Walter Block, Guest Appearance on "Our Story"

0:00And welcome to another segment of our story. We appreciate you coming and visiting with us again, and just as a quick reminder, we are with you live each and every Wednesday at 7.30 on Channel 77, followed by replays on Saturday at 1 on Channel 78, and again the following Wednesday on 78. So we thank you for taking the time to visit with us and hopefully you'll be able to take something of value away from here with you when you go. We have a lot of coverage we're going to do this evening. We've got a lot of subject matter we're going to talk about and we're going to get into some things with Professor Walter Block from Loyola University who is an economist and we're going to let you know that that's coming so you can sit tight, but before we get into that, I want to talk about some of the things that are going on with this election year climate.

1:04We are talking about the debates that they are having, and actually they had one this evening right before we came on. But I wanted to make a quick observation concerning the debates, especially the one they had last week, and that is this. I was interested to learn and to look and to see that out of all of the candidates running, five were chosen for the debates. Now, in a free democracy, quote-unquote, how do you determine which candidates are viable and which candidates are not?

1:49In fact, it's grossly unfair and unjust to select someone as your slate of candidates and then give them to your audience as being the legitimate candidates. Well, if it were left up to me, this is one more reason why the myth of democracy in America is just that, truly a lie and a myth. Now, one of the things that we want to deal with today are the situations that we have had to live with and deal with post-Katrina. And I have some footage that I want to share with you because the footage shows a number of problems this city, state and federal government has.

2:55Here we are, November the 1st, 2006, more than a year after Katrina. And what do we find ourselves doing? We find ourselves still waiting on aid and assistance and not handouts from the Federal Government but I'm talking about monies from the insurance companies and monies that have have been allocated by the federal government for reconstruction of the post-Katrina catastrophe.

3:41Now they have us as if we are recipients of welfare when many of us, most of us have paid some hard premiums to still be fighting with companies about whether we're going to be able to be made whole or not. But we're going to get back to that. What I'm going to show you is footage that I'm 99.9% sure you haven't seen before, at least not in the media. But this footage is going to show you without a doubt the resilience of our people here in New Orleans of taking care of each other and then the disaster that happened to our people and the lies that were told about what was really happening and the fact that they They could have gotten us out of here the second day, the first day, but given that even on the second day they could have gotten us out of here.

4:56They didn't do it, they refused to do it, and they have left us here just as if we were like the same group of people that this happened to many, many decades ago. Which I refer to as the indigenous people in this country, whom they ran off and stole their land and incarcerated them and had reduced them to mere nothing. Let's roll that first clip, please. The yellow house on the other side of the blue house, that's Wil and another guy. We've just been a rescue effort. I would go, but I don't swim.

5:45I don't have a life vest also. But I think even if I was a good swimmer, I wouldn't worry about the life vest. They're trying to invest in the media and the red out over the wave. Now this is Meru Street, three blocks off of Franklin Avenue. That's what you're viewing now is Meru.

6:30Now I hasten to point out that this is one of our very own war correspondents here, Brother William, who is leading the pack here, and they're showing you fish on Miru.

7:24Hey, baby, can you backstroke?

7:30Look here. Did Patty sit in on grandma?

7:41Will, what's in the water chest? What's in the ice chest? Okay. All right, we'll meet y'all around the front. Another rescue save by old, tired-ass Will.

8:24It was floating. Then look at it, there's his dog. He found that dog yesterday. But there's his dog, his buddy, his partner. That dog earned his friendship. Made some friendship.

9:47of Money and State, The Theory of Money and State, The Theory of Money and State, The

10:17This is the part that shows you they're bringing in the helicopters. This is called the Chinook, which is a troop movement transport helicopter. They brought troops in with these type of aircraft, and they leave empty. They could have been ferrying people out of there with these same crafts. I know they have enough in this part of the country that they could have gotten people out of there in a 24 hour or less period of time. Trucks you see there, they came in afterwards. They came through the water. So the federal government was able to get in and out of New Orleans during the flood.

