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Were excited to have with us this morning our speaker this morning, david boaz, hes the executive Vice President of the Cato Institute. Hes play ared a key role in the development of the Cato Institute and the lib earntarian libertarian movement. Hes the author of this new book thelibertarian mind. Hes a provocative commentator and a leading authority on nest inissues such as domestic issues and as an aside, the house this week is taking up the reauthorization of the elementary and secondary education act, drug legalization, the growth of government, the rise of libertarianism. Hes the former editor of of new guard magazine, was executive director of the council for a competitive economy. Prior to joining cato. Hes written lots of different publications, his other books include the politics of freedom and the cato handbook for policymaker. Hes been in the New York Times, Washington Post etc. Frequent commentator on national television. And just as an example of davids thinking heres a quote from a recent article called washingtons parasite economy t f. If you want the federal government to tax ask borrow and therefore 4 and transfer 4 billion a year, if you want to supply americans with health care and School Lunches and Retirement Security and local bike paths, then you have to accept that such programs come with incentive problems, politicization corruption and wealthy parasite class. So thats kind after an example of some of the provocative quotes from david. I will turn it over to him and again, were excited to have him with us this morning. Thanks very much. Thank you all for being here, and do you want to [inaudible] theres seats over here, theres seats here. There are a couple of seat and i understand theres now breakfast in the back so i want to thank robert and the raybin group for inviting me. They graciously invite me to be a guest at a lot of their breakfast, and i told robert im really not a breakfast person please do lunches but he finally got me to one of his bests by letting me be the star and talk about my book. So thats a good thing. As you heard the book is the libertarian mind, it was published by Simon Schuster last week. Sold out the first day on amazon although you never know how many copies they actually had. So let me talk a little bit about libertarianism and the book the libertarian mind, and how this relates to what i know are probably concerns on the left of many of the people here in the the audience. Libertarianism is the philosophy of freedom; Political Freedom, personal freedom, Economic Freedom. And that means i think that libertarians tend to cut across leftright boundaries. I tried to write the best accessible overview of libertarianism right now. There are many great libertarian books from john locke to richard epstein. This book had to be simple enough for me to understand, so hopefully its more accessible than a lot of those more scholarly books are. And i wrote it for libertarians i wrote it for libertarians who want to have a better understanding of our own philosophy libertarians who might want a book to give to their friends who say what is this stuff youre always talking about, but also i wrote it for tens of millions of americans who i think fall into the category that we might call fiscally conservative and socially liberal or fiscally responsible and socially tolerant. And those people i think are broadly libertarian. If you think in general the government should be smaller in the economy and in general government should leave people alone in their personal lives then whatever details in this book you might not yet be ready to accept, that means that you really are essentially a libertarian. And so one of my goals with the book is to help those people understand that theyre not on the red team, theyre not on the blue team theyre really part of the broad lib ortarian constituency. And i say tens of millions of americans, i actually have some statistical evidence for that. David kirby and i at the Cato Institute have published various studies under the theme the libertarian vote. Gallup poll for some years now once a year has asked people two questions; do you think the government should be involved in promoting traditional values or isnt it the role of the government to protect to promote any sort of values, and another question about do you think the government should do more to solve social problems, or is that best left to the private sec or sector . Then they classify people who give one set of answers as liberals, one set of answers as conservatives, and people who say i think the government should stay out of both of those areas as libertarians. And they find recently 2024 of americans fall into the libertarian category. Now, david kim by and i added kirby and i added a third question because we thought those two questions were too easy, so we added a third question from the gallup and pew array of questions and when we did that we got only 1 315 of americans falling into the libertarian category. But we also had zogby ask a question for us on one of his polls. And that question was would you describe yourself as fiscally conservative and socially liberal, also known as libertarian . And the answer to that was 44 said yes. So thats a pretty good upper bound for the lib ortarian vote libertarian vote in america, that if you define libertarian as fiscally conservative and socially liberal, 44 of americans are willing to accept the term. I have core chapters going back to the bible and on up to Milton Friedman and ayn rand, on individual rights, what rights do we have as human