My basic motivation for being a Libertarian has never been
economic but model. Well, I was convinced that the
free market was more efficient and would bring about a far more
prosperous world than statism. My major concern was moral the
Insight, that coercion and aggression of one man, over
another was criminal and iniquitous, and must be combated
and abolished. Welcome to Keith's night.
Don't tread on anyone. And the libertarian Institute
today. I'm joined by Thomas E Woods
Junior. A PhD from Columbia as well as
Harvard, mr. Wood.
Woods. Where is the best place to find
your collection of e-books and podcasts?
Well, I have considered having one site with all the eBooks on
it. But apparently there's some
marketing principle that says if you give people too many choices
they get overwhelmed, if they don't choose anything so you see
present the ebooks one at a time.
So the what actually that I just did an episode of my own show
about has to do with Alexandria Ocasio, Cortez who was sort of
the opposite. The kind of person we're talking
about today just because I keep coming across people in the
libertarian world who say she's the most Libertarian member of
Congress and I think the state of libertarian education has
probably been better. So I have been really pushing my
AOC ebook which is quite memorably called AOC is wrong.
And so I store that it's available at AOC is wrong.com
and I know that the point of our interview is not to talk about
my domain names, but But I do want to say that fortune was
smiling on me when I decided to buy AOC is wrong.com because I
bought that before, people had started calling her AOC.
She wasn't quite well-known enough.
It didn't have the notoriety yet.
For there to be this three initial nickname.
I chose it because her real name is too long for a, for a domain
name. I thought so, I just made an
AOC, then everyone started calling her AOC.
This is Even though that I own I own AOC is wrong.com.
So I would send people there. Get that links to that will be
in the description below. Tom.
I want to talk about some of our heroes in the Freedom Movement.
Please give me what you think is either this person's greatest
contribution or one thing that you learn from them, that really
stands out. What is the greatest
contribution or most important thing you learned from Hans
Hermann? Hoppa.
All right. Well, first of all, let me ask
just so I can pay. Myself correctly.
Is this a lightning round with 50 names?
Or is it going to be like for names?
12 names? 12 names?
All right. So what would you, what would
your ideal response time for each of these?
Be three minutes or three minutes for each?
All right. I'll keep an eye on the clock.
Okay. Alright.
Well, Hans has become known in terms of his books for his book,
on democracy. And that is a book that really
did kind of bring me fully over into the end.
Up world, but long before that book.
I had read his books, the economics and ethics of private
property and a theory of socialism and capitalism.
And for me, it's not just one major contribution.
It's a bunch of insights. So I think his critique of the
public goods argument is very, very effective.
But there are some Goods that they're non-rivalrous at
non-excludable and they have to be provided for by government or
they'll be under provided on the market and he just shows That
the string of inconsistencies in that.
So the his book, a theory of socialism capitalism has a great
chapter on that, but there's a chapter in his book, the
economics and ethics of private property that to this day
continues to blow my mind. And I am sorry because of my
Advanced age. I don't remember the name of the
chapter, but you'll know it when you see it because even though a
book called the economics and ethics of private property,
sounds dull and boring. It is one of the most
intellectually exciting books, you will ever read.
And he has a book, a chapter in there, in which he begins from
primitive Society using barter and step, by step.
He gets you to a modern economy with a Fiat money system, and he
shows how you go from Barter to commodity money to commodity
money with paper substitutes. And then to just the paper with
no, Already backing. And then he shows where banking
comes from. And he talks about, and from all
this. He talks about politics.
He has given you an analysis. A way to look at the world and
understand what's going on. Like, why would there be a move
toward a one-world currency or Regional currencies?
Why would that be? Well, that would be not for the
sake of convenience or all that we had convenience when we had a
gold standard that was convenient.
This is convenience for The ruling class because it means
that it's harder for One National currency to out-compete
another. When there aren't any national
currencies. There's one being inflated at a
consistent rate throughout the whole zone.
So you just look at the world, totally differently, just from
that one chapter, but then finally thinking of democracies
as being like publicly owned, government's helps to account
for a lot of what goes on since the caretakers who watch over
the government every Or six years, have no personal stake in
it. It's not their private property.
They don't care what condition it's in when they leave because
they're not leaving it to their son.
What do they care? If they rack up deaths or they
have endless Wars? Or they do all kinds of
preposterous things, the kinds of incentives.
They operate under are exactly the kind of incentives you have
when you're driving a rental car.
Now, it doesn't mean that you always go out and crash a rental
car. But when was the last time you
washed a rental car? When was the last time you got
an oil change for a rental? Car.
So you don't think of the long-term capital value of it.
Same thing with a country. So these to me are very, very
important insights. I'm going to adjust my mic so I
can sit more comfortable if I have 11 more of these, I got to
sit comfortable. Most important thing you learned
from Thomas Soul. Okay.
First of all, I think one of the most valuable Soul books is not,
you know, there are some Soul books that everybody sort of
knows the titles up. But one of the first Gotten Soul
books is his little book from the mid-1980s called civil
rights rhetoric or reality. And if you go to Amazon, you
will actually see that I have a review of that book from many
years ago that I'm very happy with the proud of that book.
What I love about it is that every single page is smashing
some myth. And so, for example, people
think well, discrimination causes poverty, or the
differences in income or education.
Educational outcomes or whatever.