11:08But why were we forced to stay here?

11:38Anti-Helicopter leaving the Superdome of Money, The Theory of Money and State, The Theory of Money and State, The Theory of Money

12:38And as you can see, the problems at the Superdome were created, were caused. They had no one there in authority, no one there giving any instructions, no one there leading the way. and for any way, form or fashion, chaos, planned chaos. And these are the kinds of things that we as a community and we as a people have to deal with every day here in New Orleans and around the country and around the world. Now you know, it's time, it's been past time, that we stop accepting this kind of treatment.

13:37Now, one of the questions for this evening is going to be, what are the alternatives? And we are going to discuss with the professor from Liola, who is an economist, what are the alternatives, what are some of the kinds of things that we can do or look towards to answer and resolve some of these problems. Welcome to our story, Professor Walter Block, appreciate having you and we thank you for taking this time out. My pleasure to be here. I'm going to ask you what is the overall solution for the problems of the negligence that the government has shown and the lack of leadership that we get from our elected officials? What would you say would be the answer to this?

14:35Well I think that the answer is free enterprise and capitalism. We've seen in the clip that that you've just showed, and it's a horrible clip showing the plight of the people, that government is not responsive. If you compare this to private enterprise, there's sort of a fail-safe mechanism working in private enterprise that doesn't work with government. For example, if we go to a pizza place and I don't like the pizza, I don't go there again. If you don't like the pizza, you don't go there again. Amin doesn't like it, he doesn't go there

15:35There is a system that has an automatic feedback mechanism that penalizes mistakes. And when the mistakes are penalized, if we have the system that continually reduces mistakes, then we have a better system. Whereas if you have the political system and you rely on government, whether it's federal or state or local, it doesn't matter. That helicopter is taking off without people. If there was a private helicopter doing that that we had hired to be our safeguard, we'd never pay them again. They go broke, but it was a government one, so there's no way we can stop them. You didn't show this clip, but there were a whole bunch of yellow school buses that were sort of half up to their hubcaps in water or higher. Those buses could have taken people out of here, but no, they didn't.

16:20The people responsible for that are political. The problem with politicians is that you only get to vote for them every four years. And then, when you get to vote for them, you get to vote for them on the basis of all-or-none kind of deal. You can't pinpoint your vote. For example, you might like politician one on policies one, three, five and seven, and politician two in policies two, four, six and eight. But you can't distinguish between those two. It's a package deal. Whereas in the market, you can vote for a red tie or a blue shirt or this kind of a wristwatch Let me ask you something. We're talking about this utopian system that would be created by privatization. Where in the world do we find The Theory of Money and Credit

17:54What I'm asking is, where is this system set up and operating today? Well, it's right here, in part. In other words, what we now have is a mixed economy where part of it is capitalistic and part of it is socialist, fascist, whatever. And we can see that the good parts are the parts where there's no problem. Where is the crisis of pizza? Where is the crisis of red ties? There is no such thing. But I tell you, if the government were in charge of making red ties or blue shirts or something, there'd be shortages, there'd be crappy shirts and crappy ties, because we wouldn't have any way to get rid of them.

18:39Now, if you're asking, where is there a society where the entire thing is free enterprise and there's no government at all? Well, you've got me, there ain't no such place now, but there are places that are closer and further away. The places in Africa and South America have heavy government operation and are very poor because of it. The places in Western Europe and North America have less government relative to those places and therefore are more prosperous. So we can see that the market works and produces and satisfies consumers, whereas the government sector doesn't, and In the Soviet Union, it was practically all government sector and we saw what happened there. I mean, people were trying to get out of there. The Berlin Wall, the traffic was one way. It was out of the communist east and into the capitalist west.