beings. Chapters on springism pluralism, toleration individualism, pluralism toleration law civil society, economics and the market process. And then, of course i have introductory and concluding chapters that put it in a context of contemporary american politics. I also have a chapter called what Big Government is all about and the quotation about the pair la site parasite economy you hard at the beginning was drawn from that. That when you create a government as big as the one weve got mostly done for idealistic reasons at least by some people, there is a bootleggers and baptist element here, there are people who want government to be big because they believe that it should take care of people, and there are other people who want it to be big because they know theyre very talented at getting a piece of what the government has if you want a government that big, you will get incentive problems politicization corruption waste and i think in cha chapter that chapter i added the line from the godfather this is the business you have chosen. If this is the business you have chosen, then this is the result you have to accept dealing with. I would say that libertarians politically favor lower taxes less regulation, more tolerance toward gay marriage and marijuana, more skepticism about endless foreign wars. The book is mostly about deeper principles that underlie those policies, but it does have probably the longest chapter in the book is on contemporary policy problems ranging from endless foreign wars to health care and Economic Growth. Now, because of the venue were in here and the nature of the audience, i want to Say Something about tensions between modern liberals and libertarians. I know that i see various liberal magazines that have lots of attacks op libertarians, and i suppose its fair to say that libertarian magazines have lots of attacks on modern liberals. The first thing that libertarians say when we talk about liberal libertarian tension is but were liberals. We are descended from the classical liberals. We consider ourselves liberals in the sense of john locke and adam smith and Thomas Jefferson and john stuart mill, and somewhere around the end of the 19th century a submit occurred a split occurred among liberals not so much on principles of free speech religious freedom extending the promises of the declaration of independence to more and more people, but on the issue of economics and the governments role in the economy. So were still liberals but now we have to call ourselves classical liberals because otherwise people wouldnt understand. Still, modern liberals and libertarians agree on a lot of things each though we may talk even though we may talk a lot more about the things we disagree about. Thursday, i believe, the Washington Post had an article on civil libertarians and libertarianleaning Tea Party Conservatives coming together in the Virginia Legislature to fight things like drones license plate readers, wiretapping. I thought that was very interesting, to see even there in richmond that there could be this alliance between the aclu and the libertarianish republicans. Theres a lot of that going on. Theres a lot of talk especially since ferguson but long before that about Police Misconduct, about the way the police treat minority communities about police militarization, and the Cato Institute was way ahead of the game Cato Institute being a flagship libertarian institution on police militarization. And weve also for some years been running a web site called policemisconduct. Net. You probably have all heard in the past few months there is no National Database of Police Misconduct except maybe the one were running. But which is obviously unofficial. We have to comb the newspapers which has been made much easier in the days of the internet to find examples of Police Misconduct and record them. But if you go to policemisconduct. Net, you can find examples that can be categorized by city by state and so on. Libertarians and liberals ideally agree on posing these endless on opposing these endless foreign wars although i must say we have been disappointed by the decline in dissent in the past few years but i trust we still have that as an ongoing issue. The war on drugs, something liberty libertarians have been critical of for years. Nsa surveillance, all of the things that came out particularly after Edward Snowdens revelations. Many of you will remember Justin Amashs amendment in 2013 to try to rein in a very small part of nsa surveillance, and one of the striking things about that amendment to me was it came close to passing in the house. Got about 200 votes. But like a lot of attempts to change the system, it got about 200 votes, but theres no way it was going to get 218 votes. But it did get roughly half of both republicans and democrats. So i think what you had coming together there was civil libertarian democrats libertarianleaning, tea partyinfluenced republicans to vote for reining in the nsa while the centrist establishment in both parts supported in both parties supported every nook and cranny of the surveillance state. Because the amash amendment only went after one little cranny, and he still couldnt get that passed. There was a subsequent amash amendment that was even milder that did pass. Libertarians, Tech Companies and liberals Work Together to fight sopa and pipa a couple of years ago. Dont ask me to explain what those are, but i know my colleagues at the Cato Institute who did understand Technology Issues were very active on them. Corporate welfare, immigration gay marriage, all issues that i think liberals and libertarians have been working