Between all kinds of groups, not just racial ones are caused are
explainable by discrimination and he just he says, that is
just such a easy convenient comic book style argument, but
it just doesn't hold when you hold all of different groups
constant. And you look at people in the
same geographical area, you know, you look at people in the
same age range, with the same level of work experience, and
on, and on then all these these, these variations that Disappear,
which is very interesting or if you some people will say, oh
there must be discrimination because White phds earn more
than black phds. He says, well, let's
disaggregate the data and see what do they have the phds in
because it turns out that Asian phds, Au turn white phds because
they have phds generally in things like engineering, whereas
at least half of black phds are in education.
We all know that education is not a highly remunerative field.
So in other words, he would look at the Channel wisdom, but under
the microscope of data, he would look at these big Aggregates and
he would say the answer to whether this is true or not
comes from breaking it down and disaggregating it.
So things like that, but what I also learned frankly it was a
moral lesson and that is about his courage in doing and saying
the things he did because that meant academic isolation.
It meant being called names, but honestly, what is impressive
about him? Is that nuts?
The matter honestly, you would see him on television and he
just would be like a hot knife through butter.
He didn't care what you said. Could you briefly explain the
difference between the constrained and unconstrained
worldview? Is that?
Yes, this is a, this is in his book, a conflict of visions.
And the the unconstrained vision is a way of looking at the world
is the because I guess what he was trying to explain, although
I don't think he quite put it this way is, why is it that
people who think the economy can be?
Land. And who think, you know, the
minimum wage should be X dollars an hour and who think we should
be locked in our homes. Because of covid, and who, like,
all these sorts of disparate different things, all seem to
reside in the same mind. And people who disagree all had.
It's very rare for people to have one of those opinions and
not every single one of the others.
Now, why should that be? And what he, what he decided was
there are certain there are two primary visions of people.
Might have the world. The unconstrained vision is one
in which and I don't mean a character.
But if we can think it, we can create, if we could dream it.
It can be made to happen that there's no sense of the tragic.
Fallen aspect of human nature that we can remake ourselves.
If we need to to create the world that we want, we can use
our, our brains to plan and create an economy of abundance
and so on. And on, whereas the constrained
vision is more pessimistic. Stick about what can be
accomplished through reason, and through planning, and through
human effort. That in fact, it's actually not
possible to plan an economy for a variety of reasons.
And our temptation is to think that because I plan my life, I
can plan an economy, but these things that these are entirely
different. So he's saying that the
constrained vision is one that understands that human nature is
what it is. And isn't going to be changed.
And so we shouldn't Try to talat Aryan programs to change it in
order to bring about our amazing vision of what the world can be.
Because what instead will wind up doing is creating some
horrific totalitarian Nightmare and not exactly have a wonderful
Society to show for it will break a lot of eggs, but we'll
never get the omelette. How about a Lysander Spooner?
All right, Lysander Spooner, a number of things from Spooner
made of the primary one. Most people get is has to do
with the Constitution. I found his work on the
unconstitutionality of Slavery to paper be very interesting
because whether or not I'm convinced by it.
I thought his argumentation was interesting and his point was
and this was a line of argument was picked up by Frederick
Douglass. By the way.
It was a minority line of argument among abolitionists.
Most of them. Like William Lloyd Garrison
said, the Constitution is a pro-slavery die.
Him. And that's why it's a covenant
with hell. We should burn it in public but
Spooner wasn't so sure. He said, well, let's look at the
different parts of the Constitution that are alleged to
involve slavery is now in no case is the word slavery used
and in each case. I can come up with a benign
interpretation of what it means. So, why should we be compelled
to accept a pro-slavery anti-freedom interpretation
unless the text absolutely demand.
Man's it. I don't care about the
intentions of the people who wrote it.
I can't be bound by the intentions of people behind some
closed doors. The only thing that is relevant
to us, are the words themselves and the words do not compel us
to a pro-slavery conclusion. And therefore, because slavery
is such an offense against natural law.
We should never assume slavery. We should always assume not
slavery and since we can come up with an anti-slavery
interpretation of these words, then we Do so.
So that mean that's at least an interesting way to approach the
question. Now, the other, but the other
main thing is it has to do with the Constitution and whether
constitutions truly bind us and now interestingly Spooner does
not think it's anti libertarian to vote.
He actually addresses the argument that if you vote, then
you're giving your consent to the system.
That's not his view. It's if you vote, you're trying
to use a defense mechanism that you've been given to.
Try to make your life better in the same way that if you were in
prison and you got to vote on whether you wait, slop or prime
rib, and you voted for prime rib, that's just not because
your consent to the prison system.
It's that you want to make your life materially better.
And if you abstain from voting, maybe going to wind up, eating
slop. How does that an improvement?
So but his key thing was I never consented to this document and
there's no other aspect of life. Like when you, when you buy a
house, you got assigned a you have a special day, the closing.
Were you go in and you just spend an hour signing documents?
He says, now that's just to buy a house.
This is an arrangement where we can conscripted you.
We can grab your money. We can tell you what to do.
We can lock you in a cage if you make us unhappy and I don't sign
anything, so, I don't buy that. Ludwig, von mises.
All right. Now mises, I think his primary
contributions really our economic.
Where's with rothbard. It's economics and a number of
other fields. Now, mises certainly contributed
to other fields, but his real contributions were economics.