19:28So we have all sorts of evidence that shows people voting with their feet against socialism and for free enterprise. What countries in Europe were we talking about? Well, I guess the countries in Europe that are more free enterprise are France and Germany and the countries in the 80s anyway that were less free enterprise were Hungary and the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia and places like that. Well, don't we see, I mean, aren't we finding the people they're protesting as vigorously as we find in this country? The people in which country are protesting? Germany, France, UK, with problems, I mean, they're not, even UK is a socialist country

20:42When you talk about Europe, when you talk about Africa, first of all, what countries are we talking about in Africa? We're talking about the market and about the government, and they're poor because of the government. It's a heavy government over in Africa. Well, pretty much all the countries in Africa have less economic freedom than countries elsewhere. Why? Why? Why? That's a good question. That's a nasty, vicious question. Well, I'm sorry. Let me go back, because you said that if the government wasn't there, then there would be more freedom. Well, it would be more of a free market, correct? Okay. The reason why it is that Africa is poor, which it really is not, is because they're stealing from Africa.

21:34They haven't been for the longest. How can the country that we get all our diamonds, juries and just about all our gold from be so poor because of a government? And that's private. That's private. It is private. Well, I think that the countries in Africa, to a great extent, the government is kleptocracy where the dictators steal the money from the people and put it in Swiss bank accounts. Something like America. In America we do that too, but to a much less degree. In America you have more economic freedom than in parts of Africa and parts of South America, and North Korea, the people in North Korea, I mean we have almost controlled experiments, in economics you usually don't get a controlled experiment, but North and South Korea were bussed down the middle in the war, and they were the same people, the same language, the same human capital, the same intelligence, whatever. And all of a sudden North is following The South is following a different system, not a perfect system.

22:36They have problems there too. But the problems that they have in South Korea are as nothing compared to the problems they have in North Korea. The same with East and West Germany. Let me ask you something because you're painting this picture of private companies being able to Administer or to Govern Better than the Structured Political Systems that we now have. And realizing and understanding that, I'm looking, well first of all, the world, the A world of economics is controlled by a few families or a few of the higher-echelon individuals that control the flow of money, not only in America but throughout the world.

23:36And if you have a free economy, then how is it possible that you just have this certain group that just controls all of the wealth and makes sure that the distribution of wealth is more in their favor than it is in the rest of our favor? Well, there are really two kinds of companies. One earns its money totally on the market, for example, Microsoft and Wal-Mart. And there are other companies like Bechtel and Halliburton, where the lion's share of their receipts don't come from people making choices to support them, but rather come from government, government contracts, government favoritism, what have you. The second system, the Bechtels and the Halliburtons and these other companies, I don't call that free enterprise, I call that fascism.

24:28That's similar to the Nazi system of Stuka and BMW and companies like that, that were hand in glove with Hitler. I'm certainly not advocating that, and I agree with you that that does occur to a great degree. But I would oppose that kind of capitalism. I wouldn't call that free market capitalism. I would call that state monopoly corporate capitalism. But Microsoft and Wal-Mart, you would say... Yes. Microsoft and Wal-Mart, I think, aren't hand in glove with the government. The way they make their money is by satisfying consumers. Microsoft started in some guy's garage or Wall-Mart has a lot of problems as far as their health is concerned. I mean, they hire the handicapped and the elderly, they pay them terrible wages, and I mean, they just don't know what to do.

25:29Microsoft, on the other hand, has had a number of problems because, who is their competition? IBM, Apple, Mac. Mac and Microsoft started out together, and Microsoft, I don't know, usurped whatever they created together and ran with it. So, I'm getting this understanding and this impression that business, big business, little business, any business, only thrives at someone else's demise. Someone else's expense. Yes. Well, I don't think that's true. I think that the essence of business is voluntary trade.