together on. In fact, i did a Little Research and concluded that cato scholars may very well have been the first think tank scholars to endorse gay marriage oppose the patriot act, oppose the iraq war starting in 2001 and publish the first study on getting out of iraq. So we have a long record on a lot of these issues. Now, it is true libertarians believe in free markets and limited constitutional government. We believe that Economic Growth would be stronger and poverty would be reduced more rapidly if we had a much stricter reliance on limited federal government and free markets than a lot of people in washington believe. We believe we think freedom and individual rights mean freedom of speech, freedom of religion free markets and strictly limited government. I do believe there is a bigger market for this than a lot of poll constitutions and politicians and pundits recognize. Were starting to see some of that recognition. Before about 2013 i never saw headlines talking about the libertarian wing of congress or the libertarian faction in the Republican Party or liberals, libertarians unite to stop bill, that sort of thing. So i think there is a growing recognition. But i do believe its still the case that theres 24 of the American People who, if asked unprompted, theyll say theyre libertarians, but there may be 2040 of americans who, if its explained to them as you generally believe government should spend less and tax less and you generally believe government should leave people alone on issues like marriage and marijuana that its a much larger number. One of the things i want to do with this book is reach those people. So thats my introduction to libertarianism and the libertarian mind, and im happy to engage in discussion. Great. So ill just ask that you identify who you are, who you work for and ask your question. Meredith. Do i need to stand up or yes. Hi, im Meredith Mcgee here with the Campaign Legal center. Really two areas that id like to hear you address. One is when you talk about free markets, just kind of the divide between the 1 and the rest, when you talk about free markets, are you concerned about the growing gap economic gap in our society . And if you have unfettered free markets, you know, as a libertarian point of view, theres really no role for the government to try and deal with this economic wage gap particularly. The second is this kind of question of the role of money in politics. And id like you to address kind of how you see the crony capitalism, kind of your view on the Campaign Finance system and where cato comes down in terms of trying to address a system that has a free market thats not exactly free but has candidates out there raising millions of dollars from a very small number of people. All right thanks. Let me talk a little about inequality. I do write about that a little bit in the book. I think the way i would look at it is what is the real problem were concerned about . I think the real problem is poverty. And secondarily r stagnant middle class incomes. So from my own point of view, every day that the price of microsoft stock goes up the wealth gap between bill gates and me gets larger. But i have a tiny bit of microsoft stock so im a little bit better off. Hes a lot better off. I am more interested in me being a little better off than in him being a lot better off. So there may be people who are actually interested simply in the gap. Im more interested in how well are people living. Finish so what im interested in are policies that improve middle class incomes and give poor people a greater chance of getting out of poverty getting into the working class, the middle class. And i think many of the policies that are proposed to deal with inequality would actually slow Economic Growth, reduce the creation of jobs, and that would be a bad thing. I would say there is a lot of crony capitalism in the system. There is a lot of Economic Activity. Theres often an assumption the government intervenes in the market to help the poor and the middle class and libertarians are against that and thats a bad thing. But a lot of the Government Intervention in the market is not even intended to help the poor and the middle class. The programs that are supposed to, i think generally dont. But a lot of the programs arent even intended that way. They are intended to protect incumbents, and those incumbents can be people with maybe even lower middle class incomes like the taxi cartel. Weve got people trying to start new competitors to the regulated taxis and being blocked by the cartel, its friends in the state legislatures and the City Councils and the existing stagnant regulations. So one of the things libertarians want is break up these systems that protect people. And then at the higher end youve got too big to fail and wall street bailouts and Automobile Company bailouts and all of those things are at least potentially good for the owners of capital, but not good for a free market not good for Economic Growth, not good for people who dont already own big banks. So libertarians were very much against the wall street bailouts and all of that. So protectionism is another area that protects the incumbents. If you are a big business that has to compete with importers, then you dont like imports. But if youre a consumer, you should like competition and imports. Libertarians stand on the side of free trade and the consumers. Now, you also asked about Campaign Finance, so on. Im a First Amendment absolutist, and i do believe in spending money to advance your political ideas is a an exercise of your First Amendment rights. What i think that studies show academics, is