Well, again, in his case, certainly moral courage, as he
comes from. Austria in 1940, with a sort of
a working knowledge of English, but it's definitely not his
first language. He doesn't typically write in
English, but he did write Human Action in English with the help
of Henry hazlitt smoothing out his his German style of English,
which you can still see bits and pieces up.
He has some kind of complicated sentences and of course in
German the word order doesn't matter quite as much.
So you're Guided by the the It forms of the verbs and the nouns
and stuff, to figure out what's really going on in the sense.
But anyway, I happen to like mises pros.
So the fact that he stood up against the spirit of his age
and against the totalitarian, 's the Nazis who were taking over
in Central and Eastern Europe at that time and then came to the
US and stood up to the academics and the US who were all falling
in love with Marxism and, and partial Marxism, and he just
wouldn't have any It and today when we look back on New York
University. Nobody knows who was teaching in
the economics department at NYU in 1961 name, me somebody but
they but we know the name Ludwig von mises because his work is
still discussed and still considered important with me is
of course, there are many things that you would say that you
walked away with from it, but certainly his theory of the
business cycle is very relevant to us today that when you
interfere with Market interest rates you You set in motion, a
series of events that can't be Unwound until the economy has
come undone and needs to be redone in a sustainable fashion.
In the way. It would have been done, without
artificially low interest rates. So the idea that we can fiddle
with prices like the price of milk.
Well, most people recognize that that's going to lead to
problems, but the price of milk is not arbitrary, but when it's
interest rates, everybody thinks this is the key to permanent
Prosperity, but can it Really manipulating a rate lower than
it was set by the decisions of millions of people.
I mean, really, that's, I entered.
So that we shouldn't have any more foreign aid.
Just tell Bangladesh, lower your interest rates.
If there are no real consequences that way, just
instinctively, we know this is preposterous and mises walks us
through step by step. Exactly.
Why it is. So, so that's one of many, many
economic contributions from these has Michael humor.
Okay. Well, I, I love Michael.
Humor and I highly recommend people read his book, the
problem of political Authority and I would say that book
Rivals, the economics and ethics of private property in sounding
like a boring book, but it is anything.
But it is a rollicking demolition of argument after
argument for for the state for democracy as being the most
moral system. And what what humor is good.
That is instead of abstract. Theorizing, most of the time his
arguments are made through really really Vivid analogies.
And so a very, very simple analogy drawn from the book
involves you and your friends going out after class and having
a drink and your friends, all vote that you're going to pay
for the drinks. Does that mean you're obligated
to pay for the drinks? Of course, not.
You just I don't value any of your stupid opinions at all.
How should you get? Why would you get to vote on who
gets to pick who has to pay and it happens to be me?
So he says well, how is this different?
Is there some magic dust that sprinkled on people when there's
a whole lot of them and you know, and one of them happens to
be like a political leader and people have voted for him.
So once they vote for him, there's a magic dust.
That means that if he issues a command you're obligated to
comply. What is the source of political
obligation. It's to know.
And he says, he basically what he's saying is every time we
take the arguments for political obligation.
Well, we all consider this or well, most of us can send it to
this and it's impractical for us all to consent.
So you just got to do what you're told.
He said, there's no way we would accept this in any other area of
Our Lives. Not in the bar, not anywhere
else. So, why suddenly do we have to
accept it here? And it's basically the answer,
usually is a lot of hemming and hawing, and is now, sorry as a
rigorous philosopher. I don't accept hemming and
hawing as an Argument so highly highly recommended book?
John has Ness. John has this, I got to meet him
once years and years ago 1992. I met him at an event put on by
The Institute for Humane studies, and he is, I think he's
still a law professor at Georgetown but his his, he's
written a lot of things. And but the, the are the article
that has Duck out all these years later and is still
compelling is the myth of the rule of law and very early on in
the Tom would show. I did an episode of my podcast
with him on this, who knows what number it is.
I'm maybe some followers of mine are like the Star Trek
convention, people like they've memorized all the episode
numbers, but if you look up has nests at Toms podcast.com that
do a search in page, you'll find it.
And his argument was with the myth of the rule.
Of law. That the people are just naive
about the state even so-called small government conservatives,
or maybe especially those people because they think there's an
objective way to interpret those words on a page and if we just
get judges who will do that, then we'll be set and so he gave
us a thought experiment in the class.
He said, all right, the First Amendment says Congress shall
make no law in the, you know, and he goes on and on respecting
the freedom of speech and all that and then he lists.
Bunch of things that the government might do, and he
says, can the government, according to this can the
government do this, can't do, this, can do this, can do this.
And of course, we all said no, no, no no, First Amendment
prohibits, all that and then he went reviewed it with us.
He said, okay. Well for number one, those of
you who said no treated Congress as if it said the president.
So you got that wrong then he and then he just listed.
He said, basically all of you inserted your own wishful,
thinking into these words instead of actually looking at
the words on the page. And so he pursues this argument
further and actually has you convinced by the end, that there
is no way to come up with words that if that, that some judge
couldn't figure out some way to interpret in a way that gets
him, the outcome he wants and it's a, it's a terrifying
conclusion, really? Because it forces you into,
let's say a political posture, you weren't expecting to adopt
when you started reading as article.
