Welcome to Keith's night. Don't tread on anyone in the
libertarian Institute today. I am joined by Christopher J
coin. He is a economics.
Professor at George Mason University.
He's the author of the upcoming book in search of monsters to
destroy. He also co-authored
manufacturing militarism US Government propaganda in the war
on terror. We're going to be talking about
the domestic costs of War today. Dr. Cohen thank you.
So much for your time. Thank you for having me back
Keith. It's great to talk to you.
One of the great propaganda methods is to discuss, something
only with the potential benefits in mind.
Should we Liberate the sand? So country, should we defend
Taiwan, but the costs or the downsides, both in number of
lives and the amount of money is rarely discussed.
Can you walk us through how we can measure the domestic cost of
war? The cost of War to the Open
people when the US military intervenes anywhere.
Yeah. And so this is a great question
and important one because as you point out correctly, rarely is
it discussed? And, and so, let's step back for
a moment, the notion of cost the way an economist think about it.
The way, the way most people would think about the extent,
they do is monetary outlays. So your expenditures we spend x
amount and even there, the discussions related to war.
Typically terrible, very rarely do people even talk about the
monetary outlays and if they do, they severely under State them.
I mean, let's not forget that members of the Bush
Administration and George w--. Bush himself were saying that o
Iraq will pay for itself in the oil will pay for it and it will
be greeted as liberators and it will be basically Costless to
the American population trillions of dollars later.
Not so much and so A good rule of thumb just on monetary
outlays. So explicit costs is whatever.
Politicians say they are severely understating it.
I don't know if multiple of 15 or 20 or 30 is a Rule of thumb,
but they're understanding it, but the costs are even more
significant, why? Because costs are not just
monetary outlays, but also injuries and death to human
beings. Both Americans.
But also foreigners. Again, there's even to the
extent. People count injuries and
deaths. It tends to be focused on
Americans and other people don't count as Tommy Franks, a member
of the US Military One, say we don't do body counts
representing the US. Moment when people are talking
about civilians being killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.
So there's those costs but there's a whole nother set of
cost, which is in order to operate the war Machinery.
I don't mean the literal Machinery.
I mean, the apparatus that carries out Warfare.
It takes a lot of resources to do.
Some of those are physical resources.
So steel has to be pulled from making buildings to making
tanks. Then it also redirects human
capital that is you need to redirect people's abilities, the
alertness of entrepreneurs from satisfying, the wants of private
consumers, which is what they do in markets to satisfying their
political Masters. And so the cost of War are
severely understated just in monetary terms as we mentioned
their enormous. But when you add in these other
costs and there are enormous and you can't measure them
completely Because there are certain aspects that you can't
monetize, so think about think about this.
You know, if you are born before, you know, like I was
born in the late 70s. So airport security for me was
walk through a metal detector. Put your bag down, it goes
through the X-ray machine, that's it 9/11 happens.
Now it's you take off your shoes, you get your hands wipe
for the explosives, you can get patted down for having a bead of
sweat, on your forehead. Ed, which is some signal that
you might be a terrorist and so on and so forth.
You can be on watch lists, my kids who are young will never
know the pre 9/11 experience. So to them airport, security,
what it is today to, what appears to me and others who
experienced the prior is very different is obnoxious and what
government does, they'll never know that and that cost those
changes in freedoms and Liberties these Are not things
that you can just monetize. Like you can monetize a piece of
a piece of plastic or metal that you can purchase on a market.
And so those costs are are Broad and significant.
When it comes to the Paul Krugman world view of the
economy in his book arguing with zombies.
He says look all right we got a lot of spending in these
government sectors but the reality of the economy is my
spending is your income and your spending is my income.
So even if you can say look this or that sectors extremely
bloated to stop having such a sector is to advocate for More
or less an economic recession, because you're decreasing the
amount of people in the labor force.
Decreasing the amount of spending decreasing the amount
of monetary circulation. Therefore, when people like you,
when people like Abigail Hall, advocate for decreasing
government spending, you're more or less advocating for
recession. What if anything is wrong with
that logic? Well, for this, we need to turn
to Frederic bastiat. The the famous French Economist
and he made a wonderful point. It's very straightforward when
you realize it, but A lot of people fail to internalize it,
including those that adopt the the type of logic that you just
laid out for us and among other things.
Bastiat pointed out that there's the seen and the Unseen.
So this is oftentimes discussed in terms of the broken window
fallacy that, you know, following a disaster or embossed
Yachts example, window breaks ago, that's good.
So, it's bad. Of course for the person that
has to pay but it's good because it stimulates economic activity.
And you hear this after natural disasters?
You oftentimes Is here with more.
This is great, it will stimulate spending, it will give people
income. Well what does that Overlook?
What bastia pointed out and then of course, Henry hazlitt in
economics in one lesson took bastiat slesin on the seen and
the Unseen. And that's the central point,
which is another wonderful book is, well, wait a second, what
would have happened if the window had been broken?
What would have happened if we hadn't gone to War?
What would have happened if there was an earthquake that
destroyed things? Oh, we would have had stuff that
we had prior. For was destroyed and we would
have had income to spend on other things.
So it's not like you either fund war production or the resources
magically disappear, they get used in other things and so no
doubt. If you cut the military budget,
no doubt. If you reduced war production,
that people in those Industries, the owners of firms.
The employees of firms stockholders of those of those
firms would suffer a loss because They would have less
business and government is their main source of business.
But what that neglects is that those resources would be used
for other things. So, then it really comes down
to. Where does your confidence lie
with What entity has the best ability to make decisions about
how to spend scarce resources? Do you think private decision
makers in private competitive markets?
Are better placed to allocate scarce resources or do you think
that government planners are I am of the position that the
former that is private economic actors or in a superior position
to determine how to best allocate scarce resources.
But as you pointed out in your motivating question, there are a
lot of people that are quite confident in the ability of
government to do so. So one more thing on this
because this is Cass. Sunstein's response to the
broken window fallacy he more or less Embraces the fallacy and
attempts to flip it onto us. This is in a book titled
Conformity he says look there's so much trash that the idiot
masses waste their money on these BMWs.
When look if we had outlawed BMWs it's just a status symbol
it's not like people. Couldn't drive that the coolest
people in town would have liked Intrepid or whatever.
You know, let some some other sort of cars.
So this is really the stupid greed economy.
That is wasting all these resources, imagine what we could
do, if we limited the amount of money that could be spent
privately and we combat it climate change and we combat it
all these authoritarian dictators across the world.
So sunstein says, yeah. I yeah, I agree with the broken
window. We'll see.
Every fallacy, every dollar that's spent in the greedy.
Private sector could be spent in the public sector.
So when it comes to the mindset of public is for everyone,
private is for narrow few selected people.
How do you respond to that mentality?