theres not much good evidence that Large Campaign donations, Large Campaign spending actually influences politicians. People give money to politicians they like rather than politicians doing what their funders want. However, what we do know is that most Campaign Spending goes to incumbents but incumbents dont get defeated unless their opponents have a lot of money. So if you want to protect incumbents, then you pass the laws that incumbents have been passing like the mccainfeingold act. If you want to see more rotation in office, there are better ways to do it. Number one, allow challengers to raise enough money. Number two put term limits on the incumbents. I would like to see we put a term limit on the president , we have term limits on most governors. We should do the same thing for legislators in congress and the state legislatures. So id rather stick to the First Amendment, allow people to spend money as they choose knowing that you are trying to funnel money to if you are trying to funnel money to a member of congress, there are many ways to do it that are less transparent than giving money to his campaign office. Theres the Mitch Mcconnell center for statesmanship at the university of louisville all those kinds of things, the dole foundation. Dole foundation had a noble purpose, to help handicapped people, but it did mean it was a way to curry favor with the Senate Majority leader if you gave contributions to it. Youre never going to stamp out all of those thing so why not just go ahead and make it transparent . Let people give money to people they want to . So thats where i come down. Im [inaudible] martinez. I agree with lots of what youre saying andive ive run into this. My sons a hard core libertarian, but where i run into a brick wall could you speak on what the libertarian mind thinks about Foreign Policy . This is where i run into a brick wall every time. Okay. If we define libertarians as people who are fiscally conservative and socially liberal or a little more precisely as people committed to personal freedom and Economic Freedom, that does not inherently tell you what to think about Foreign Policy. And there are people who would say that they hold those views and are libertarian and favor a robust american Foreign Policy to advance freedom around the world which might include protecting israel and ukraine, might include the iraq war, whatever. Finish i think the more appropriate libertarian Foreign Policy is to recognize that government is not very good at achieving its purposes and that war is a devastating thing for any society, and so we should avoid wars and we should avoid wars that are not our wars, and we should pursue a policy of noninterventionism. So the libertarians i know tended to to oppose the first gulf war the iraq war not necessarily the war in afghanistan because america was taked by people who attacked by people who had at least been harbored in afghanistan and noninterventionists always said america must have a Strong National defense, Strong Enough to repel and counter any potential attack. Well, we got attacked, and we responded. But iraq did not attack us, and so in general i think libertarians believe in peace. They understand how devastating war is to lives and bodies and to the economy and to society, and therefore, wed like to the stay out of wars whenever possible. Over here. Hi, my names mike [inaudible] im the acting director of the Washington Legislative Office of the aclu. First of all, i want the thank you for working with us on a whole range of issues as you said immigration and criminal Justice Reform and any number of others. I think before too long were no longer going to be strange bedfellows but, perhaps familiar bedfellows. I did want to ask you about the libertarian view of the equal protection language of the constitution and the various civil rights laws that have been passed and how do you, how do you reconcile those rights with some of the other views of limited government that youve talked about already . Well, the equal protection clause, i support the u. S. Constitution, i support the equal protection clause. Cato institute is currently preparing a brief in the Supreme Courts gay marriage case, and we certainly have made equal protection arguments in those previous cases, and i assume well be doing so again in this brief. Im the first in my family not to be a lawyer so i want to try to go not too deep into clauses of the constitution. But equal protection im in favor of. Where libertarians are troubled by some of these laws is when they affect private actions. You know the distinction between state action and private action. The state must treat people equally. The state was in violation of the equal protection act throughout all the time thatimposing that it was imposing segregated schools e when it banned interracial marriage, not to mention the far worse thing that were done to africanamericans in this country in blatant violation of what the constitution should have been understood to say. But when you get into private action, then i think you should be much more cautious. And i think theres been a libertarian debate on the 1964 civil rights act. The part that overturned jim crow libertarians are in favor of. The part that regulated private hiring and housing, some libertarians said it is better for society in the long run to outlaw the jim crow practices but not to interfere in private housing and hiring. Other libertarians said yes thats a good general principle, but after 250 years of oppression by the state, its not good enough to say okay, were going to stop. When you get into other groups, for