Many critics of the free-market, criticized it for consisting of
greedy, envious dog-eat-dog mentalities and short-sighted
decision makers. The problem with all of these
criticisms is that they apply many times over to the
government since one cannot opt out of funding them.
And the government does not face competition said, another way
while voluntarily funded competing organizations may have
shortcomings, they are preferable to the coercively
funded monopolies of the state, welcome back to the corporate.
Port everyone. I'm James Corbett of
corbettreport.com. It is, August of 2022 and it's
been at least what, four or five days.
Now, since I just recommended a couple of dozen books for you
and I'm sure you've all read through them by now.
So, how about another one? Yes, today I am here with
another book recommendation. This one is called The
voluntariness Test Handbook. It is a collection of essays
excerpts and quotes, and it has been compiled edited together by
Good friend of the corporate report previous guest you should
know him. Well Keith Knight of Keith
Knight don't tread on any one of the libertarian Institute.
He has an odyssey page. I'm sure you've seen his work
before. If not the link will be in the
show notes so that you can see it along with the link to this
brand new book. Hot off the press Keith Knight.
Thanks for talking to us today. Always appreciate your time,
James, thanks for having me. Well I appreciate your time.
I appreciate the amount of time and effort that goes into
creating and editing a compilation like this of essays.
Excerpts and quotes. There's there is quite an
interesting mixture of things in here.
But before we dive into the contents of this book, first of
all, I should note that this book is available obviously as a
physical paper back like I have it is also available as a free
PDF on Odyssey.com right now. But I trust that the Corbett
report audience wants to support people who do put in the time
effort and energy to make things like this available to you.
So please do consider purchasing the actual physical book which I
will put the link in the show. Not so that people can do that
but I am loathe to always, always always have to start at
Square One or the square before one with conversations like
this. But it's just a fact of life.
That 99.9999 percent of the population is statist by default
and can't even imagine what anything else actually might be
so voluntary. Voluntary isn't volunteerism.
As I hear people sometimes say Say because it, which is it
rankles me and as a man of letters, I'm sure Keith.
It probably rankles you to hear people saying things like
volunteerism and other butchering, zuv a fairly simple
word voluntary ISM but it's not just, it's not just as semantic
thing. It's not just oh, they got the
name wrong, it shows that they don't understand what the name
is or what it means. So I appreciate that you started
this collection with a list of definitions.
Tell me your definition for voluntary is mmm.
I use the definition given by the founder of volunteerism.
A gentleman named Auburn Herbert.
I just want to get it right? It's the moral position which
maintains that no peaceful person can, justly be submitted
to the control of others in the absence of his or her own
consent. So, we see this virtually on a
daily basis with what we would regard as common sense morality.
So you could both look at someone who was enslaved.
And look at another person, working hard and saying well,
these are both people. Performing labor.
They're both working hard toiling.
They might not get paid a lot. What is the difference between
these two? You might look at one person
going to someone's house and another person.
Getting kidnapped in both cases there at someone else's
geographical location. There is a foundational
difference between these actions trade and theft rape and
lovemaking. And that is the fact that both
parties both adults in these activities are engaged in
consensual activities because they have the better.
Claim to their body. Then their neighbor, then the
wise people of society than the rich people of society.
Then the majority of society, they get the final say and how
they spend their scarce time on this Earth, meaning you're not
entitled to anyone's time. So, unless someone chooses to
voluntarily give you a second of their time, a year of their time
or a penny out of their pocket, you are not entitled to anyone
elses time unless they voluntarily, give it to you.
So we both have this moral Foundation as well as the
economic And well-being of but we're not able to achieve our
ends in society, unless we're able to do so in a Cooperative
manner, that's cohesive as opposed to being destructive.
Now, that is the general Foundation of what volunteerism
is, a referring to interactions being voluntary.
Not as Ana, kasparian once said, based on people volunteering and
not being compensated for things.
Yeah, don't get your political philosophy from ANA kasparian.
Alright. Alright.
No excellent simple. Very simple, very
straightforward. I would say fairly
uncontroversial, I think anyone who would dispute the sort of
basic ethical principle that's being elaborated.
There is probably not someone that I want to be associated
with, but it is absolutely revolutionary to Simply play
that single fundamental ethical principle out to its logical
conclusion and extend those conclusions out to the space of
politics and the state which for some reason is this special
thing that Is this special category in people's brains?
That's why you can easily compile 300 Pages.
