Tom Woods Speech to the Texas Libertarian Party State Convention, June 9, 2012

all right let's put this up here thank you

everybody okay oh can I stand on this okay I don't know if that's some kind of

insult like they know I'm short so they've got this special little ribb actually rather rickety Contraption here

who knows what might happen gosh now like I'm towering over this Podium and all the rest of you folks okay well all

right now I know how all you tall people have all right well anyway a real it's a great pleasure to be here with you guys

um I spent a little bit of last night at uh we'll just call it the other convention oo yeah that's right I was

there and there were a bunch of those people who said we'd love to come hear you tomorrow but you know we don't want

to get in trouble for being involved with the Libertarians oo terrible but I

think a lot of what you guys do is uh thankless work sometimes it's

unbelievable drudgery and yet you just do it and do it and do it you keep on doing it anyway and it doesn't always

bring immediate success it just brings more drudgery and more work and yet you just keep at it and I deeply respect

people who do that so I'm very glad to be able to talk to you so what I'm doing today is I'm giving two speeches now how

can that be how can the schmuck give two speeches well I I decided I want to give

first I want to start with here's what I would say let's suppose what we all crave is that if only we could GR grab

the whole country by the throat for just like a half hour if we could just talk to people for a half an hour what would

we say to them that would leave them Libertarians on the other side of that that's what I want to do but then I also

thought but I also want to talk to the Libertarians I don't want to talk to these imaginary non- Libertarians for the whole speech I also want to talk to

the Libertarians so I'm going to give two speeches so the first one is what would I say to the whole world if I had

their attention after they've gone through 12 years of government propaganda and they've been told the exact opposite of everything I'm going

to say to them what would I in fact say and then secondly what would I say to a bunch of Libertarians if I just happen

to have them in a room together and guess what look hey hey here I am so we're going to do both of those and then

sort of tie it all up together so we're going to zip right along now everything I say will not be footnoted giving the

time involved and I have so much to try to cover because I'm trying to convince people who have spent their entire well

youth anyway in an institution funded by the government whose job it is to make them into conformists so it is tricky I

have a lot to say to these people so I'm going to zip through it so I would start first of all I find it there's a certain

irony in what happens at your high school graduation when you always get

that speech about you got to follow your dreams you can accomplish anything but

yet the whole 12 years you've been in that school they've been teaching you the exact opposite you can't do

anything only the government makes possible civilized life and only the government makes it possible for you to

survive and earn a living and only the government makes it possible for you to work in decent conditions and only the

government makes the Arts Possible only the government makes the Sciences possible government government

government government but hey you can do anything you want what does that mean like how do they have the nerve to give

that speech but anyway they do and so we are sort of I don't know propagandized

into thinking that all the good things in the world come from some guy being in

charge and telling everybody else what to do people look to the the example of the military and they say look at the

milit military gets stuff done we got a guy in charge and people who obey so this should be the model for all of

society this is the the sense people have that's why I think some people accepted the idea that Central economic

planning was a good idea cuz it seems to them wouldn't it be better and more efficient for there to be some guy

barking out orders to everybody instead of everybody just doing whatever he wants that sounds chaotic and disorderly

we can't have that so first I would tell

people there are Miracles that go on every single day in this world that

occur simply because individuals are acting like think for example there was

nobody in charge of the English language there was no one guy who said okay

everybody I've decided I've decided the word for this is tree everybody got that it's going to be tree

from now on like that didn't happen and so it's not even like as my friend Bob

Murphy puts it it's not that dictionary companies invented English it's not like

dictionary companies just forced upon us the meanings of the words the dictionary companies are merely codifying our

already customary practice of designating this as a tree so where does English come from it comes from just

spontaneous interaction of people there is no Zar or commissar or planner of the

English language and yet there it is but you could imagine you could just imagine people today thinking that there must

have been some English language commissar who developed the language or or how about take a scientific field

like physics now physics has progressed tremendously over the centuries and yet

there is no guy there's no guy with a giant physics hat

and he's wearing a lab coat he's in charge of physics there's nobody in charge of physics they have physics

journals and the journals weed out are supposed to weed out the bad articles publish the good ones and people build

upon each other's work and the result is this tremendous edifice of physics and yet it develops with no guy doing it no

one even stops to Marvel at this but this contradicts this idea that you need some guy in charge no what's miraculous

is how how much we get done done with nobody in charge with just human beings interacting with each other like with

other human beings just that's it where we interact with each other without some guy with a bullhorn and it's astonishing

what we can accomplish like for example I'm sure everybody in this room is at least familiar with that Leonard

Reed essay that Milton Freedman popularized I pencil so Milton Freedman holds up this pencil and he says look I

got a freaking pencil over here you look at the things in this pencil and you realize there's no person on Earth who

could who could produce this pencil and you're skeptical of that you think oh I know I know Joe works at the Pencil