Yeah, well I think that the underlying assumptions that you
just laid out quite nicely, you're doing a lot of work and
heroic work, the idea that if you just transfer these
resources that the government will do stuff for the people.
It's unclear to me why you would think that would happen just to
highlight a couple other challenges before returning to
this. If people private people are too
Goofy, too dumb to elitist. Too narrow focused to pick a car
or for the nudge. People to pick a apple over a
Snickers bar, I don't know. In what world people think
they're going to be able to select politicians or Regulators
that can tell them the best way to live.
So that's one thing. The second thing thing is to the
extent, we take the status symbol logic.
And we embrace it will let's be consistent, I can't think of a
higher status position and telling other people how to live
their life then telling other people what they should do for
their own good. That is the ultimate status
position. Its power over other human
beings and so I care much less about people driving a BMW
because they think it looks nice.
Driving down the street compared you granting a Member of the
so-called Elite power to tell other people how to live their
lives, because then we have to focus on selection mechanisms,
which then leads us to things like fa Hayek's treatment of
selection of planners in the road to serfdom in the chapter
titled. Why the worst get on top which
is Hayek says, well what type of people are going to tend to rise
to the top in situations where you get to boss.
Other people around where you get to control them where you
have to rely on instruments of force, A threat thereof, which
is what the state is in order to back your mandates, people that
feel comfortable doing those things.
And Hayek says, look quite often.
Those are not going to be the nicest people in society because
nice people don't like to boss other people around.
Don't like to force them to do things and don't like to use
Force to back up their mandates. But going back to your initial
question. I don't understand why we would
think that government has either the knowledge or the incentives
to carry out these grandiose. Projects, they can do stuff,
people in government can spend money, no doubt.
But that is different than doing things like ending, climate
change, creating wealth, ending poverty, and so you always have
to take into account two things. Number one, the the knowledge
aspects. What knowledge is required to
do? What the the do-gooder say, they
want to do and then on top of that the incentives, what
incentives do they face and oftentimes.
It's highly perverse incentives and then Course you know, as one
writer worn long ago, be wary of the humanitarian with the
guillotine and I think that's good advice because they might
state that they want to be to do good, but if you're not careful
they'll behead you and that's a good warning.
I think in these kind of discussions and why is that?
Is it because the average constraint of I'm doing this for
myself. Can sometimes be checked by
other people doing things? Things in there, you know,
explicit self-interest. We can say everything's in your
self-interest but when the humanitarian is oh well I'm
doing this on behalf of other people and so there's really no
stopping me. The more you fight me.
The more I want to allegedly helped these people.
As a matter of fact, I want to help say blacks so much that I
don't care that the vast majority of them prefer school
choice compared to a districting system.
They don't even know what's good for them.
I see that one all the time. Yeah.
Is that why it is there? An actual reason?
Because they've said that they no longer have the constraint
of. I'm not selfish like these
libertarian people. I'm doing this for others.
Let's go baby. Yeah, I think that's certainly
part of it and the other part of it is that genuine
humanitarianism doesn't require force.
And so I'm always quite skeptical when people say, you
know we're I'm here to help you and they're sticking a gun in
your face. Something's amiss Or the or the,
or the famous meme that went around, don't know if it's
famous but it went around for a while back.
This probably decade ago of member of the US, military kick
in a door and Iraq and Afghanistan.
Ends Afghanistan saying in the caption was, I'm here to bring
you democracy. There's something funky about
this. In terms of the, the it doesn't
pass the smell test. And whenever that's the case, I,
you know, I makes me hesitant but then you take into account
the kind of incentives you're talking about where you can
shift costs on the other people, you're not incurring the full.
Cost of your behavior, oftentimes other people are
paying for it. So you're spending other
people's money and when you take all these things into account
again, it doesn't mean you can't do anything to help people.
But simply saying you want to help people and do good, doesn't
make it. So, and so again, notice the
consistency in this argument, which I like, which is we don't
have to assume variation agent type and what I mean by that is
we're not saying there's like good people and bad people, and
only bad people are in government and only good people
are In private, the private sector.
That might be the case, by the way.
But we don't need to assume that that makes the argument easy
because the bad people do bad stuff, the good people do, good
stuff. We can assume that in both
settings, there's good and bad people.
But the institutional environment, the incentives,
they face are quite different. And so, the nice part in this
goes back to Adam Smith and many others have pointed out in
markets, is you can be the most self-interested arrogant,
vainglorious person in the world, but in order to make
money in the market you need to To satisfy the wants of other
human beings in politics. You do not have to do that and
that in the more power you give to political actors, the more
space scale and scope you give them to exercise their power
over people. And so that's one of the the key
differences to keep in mind, I think So what I have written
down here, it seems like what you're saying, is the scam.
Sort of, you wrote a book on propaganda here, so I figured,
you're probably the the best person to ask it almost seems
like the propaganda the mechanism is they take something
that exists in human society, greed and ignorance any society
everywhere you could find some grade and some ignorance and
then they pin it on the voluntary sector, never applying
it to their own sector. Is that the heart of the
propaganda that the sunstein's of the world are pushing?
Yeah. And I don't know if I, if you
want to call propaganda. I think it's just a lack of
analytical consistency. So I don't know if it's a, I
don't know if it's an intentional misdirection or
misinformation, it might be, but I just think people, I think
people tend to associate the public sector with good.
And you were put it before in the private sector as Cutthroat
competition, dog-eat-dog competition and I'm looking out
for number one at the expense of everything.
Everyone else. The public sector, it says
positive. Some, we all benefit and that's
just not true, you know. And, you know, as you pointed
out greed, is a social constant is existed with us forever.
I remember hearing I forget who said it but I like it.
So I'm going to borrow it and I give credit to whoever came up
with it but using greed as an explanatory variable for
outcomes is the equivalent of using gravity to explain why a
plane crashes. If so, if a plane crashes, why
the plane crashed gravity that doesn't explain?
Lane it because, of course, lots of planes don't crash.
And so, there has to be some other explanatory factor or
factors that can help us explain it.
I think it's the the same logic here.
The modern monetary theorist, Advocates will say that.
Look under our gold standard, we had this constraint, you can
only print so much. The thing was backed by a
commodity, that was really horrible.
The good thing. Now, is we don't even have to
print the money that we call printing.
We can increase the number of digits in your account simply by
having the Federal Reserve enter them, this allows people to
access things for free, we could have free college for Housing
free healthcare. What is wrong with this mindset?
If anything that there's a cost to something that has money, we
give the people the money and now it's free.
What, yes, that missing. I mean, the fundamental issue is
that you each when you, when you print money or create money out
of thin air, as you nicely summarized it it devalues
existing units of the money. And so it makes units that
people are already holding worthless each and of Course the
people that tend to suffer the most under this type of system
or those on a fixed income. So either relatively poor people
on a fixed income or elderly people who are either retired or
living off of some kind of nest egg that isn't growing, in terms
of earning more income, they could be earning interest or
other returns, of course. So, that's the problem.