It could have been I'm sure much larger than 300 pages but here's
300 pages on this subject elaborated by lots and lots of
different writers in lots of different contexts and that's
actually the first thing I'd like to ask you about, why,
where did this idea for to do this?
Come from? Why, and how did this project
get started? Well, the self-serving answers.
I was sick of repeating myself, so Just wanted one thing where I
could say I've done the work. Here it is.
Goodbye. The reason that I was so
motivated to have one thing that I could give people is because I
know it can be intimidating. There's so many books out there
on so many topics. It's sort of like they all
cancel each other out. Whereas, if I had said look,
here's one book that I want to give people to sort of,
introduce them to this Freedom philosophy.
Sort of, you could imagine, this is kind of the idea, attempted
to pick up the mantle, from the American Declaration of It's the
earliest essay I have in here is from 1850 a gentleman named
Frederic bastiat from France writing.
So it's the attempt to take these principles and apply them
consistently. The reason it's so important to
have them all together is because well they have no
problem asking us to spend 12 years of Our Lives reading their
materials at the youngest age. My thing is look, if I would
love for you to listen to 100 podcasts and You know, Read 50
bucks and these essays and oh you got to join me for that
seminar. It's going to be so fun.
My whole thing was look, check out this one book.
I think this will give you the best understanding of sort of
where we are. I intentionally had such a
variety of people coming at it, both from what you could call
leftism, this would be anyone who focuses highly on the amount
of egalitarianism in between both individuals and
institutions John Locke. Actually summarize this.
This saying that it's not just that me, and you have equality
before the judges and the officers.
We also have equality with the judges and the officers.
So this is something people like Sheldon, Richmond has two
articles in here. Roderick T, long also has a two
articles Hans Hermann. Hapa takes the philosophy of
Karl Marx, the exploitation Theory and attempts to show how
there is overlap with the freedom Theory.
That's called Austrian verse Marxist class analysis.
So those people Would be generally considered on the
right. So anyone who cares about things
like equality and making sure people live with dignity,
there's something for them. When it comes to people on the
right, we have the former senior editor of National Review.
William, F Buckley is right hand man, a guy named Joe.
Soberin he wrote, he writes an article in here, numbers not
coming to me, it's titled The Reluctant Anarchist, and he
basically came to this conclusion.
That once you give one group, With a monopoly on
decision-making within a geographical area with people,
they haven't consented with or contracted with, and there's no
give-and-take sort of contract. There's, there's these
unilateral contracts where you have an obligation to obey and
the state does not have an obligation to provide
protection. In fact, when they don't provide
protection like Pearl, Harbor, or 911, the amount of power they
have increases. So once you grant that Monopoly,
then basically any words on paper are unilaterally And by
them and they have this ultimate amount of power.
So the idea that, well, what if the American government gets
tyrannical sometime in the future?
Well, anyone looking at events such as Hiroshima or things
operation meeting house or Vietnam, or operations in Iraq,
or sanctions or mistreatment of the natives.
All of these things that is not to bash, America.
That's just where I'm from. So, I use those Examples of all
of those things, what makes them bad is, they were initiating
violence against non aggressors. They weren't just defending
themselves in those cases against those people.
So it comes down to. I chose these things because I
wanted people from both the right and left to realize that
their views are actually harmonious with the idea of
voluntourism. And I try to get the highest
number of essays. That would have, that would give
me multiple different starting points that led to the same
conclusion people from If people from the right from the 1850s up
to today, also, I stole the idea from Michael malice as Anarchist
handbook. I like the tldr there, but, but
yeah, let me honestly, let me commend you for your editorial
selection process in this, as I was reading through it, I, it
really struck me. I mean, there's no way not to be
struck by this, this rain ranges all the way from really
scholarly essays by Sirs and historians and philosophers, and
with, with footnotes and all of that very serious essays all the
way down to personal anecdotes from retired, Marines and police
officers and everything in between.
There's transcripts of seminars and videos in here.
There's quotations, there's excerpts of various sorts.
It's just such a broad range of material.
And as you say, all swirling around the same idea, and at
times, it can almost feel repetitive like.
Well, this guy's just saying, what the last guy was saying,
but then, there are other times where actually?
No, that's really different than what?
Other guy was saying it coming at it, from a completely
different perspective and some of them I think, yeah, that's,
that's bang on some of them. I think.
No, I don't, I don't think I agree with that, but that's
actually one of the refreshing things about this.