instance more recently gay rights and antidiscrimination laws there, i understand the argument for that. I think these laws tend to follow Public Opinion and so the important value is to change Public Opinion in the direction of tolerance and acceptance and a recognition of the dignity and autonomy of every individual. And to the extent that changes, the law the legal changes are not even that necessary. Once they happen, they reflect whats already happened in society. And i have to say right now the idea that we are combing the country looking for wedding planners or photographers or cake bakers and trying to use the power of the modern state to force them to take pictures of a wedding theyre morally offended by is an unpleasant example of intolerance. There are lots of wedding photographers, there are lots of cake bakers. It just doesnt seem necessary to me to force these people to tow the line. Again, the state has to treat people equally. It has not done that for lots of groups, and thats why i talk about how one of the great liberal and libertarian triumphs of American History is slowly, all too slowly, extending the promises of the declaration of independence, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness to groups to whom they had long been denied; africanamericans women, gay people, anybody whos been excluded as a class from those things. It was important that the state stop that discrimination and start treating them equally and, obvious, we have not yet achieved marriage equality. We may be about to, and thats one of the elements of equal protection in the narrow sense and the promises of the declaration of independence in a broader sense. So speaking of tell us us who you are. Yes, i will. I will. Theres a whole leadup. [laughter] speaking of individual autonomy and selfrespect, my name is chris teach [inaudible] im with the center for reproductive rights, and i was hoping you could speak a little pit as to how libertarians feel about abortion regulations. Since 2011 actually there have been more onerous regulations on providers and on women than the previous decade combined, you know . Waiting periods used to be 24 hours, now in states were seeing 72 hours regulator providers are being asked to change the physical construct of their buildings in order to conform with things that have absolutely nothing to do with care, and this is all imposed by the states. And were starting to see some of these regulations come to the federal level. I was wondering if you could talk about those types of regulations and the state interfering with an individual in that way, because theres a little bit of a conflict, i think, when it comes to the social aspects of that debate maybe for libertarians, and i was hoping you might be able to speak on that. Than other republicans there have been up until now very few republicans who questioned the drug war, and therefore there was no faction or anything. On reproductive right is think libertarians believe the role of government is to protect life liberty, and property, and right there you see a bit of a conflict. Some libertarians i would say probably twothirds to threequarters of libertarians are pro choice. But theres a minority who are pro life. They would say the first purpose of government is to protect life, and this is a life. Other libertarians would say the purpose of government is to protect liberty and this is the womans choice, you cant require a woman to bring forth life for another potential person. Therefore, liberty is the operative word here. What i notice among libertarians is that both sides have more respect for the other position than i find in a lot of the pro life pro choice battles. I heard a writer who is a libertarian, speak once about this and she said have friends 0 who are prolife and they dont hate women and i have women who are pro choice and they dont hate babies and i keep hearing this from both sides, and i just think we need to be more open to hearing she took it more broadly than that. We need to be more open to hearing the other sides point of view and appreciating where theyre coming from without just assuming if they disagree with us theyre on the wrong side. Im not an expert on these laws but for a libertarian it goes back to the basic point. If you believe that this is a human life and the governments purpose is to protect life, then youre going to be sympathetic to these various attempts within the bounds of Supreme Court Juris Prudence to narrow the opportunity for termination of pregnancies. If you believe that this is a womans right its covered by the governments mandate to protect liberty, then youre going to be unsympathetic to these things. So it comes down to basic principle, and as i say one of the studies we published on he the libertarian, cited a study finding that somewhere around twothirds or threequarters of libertarians were pro choice which also fits my observation of the libertarian side knew. Im going to take a chance and jump in with a question. Based on your principles and beliefs of how would you look at other countries . What countries would you say most match your libertarian principles and beliefs or how does the United States stack up . The United States looks pretty good. We had the declaration of independence. We have the constitution. In fact, i criticize libertarians a lot of times for having an overly negative view of the world and of the United States. One of the great libertarian books was the road to cerfdom. It a agrees warning but is not a map of the world. People think were always on the road to crushdom. I dont think thats truism think all the work