Factory he could make a pencil but when you think about it it's actually quite difficult the pencil begins with a tree

got to chop down the tree what are you going to chop down the tree with well you going to need an axe or you need a

saw what's the saw going to be made out of it's made out of steel and for steel you need iron ore and then you need

transportation to transport the steel from one place to another the transportation requires gasoline which

requires oil Refinery all these different things that you would need to be an expert in to create a pencil no

human brain could possibly contain so there were all the and that's not to mention the rubber for the Eraser the

graphite which comes from South America all these different things coming together to produce an object that costs

you a few cents now could you imagine before we had pencils describing to people all

right here's what we need to do all right first we got to go to this continent then that continent then we

got to get the graphite we got to chop down the tree we got to produce paint requires all these ingredients and all these processes then we got to shave

down the the wood to make it all nice and smooth where people would say my gosh this this device is going to cost like a billion dollars and we're going

to need some pencil commissar in charge of this thing we would never produced a pencil no one would even

try and yet this happens every single day and nobody even notices it nobody

even notices the miracle of this without any Central Direction without that bullhorn guy these miracles go on every

day and we are not ever taught to stop and appreciate them for a change in fact

there was one time I had a sick child she needed a vaporizer in the middle of

the night so the middle of the night I go to the store I buy her a vaporizer for $10 and I actually this is not a joke I

stood there in the store and I marveled at the fact that I just bought a

vaporizer for my sick kid in the middle of the night for $10 this is incredible think of all the

things that had to come together to make this possible and then I realize wait I have a sick kid I can't really be standing around here phos ofice I I got

to get out of here but you know what we are taught to do though in school we're not taught to appreciate markets or the

price system that makes all this miraculous stuff possible no we're taught how a bill becomes a

law so right away it prejudices people in favor of government activity I know all about how a bill becomes a law but I

have absolutely no idea how a p could be possible and I have so no idea about it

that I don't even have the idea to ask myself the question so these Miracles take place every day and in fact on the

free market we have what the Great Frederick basad called economic harmonies that on the market we are all

acting harmoniously in cooperation and concert together that workers and

businessmen have the same interests not contrary interests the same interests the business businessman wants low taxes

on his business so that he can make more profits but the worker also wants low taxes on that business because the more

profits that are earned the more the businessman can invest those profits in Capital Equipment that makes the worker

more physically productive that means more goods are produced and when more goods are produced Visa the amount of

money in the economy that makes your money worth more the money stays roughly the same the goods are increased we all

become wealthier through this process the only thing government can contribute to that healthy process is stagnation

and retrogression that's it all they can do is tax this wonderful process by which all of us working together improve

our living conditions but what does the state create does it create economic harmonies

no the state can only create conflict it gives a special privilege to one group

that harms the other groups that encourages the other groups to lobby for their own special privileges which in

term harm everyone else and it encourages is a kind of loow intensity Civil War of all against all there's no

economic harmonies there now but but they say that what I'm

saying to you is too simplistic they say that freedom yields

you bad things it yields you poverty poor working conditions and all the rest of it all the things we learned in the

seventh grade the free market gives you all those things but as I just explained it's the market that curbs those

things imagine in the 18th century imagine the year 1700 why are people poor in 1700 is it because the rich

people are wickedly depriving the poor of all the flat screen TVs in the year 1700 why is it why is it that in the

year 1700 nobody protests against the existence of poverty it's because in the year 1700 it

never occurred to anyone that you could abolish poverty it it it was assumed that the world you're going to be born

into is a filthy world of squalor you're going to live your life one bad Harvest

away from starvation and then you're going to drop dead no one have figured you could get away with a life better

than that it's only when you get the market economy it's so fantastic as a wealth creator that you realize wait a

minute people don't have to live like Savages anymore it is possible to lift people out of this thing well the reason

people are poor in 1700 is they're doing most of their work by hand imagine if

today we get rid of all the equipment we used to produce things we produce everything by hand we would produce like what 1 300th of what we produce now if

even that and there would be whole classes of goods we couldn't produce at all TR try to engage in in in coal

mining with just your bare hands good luck try to engage in in any type of mining or raw material extraction of any

kind forget it none of that stuff could even be done so of course they're going to be poor it's not that the rich have

taken all the stuff from them if you redistributed everything the rich person had in 1700 and gave it to everybody

else everybody else would wind up with an extra two cents and then that would be it that rich person would move out of

the country before this could be done to him again that'd be it congratulations the only way you can improve things is

by letting the market function let profits be reinvested and build that Machinery so that we become more

productive Goods become more abundant and their prices come down relative to wages that is the only way we could

become better off I've talked about working conditions in a couple of my books I won't uh dwell on that but that

is also something that the market makes possible if we went over to Bangladesh today and said you people have to work

in terrible conditions So today we're going to impose the US Federal Register of regulations upon the whole country

would that mean that the next day everyone would be working in a wonderful air conditioned office building no it'

mean the next day everybody's unemployed no one could afford that in Bangladesh so it can't possibly be uh quite that

simple and it is indeed the market that makes possible the wealth that allows us to work in in better

conditions in fact I have got I just returned from Spain so I hardly even know what time it is or what day it is

or what country I'm in but I was in Spain earlier this week I gave a talk there people were telling me that in Spain it is so difficult to start a

business there is so much bureaucracy and so much red tape that only the very wealthy can afford to do it which is why

you see gigantic businesses there you don't see even in this country with our curtailed freedoms we still have some

small entrepreneurs popping up you just don't see that in Spain you're either poor or you're super duper Rich cuz only

the super duper Rich can possibly navigate the regulatory Thicket that the state has imposed the state by the way