This is not a Bible or some catechism you must all Now read
from the hymn book of voluntarism know.
There's lots of different people that have different approaches
to this and and have different takes on it and that's a good
thing. I think at least from my
perspective, how about from your perspective?
Do you have a it's like choosing babies.
I'm sure. But do you As a favorite essay
or that you've included in here? Yes, I would.
I think I would have to choose. I believe it is chapter 76,
questions for status. So this was by Stefan molyneux
in his book, practically in our key.
The freedom of the future, when he says is look, I'm really
interested in getting into the details of how, you know, things
like a stateless society would work, we have examples of
people, you know, arbitrating disputes PayPal Amazon.
EBay people do this constantly throughout the day.
You know, things like roads. There's a lot of roads that
exist that are privately built by businesses.
Who simply do so not because they're so kind.
But because they want to bring people in.
But instead of getting into those, I first want to have six
questions that we go through before.
But before we really start criticizing this, this way, we
can make sure we are on the same page.
So it's only a three page chapter.
The first thing he says is, does government actually solve the
problem in question. So very often people will say
well, you Can't have, you know, stateless society because it
could be taken over by another Society.
There could be some people who exploit others, what this leaves
out is the fact that this very same Injustice occurs with or
without a state, so they're taking something that exists in
human society and then uniquely pinning, it on the concept of
volunteerism. So molyneux really introduces
people into was getting how to think this way.
Second question. The answers can, the criticism
of the anarchic solution. Be equally applied to the
statist solution. Another words.
Well, the thing is, the reason you can't have a voluntarily
funded, you know, police agency is the police agency, if they're
not, you know, accountable to the voters they might just not
defend you. Well, there are a number of
examples. There was just a main major one
in America, where 376 police officers sat outside while
parents are running in trying to save their kids from a murderer.
So, that's one example. Other examples, the government
of China did exactly protect. Its citizens from Shanghai Shack
or Chairman Mao or Emperor Hirohito.
The population of Germany was not very well protected, so they
don't that government didn't solve the problem.
Think 1.3 million Frenchmen were killed in the first world war
alone. So having a state, having a
monopolist on protection, does not solve this problem.
So that is a small intro into what is probably my Protection
of the book. Maybe it was just because when I
read it, I had been coming at things so much from the idea of
all right. It's time to watch the news and
kind of, like, figure out who to hate today.
It's like, okay, we hate Iran. Yeah, those bastards are
building nukes and they're like days away.
They're Pals with Hezbollah, who the worst people on earth.
Oh, we're back to hating Iraq. Just yesterday.
Now, I have to hate Al-Qaeda again because they killed
allegedly, Ayman, al-zawahiri. And I've been hating In this
whole time. And before I was hating the
banderites in Ukraine because their National socialists and
there's a white supremacist element there, but now I have to
support giving them 40 billion dollars a year and I used to
hate the rich, but now we have to like them because they're
also our countrymen. So, instead of getting in this,
you listen to the media for them to issue your opinion of the
day. That's so unnecessarily divisive
hating People based on accidents of birth.
These arbitrary divisions, you can actually build Genuine
divided and unifying strategy based on people who achieve
their ends in life, voluntarily versus people who achieve their
ends in life violently, those are the ultimate exploiters.
So I hadn't really thought of things on those terms until I
had come across that article from from molyneux and
especially you don't have to like you know, travel to the top
of Mount Everest and read some secret.
Scroll to find this empirical evidence.
He goes before getting into the specifics of, you know, how many
The government's killed and how long it takes them to show up to
911 calls versus private organizations that were tried.
And you know places like Detroit he goes let's talk about things
that we're just able to understand logically and that's
why I like that article. So much.
Second favorite would be chapter, 42, logical, fallacies
by Michael humor that when I just have a blast reading every
time. So yeah, those are the two that
come to mind. Yeah, I don't know if I could
choose a favorite. I'm familiar with a lot of this
material. Some of it was new to me and
perhaps the stuff that was new to me was was more interesting
just for virtue of being new. For example, chapter 9 on social
cooperation, by Sheldon Richmond.
I had not heard the little anecdote that he starts off with
here as Effie's. Advanced Austrian economic
seminar at heavy Eve's Advanced Austrian economics seminar last
summer more than one speaker. Mentioned that Ludwig von mises
considered a different title for the book we know as human
action, the other title social Operation.