Michael malice. Oh, geez.
I cheese. I've learned a lot from Michael.
Malice on a personal level, sometimes what not to do.
I'll Grant you. But I've definitely learned a
lot from him in just in life lessons because he's helped me
through a lot of some difficult times in my life.
But also what I like about him is that he finds, he doesn't, he
doesn't say that evil isn't evil.
But he finds Silver Linings that, I don't see sometimes.
So sometimes I'll say, look at these terrible thing.
The regime is doing or or look at this awful speech, this
Politico just gave, but then he'll say, no.
I don't know. Listen to that speech again.
Is that sound like the speech of somebody who feels really in
control of things who feels like Society is going just the way
they want. Oh, yeah.
I hadn't quite looked at it that way, but he often does look at
it that way and he's currently at work on.
A book to be called the white pill and he's going back and
looking at among other things that the the Terrors the horrors
of Communism. And and those were overcome,
those actually were overcome in our lifetimes.
We saw people rising up against them.
It's very, very easy, especially in our present times to grow
discouraged, but it's important to remember, even now, even with
the censorship and the BS, we have to put up with even now.
We're vastly better off than we were with three television
channels. If there were three television
channels. No one would know about the Tom
would show there couldn't be a Tom would show there couldn't be
this conversation. So it is important, you know
much as we have to emphasize the suffering that we're enduring
and the Injustice of it all. At the same time, for the sake
of perspective. It is important to realize the
advances that we've made because we have made them and those can
save us Us from debilitating and discouragement, Scott Horton.
Scott Horton, first of all, he's taught me.
What one person's brain is capable of holding.
Just when you think you know, there's got to be a finite
amount. Once you learn enough, things,
other things must get pushed out or something, apparently, not
because scotches knows that it knows that it knows it.
But this is a guy who for years and years.
I mean, I think now Scott is really getting recognition that
he deserves Noam Chomsky recently.
Twice praised Scott's book, Fool's errand or it may also be
a Fool's errand. The book on Afghanistan and
that's great. I mean, he got a copy Scott sent
to many actually read it and and he holds it in very high regard
and that's great. And now Scott goes to
conferences and he walks out there and he gets huge cheers
from everybody, but he Labored for years, in relative
obscurity, you know, not that many people knew who he was, but
he just did his interviews. He did his shows he learned, and
learned, and learned, and became the unbelievable expert.
He is today, and not, because he majored in Middle Eastern
studies in college. I don't know.
I don't know if Scott went to college, to, be honest with you.
I just know that he reads everything he can, he listens to
a wide variety of voices, and he has an amazing ability to
synthesize all this, but in terms of what I've learned
academically it is primarily the counterproductive nature of
almost everything. The US government doesn't
foreign policy, particularly the war on terror and then on a
smaller scale. I know I can ask him.
Well, what did The Surge work? If not, what was the problem
with the Surge and I can get the answer from him, anytime.
I want to right away, Adam Smith.
Adam Smith. Did did teach me a bit about the
division of labor? Although he was teaching the
division of labor in terms of in one firm.
You know, somebody does this part something, does that part?
And if everybody is supposed one little part we get more done in
the same amount of time and but the real interesting thing about
the division of labor is the division of labor across the
whole society, but that was, that still something but also
but mainly what, what Smith taught me was that Society, our
Commerce, Self-regulating. In the sense that we don't need
to say, we have a major pencil shortage.
So we're going to need more firms producing pencils.
We don't need to send that message to anybody because
they'll get the message when they see that the price of
pencils just tripled. And so somebody will think,
whoa. Now that price is high enough
that I should consider going into pencil creation.
And so, what will happen then is that they'll be a greater supply
of pencils now and that'll put downward pressure on the price
of pencils until those abnormal profits are dissipated and then
we move on or if suddenly people decide they want to use
ballpoint pens from now on. They don't like pencils.
So now you can barely sell pencils at all.
You got to sell them at a very low price and that leads to
losses in pencil firm. So again, we don't need to send
out a memo. We have too many pencil firms.
Now, they figure that out on their own.
Than and sooner than and more efficiently than any politician
could. And so this then can lead us to
use to further insights of our own.
Like, when there is a shortage caused by a natural disaster, a
shortage of lumber. Well, what's that going to mean?
It's going to mean that if Lumbers price is allowed to rise
fish at Lehigh. Then people will people will
build rafts from across the to, you know, from another Island
and and and roll over there to bring the lumber if they have to
at that price or somebody. We'll say I'm willing to give up
my weekend where I look forward to having a beer and watching
the game and it give up my weekend to drive two states away
to bring lumber because the price is so high.
But if you just force the price down, you're interfering in this
natural process that Smith identified.
And so instead all that's going to mean is that that Lumber been
snatched up immediately not used for its most value productive
use, while a lot of people are going without Lumber.
That's that's not the right solution.
So these these subsidiary insights From Smith since Ralph
Franco. I miss Ralph Reiko so much.
He was a historian at Buffalo State College, senior, fellow
The mises Institute. And he wrote a couple of books
before he died. One of them was great Wars, and
great leaders. And the other one I sorry is
escaping me, but it was really a compilation of his of his
lengthy articles on a variety of topics, from Woodrow Wilson to
German liberalism and a lot of topics that he was knowledgeable
about. But I really learned an awful
lot about what I know about World War one and US
intervention directly from hearing Reiko discuss the
absurdity of it. So, that'd be the first thing.