26:17You've got a lovely hat there. If I offer you ten bucks or a hundred bucks for the hat, and you value the hundred bucks more than the hat, and I value the hat more than the hundred bucks, we make a trade. And that's the essence of business. We both gain. You value the hundred bucks more than the hat, I value the hat more than the hundred bucks. There's mutual benefit. Whereas when Halliburton gets its money, it gets it through the government who tax people coercively. It's very, very different. Now, I don't think that Walmart is exploiting anyone. We've got a new Walmart out in, you know, in New Orleans, and people come in the shop there, they must pay enough wages because they keep employees. If they were exploiting the workers, they wouldn't get any workers, the workers would all quit. So I think that Walmart helps the poor, Walmart hires the poor, Walmart sells to the poor, and to the middle class and to the rich too, because they have

27:12great service. I don't see that Walmart is the enemy. Walmart is a voluntary operation. As soon as we didn't like Walmart, they'd go broke, unlike FEMA. I'm sorry, you really think so? Yeah, if most people didn't like Walmart and refused to shop there, they'd be out like them. Look, there was the Edsel. This might be before your time, but I'm sure you remember the Edsel. This was a car that the Ford Motor Company put out that costs zillions of dollars. People hated it. Johnny Carson was making jokes about it. He was sort of the Jay Leno of the day. They lost zillions on the Edsel. Had they kept going, one more Edsel, they would have been out of business. Yes, if you look at the Fortune 500 companies for the last 10, 20, 30 years, you're going to see a lot of companies that seem very powerful and all of a sudden they're not there.

28:02Since you remember the Edsel, let me take you back to 1962, when Chrysler was on the verge of bankruptcy, and Chrysler developed a turbine engine for a car. They produced 50 and put one in each state as a test model. The turbine would run off of anything flammable. Rubbing alcohol, drinking alcohol, kerosene, anything that would burn, they could put into this engine. When they developed 50 and put it in 50 states for a tryout, the government came in and virtually paid Chrysler not to to Produce that Car.

28:59Do you recall that? No, you have the advantage of me here. I don't remember that situation. But in terms of the General Chrysler case, they were almost on the verge of bankruptcy and the government had to come and rescue them. This is horrible. What they should have done is let Chrysler fail because people weren't willing to pay them enough money to pay for the costs of making automobiles. When the government gets in and puts its finger on the scale, The government puts a big fat thumb on one of the scales, then it violates consumer sovereignty. But doesn't the government underwrite, protect and maintain big business in this country?

29:46Yes, it does, and it's horrible, and they should stop doing it because that's the direction of economic fascism. What I'm saying is they should stop doing that and they should just allow business, assuming that there's no fraud or anything like that, and that would be a legitimate government function to stop fraud, at least in the limited government philosophy of classical liberalism. But it's sort of like when the referee grabs the ball and starts dunking it, how are you going to have a basketball game? The purpose of the government in this government philosophy is to be the referee, to make sure that nobody punches out anybody or rapes or murders or what have you or commits fraud. But when the government starts helping some companies, it has to hurt other companies because it's doing it with taxes.

30:32So I think we have to distinguish between laissez-faire capitalism on the one hand, which is good, and corporate monopoly state capitalism or fascism on the other. To go back, you talked about North Korea and South Korea, and I'm going to come back to what we're talking to for now. You said North Korea is doing better than South Korea. No, no, the opposite. South Korea is doing better than North Korea. They are? Oh, yeah. Sure. In North Korea, they're practically starving. Not practically. I think you're making a slip of the tongue here. That's what they print in the press here, but that's not the world picture now. from what I've seen, North Korea has been holding its own because they've been partnershiping with China quite a bit and they seem to be doing quite well. Well, I don't know what to say about that. Take another case, East Germany and West Germany.

31:21Again, the same people, the same language, the same culture, the same religion, the same everything. And due to the accident of World War II, the country was split about 60-40 percent. And there was one-way traffic. People were trying to get out of East Germany and try to get into West Germany. East Germany was an economic shambles. West Germany was magnificent compared to East Germany. And again, we have this control experiment where you have socialism in the East and semi-capitalism in the West. And the market speaks, people speak. All right. We talked about Wal-Mart and McDonald's. We talked about that businesses don't thrive when one of them goes down. Like you have Wal-Mart Burger King rallies, Popeyes, and you've got churches. Why is there Popeyes on this corner and the churches right across the street from it? Why is there McDonald's on this corner and the Burger King right across the street from it? Because if the Burger King wasn't there, there would be no competition.