Now, the the mmt people, you know, look they say, Deficits.
Don't matter increase in the money supply.
Is it matter. It's not that inflation.
Can't happen, they say but we can tame it through regulations
and taxes and so they attribute a lot of inflationary causation
to greet to go back to our earlier conversation and
specifically, the greed of Corporations and windfall
supposed windfall profits. That's kind of language they
use. And so what is the way you know?
I think about this. Well we have the inflationary
pressure in terms of Introducing existing value of money.
You have relative price distortions.
So what I mean by that is as Government prints money, it's
presumably going to spend it. And when it's spends it it will
influence prices. But in doing that it's changing
the structure of those prices that that which would emerge if
markets were left up to their own devices.
And so, you know, if Government injects a lot of money into, I
don't know, pick something and it's gonna change the scarcity.
Chance of that resource or resources and that's going to
have Ripple effects throughout the economic system in ways that
you and I don't know, you know, the beauty of a market economy,
is that it operates? So efficiently, that you and I
don't need to know details as the, the Nobel prize-winning
Economist. Fa Hayek said, like, look, if
the price of 10 increases, you know, an economist would talk
about that is, okay. Let's think about supply and
demand, right? And we could draw supply and
demand curves on the breadboard and talk about it.
Ordinary People just walk around and live their life.
If they see the price of tin, go up and they consume less 10 on
the margin because it's more expensive, which captures the
relative, scarcity of 10. When government starts
intervening in the economy, it starts to stored in those
relative prices, so it might make 10 more scarce even though
that's not reflecting genuine, underlying Market valuations to
reflecting the valuations of government planners.
And this going back to where we started, by the way, is why the
war economy is so devastating. It is It's simply the monetary
outlays. It's a lot, you know, the US
government is what heading towards a trillion-dollar base
budget. That's, that's the direction
it's heading for the Department of Defense.
That's a lot of money in the Raw meaning in itself, but when it
ends, when that money is both pulled out of the private sector
or dead is issued, which means you got to pull it out later to
repay the debt or when government intervenes and
markets to redirect resources, from producing private computers
to produce. And cute computers for f-35s
that has real effects on physical items.
In the economic system, it has effects on human capital and
laborers, it redirects. All these things and distorts,
all these markets in ways that you can't see, you can't see it.
Because the market economy is so complex, you can't see it
because it's not something you can just easily measure and add
up, and that's what makes it so, Dangerous is the fact that it
has these Ripple effects on the broader, dynamism of the market
economy, which are often times neglected, just because they're
so difficult for people to grasp and went come back to our
comments earlier about the spending for spending sake, just
to increase output. If you treat all of this stuff
is homogeneous. So the same you avoid this
problem because a dollar spent on an iPhone for private
consumer is the same as the dollar spent by the government
on a drone in that. Framework.
A dollar is a dollar. In fact, some people say well
no, there's a multiplier. If we give a dollar to the
Drone, then you get this multiplier effect, you get even
more spending. Well, I think any ordinary
person if you said to them as an iPhone, the same as a droid
drone. They'd realize, no, it's not.
And once you realize that you realize that spending has real
effects because that dollar spent on the Drone, has to come
from somewhere else. It has to, you can print it but
that has real economic effects as well.
So there's no way to avoid Cos it's just one of those costs go
to look like and how good it, you are hiding them from
Ordinary People because that's the shell game like can we move
resources around enough, so people don't see what's
happening and then they do see we just chalk it up.
Either too greedy corporations or as in the case of the world
wars we put out propaganda posters about sacrificing.
So during WWII. What did you have Victory
Gardens? Right?
Grow your own food talk about. Out demonstrating that war is
destructive for development. Most people in wealthy societies
have Gardens for a hobby, not because it's their source of
food. We're in a wealthy Society, we
rely on other fellow human beings to produce food and then
we peacefully trade with them. What the Lord did was to
impoverish people, such that Government tried to make it
patriotic. And as part of the sacrifice to
grow your own food again, to literally return you to earlier
stages of development. That is the destructive nature
of warfare and then you take that and you spread it across a
whole host of different economic activities because the US
military sector is entangled with so many private sector
Industries. We tend to think of the main
military contractors and those are key but you start looking at
military contractors, are firms, that received, military
contracts, Healthcare Providers technology companies because of
course, You need people to run the apparatus, it literally
infects it being the military, infects, all aspects of domestic
life, and we take it for granted, we don't, most people
don't even know about and care about it and we've been so
trained to think about it as well.
This is a necessary thing. It is patriotic to support this
that most people don't even question it.
Yeah, I'm I'm not sure how how that lies started.
We're just because you don't think something should be like,
totally dominant, doesn't mean you don't appreciate it.
The, the analogy that I use is it's like I don't believe
Farmers have a right to go around and boss, everyone
around, and take their income with the threat of jailing them.
That doesn't mean I'm not appreciative of farmers.
Same thing in the security sector.
The the lack of questioning. Surely, surely is one one of the
Great Hurdles, we face when it comes to trying to decrease the
amount of spending. So so let's say we have a
drastic decrease in the amount of people in the military.
Well, first, I actually want to get to.
Are you familiar with the term blowback?
Oh yeah. Oh yeah.
Can you explain what that means? And what evidence?
If any there is for such a theory?
Yeah, well the idea of blowback, a lot of people think about it
kind of as an unintended consequence or or a foreign
entity. Te T doing something.
Back to the United store. The intervening government.
So it's often. It was, it was a term coined by
the CIA and it what it, what it entails is when you intervene in
another society, when you engage in foreign policy typically, or
talking about either direct military operations are covert
operations. Blowback is when the recipients
if you will or the targets of that action do things in
response to The intervening country that's the in the
broadest sensor. The way I described it in plain
English is if you poked a hornet's nest, you're going to
get stung. That's that's to me.
Blowback, there's a wonderful political Scientist by the name
of Chalmers Johnson, who wrote a book called blowback.
So if people want to read more about this.
But that's the idea it's that when you when you it's related
to foreign policy and foreign intervention.
And again this isn't some conspiracy theory or libertarian
concept. The CIA are the folks that
coined the term. And again, it doesn't take a
rocket scientist to realize. This there's examples throughout
human history of one group of people or one government
intervening abroad, and those people being targeted
retaliating against the intervening government.
And that's the risk again, the problem is this very rarely.
Does anyone make that connection publicly Certainly not knowing
in the in the public space that wants to keep their job.
What they do is interventions are take undertaken.
It generates a host of intended consequences and unintended
consequences and then that necessitates subsequent
interventions and those things are Justified based on the first
failure. So the need to intervene again
is because oh look, they're attacking us, very rarely does
anyone. Never asked.