I also learned about the scholarship and debate around
the Industrial Revolution whether or not that on net
benefit of the average person. So, for a while there was a
debate that was called the standard of living debate and it
was divided into two camps. One was called The Optimist and
one the Savannah. So you can sort of figure out
which was, which, But as time went on by the 1970s, The
Optimist had more or less won the debate because even a
Marxist, like EP Thompson was forced to admit that.
Well, nobody says everything got worse with, but they were saying
that before, you know, wasn't nobody, they were saying
everything got worse. So it was people like TS Ashton
and Rh Maxwell, and and others and then later lesser-known
Scholars, like Sue. Shenoy of, I can remember shoes
from New Zealand or Australia who wrote a lot about it.
Then, of course, Deirdre McCloskey has written about this
too that we see that. In fact, when we look at Living
Space per capita clothing, caloric intake, life, expectancy
income, whatever, we see that actually the standard of living
was improved and would have been improved further in Britain.
If it had coincided with a lot of warfare that Britain was
involved in the Wars of the French Revolution and the
Napoleonic Wars historian Paul Johnson.
All right. Now Paul Johnson is not a quote
unquote professional historian. So other historians hate him the
same way. They hated David McCullough who
wrote but biography of John Adams and a number of other
books 1776 and that's mostly just professional jealousy
because most professional historians writing excruciating
Lee boring books, that even their peers only pretend to
read. So the fact that McCullough gets
rich as a historian or Johnson gets Rich, they can't stand it,
but Also Johnson was extremely prolific.
I mean, he wrote a history of the American people that I'm
only. So, so on.
I really like his. I like his book intellectuals.
I like his book modern times, which is it like a history of
the 20th century. But, but past that he was also a
turns out a tremendous art Aficionado.
So he wrote a huge book, called a history of art, spanning art
all around the world. That was just one of his
Hobbies. So he decided to write Majestic
book about that. He wrote a history of
Christianity, which I think he wrote his more left-wing years.
So I don't necessarily recommend it.
He wrote a history of the Jews, extremely prolific.
And I was told as a college freshman.
By another freshman that I should read Johnson's book
Modern Times, And I see when you're a Harvard freshman,
people tell you to read 800 page books, or whatever it was, and
they expect you to actually do it, and I did it.
And I loved every minute of it because he writes in a crisp and
engaging style where they're curious and interesting
anecdotes on every page and quotations.
You've never heard before or interesting, interesting,
tangent. Still go on about some some
invention and why it mattered. There's no There is nobody like
him, really. And in modern times taught me
that the people I had been taught were great, presidents
were actually bad and the supposedly bad presidents, were
often times, not so bad. So that was a key Insight.
But beyond that, I learned a lot about the history of Africa in
the 20th century and the Socialist experiment that
occurred in Africa. When Western educated African
leaders return to Africa and imposed on their poor people to
stupid ideas. They got in the west but that
there were some exceptions where they didn't impose outright
socialism and they wound up doing a lot better.
So I learned really about the dangers of collectivism as
illustrated by the atrocities of the 20th century and the failed
social experiments, the 20th century Murray, rothbard.
Oh, come on. All right, how many more do I
have? After Mary rothbart, so I can
paste this. Now, we got about five more.
Oh, geez. I don't think I lied about the
12. I am.
I love your eyes. All right, well.
I learned so much from Robert. I really don't know where to
start. I his work on the Great
Depression, convinced me that it was the feds intervention in the
20s that led to the crack up in 1929.
I learned that Herbert Hoover was an interventionist, which is
what the historians now admit. But it took them long enough to
catch up to rothbard. But I also learned the the the
basic Contours of Austrian economics by by studying the
concepts in man economy and state that was of great
importance to me. And I understood better, where
mises was coming from by reading rothbard, scholarly articles on
epistemology and economics, but I learned about the history of
economic thought by reading his two volumes on it.
I learned about the Of pseudo, Anarchy, in the history of
early, colonial Pennsylvania that I hadn't known about.
But that is worth knowing that when the British Representatives
showed up. They got to the whatever the
hall was that the politicos were supposed to meet in.
It was all dusty with papers everywhere.
No. Sign of anyone having been there
in the longest time, you know, there's just little things like
that. I enjoyed learning from from
him, but I also learned about People who before the Cold War
got into really high gear in the 1950s were warning.
That that was a bad idea that communism was terrible, but
converting your country into a gigantic Warfare State might be
a mistake and it might be a mistake you never ever get to
take back and we're living through that.
Right now. We have a military that just
keeps going around looking for for enemies, that it's a program
in search of justification. Well, I think that maybe we
should have learned a lesson. From all that.
But you know, I I learned about some of the ideological
movements of the 1960s which rothbard latched onto searching
for anti-war people. But also the implications of the
non-aggression principle are spelled out in great detail.
Not always in ways. I agree with, but always in ways
that make me think in his book, the ethics of Liberty.
I learned about money and banking from rothbard and and
where money comes from and what the purpose is supposed to
serve. And what what's what's an
example of a good money and transitioning back to a good
money and all sorts of things like that.
I remember asking him in person one time.
Is there a history of money written from a pro gold standard
perspective? And he said, well, you might
look at The Minority Report of the u.s.