32:23Well, you don't have to have competition right across the street. You can have two If there were no Burger Kings and only McDonald's, then there would be no competition, so they couldn't sell at the price that they're selling it. Well, first off, hold on. Secondly, you were saying that McDonald's and Burger King are satisfying their customers. Yes. No, they're killing their customers, really. Which is another question, brings up another question about big business. Do we sacrifice people's health for profit purposes? Look, they're satisfying their customers in the eyes of the customers, otherwise the customers wouldn't be lining up there. Now, maybe in some sort of overarching sense, like take cigarettes.

33:08I would say cigarette manufacturers are satisfying their customers. And my proof or my evidence for this is that people buy them voluntarily. Nobody comes up with a gun to a guy and says, hey, you better buy some cigarettes or I'm going to plug you. Rather, they buy it themselves. So it satisfies customers in the sense of the consumer's choice. Now, from a medical point of view, maybe cigarettes aren't good, but I'm not talking about that. I'm not talking about McDonald's makes you fat or whatever it is. I'm saying that they choose McDonald's rather than soybeans or whatever else the alternative is. Excuse me. Hold on. We have a caller. We're going to take the caller. Caller, are you with us? Yes, I am. Question or comment? Question. He's talking about privatizing. Let's take, for example, Chevron and Texaco.

33:57Let's deal with the racism in Chevron and Texaco. How does that help, folks, when you have Chevron and Texaco? What choice do you go to force for black people in this country? When you go from Chevron, you go to Texaco, and you're dealing with the same racism. And you'd privatize, and let's look at Avis and budget. If I left from Avis and went to budget, Because I'm having problems at Avis. You know, Avis and Budget are the same parent company? Well, do you think that we'd be better off if all car rental places were run by government? No, no. That's not the question. I'm saying when you're talking about private business, private owned, I'm talking about racism in this country and how private industry doesn't help the matter themselves themselves when they're being very racist and prejudiced towards people in this country.

34:49Okay? What I'm saying is, if I went to Avis, or if I went to budget, if I went to Avis and I had a problem and went to budget, but I don't know as a consumer, they're both owned by the same people. Well, look, if they're both owned by the same people and that's such a great advantage, then they'll be great... It's not a great advantage. Let me just finish my point. If both companies are owned by the same parent company and this is such a great advantage, Okay, but what I'm saying, you're missing the point here. What I'm saying here, when I used Chevron and Texaco, for instance, we went to Chevron, we found out Chevron had racist harm practices. Okay? And people decided, okay, we can't go to Chevron anymore. We'll switch and go over to Texaco, find out they had the same problem. Okay? So if you privatize things in this country to where you're going to be able The private industry is having all types of racial issues. How does that affect black folks in this country when they're going from place to place and they don't even know who's who in all of this? In other words, you don't know what's behind all of this.

36:14If they have lower wages, then you can make more profits by hiring them. And if you can make more profits by hiring them, that's the market solution to the problem of racism. Look, suppose a black person is worth $10 an hour. And a white person is also worth $10 an hour. They're each equally productive. But due to racism, the white person is making $10 an hour, but the black person is only making $7 an hour. Well, if that's true, then the employer who's hiring him is making an extra $3 an hour profit. So that's okay? That's great, because then what will happen, as a first step, let me just finish, because then what will happen is that the guy who hires the black worker under this scenario will put out of business the other guy, because he'll be able to underprice him.

37:01So I'm supposed to support this philosophy of business? Yeah, it'll get rid of racism. The point you just said, how will it get rid of racism if we're being paid $7 an hour, you're being paid $10 an hour. Supposedly the guy that's being paid $10 an hour goes out of business. How does that have to do with anything with the racism? What it looks like it has to do with the other guy making more money over the other guy, which really is a monopoly. The person who's hiring the white is going to go out of business. The person, the company that's hiring the black, whose only color is green, as in money.