ive been talking about here ending slavery, ending jim crow moving toward equal rights for gay people, for women all of that is an advance, not towards cerfdom but towards freedom, and even within like Economic Activity we did cut tax rates, particularly in the reagan years. In the carter years we eliminated a lot of the cartel regulation from the new deal, in transportation in finance, in telecommunications. And i always tell i sometimes have libertarian interns come up to me and say my god were losing all our freedoms. Were on the tried cerf dom. I say, are youwide about being drafted and sent to vietnam . No. And i say i was. Thats a big advance. Other countries i think the United States and other western countries are pretty much in the same ballpark in terms of human rights, rule of law, private property markets, those kinds of things. Cato participated in the production of a report called the Economic Freedom of the world. It finds hong congress and singapore to be the most economic free countries in the world. Singapore might not rank so well if we included social freedom and hong kong has not had Political Freedom though it had personal freedom there was robust free speech and people could live their lives as the chose. They just couldnt choose their government under british cruel now under chinese rule. So if you combine, for instance, the free tom house ratings on Political Freedom and Economic Freedom of the world youll get countries like new zealand australia, northern europe, the United States being at the top on individual things. There might be topics where i would say some other country is doing better, and i must say, in the past dozen years the United States fell from third or fourth to about 15th in the Economic Freedom of the world rating, and i specify the past dozen years. This is not just obama. This is president bush also helped to propel the decline in Economic Freedom. But the most important fact in the Economic Freedom of the world report is they i forget when they start doing the report but they have taken it back to about 1975 and tried to assess the Economic Freedom of about 150 countries every few years since 1975 and theres been a steady growth internationally in Economic Freedom. Faltered a bit around the time of the great recession, bum i think its ticked back up. A lot of that is because of india and china the two largest countries in the world, moving toward greater Economic Freedom, and hopefully because of that greater political and personal freedom. So, libber tearans too often worry, were on a road to cerfdom but the fact is if you look at the world as whole i believe, with many exceptions, the world is moving toward a greater recognition of human rights the rule of law, womens rights, gay rights, rights of religious minorities and private property, sound money, and market economics. So, its slow but there is Real Progress happening in our time. My name is mark [inaudible] wanted to ask you about what you think about the District Of Columbia plight as rerates to congress and not having full liberty to execute our laws and budget as we would if we were a state. Well, im not sure i ever convince anybody from the District Of Columbia on this point. I actually do think the founders set up the District Of Columbia separately from the states because they wanted a Federal District and it was not supposed to be a state and it was not supposed to have representation in congress, and i think theres a problem when you have the government itself as an Interest Group in society. Now, d. C. Not having voting delegates in congress does not eliminate the fact that senior government officials and Government Employees as a class are Interest Groups anyway, but i do think thats a problem. So i am do not object to the district remaining a Federal District and nobody is required to live in the district. If you want to be able to vote for president well actually you can vote for president if you want to be able to vote for a member of congress, you can live in virginia or maryland or anywhere else in the world. The Federal District makes sense. Keep it the way it is in the constitution. The bigger problem this is what i write about in this material on the parasite class is that the bigger government gets, you have both Government Employees as an Interest Group, using government my taxpayer dollars to lobby the government to take more of my taxpayer dollars away from me, and i think theres something wrong with that in addition it creates a lot of wealth in washington that comes from the rest of society. Washington, of course, has a very bifurcated system of wealth, but a lot of people in washington go down where the Cato Institute is at tenth and massachusetts, and you just see all these luxury condos and Office Buildings being built all around us in an area that was not built up until the past 15 years or so, and i think that is a sign that too much of americas wealth is being drawn to washington and being drawn in to the game of lobbying and parasitism. So like i say i never convince anybody from the District Of Columbia that the founders were right to have a separate Federal District but thats he way i see it. Yes sir. I am with the think tank in austin for the texas Public Policy foundation. I have a question about banking regulation. I read an interesting column by george will, who is broadly speaking a libertarian. He said very uncomfortable with the idea of government tapping capping the size of somebodys bins but when the banks are on the brink of collapse, the government bails them out and i mate be time to start capping the size of banks because the