Gold Commission because it has a couple of lengthy chapters on
the history and and sure enough. It's actually it's a book.
The Cato Institute published in the early 80s called the case
for gold. So it's actually written in the
form of a book and sure enough, the historical material in there
is tremendously good. I found out only after
rothbart's deaf that. He wrote those chapters, but he
didn't tell me that he could easily have said, I wrote the
chapters on economic history in that report, but he didn't say a
word about that. He just let let me read it
without realizing it was his thing.
So he also taught me, humility, I guess.
Frederic bastiat. Basquiat lived up until the
mid-nineteenth century and was an economic journalist, but was
also an excellent Economist in his own.
Right is not given proper credit for that.
But he's one of the, he is the first person who taught me the
principle of the Unseen that in economics.
It's not sufficient to look at something solely with your
physical eyes. You also need to look at it with
your mind's eye because for example, if the government
builds some big project and then Hey, everybody.
Look at this big project and you should congratulate us for this
big project. That's what you see with your
physical eyes, but surely the labor and the resources and the
time to create this thing would have gone into something else,
the satisfaction of other needs, but I can't see those because
they weren't allowed to come into existence.
So we have to evaluate it in terms of the opportunities for
gone. So, for example, in the 19th
century suppose somebody wanted to develop the iPod.
Well, obviously, none of the relevant technology exists.
So they would have had to engage in absolutely impoverishing
levels of expenditure to do the research and develop the
technology at that time to create an iPod.
It would not even remotely, be worth it.
But it suppose they did, and they said, hey everybody look at
this iPod. You wouldn't have had that if
you'd waited for your stupid free market development, but the
thing is, if we'd waited for the stupid free market development.
I've had to come at such a huge expense to our standard of
living, the market will develop it.
When we're ready when we're willing to save the resources
necessary for the R&D and for everything else when we're
willing to engage in the voluntary, saving that lowers
interest rates and tells entrepreneurs, Now's the Time to
borrow and to invest in these long-term projects.
That's when we'll get it. So sometimes people say, look
the government invented this technology.
We would never have had that. Well, probably we Would have
because we're not stupid, we would have developed these
things. There is a controversy about, so
called crossover technology when the government creates
something. You think, well, would we have
had Tang if it weren't for astronauts?
Well, there's a lot of research on this but some research says
maybe 95% of this stuff would have been developed privately
anyway, and the other five percent who even knows if we
need it or not. So Bastian is constantly
reminding us that we have to evaluate these sorts of things.
In terms of the opportunity cost and the importance of
opportunity cost in economics, Pat Buchanan.
All right, Pat Buchanan. First of all, I learned the
value of somebody who even though he gets criticized, you
know, you wrote this column in 1977.
He doesn't just get on his knees and beg forgiveness.
He doesn't care what you think. He doesn't care that he wrote an
unfashionable column in 1977 because he's too busy writing
his columns in 2021 and he's too busy churning out, best-selling
books in the Here's so one of the things I learned from it.
Certainly I'll his book a republic.
Not an empire, was I thought was very valuable as a history book.
I think he's very, very knowledgeable as a historian.
So I would say that I learned some stuff about interventionism
and and from Pat, also, when in 1991, the Persian Gulf War
occurred, that was against that night at the time.
I didn't understand why because I thought well, we're right.
Winger's where Republicans. So we support the military.
And right now, the military is involved in this War.
I couldn't understand why he was against it, but he was teaching
me something at that point. It's not war per se, or the
military per se that we support. In his case.
It was, we had to stop the threat of Communism.
It's not because I'm just whatever, the Pentagon tells me,
I just adore sit. And so that paved the way for me
to think in healthier ways, about war in the military, but
the key thing, he taught me had nothing to do with For your
politics. I had dinner with him one time
back in around 2005 I guess and my book the politically
incorrect guide to American history of just come out and
initially right-wingers really liked it and it sold really
well, but then the Neo cons discovered and they didn't like
it at all because it was not a neocon telling of American
history. And Pat told me these people,
basically, just they just endorsed the New York Times
version of American History, you know, that's just The way they
are so they're not going to like your book, but I told him they
are attacking me viciously and unfairly, and you know, what am
I going to do? And his answer was where there
is no solution. There is no problem.
There's nothing you can do about that.
They're going to write with they're going to write.
So you don't really have a problem because there is no
solution to it. If you have a problem, you sit
there and think about how am I going to fix it?
You can't fix it. So, What was his advice?
Just keep working your tail off, you know, just do it.
Basically do a Pat does just keep churning out, best-selling
books, get your revenge that way and that's what I did.
I wrote articles. I made videos.
I wrote books and people just kept on discovering me.
They discovered me through video platforms, or through events or
through word of mouth or through my books and articles.
And I've gotten to a point where I can actually make a living as
a podcaster. I mean, this is like if It's not
a unicorn. I don't know.
What is Lew Rockwell. Alright lose-lose.
Analysis of the world. Really, really helped shape my
own because a lot of times they would be something going on in
the world. I didn't know quite what to
think about it and I would always want to get lose.
Take on. And I remember there was some
now, you'll have to forgive me. The details are murky and this
could have been 20 years ago, but there was some episode where
I don't know if it was a u.s. Plane passing through Chinese
airspace or some kind of thing like that and the Chinese were
vigorously, objecting to it and American Patriots, were all
upset. And Lou had the gall to write an
article called China was right. And from that moment on, I
realized this guy just doesn't care.