37:48He doesn't care white, black, green, blue, skin is irrelevant. He's only concerned about green, as in money. We hear that a lot, but that's only in theory. It never works practically. Oh, no, no. Look, I think that's a problematic way to look at it, because theory is supposed to be a theory about reality. If it's good in theory, then it describes reality. If it doesn't describe reality, it's not a good theory. So it's a bad theory, but it's reality. No, no, I think it's a good theory. The way the market gets... You're not describing reality, so obviously it's a bad theory. Yeah. Well, I think I am. I'm showing you a situation where people who engage in racist behavior go broke, which means that the people who are left aren't racist. Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. Who goes broke?

38:33The Racist guy is going broke. Wait, they do? Yeah. So why is Chevron still in business, Exxon still in business, Wal-Mart still in business? We can go down the whole thing all day. You have to prove to me first that they're racist. I'm saying if they're racist, but where's the evidence that they're racist? Okay, let's look at it this way then, since you need some evidence. How many black executives are in the Fortune 500 companies? What is the percentage of black executives? What is the percentage of monies that these companies spend in black neighborhoods or where blacks will benefit?

39:22You know, I mean, it's almost non-existent. Well, blacks are about 14 percent of the population, give or take, something like that, 13-14 percent. That's the myth that they've been telling us, yes. No, I think that's true, that black people are about 13 or 14 percent of the population, and certainly the CEOs are way less than that, so blacks are vastly underrepresented among CEOs. On the other hand, they're vastly overrepresented in NBA and NFL. Okay, let's go, let's do something closer to home here. You will take New Orleans pre-Katrina, because we knew what the demographics were pre-Katrina. You are at Liola. You have Tulane next door to you, two universities that cater to mostly whites.

40:13On your staff, how many blacks do you have as opposed to how many whites? I'm sure it's overwhelming, yet you're in a black city that you pull from the pool of students that you bring locally in, or mostly white, and all of the monies that are spent or spent mostly in the white community. So we're in a predominantly black city, so how do you justify this? I thought we were going to talk about Katrina, but I'm happy to talk about this. I don't know the exact statistics, but I think there are very, very few black professors at Loyola. There might be two or three out of 250. Very, very few. Black students are a little higher percentage.

41:04I would guess 5%. I'm not sure. I just don't have these numbers at my beck and call. I don't see that this is racism. I mean, people who think that it's racist think that every profession should have the same proportion of people in it. No, I don't say that. What I'm saying is based upon the standards of business, the business should reflect its climate. If you are in a predominantly white area, then it should reflect a predominantly white workload. If you're in a predominantly black area, it should reflect a predominantly black workload.

41:52I don't think so. I think that there should be freedom. People should be free to hire whoever they want, as long as there's no coercion. That, to me, is the free society. And where does this freedom come in? Because you talked about earlier, you were talking about the freedom of economic systems, the fail-safe systems, the better systems. You talked about Wal-Mart. And you said the example you gave was if someone wanted to, if something about a pizza, if people stopped buying at a pizza store, then it would go out of business. The market would correct itself, I think is what you were trying to say. Then if that's true and correct, how in the world is big business benefiting from products that are killing people every day?

42:43Health, accidents, all, you name it, in any category. They are producing weapons that are killing folk in large numbers every day. They're not allowing, they're not, people are not able to make decisions based upon reality, they're making decisions based upon something that is called, there's a term for it, subliminal subduction, I'm sure you're familiar with that. Subliminal advertising. Yeah. Which means that you are loading the gun, and you are pulling the trigger, and the people don't even see it coming.