risk of government bailouts is too high and its how should a libertarian think through that problem . Well, im no expert on banking regulation, but i have more or less the same thought process george will does there, and i have heard libertarian economists say it would be better to make it clear to the banks that youre a business, like any other business, and if you run your business badly you should go out of business. Thats what happens in the market process. We have Creative Destruction and if your favorite Restaurant Goes out of business or if your Restaurant Goes out of business, thats very sad thing, but Creative Destruction in the market process is what has brought us from being a poor subsis stance economy on the Eastern Shore of the east coast of the across to being as wealthy a society as we are. So we need Creative Destruction and that means not acknowledge theres creativity in the economy but there will be destruction, that businesses will be destroyed. So what about the banks . Well various people including libertarian economists issue said for some years number one, that fannie mae and freddie mac are backed by the full faith and credit of the u. S. Treasury, even though they swore they were not. We pondered in a study we did some years ago how could you convince the market that fannie mae and freddie mac are not backed up by the full faith theres a law that says they can not a draw on the credit of the United States. You have the secretary of the treasury stand on the steps of this treasury once a year ask say, i reafirearm no federal guarantee . But their loans always traded with a discount that indicated that the market thought they were backed up by the u. S. Government and guess what they were and they got bailed out. But i did talk to a couple of economists who said you know the stocks or loans of the biggest banks also trade at a discount like that, indicating that the market doesnt believe the biggest banks would be allowed to go bankrupt, and indeed in 2008 we saw these bailouts happening. We saw t. A. R. P. You can argue that the day the tea Party Started was the day the Bush Administration announced it intended to spend 800 billion bailing out the big banks and congress phones rang off the hook with nobody organizing it, congress phones started ring off the hook with people saying dont give money to the big banks. Im opposed to too big to fail. Banks would make more responsible decision ifs they had to stand on their own two feet. But if i dont believe that the u. S. Government would let the banks fail if they make bad decisions, then what do i do . Just accept that we live in an imperfect world . Or there is this argument, a bank that is too big to fail is too big. Dont let it get that big. Obvious live as a libertarian i dont want to cap the size of successful businesses. I dont think google is too big itch dont think microsoft was too big. Now nobody worries about microsoft because its been creatively halfway destroyed other. Companies have come along. Is facebook too anything no, im not bothered by facebook being too big. But if the banks have this blank check on the treasury, then thats a real probably. So im not prepared at this point, and i dont think george will was prepared to say lets put a cap on the size of banks. I would still like to get some agreement that we really have a that we have really abandoned too big to fail but at some point if we became convinced theres no way to stop too big to fail can see libertarians saying the second best to avoid another 800 billion bill to the taxpayers, would be to cap the size of the banks. Time for a couple more questions. Anyone have any . I work for the [inaudible] in terms of the future of the Libertarian Party do you see [inaudible] and they tend to be more aggressive in their thinking do you think there will be joined more to Libertarian Party than the traditional democrats or republicans . Let me be clear. Im not a spokesman for the Libertarian Party. Im a political independent. Im talking about libertarianism as a movement and concept, and i hope there are more libertarians in america and they become more conscious they are libertarians and they can join the Republican Party or the Democratic Party or the libertarian part or just devote their efforts to Initiative Campaigns or devote their efforts to making a secure future for their families and ignore politics, which is actually probably one of the reasoned that libber tearans underperform in politics. They dont care about politics. If they can be left alone, theyre happy with that. I do believe that millenials are strikerringly more liberal libertarian on social issues, personal freedom issues than older groups. What about economic and size of government issues . Thats a little more difficult to say. The Reason Foundation does a regular poll and their pollster has tried to present evidence that millenials are not as Big Government progressive liberal, as some polls would indicate. Im not sure im entirely convinced. However, most millenials, still living in their parents basement, have not yet really started paying taxes. When people start paying taxes they tend 0 to get somewhat more fiscally conservative or libertarian on the size of government. I do think also among millenials there is a huge deep kept sent simple about the ability of government to solve problems. Even though they say they want the government to guarantee everybody a job, theyre deeply skeptical that Government Works and thats going push them in a libertarian direction in the long run. Also theyre really growing up in a world of incredible choice available in so many