I've heard that story before but this time it got me thinking,
would the free market movement have been perceived differently
by the outside world. If Misa said, use the other
title with the question phrase. So narrowly the answer is
probably, no. So let's broaden it would the
free market movement, be perceived differently.
If its dominant theme was social cooperation rather than rugged
individual, individualism, self-reliance Independence, and
other synonyms were so fond of. That's an excellent starting
point for examining this from a fresh perspective.
Because obviously, I you've been in this long enough to hear this
a million times. I certainly have from people
who, oh, you're always talking about individuals and
individuals and you just want to live in a cabin in the woods,
all by yourself. No, no, no.
The heart of voluntary ism is cooperation, that is what this
is about working together. Consensually mutually on things
that we agree on in order to build build up the world rather
than forcing people at gunpoint to do what I want them to do and
then we can argue over who's holding the gun.
That's That's insanity. This is social cooperation.
So I think reframing things like that, it's just so valuable and
that's why I appreciate discovering new nuggets like
this one that I hadn't seen before.
So I appreciate that. Another thing that I appreciate
in this collection is as I say not, not necessarily that people
are contradicting each other, but they're just coming at it
from such different ways that you no matter where you are on
the statist anarchist Spectrum or left or, right, or what
flavor of anarchism you like, or whatever.
Will be something here that will be in accord with what you
think. And we'll be oh yeah, that's
what I think and then there will be other ones that think
anything. No, no, that's the right.
Like, for example, I really appreciated reading what it
means to be an anarcho-capitalist by Stephan
kinsella. Who I've I've already I've read
this essay before but reading it in this collection.
It really stuck out to me, just how beautifully simply he
defines sort of the nature of anarchism in that first
paragraph of that article and how it's an ethical point of
view. And That's why it confuses
utilitarians. And in a way, although it's not
really a contradiction. But when when rothbard in war
peace and the state is writing about the Buckley criticism
that, you know, you dreamers just out there so you know, sort
of dreaming but you have no strategic intelligence about
what you're talking about. So rothbard's like all right you
want strategic intelligence? Looking at the war?
Question of War and Peace. All right, here we go.
And he goes deep dive into sort of the more utilitarian ish.
Of way of looking at this. And as I say, it's not
necessarily a contradiction, but it's very different approaches,
and I appreciate having that mixture of them.
Tell me about your own experience of putting this
together and, and finding that balance between different
approaches. Yeah, I definitely liked our
rothbard, would sort of take Buckley up on something like
that as if that criticism doesn't apply to Buckley
universally. Well okay, let me think if it,
what if there's like ever a war that America goes into and it
lasts 20 years and then the opponent's take over the capital
after 11 days. Then surely, I mean, like, if it
was ever like the first time, NATO declared Article 5, well,
then you guys would say, well, we can't have a state providing
the security then you, you know, you utopian government.
Believers would have to give things up.
If after, you know, 12 years of school and kids are not only not
smart, they believe things that are just verifiably untrue.
Well, then you stayed us would just have to give up this
fantasy. That we could just give the
state this Our and they'll give us education and protection.
That they're actually the the the utopians here is far as
coming at it from from different aspects.
I really like the fact that there are a number of professors
with phds who have also come to this conclusion who have a great
deal of both Empirical research that you can test.
But after you know, seeing so many times where empiricism
fails or it's really difficult to replicate things or it's
true. But that was Sort of a fad or if
that's a thing in America, it's less true and, you know, places
like Nigeria what these professors are able to do was
first come up with very brilliant, analogy someone like
Jason Brennan. He gives you three thought
experiments that sort of really take you out of the realm of
being so connected with your identity.
So he is so he doesn't say well imagine if Trump did this would
you like that? Well what if Obama did this well
anyone hearing that is already already has an opinion on one or
One or two of those people. So what Brennan says is let's
take this guy. Virtuous Fanny.
You know, he is so virtuous that he really cares about the poor.
In fact, he cares so much that he is going to require that.
You give him money, so he could help these people that are
impoverished and horrible news. If you don't help her to us
Vani. Well, he actually gets to take
your house but the point is is that he's going to help them and
You might disagree with how effective has helped his, but
he's going to take your house, we would immediately see this as
this is a guy who was robbing us under the guise of helping us,
or he hasn't put any thought into this.
Well, Brennan correctly says, this is in principle.
No, different than what you would call property taxes, which
I think in all 50 states in America, but we certainly have
this means that if you don't chip in for your local, they are
mostly allocated. It's a schooling facilities.