Well why, right? And and of course, kind of the,
the famous moment in Contemporary American politics
is the great debate where on the Republican platform, where Ron
Paul and Rudy Giuliani famously got into it because Ron, Paul
brought up this issue of blowback with that 9/11 attacks.
And Giuliani said well how dare you blame America, how dare you
even say that, right? That the idea of even saying
that Intervening in another Society could have unintended
consequences is off-limits. And so different people analysts
put different weight on blowback as an explanatory variable, for
different outcomes but I certainly think it's an
important one and you know, if you go read you know like Andrew
base of itches book on the Middle East, on the history of
US intervention in the Middle East, it's just a wonderful
example of this. There's a lot of other great
history in there too but just A wonderful example and if you
read it through this lens, you see, just one intervention
leading to lead to another intervention, this kind of
spiral effect. And then, as I mentioned, Chama
Chama Johnson's book. Blowback has just wonderful
examples of this logic as well. There is a book, titled Jihad
Bin Laden in his own words, interviews speeches and
declarations and it's goes back to Bin Laden's, 1995 letter to
King fahd of Saudi Arabia, all the way up until I think. 2002
it records all this and it's very clear that Bin Laden's.
Biggest recruiting mechanism is the Americans occupy.
The land of the two, holy sanctuaries in a conspiracy.
With the Saudi regime, which is now a legitimate and they use
that to bomb people in Iraq, from after the first Gulf War
and an axe sanctions which kill civilians, not to mention
support for Israel, which which of course he also mentions.
So the fact that 911, the big justification for a big military
in my lifetime. People don't appreciate that.
And one more example, which doesn't get nearly enough.
Attention here is a quote from the transcript of Omar.
Matine's 911 call. This is the murderer from the
Pulse Nightclub in Orlando. Florida.
What Obama called the worst mass shooting in American history
because he didn't want to admit. That Wounded Knee was a lot
bigger. Omar Mateen says, you have to
tell America to Bombing Syria and Iraq.
They are killing a lot of innocent people.
What am I to do here? When my people are getting
killed over there, you have to tell the US government to stop
bombing. They are killing too many
children. They are killing too many women.
Okay, you need to know that they need to stop bombing Syria and
Iraq. The u.s. is collaborating with
Russia and they are killing innocent women and children,
okay. The airstrikes need to stop and
stop collaborating with Russia. Now you feel now you feel how it
is Now, you feel how it is? That is an exact transcript from
the Pulse Nightclub murderer. So, of course, Donald Trump and
Barack Obama lie and say, well, he was just an Islamic homophobe
not I've read the transcript, 18 Pages, no homophobia.
It's just that again, and again and again, anything else before
we move on on, non monetary cost to a interventionist foreign
policy. I think just to kind of close
the circle on this. I think the main takeaway is
that the first one which is straightforward, is that the
costs of War are always understated?
Always, there always understated.
Both, as I mentioned earlier on the explicit monetary side, but
all these other costs, which are unseen, but have real effects on
human life are, are, are there and they are real?
And they are neglected and no one in the polity.
So no one in the public space who wants to advance.
Since their career has any interest in revealing those
costs or protecting them. You know, the interesting thing
about this blowback conversation is that where these things
happen? Like the perfect example, you
just read understand as a government, even for Defenders
of government doesn't matter what your ideological stripe is
government is doing the opposite of what they purport to do.
So you know, people on the left people on the right people in
the middle. What do they say?
Well most of them believe in government and they'll what they
want government do varies but almost All of them will say,
well, government has to protect, people has to protect their
freedoms. It has to protect their
Liberties, their rights, their person and property.
Okay, that's nice. But as you pointed out, past
actions are actually undermining those things and that's one of
the costs of war. The reason they're understated
is because they're long and variable and they often times
take decades to emerge. So you get the Espionage Act in
the early 1900's is another example of kind of the long and
variable affects of Of foreign policy, that's what I think
1917, the presidential Administration that used the
Espionage Act. Most was the Obama
Administration and they leveraged it against journalists
against leakers that was not the original intent of the act at
all. And so you can see how you
expand Government powers decades ago.
It sits idle. And then all of a sudden you
have the precedent for government to expand in the
future and so the weapons of War II Just literally the weapons,
the the instrument of war and violence is something that
should be wielded very carefully yet, it's just the opposite in
America, it is there's Unity around it in certainly
Washington DC. But you know, if you look at
public opinion, polls, most Americans are highly supportive
of the US military. It's, I think it's the most
trusted institution in the federal government, and that
gives a blindness to how that instrument is used by policy
makers and so So that's the kind of takeaways from this.
I think my colleague at the libertarian Institute, Laura
Calhoun put puts forth a very convincing thesis.
She says that when people, you know, are sort of looking for,
you know, how to do things because politicians are always
on the television, they sometimes, you know, work the
politician into their personality and that sort of
builds the culture. And when the politicians are
constantly, Aang, we have an issue, let's use the police.
Let's use the military. Well, all these people in the
society are now much more likely to use violence in their
everyday lives and you see it all the time.
Like any time, someone has like a, a friendly joke, and they're
filming it on YouTube, get away, or I'm going to call the police,
call the police. I mean, it's it's now in their
mental chip and it's their go to and she says, it goes up to, and
including things like, you know, They're called Mass Shooters
Mass murderers. Who use guns do you think
there's actually a cultural effect that going to war has to
the domestic population? Oh I certainly do.
I certainly do that even, you know, you have to I don't even
think you have to be a psychologist Jew to understand
this. I mean, just look at the
history. You don't go back that far.
Just look back to certainly to the world wars.
Every major war, the United States has fought, what has the
government done. It takes.
Goes back to the propaganda point.
They take active steps to cultivate a culture of unity of
sacrifice of patriotism. All, in the name of the war
effort, they work to disarm descent.
Sometimes through persuasion, sometimes through covert
operations. Like, when the CIA FBI NSA were
surveilling, infiltrating and the anti-war movement during
Vietnam War. And so So it certainly has a
cultural effect on top of that. It certainly in America other
countries to perhaps by no America the best.
From a very young age kids are indoctrinated into the idea that
the state and the military are necessary to protect us.
The whole idea about thanking members of the military for
their service, irregardless of knowing anything about them.
What they've done. You know, meaning that a lot of
people in the military are not on the front lines of combat,
they're sitting in an office and that might be fine and well for
what they do. But it's weird to thank them for
their service. Like somehow they're doing
something heroic, but we do that and and for a country that is
built on skepticism of government on patriotism, not in
terms of worshipping the state. But in terms of the ideas of
individual, liberty and freedom, To my way of thinking, that's
quite an odd practice. And so certainly, I think there
is a cultural, a culture that is both necessary for government to
operate its militaristic activities.
But it also cultivates those very things and it cultivates
them through education, formal education, it cultivates them
through media and Partnerships with the media.