which portrays itself as the great savior of the poor well how about poverty around the

world is that the fault of the free market is that the fault of you and me of us being free well in fact this is

the century the 21st century and the 20th century combined these are the centuries where we've started to see

after some some years of of of of Third Way Central planning we started to see

in the mid 20th century but starting really in this in the'80s a lot of

liberalization of the good sort around the world and what did we see poverty fell dramatically absolute poverty

amounted to 85% of the world population in 1820 by 1950 that was down to 50% by

the early 1980s down to 33% and by a 2001 down to 18% the world has never

seen that amount of of poverty alleviation a ever ever at the very time

that markets are opening up never seen any progress like this do we read that in the newspaper hey great news

everybody the New York Times hey great news look poverty is really no nothing nothing we are led to believe that the

poor are poor because the rich took all their stuff when did these poor people have

all that stuff for one thing I mean this is or or the poor get poorer the rich get richer it's this can't possibly the

poor at some point you hit subsist level if you get any poor I mean I the phrase

doesn't even make sense but exactly the opposite is the truth now governments did try to help people we had foreign

aid programs in the 20th century and everybody all the experts said the foreign aid programs are indispensible

to lifting these people out of poverty what did these foreign aid programs do they kept these people in poverty in

case after case after case there is almost nothing in the history of mankind that has a worse record than Western

than Western governments and their state-led development schemes absolutely appalling it led to retrogression not

progress this was the attempt of governments to help when they stopped helping things got a lot better when

Chile had foreign aid cut off when South Korea had foreign aid cut off or Hong Kong these places flourished because no

longer could their crummy status policies be subsidized they have to adopt the free market the result was

fantastic Prosperity well how about domestically how about the United States surely government got rid of poverty in the US

where would we be without our overlords here right we'd all be impoverished earning 2 cents an hour digging in a

ditch somewhere well it turns out that in the us if we look at modern standards

of what constitutes poverty in the year 1900 poverty claimed 95% of the

population by the late 1960s that was all the way down to 12 to

14% the amount of anti-poverty federal initiative during that time is so so

negligible as not to be worth talking about and yet poverty fell dramatically

during that time then the government really got involved late 60s is when the Great Society programs really started to

get funded then the government got involved then what happened to Poverty it had been coming down like this then

what happened then it stagnates now we can talk about what the reasons for that would be why these

programs are counterproductive and again in some of my books I've talked about that but the point is there is this

brute fact of the poverty rate going like this and then the government gets involved and it goes like this now

suppose the situation had been reversed suppose the government was spending a lot on poverty all these years and and

then we saw poverty fall and then the government because evil Libertarians got in charge the government stopped

spending money on it and then poverty leveled off you know what we would hear well this just goes to show government

spending is what alleviates poverty and if we get rid of the government spending then it stagnates but exact L exactly

the opposite is the truth so what do we hear in the headlines or in textbooks nothing crickets nothing at all no

acknowledgement of this whatsoever and the domestic analog to foreign aid has

been the welfare state and the welfare state has corresponded with a stagnation

in the poverty rate the same way that foreign aid to other countries responded in in the same way all right so the

other thing is well if we have freedom then the environment is going to be damaged and you know we're all going to die

instantly now I understand that sort of argument we should remember that the workers paradises where you had

centrally planned economies were not known for Environmental Quality in fact in the Soviet Union it was a crime it

was a felony to drop a lit cigarette into the vulga river because it was a a fire hazard a

river was a fire hazard so we should bear this in mind but of course number

one a Libertarian would properly speaking would think of of pollution as being a form of aggression if it is a

form of trespass onto your property and does damage to to your health and to your property then it ought to be

actionable and there's that great article law property rights and air pollution where Murray rothbard lays out

exactly how that would be dealt with in a free Society so first of all it's a caricature to think that well we Libertarians we love pollution like yeah

that's how we know that industry is really cranking things out like if I'm not coughing it's not capitalist that's

not not really how we think but also property rights are what make possible

the care of the environment now we get told for example that the American Indians they didn't have private

property they were uh purer than that they were like Russo's noble savage this

is all a fantasy invented by people who couldn't care less about the real truth of the American Indians they just want

to exploit these people on behalf of central planning the fact is that numerous American Indian tribes not only

did they have private property but they assigned property rights for example in hunting they would say this family can

hunt in this area well that's good because if you don't assign that then everybody's just going to kill every

animal in that area because if nobody owns the area if they do own the area they think well if I kill all the

animals then next year there ain't going to be no animals so I guess I don't want to kill them all now I want to because I

can enjoy the capital value long-term value of this land I better not kill all of them now I better leave some to

reproduce but if there's no private property and you try to do that you try to say you know what going to restrain

myself I'm not going to kill all the animals I'm going to wait till next year then somebody else just come in and kill them because you have no property right

in it so the incentive then in under public property is for everybody to kill as much as possible right away so that

nobody else gets it but as soon as you assign a property right in it you have the urge to care for it this is also

true in the Pacific Northwest the American Indians assigned uh fishing rights for salmon so that there wouldn't

be over fishing people would just fish out all the salmon leaving nothing for for the following year so there's a lot

of common sense to to the libertarian position well wouldn't the free market free market we're we're taught in school

if we have what you people are calling for I mean it sounds nice when you talk about it but really it's going to lead to monopolies it's going to lead to