So if you don't chip in, they will literally confiscate your
house. And if you try to resist them,
they get to shoot you, which is the ultimate claim that they
have, what you could refer to. As Government Supremacy, they
call the shots. Everyone else has to obey.
This is what you could, maybe call the least equal institution
in society. And sometimes it takes people
who have been professors, who have really dug through all this
for them to be able to effectively communicate
Something like that. The other example he uses is
well smokings bad for you. I mean look, the studies show.
Smoking is bad for you. So this guy in order to help
society, as a whole, stop things, like lung cancer
secondhand, smoke, parents dying, children living without
parents because they've died from lung, cancer unnecessarily.
What, what what this guy young passion, Peter is going to do is
he's going to put you in a cage, if he catches you smoking in a
few resist. Mmm.
Is going to shoot you. Well, it again, in this case you
see, it's a blatant example of some people initiating violence
against others, showing how under any other circumstance.
We would see this as unjust. So really the ability for a lot
of these people to use persuasion skills to communicate
to people. That never would have crossed my
mind in such a simple way, this long explanation of Mind.
By the way, it's one page. This is the shortest chapter but
I just, I just Found it. So intriguing, how he was able
to just really grab your attention in such a short amount
of time. You say?
Well gosh, I could watch Don Lemon every night for like 6
hours and I don't really learn much, but in this one page, I'm
blown away. And now I learn how to
communicate. I learned a fundamental
understanding of how these ideas are applicable in the real world
today, as well as their effects. I hope that answers the
question. I think it does that, that this
is in some sense, the most Citing part of a book like this
is the way that it helps to reframe things out of that
people don't see clearly and you can see it clearly in a very
short and concise way. That's explained very nicely.
For example. Of course, you have coupons, do
we ever really get out of Anarchy in here, which is an
important essay and I hope people will read it.
But I also I just noticed in war peace in the state.
Rothbard essentially makes the same argument in the space of a
paragraph that Is so important for people to understand.
If you are a nationalist and you are opposed to globalism, then
you are in favor of Anarchy, you just don't know it yet.
So rothbard rights in the modern world.
Each land area is ruled over by a state organization, but there
are a number of states scattered over the Earth, each with a
monopoly of violence, over its own territory.
No super State exists with a monopoly of violence over the
entire world. And so a state of Anarchy exists
between the several states. It is always been a source of
Wonder, right? Incidentally to this writer.
The same conservatives, who denounces lunatic, any proposal
for eliminating, a monopoly of violence, over a given territory
and thus, leaving private individuals without an Overlord,
should be equally insistent upon leaving states without an
Overlord to settle disputes between them.
The former is always denounced as crackpot.
Anarchism the latter is hailed as preserving Independence and
National sovereignty from World Government.
So, again, such a simple point. But so, effectively stated there
And as I say, in much greater detail bike in Kazan Kazan sesay
but that strikes me that the very people who perhaps most
need to read this book are probably the people who won't
read it. I would assume a lot of people
who buy the voluntary is handbook, already considered
themselves to be voluntary as sore at least interested in the
philosophy, but the dyed-in-the-wool stay tests who
sure whatever may be a collection like this won't
convince them but at the very least it will get brain cells
firing, it will start. You at least put some some
thoughts in people's minds that they might not have had before.
I think those are the people who really need to see this book.
Unfortunately probably won't see it but who was your audience?
What audience did you have in mind putting this collection
together? The reason this book took so
long is because Scott Horton and I as well as my colleagues at
the libertarian Institute. We really wanted something that
we could hand to anyone who's interested in politics and we
said, well we want to what we don't want to water down the
message at all. So the Very common watering
down. We get from people on our side.
Certainly people, like David bows.
Well at the Cato Institute will say very Bland things and just
try not to hurt anyone's feelings of a lot of these
regime change Wars, have unintended consequences and
seldom, are they in the interest of the American people?
That's not in this book in here at Scott Horton.
And Lew Rockwell saying war is a euphemism for mass murder based
on Collective as lies. So I said, I'm not willing to
water down this message at all. So basically what we were
banking on is grabbing people's attention in such a way to show
them. That this is a productive
conversation. It's not just some, you know,
pie-in-the-sky philosophy that you would only read in a
classroom. So it's anyone who would be
watching the news and feels like they can not get a lot of bang
for their Buck. You can watch a lot of Sean
Hannity. I mean the best Caveat to that
would be, you know, Tucker Carlson's.