He just is fearless or sometimes the right wing would say, things
like we need to rein in the powers of the presidency.
Well, there's no chance of that happening.
There's absolutely no chance if that was going to happen.
It would have happened by now. So Lou instead would write an
article called down with the presidency.
Like let's hope Bill Clinton is the last president of the United
States. He didn't get that particular
wish but his willingness to think the unthinkable and say
the unsayable and take our analysis all the way, even if it
took him two radical conclusions has been a really important
guide for me. Henry hazlitt.
Alright hazlitt is going to take that idea of Basquiat.
Of the seen and the Unseen and really develop it into a whole
approach to economics because Hazlet who I know for a fact did
not attend college wrote economics in one lesson.
It's it has sold a couple million copies.
Any book on economics that sells a couple million copies and
isn't a textbook that the kids are forced to buy must be
impressive. And really, he is riffing on
what what Basquiat was saying. If has, what's going to talk
about rent control. He's not going to leave it at.
Yep, rent control means people have lower rents.
So look at these people. They have lower rents.
I see that with my physical eyes.
Well again, anybody at any IQ level can see that with their
physical eyes, one of the things that we're not seeing, so his
point was don't Focus exclusively on what the
immediate consequences of a policy are on the intended.
Recipients focus on the long-term.
Exxon everybody. So it's true that some people
living in those apartments. Now, get cheaper, Frozen rents.
That's true. But so is, do you really think
that's it that all we have to do is like passing a law against
gravity. You really think that's going to
work. What is this going to mean?
Well, think of it this way. I like, Walter blocks view of
this. Now.
He's not actually advocating this.
He's just using it as a thought experiment, but he says, just to
show how wrongheaded rent control is consider this.
It would actually be better if what you were seeking was an
increased supply of low-income housing.
It would be better for you to impose price controls on
literally every single thing in the economy, except low income
housing. Because in that point at that
point all the investment dollars would flood into low-income
housing and the supply would explode and that would push the
rents down that will get you exactly what you want.
So when you realize that then you realize, okay.
Well then any measure, that's not that it is going to have
some problem that we're not going to want.
And so the rent control, of course, is going to is going to
send people far away from from low-income housing.
Why would they do that? They you, first of all,
low-income housing is not a lot of fun.
Okay. It's not a lot of fun trying to
collect money in low-income housing buildings.
Okay, it's not something people are particularly excited about
to begin with and then they get the idea that the rents they
charge could be. But rarely changed forget it,
they're not going to bother doing it or they'll do it, but
they're not going to fix your leaky pipe or they'll wait six
months to fix it. Because with the rent this low
and they can get, they have a million people waiting outside
to get that that room from you who won't complain about the
leaky faucet and the leaky pipe. So they'll just go whereas if
you have low rents because there's an abundant Supply, the
landlord doesn't have a billion. People waiting outside the door
beating down his door so he can't Be abusive and neglectful.
So there are a million negative consequences that come from
this. There would be fewer housing
units available. But the problem would be very
few. People can see with their minds
eye. So, very few people will say,
the reason I'm having trouble finding housing, is that rent
controls making it unprofitable to build these houses instead,
they'll, they'll look for help from the government, which is
exactly the source of the problem.
They'll blame the rich fat cats for X.
Y&z it It's people thinking in a completely poisoned way, Dave
Smith. All right, Dave Smith is
somebody I have thoroughly enjoyed watching grow into the
Superstar. He is.
And I would say that from time to time.
So I listened to Dave's podcast somewhat regularly.
And I find that his analogies and explanations are really,
really good, and they can help anybody understand.
And sometimes, he'll even, he'll be somebody like Lew Rockwell.
Huh? Wonder what Dave's take on this
is going to be and almost always, I say.
Yeah. All he did was take a
Libertarian Theory and apply this thing to it and he's
Fearless when it comes to debating people will debate, you
will have a good back and forth. But also his I frankly think
it's admirable that he'll talk to Ben Burgess who's a socialist
and tell him. I think that your book has
certain merits. There are very few people who
will reciprocate. There are not very many.
He left Wingers who have me on and say, hey, that's a super
book you wrote. So I think that's that's a great
example for us. But the power of communication
effective communication is Illustrated.
Very, very strongly through Dave.
And I think that's why he's built up such a big audience.
Finally Ron, Paul. With Ron Paul, it's the value of
of sticking to your guns and being consistent because it
makes you credible because you hold this opinion in good times
and bad, you know on Twitter sometimes I'll see people who
don't know anything about me or anything about my friends.
Say well, what were you saying when Trump was bombing Syria?
I was saying the same thing, of course, why would I say anything
different? I'm not like you, I mean, the
sort of people who would ask me that are Sort of people who
yeah, it under Trump. They're really upset and under
buy them. They're making excuses.
So they assume I'm the same way. It's projection.
They assume I'm the same way, but unlike them I have
principles. Well, Ron Paul has principles
like times of million and he he doesn't care if he gets invited
to the fancy events where there was a time in Bill Clinton's
term where he was invited at a big thing at the Clinton white
house and they had this big receiving line where all the
congressmen to get their pictures taken.