Wicked people little short little people with white mustaches carrying sacks of money with dollar signs on them running

around they're going to be running the economy and that's what you Libertarians want you love corporations man well okay

for one thing if we love corporations so much how come they don't donate to us

okay

there are some corporations that would rather see the whole world burn to the ground and have a free

market but in fact this whole free market yields monopolies thing first of all it comes in part from what we again

what we learned in in junior high school because I remember when I was in junior high school I just couldn't believe how anyone could support the market economy

I couldn't understand this it leads to these monopolists who dominate have the economy by the throat and only are

progressive leaders could possibly emancipate us from this terrible serfdom and all that but when you actually look

at it it's true you have some really predatory entrepreneurs who are using their political connections to get them

special benefits tariffs that protect them from competition and whatever but when you look at people who didn't do

that you actually have people I don't see why I'm supposed to despise why am I supposed to despise Cornelius Vanderbilt

for example this is a guy who before he even get before he get into railroads later in his career he's a guy who

defied the the government Steamboat Monopoly uh in the New York area and

then when the Monopoly was overturned he competed with the with existing Steamboat companies and he would say

well you want to go from A to B it used to be $3 a trip now it's 10 cents a trip on my on my boat on some trips he would

say it cost you nothing you can ride for free but I hope you're hungry because I'll make money selling you food this

was a an astonishing contribution to the world or then he he uh he used his

railroad or uh to uh transport male and he's transporting male across the country and he's competing against a

subsidized railroad line getting government money and he's still doing it for a quarter of the rate and the

subsidize line goes out of business and he prospers why am I supposed to dislike a benefactor of mankind like this why am

I why am I taught that this is the wicked person but the great wise benign benevolent people are these US

presidents whose faces look down upon me from the top of the classroom wall why is that

well it's a rhetorical question so there's of course we talk about Andrew Carnegie singlehandedly

single-handedly the guy reduces the price of steel rails in a quarter Century from $160 a ton to $17 a ton I'm

supposed to hate that guy now Rockefeller okay he could talk about the things he you know his foundation did

what that's a separate question I'm talking about as an entrepreneur I mean this is a guy who takes the price of kerosene and drops it from a dollar to

10 now the government can't ever do anything like this this improves everybody's standard of living because

now everything that uses that as an input gets cheaper everything that uses steel as an input gets cheaper people's

standard of living Rises across the board all the government can do is take stuff from some people and give it to

you and that is not only is that a wash it's a dead weight loss because of the inefficiencies and everything else

involved but these people actually did improve people's standard of living this goes on today and we are talk to despise

people who are involved in Commerce we're taught to be total jerks to store clerks for example you treat store now I

say you pres company accept it but we're taught to treat store clerks like garbage you know like one there's one

tiny thread wrong on your clothes and I mean you are going to make hell over this thing whereas the TSA is sticking

their hands down your pants and you're going well you do what you got to do man like there's something wrong here right

I mean people have got to be schooled to think this way cuz that is not a normal reaction to this also okay so then the claim is but

we do have monopolis and then they take over and then they can drive their competitors out of business they just make their prices super low nobody

compete with them they drive everybody out of business it's called predatory pricing again I've talked about that in in some books I have an article coming

out on this from the future of Freedom Foundation uh in a little while but for now I'll just say that there's almost no

evidence of of this ever actually happening there are firms that drive other firms out of business yes but

that's consumers drive those firms out of business not the firm really but where where's the uh the suddenly high

price that they're supposed to then impose on the rest of us they they never materialize and there are a whole lot of

reasons for that there a whole lot of reasons that predatory pricing is a counterproductive strategy and there are a whole lot of of ways Market mechanisms

that even if that were possible that that could fight against that but as I say I've got an article coming out on this and and uh I have so much else to

say I'll put that as a as a footnote check Tom woods.com eventually there'll be an article on predatory pricing but I

have talked about that in my Politically Incorrect guide to American history and finally the Anti-Trust laws notice that

antitrust complaints do not typically come from consumers consumers do not go

to the government and say I am so sick and tired of paying so little for this product I am so sick and tired of

getting this product for free please do something about never had it's always the competitor that should tell you

something about what the real interests involved in that are okay but wouldn't we things would be unsafe right there

would be quacks taking advantage of us we're too stupid to look after ourselves so these are the same people who say

we're smart enough to vote for people who are going to make decisions that are of momentous historic significance that

can affect the whole world we're smart enough to do that but we're too stupid to pick a doctor like we can't just look

you know take one second on the internet and find some basic Clearing House of of doctors who are respect we can't do

we're too stupid to do that for our own health however we can vote for a guy who's going to make policy against Iran