Probably the best and you still have to watch quite a bit.
You can even see him being very principled in some areas.
It's vitally important that we don't risk war with Russia,
well, vilifying people, but like China or justifying the worst
state in other areas such as the second world war.
So it's like yeah, the greatest mass murderer in history.
It's like well that was unnecessary to a conscription
Millions of people into 60 million lives killing civilians,
giving mothers without Sons. Well, that was virtuous.
The problem is is that you can hear so much of these ideas
without ever coming across a consistent approach to how they
can be analyzed. So what we're banking on is that
people who are generally interested in politics at all,
we'll see this and it'll show them.
Wow, I did not know that I was Thirsty until I drank this for
the first time, this is what this is productive.
I just read a page and I really learned something.
Whereas you could read Mitt Romney's, no apology probably
five or six times and not extract anything about well, it
was published what in like 2011, or 2012 when I read it.
And today, I mean, it's good for like firewood and disc in
December. There's nothing that you can get
out of it. Whereas these I think are really
Timeless. I think.
Anyone who comes across them will learn something.
Them. So that's why that's my
justification for saying that anyone generally interested in
politics is my audience with this book.
Yeah yeah as someone who just did an entire course and
documentary series about the history of on of media mass
media, I can feel your pain. It's like no, no this isn't
boring. Honestly this is really
important. Actually it's really interesting
and important and once you see it you'll know.
But you have to see it first. You won't know.
You're thirsty till your drink anyway, I get that.
Pain. Well, again an incredibly
interesting collection of essays, no matter where you come
on the statist anarchist Spectrum, or what flavor of,
whatever political ideology, subscribe to there is stuff in
here, that's worth reading, including the stuff that I
disagree with. Yes, there is stuff in here that
I disagree with. I think this person's wrong,
they're making the wrong argument.
Walter Williams the argument for free markets, morality versus
efficiency. People who criticize the
existing distribution of income is being unfair and demand
government redistribution are really In the process whereby
income is earned their bottom line, is that millions of
individual decision makers, did not do the right thing.
Consider the wealth of billionaire.
Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft Gates earned billions
because millions of individuals voluntarily spent their money on
what they wanted his products for someone to say that Gates is
income is unfair is the same as saying that the decisions of
millions of consumers are wrong. No, absolute hogwash, no Gates,
relied on the state and patent laws in order to Or Saint
artificially restricted Market that has nothing to do with free
markets. That couldn't be more wrong.
Having said that I agree with much else of the core substance
of Williams argument. And I agree with so much of
what's in this book, it's all fascinating and interesting
stuff, but it doesn't mean. I necessarily agree with every
Point that's being made by every author, I would assume even for
yourself. It's not like you agree with
every single thing that's being said in a book like this.
But that you think it's valuable for people to hear?
Of course. Yeah.
Well there's only so many chapters where I could just use
excerpts or use an entire thing except take out one or two
paragraphs. So of course, you're relying on
the readers, ability to discern and for that discernment, you
have chapter 42 on how to think, clearly by the by Michael humor,
the goal of now me bring a lot of the so someone like Walter
Williams, just so brilliant. Imagine a guy growing up in the
Jim Crow, South East conscripted Into.
I want to say it was during the Korean War.
I don't think I ever saw combat, but I mean, for someone like
that to come so far and get such an intellectual Foundation into
things that are extremely difficult to go, go into, he
said, well I didn't join the Marines.
I had my labor Services confiscated from me D.
I don't think people realize how unpopular that would have been
to say in a time where well don't you know, we have to we
can't surrender. Under to the Communists.
So anyone who's in uniform as, you know, a part of the nation
and whatnot. So those people have so much
wisdom that even when I really think that I have one on them, I
go. Well, maybe they're really
communicating something in here that will learn later.
And as far as intellectual property, I have a chapter by
Isaac Morehouse on here. Does titled how I changed my
mind on copyright more or less you saying that.
If I have this physical book and you take it from me?
Well now I no longer have it and we can That's theft, but what if
you snap your fingers and made one copy or a million copies?
Yes, it would change the value but value just means a price
that other people are willing to pay your sacrifice for or
something. The other people see in
something. So it's not that people have a
right to the value. It's that they have a right to
the physical Integrity of their body and justly acquired
resources. So you get so many good now gets
like that but another similarity, you will see Between
all of these authors is their ability to show.