Again, if you think this is some kind of conspiracy theory just
look up Ation Mockingbird which was a major government operation
to partner with journalists and through Hollywood.
And so a lot of people and Abby. And I talked about this in
manufacturing militarism, you know, a lot of people don't
realize that many Hollywood films partner with the
Department of Defense that has a department that is focused on
entertainment. The government subsidizes them,
by providing them resources and access to military facilities,
but they get to review the script and make suggestions for
changes. One of the most justified
unquestionable Wars that America has been involved in, in my
lifetime was Afghanistan. What are the major lessons we
could learn from us intervention in Afghanistan?
Yeah. Well, the main one, I don't mean
to sound flippant, but don't do it.
I mean, you know, I, I'm, I was amazed 5, not really, that's too
strong. But when the Afghanistan papers
came out. So the Afghanistan Papers are
there. Most of them are publicly
available already or at least the the reports by the Inspector
General for the Afghanistan reconstruction where but the
Afghanistan papers are a series of Lessons Learned reports from
cigar. That's the special Inspector
General for the Afghan reconstruction and a bunch of
what are called snowflake memos. They're short memo still like
one page or call paragraph memos from Donald Rumsfeld or to
Rumsfeld and Craig Whitlock. I believe is a journalist named
who foiled these and got these and they released them there on
the watch. Post website and then he wrote a
book called Afghanistan papers that weaves them together into a
narrative. Go read that book for those
interested and Page after page, what do you see, exactly what
any skeptic of government would expect?
Perhaps even worse perverse incentives.
So you have corruption not just in Afghanistan, but domestically
because you have money flying around with no checks and people
are just trying to grab it as quickly as they can.
What else do you have dysfunction?
From top to bottom both in the US government in foreign
operations and foreign relations with other governments, just
massive dysfunction. It's not like, there's a couple
mistakes made. So a lot of people like to say,
well, what did we learn? And then, they'll say things
like, well, we need to do this better.
We need to plan better. We need more resources.
Well, not really my reading of the Afghanistan papers is that
there are systemic features of the Military apparatus both
domestically and internationally, which prevents
it from doing those things that proponents of that apparatus
claim, it can do. And so when that's the case,
it's not a, it's not a matter of just, well, if we had better
people planning, we had lots of people planning.
We had bipartisan, we had multiple administration's
planning in Afghanistan. It's not a matter of resources.
We had lots of resources. It's a pure matter of State.
Pathologies of a set of dysfunctions inherent in a
large-scale government operation and those things cannot be
fixed. That means that at a minimum
someone who advocates for these things I would hope would be
extremely skeptical going forward for those of us who are
skeptical going into Afghanistan that My way of thinking provides
a series of data points to illustrate the various concerns
that we have with the operation of that state apparatus and it
doesn't require cherry-picking. It's not like you're just
picking out the bad stuff that happened.
I mean, the entire thing was a disaster, and you can even see
this in the points of success people race.
Like, what are the points of success?
They race? Well, they typically
cherry-picked themselves and say well women in this area got
access to education. Well, number one, The argument
for invading Afghanistan, was not, let's give some women
access to education. That only became the goal when
it became the goal. Second of all, they, it's Cherry
Picked because those instances where they increased access,
they exclude the rest of the country, where there was things
got worse for women. Oftentimes driven by the
occupiers, by the way and of course the minute the u.s. left
which itself was a disaster while they're still there, but
formally left. It all collapsed.
So none of it was sustainable. None of it was legitimate
nation-building or Society building.
It was all just a dysfunctional shell game.
And when I read this, I remember thinking like, okay, this is a
chance like people if they read this, they're really going to
see. It's kind of pulled back the
curtain on the operations of the security State and then, of
course, Russia and Ukraine happened not long after.
Now everyone again is like, well, now we need to double
down. We need a bigger military
because of Russia. Because of China.
And so the, the the very small opening in the window for a
critical discussion and critique of not just Afghanistan but of
the security state in the military sector itself.
Slammed shut pretty quickly and that's disheartening.
But also I think cause for dumb people like myself doubling down
because now, We need more than ever to make clear to people how
this thing operates, especially because of the risks that are
posed by places like interactions with Russia and
China where nuclear Wars on the table.
And and so it's the stakes for humankind now or even greater.
If we go back to where we started talking about the cost
of War, Of course, yes. So nato in its entire history,
declares war declares Article 5 for the first time and then
spends 20 years of an operation in Afghanistan and then the
Taliban Takeover in 11 days and we have murder rates increasing
in places, like, Seattle, Chicago, all across America, a
lot of crime going up. And this is what Joe Biden
actually says, on 60 Minutes. What?
Chinese president XI know about your commitment to Taiwan.
We agree with what we signed on do a long time ago and there's
one China policy and Taiwan makes their own judgments about
their independence. We are not moving, we're not
encouraging, their being independent, we're not to let
that's their decision but would US forces defend the island.
Yes, if in fact, there was an unprecedented attack after our
interview of White House, official told us US policy has
not changed officially the US will not say whether American
forces would defend Taiwan, but the commander-in-chief had a
view of his own. So unlike Ukraine to be clear,
sir US forces us. Men and women would defend
Taiwan in the event of a Chinese Invasion.
Yes. What would be the potential?
Downsides of the US intervening in a conflict between China and
Taiwan. Clothespins, the biggest
downside would be a war of massive proportions that would
kill Millions. Upon Millions upon millions of
people nuclear war. Of course, would talk about
costs not just lead to immediate Devastation of a significant
number of human lives. But have long-term effects due
to things like nuclear. Which, of course, the idea that
it affects the atmosphere which then will affect the ability for
things like crops to grow for other areas of life to function
because of the effects on the atmosphere.
And so, you know that clip is you kind of chuckle when you
hear, because it's like no one China and then two seconds
later, it's like no, we're going to, we're going to defend them
if we need to. And so it's somewhat funny, but
it's also scary. It's scary.
Of course, the consequences, but it's also scary.
Because who's running this apparatus.
So the president you know, is runs part of it.
And but it also an enormous apparatus, you know, people
refer to as the Deep state but that's outside the president's
control. Again, people like to think
there's one person, but it's representative, I think of the
dysfunction of it. And so, again, the issue is
people like to think of someone being in control, they'll say
things like we need government because someone needs to create
Order someone needs to create stability absent.
This we'd have chaos, we can't have chaos.
We'll just listen to that clip. That's chaos.
Its orderly. In terms of, there's a sentence
being said, in a certain structure, that's the order, but
it's chaos. In terms of simultaneously, you
have the head of the most powerful military in the world
saying No One China, we're not getting Ravine and then we're
going to intervene to defend. And so you know, one of my big
concerns and something. I've Tried to push in my own
writing is, you know, a lot of people frame international
relations like, no, we have to be tough.