areas and i cant believe that millenials who have accepted that choice in lifestyle and choice on the computer and choice of devices and all the things when i was growing up we had three networks, and basically in my little town we only had one newspaper. You cant get the New York Times. I dont think you could get the wall street journal in my town. So totally different now. You can be growing up in mayfield kentucky, where i did, and you can read the New York Times every day or you can read the times of london every day. I cant believe that people who and now theres uber. Thinks like that. And i cant believe the people who expect that much choice in their lives, who have come to accept it, are going to be satisfied with being told theres one Government School that your child has been assigned to on the basis of geography, o. That theres one Healthcare Plan and you ought to sign up to are or one retirement system designed for the traditional family of the 1930s. The Social Security system. So i would guess that their cynicism about government and their casual acceptance of a world of infinite choice is going to push libber tear yaps in a millenial direction, which cost make me optimistic about the political future for libertarians broadly. Time for one last question. Talking about scandanavia in terms of economic and social freedom. My question is, whether you think within your it is fair and legitimate for people to have the ability to take rights away from. Thes. Countries have extremely high taxes and then [inaudible] and so the majority taking away the rights and maybe the minority doesnt agree with the role the state plays. Do you think its possible for people to live a better life by reducing their rights voluntarily to through a democratic system . You talk about scandanavia, and i think lot of americans have a misconception about scandanavia. They sometimes call them socialists countries. Theyre not socialist countries. Theyre private Market Private property, free trade countries wife not undo levels of regulation. What they do have is high levels of taxes and transfer payments. So i have heard libertarians recently saying people talk about the nordic model. If we could have the nordic model id be happy with that because they are generally opentrading economies they are countries with a lot of personal freedom, they are countries that have generally very minimal capital regulation and not so much labor regulation. They just have high levels of taxes and transfers which libber tearans dont like but if you had to make the trade some libber tearans might opt for that. On your philosophical question you stated it one way at the beginning and a slightly different way at the end of your question. So when you say can a society vote to take away its own rights well, theres a problem with that. Its unlikely to be a unanimous vote so that is what bothers me about talking about taking away our own rights. We are in fact going to take away rights from our neighbors and so i dont think that is an appropriate thing and you did acknowledge that yes that means a majority takes away the rights of a minority. I think that is not good from a herber tarean perspective and not good from the perspective of moral philosophy and why i think its a good idea to guarantee our rights in the constitution, which we tried to do in this country sort of the ways. First, we wrote a constitution that did not give the government any fewer take away our rights. It gave it in article 1 section 8, very narrow set of powers, and when it was proposed the people of any free driven deserve a bill of rights. Alexander hamilton said what is the point of a bill of rights when the constitution gives the government no power to violate rights . But people wanted the bill of rights so they wrote one, for greater caution and for eight amendments they outlined the rights they were protecting and then in the ninth amendment, for even greater caution, they said, the enumeration of certain rights in this constitution shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retaped by the people. Retained is an important word. The stuffings dill not grand people their rights. People already had their rights and the constitution guaranteed they would retain them, and then in the tenth amendment it said and by the way any powers not granted to the federal government are reserved to the states or the people. So were sort of a trip triply redundant system. Didnt entirely work but compared to the rest of the world is worked well. I think its a bad idea to talk about voting to give away our rights. In fact that is what inalienable rights means. It mean means you cant give them away sometimes people challenge libber tearans, can you sell yourself into slavery . No. You can sell your for an extended contract. Max scherzer just signed a contract for five or stenyears to work for the Washington National us but he could not sell himself into slavery. So we would be bitter off protecting all of our rights and freedoms and if people want the benefits they think theyll get from welfare state there are ways through longterm contracts and insurance and so on to gain those benefits in a way that i pay for the choices im willing to make and dont impose those choices on other people. So thats my case for libertarianism, and i hope that those tens of millions of people who are fiscally conservative and socially liberal bill buy the libertarian mind and fine out if theyre actually libertarian. Lets give david a round of applause. Thank you. [applause] seem to be contagious. Thanks, everybody

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