The really is to show the reader how to think, as opposed to sort
of listing off bullet points. So, when I quote, someone like,
Bryan Caplan multiple times toward the end of people like
Ben Powell people like Michael humor thomassie Woods.
Junior has written an excellent essay on the misplaced fear of
Monopoly Sheldon Richmond. Scott Horton as an article
individualism versus War. What they're showing you is how
to think critically. So it's About memorizing,
certain things because if all you do is memorize things, the
next scam, whether it's going to be called a virus, or a
terrorism, whatever it is. I promise you, it'll be.
This is different. Now, it'll be something to that
extent of. Well, we've never seen this
before in the past, that would have worked.
But now, it's totally did. Now people do have the right to
rule other people. This is different.
Then we're going to have to publish like a new book, every
few months, because it's like, oh, Putin went further than
Donna stand Lu, Hans. All right.
New Book. Now we gotta justify this so
because they're teaching you how to think you never have to play
catch-up with. Now, I have to go find the
Empirical research for the new scam.
They're trying to sell me with regards to why they now have the
right to rule people, which they previously didn't.
So because these authors are so good at teaching people how to
think. I think people will really
benefit from having a copy on hand.
Lot of the articles are very short, only, two of them are
rather long and there's two sections that are Three sections
rather that are just quotes that you could just have as a coffee
table book, briefly read things and get the summary.
And if you just want a summary, the first two and last two
pages, the introduction in the afterward, I try to summarize
everything for people who aren't willing to well read the whole
collection. Yeah, in fact that was what I
was thinking I was going through.
This isn't necessarily the type of book.
You want to sit down and read cover to cover you could, but
it's the book you can dip in and out.
And well, read this essay overall, I want to look at this
quote and it would be A great coffee table book.
Imagine red peeling people with just having this lying around,
they pick it up and they're like, oh my God, sir, blow their
minds. Imagine if a dentist was putting
this in there, you know, waiting room anyway, I don't know.
Yeah, I think it could be very effective in that way as well.
And sorry, I genuinely just remembered, but yeah, I, I'm in
here as well. Thank you for, including one of
my, an excerpt from one of my previous newsletter, editorials,
that I think is quite appropriate.
And I'm glad you included it because it's, I think important
stuff to include. But That's not why I'm promoting
this book by the way, but I do appreciate that.
And as I say, I think everyone there will be something in here
for everyone of any political persuasion.
If you are interested in understanding these issues at a
deeper level and not even in that framework of politics than
the way people think of politics.
No, this is about fundamental principles and how human beings
should act and organize and cooperate.
And all of these fundamental questions about what it means to
be human, it affects everyone. So I hope people will Waking up
now, assuming people are interested and they do pick it
up and they do read it and they are interested in more.
Where should people go for more? After they've read the voluntary
of ten book after they've read the volunteers handbook?
Well, libertarian, institute.org has thousands of Articles essays
podcasts and videos that could keep anyone busy for the rest of
Eternity, we're constantly updating the site and putting
new things up there on a daily basis.
Libertarian institute.org up were attempting to have a free
educational archive, so anyone can go on there, go into the
search engine type in one thing, they're interested in and
hopefully get both bit philosophical in-depth
foundational, understanding of what's going on as well as the
updated data data information. We have people like Kyle
anzalone and Connor Freeman focusing on the excellent
foreign policy updates almost as they happen, we have gentlemen,
Patrick McFarland I know you've ever had on the show, he brings
an excellent legal mind, so with someone with a law degree on our
side that's just a bit of relief and knowledge call and say no
that's not legal in any state like a?
Well that's why we have you on call.
So yeah, a lot of us. There are constantly updating
the place and that is probably the best best place to go.
After you've read the book, if you're interested in more,
Excellent. Any big projects in the works or
anything coming up next. You like people to know about
Yeah, I am. I working on a bunch of
transcripts for my interviews so while people, I'm just asking
some fans who their favorite interviews of mine have been,
we're getting transcripts and probably making a book of that,
but other than that, nothing, nothing else in stone.
Excellent. Well.
Okay, we'll leave it there for today.
I will, once again, direct people not only to your blog at
the libertarian Institute. Your Odyssey channel, the book
itself, obviously once again, the link is Is in the show
notes. I hope people will check it out.
I think it'll be worth your time but we'll leave this
conversation here today. Keith Knight, thanks for your
time. James Corbett, thank you for
having me.