I it seems to me it's either one or the other but it can't you can't uh have this kind of contradiction but when we

think about something like occupational licensing the state has to license people because otherwise we'll all be

taken advantage of well again not only are there private certification agencies all over the place I mean there is even

even in terms of Regulation Underwriters laborator certifies Electrical Products that's a private organization it puts

its seal of approval on a product and if that product is unsafe underwriter Laboratories is ruined whereas if if

some government bureaucracy puts its symbol on there and it's unsafe are they ruined are they ruined no their budget

doubles they're not ruined look at the incentive that's that's there but also think about whenever you see some

requirement that this or that occupation has to get a special government license ask yourself this do the existing firms

in that industry have to comply with the requirements for the license so for instance sometimes they increase the

number of Hoops you have to jump through to get the license they say well from now on all the flower Rangers now have

to prove that they can do X or Y do they ever apply that retroactively to the existing flower Rangers never of course

not now if this were really for the general Public's well-being wouldn't we be equally as threatened by bad existing

flower arrangers as we would be from new entrance to the field and yet it's only to the new entrance that they apply

these regulations could it be that this is meant that way could it be that Adam

Smith's Insight that you can't get businessmen together for 3 seconds without them angling against the

Republic in one way or another that maybe he was right ah well indeed and then moreover I didn't pick that at

random there are some states that require flower arrangers to be licensed think of the dangers we have hearded

there but what about the Arts and Sciences though I mean it's really nice of us to talk about freedom and we

cooperate on the market these Miracles take place but there'd be no art if it weren't for the government if there

weren't a Joe Biden paternally watching over all of us I mean every artist in the world would just put his paint brush

down and say I just can't go on is that is that the case well you

know what actually the fact is that when you look at the National Endowment for the Arts I mean what is it I don't even

remember what its budget is these days it might be $200 million a year however

the amount of money that is voluntarily given by people to the Arts every year is in the billions of dollars and in

fact what in fact do we wind up getting from government Arts do we get the best artists is that what typically happen no

what we get is artists who happen to be good at filling out government grant applications these tend not to be the

best artists by the way just might think of that yeah what about the Sciences though now surely you people can't be

such neander I mean without government involed we'd have no science nobody would even be interested in the science

we'd all be worshiping Thunder you know or sacrificing an ox to Thor or

something if it weren't for government funding of the Sciences but it turns out again if you look actually at history

you look at before people's fortunes were being decimated by death taxes and income taxes and all that the private

sector vastly outperformed the public sector in donations to the Sciences I mean not even close same thing with

welfare spending by the way so there's that and then there there are government arguments well uh you know people can't

capture the profits of science for themselves or there's no profit in basic science I talk about this in rollback a

little bit longer the key book on this if you are interested in the Sciences is this wonderful book by Terrence key ke a

l y called the economic laws of scientific research and man the scientific establishment absolutely

hated him for writing this book where he showed that it is this is uh the claims that are made for government science

funding are are every single one of them is faulty not one of them actually conforms to The observed data and

moreover what typically happens with government science funding is that one point of view is privileged because

politicians are not they feel like they can't get away with funding this approach to cancer cures and that

contradictory approach to cancer cures because they're afraid taxpayers will say hey you're you're funding different

things they're going to half of these things are going to be wrong so what they do is they say what's the consensus among scientists they pour all the money

into the consensus and that builds up this one way of thinking anybody who's a dissenter from that is immediately

ostracized marginalized can't get any attention and so science becomes

inevitably politicized we're also told that if we if if it's just you and me interacting

and exchanging things we cause depressions depressions just occur spontaneously on the market people

become greedy at a particular moment and then suddenly depressions occur there's not

enough spending like whatever the rationale is we're told that depressions occur but our answer to that is that

depressions are not natural to the market economy there's no reason for them to be natural to the market economy

businesses going out of business that happens not everybody can anticipate what consumers are going to sometimes you produce a product people

don't want it you go out of business that's going to happen but why would a whole cluster of businesses go out of

business at once at the same time why would that happen and so what we do is we refer to the Austrian School of

Economics which teaches that when you have a crummy Central Bank that interferes with the economy it deforms

the economy it's it lowers interest rates artificially and it encourages investment in the wrong lines of

production it encourages Investments that wouldn't have seemed profitable if it weren't for these artificially low

interest rates and so the economy becomes deformed we we begin to see uh sectors

of the economy expand that wouldn't have expanded otherwise that the economy would be saying normally no don't expand

that expand here and as time goes on it requires more and more money being

printed to sustain these artificial firms and artificial lines of

production but they can't keep printing money and creating money over and over because ultimately they'll destroy the currency So eventually they have to stop

the inflation and then all this production that's been propped up that can't survive without these artificial

infusions of money they they fail and then you get this depression and then we're told we caused that the government

had nothing to do with that that's because of us and If Only They had been able to crack some more skulls they

could have prevented this depression it's it's everything is always our fault the financial crisis was our fault

inflation is our fault that's greedy businessmen that's labor unions it's never the government's fault they're

always innocent bystanders now if you're seven years old you might be satisfied with explanations

like those but after a while you have to say maybe the government has an interest in making us think that all good things

are caused by it and all the bad things are caused because we don't have enough of them the fact is in this most recent

financial crisis you know how many agencies state and federal we have in this country whose job it is to regulate

financial markets 115 so you mean to tell me that if we

had had all if we had just had 116 then we wouldn't have had this crisis these Regulators we had plenty of

them none of them saw the crisis coming almost none of them and most of these people let's face it are not the

brightest bulbs in their class if you go to business school you do not say to

yourself I can't wait to get out so I can work for the SEC no does not happen doesn't happen that's the kids who are

in the bottom of the class and they say I guess I got to go work with the SEC and they wind up being time serving