I'm with Bill Clinton and he just wandered his wife just
wandered around because they had absolutely no interest in that.
That is not why? He's, I'm not here for
celebrity. I'm not here to rub elbows about
here to say. Look at the cool people, I hang
around with its I have really urgently important ideas.
I want to convey to the public and he just stuck to that and
stuck to that which is why you could listen to him in 1983 and
he sounds like him in 2021. So all that's valuable, but
also, I did read some of his early books.
So I actually did read the the case for gold.
The whole thing, the, the history, and the economics.
And on the case to be made, I read his speeches and boy that
filled in a lot of gaps for me, in terms of foreign policy and
the Neo cons and all that. He's really got their number and
I definitely benefit from Reading him.
We got about five minutes left. Thank you so much for being
generous. Eris with your time, how can an
understanding of Austrian economics?
Help us torian's understand what happened?
And why? Well, I actually wrote maybe
you're even referring to an article of mine.
I wrote an article for the Journal of the quarterly Journal
of Austrian economics, called what Austrian economics can
teach historians. So you can Google that or let's
say, use your favorite search engine.
These days and you'll find what Austrian economics can teach
historians. So, the I would say that the
quick version would be I can give a specific example of the
kind of thing. We could learn that if we're
looking at an economic downturn. Well, we're going to be inclined
to look for was their monetary inflation.
That preceded, it because we have a theoretical understanding
of where these downturns come from.
So we're going to know where to look.
We're going to know what to look for.
If you don't have any theoretical underpinning.
How would you know what to look for?
What are you just going to just repeat some events that
occurred? Okay, but how do you know that
any of those events had anything to do with what happened?
There's nothing strictly speaking in the historical data.
It's going to help you resolve that unless you have some
understanding of how things work.
So and most historians don't have that.
So the Austrian School will will help you with that.
So I gave that as an example like a specific thing because
you are in the Austrian School, you know this sort of thing, but
beyond that, you know, the the the the Austrians, but let me
say this, I can also understand why a minimum wage policy had a
certain effect, but the mint, the analysis, the minimum wage
is not unique to the Austrian School that would just be
because I have economic knowledge.
I can know that such and such thing will succeed or fail or I
can evaluate the claims being made by the politicians at the
time. Like for example there numerous
times in American history where politicians have claimed.
That money is too scarce. We need more money created.
We don't have enough money. Well, I know right away, they're
just confused because any amount of money can facilitate any
number of transactions. As long as the prices are free
to fluctuate. So I can immediately know,
that's just Democrats, just that's just demagogues because I
understand how money works. So I can evaluate what they're
saying or if somebody says we cut off trade with the world and
that helped make us rich. Well again, I can evaluate that
because women cutting off trade with the world.
That's something that the enemy does to you during war.
If that made you rich, why would the enemy blockade you?
If that makes you rich? Because now you'll buy American
or whatever. Why would we have blockades?
The blockades are meant to impoverish you, right?
So the same thing they used to impoverish.
It was probably not going to make your country wealthy.
So you you become cynical about out the speeches and pretty
words of politicians because you have the understanding of how
the world works that you can put it that you can set against what
they're saying and draw your own conclusion.
What is the most underappreciated contribution of
the Catholic Church to Western civilization?
Oh, geez. All right.
Well, this is just for example, people might not know.
This is a reference to my book, how the Catholic church built
western civilization and its organized in a series of
chapters. So I'll talk about cyanide
science. Longest chapter because
everybody thinks well the church hated science because they just
want people to be stupid and ignorant to keep putting the
money in the collection plate. And all that.
I know that that was the conventional wisdom through the
enlightenment. That was the convened.
That was why Voltaire was so unhappy.
At least one reason, then it was the conventional wisdom up to
the late 19th century. When the president of Cornell
wrote, a two volume history on the alleged Warfare between the
science and theology. That was Andrew Dickson white
Cornell. That was the conventional
wisdom. That's not the conventional
wisdom anymore. As of the 1950s, real historians
of science. Do not believe that and if you
don't believe me, there's a company called the Great Courses
and they sell courses taught by some of the top professors.
Now, they are as plain vanilla as can be because they don't
want to offend anybody. And because they're not
libertarian. They're not conservative, not
liberal. They just want to sell courses.
So I took their history of science questions because I
needed to see what is the guy saying.
And sure enough, even there. They're being as vanilla and
inoffensive as possible. Even they are saying, yeah,
we've long since passed moved this past, the simplistic, the
church hated science sort of thing that we don't buy into
that anymore. It's a much more interesting and
complicated story and I tell that in my book.
So I'll guess I'll just stop there.
But the book talks about international law, which, by the
way, international law does not have to be in the United
Nations. It's simply has to mean an
understanding that there are certain general principles that
apply. Not just to your enemy, but to
you to that all peoples in order to be moral, have to subject
themselves to things like that. Also, our current understanding
of Charity that you when you help somebody, you help them
without expectation of reciprocity or you make a
donation. You don't necessarily do it to
get your name on the building. This would have been thought of
as Unthinkable and inexplicable in ancient, Greece or Rome.
So there are a lot of things that we just are not aware of
that. We've inherited.
It whether we like it or not from the church.
Thank you to everyone for watching Keith Knight.
Don't tread on anyone and the libertarian Institute.
Dr. Woods. Thank you so much for your time.
My pleasure key.