly what's going on, the facts are not in disuse. Well, poor from Mr. B. And then another problem is usually patents are for what, 17 years or 27 years or something like that. But look, if I own a pencil, I own this pencil forever and not only do I own it for my life but I can give it to my kid who can give it to his kid. So what's with this craziness if property rights are really property rights, they should be forever.

1:31:03So patents were just screwy in various ways. Well, what about copyrights? Copyrights, for Murray, were more sensible because they could emanate from contracts. Namely, I sell you this CD, or I sell you this medicine, or I sell you this Coca-Cola on the ground so that you promise not to copy it, because I have copyright over it. And this is a little bit more sensible than patents, because it doesn't have the same problems of stealing from independent owners. Okay, now what's Stefan's argument against copyrights is, if A sells B something on the condition that B not copy it, suppose B loses it, or suppose B is, suppose what it is is a song, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, now I'm going to ruin your radio audience by singing it, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, you see why I shouldn't sing?

1:31:57Okay, so A sells B the song Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, and now B is whistling it in the shower, and he's overheard by C. Well, now C thought singing it, and A says, hey, you know, you can't sing the song, because I own it, and I gave it to B on the condition that he doesn't copy it, and you heard him, and you know, you can't do that. This is sort of a little lunatic here. Look, the whole idea is incoherent because the idea has to be expressed in words, right? The idea that you can own property and ideas has to be expressed in words. Well, if you really had ownership in ideas, words are ideas, so every time I say anything, for example the word anything, now Mr. Anything probably invented the word anything, and who Who am I to use the word without paying him or his heirs, and the word heirs, and the word blah, and the word and, and the word but was created by Mr. But.

1:32:57So the point is that you're committing some sort of performative contradiction by even saying that intellectual property is a good idea, because if it was a good idea you should shut up. You can't even say it because you're saying it in words that were created by other people and you're not paying them. So the whole thing is crazy. Now look, girl A puts her hair up in a ponytail, and girl B sees this and says, hey, whoop-dee-doo, I'll put my hair up in a ponytail. Did she un-tail the pony? I don't know if that's the right way to say it, but did she go to A and mess with her hair so that A no longer has a ponytail? No. A still has a ponytail. So what did B steal from A? Nothing. The idea is that once the recipe is known, the second guy can have it without the first one. And if you tell girl B, no, no, no, you can't have your hair on a ponytail, what you're really doing is committing some sort of rape

1:33:58on her, in effect, because you're telling her how she can use her body and how she can't use her body in a way that is not violating the rights of other people, and ponytails

1:35:06On this empirical issue, it's not as clean as the principle of libertarian position, but let me make the following point. See, right now, if I'm going to invent a new machine or a new pharmaceutical, not only am I going to have to hire biologists or chemists or engineers, I'm going to have to hire lawyers because I have to invent around all present patents and copyrights. You see what I'm saying? Doesn't it have the effect of really forcing people to reinvent the wheel over and over again instead of just using existing technologies? You have to sort of remake the technology just in a different way where it could have worked the first time, just the same, and you could just build upon that. So really it stifles innovation instead of sort of prodding it on, right?

1:35:56Well it does both. On the one hand it does stifle, you know, patents do encourage innovation because they Thomas, if you invent something, you get to keep the value of it for 17 years or whatever it is. On the other hand, they stifle innovation because you just can't innovate. You have to innovate around other people's innovations and you have to spend a lot of time with high-priced lawyers who are also chemists who know these kind of laws. In other words, it's like a landmine out there. You just can't go out and invent something. You have to invent things circuitously around all the other excellent patents and you have It's sort of a police-side in the entire field. Right. Take my book, Defending the Undefendable.

1:36:43Suppose somebody else were to buy a copy and then zero oxygen and start selling it. Now, if they said that they wrote it, that would be a lie and that would be fraud. But suppose they kept my name on it and they just sold it and they started making money off the sales. Would that hurt me? No. Rather, that would drive the price, my speaking price. When I give speeches, I charge an honorarium speaker's fees. Well, these people who are now publicizing my book are getting me more gigs. It's the same thing with The Beatles or Elvis or any of the Death Jam or something that you were playing before. If I make more videos like that and more people hear about it, more people are going to want to hear them give live concerts.