drones and the kids who graduate the top of their class run rings around them it is not for lack of of regulators that we

had this problem the CH who's the chief regulator of the banking system the Federal Reserve and the Federal Reserve chairman did they perceive that there

were problems uh coming down the line Greenspan told everybody you should take out um adjustable rate mortgages and

that the fundamentals are sound Bernan said there's no housing bubble um appraisement practices are sound lending

practices are great everybody should get in with both hands that's what these people said Greenspan this guy is

supposed to be like in charge of everything we're supposed to just bow down in front of this guy he's the wise planner the former saxophone player

turned Federal Reserve chairman we're supposed to say oh my gosh Allan you know what interest rates should be we're

too stupid to decide them on our own you better tell us what it is and and the thing is he would say things like I'm

not kidding he would say things like I had this feeling in my gut and so I decided to lower interest rates by 25

basis points a feeling in his gut and meanwhile you got people who were who practically

worshiped this God you remember um the story of Steven glass he was a reporter for the new Republic magazine and they

made this wonderful movie about him shattered glass because he used to just make up his stories he invented the

stories people would say gosh how does he break all these fascinating stories because he invented them he just made them up they didn't actually occur so

one of the stories that he invented was that some Wall Street investors had had built a Shrine to greenpan with flowers

and candles and an image of greenpan and they would gather together and meditate there now that was a madeup story but

the point is nobody noticed that was a madeup story people thought yeah that seems

plausible that is creepy I mean this is what this is what we are taught the type

of disgusting superstitious reverence we are taught to have for these people and then it turns out they're dead wrong

Greenspan even was interviewed I was a Sawyer I can't remember he was interviewed not long ago and she played

a portion of his Congressional testimony total gibberish that makes no sense what soever and she asked him to explain what

this meant and he admitted that he was just making stuff up he was trying to throw Congress off the track and he fig

basically he figured Congress doesn't know anything about monetary policy so you just go blah blah blah and they'll just go yes sir yes sir win's lunch and

so it turns out that even Greenspan himself he said he called it well what I was using there was syntax

destruction so he's even got his own weirdo phrase for it so think about this now so these the

so this is a guy who's in charge of the money supply and he admits that he just blabs and blabs about nothing to throw

Congress off the track meanwhile he's totally clueless about what's going on and we're supposed to Repose our

confidence in these people and that you and I who are skeptical of this there's something wrong with us we must be antisocial or something if you don't

like alen greenspin something wrong here now ultimately what does it boil

down to though we can answer all these objections all day long it basically boils down to there are two ways to acquire wealth you can create wealth by

serving your fellow man that's the way uh a civilized person creates wealth or

you can expropriate people you can loot people at the point of a gun you can take stuff that's it everything boils

down one way or another boils down to one of those two original ways well it's obvious which way our

Society has chosen so we have agriculture subsidies that help the

farmer and that that basically amount to a gun in the ribs of everybody else we have sugar quotas that steal on behalf

of the sugar producers we got the export import bank which diverts credit to certain favored firms we got the Federal

Reserve which diverts credit to certain favored firms and this just goes on and on and on and on not to mention all the

other things the military-industrial complex all of this occurs through the barrel of a gun and we have to ask

ourselves is this the most humane way for human beings to interact with each other at the end of at the point of a

gun it's indirect sure we hire somebody else to to uh wield the guns is there

really no other way we can live than by my group impoverishes the rest of you and enriches itself and then your group

is going to impoverish us and enrich itself what if we just stopped doing that wouldn't be a lot

richer so it really boils down to is the foundation of civilization peace and

free exchange and voluntary interaction of of individuals or is the foundation of

civilization as the state would have it the gun the badge and the hangman the state has warped our moral

sense and taught us that looting and aggression are okay as long as they're done by majority

vote and it has turned us against each other it has taken natural harmonies and

replaced them with disharmony and it is at this time that we ought to recall with Murray rothbard

that what we are really faced with in society is not a conflict of Rich versus poor or white versus black or City

versus country or industry versus agriculture but all of us against the

parasites who live off our labor and train us to believe that there is no other way to live there is another way

to live and it's called Liberty and join us thank you that's the first

[Music] one thank

you thank you thanks very much okay now that's

speech number one the second speech is much shorter it's like it's a I can't even dignify it as a speech it's like five minutes of pep talk but I do want

to give a pep talk I don't want to just give a speech Just for non- Libertarians be a little weird at a Libertarian

convention so a few little things and then afterward I'm going to zip over to my the glasses were nice enough to let me use some of their table so I have a

few titles I'll be sitting there chitchatting with folks although you know at 1:30 you got to be back so don't

you get in trouble don't blame me if you're out here talking to me you know I I didn't tell you to do that okay I just

want to give just a little bit of advice or just thoughts about Libertarians and libertarian political activism and this

is not dogmatic if you don't agree with me that's perfectly fine you know these are honorable sources of honorable disagreement but first thing that I

would think to say to somebody who wants to run as a Libertarian is do not run on Lower taxes and lower

spending of course we favor lower taxes and lower spending but unless you're going to say that I pretty much

want I mean so low that you can't believe how low I want the taxes and spending to be then people will just

vote Republican because they'll just say well you know Libertarians have a hard time winning Republicans are more likely

to win so I just vote for the Republican if you're just Republican light why would people vote for you

and you could say oh but I'll actually stick to my word yeah but they all say that everybody says I'm going to repeal

regulations I'm yeah you got to have some only you can figure out what what your unique unique spin on the Liberty

message is but you better have that spin to distinguish yourself of course you got to use YouTube these days and I

would I think Gary Johnson I I'll be honest uh I think he's done some very good ads so far distinguishing himself

from the two parties and I think that's a critical thing and I would I would make an I would basically just say that the

likelihood that Libertarians are going to get the 65 and over demographic is very very low very unlikely because Ron