43:32Well, if you want to talk about debts, my most recent book is on highways, which are run by government. And you know how many people die on the highways every year? 40,000. From what? From motor vehicle accidents. The government, they don't make the motor vehicles. No, but they make the highways. They run the highways. So you're saying that it's not the fault of the business, it's the fault of the government because the government has the highways, but the government's not responsible for what's put on the highways. That's right. I'm saying that if we privatized the highways and we allowed highways to compete with each other, they would come up with ways to reduce the death penalty. Sorry, not the death penalty. How do we jump to that? Well, you're the one that said that business is killing people en masse. I mean, they might be killing them through cigarettes, but it's a voluntary killing.

44:20And I insist that people have a right to be killed if they want to be killed by cigarettes. I gotta cut you off. You say voluntary killing. You know what brainwashing is? I do. So how could that be volunteer? No, no, no, no. My point is, why is there, if it's not there, then it used to be. Well, I know there's a drug store in every corner in the black neighborhood. In every neighborhood, there used to be a gun store in every corner of the neighborhood, and on every TV ad, billboards, you see liquor, smoke and guns. You do not see that in any white communities. Period. Why? Well, evidently the people that are selling these products think that they'll make more profits by selling these to black people because they think that black people want these more.

45:08White people smoke too! Of course. Well, there's... I think they do, but I'm assuming that your facts are correct, I've never noticed this, but assuming that you're stipulating that you're right, it's because... Okay, you say you never noticed this, around Loyola, I know you drive around there a lot, is there any drugs, liquor store, billboards of cigarettes or alcohol? There are no billboards at all, and there are no stores right there, but there are grocery stores, and grocery stores sell alcohol. In other words, they stay out of the middle-class and upper-class neighborhoods. They bring it down in our neighborhoods. That's where you find it prevalent. But you talk about business. Are you aware that one of the biggest businesses in this country was slavery?

45:58You're aware of that? I am. and that the Civil War was fought and people think it was about the emancipation of black folk and it had nothing to do with the emancipation of black folk. It had to do with changing or transferring, excuse me, transferring the marketplace from the private sector to the public sector. Slavery was transferred from the private sector which was the slaveholders and it was put on the dole or on the government's shoulders. Well first of all, I oppose slavery, it's a coercive act and I'm very much opposed to slavery of any kind. I don't think it was a civil war, it was a war of southern secession.

46:45A civil war means that there are two sides wanting to fight, each one wants to take over the whole thing, the whole government. In the war of 1861 or the war of southern secession, the South didn't want to take over The North wanted to take over the South, so minor correction. I think, Amin, your point is sort of like, you know, there's this joke, there's a mouse on top of an elephant and they walk across the bridge and they make the bridge sway, and the mouse said, boy, we made that bridge sway. Well, I think your focus on cigarettes and alcohol and things like that is like the mouse problem. I think there are much more deep problems for the black community than those. I think those are the mouse problems. The elephant problems are... Name them. The fact that drugs are, heroin and marijuana are prohibited and black people are shooting each other just like white people shot each other and Elliot Ness and the mafia when we

47:40had prohibition of alcohol in the 30s, white people were shooting each other and some blacks but the point is that if drugs were legalized, young black men wouldn't be butchering each other. It's a horrible thing. So to talk about some people smoking cigarettes and other people drinking booze, I think it's just misguided, I think the real problem is that they're prohibiting heroin and cocaine and marijuana, and if they were legalized, there'd be no more killings over that than there are now killings over alcohol. Let's talk about the legal drugs then, the drug companies that sell drugs through prescriptions legally. Yes. And we're finding that we have more prescription drug junkies in this country than we have illegal junkies in this country.

48:33Well, I don't think that the problem, I think, again, this is the mouse versus the elephant. I think the prescription drug problems, of which there are some, are mouse-like problems, whereas the problem of heroin and cocaine and marijuana, that's the elephant problem. It's sort of like there's this big elephant sitting in the room and no one's talking about it. Well, wouldn't, isn't that normally the position of big business that to minimize what is being viewed as being the villain, the villain of big business?