1:37:29So it's really unclear as to whether it will stifle or not. It's an empirical issue. On the one hand, yes, there will be out certain royalties. On the other hand, their concert fees will go up. So it's very unclear as to whether there will be more or less innovation. But as Stephen Consola says, he thinks that the optimal amount of innovation or creativity is the amount that's compatible with libertarianism. and what's compatible with libertarianism is non-aggression and you're not aggressing when you put your hair in a ponytail just because you saw someone else do it. Sure. Right. My biggest issue with this whole thing is when you buy a CD, when you buy something that becomes your property and you're under your control, how organizations like the Recording Industry Association of America, you know, feel like they have the right to tell you how to then use that product.

1:38:22I mean, no other thing that you buy has that kind of restriction on it. You could buy a pair of glasses and use them any way you want. So I have an issue with that because it's not something that's under their control anymore. You have acquired it, and in an essence you have kind of homesteaded it. It's become part of your property. And therefore I have the right to do what you want with it, you know, like play it in front of your friends or give it to your friends to copy even, things like that. Stephen Friesdahl has this magnificent little story in his beautiful, brilliant article. And what it is is that there's this town. And I know that the railroad is coming through. And right now the land sells to $10 an acre because it's just scrub land and, you know, you can't grow much on it.

1:39:10But when the railroad comes through, instead of $10 an acre, it'll be worth $10,000 an acre. So what happens is that you, Mike, you break into my house and you find the secret letter that I've got that says the railroad is coming through and now you're a thief and you know you should go to jail, you're a bad guy but what you do is you go to the local bar where Clem and the boys are hanging out and you tell everyone that hey, guess what, the railroad is coming through. You got that? Yeah. The Theory of Money and Credit

1:40:43You ought to be able to make them pay except $10 an acre. Isn't that ludicrous? And yet that's one of the logical implications of this crazy idea that you can own ideas. You know what? I want to trademark the little trademark symbol. I want to trademark the alphabet. That would be justice, wouldn't it? That's beautiful. Libertarianism is lots of fun, come up with libertarian jokes. No one else is going to laugh at them, but we can have a ball. Well, that's why I really enjoy listening to your Mises podcast, because you throw in some jokes there that only libertarians would get. We ought to have a t-shirt. It's a libertarian thing you wouldn't understand.

1:41:30I like the one about antitrust. You go on about antitrust in the room of lawyers. Yes, yes, I've got a great antitrust joke, shall I tell it? Totally, yeah. Okay, it's a two-part joke and in the first part of the joke there are three Soviet prisoners and they're all in jail in the Gulag and they're comparing notes as to why they're in jail. And the first guy said, well, I came to work late and they accused me of stealing labor services from the state which owns all the labor services so they put me in jail. And the second guy says, well, I came to work early every day and they accused me of brown-nosing The third guy said, I came to work every day exactly on time for the second, and they put me in jail because they accused me of owning a western wristwatch.

1:42:18So that's the first part of the joke. I once told this joke to a bunch of lawyers and economists who make a lot of money from antitrust, and they loved this joke, but then they didn't like the second part of the joke. Second part of the joke goes like this, there were three U.S. prisoners in jail, and they They're all guilty of a violation of antitrust. And the first guy says, well, I charge more than everyone else, and they put me in jail for gouging and profiteering. The second guy said, I charge less than everyone else, and they put me in jail for predatory pricing and cutthroat competition. The third guy said, well, I charge the same prices as everyone else, which is a little hard to see, good for these other two guys, but what the heck, it's just a joke. And so I charged the same thing and they accused me of collusion and setting up cartels.