Paul couldn't get I don't mean you ever write anybody off but I mean I'd love to see an ad where you got one person

represents the Republicans one person represents the Democrats one of them's driving a red Buick and the other one's driving a blue Buick and then you got

the super cool Libertarians like hey don't you want to be like us wouldn't that be better anyway that's my own sort of thought okay

second thing is do not neglect foreign policy there was a period obviously if you're running for State office I think

you can safely neglect foreign policy but there was a time in the history of the libertarian party where you know you

could find a lot of people who were I think this is over thankfully more interested in science fiction than in foreign policy that that those days are

over okay because some of the state's worst crimes are carried out in the area of foreign policy if you want to

distinguish yourself from the other parties that is a clear way to do it because there is a bipartisan foreign policy consensus that has done nothing

but harm to this country and you cannot run away from that and when when Murray rothbard was was helping to write the

initial U libertarian party platform he had to he had to claw his way to making

sure that foreign policy was given pride of place he said this is the key issue James Madison said this was the key

issue I mean war is what brings in its train so many forms of Oppression it cannot be neglected this is this is an

essential uh issue uh thirdly the Murray rothbard is radioactive thing needs to come to an

end okay there are people who now you notice

I made respectful reference to Milton Friedman he had many important contributions that we respect however um

rothbard was a great man I don't mean you have to worship him I don't mean you have to agree with every word he ever said I don't mean you have to belong to

a cult of rothbard I don't mean you have to wave incense in front of him but For Heaven's Sake somebody writes a thousand

page economic treatise that is praised by Ludwig von mises who was not exactly copious in his praise if you know

anything about him uh who in in his 20s and 30s was so conversent with economic

literature that he knew the the mainstream inside and out look at the footnotes in man economy and state in

his spare time he writes a four volume history of colonial America he publishes

uh libertarian newsletters he founds the quarterly Journal of Austrian economics the Journal of libertarian studies he

writes works of history on the Great Depression that are astonishing in their

scope and their effectiveness he writes a study of the panic of 189 that's praised by every academic Journal one

one could I mean who's a movie reviewer he his correspondence is this big you would write to him he would write you

back even though how did he find the time he's writing all these big books on an old typewriter I mean this maybe you

didn't agree with every strategic decision he made but you know whoever's infallible in this room will will drop

rothbart and follow you but this guy is a hero who helped to found this very

institution that we're we're we're sitting here uh celebrating so this whole thing where the only Libertarians

in the world are hyek fredman and John stasel that's got that's it that's

that's got to go and you know who I mean when I say these things and that's not to say that we shouldn't respect John

STS I'm not in no way am I taking anything away from those people I'm not trying to take away I'm trying to give

okay always give then finally one small little thing and I I hope I won't seem

like an ungrateful guest because believe me I am extremely grateful to be here um but I noticed that on the sign I was

going to say this anyway and then I saw on the sign it says this for the Texas libertarian so just a a gentle um

correction from my point of view I don't think it's a good idea to describe Libertarians as being fiscally

conservative and socially liberal I think that's a wrong way of looking at it cuz that for one thing now if you're

really really really pressed for time I could make maybe see that but I think it

first of all it makes us sound like we don't really have a philosophy we just borrow a little bit from these people a little bit from those people hey we've

taken the things that we think you might like and we've kind of mashed them together even though they don't really make sense that's not true at all we

have the most consistent philosophy of anybody who ever [Music]

lived our philosophy is we're against the initiation of violence that's it and

whatever follows from from that that's what we believe that's it very simple and also think of I mean the words

fiscally conservative have been corrupted I think Beyond

hope I don't want to be confused with those people okay I people oh I'm fiscally conservative I just want the

deficit to be only 800 billion yeah you know what we are a different species of of person from from that but now I just

so that you won't think all I do is gripe because it's not griping it's just some constructive critic ISM I want to

point out a little few just one quick thing that we should be happy about the fact that we have been out of power we

have not been in the Inner Circle there's one good Silver Lining to that and that is as the wheels are coming off

and they are coming off fast in Europe where I just came back from they are coming off fast in Europe and they're

coming off here too they can't possibly blame us for this

people are going to be looking for answers and they're going to be looking for answers not from the same old people

who caused all the problems they're going to be willing more willing than ever to look in places that they

wouldn't have thought they would have looked even five years ago and that's the Gap we have to fill now I know it's

a cliche to say the internet has opened up a lot of possibilities for us but

it's absolutely true now it's also true that on the internet you can read Time Magazine you can read mainstream opinion

but but the point is you could read mainstream opinion before the internet but you couldn't really find us I mean and if you did by accident you know if