We have to deter if we don't talk strong than other people
take over, maybe. But there's something to be said
about when you talk tough, it also incentivizes other people
to be tough as well. And so, often times the threat
of violence is endogenous, meaning internal to the
interactions between people. It's a response.
You how you are behaving in the threat, they perceive.
And so, one of the things I think is really hard is to try
to think about from the perspective of other people,
non-americans how they might perceive statements, like the
one we just heard and if they feel threatened, they're going
to respond accordingly. And how are they going to
respond? Presumably by making military
moves. But then that creates again is
we're going back to what we talked about earlier that
requires. Now the need for more military
response because we need to be tough and it's just Is a spiral
and so emphasizing things like diplomacy emphasizing things
like, well, look, just like in your normal life.
You don't have to like everyone you interact with but we tend to
say like look, you know, you live and Let Live I don't have
to like everyone I interact with or everyone, I, whose path I
cross with but I need to find a way to live with them.
And why don't we apply that logic to the to the
International Space? You know, people will say, well
that's naive. That's that, that's a, that's a,
that's the road to No, the road to Rune is pushing the most
powerful military in the world into conflict.
That is a guaranteed road to ruin.
And so, you know, I it's we're in a precarious time right now
because of this stuff and, you know, I think the message and
the topics were talking about here are of utmost importance
precisely for that reason, I love Brian.
Kaplan's example, I, if I remember it correctly, it's so
you You start a new job and you walk into the office and you go
up to everyone. No, just pull out a gun.
Just keep it at your side. And say anyone who screws with
me, you're going to be in a world of pain, just go around
and say that to everyone. Surely that's going to keep you
really safe, you know? And everyone's going to like you
and respect you because you're really, you know, showing them
how aggressive you can get or could maybe the exact opposite
happened and everyone would hate.
You see you as a threat and want you either gone or dead?
It's like that is exactly. What happens when you put
missiles in Turkey, to try to provoke the Soviets, or you
start sending javelins to the government in, in Ukraine and
you expand NATO against James Baker's, promise to explicitly,
not expand NATO, and encircle Russia.
After they just lost a ton of people in a world war so that
that is so important and I did want to ask what are some
examples of Industries in America.
Gotta Wear a large percentage of people worked in the past and
today we don't have as many because this could sort of
service and example, of just because we have a lot of people
working in this military industrial sector.
Now means we can still have economic growth in the future
without such a sector. What is an example in American
history? If there are any?
Yeah, yeah, there's plenty. I mean, one of them steel
manufacturing. So at one point in time, there
is a significant portion of certain regions.
So like the Rust Belt and For example, were involved in steel
production and that went away Through Time, both due to
Innovations in Technologies, globalization so international
trade and so on. And, you know, there was a cost
of transition. So if you look at a city like
Pittsburgh the Steel City, there's a reason it's called the
Steel City. There's a reason the football
teams called the Steelers. It's because steel dominated
that area. And so, when When the steel
industry was in Decline, Pittsburgh took a big hit and
for a while the city was in Decline but now Pittsburgh is a
vibrant and Lively City. It focuses on technology, it
focuses on health care and health Innovations.
And so, that's one example manufacturing, you know, often
times you hear people say like, well America doesn't make things
any more America's they should manufacture more stuff.
The number we still do Extra stuff by the way.
It's not as much as in the past and so that's okay too.
Why don't we manufacturers much again, globalization and trade
which is to my way of thinking a good thing and productivity.
So due to increases in Machinery, we don't need as many
people involved in manufacturing and from an economic standpoint,
that is a good thing. I mean just do a simple thought
experiment, right? Like we have backhoes to dig
ditches. So their backhoes dig ditches.
Has and you need one person to drive the backhoe.
You could say, like I want to create jobs, I'm going to ban
backhoes and all ditches must be Doug using teaspoons from now on
and then you could have 500 people digging a ditch with
teaspoons that would create 500 jobs but it wouldn't create
wealth wealth creation is using scarce resources to produce
things, people value that then frees up additional resources to
do other things. So By having the back code that
only requires one driver. I can still get the ditch and it
frees up. All the other laborers that
would have been required to use shovels and they can do other
things. And so given that we live in a
world of scarcity, and we have unlimited wants, meaning human
beings. There's always new jobs to be
had. There's always new things to be
done. And so, that's the way I think
about the nature of economic activity and really the nature
of wealth creation. One of the economic issues we
face when dealing with politicians or hate to use the
term. Bureaucratic Feels Like Straw
Manning, but members of the military industrial economy is
the assumption that look, I work in a totally different sector.
They work in this sector so they probably know what they're
talking about. So when Marco Rubio and Lindsey
Graham, I mean two sources are telling me that Russia and China
are people we need to, you know, start Dealing with and getting
heavy handed with. I should trust them and it's not
like, you know, we found that there, you know, heavily
invested in, right? The honor Northrop Grumman so
therefore they don't have a real interest.
However, the economist appreciates the concept of
psychic profit meaning that all of these people are still
benefiting the second. They get in front of a
microphone and they get another election and they have all these
people cheering their name, what is psychic profit?
And what are some lessons we can appreciate.
You ain't about it when trying to understand the potential
ulterior motives for mode, for politicians trying to get us
into war. Yeah, so the concept of psychic
profit the best, kind of exposition if listeners are
interested in reading more as Murray rothbard man, economy and
state. He talks about this idea of
psychic profit but really what it is.
I mean other people have talked about it too but I think it's a
very nice Exposition. He offers really what it is.
Is you know, a lot of people again think of profit like early
return our call Cost. We said monetary outlays.
They think of profit is like money in the bank and that is
certainly one manifestation of profit.
If your, if your revenues exceed your costs but psychic profit is
the idea that you and I are economic actors in general can
benefit, we can gain satisfaction from doing things,
which don't necessarily show up in monetary outlays.
They don't necessarily show up in a balance sheet.
So, for a politician, that might be something like, Effects,
right? If you have a, you want to have
a legacy for being, a good leader, in a strong leader.
That's, that's, that's a reputation effect, it's not a
concrete thing that it shows up in the bank account per se.
So why does that matter? Well, again, I think it comes,
that's part of it, but I think it's a lot of this going back to
your question about about politicians talking about
foreign threats, goes back to just the logic of politics and
get an electoral politics and keeping people in check.
Check. And one of the best ways to keep
the citizenry citizenry in. Check is to instill fear in
them. There's, there's hobgoblins
around every corner and we are the only people that can protect
you from them. And again, we don't need to go
back that far. We could go back far in history
but just go back to 9/11, all right?
And there's a political Scientist by the name of John
Mueller and he did wonderful work on the nature of the war on
terror, from a variety of perspectives.
And one of the Things he pointed out just looking at statistics
was the likelihood of an American being killed in a
terrorist attack is miniscule. So you have a much higher
likelihood of being killed, you know driving a car, getting a
deer running across the street. While you're driving a car.