1:43:07And it was definitely silence because these people were very bright people and they understood. And the point is that in the Soviet system, if you come to work early later on time and they put you in jail, well, you know, that's no law. Law is supposed to distinguish between, you know, legitimate activity and illegitimate activity. But it's the same thing with antitrust law. If you can go to jail for higher, lower or the same prices, what kind of a law is that? The law against rape is good. If you rape, you go to jail, and if you don't rape, you stay out of jail. But with these other kinds of things, you go to jail no matter what you do, which is just horrific. And yet, that's our antitrust system. It is. It's really despicable because, like you said, there's nothing you can do.

1:43:56What can you do? Look, poor Bill Gates, the reason they were after him is because he sat out there in Seattle and he just made computers, and he didn't bribe the Republicans, and he didn't bribe the Democrats, and he didn't play the game the way the powers that they want the game played. He was just a laissez-faire capitalist type. He created an industry, he created employment, he made the lives of many people happier, but he didn't pay off the boys in Washington, D.C. So they got on his case. Now that he's set up his, what do you call it, his foundation, and now that he's stuffing money down the throats of everybody, he won't be guilty of It's a shame, too, because isn't his capital worth more going into resources so that he can employ people and make more products and get the market going, instead of just giving it away to all these charities and things?

1:44:55Right. He could be bettering society. Yeah, by profit instead of... Right. Well, that's a very interesting question as to whether he's doing more good now than he was before. And I would tend to think that it's an empirical question, namely, what do you do more good? It's not really a libertarian question. And I would tend to say, yes, that he was doing more good when he was making computers,

1:45:50Well, we've got only five minutes left here on the Mike Martin Show. So I just want to let everybody know that if you've got any questions or comments and you didn't get them in during the show, you can always email them to mikemartinshow.gmail.com. And always, we're going to be here, Sterk and I, on Mondays. Starting next week, we'll be at 10 p.m. Eastern and Standard Time on blogtalkradio.com, which will be a lot easier for a lot of people, because I know I'm getting tired here and it's 12.55 a.m. on the East Coast, so we've got now four minutes remaining, so Walter, I want to give you the last word and throw in anything you'd like to add to the program here.

1:46:37Well, I think on the email you sent me, there were seven questions, like roads, and police, and courts, and I forget other things. It's really too late to do justice to all of those things, but I wanted to commend you for your initiative. I think it's a wonderful radio program. I think you're doing the Lord's work, as they say. You're promoting liberty, and I'm just delighted to be part of it. I'll revisit you again one of these days. Excellent. We'd love to have you on, you know, Political Jedi, of course, or at least Philosophical Jedi more accurately. And my philosophical burrito, are you still on? Yeah, I'm still here.

1:47:23I'm still here. I'll go on from time to time. I'll be your gnat. I'll be your bother. And then you can kick me out when you want to. Well, a lot of this is fun because, you know, I just came up with the burrito thing, I hadn't planned it, I hadn't planned on pulling a stir fat or anything like that, but this is part of the creative process, that, you know, you come up with things when you're, in other words, the process itself is creative and you come up with new ways of looking at things and you've been a great inspiration to me by asking me those very good, provocative questions. Excellent. It reminds me, Chris, are you still there? I am, yes. All right. Actually, I took a trip to Taco Bell and got some burritos because I was kind of hungry.

1:48:13And the munchies, huh? Yeah, you know, it hit me. I just kept hearing about it, so I got hungry. How do you feel now about capitalist anarchy? I feel more enlightened on the topic. I feel like I know a little bit more about it and understand it more. So I would like to thank you for taking the time to speak here with us. Well, if you want to do further reading on this, go to the Mises web, Mises.org and look up Roderick Long, 10 Objections to Anarchy, and look up Hans Hoppe and look up Murray The Theory of Money and Credit If you would like, you could get an entire education in economics just from listening to the podcast, which are great because you just put them on while you go to work, and on your car in the morning, on your iPod, or if you're trying to avoid the bums in New York City, it's always great to put it on your iPod, listen to Mises podcast, but hopefully this show will be ending up as a Mises podcast, so we're spreading the word that way. The Mike Martin Show, of course.