you want to find out about our philosophy you got to send a self- addressed stamped envelope to some address somewhere and you know 3 weeks

later you get a pamphlet but today we can we can reach

people in in ways that are astonishing and so what I want to urge people to do is something that I've been urging

people to do uh in a lot of the places that I've been stopping you have ways to reach people that are free you can start

your own blog and it's free and you should you should do that and and just you say well I'm already really busy

just just get more efficient we can all get more efficient carve out 20 minutes a day and just write on that blog what do I write about well if current events

aren't enough to chew on or if you feel like well I I don't have enough original to say other people are talking about current events read there's a plenty of

good stuff to read just write about what you're reading and that'll help somebody somebody else who going to be reading that thing it help that person navigate

just write down what your thoughts are about what you're reading I actually made up a thing I know we're not just about economics we're about the whole

package but I'm interested in economics so I wrote up a free resource because people kept asking what should I read I

want to become interest um knowledgeable in Austrian economics so I wrote up learn Austrian economics.com so you can

go there and this link to almost all the resources are online for free or you can listen to them so get a few of those and

just just start writing about them and this will help somebody it'll help you it'll make you a better writer will help

you organize your thoughts better there would be no time in your life when you're going to say gosh I'm so sorry I

wasted wasted time becoming a good writer and thinker that was just out the window that time you're not going to say that to yourself secondly everybody can

have a YouTube channel it's amazing you can comment on things and it's free start your own YouTube channel and it's

free it's amazing you should do that and this will help you get over your fears of speaking there won't be an audience

right in front of you but you'll be surprised you're ALS it's also nerve-wracking to speak in front of just a camera and some ways that's more nerve-wracking because you don't know if

anyone's going to laugh at your jokes or not you know this just out there in The Ether but this is free I I have a friend

and I keep badgering him I keep saying to this friend and this is my form of saying you better do this cuz someone's

going to take this idea I have a friend who's very very very I have a I'm blessed because I travel in these

circles to know a ton of geniuses this guy knows a lot about economics and I said you know what you should do you

start a YouTube channel and every week you make an 8 minute YouTube critiquing

Paul krugman's column

and you call it you just call Simply call the channel the anti- crew you will be a

sensation everyone will tune into this thing every week a sensation and then you link back to your your uh your blog

and you get more traffic for your blog and and you build yourself up and everybody's happy like why would you not

do this these sorts of things are at your finger I mean that's a million-dollar

idea why won't he do it I don't know but I'm going to send him I hope this video gets online I'm going to say all right

look look you got like 10 more seconds to start doing this because I just told people this idea somebody's going to do

it but the point is think of what your Niche is and we got to be all over this thing because and and by the way I I

figured out what my my Niche is because okay I I do public speaking and I write

and that helped me figure out my Niche because and again this is not just self-deprecating humor I'm really not

good at anything else like I'm not good at anything else like I I'm when I see a

carpenter come to do work my house to me he's like a magician I I have absolutely

no idea how I'm looking at this unfinished part of my basement and then a few weeks later I walk in there and it's like a paradise like I I if I had

10 lifetimes I couldn't even conceive of how this is done or fixing my C see my wife grew up in rural Oklahoma so she

can fix a flat tire she can shoot a deer she can do all this stuff right I I am

just so pathetic compared to this this woman like I don't I don't know how my car works as I've said before as far as

I know there's an angel in there that makes it go I I have no idea so this this being the only thing I can do I

started up something where I said in the same way that we can create our own alternative media instead of trying to

make sure that ABC employs good reporters that's pretty hopeless or it said make make sure the New York Times

hires good reporters that's a hopeless cause and the New York Times is going down the tubes anyway so who cares create your own so I thought in the same

way I'm always griping about these professors and they fill the kids head heads with with uh nonsense and it's a

good thing these kids are drunk anyway and they can't retain any of this information and I gripe about it but

then I thought you know a lot better than griping and being a lazy bum because any lazy bum can gripe why don't

you create something so I thought why don't I I have a PhD in US history why don't I just teach like a liberty US

History like this is what people should know about us history and I'll just teach that myself using this mechanism

so I've gotten a few of my friends whom I trust I have a guy who teaches economics for me so I just started a

site called Liberty classroom.com and it's the most exciting thing I've ever done so there's stuff for everybody to

do so we are involved then in a struggle that isn't going to have a quick

resolution because this is a struggle that goes back as far as you can go in

human history the struggle between Liberty and Power in fact if you have any books by Liberty Fund uh you you

open them up and on the inside cover they have this copor script from ancient Sumer from one of

the earliest recorded civilizations and the script means Liberty so we have this

going back to at least 3,000 BC this struggle at least in recorded history

and this is going to be a struggle that will persist long after we're dead so we shouldn't be looking for quick immediate

short-term gains although we should welcome them when they occur but we should be in this for the Long Haul be

prepared for discouragement and remind ourselves that we're doing the right thing we have made so many wonderful

friendships in this course of this struggle we've expanded our Horizons I've learned so much because I know I

know some history and economics but there are a lot of things I don't know about that I've learned from all of you folks it's a privilege to be involved in

in this movement and I hope you'll always think of it that way and thanks again for for having me

dying of thirst just a programming announcement if Elizabeth Miller is here she can come up I