Getting hit by lightning drowning in a bathtub things
that we take for granted on daily basis.
We don't think twice about so he was trying to get us to realize
the threat was minimal but he also has other books where he
talks About and one books called overblown.
He talks about to terrorism industry and he says the
terrorism in distress, the politicians, that's members of
the media. That's the private sector,
Consultants. They all have an incentive to
overstate the threat. Why do they overstate the
threat? Because the industry thrives on
there, being a threat if there's no terrorist threat, there's no
terrorist industry because who's going to pay for a non threat
just like most people don't pay for, you know, a consulting firm
when they worry about deer running across the street.
Happens. It's terrible when it happens
and people are harmed by it, but it's a part of life.
And so that's why I think most politicians do it because by
doing it, they can secure more resources, more control, and
people fall in line. And then, once you anyone, who
tries to push back in politics, and this is one of the great
challenges you then get pigeonholed as being soft and
not caring about security and Liberties.
Like, I am concerned for the people safety, and my opponent
is wish She washe and week and they are okay with the
terrorists taking over. It's like, what are you talking
about? You know, this just isn't a
threat to worry about. So you came and have those
conversations which is really troubling.
I had once asked, what one of my Jewish friends, I had said.
So you and I went to Temple for 13 years.
We were raised Jewish. And we're always told about the
horrors of anti-Semitism and in 20-something years have neither
of us have faced, you know, any terrible anti-Semitism that
we're always. Told us lurking around the
corner, I asked him, what do you think?
This is he goes now Zionism thrives on Jewish and security
and in that moment I go well you know what that is so interesting
that there is a power, grab to be had the more insecure.
This organization is the more organizations, like the ADL are
going to get attention. And you see that in every single
aspect of society, where the leaders have become now, a
terrible exploiters, I've really enjoyed this conversation.
You have time for three more questions.
Sure. Yeah.
Now America was in a Great Depression then there was a
second world war and then there was no longer a depression
therefore WWII got America out of the Great Depression.
What if anything is wrong with that?
Yeah, so so the this is a story that is widely accepted.
It's taught in schools. Many people believe it.
The idea that that World War Two was the driving force.
Behind getting the United States economy out of the the the
downturn it was stuck in the wake of the Great Depression and
the the best work on this from from, from my perspective, is by
an economic historian by the name of Robert Hicks and Robert
Higgs wrote a series of papers and I'll highlight 14.
Now, in the what I'm talking, I forget the exact name but it
came out in the early 90s and what Higgs did is he reexamined
the data. On the war and some of the
common claims. So what are the common claims it
increased employment? The war being, it increased
employment it led to more output and it increased consumer
spending. So Higgs is great on this, he
takes the data is given and he says, well let's unpack this
using economics. So let's start with output.
So output went up, of course, it went up.
Why did it go up? Because the government made more
stuff, that's the logical outcome.
If you spend more money on making tanks, you're gonna get
more output. But wait, a second Pig, says,
something's amiss. When we talk about output for
human well-being, we think we talked about things that people
value, not just production for Productions sake.
So then this goes back to what you and I are timeout.
Earlier a dollar is not a dollar making.
Drone is not the same as making an iPad, that allows someone to
be more efficient in the private sector.
It's true that both of those things are output and the
problem with aggregate output measures gross national product.
For instance, is that it doesn't differentiate between
value-added output and output. That's produced for output sake,
the same mistake that economists made with the Soviet Union that
what was the mistake they made a few look like Paul samuelson's
textbook, he is GDP gross, domestic product figures.
He's like Soviet Yoon's could have got a pet surpass.
The capitalist systems, what was the mistake?
Well, there's a small number of economists warn Nutter.
Paul Craig Roberts Murray rothbard, it said wait a second,
something's not right here. How can it be that you're
claiming that the Soviet Union is going gangbusters with growth
but people are waiting in line for basic items like bread and
meat things that we take for granted in developed and Wealthy
societies. Well, because what we're
aggregate figures at counting in addition, Some of them being
made up whole things like military, expenditures
infrastructure, and so on those things don't improve human
well-being. They don't improve the true
genuine wealth of the private citizenry.
So that's number one. Big says look when you pull out
military spending which is what he does of those aggregate
figures, it didn't go up, it actually went down.
Okay, so that's myth. Number one, the idea that
somehow the war increased output it didn't it increased output.
Sure. But it increased output in areas
that didn't improve the well-being of people.
Number two is labor. So it increased or excuse me,
increased employment or or decrease unemployment.
That's the second kind of common claim.
Hague says, look what was going on during the war conscription
and redirection of private people into war production.
So if government says, you know, we're going to hire people to
make typewriters and then it starts spending a lot of money,
hiring people making typewriters and then more people Both start
working on typewriters, it would be weird to call that some glue,
some major success. It's like government has distort
spent money on distorting things, of course you're gonna
get more outcome. Somewhat is Higgs.
Do he looks at Labor Statistics and he pulls out all the
military people involved in. What do you see during an actual
private employment decreases? Then you get consumer spending
and so what is Higgs do? He says well you need to adjust
for inflation because a dollar is not a dollar when the
government is running the printing.
Press he had He controls for What's called the inflation
deflator. So basically you're turning
nominal money into real income by controlling for inflation.
The purchasing power of a dollar in the face of inflation and
consumer purchasing power didn't increase.
So there you have it. He's using the data itself
combined with the economic way of thinking that we've been
discussing to demonstrate that, it wasn't the case that it
increased consumer well-being, the the well-being of concern of
private consumers in I could hug says look, you had a centrally
planned economy you had rationing.
You had basic items that people previously were able to get
nylon rubber. They couldn't get, they weren't
coffee coffee grounds, lots of things they were and they were
encouraged. As we were talking about earlier
to impoverish themselves. Don't take trips, don't buy
stuff. You don't need.
Eat all the food on your plate. Grow your own food.
These are all examples. Bowls of not wealth.
It is an example of the destruction of wealth of making
people poorer, and it's quite a powerful narrative that he tells
and I find it quite convincing. One of the arguments against a
lot of what you're advocating is, what this does.
Is it leads to hoarding hoarding materials.
Hoarding money is really bad for an economy.
This is another word. This is the slander word for
savings. What are the potential benefits
of saving money or postponing consumption of resources in an
economy? Yeah.
Well the first of it appear, Lee Private level is its people's
resources. So if they If they want to, if
they want to forego consumption. Now in order to have money for
consumption in the future, that's that's living in a
society where people are free and and they control resources.
That's number one. But on top of that, you know,
people view savings, as you put a quite correctly often times is
like I don't know if they think it's like buried under someone's
mattress or whatever. What happens with with savings?
Well, it gets invested that those resources get Invested.