49:21When you have identified the villain, so they minimize it and try to take you off point to miss, so you can miss the point and go chasing a dove instead of chasing the mark? I don't think this is a business problem. I think it's a government problem. They prohibit drugs. Let me talk about another problem, I mean, that is an elephant kind of problem, And that's welfare. And what welfare has done has not... You know, you were talking about slavery before? In some sense, slavery was not as damaging, in some sense, slavery was not as damaging to the black community as welfare because after slavery ended in 1865, the black family was still intact. For years after 1865, people were looking for each other.

50:11They were saying, you know, Emily Lou was sold up the river, Joe was sold down the river. They were trying to get their families together. As late as 1910, the white and the black families were equally intact, roughly. There was a percentage difference. Welfare started really in 1965, and nowadays many, many black kids are brought up in single family houses without a man in the family. And the reason for that is welfare. It's sort of like when you put a frog in boiling water, the frog knows enough to jump out, And the boiling water is like slavery, but when you put a frog in cold water and heat it up slowly, this is the welfare, the frog doesn't know. It's very insidious. So a big, big problem is to get rid of welfare, which emasculates the black family, and we get to the call, but before we get to the call, let me just say this to you. That's the view of most white racists. Actually, welfare is nothing more

51:13Then the deliverer or the system by which government monies are transferred to business through the welfare recipients. They are the carriers of the monies. Caller, you are with us. Question or comment? Comment. I wanted to comment about the admission standards at Loyola University, at Tulane University, and the University of New Orleans. While the Vietnamese population represents maybe 2% of the total of our city, there's a higher percentage of Vietnamese students in all three of those universities. Now, is that a racist thing, or is it the fact that these students worked hard, studied, got the grades, and gained admission to these fine universities?

52:02Well, I don't think it's racist at all, nor do I think that it's racist that the blacks are, what, 90% of the NBA and 80% of the NFL? I'm not sure of the exact numbers, but something like that. And in baseball, they're way more than 14%. I don't think that's racist. I think that... How is it that the Vietnamese who didn't come to our study until the early 80s, that they have managed to bring themselves to the point where they have a higher admission rate than the black community that has been here for 200 years? I've got a very good answer for you, and thank you for the call. I appreciate it. But it's quite simple. The Vietnamese are Asians, so they share the same, they share the same qualities and quantities of life that the whites share.

52:54Actually, they're kin. You have Caucasians and you have Asians. You have whites and you have yellows. They are kindred. So they're taking care of each other. And that is why you have more Vietnamese, more Asians in jobs where blacks should be. Now, you're going to tell me that blacks are not qualified, but yet you do everything you can possibly do to make sure that you keep us in a bad position. So, thank you for your call and comment, but you need to really look at the situation that's going on in this country and around the world. Well, I have a very different answer to that. There's this guy, Thomas Sowell, who I'm a big fan of.

53:44He is a black economist. Some people call him an Oreo cookie or something. I don't think so. I think he deserves a Nobel Prize in Economics not because of affirmative action, but because of his merits. Because he agrees with you. I agree with him. We agree with each other. So, I mean, the same thing. Well, that's not why I think he's so great. There are other people that agree with me that I don't think deserve a Nobel Prize in Economics. I hate to cut you, but we'll have to invite you back. We're run out of time.

54:42You can call in and have your questions ready for him. Brother Mien, do you have anything before we go? You have about 30 seconds. I just wondered, you talked about the welfare situation in slavery, but one of the reasons that people have welfare is because you're coming from broken homes, a mother and a child, no father. That's the slavery mentality. If you know the Willie Lynch letter, that's why it's welfare. There's nothing to do with it. You have to understand that it's been a systematic problem from the beginning of bringing us over here in the beginning and maintaining that same mentality, that same economic climate that is a thrust and a must in your communities to be able to champion your causes and your culture.

55:34Remember, until next week, stay strong, stay proud. Black Power and Black Nationalism is the way. Later.