And in order to grow an economy in order to become wealthy, you
have to forego consumption. You have to invest in What's
called the structure of production, lengthening the
structure of production. In other words, you know, go
back to like a very rudimentary thought experiment, you're on an
island by yourself. You could fish with your hands
and let's say you could catch five fish during the day because
fish are difficult to catch with your hands or you could forego
consumption for a day. So you could not The fish, but
you could work instead on spending your time on investing
in capital. What could you do?
You're sewing a net, right? It take you a day to so Annette
and then tomorrow you can catch 10 fish with the net.
So you for you for went consuming today, you invested
those resources and lengthening the structure production and you
become more productive in the future.
That is what drives development tied up in that, of course, if
things like entrepreneurship, so, entrepreneurship is the
alertness to profit opportunities, but, You need
resources to leverage that alertness.
So I have an idea that I think will generate some new
innovation but I need resources. Where do those resources come
from people saving. And so the idea that somehow
saving is a bad or it harms, the economy is a very peculiar view
of what's happening. And certainly, I think neglects
the fact that in order to extend the structure of production and
to become wealthier Through Time, Foregoing consumption is
necessary. Final question.
Thank you so much for your time. By the way, joined by Professor
Chris, coin of George Mason University author of in search
of monsters to destroy as well as manufacturing.
Militarism US Government propaganda in the war on terror.
A lot of people, even people who don't agree with us,
economically are familiar with the concept of Adam Smith's
invisible hand. Can you please explain what the
Implications are of the Invisible Hand and why it's
important. Sure.
So the Invisible Hand interestingly Smith uses the
term invisible hand once in The Wealth of Nations and then once
in the theory of moral sentiments.
So he's become known for this and it's a term that gets used a
lot, but it's not like Central to the his enormous books.
They're quite thick and dense and filled with insights.
But in any case, you know, people typically, when they use
the term, invisible hand, what they mean are these?
Self ordering processes of markets.
And so what they'll often times say is markets look like, or or
act as if they're Guided by an invisible hand, that something
that they're being controlled to generate an orderly outcome.
So that's fine. I think it's problematic from
the standpoint that no we just need to be careful not to fall
prey to the idea that someone controls the economy because no
one controls it. And that's why The economy
market economies are desirable and so just to say a little bit
more briefly markets number one or interactions between human
beings. There's buyers and their
Cellars. So the idea that markets do
anything is a misnomer to start with markets, don't do anything,
because markets don't exist absent individuals, interacting
with each other. Any time you mess with the
market, you're messing with human beings peacefully
interacting with other human beings.
That's the first thing. So then, why do we have
confidence in markets? Well, because there's Is in
place, private property rights, I have ownership over my person
and over some resources and so do you without that, of course,
you can't have the exchange, because you can't trade,
something you don't own, and so exchange requires either some
kind of property, right, recognition.
That's a norm that is a Norms, a set of traditions or beliefs.
It doesn't have to be formally enforced, although it can be,
you can have government enforced, property rights in All
and empirically, they do that in some cases but they don't have
to be. And so you need those property
rights. Then what happens then price is
emerge through exchange with a monetary unit, those prices
reflect scarcities that allows us to judge how to best.
Use, scarce resources, should I use a scarce resource to make a
phone or an iPad or computer or to leave the mitel that's an
option as well? Well, I have to gauge what the
expected value of them and so I purchased resources Combining
together. And then how do you judge?
Whether you have made the correct forecast, profit loss in
a market, that's what profit and loss does a profit indicates
that you have produced things. That consumers value a loss
indicates that you have not and it's a incentive to stop doing
that. So what people refer to how
often times is the Invisible, Hand is this process because
what happens in this process is order, emerges, order emerges,
not through anyone's centrally. Planning it not through anyone,
centrally controlling it, but through human beings pursuing,
their own diverse ends peacefully, interacting with
other people and coordinating with them.
And it's a beautiful thing. Because when we step back and
appreciate it, which we often don't, we typically take it for
granted. We say like we point out the bad
stuff or things that we think are bad things and we take for
granted the fact that, you know, we're able to get goods and
services that People in the past could only dream of and were
able to get them relatively quickly and we are able to
Outsource almost all aspects of Our Lives.
We're able to have chefs, we're able to have access to medical
professionals. We're able to consume artwork
from around the world, and music from around the world, and
entertainment from around the world, sitting at home.
And those are all wonderful and beautiful things and they are
the source of human, creativity and Ingenuity.
And it is ultimately, the power of markets is they enable human
beings to unleash, their creativity.
They enabled human beings to truly develop, you know, there's
a tendency to view development to some outcome.
Like GDP measures our per capita income, this goes back to your
good question before about psychic income.
Let's take a broader view of development development is doing
what you want to do. Maybe your goal isn't to earn as
much monetary income as you can. Perhaps, you have a Offer for a
hundred thousand dollars, but you except the one for 75,000
dollars and I say, well, that's crazy.
I can't believe you gave the money.
You say no, actually, I can because I made the choice.
Why? Because of psychic income
because the seventy five thousand dollar job brought you
additional satisfaction. Maybe it was geographic
location. Maybe it was the pride in the
work that you valued the work you'd be doing even though your
monetary salaries lower could be a whole host of different
things, maybe you like the people more?
You like the the the mission of the organization, it can be a
whole host of things. And that is the beauty and power
of markets. In terms of allowing people to
flex their muscles of creativity, and true diversity.
Because to the extent, each of us is different.
And each of us views the world differently, markets and power
people to both nourish that diversity, but to act upon it,
as well. And that's just a few of the
reasons that I find markets so attractive as a way of
Organizing social interactions between people.
I really appreciate that answer, just because I had always seen
it. I'd previously seen the world as
well. When you do something, you could
either do it for yourself or you could do it for the greater
good. What Smith does is?
He shows that no such dichotomy. What will exist?
So long as you're engaged in voluntary exchanges with, with
other people. So I really appreciate you
bringing some research and background into that.
Check out the links in the description will take you to dr.
Coins. Website CC o YN e.com again the
book is manufacturing militarism.
U.s. propaganda in the war on terror.
I know you have another book on tyranny in the police state, but
I don't see it on your website. What is that one called?
Yeah, that's called tyranny, comes home.
It's under its on under another tab on their tyranny comes home.
The the domestic fate of u.s. militarism and that, that is
about how intervening abroad. You know, a lot of people act,
like intervening abroad, protects Liberties and freedoms
at home. They become integrated into
American life. This goes back to your wonderful
question before about the culture, the domestic culture
and you see things like the militarization of police, the
surveillance State, all of those things started abroad, and
slowly integrate it into domestic life.
And in the process eroded Liberties and freedoms and
continue to do. So, thanks to everyone for
watching Keith and I don't write on anyone and the libertarian
Institute dr. Coin thanks so much for your
time. Thank you again.
Keith